cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Selective decreases in levels of mRNA encoding a water channel (AQP3) in ileal mucosa after ileostomy in the rat

Water channels (aquaporins) provide pathways for water permeation in a variety of epithelia. Aquaporin-3 (AQP3) has been localized to the basolateral membranes of epithelial cells in the small intestine, but mechanisms that regulate its expression and function have not been explored. To determine whether luminal content may influence intestinal AQP3 gene expression, adult Sprague-Dawley rats underwent sham laparotomy (N = 11) or loop ileostomy (N = 9) and were killed 8 days after procedures. Northern blot analysis was used to measure messenger RNA (mRNA) levels for AQP3 and the Na+/K+ ATPase, a housekeeping transporter that regulates cellular levels of Na+ and K+. At sacrifice, histologie examination revealed only minimal changes in mucosal morphology. In sham animals, Na/K mRNA levels increased moderately in distal regions of the small intestine. Ileostomy did not alter these levels in any region. In contrast, in sham animals, AQP3 mRNA levels increased along the length of the intestine and were markedly higher in the distal ileum. Diversion of luminal contents decreased AQP3 mRNA levels in the postileostomy region by 30% to 50%. These findings indicate regional variations in expression of the AQP3 water channel in mucosa of the small intestine. In addition, they suggest that AQP3 gene expression may depend on the presence of luminal contents.
Post-mortem brain pathology is related to declining respiratory function in community-dwelling older adults.

Damage to brain structures which constitute the distributed neural network that integrates respiratory muscle and pulmonary functions, can impair adequate ventilation and its volitional control. We tested the hypothesis that the level of brain pathology in older adults is associated with declining respiratory function measured during life.1,409 older adults had annual testing with spirometry and respiratory muscle strength based on maximal inspiratory and maximal expiratory pressures. Those who died underwent structured brain autopsy. On average, during 5 years of follow-up, spirometry and respiratory muscle strength showed progressive decline which was moderately correlated (ρ=0.57, p<0.001). Among decedents (N=447), indices of brain neuropathologies showed differential associations with declining spirometry and respiratory muscle strength. Nigral neuronal loss was associated with the person-specific decline in spirometry (Estimate, -0.016 unit/year, S.E. 0.006, p=0.009) and reduction of the slope variance was equal to 4%. By contrast, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology (Estimate, -0.030 unit/year, S.E. 0.009, p<0.001) and macroscopic infarcts (-0.033 unit/year, S.E., 0.011, p=0.003) were associated with the person-specific decline in respiratory muscle strength and reduction of the slope variance was equal to 7%. These results suggest that brain pathology is associated with the rate of declining respiratory function in older adults.
The Paradox of Security in Virtual Environments

Virtualization trims administrative overhead, eases system management, and combats OS-level security vulnerabilities. However, it also exhibits new characteristics and exposes new vulnerabilities that can be detrimental to securing the system.
Estimating Cancer Screening Indicators in the Primary Care Setting

The software "Profile: A Cancer Risk Profile of Your Patient Practice" was used to estimate cancer screening activities in a primary care practice. "Profile" is a public health tool that does not track the screening histories of individual patients, but rather, using a sampling strategy, provides estimates for the entire practice of the age and sex specific number of screening eligible patients, the number screened, and the number that should have been screened, based on National Cancer Institute/American Cancer Society (NCI/A CS) guidelines. This report describes "Profile," and the results it generated from a sample of medical records. Primary care providers who seek to integrate primary and secondary cancer prevention activities into their routine practices will find it useful to have an objective estimate of their current level of such activities.
Analysis and characterization of multilayered reflector antennas: rain/snow accumulation and deployable membrane

There are important engineering issues in designing reflector antennas that cannot be addressed by simply assuming a perfect electric conductor (PEC) reflector surface. For example, coatings may exist on antenna surfaces for protection, rain or snow can accumulate on outdoor reflectors, and the deployable mesh or inflatable membrane antennas usually do not have solid PEC reflector surfaces. Physical optics (PO) analysis remains the most popular method of reflector analysis owing to its inherent simplicity, accuracy, and efficiency. The conventional PO analysis is performed under the assumption of perfectly conducting reflector surface. To generalize the PO analysis to arbitrary reflector surfaces, a modified PO analysis is presented. Under the assumptions of locally planar reflector surface and locally planewave characteristic of the waves incident upon the reflector surface, the reflection and transmission coefficients at every point of the reflector surface are determined by the transmission-line analogy to the multilayered surface structure. The modified PO currents, taking into account by the finite transmissions of the incident waves, are derived from the reflection and transmission coefficients. Applications on the analyses of the rain and snow accumulation effects on the direct-broadcast TV antennas and the effects of finite thickness and finite conductivity of the metal coating on a 15-m inflatable antenna are described and results are presented.
Using an object-oriented approach to the development of a relational database application system

