cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A Study of Sijunzi Decoction on Gastrointestinal Function for Premature Infants

Objective:To observe the effect of Sijunzi decoction on gastrointestinal function of premature infants. Methods:One hundred and twenty premature infants were randomly divided into a treatment group (with routine treatment and oral Sijunzi decoction) and a control group (with routine treatment only). Then the clinical symptoms,such as the time of meconium and yellow-stool excreted,body weight on the 10th day,vomiting,abdominal distention,diarrhea,neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and hyperbilirubinemia incidence and stomach tube rate of the two groups were observed after treatment. Blood sugar,blood bilirubin,plasma motilin and gastrin concentration of 120 premature infants on the 1st day and the 7th day were tested. Results:There was no difference in the time of first dejection,diarrhea incidence of premature infants between the two groups (P0.05). The time of yellow-stool being excreted in the treatment group was shorter than in the control group (P0.05). There was significant difference in the body weight increase of 10-day-old,vomiting,abdominal distention,NEC and hyperbilirubinemia between the treatment group and the control group (P0.05). There was significant difference in stomach tube rate (P0.05) but the plasma motilin concentration was significantly increased compared with the control group. The difference showed statistical significance (P0.05). The plasma gastrin concentration was increased compared with that of the control group,but without statistic significance (P0.05). Conclusions:Sijunzi decoction can facilitate gastrointestinal hormone release,promote development and maturation of premature infants' gastrointestinal function,lighten bilirubin degree of premature infants,help the infants pass the feeding time with no obvious side-effect. So it is worth popularizing.
Alternating Diet as a Preventive and Therapeutic Intervention for High Fat Diet-induced Metabolic Disorder

This study presents the alternating diet as a new strategy in combating obesity and metabolic diseases. Lean or obese mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) for five days and switched to a regular diet for one (5 + 1), two (5 + 2), or five (5 + 5) days before switching back to HFD to start the second cycle, for a total of eight weeks (for prevention) or five weeks (for treatment) without limiting animals’ access to food. Our results showed that animals with 5 + 2 and 5 + 5 diet alternations significantly inhibited body weight and fat mass gain compared to animals fed an HFD continuously. The dietary switch changed the pattern of daily caloric intake and suppressed HFD-induced adipose macrophage infiltration and chronic inflammation, resulting in improved insulin sensitivity and alleviated fatty liver. Alternating diet inhibited HFD-induced hepatic Pparγ-mediated lipid accumulation and activated the expression of Pparα and its target genes. Alternating diet in the 5 + 5 schedule induced weight loss in obese mice and reversed the progression of metabolic disorders, including hepatic steatosis, glucose intolerance and inflammation. The results provide direct evidence to support that alternating diet represents a new intervention in dealing with the prevalence of diet-induced obesity.
Forty years of transurethral prostatic resections.

AbstractThe 4 consecutive series of transurethral prostatic resections compared were done by the senior authors during a period of nearly 40 years: 420 cases in 1937 to 1938, 520 cases in 1940 to 1945, 480 cases in 1950 to 1955 and 270 cases in 1972 to 1973. The most notable improvements in the recent series are the fewer patients with temperatures more than 100 degrees (69 versus 29 per cent) and the improved mortality rate (5.5 verus 0.7 per cent). In our opinion these improvements are owing to antibacterial medication, improved instruments, more skillful performance of the operation, the use of isotonic irrigating fluid and improved postoperative care.
Health Spending Slowed Down in Spite of the Crisis

Since the end of the Great Recession, growth in health care spending has declined to historically low levels. There is disagreement over whether this decline was caused by falling incomes during the Great Recession (and therefore is likely to reverse once the recovery is complete) or whether the decline represents a structural change in the health sector (and therefore is more likely to endure). We exploit plausibly exogenous regulatory changes in the mortgage lending market to estimate causal effects of the financial boom and bust cycle on personal income in the health sector in a panel of U.S. counties. We find that counties that were exogenously more exposed to the financial crisis because of the regulatory reforms experienced a greater rise in the size of the health sector over the course of the boom and bust relative to control counties, with the differential persisting through the recovery. We also provide evidence that both the boom and the bust periods of the financial crisis increased mortality in treated counties compared to control counties.
Science Fiction Prototyping at Work

Though better known for its design software, Autodesk has begun using science fiction prototyping to explore the future of design, technology, and humans. In the Web extra at https://youtu.be/_nL3VmN2xmM, Rhode Island School of Design student Caroline Brewer discusses using science fiction prototyping to write and illustrate FOUR, an anthology of futuristic short stories. The second Web extra at https://youtu.be/F9tjmOGp4ik is an audio recording of editor Brian David Johnson and guest author Evan Atherton expanding on this Science Fiction Prototyping column.
Ring lasers and photodetectors on the hybrid III–V-on-Si platform

