cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A case study on the induction of clinical tolerance in cold urticaria

The mechanism(s) by which repeated cold challenge in a patient with idiopathic acquired cold urticaria resulted in the induction of clinical tolerance to cold stimuli was studied. Plasma histamine levels, mast cell ultrastructure, and the cutaneous response to intradermal injections of morphine, histamine, and substance P were examined before and after the induction of tolerance. Plasma histamine levels draining cold-challenged, clinically tolerant skin were markedly diminished compared to histamine levels obtained during cold-induced angioedema. Furthermore, electronmicroscopy of skin samples taken from tolerant skin after cold challenge revealed intact, largely normal appearing mast cells. Intradermal injection of mast cell secretagogues and vasoactive agonists into normal and tolerant skin sites resulted in similar whealing responses. Thus, these studies suggest that the state of clinical tolerance to cold stimuli is due neither to mast cell-mediator depletion or tachyphylaxis of the cutaneous vasculature to vasoactive agonists. It appears likely that tolerance may be due to the induction of a specific state of unresponsiveness of mast cells to cold stimuli or possibly to depletion of a cold-induced cutaneous antigen capable of triggering mast cell degranulation.
On the thermodynamic driving force for diffusion-induced grain boundary migration, discontinuous precipitation and liquid film migration in binary alloys

Abstract An expression for the net thermodynamic driving force (free energy change per unit distance of reaction front migration per unit area of reaction front) for the migration of reaction fronts during diffusion-induced grain boundary migration (DIGM), discontinuous precipitation (DP) and liquid film migration (LFM) in binary alloys is determined from a two-dimensional model which considers individual segments of the migrating reaction front as open systems which can receive solute and solvent atoms from or give them up to the surrounding material. In the case of DIGM and DP the reaction front is treated as a separate grain boundary phase of thickness δ. In the case of LFM it is treated as a liquid film of thickness δ. The magnitude of the force on the reaction front is calculated for DIGM in AuCu and for LFM in NiMo using available thermodynamic data. Finally, a criterion for the stability of a reaction front, when a small change in composition across a reaction front occurs and the reaction front composition is slightly changed, is established which shows that a driving force for reaction front migration can develop spontaneously as the result of solute and solvent diffusion along it, as long as the curvature of the free energy curve for the reaction front is positive.
Pavements as Embodiments of Meaning for a Fractal Mind

Taking as a point of departure one aspect of how the mind establishes a connection with the environment, this paper examines the role of pavement design in the environment as a vehicle for conveying meaning.
GRFT - Genetic Records Family Tree Web Applet.

Current software for storing and displaying records of genetic crosses does not provide an easy way to determine the lineage of an individual. The genetic records family tree (GRFT) applet processes records of genetic crosses and allows researchers to quickly visualize lineages using a family tree construct and to access other information from these records using any Internet browser. Users select from three display features: 1) a family tree view which displays a color-coded family tree for an individual, 2) a sequential list of crosses, and 3) a list of crosses matching user-defined search criteria. Each feature contains options to specify the number of records shown and the latter two contain an option to filter results by the owner of the cross. The family tree feature is interactive, displaying a popup box with genetic information when the user mouses over an individual and allowing the user to draw a new tree by clicking on any individual in the current tree. The applet is written in Javascript and reads genetic records from a tab-delimited text file on the server, so it is cross-platform, can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection, and supports almost instantaneous generation of new trees and table lists. Researchers can use the tool with their own genetic cross records for any sexually-reproducing organism. No additional software is required and with only minor modifications to the script, researchers can add their own custom columns. GRFT's speed, versatility, and low overhead make it an effective and innovative visualization method for genetic records. A sample tool is available at http://stanford.edu/~walbot/grft-sample.html.
Dispositions and Teacher Assessment: The Need for a More Rigorous Definition.

This article discusses the use of dispositions as a basis for evaluating candidates for teaching credentials. It begins with the assumption that any evaluation process must rely on clearly defined ...
Ethanol-induced fatty acid ethyl ester formation in vivo and in vitro in rat lung.

Fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) are the end products of a non-oxidative pathway for ethanol metabolism in a variety of human, rabbit, rat and murine tissues. Our objective was to determine the significance of this pathway in the metabolism of ethanol by the rat lung. In vitro, 14C-labeled ethyl oleate formation was assayed in the lung and compared with the pancreas, liver, heart and brain. Lipids were extracted with acetone, and 14C-labeled ethyl oleate was isolated and quantified by thin layer chromatography (TLC) and scintillation spectrometry. FAEE synthetic activity in the lungs (in vitro) was found to be intermediate among the organs examined. In vivo, male rats received 10% ethanol in their drinking water with or without daily i.p. injections of 4-methylpyrazole (1 mmol/kg body wt) for 15 days. Another group of male rats received 4 g/kg body wt ethanol as a 50% (v/v) solution by gavage every 12 h for 2 days. FAEE from the three organs with the highest in vitro activity for FAEE synthesis (pancreas, liver and lung) were extracted with acetone, isolated from normal lipids by TLC and separated by gas chromatography. The lung had lower FAEE-forming activity than the pancreas or the liver in the 15-day studies. However, in the 2-day study, the lung had higher activity than the liver but lower activity than the pancreas. Ethyl oleate, ethyl stearate and ethyl palmitate were the predominant FAEE formed in the intact organism. Ethanol-induced FAEE may play a role in the development of alcohol-related injuries to the lung.
Tunable Arrays of ZnO Nanorods and Nanoneedles via Seed Layer and Solution Chemistry