Object-oriented technology has been proposed in recent years as a promising approach to increasing programmer productivity and the quality of software development. The traditional development of a database application system distinctively separates a system's behavior and its data by using entity-relationship diagrams, functional decomposition, and process-dependency diagrams. The object-oriented approach, on the other hand, integrates both data and behavior, and this can result in a merging of both software and databases. To gain more insight into the object-oriented approach to the analysis and design of software development, we applied this approach to the development of a simplified hospital administration system. The resulting application system is an object-based system but uses a relational database manager. This illustrates the fact that object-oriented approaches are not limited to object-oriented systems or databases: they can, in fact, be used for more traditional design. This technique may allow easier transition from data-based to object-based systems. Software that is reusable, improved in its design, more reliable, and simpler in its programming and maintenance requirements would truly be an advantage to users and developers alike.
Expression profiling of transforming growth factor β superfamily genes in developing orofacial tissue

Background Numerous signaling molecules have been shown to participate in the dynamic process of orofacial development. Amongst these signal mediators, members of the transforming growth factor s (TGFs) superfamily have been shown to play critical roles. Developing orofacial tissue expresses TGFs and BMP mRNAs, their protein isoforms and TGFs- and BMP-specific receptors. All these molecules display unique temporo-spatial patterns of expression in embryonic orofacial tissue, suggesting functional roles in orofacial development. For example, the TGFss and BMPs regulate maxillary mesenchymal cell proliferation and extracellular matrix synthesis. This is particularly noteworthy in that perturbation of either process results in orofacial clefting. Although the cellular and phenotypic effects of the TGFs superfamily of growth factors on embryonic orofacial tissue have been extensively studied, the specific genes that function as effectors of these cytokines in orofacial development has not been well defined.
Dihydroisoxazole Analogs for Labeling and Visualization of Catalytically Active Transglutaminase 2

Summary We report the synthesis and preliminary characterization of "clickable" inhibitors of human transglutaminase 2 (TG2). These inhibitors possess the 3-halo-4,5-dihydroisoxazole warhead along with bioorthogonal groups such as azide or alkyne moieties that enable subsequent covalent modification with fluorophores. Their mechanism for inhibition of TG2 is based on halide displacement, resulting in the formation of a stable imino thioether. Inhibition assays against recombinant human TG2 revealed that some of the clickable inhibitors prepared in this study have comparable specificity as benchmark dihydroisoxazole inhibitors reported earlier. At low micromolar concentrations they completely inhibited transiently activated TG2 in a WI-38 fibroblast scratch assay and could subsequently be used to visualize the active enzyme in situ. The potential use of these inhibitors to probe the role of TG2 in celiac sprue as well as other diseases is discussed.
Alumni Satisfaction and Behavioral Intentions: University versus Departmental Measures

The importance of satisfying students' expectations has grown over the past decade, but satisfaction measurement in higher education remains unclear. This empirical study examines and demonstrates the utility of viewing student satisfaction as a function of meeting both department and university expectations. Findings indicate that measuring student satisfaction by only one of these dimensions may negatively impact the usefulness of the satisfaction measure.
USING ADVANCE ORGANIZERS TO FACILITATE LEARNING AMONG OLDER ADULTS

Older adults can profit from teaching techniques that address their unique abilities and needs. Many older adults do not use learning strategies that would enhance their learning performance. They are likely to use ineffective approaches even after this ineffectiveness has been shown. The learning performance of older adults can be improved by helping them to organize better the material to be learned. This article presents a few practical suggestions on how advance organizers can be used to facilitate learning among older adults.
Innovation as co-evolution of scientific and technological networks: exploring tissue engineering

The question of exactly how science is commercialized is an important one. While the social structures of “science” and “technology” are distinctive, recent work suggests that scientific and technological ideas in fact co-evolve. This paper addresses the dynamics of such co-evolution: are scientific networks deeply co-mingled with networks through which technology is created and if so how? It does so in a study of an emerging area of biomedicine—tissue engineering. The research is based on a novel methodology that takes advantage of the fact that an idea is often inscribed in both a patent and paper, thus forming a patent– paper pair. Starting with the pair, it is possible to trace the citation network of patents, papers, inventors and authors, combining traditional bibliometric analysis with in-depth interviews to provide new insights. The results show that for this case there exist distinctive scientific and technological networks. Furthermore, while there is evidence of overlap, it is neither co-publishing nor citation as might be predicted from current literature. Rather co-mingling exists through founding, licensing, consulting and advising. This has implications for our understanding of the processes through which spillovers arise, the way in which commercialization and technology transfer should be structured and for recent debates on conflict of interest in biomedicine. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Computing the 3-D structure of viruses from electron microscope images