Silicon photonics, the art of achieving photonic functions on the Si-based platform, have been regarded as the most feasible solution for the growing request on data transmission, particularly in data center and high-performance computing applications. Higher bandwidth, lower cross talk, lower latency and lower power consumption are major advantages over the conventional metal interconnects. Consisting of a III–V epi bonded onto the Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, the III–V-on-Si platform has gained a lot of interest due to its practical solution to combine the desirable electrical and passive optical properties of Si and active optical properties of III–V. It is also compatible with Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure, which makes it promising for mass production. In this talk, we will review our recent work on the two critical components for an efficient hybrid transceiver, i.e., ring lasers with unprecedentedly low tuning power, and photodetectors with high speed, high responsivity, and low leakage current optimized at the same time.
Feel the fascination of fractals

Eight years ago, I hated fractals. As a result of a documentary being made about my research, fractals had infiltrated every minute of my day for four weeks. One night, in a fractalexhausted state, I switched on the television.
Sébastien Vaillant and the Sexuality of Plants

The emergence of botany as a science distinct from medicine and herbalism in the 18th century was a gradual metamorphosis, not a sudden flowering. If there wasa particular moment that, in retrospect, looms as a prophetic indication of new directions, it has to be Sebastien Vaillant’s lecture at the Jardin du roi in Paris at six o’clock on the morning of 10 June 1717. The sexual character of plants had been proposed by others somewhat earlier, but in discreet and professional communication; yet, the idea of the sexual reproduction by plants was little known and hardly accepted as fact. Vaillant, on that memorable morning, presented the idea in such ribald phrases, with analogies explicitly drawn from human anatomy, that the audience, mostly medical students, departed both enthralled and convinced, no matter that the occasion also provoked scandal from those who had always presumed the sweet innocence of flowers.
Transcriptomic Responses in the Bloom-Forming Cyanobacterium Microcystis Induced during Exposure to Zooplankton

The bloom-forming, toxic cyanobacterium Microcystis synthesizes multiple secondary metabolites and has been shown to deter zooplankton grazing. However, the biochemical and/or molecular basis by which Microcystis deters zooplankton remains unclear. This global transcriptomic study explored the response of Microcystis to direct and indirect exposures to multiple densities of two cladoceran grazers, Daphnia pulex and D. magna Higher densities of both daphnids significantly reduced Microcystis cell densities and elicited a stronger transcriptional response in Microcystis While many putative grazer deterrence genes (encoding microcystin, aeruginosin, cyanopeptolin, and microviridin) were largely unaffected by zooplankton, transcripts for heat shock proteins (hsp) increased in abundance. Beyond metabolites and hsp, large increases in the abundances of transcripts from photosynthetic processes were observed, evidencing energy acquisition pathways were stimulated by grazing. In addition, transcripts of genes associated with the production of extracellular polysaccharides and gas vesicles significantly increased in abundance. These genes have been associated with colony formation and may have been invoked to deter grazers. Collectively, this study demonstrates that daphnid grazers induce a significant transcriptomic response in Microcystis, suggesting this cyanobacterium upregulates specific biochemical pathways to adapt to predation.IMPORTANCE This work explores the transcriptomic responses of Microcystis aeruginosa following exposure to grazing by two cladocerans, Daphnia magna and D. pulex Contrary to previous hypotheses, Microcystis did not employ putative grazing deterrent secondary metabolites in response to the cladocerans, suggesting they may have other roles within the cell, such as oxidative stress protection. The transcriptional metabolic signature during intense grazing was largely reflective of a growth and stress response, although increasing abundances of transcripts encoding extracellular polysaccharides and gas vesicles were potentially related to predator avoidance.
Small-cell lung cancer in 2016: Shining light on novel targets and therapies

In 2016, the pace of biological insights into small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) was reflected in new treatment approaches that have suggested meaningful clinical benefit to patients. We focus on three highlights of 2016: preclinical studies defining NFIB as a putative driver of metastasis, and two clinical studies; one that assessed the efficacy of an agent targeting the Notch ligand DLL3, and the other that explored T-cell checkpoint-blockade therapies targeting PD-1 and CTLA-4.
Evaluating the relationship between sublexical and lexical processing in speech perception: Evidence from aphasia