We have systematically studied the effect of pH and 1,3-diaminopropane additive concentration on the morphology of ZnO nanorod and nanoneedle arrays grown in aqueous solution using a variety of seed layers. Increase in the growth solution pH from 6.8 to 13.2 resulted in a near doubling of the growth rate in the [0001] direction possibly due to attractive interaction between the zinc species and the growth surface at high pH, leading to nanorod arrays with reduced faceting and higher aspect ratios. Increases in 1,3-diaminopropane concentration initially enhanced and subsequently inhibited growth of tapered ZnO nanoneedles on seed layers consisting of ZnO nanoparticles, oriented ZnO films, or columnar facets of ZnO microrods. The final nanoneedle dimensions, packing density, and alignment were strongly affected by 1,3-diaminopropane concentration and seed layer type, which can be explained in terms of the relative strength of zinc chelation by 1,3-diaminopropane, the areal density of seeds, and other factor...
Effects of Prolonged Darkness on the Sensitivity of Leaf Respiration to Carbon Dioxide Concentration in C3and C4Species

Predicting responses of plant and global carbon balance to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere requires an understanding of the response of plant respiration to carbon dioxide concentration ([CO 2 ]). Direct eAects of the carbon dioxide concentration at which rates of respiration of plant tissue are measured are quite variable and their eAects remain controversial. One possible source of variation in responsiveness is the energy status of the tissue, which could influence the control coeAcients of enzymes, such as cytochrome-c oxidase, whose activity is sensitive to [CO2]. In this study we compared responses of respiration rate to [CO2] over the range of 60 to 1000 mmol mol ˇ1 in fully expanded leaves of four C3 and four C4 herbaceous species. Responses were measured near the middle of the normal 10 h dark period, and also after another 24 h of darkness. On average, rates of respiration were reduced about 70% by the prolonged dark period, and leaf dry mass per unit area decreased about 30%. In all species studied, the relative decrease in respiration rate with increasing [CO2] was larger after prolonged darkness. In the C3 species, rates measured at 1000 mmol mol ˇ1 CO2 averaged 0.89 of those measured at 60 mmol mol ˇ1 in the middle of the normal dark period, and 0.70-times when measured after prolonged darkness. In the C4 species, rates measured at 1000 mmol mol ˇ1 CO2 averaged 0.79 of those at 60 mmol mol ˇ1 CO2 in the middle of the normal dark period, and 0.51-times when measured after prolonged darkness. In three of the C3 species and one of the C4 species, the decrease in the absolute respiration rate between 60 and 1000 mmol mol ˇ1 CO2 was essentially the same in the middle of the normal night period and after prolonged darkness. In the other species, the decrease in the absolute rate of respiration with increase in [CO2] was substantially less after prolonged darkness than in the middle of the normal night period. These results indicated that increasing the [CO2] at the time of measurement decreased respiration in all species examined, and that this eAect was relatively larger in tissues in which the respiration rate was substrate-limited. The larger relative eAect of [CO2] on respiration in tissues after prolonged darkness is evidence against a controlling role of cytochrome-c oxidase in the direct eAects of [CO2] on respiration. # 2001 US Government
Childhood maltreatment among community dwelling adult Latinas.

There is a lack of research about childhood maltreatment among adult Latinas in the United States. The aim of this secondary analysis was to explore the occurrence and co-occurrence of maltreatment during childhood in a community-dwelling sample of adult Latinas. Participants were 62 women ages 18–45 who read and spoke English, attended work or school on a regular basis, and had no health or functional interferences with daily living. On average, participants were 29 years of age (M = 29.08, SD = 9.30), high school graduates (n = 36, 58.1%), married (n = 36, 58.1%), and employed (n = 27, 43.5%). Over three quarters of participants (n = 49, 79.0%) reported at least one form of childhood maltreatment: emotional abuse (n = 24, 38.7%), physical abuse (n = 29, 46.8%), sexual abuse (n = 29, 46.8%), emotional neglect (n = 27, 43.5%), and physical neglect (n = 23, 37.1%). Maltreatment severity increased with the number of maltreatment forms. Women sexually abused during childhood were more likely than women witho...
The Ties That Bond: Re-Examining the Relationship between Facebook Use and Bonding Social Capital