The 3D reconstruction of the electron scattering intensity of a virus from cryo electron microscopy is essentially a 3D tomography problem in which the orientation of the 2D projections is unknown. Many biological problems concern mixtures of different types of virus particles or mixtures of different maturation states of the same type of virus particle. For a variety of reasons, especially low SNR, it can be very challenging to label the type or state shown in an individual image. Algorithms capable of computing multiple reconstructions, one for each type or state, based on images which are not labeled according to type or state, are described and demonstrated on experimental images.
Quantifying expression of a dissimilatory (bi)sulfite reductase gene in petroleum-contaminated marine harbor sediments.

The possibility of quantifying in situ levels of transcripts for dissimilatory (bi)sulfite reductase (dsr) genes to track the activity of sulfate-reducing microorganisms in petroleum-contaminated marine harbor sediments was evaluated. Phylogenetic analysis of the cDNA generated from mRNA for a ca. 1.4 kbp portion of the contiguous dsrA and dsrB genes suggested that Desulfosarcina species, closely related to cultures known to anaerobically oxidize aromatic hydrocarbons, were active sulfate reducers in the sediments. The levels of dsrA transcripts (per μg total mRNA) were quantified in sediments incubated anaerobically at the in situ temperature as well as in sediments incubated at higher temperatures and/or with added acetate to increase the rate of sulfate reduction. Levels of dsrA transcripts were low when there was no sulfate reduction because the sediments were depleted of sulfate or if sulfate reduction was inhibited with added molybdate. There was a direct correlation between dsrA transcript levels and rates of sulfate reduction when sulfate was at ca. 10 mM in the various sediment treatments, but it was also apparent that within a given sediment, dsrA levels increased over time as long as sulfate was available, even when sulfate reduction rates did not increase. These results suggest that phylogenetic analysis of dsr transcript sequences may provide insight into the active sulfate reducers in marine sediments and that quantifying levels of dsrA transcripts can indicate whether sulfate reducers are active in particular sediment. Furthermore, it may only be possible to use dsrA transcript levels to compare the relative rates of sulfate reduction in sediments when sulfate concentrations, and possibly other environmental conditions, are comparable.
On 1–1 bivariate transformations

Abstract We study a class of one-to-one tensor mappings defined on a rectangular region of the plane. Such mappings are of interest in image processing, computer vision, biological morphology, cartography, and medical imaging. The mappings are constructed as tensor-products of univariate functions, and the main result is a set of constraints on the parameters of the mapping which assure that it is one-to-one. We illustrate the method by showing how to construct one-to-one mappings using tensor-product polynomials and tensor-product splines.
A graphic measure for game-theoretic robustness

Robustness has long been recognized as an important parameter for evaluating game-theoretic results, but talk of ‘robustness’ generally remains vague. What we offer here is a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness (‘matrix robustness’), using a three-dimensional display of the universe of 2 × 2 game theory. In such a measure specific games appear as specific volumes (Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, etc.), allowing a graphic image of the extent of particular game-theoretic effects in terms of those games. The measure also allows for an easy comparison between different effects in terms of matrix robustness. Here we use the measure to compare the robustness of Tit for Tat’s well-known success in spatialized games (Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books; Grim, P. et al. (1998). The philosophical computer: Exploratory essays in philosophical computer modeling. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press) with the robustness of a recent game-theoretic model of the contact hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction (Grim et al. 2005. Public Affairs Quarterly, 19, 95–125).
Community Composition and Structural Changes in a Managed Illinois Ozark Hills Forest

Abstract Forest stand dynamics were evaluated in a previously managed Quercus-Carya-dominated forest inventoried in 1980 and 2000, a period during which all active forest management was suspended and fire suppression was complete. The diameter distribution superficially resembled a stable unevenaged structure. Over the course of the study, smaller diameter classes were increasingly dominated by shade tolerant species Acer saccharum and Fagus grandifolia across all landscape positions. Diameter distribution changes varied among Quercus species with Q. alba and Q. rubra basal area increasing 63 and 45%, respectively, and Q. velutina decreasing 25% in the >43.2 cm size class. Combined Q. alba, Q. rubra and Q. velutina density decreased 56% in the <27.9 cm size classes. Transition towards a mesophyte-dominated forest is occurring across all positions in this topographically-diverse landscape, although more slowly on the drier, less productive aspects and slope positions. These changes are comparable to those ...
Item response theory analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health-Related Quality of Life (CDC HRQOL) items in adults with arthritis.