Several studies have reported that aphasic patients may perform substantially better on lexical than sublexical perception tasks (e.g., Miceli et al., 1980). These findings challenge claims made by models of speech perception which assume obligatory sublexical processing (e.g., McClelland and Elman, 1986; Norris, 1994). However, prior studies have not closely matched the phonological similarity of targets and distractors or task demands of the sublexical and lexical perception tasks. The current study addressed shortcomings of these prior studies, testing 13 aphasic patients on sublexical and lexical tasks matched in phonological similarity of stimuli and task demands. When the lexical and sublexical tasks were not matched (Experiment 1a), as in prior studies (e.g., Miceli et al., 1980), several patients with impaired sublexical perception were within the control range on tasks tapping lexical perception. In contrast, when the lexical and sublexical tasks (sublexical: syllable discrimination, auditory-written syllable matching (AWSM); lexical: word discrimination, lexical decision, and picture-word matching (PWM)) were matched on these factors (Experiments 1b and 2), in most instances, patients were impaired on both sublexical and lexical tasks relative to controls and performance on the lexical tasks was not significantly greater than that on the sublexical tasks. For two patients, performance on one lexical task was statistically better than that on one sublexical task, but the advantage was not replicated across other task comparisons. The current study is consistent with models of speech perception which assume obligatory sublexical processing and fails to support models that do not require successful sublexical perception in order to access lexical levels (e.g., Goldinger, 1998; Hickok and Poeppel, 2000).
The Sponge Fauna of the Eocene Castle Hayne Limestone From East-Central North Carolina

The Eocene Castle Hayne Limestone has yielded one of the most varied and best preserved sponge faunas known from Tertiary rocks of North America, from outcrops near the community of Mt. Olive in east-central North Carolina. Demosponges include: Ophiraphidites infundibuliformis Schrammen, 1899: the new species Ophiraphidites hadros; and the new genus and species Acrochordiella vokesi. Hexactinellid sponges include the new lyssacinosid euplectelloid species, Regadrella trabecula, and the new dictyid Haynespongia vokesae. Fragments of root tufts and lychniscosid sponges also occur. This is the first report of lychniscosid sponges in North American Tertiary rocks.
The k-diameter component edge connectivity parameter

We focus on a network reliability measure based on edge failures and considering a network operational if there exists a component with diameter k or larger. The k-diameter component edge connectivity parameter of a graph is the minimum number of edge failures needed so that no component has diameter k or larger. This implies each resulting vertex must not have a k-neighbor. We give results for specific graph classes including path graphs, complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and a surprising result for perfect r-ary trees.
Quantum transition probabilities during a perturbing pulse: Differences between the nonadiabatic results and Fermi's golden rule forms.

For a perturbed quantum system initially in the ground state, the coefficient ck(t) of excited state k in the time-dependent wave function separates into adiabatic and nonadiabatic terms. The adiabatic term ak(t) accounts for the adjustment of the original ground state to form the new ground state of the instantaneous Hamiltonian H(t), by incorporating excited states of the unperturbed Hamiltonian H0 without transitions; ak(t) follows the adiabatic theorem of Born and Fock. The nonadiabatic term bk(t) describes excitation into another quantum state k; bk(t) is obtained as an integral containing the time derivative of the perturbation. The true transition probability is given by bk(t)2, as first stated by Landau and Lifshitz. In this work, we contrast bk(t)2 and ck(t)2. The latter is the norm-square of the entire excited-state coefficient which is used for the transition probability within Fermi’s golden rule. Calculations are performed for a perturbing pulse consisting of a cosine or sine wave in a Gaussian envelope. When the transition frequency ωk0 is on resonance with the frequency ω of the cosine wave, bk(t)2 and ck(t)2 rise almost monotonically to the same final value; the two are intertwined, but they are out of phase with each other. Off resonance (when ωk0 ≠ ω), bk(t)2 and ck(t)2 differ significantly during the pulse. They oscillate out of phase and reach different maxima but then fall off to equal final values after the pulse has ended, when ak(t) ≡ 0. If ωk0 ω. While the transition probability is rising, the midpoints between successive maxima and minima fit Gaussian functions of the form a exp[−b(t − d)2]. To our knowledge, this is the first analysis of nonadiabatic transition probabilities during a perturbing pulse.
Bergman Kernel and Bergman Metric

In this chapter we consider general domains in ℂ n . The material discussed is easily available in the literature. Still we give here essentially complete proofs, since we can do it in very concisely and since the results will be used later in several instances.
Correction to: Closing remarks: novel approaches to complex societal change and sustainability