Research has established a positive relationship between measures of Facebook use and perceptions of social capital. Like other social network sites, Facebook is especially well-positioned to enhance users' bridging social capital because it lowers coordination costs associated with maintaining a large, potentially diverse network of Friends. The relationship between Facebook use and perceived bonding social capital, however, is not as clear. Previous studies have found a positive relationship between Facebook Intensity (FBI) and a measure of bonding social capital that focuses on benefits accrued locally, i.e., within a university context. This study looks at the relationship between Facebook use, offline behaviors, and social provisions, a broad-based measure of social support that taps into a dimension of bonding. Findings suggest that while FBI no longer predicts bonding, specific behaviors on Facebook are positively linked to perceptions of three social provisions related to one's closest friends and family.
Corporate Governance And The Quality Of Financial Disclosures

Congress has recently enacted measures designed to improve corporate governance standards. Regulators have asserted that strong corporate governance enhances the transparency and validity of financial statements. Previous studies addressing the relationship between corporate governance and financial reporting quality yield mixed results. This study employs analyst earnings forecasts to determine whether corporate governance procedures impact the quality of accounting information. Following the work of Barron et al. (1998), we examined the impact of various measures of the strength of corporate governance on forecast accuracy and dispersion. Our results provide mixed evidence to support the notion that the strength of corporate governance impacts the quality of financial statement information.
Stand-scale tree mortality factors differ by site and species following drought in southwestern mixed conifer forests

Impacts of drought on tree mortality in high-elevation mixed-conifer forests of southwestern U.S. are poorly understood. A recent extended and severe drought in the region provided an opportunity to investigate the patterns and factors associated with tree mortality in this forest type. Specifically, we quantified mortality that occurred between 1995 and 2008 of four tree species, white fir (Abies concolor), limber pine (Pinus flexilis), trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides), and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), in mixed-conifer forests over three sites in northern Arizona within 84, 0.02 ha plots. We found: (1) varied but substantial tree mortality (4–56% by basal area) in most species between 1996 and 2006 in association with recent severe and prolonged drought; (2) tree mortality differed among sites and species with aspen and white fir having the most mortality (>30% by basal area); (3) relationships between tree mortality and most climatic factors (e.g. temperature, precipitation, Palmer Drought Severity Index) were lagged 1–4 yr; (4) bark beetle attack and intraspecific tree basal area were consistently and positively related to tree mortality for most species and sites, whereas topographic and other stand characteristics were less consistently related to mortality. Results show that aspen, Douglas-fir, and white fir were more vulnerable to recent drought-associated mortality than limber pine. Associations between tree mortality and intraspecific basal area support further evaluation of treatments that reduce intraspecific competition within stands to lower risks of tree mortality in southwestern mixed conifer forests.
Informed Consent for a Vaginal Birth After Previous Cesarean Delivery

M.L. is a gravida 2, para 1 being seen for an initial prenatal visit. She is requesting midwifery care and wants to have a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). Her previous pregnancy was uncomplicated. She had a cesarean delivery for failure to progress at 8 cm with a fetus in a persistent occiput posterior (OP) position 3 years ago. Her son was born with Apgar scores of 8 and 9. He weighed 7 lb. 9 oz at birth. M.L. did not have any signs of infection during the postpartum period and she went home with her son on postpartum day 4.
1.3 [micro sign]m InGaAsN vertical cavity surface emitting lasers grown by MOCVD

The first InGaAsN VCSELs grown by MOCVD with CW lasing wavelength longer than 1.3 /spl mu/m are reported. The devices were of conventional p-i-n structure with doped DBR mirrors. CW lasing up to 65/spl deg/C was observed, with a maximum output power at room temperature of 0.8 mW for multimode devices and nearly 0.3 mW for single-mode devices.
Formation of the ST12 phase in nanocrystalline Ge at ambient pressure

Amorphous nanophase germanium can crystallize into a high-energy tetragonal phase (Ge-III/ST12) upon thermal annealing, particularly when prepared by the naphthalide-mediated reduction of GeCl4 and subsequent treatment with t-BuMgCl. The formation of ST12-Ge is typically associated with high pressure, yet the nucleation and coalescence of this phase can be observed by in situ transmission electron microscopy at low pressure and at temperatures well below 200 °C, and can persist at temperatures of up to 500 °C. The low coalescence temperature of nanophase ST12-Ge suggests its compatibility with applications in direct-print electronics.
Quantitative synthesis of context dependency in ant–plant protection mutualisms