Background Examine the feasibility of performing an item response theory (IRT) analysis on two of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health-related quality of life (CDC HRQOL) modules – the 4-item Healthy Days Core Module (HDCM) and the 5-item Healthy days Symptoms Module (HDSM). Previous principal components analyses confirm that the two scales both assess a mix of mental (CDC-MH) and physical health (CDC-PH). The purpose is to conduct item response theory (IRT) analysis on the CDC-MH and CDC-PH scales separately.
Central East Pacific Flight Routing

With the introduction of the Federal Aviation Administration s Advanced Technology and Oceanic Procedures system at the Oakland Oceanic Center, a level of automation now exists in the oceanic environment to potentially begin accommodating increased user preferred routing requests. This paper presents the results of an initial feasibility assessment which examines the potential benefits of transitioning from the fixed Central East Pacific routes to user preferred routes. As a surrogate for the actual user-provided routing requests, a minimum-travel-time, wind-optimal dynamic programming algorithm was developed and utilized in this paper. After first describing the characteristics (e.g., origin airport, destination airport, vertical distribution and temporal distribution) of the westbound flights utilizing the Central East Pacific routes on Dec. 14-16 and 19-20, the results of both a flight-plan-based simulation and a wind-optimal-based simulation are presented. Whereas the lateral and longitudinal distribution of the aircraft trajectories in these two simulations varied dramatically, the number of simulated first-loss-of-separation events remained relatively constant. One area of concern that was uncovered in this initial analysis was a potential workload issue associated with the redistribution of traffic in the oceanic sectors due to thc prevailing wind patterns.
The Genus Absidia: Gongronella and Cylindrical-Spored Species of Absidia

SUMMARYThe synonymy of the genus Absidia is discussed, and a new subgenus Mycocladus is proposed to include all species of Absidia which have suspensors without long finger like projections surroun...
Bias characterization of CrIS shortwave temperature sounding channels using fast NLTE model and GFS forecast field

The strong nonlocal thermal equilibrium (NLTE) emission in the upper atmosphere impedes the usage of Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) temperature channels near 4.3 µm in the operational data assimilation. This study explores the bias characteristics of those temperature channels near 4.3 µm with and without a fast NLTE model implemented in the Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM). It is shown that the biases of those temperature channels can reach up to 12 K and are dramatically reduced to below 4 K during daytime by the fast NLTE model with small differences from the nighttime biases. However, the biases after applying the NLTE correction remain large for CrIS upper atmospheric temperature channels during both daytime and nighttime. A further investigation suggests that the remaining biases in those temperature channels mainly originate from the cold biases in the stratospheric temperature profiles of National Center for Environmental Prediction Global Forecast System (GFS) forecasts as input to CRTM. The cold biases reach the maximum of about 8 K near the tropics at about 1 hPa, decreasing toward higher latitudes and lower altitudes.
Recent Advances in Cardiac Allotransplantation

Heart transplantation has become a routine approach to the management of severe cardiac failure (1). Indeed, given the excellent survival statistics for heart transplant recipients, heart transplant outcomes are now an important standard against which the success of other therapies is routinely measured. There are more than 200 institutions currently performing heart transplants worldwide, two-thirds of them in the United States. In 1995, there were 4049 heart transplants reported to the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT); 2359 of these took place in the United States. The same figures for the year 2000 were 3175 and 2197, respectively (2). It is clear that more patients would benefit from heart transplantation if more donor organs were available; in 2000, there were 3452 new registrations on US waiting lists, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). In that same year, the median waiting time for a heart transplant in the United States, considering all patients regardless of waiting list priority, was 346 days (3).
Effects of support diameter and compliance on common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) gait kinematics.

ABSTRACT Locomotion is precarious in an arboreal habitat, where supports can vary in both diameter and level of compliance. Several previous studies have evaluated the influence of substrate diameter on the locomotor performance of arboreal quadrupeds. The influence of substrate compliance, however, has been mostly unexamined. Here, we used a multifactorial experimental design to investigate how perturbations in both diameter and compliance affect the gait kinematics of marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ; N =2) moving over simulated arboreal substrates. We used 3D-calibrated video to quantify marmoset locomotion over a horizontal trackway consisting of variably sized poles (5, 2.5 and 1.25 cm in diameter), analyzing a total of 120 strides. The central portion of the trackway was either immobile or mounted on compliant foam blocks, depending on condition. We found that narrowing diameter and increasing compliance were both associated with relatively longer substrate contact durations, though adjustments to diameter were often inconsistent relative to compliance-related adjustments. Marmosets also responded to narrowing diameter by reducing speed, flattening center of mass (CoM) movements and dampening support displacement on the compliant substrate. For the subset of strides on the compliant support, we found that speed, contact duration and CoM amplitude explained >60% of the variation in substrate displacement over a stride, suggesting a direct performance advantage to these kinematic adjustments. Overall, our results show that compliant substrates can exert a significant influence on gait kinematics. Substrate compliance, and not just support diameter, should be considered a critical environmental variable when evaluating locomotor performance in arboreal quadrupeds.
Structural phase transitions of tridymite : a 29Si MAS NMR investigation