In the original publication of the article, the name of the conference was published incorrectly as “International Complex Systems Society” in abstract. The correct name is “International Conference on Sustainability Science (ICSS)”.
Implementation of a Carrier Screening Program in a High-Risk Undergraduate Student Population Using Digital Marketing, Online Education, and Telehealth.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Access to preconception carrier screening, which provides at-risk couples with more reproductive options, is critically important. To address this need in the Jewish community, genetic counselors at Emory University launched JScreen (www.jscreen.org), a national online genetic disease education and carrier screening program. To reach the preconception demographic, JScreen initiated a study evaluating the impact of marketing and education on knowledge and screening activity on college campuses. METHODS Students at 10 universities were targeted with a marketing campaign designed for this initiative. Those who elected screening were provided pre-test video education designed for the study. Success was assessed through enrollment in testing, comparison of pre- and post-education knowledge quizzes, and patient satisfaction surveys evaluating genetic counseling and the JScreen process. RESULTS A total of 1,794 participants were enrolled. Over 99% of those screened were not pregnant. Knowledge quiz scores improved significantly post-education, and patient satisfaction was over 98%. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggested that the use of targeted marketing helped promote preconception screening in this population. The study demonstrated that video education was effective in educating participants about benefits and limitations of testing. Also, the use of telehealth technology facilitated access to professional genetic counseling services. This study serves as a model for future public health initiatives.
Anion Enhancement at the Liquid–Vacuum Interface of an Ionic Liquid Mixture

The liquid–vacuum interface was investigated for a ionic liquid (IL) mixture containing 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate, [C2MIM][OAc], and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, [C2MIM][TFSI]. Herein, we detail a quantitative connection between molecular simulations and angle-resolved X-ray photoemission spectroscopy for an IL–vacuum interface. Results show that for a mixture with a low concentration of [TFSI]−, the anion [OAc]− is slightly depleted from the interface, whereas the [TFSI]− anion is significantly enhanced relative to the bulk. Both experiments and simulations reveal that the mole fraction of [TFSI]− increases significantly from the bulk value in the top 17 A. Furthermore, simulations show that [TFSI]− has a preferred orientation at the liquid–vacuum interface.
Measuring the cost of capital in cooperative businesses

Cooperatives usually cannot employ market‐based methods for valuating equity capital and must rely instead on accounting‐based methods. This paper assesses several approaches for valuating cooperative equity and suggests that the rate of return on equity is an appropriate measure of the opportunity cost of equity because it determines the levels of cash patronage refunds, equity retirement, and growth a cooperative can maintain. Simulations are used to explore the relationship between various measures and the rate of growth and demonstrate that the rate of return on equity is the only measure invariant with respect to changes in the growth rate. Calculations for US cooperatives show that the rate of return on equity results in a higher cost of equity than estimates based on the opportunity cost of funds and confirm that equity is more expensive than borrowed capital. A numerical example illustrates the early redemption of member equities at a discount.
State Boards of Nursing Guidance to Mitigate Prescription Opioid Misuse and Diversion

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine the types of content and to what extent that individual State Boards of Nursing (SBON) in the U.S. are providing information and education for nurses to mitigate prescription opioid misuse and diversion by patients and the public. Design A descriptive, cross-sectional, survey research design was selected. Methods A survey of the SBON by two investigators, who independently reviewed each SBON website, was completed over a four-week time-period. The websites were explored for resources related to opioids. Links and descriptions were reviewed, then compared for accuracy. Results All but two SBON had at least some information on the mitigation of prescription opioid misuse and diversion. Minimal information was available regarding the mitigation of opioid misuse and diversion in 18 of the 50 states and DC (35%). Conclusions SBON have a responsibility to educate licensees to enable them to assist in the mitigation of opioid misuse and diversion. States have resources like PDMPs, opioid tool-kits, newsletters, announcements, and prescriber guidelines that need to be more numerous, of higher quality, and easier to access. SBON should be commended for the resources that they currently provide, but more can be done for nurses to aid in this endeavor. SBON are positioned to provide education and information for nurses to reduce opioid misuse, and diversion. The SBON websites need to have a link to their PDMP, opioid toolkit, OD treatment, and opioid prescribing guidelines readily accessible by nurses and especially APRNs.
Introduction: A Handbook for Documentary Geniza Research in the Twenty-First Century

This essay introduces a special triple issue of Jewish History that aims to offer both an introduction to and an in-depth guide for documentary Cairo Geniza studies. We outline the history of scholarship that led to the definition of the documentary or historical Geniza and in particular introduce the work of Shlomo Dov Goitein, the scholar whose work has essentially defined the field for the past half century. This historical sketch is followed by a brief review of the kinds of materials found in the documentary corpus and a look at the distribution of scholarship to date on different document genres, including some that have so far remained relatively overlooked. The nature of the materials, and the history of their scholarship, helps shape the rationale for the volume’s form as we provide an overview of the essays in each of its four sections, which focus in turn on historiography, methodology, document types, and writing Geniza history.
Assessing science motivation among high school students participating in a supplemental science programme: the Emerging Scholars Environmental Health Sciences Academy

Motivation to learn science plays an important role in the persistence, achievement, and career aspirations of students studying science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Several studies ha...
A Monocular Vision-based Obstacle Avoidance Android/Linux Middleware for the Visually Impaired