Context dependency, variation in the outcome of species interactions with biotic and abiotic conditions, is increasingly considered ubiquitous among mutualisms. Despite several qualitative reviews of many individual empirical studies, there has been little quantitative synthesis examining the generality of context dependency, or conditions that may promote it. We conducted a meta-analysis of ant-plant protection mutualisms to examine the generality of context-dependent effects of ants on herbivory and plant performance (growth, reproduction). Our results show that ant effects on plants are not generally context dependent, but instead are routinely positive and rarely neutral, as overall effect sizes of ants in reducing herbivory and increasing plant performance were positive and significantly greater than 0. The magnitude of these positive effects did vary, however. Variation in plant performance was not explained by the type of biotic or abiotic factor examined, including plant rewards (extrafloral nectar, food bodies, domatia), ant species richness, plant growth form, or latitude. With the exception of plant growth form, these factors did contribute to the effects of ants in reducing herbivory. Reductions in herbivory were greater for plants with than without domatia, and greatest for plants with both domatia and food bodies. Effect sizes of ants in reducing herbivory decreased, but remained positive, with latitude and ant species richness. Effect sizes in reducing herbivory were greater in tropical vs. temperate systems. Although ant-plant interactions have been pivotal in the study of context dependency of mutualisms, our results, along with other recent meta-analyses, indicate that context dependency may not be a general feature of mutualistic interactions. Rather, ant-plant protection mutualisms appear to be routinely positive for plants, and only occasionally neutral.
Optimizing java programs using generic types

Our research involves improving performance of programs written in the Java programming language. By selective specialization of generic types, we enable the compiler to eliminate typecasting, and provide type information to remove dynamic method lookup at runtime. An example of this specialization using Quicksort showed performance improvement of about 25%.
A Variable Structure Approach in Discrete Decentralized Time-Varying Nonlinear Manipulator Control

In this paper a decentralized trajectory controller for robotic manipulators is designed and tested using a multi-processor architecture and a PUMA 560 robot arm. The controller is made up of a nominal component designed using a computed torque approach and a correction component based on a variable structure suction control approach. The second control component is designed using bounds on the difference between the used and actual values of the model parameters. Since the continuous manipulator system is digitally controlled along a trajectory, a discretized equivalent model of the manipulator is used to derive the controller. The motivation for decentralized control is that the derived algorithms can be executed in parallel using a distributed, relatively inexpensive, architecture where each joint is assigned a microprocessor. Nonlinear interaction and coupling between joints is treated as a disturbance torque that is estimated using a nonlinear feedback signal and is compensated for.
Relations between Third Order Isothermal and Adiabatic Elastic Constants for an Isotropic Material

Relations between the adiabatic and isothermal third order elastic constants are derived from a general expression for the free energy of an isotropic material. The relations include the linear terms in the temperature variations of the coefficient of thermal expansion and of the second order elastic constants. Numerical calculations are made for aluminium. A partir de l'energie libre d'un materiau isotrope on obtient des relations entre les constantes elastiques adiabatiques et isothermes du troisieme ordre. Ces relations comprennent les coefficients de premier ordre dans le developpement en fonction de la temperature du coefficient de dilatation thermique et des coefficients elastiques du deuxieme ordre. Les calculs numeriques sont effectues dans le cas d'aluminium.
The Influence of Storage of Shell Eggs Produced by Hens Fed Crude Cottonseed Oil on the Very Low Density Lipoproteins Isolated From These Eggs

Abstract Very low density lipoproteins were isolated from fresh and from 6-month old eggs laid by hens fed a diet containing crude cottonseed oil. There were no differences between the very low density lipoproteins isolated from the fresh and those from the stored eggs in the percentage of lipid extracted by ether after the action of unfolding agents, detergents, reducing agents, trypsin, Pronase, or phospholipase D. Phospholipase C released less lipid from the very low density lipoproteins of the stored eggs than from those of the fresh unless they were extracted with ether before digestion, when equal amounts were extracted. Very low density lipoproteins isolated from fresh eggs and those isolated from stored eggs contained similar percentages of lipid. The very low density lipoproteins from the stored eggs had lower isoelectric points than those from fresh eggs, but there were no differences in average size when determined by electron microscopy. Egg yolk very low density lipoproteins are normally quite stable in water solution, but those from the stored eggs showed evidence of some decomposition during prolonged ultracentrifugation in water solution in contrast to those from fresh eggs.
Importance of assay specificity for plasma protein binding determinations.