Changes in 29 Si MAS NMR Spectra of synthetic tridymite from room temperature to 504°C are consistent with the structural phase transitions previously observed by x-ray diffraction and by oatical and calorimetric methods. The results also provide evidence for a disordered or incommensurate structure for the OP and OS phases (stable from about 110 to 200°C) and for dynamical disordering of the O atoms at greater than kilohertz frequencies for at least the higher temperature OC and HP phases
The Value of Cooperation: Minimizing User Costs in Multi-Broker Mobile Cloud Computing Networks

We study the problem of user cost minimization in mobile cloud computing (MCC) networks. We consider a MCC model where multiple brokers assign cloud resources to mobile users. The model is characterized by an heterogeneous cloud architecture (which includes a public cloud and a cloudlet) and by the heterogeneous pricing strategies of cloud service providers. In this setting, we investigate two classes of cloud reservation strategies, i.e., a competitive strategy, and a compete-then-cooperate strategy as a performance bound. We first study a purely competitive scenario where brokers compete to reserve computing resources from remote public clouds (which are affected by long delays) and from local cloudlets (which have limited computational resources but short delays). We provide theoretical results demonstrating the existence of disagreement points (i.e., the equilibrium reservation strategy that no broker has incentive to deviate unilaterally from) and convergence of the best-response strategies of the brokers to disagreement points. We then consider the scenario in which brokers agree to cooperate in exchange for a lower average cost of resources. We formulate a cooperative problem where the objective is to minimize the total average price of all brokers, under the constraint that no broker should pay a price higher than the disagreement price (i.e., the competitive price). We design new globally optimal solution algorithm to solve the resulting non-convex cooperative problem, based on a combination of the branch and bound framework and of advanced convex relaxation techniques . The resulting optimal solution provides a lower bound on the achievable user cost without complete collusion among brokers. Compared with pure competition, we found that (i) noticeable cooperative gains can be achieved over pure competition in markets with a few brokers only, and (ii) the cooperative gain is only marginal in crowded markets, i.e., with a high number of brokers, hence there is no clear incentive for brokers to cooperate.
Lower extremity venous reflux

Venous incompetence in the lower extremity is a common clinical problem. Basic understanding of venous anatomy, pathophysiologic mechanisms of venous reflux is essential for choosing the appropriate treatment strategy. The complex interplay of venous pressure, abdominal pressure, venous valvular function and gravitational force determine the venous incompetence. This review is intended to provide a succinct review of the pathophysiology of venous incompetence and the current role of imaging in its management.
An 18-cm unruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a significant source of morbidity and ranked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the 15th leading cause of death among adults aged 60 to 64 years. Size confers the largest risk factor for aneurysm rupture, with aneurysms >6 cm having an annual rupture risk of 14.1%. We present the case of a 60-year-old man found on ultrasound imaging at a health fair screening to have a 15-cm AAA. Follow-up computed tomography angiography revealed an 18-cm × 10-cm unruptured, infrarenal, fusiform AAA. Giant AAAs, defined as >11 cm, are rarely described in the literature. Our patient underwent successful transperitoneal AAA repair with inferior mesenteric artery reimplantation and was discharged home on operative day 6. We believe this case represents one of the largest unruptured AAAs in the literature and demonstrates the feasible approach for successful repair.
The Use of Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies Among Latina/o Student Teaching Interns During Science and Mathematics Instruction of CLD Students

ABSTRACTTeacher preparation is a complex process; also complex are the standards that define what novice teachers need to know and be able to do to effectively meet the needs of all of their students. Add the demographic shift in the student population, and there are additional demands on teachers to provide students with the education they need and deserve. Given these changing needs, teacher educators must implement effective strategies to diversify the teaching force and to prepare all teachers to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. This study sought to document the extent to which Latina/o elementary teacher candidates described and demonstrated culturally responsive teaching strategies using their students’ cultural and academic profiles to inform practice in classroom science and math instruction. The results and conclusions from this study indicate the Latina/o teacher candidates were learning to become culturally responsive classroom teachers. As student teachers they...
Performance evaluation of a curved electrode actuator fabricated without gold/chromium conductive layers