Increasing maturity in Fog/Edge computing has enabled many latency-sensitive Internet of Things (IoT) applications to achieve better performance and shorter response times. Our work on the URMILA middleware [1] proposed a performance and mobility-aware Fog/Edge resource management solution to support cognitive assistance to the visually impaired. However, URMILA was evaluated only in lab-based emulated scenarios. We overcome this limitation by presenting an affordable, unobtrusive and simple-to-use solution for the visually impaired. Alongside the long cane or the guide dog, our application aims to provide the visually impaired with a more detailed description of their environment. Using a single-camera on the Sony SmartEyeglass SED-E1 as the only sensor and an Android/Linux application, we were able to perform both per-pixel depth prediction and object detection on each image frame. By combining the information from these two sources, we provide users with a descriptive audio feedback assisting them in avoiding obstacles and thus better situational awareness. URMILA is used as before to manage the fog and edge resources in the system. We show the effectiveness of obstacle detection and recognition by creating both an outdoor and indoor scenario.
Explaining Economic Inequality Using the Film, The Queen of Versailles

In introductory classes on race and ethnicity, terms like wealth, economic inequality, and SES (socio-economic status) often take center stage during one chapter or another. There are numerous text books on this subject. But, I've had more success explaining these terms by using different media. To illustrate such important themes to non-economics majors, I often show and discuss The Queen of Versailles, a 2012 documentary that depicts the Siegel family’s 2-year meteoric decent from wealth (being worth billions of dollars) to rags (being worth “only” tens of millions of dollars).
Quantifying Drug Cargo Partitioning in Block Copolymer Micelle Solutions

Understanding molecular partitioning in solution is crucial for the design of micelle-based formulations. We investigate PEO–PPO–PEO triblock copolymer micelles and their solubilization of three hy...
Predicting Outcomes of Chemical Reactions: A Seq2Seq Approach with Multi-view Attention and Edge Embedding

Materials Genomics initiative has the goal of rapidly synthesizing materials with a given set of desired properties using data science techniques. An important step in this direction is the ability to predict the outcomes of complex chemical reactions. Some graph-based feature learning algorithms have been proposed recently. However, the comprehensive relationship between atoms or structures is not learned properly and not explainable, and multiple graphs cannot be handled. In this paper, chemical reaction processes are formulated as translation processes. Both atoms and edges are mapped to vectors representing the structural information. We employ the graph convolution layers to learn meaningful information of atom graphs, and further employ its variations, message passing networks (MPNN) and edge attention graph convolution network (EAGCN) to learn edge representations. Particularly, multi-view EAGCN groups and maps edges to a set of representations for the properties of the chemical bond between atoms from multiple views. Each bond is viewed from its atom type, bond type, distance and neighbor environment. The final node and edge representations are mapped to a sequence defined by the SMILES of the molecule and then fed to a decoder model with attention. To make full usage of multi-view information, we propose multi-view attention model to handle self correlation inside each atom or edge, and mutual correlation between edges and atoms, both of which are important in chemical reaction processes. We have evaluated our method on the standard benchmark datasets (that have been used by all the prior works), and the results show that edge embedding with multi-view attention achieves superior accuracy compared to existing techniques.
CFPNet-M: A Light-Weight Encoder-Decoder Based Network for Multimodal Biomedical Image Real-Time Segmentation.

Currently, developments of deep learning techniques are providing instrumental to identify, classify, and quantify patterns in medical images. Segmentation is one of the important applications in medical image analysis. In this regard, U-Net is the predominant approach to medical image segmentation tasks. However, we found that those U-Net based models have limitations in several aspects, for example, millions of parameters in the U-Net consuming considerable computation resource and memory, lack of global information, and missing some tough objects. Therefore, we applied two modifications to improve the U-Net model: 1) designed and added the dilated channel-wise CNN module, 2) simplified the U shape network. Based on these two modifications, we proposed a novel light-weight architecture -- Channel-wise Feature Pyramid Network for Medicine (CFPNet-M). To evaluate our method, we selected five datasets with different modalities: thermography, electron microscopy, endoscopy, dermoscopy, and digital retinal images. And we compared its performance with several models having different parameter scales. This paper also involves our previous studies of DC-UNet and some commonly used light-weight neural networks. We applied the Tanimoto similarity instead of the Jaccard index for gray-level image measurements. By comparison, CFPNet-M achieves comparable segmentation results on all five medical datasets with only 0.65 million parameters, which is about 2% of U-Net, and 8.8 MB memory. Meanwhile, the inference speed can reach 80 FPS on a single RTX 2070Ti GPU with the 256 by 192 pixels input size.
Corrosion inhibition of AA2024-T3 by a coating containing dual-pH sensitive, corrosion inhibitor loaded microspheres