Plasma or serum protein binding determinations of extensively bound drugs are subject to serious error if the analytical methods employed do not discriminate between such drugs and their degradation products, metabolites, and impurities. Experimental evidence is presented to demonstrate the magnitude of this problem with respect to warfarin.
Luminous Marine Organisms

In the ocean, bioluminescence is found across nearly all taxa, from bacteria to fi sh (Fig. 2.1 and review by Herring 1987). In many senses, it is easier to name the few non-luminous phyla than it is to detail each luminous group. However, even in light of recent breakthroughs in molecular biology, we are hardly closer than E. Newton Harvey (1952) was to being able to explain why luminescence is distributed among phyla the way it is. For example, among the phytoplankton, many dinofl agellates are luminescent, while the silica-encapsulated diatoms are not. Among protists, in contrast, the calcium carbonate-shelled foraminifera are not luminous, while their siliceous cousins the radiolarians are. In some groups, such as ctenophores and siphonophores, nearly all species may be luminous, while other groups may have only a single luminous representative. Luminescence seems to be more prevalent in taxa that live in the water column and in the deep sea-environments well suited to communication with light. Both habitats are fairly transparent to blue-green wavelengths, and the deep sea is in a constant state of dim illumination during day and night. Within this diverse assemblage, it is diffi cult to estimate the number of times that bioluminescence has independently evolved. Hastings (1983) estimates that this has occurred at least 30 times. This number would be heavily dependent on the defi nition of “independent”. For example, once bacteria become luminous, is it considered an independent event for fi sh to use their light in a specialized organ? If ostracods develop the ability to make light, is it an independent event for fi sh to use their substrate as the basis for their luminescence system? Several authors have argued that the evolution of luminescence has proceeded by coopting chemistries that originated for other purposes, specifi cally as mechanisms for reducing oxidative stress (Case et al. 1994; Labas et al. 2001; Rees et al. 1998). Because marine luciferins are readily available in the food chain, it would appear that, after the initial evolutionary events, the diversifi cation of bioluminescent organisms could be relatively easy and recent (Haddock et al. 2001). An organism
Effectiveness of oat and rye cover crops in reducing nitrate losses in drainage water

a b s t r a c t Much of the NO3 in the riverine waters of the upper Mississippi River basin in the United States originates from agricultural land used for corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) production. Cover crops grown between maturity and planting of these crops are one approach for reducing losses of NO3. In this experiment, we evaluated the effectiveness of oat (Avena sativa L.) and rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crops in reducing NO3 concentrations and loads in subsurface drainage water. The oat fall cover crop was broadcast seeded into living corn and soybean crops before harvest in late August or early September and was killed by cold temperatures in late November or early December The rye winter cover crop, which had already been used annually for four years, was planted with a grain drill after corn and soybean harvest, overwintered, grew again in the spring, and was killed with herbicides before main crop planting. These treatments were evaluated in subsurface-drained field plots with an automated system for measuring drainage flow and collecting proportional samples for analysis of NO3 concentrations from each plot. The rye winter cover crop significantly reduced drainage water NO3 concentrations by 48% over five years, but this was less than the 58% reduction observed in its first four years of use. The oat fall cover crop reduced NO3 concentrations by 26% or about half of the reduction of the rye cover crop. Neither cover crop significantly reduced cumulative drainage or nitrate loads because of variability in cumulative annual drainage among plots. Both oat and rye cover crops are viable management options for significantly reducing NO3 losses to surface waters from agricultural drainage systems used for corn and soybean production. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Autobiographical Misremembering: John Dean Is Not Alone

SUMMARY Survey respondents were asked to provide knowledge responses to public events and names that occurred as long ago as the 1930s and as recently as the 1980s. Respondents made errors that reflect the use of semantic and lexical memory systems, and reconstructive processes based on a semantic theme. Errors, as well as correct responses, are affected by whether the events originally occurred during the transition phase (early teens to mid-twenties). Responses indicate that events that occur during the transition phase are remembered better than events that occur during other life phases (in contradiction to the differential sampling hypothesis), but that events that occur during the transition phase can also promote error-prone reporting by interfering with other events or by promoting inaccurate reconstructions. The evidence suggests that the transition phase is not a monolithic entity, but that young adolescence differs from older transition phase ages by having a greater concentration on determining general properties of the world. Support is strongest for cognitive accounts of transition phase effects such as the first experience hypothesis, and results challenge physiological and evolutionary accounts that are tied to the transition phase promoting better memory. Finally, the more dramatic observed errors (such as inverting the subject and object of an event) point to possible undocumented instances of autobiographical misremembering. & 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Determination of Cell Fate within the Telencephalon

The telencephalon (basal ganglia, septum, cerebral cortex and olfactory bulb) contains two general classes of neurons: those that project axons to distant targets and those that make only local connections. While projection neurons can be either excitatory (such as those in the olfactory bulb and cortex) or inhibitory (such as those in the striatum), local circuit neurons (interneurons) are usually inhibitory. Within these two general classes of neurons there are a myriad of cell subtypes based upon axonal and dendritic morphology, chemical markers, neurotransmitters, connectivity and physiology. A crucial issue regarding the development of the telencephalon is the molecular determination of neuronal subtypes. Since important aspects of neuronal fate determination occur within the proliferative zone, the consideration of determinants of a mature neuron's fate requires consideration of that cell's origin.
Lattice Properties of Ge and GaAs Strained-Layers on Si