Curved electrode actuators displace on the order of a biological cell diameter at low actuation voltages, making them a potential candidate for probing and micromanipulation of cells in an underwater, closed microenvironment. Here, a closed microenvironment is formed by bonding a Polydimethylsiloxane-based cap-like structure to the actuator; however, the presence of Au/Cr conductive layers on the actuator reduce the available silicon surface area of the actuator—resulting in poor adhesion. Therefore, we propose to fabricate the actuators without these conductive layers. In this paper, we demonstrate the absence of these layers has a minimal effect on the actuator’s peak-to-peak displacement and force. The actuator achieves the following performance metrics: large displacement (1–10 μm) and force (1–21.5 μN) range; broad frequency range (1–500 Hz); and low actuation voltages (0–8 V) in viscous media that are necessary for cell probing and micromanipulation applications.
A narrow open tubular column for high efficiency liquid chromatographic separation

We report a great feature of open tubular liquid chromatography when it is run using an extremely narrow (e.g., 2 μm inner diameter) open tubular column: more than 10 million plates per meter can be achieved in less than 10 min and under an elution pressure of ca. 20 bar. The column is coated with octadecylsilane and both isocratic and gradient separations are performed. We reveal a focusing effect that may be used to interpret the efficiency enhancement. We also demonstrate the feasibility of using this technique for separating complex peptide samples. This high-resolution and fast separation technique is promising and can lead to a powerful tool for trace sample analysis.
Restoration of Cough via Functional Electrical Stimulation

Abstract While restoration of inspiratory muscle function to restore breathing in ventilator-dependent spinal cord injured (SCI) subjects is an important clinical modality, restoration of expiratory muscle function may be even more important. Due to paralysis of this muscle group, individuals with SCI are unable to cough effectively, increasing their risk of atelectasis and respiratory tract infections. Restoration of an effective cough has the potential to reduce the incidence of aspiration, need for caregiver support, the occurrence of bronchitis and pneumonia and, also to improve life quality. Current methods of respiratory secretion management produce short-term benefits but are cumbersome, labor intensive, and costly. And, despite use of these methods, respiratory complications remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality in this patient population. Several methods have been proposed to restore expiratory muscle function including magnetic stimulation, surface abdominal muscle stimulation, and spinal cord stimulation (SCS). While each of these methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, SCS has been most thoroughly evaluated, demonstrating that SCS is safe, portable, and effective. Utilizing disc electrodes which are surgically implanted on the epidural dorsal surface of the lower thoracic spinal cord, SCS results in expiratory pressure generation and peak expiratory airflows comparable to that observed in normal subjects. Cough efforts can be generated repetitively and on demand to facilitate expectoration of secretions. Use of this method has been shown to virtually eliminate the need for caregiver support and markedly reduce the incidence of respiratory tract infections. Moreover, a cost benefit analysis has demonstrated that the break-even point for implantation of this device is achieved within the first year. Future developments of this method include use of wire electrodes, which can be implanted using minimally invasive techniques, which eliminate the need for hospitalization and should markedly reduce the costs of the procedure. Ultimately, restoration of an effective cough holds promise to improve life quality and reduce the morbidity and mortality in subjects with SCI.
Problems with How We Do Economics Today

The first chapter of this book summarized how we undertake economics, and our explanation for that approach in the modern Western world. The second chapter introduced the idea that this contemporary view of understanding economics is just one of many ways that humans have understood how the economy operates. The last century has seen the ascendancy, indeed intellectual dominance, of neoclassical economics (NCE, also known as Walrasian economics). The basic NCE model represents the economy as a self-maintaining circular flow among firms and households, driven by the psychological assumptions that humans act principally in a materialistic, self-regarding, and predictable way. Unfortunately, the NCE model violates a number of physical laws and is inconsistent actual human behavior, rendering it to be an unrealistic and a poor predictor of people’s actions. Recently, an array of experimental and physical evidence and theoretical breakthroughs demonstrate the disconnect between evidence and neoclassical theory. Despite the abundance and validity of these critiques, few economists seriously question the neoclassical paradigm that forms the foundation of their applied work. This is a problem because policy makers, scientists, and others turn to economists for answers to important questions. The supposed virtues of «privatization,» «free markets,» «consumer choice,» and «cost-benefit analysis» are considered to be self-evident by most practicing economists, as well as many in business and government. In fact, the evidence that these concepts are correct is rather slim and contradictory. Thus, this chapter is a strong critique of economic theory, in this case NCE.
LARS: Logically adaptable retention time STT-RAM cache for embedded systems