Abstract In this study, we describe a smart coating that responds to either an increase or a decrease in pH to assist inhibitor effectiveness. Dual-pH sensitive microspheres containing a corrosion inhibitor were fabricated using a simple, template-free, one-step process. A polyelectrolyte coacervate consisting of polyacrylic acid and polyethylenimine was the shell material of microspheres that enclosed Ce(NO3)3 inhibitor using a coaxial electrospray method. The Ce(NO3)3-loaded microspheres with a core-shell structure can release Ce(NO3)3 at both acidic and alkaline pH. A smart coating consisting of these microspheres embedded in a polyvinyl butyral coating releases Ce(NO3)3 to improve the corrosion resistance of AA2024-T3.
Parallel processing for PHAST: a three-dimensional reactive-transport simulator

A parallel algorithm for the reactive-transport simulator PHAST was developed for a Beowulf cluster of Linux PCs. The Local Area Multicomputer implementation of the Message Passing Interface standard was used for communication among processors. PHAST simulates reactive transport by operator splitting the calculation into a flow and transport step and a chemical reaction step. A load-balancing algorithm was developed using random mapping of cells to the processors for the reaction task and rebalancing after each time step. Testing with a demonstration field-scale example showed that the parallel algorithm was scalable over a range of processors and problem sizes. Load balancing is an important element of the parallel algorithm. Super-linear speedup indicated that the sequential program is not optimal in cache usage. Relative speedups on 16.8 effective processors ranged from 10 to 24 which can bring field-scale reactive-transport simulations into a reasonable timeframe.
U. S. demand for different types of imported and domestic investment goods

Separate investment demand functions are developed and tested for (1) plant and equipment, (2) inventory, and (3) residential housing and compared for consistency with previous studies of total investment demand. U.S. 1960 - 2000 data are tested using 2SLS with heteroskedasticity controls. Data in first differences are used to reduce multicollinearity, non stationarity and autocorrelation. The models explain 90% of the variance in plant and equipment demand, 85% of housing demand and 67% of inventory demand. Plant, equipment and inventory investment appear driven by the accelerator effect, crowd out, depreciation, interest, and the exchange rate; residential construction by disposable income.
Interaction of tight binding repressors with lac operators: An analysis by DNA-footprinting

To increase our understanding of protein-DNA interaction in general, and inparticular that of lac repressor with lac operator, we have investigated the interaction of tight binding (Itb) repressors with wild type (WT) operator and Oc operators. Nine Oc and a WT operator were cloned and sequenced. Three different Oc and an O+ were then chosen for the footprint analysis of six Itb repressors and WT repressor. Distinct protection patterns for the various repressor-operator pairs were observed at low repressor concentrations whereas, at high repressor concentrations, a stretch of 24 bases of the lower strand of the four different operators was protected in most cases. This protection pattern at high repressor concentration was almost completely redundant for all repressor-operator pairs, in spite of the fact that the affinities of the various pairs differed by more than three orders of magnitude. Two exceptions to this general observation were the two tight binding repressors R67 and R78a. These had been mapped in a region that codes for amino acid residues involved in subunit interaction. The two repressors showed reduced protection of O+ and of some Oc operators at the 3′ (right) end of the lower strand. Dimethylsulfoxide, which is known to increase the affinity of O+ for repressor, did not increase the number of bases protected by WT repressor on the lower strand of O+. The footprinting results presented here clearly demonstrate that lac repressor can maximally protect about 24 bases of the lower strand of the operator and that the number and kind of interactions occurring in this region determine the strength of the repressor-operator interaction.
Issuance Of Subsidiary Stock As An Earnings Management Strategy

Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, expressed concern that the pervasiveness of earnings management in American corporate financial statements threatens the integrity of financial reporting. Levitt referred to the “cookie jar” phenomenon wherein U.S. firms have earmarked opportunities to “find gains” when earnings are less than anticipated. The academic research literature includes a large number of studies on earnings management strategies. One relatively unexplored strategy is the use of stock issuances by subsidiaries to generate gains under the provisions of SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 51. Based upon a sample of 125 observations of this accounting choice over the period 1985 through 1997, our study provides compelling evidence that recognition of gains on the issuance of subsidiary stock coincides with periods when earnings fail to meet expectations (as measured by analysts’ forecasts), and that the recognition of these gains in the income statement is effective in achieving earnings expectations. Further, the amounts of these gains are large relative to pre-gain net income
Consumer Search Behavior on the Mobile Internet: An Empirical Analysis