A phenomenological lattice dynamics model has been developed that describes how strain affects phonon frequencies and elastic constants in Group IV and III-V semiconductor thin films and strained layers. Using this model, the phonon dispersion relations for strained-layer heterostructures of Ge and GaAs on Si have been obtained in the quasiharmonic approximation. This model uses available experimental data and can predict the effect of arbitrary strains on thin films.
Sociocultural Pressures and Body Image Disturbances: A Comment on Cafri, Yamamiya, Brannick, and Thompson

The meta-analysis by Cafri, Yamamiya, Brannick, and Thompson (this issue) established that body image disturbances in females are associated with awareness of the thin ideal, internalization of the thin ideal, and perceived pressure to be thin. This commentary discusses several theoretical implications of these findings and suggests directions for future research. For example, the evidence that the cross-sectional relations between these three sociocultural factors and body dissatisfaction are larger than the relations observed in prospective studies suggests that these factors may be reciprocally related to body dissatisfaction; preliminary analyses of prospective data provided support for this assertion. In addition to following up these findings with prospective studies that test for reciprocal effects, it would be particularly useful if future studies provided experimental tests of these relations and more rigorous tests of the validity scales that assess sociocultural factors.
Planetary- and Synoptic-Scale Influences on Eastern Pacific Tropical Cyclogenesis

Abstract The structure and evolution of lowpass-filtered background flow and synoptic-scale easterly waves were examined during the 1991 eastern Pacific hurricane season. Active and inactive cyclogenesis periods conformed well to the sign of the near-equatorial, lowpass-filtered, 850-mb zonal wind anomaly, consistent with the recent results of Maloney and Hartmann. This behavior emphasizes the importance of westerly wind bursts associated with the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) in creating an environment favorable for eastern Pacific tropical cyclogenesis. Synoptic-scale easterly waves reached the western Caribbean and eastern Pacific regularly from upstream, usually from Africa. The amplitude of waves leaving Africa had little correlation with the likelihood of a wave producing an eastern Pacific storm. Rather, easterly waves intensified, and tropical depressions formed, during the convectively active phase of the MJO in the western Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Wave growth, measured by strengthening o...
Distributions Derived from the Multinomial Expansion

(1946). Distributions Derived from the Multinomial Expansion. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 59-74.
Multigrid Smoothers for Ultra-Parallel Computing: Additional Theory and Discussion

This paper investigates the properties of smoothers in the context of algebraic multigrid (AMG) running on parallel computers with potentially millions of processors. The development of multigrid smoothers in this case is challenging, because some of the best relaxation schemes, such as the Gauss-Seidel (GS) algorithm, are inherently sequential. Based on the sharp two-grid multigrid theory from [17, 18] we characterize the smoothing properties of a number of practical candidates for parallel smoothers, including several C-F , polynomial, and hybrid schemes. We show, in particular, that the popular hybrid GS algorithm has multigrid smoothing properties which are independent of the number of processors in many practical applications, provided that the problem size per processor is large enough. This is encouraging news for the scalability of AMG on ultra-parallel computers. We also introduce the more robust `1 smoothers, which are always convergent and have already proven essential for the parallel solution of some electromagnetic problems [23].
Lymphangioma Circumscriptum of the Vulva in a Young Patient with Crohn Disease: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Lymphangioma circumscriptum (LC) is a non-neoplastic proliferation of the lymphatics in the deep dermis and subcutaneous tissues that rarely affects the vulva. Most commonly it is a long-term complication of pelvic lymphatic obstruction due to surgery, neoplasm, radiotherapy, or non-neoplastic conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease and tuberculosis. LC can clinically mimic condylomata, fungal infections, or dermatitis herpetiformis. …
Prevalence and Correlates of Worry About the Health Harms of Medical Imaging Radiation in the General Population.

Background: In recent years, there have been dramatic increases in medical imaging use and increasing media attention to increased exposure to ionizing radiation in the United States. Patient persp...
Investigation and analysis on brucellosis of occupational groups related knowledge awareness rate in Dongxihu district of Wuhan city

Objective To investigate brucellosis of occupational related knowledge awareness rate and behavioral habits of brucellosis among high risk population in Dongxihu district of Wuhan city, so as to provide the basis for carrying out targeted health education. Methods Using census method, to carry out a questionnaire investigation of health protection knowledge and behavior of brucellosis among sheep breeding, trafficking and other closely related populations in Dongxihu district. Results 147 Brucellosis related occupational persons were investigated. The majority were males, accounting for 62.59%(92/147). Age were mainly from 20 to 79 years, average age of 50.6 years. Occupation in sheep mainly backyard farmers was accounted for 87.07%(128/147), junior high school education or less accounted for 77.56%(114/147), the investigation on brucellosis health protection knowledge overall awareness rate was 49.18%, the rate of male was higher than female( χ2=12.849, P0.01). Conclusion This results indicated that brucellosis of occupational related knowledge awareness rate was relatively lower in Dongxihu district, backyard farmers exposed to the rearing environment, and take protective measures of lower consciousness in the proces of content with animals, the awareness of personal protection contacted with dead sheep was poor. So it's importance to enhance education about brucellosis related knowledge in professional people.
Morning keynote address by Ron Ritchey