STT-RAMs have been studied as a promising alternative to SRAMs in embedded systems' caches and main memories. STT-RAMs are attractive due to their low leakage power and high density; STT-RAMs, however, also have drawbacks of long write latency and high dynamic write energy. A popular solution to this drawback relaxes the retention time to lower both write latency and energy, and uses a dynamic refresh scheme that refreshes data blocks to prevent them from prematurely expiring. However, the refreshes can incur overheads, thus limiting optimization potential. In addition, this solution only provides a single retention time, and cannot adapt to applications' variable retention time requirements. In this paper, we propose LARS (Logically Adaptable Retention Time STT-RAM) cache as a viable alternative for reducing the write energy and latency. LARS cache comprises of multiple STT-RAM units with different retention times, with only one unit on at a given time. LARS dynamically determines which STT-RAM unit to power on during runtime, based on executing applications' needs. Our experiments show that LARS cache is low-overhead, and can reduce the average energy and latency by 35.8% and 13.2%, respectively, as compared to the dynamic refresh scheme.
Radiotherapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Postoperative thoracic radiotherapy remains an unsettled issue in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Prior to the 1980s, retrospective and older prospective studies suggested an improvement in survival for some subsets of patients. However, the selection criteria both for those who were selected to receive postoperative radiotherapy and for those who were not selected, the staging techniques used to evaluate the mediastinum, and the inclusion of N1 with N2 patients, flawed these studies. The Lung Cancer Study Group conducted a series of postoperative trials using non-small cell lung cancer patients. In one trial of completely resected squamous tumours, patients were randomised to external radiotherapy, 50 Gy in 5 weeks vs. observation without radiotherapy. Approximately 80% entered had disease confined to N1 nodes. The definition of complete resection was quite specific: any positive margin, or nodes at the highest level of resection were grouped as incomplete resections. All mediastinal lymph nodes were carefully evaluated pathologically. This meticulous lymph node evaluation makes these data unique. No survival benefit was found, but a significant reduction in local failure was observed in the radiotherapy group [1].
Exploring Siamese Neural Network Architectures for Preserving Speaker Identity in Speech Emotion Classification

Voice-enabled communication is increasingly being used in real-world applications, such as the ones involving conversational bots or "chatbots". Chatbots can spark and sustain user engagement by effectively recognizing their emotions and acting upon them. However, the majority of emotion recognition systems rely on rich spectrotemporal acoustic features. Beyond the emotion-related information, such systems tend to preserve information relevant to the identity of the speaker, therefore raising major privacy concerns from the users. This paper introduces two hybrid architectures for privacy-preserving emotion recognition from speech. These architectures rely on a Siamese neural network, whose input and intermediate layers are transformed using various privacy-performing operations in order to retain emotion-dependent content and suppress information related to the identity of a speaker. The proposed approach is evaluated through emotion classification and speaker identification performance metrics. Results indicate that the proposed framework can achieve up to 67.4% for classifying between happy, sad, frustrated, anger, neutral and other emotions, obtained from the publicly available Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture (IEMOCAP) dataset. At the same time, the proposed approach reduces speaker identification accuracy to 50%, compared to 81%, the latter being achieved through a feedforward neural network solely trained on the speaker identification task using the same input features.
Cultural Heritage, British Diplomacy, and the German Peace Settlement of 1919

Restitution of cultural objects was one of the topics covered in the Treaty of Versailles and the related peace treaties. Britain made specific claims in Article 246 relating to the Koran of Caliph...
Financial Constraints & Collegiate Student Learning: A Behavioral Economics Perspective

Gaps in college completion persist between low- and high-income students. These disparities can be attributed in large part to a lack of college affordability and information asymmetries about the ...
Phototherapy and PUVA

Phototherapy can be used to treat multiple diseases of the skin. Although use may be limited by insurance coverage and availability, it is an extremely effective therapeutic option. Here, we outline the different types of photo- and photochemotherapy as well as their use in management of dermatologic disease.
Optimal Power Flow Calculation of Combined Electricity-Heat Power System Based on Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers

With the continuous development of Energy Internet, the power systems and heat systems are beginning to couple and interact. Since the heat system model is more complex and difficult to solve, in order to make the operation of combined system safer, more economical and more reliable, the calculation problem of optimal power flow(OPF) is worth studying. In this paper, to solve the OPF calculation problem of combined electricity-heat power system, an OPF model based on hydraulic model and thermal model of heat system, and DC power flow model of power system was established, and an OPF calculation method based on Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers(ADMM) was proposed to solve the model under the distributed framework. Finally, the correctness, good convergence and strong robustness of this method were proved by comparing with the results of the centralized algorithm and observing its solution process.
Aortic Coarctation: Basic Imaging Findings and Management