The increasing diffusion of smartphones has facilitated access to product information by providing Internet access anywhere and at any time. As a result, consumers are increasingly using the mobile Internet to search for product information to help them in their purchase decisions. However, there is very little documentation of how, where and when consumers actually carry out such search. Using location-based data from a leading European product information and barcode-scanning app that contains more than 80 million observations, this study provides insights using actual consumer search behavior. The results show that access to more types of information, especially product related information, reduces further search on price information, suggesting that information provision can lower price sensitivity. Furthermore, consumer search on the mobile Internet is not bound to store opening hours and is likely to happen to a large extent as ongoing search during consumption. Finally, consumers’ geographic mobility is positively correlated and previous search experience is negatively correlated with their search intensity.
The Political and Economic Consequences of Defining Sustainable Agriculture in the US

Despite the increasing popularity of sustainably produced foods, a concrete definition of sustainable agriculture has been elusive. Even the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) article, “What is Sustainable Agriculture?” starts with the idea that “Some terms defy definition. ‘Sustainable agriculture’ has become one of them” (Gold 2011). This essay explores (1) the history of sustainable agriculture as a concept in the United States, (2) the political and economic forces that have impacted and stifled the process of defining sustainable agriculture, and (3) the implications for social justice that come with creating a specific definition of sustainable agriculture. Recognizing that the ability to define a varied set of agricultural practices as “sustainable” (or not) is an important source of political, economic, or social power, this essay explains how such processes might impact the future of food systems in the United States.
Sam goes to school: story listening systems in the classroom

Long before children receive formal instruction in reading and writing, they participate in a world filled with language. Research in emergent literacy emphasizes the importance of these early experiences with oral and written language as a foundation for later literacy.
The Use of Study Partner in the Manifestation of Science and Language Skills

A Study Guide was tailored to the students of De La Salle and was used as Study Partner. This employs the inquiry- based instruction through the 5 E’s of science lesson: Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend and Evaluate. The descriptive method of research was used in the study to determine the efficacy of the useof Study Partner in the manifestation of science and language skills among the respondents and its relationship to the grade of the students. Results showed that the use of the Study Partner in Human Anatomy and Physiology had been contributory to the enhancement of the language and science skills of the students. The use of the Study Partner had developed a process, reasoning and the critical thinking skills of the students as well as the reading and writing skills. A significant contribution is in the development of the critical thinking skills in science and the reading and writing skills in the language area. The process skills and the critical thinking skills developed were also found to have significant contribution to the final grade of the students in Human Anatomy and Physiology. Keywords - Education, efficacy, science skills, language skills, study guide, study partnerdescriptive design, De La Salle Lipa, Philippines
How to Come Up With a Good Research Question: Framing the Hypothesis

Having a questioning attitude is the fist step in the research process. Research begins with a question, which leads to a hypothesis. Questions abound in our daily clinical lives. Most quality research consists of comparisons. By carefully selecting a comparison group or condition, the quality of the research project can be improved. By including in the hypothesis the comparison group, the experiment can be focused and the analysis simplified. The best questions come from the investigator's subject of interest. When starting a research project, start small and choose an experienced mentor.
The impact of telecommuting design on social systems, self-regulation, and role boundaries.

As more companies and employees become involved in telecommuting, researchers and managers will need to understand the effects of this relatively new working arrangement on the work perceptions and behaviors of the individual telecommuter. The extant empirical literature provides mixed results and is limited by a lack of theory; consequently, neither researchers nor managers can rely on this literature for clear direction on how telecommuting will likely affect individual telecommuters. There is a critical need for theoretical frameworks to guide research on how telecommuting may affect the telecommuter’s job perceptions, working relations, and work outcomes. We present a multi-dimensional framework of telecommuting design, and focus on how telecommuting design may affect the telecommuter’s work environment and outcomes through its effects on the social system of the telecommuter, autonomy and self-management opportunities and requirements, and role boundaries, particularly in terms of the work and non-work interface. Our goal is to provide a framework to assist managers and researchers in systematically addressing questions of how to design telecommuting arrangements to maximize their potential benefits while minimizing their potential drawbacks.
Rule based approximate reasoning for intelligent control

Fuzzy logic control is being increasingly applied to solve control problems in areas where system complexity, development time and cost are the major issues. In the absence of a system mathematical model, a fuzzy system model is described which is analogous to a human operator's behavior, based on approximate reasoning bound by a minimum set of rules. A set of linguistic fuzzy control rules are set up which are conditional linguistic statements which establish the relationships between the inputs and the outputs. The motor speed is controlled by controlling the armature voltage Va. This technique is used by the author as a fundamental basis for the fuzzy controller synthesis. To comply with the torque demand requirements, the armature current and field currents are maintained at a constant level for motor speeds less than the base speed and the speed is controlled by varying the armature voltage. The field current can be varied to control the speed by maintaining the armature voltage at a constant level for motor speeds higher than the base speed. But, field current is not varied here, since speed control is below the base speed. The armature is supplied with different voltages with the shunt field of the motor permanently connected to a constant exciting voltage. The main supply is AC which is converted to DC by using a bridge circuit. Silicon controlled rectifiers (SCR) are used to vary the mean voltage supplied to the DC motor by firing the SCR's at varying angles of the input sine wave. The speed of the motor is more or less proportional to the varying supply voltages.
Determinates of Non-Utilization in Pediatric Heart Donors