Transcribed and edited by Jacques Thomas. The speaker was introduced by Joel Rasmus. Dr. Ron Ritchey and Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), the company he works for, have had a relationship with CERIAS for the last couple of years now. This has been a very good relationship; one that has continued to grow. BAH does contracting for the government and for the IATAC, which does IA consulting and testing for governmental agencies and vendors. His work is of interest to a lot of us, with the unique perspective of working inside the government. Dr Ritchey, in addition to his duties with BAH and as chief scientist for the IATAC, also occasionally teaches at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. We want to thank Dr. Ritchey for readily accepting our invitation to speak at the Symposium on his first visit to Purdue. As many of you know, one of Dr. Ritchey's colleagues, Admiral Mike McConnell, was supposed to participate in yesterday's fireside chat. Unfortunately, he could not attend it. Dr. Ritchey kindly substituted for him. We thank Dr. Ritchey for going above and beyond his commitments in helping this symposium be a success. Today's talk is a talk that Dr. Ritchey had in the works and proposed to finalize for the Symposium. When we asked him if he would like to come give a talk, we did not have to prompt him. He said he had this talk that he had been working on, and that would be good for me to go ahead and finish this talk. The gist of the talk clearly showed that it matched CERIAS's interest in security. We are sure that this talk will raise some eyebrows in the audience. Teaching as an adjunct faculty member, even at George Mason is a labor of love: the pay is not great, but the job definitely has rewards. One of these rewards is to see how bad a job we are doing as an industry in teaching people about security awareness. I teach a course on how to develop secure software. In my opinion, this is a "101" level course. At George Mason, it is listed as 600. The quality of the code at the beginning of each semester is interesting. Some code is very well structured and most of the code is not that bad, but the security awareness is not there. When you teach security awareness to the students, the quality of the code improves. Especially when you give them the techniques on what to watch for, and the methods and the mechanisms that can be used to avoid those challenges. This is not what this talk is about. This talk is about the end result, and what happens after you do that [give them the tools and techniques], even when we spend this time, a full semester, 15 weeks of concentrated effort.
Michigan Local Governments Actively Promote U.S. Census Participation

This report presents Michigan local government leaders’ descriptions of local efforts to encourage participation in the 2010 U.S. Census among their jurisdictions’ citizens. The report is based on statewide surveys in the Spring 2010 wave of the Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS).
GLUCOCORTICOIDS AND CORNSTARCH THERAPY FOR NON–ISLET CELL TUMOR HYPOGLYCEMIA: A CASE REPORT

ABSTRACT Objective: We present a case of severe hypoglycemia in a patient with recurrent solitary fibrous tumor or non–islet cell tumor, maintained successfully in a euglycemic state with a combination of glucocorticoids and oral intake of uncooked cornstarch. Methods: Case report and literature review. Results: An 80-year-old Caucasian female with a history of solitary fibrous tumor of the lung treated with left lower lobectomy in 2009 had a recurrence in 2015 with a retroperitoneal tumor mass. She presented to our hospital with a syncopal episode and capillary blood glucose of 18 mg/dL. Routine laboratory studies were unrevealing. Fasting insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) was 228 ng/mL (normal range, 54 to 205 ng/mL), insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF-2) was 541 ng/mL (normal range, 333 to 967 ng/mL), and the IGF-2:IGF-1 ratio was 2.3 (normal, <3.8). Large amounts of infused glucose barely maintained glycemia, and a trial of octreotide failed. Therefore, she was begun on uncooked cornstarch and predn...
Corpus domain effects on distributional semantic modeling of medical terms.

MOTIVATION Automatically quantifying semantic similarity and relatedness between clinical terms is an important aspect of text mining from electronic health records, which are increasingly recognized as valuable sources of phenotypic information for clinical genomics and bioinformatics research. A key obstacle to development of semantic relatedness measures is the limited availability of large quantities of clinical text to researchers and developers outside of major medical centers. Text from general English and biomedical literature are freely available; however, their validity as a substitute for clinical domain to represent semantics of clinical terms remains to be demonstrated. RESULTS We constructed neural network representations of clinical terms found in a publicly available benchmark dataset manually labeled for semantic similarity and relatedness. Similarity and relatedness measures computed from text corpora in three domains (Clinical Notes, PubMed Central articles and Wikipedia) were compared using the benchmark as reference. We found that measures computed from full text of biomedical articles in PubMed Central repository (rho = 0.62 for similarity and 0.58 for relatedness) are on par with measures computed from clinical reports (rho = 0.60 for similarity and 0.57 for relatedness). We also evaluated the use of neural network based relatedness measures for query expansion in a clinical document retrieval task and a biomedical term word sense disambiguation task. We found that, with some limitations, biomedical articles may be used in lieu of clinical reports to represent the semantics of clinical terms and that distributional semantic methods are useful for clinical and biomedical natural language processing applications. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The software and reference standards used in this study to evaluate semantic similarity and relatedness measures are publicly available as detailed in the article. CONTACT pakh0002@umn.eduSupplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Computing FOAF Co-reference Relations with Rules and Machine Learning

The friend of a friend (FOAF) vocabulary is widely used on the Web to describe ’agents’ (people, groups and organizations) and their properties. Since FOAF does not require unique ID for agents, it is not clear when two FOAF instances should be linked as co-referent, i.e., denote the entity in the world. One approach is to use logical constraints such as the presence of inverse functional properties as evidence that two individuals are the same. Another applies heuristics based on the string similarity of values of FOAF properties such as name and school as evidence for or against co-reference. Performance is limited, however, by many factors: non-semantic string matching, noise, changes in the world, and the lack of more sophisticated graph analytics. We describe a proto-type system that takes a set of FOAF agents and identifies subsets that are believed to be co-referent. The system uses both logical constraints (e.g., IFPs), strong heuristics (e.g., FOAF agents described in the same file are not co-referent), and an SVM generated classifier. We present initial results using data collected from Swoogle and other sources and describe plans for additional analysis.
Parallelizing motion estimation for reducing the complexity of HEVC/H.265 video codec in wireless environments

Researchers are extensively investigating motion estimation for H.265 (HEVC), the newest video coding standard for wired and wireless environments. Reducing the complexity of encoding in mobile applications is essentially required for smooth transmission as well as storage. The principal contributor towards this complexity is the motion estimation component of the encoder. Parallel processing of motion estimation is an attractive option to cope with the high complexity but it poses a research challenge. This paper briefly describes some of the existing parallel and nearly parallel motion estimation algorithms. Next, we propose a parallel motion estimation scheme that employs different search patterns and various ranges of motion search. The target platform is a multicore parallel processing system. The experiments include the speedup, bit rate, and video quality, showing the efficiency of the proposed scheme. Different search patterns are compared as well.
Non-photorealistic rendering with coherence for augmented reality

A seamless blending of the real and virtual worlds is key to increased immersion and improved user experiences for augmented reality (AR). Photorealistic and non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) are two ways to achieve this goal. Non-photorealistic rendering creates an abstract and stylized version of both the real and virtual world, making them indistinguishable. NPR hides unnecessary and overwhelming details of the world, and reveals and emphasizes important information of the scene. This could be particularly useful in some applications (e.g., AR/VR aided machine repair, or for virtual medical surgery) or for certain AR games with artistic stylization. Achieving temporal coherence is a key challenge for all NPR algorithms. Rendered results are temporally coherent when each frame smoothly and seamlessly transitions to the next one without visual flickering or artifacts that distract the eye from perceived smoothness. For example, temporal coherence is maintained in brush-based NPR algorithms if the brush stroke located at a certain anchor point smoothly transitions to a corresponding anchor point from one frame to the next. NPR algorithms with coherence are interesting in both general computer graphics and AR/VR areas. Although NPR has attracted many researchers’ interest in the AR/VR community, very few of the existing algorithms can support temporal coherence. Rendering stylized AR without coherence processing causes the final results to be visually distracting. While various NPR algorithms with coherence support have been proposed in the general graphics community for video processing, many of these algorithms require thorough analysis of all frames of the input video and cannot be directly applied to real-time AR applications. We have investigated existing NPR algorithms with coherence in both general graphics and AR/VR areas. These algorithms are divided into two categories: Model Space and Image Space. We present several NPR algorithms with coherence for AR: a watercolor inspired NPR algorithm, a painterly rendering algorithm, and NPR algorithms in the model space that will support several styling effects.
Depressive Symptomatology Mediates Associations With Community Reintegration in Veterans With TBI

Community reintegration (CR) is a challenge for military veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, bodily pain, and limitations in physical funct...
A supplementary tool to existing approaches for assessing ecosystem community structure

Abstract Measures of biological or species diversity are central to ecology and conservation biology. Although there are several commonly used indices, each has shortcomings and all vary in the relative emphasis they place on the number of species and their relative abundance. We propose utilizing Fisher Information, not as a replacement for existing indices, but as a supplement to other indices because it is sensitive to community structure. We demonstrate how Shannon’s and Simpson’s diversity indices quantify the diversity of two different systems and how Fisher Information can enhance the analyses by comparing, as example, body size, and phylogenetic diversity of the different communities. Fisher Information is sensitive to the order in which species are entered into the analysis, and therefore, it can detect differences in community structure. Thus, the Fisher Information index can be useful in helping understand and analyze biodiversity of ecosystems and in comparing ecological communities.