Purpose: Improved survival while waiting for transplant has increased the demand for donor hearts, but there are no standardized guidelines for donor selection. The objective was to analyze pediatric cardiac donor utilization across eras and determine factors associated with non-utilization. Methods: United Network of Organ Sharing database was used to identify all pediatric donors (age < 18 years) who were offered for heart transplant from 2000-2012. Modern era was defined as 2007-2012. Cohort was divided based on utilization of donor heart. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify factors of non-utilization. Results: Of 11,944 donors, there were 5,838 (49%) hearts that were unutilized. Non-utilization decreased from 51% in old era to 47% in modern era (p less than 0.001). Overall, unutilized donor hearts were highest amongst children (1-10 years) (57%). There has been an increase in unutilized donors who were on inotropes, had CPR greater than 20 minutes, clinical infection, anoxia as the cause of death, or considered CDC High Risk (Table 1). Anoxia, head injury and modern era were donor factors that predicted utilization while cardiopulmonary resuscitation, CDC high risk, liver dysfunction, age 1-10 years, greater than 3 inotropes, and abnormal left ventricular ejection all predicted non-utilization (Table 2). Conclusion: Despite improvement in pediatric cardiac donor utilization in the modern era, a substantial number of organs are still unutilized. Increased use of donors with less desirable characteristics could improve patient outcomes.
Wake on wireless: an event driven energy saving strategy for battery operated devices

The demand for an all-in-one phone with integrated personal information management and data access capabilities is beginning to accelerate. While personal digital assistants (PDAs) with built-in cellular, WiFi, and Voice-Over-IP technologies have the ability to serve these needs in a single package, the rate at which energy is consumed by PDA-based phones is very high. Thus, these devices can quickly drain their own batteries and become useless to their owner.In this paper, we introduce a technique to increase the battery lifetime of a PDA-based phone by reducing its idle power, the power a device consumes in a "standby" state. To reduce the idle power, we essentially shut down the device and its wireless network card when the device is not being used---the device is powered only when an incoming call is received. Using this technique, we can increase the battery lifetime by up to 115%.In this paper, we describe the design of our "wake-on-wireless" energy-saving strategy and the prototype device we implemented. To evaluate our technique, we compare it with alternative approaches. Our results show that our technique can provide a significant lifetime improvement over other technologies.
Thromboxane mimics the pulmonary but not systemic vascular responses to bolus HCl injections in broiler chickens

Abstract Bolus i.v. injections of 1.2 N HCl elicit a rapid but transient pulmonary vasoconstriction in broiler chickens. In mammals, the pulmonary vasoconstrictive response to bolus acid injection depends on increased synthesis of thromboxane A2; however, the vascular responsiveness of domestic fowl to thromboxane previously had not been evaluated. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that, if HCl triggers pulmonary vasoconstriction by stimulating thromboxane A2 synthesis in broilers, then bolus i.v. injections of the potent thromboxane A2 mimetic U44069 (9,11-dideoxy-9alpha,11alpha-epoxy-methanoprostaglandin++ + F2alpha; 1 micromol/mL; 0.5 mL injected volume) should trigger hemodynamic responses similar to those elicited by HCl (1.2 N; 1.5 mL injected volume). Both HCl and the thromboxane mimetic elicited twofold or greater increases in pulmonary vascular resistance, which in turn increased pulmonary arterial pressure by 50% despite concurrent reductions in cardiac output. The reductions in cardiac output were associated with reductions in stroke volume but not heart rate. The thromboxane mimetic also increased the total peripheral resistance, which minimized the reduction in mean systemic arterial pressure associated with the decrease in cardiac output. In contrast, HCl injections did not increase total peripheral resistance; consequently, the reduction in cardiac output caused the mean systemic arterial pressure to decrease by 30 mm Hg. Mannitol (2.5%; 1.5 mL) was injected i.v. as a volume control, and had no influence on any of the variables. This study provides the first direct evidence that thromboxane is a potent pulmonary vasoconstrictor in broilers, and provides support for the hypothesis that thromboxane mediates the pulmonary vasoconstrictive response to bolus i.v. injections of HCl. The differential response of the systemic vasculature to the thromboxane mimetic and HCl may indicate that cardiopulmonary responses to HCl injections are not mediated solely via thromboxane production. Alternatively, a direct dilatory effect of elevated hydrogen ion concentrations on the systemic vasculature may have counteracted any tendency for simultaneously evolved endogenous thromboxane to elicit systemic vasoconstriction.