Abstract Coarctation of the aorta (CoA) is a common congenital disease associated with narrowing of the descending aorta. CoA is an arteriopathy that can be associated with other congenital heart and systemic defects and therefore requires vigilant and continuous management and screening even after correction. Advancements in imaging have revolutionized the way CoA is diagnosed and managed. In this article, the authors review CoA and its management, with a focus on the various imaging modalities used for diagnosis and screening of CoA and its associated malformations.
Laser-assisted Fluorescent Angiography to Assess Tissue Perfusion in the Setting of Traumatic Elbow Dislocation.

Introduction In the surgical setting, the most accepted technique for measuring tissue perfusion includes subjective identification, with visual and tactile inspections of the tissue, performed by a surgeon. Recently, fields such as ophthalmology, plastic surgery, and other surgical specialties, such as cardiac, vascular, and transplant surgery, have seen the emergence of laser-assisted fluorescent angiography (LAFA) to visualize real-time tissue perfusion during procedures. Case report The case of an 80-year-old woman, who presented with a wound over the left medial elbow following a subacute recurrent elbow dislocation, illustrates the use of this technology in the field of orthopedics. Initially, the patient was treated at an outside facility where the dislocation was reduced, and she was placed in a long arm splint. With concern of recurrent dislocation and wound development, she presented to the authors with a complex wound measuring about 9 cm x 5 cm with variable thickness ranging from 0 mm to 5 mm in depth. Her initial emergent irrigation and debridement and wound management was assisted by LAFA and the administration of indocyanine green to guide debridement and determine viable wound margins. After staging with external fixation and a negative pressure wound dressing, she later returned for skin grafting and healed uneventfully. Conclusions In conjunction with plastic surgeons, the orthopaedic team utilized LAFA for debridement that led to both a successful wound repair and skin grafting procedure.
Beyond Information Organization and Evaluation: How Can Information Scientists Contribute to Independent Thinking?

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is making fundamental changes to our life, our society, and our thinking The substantial influx of information on disease updates, case analysis, suggestions, and recordings leads one to contemplate what information professionals and information scientists can contribute to shorten the pandemic, improve human lives, and build a more impactful profession This viewpoint examines concepts related to misinformation and discusses the responsibilities of information scientists, especially in the context of independent thinking It suggests that research on and education in information science could help to develop independent thinking and train independent thinkers
The Effect of Individual Characteristics and Supervision Experiences on the Perceived Quality of the Supervision Relationship

Research has shown that high-quality relationships between individuals on probation/parole and their supervising officers can reduce recidivism and increase compliance. Although this relationship c...
PatentsView: An Open Data Platform to Advance Science and Technology Policy

What are the connections between science and improvements in economic and social outcomes that drive the “value” of science? Most of the time, these connections are circuitous, varied, diffuse, and opaque. Patent data offer an opportunity to expose new connections between science and technology as well as exposing links to downstream economic and social outcomes. The PatentsView open data platform performs data preparation, visualization, and adds helpful features to USPTO’s administrative data. PatentsView is fundamentally a free “intermediate good” that provides the needed materials for researchers, policymakers, and students to conduct their own analyses, make their own linkages, and derive their own insights. This paper provides a quick tour of the PatentsView platform.
Considering the Call to Action for Science Education

A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine serves as a “Call to Action” for science educators and policies that affect science education in the United States. The report includes numerous recommendations of ways chemistry educators can be important partners in their local, state, and national activities.
Loss of aryl hydrocarbon receptor suppresses the response of colonic epithelial cells to IL22 signaling by upregulating SOCS3.

IL22 signaling plays an important role in maintaining gastrointestinal epithelial barrier function, cell proliferation and protection of intestinal stem cells from genotoxicants. Emerging studies indicate that the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a ligand activated transcription factor, promotes production of IL22 in gut immune cells. However, it remains to be determined if AhR signaling can also affect the responsiveness of colonic epithelial cells to IL22. Here, we show that IL22 treatment induces the phosphorylation of STAT3, inhibits colonic organoid growth, and promotes colonic cell proliferation in vivo. Notably, intestinal cell specific AhR knockout (KO) reduces responsiveness to IL22 and compromises DNA damage response following exposure to carcinogen, in part due to the enhancement of SOCS3 expression. Deletion of SOCS3 increases levels of pSTAT3 in AhR KO organoids, and phenocopies the effects of IL22 treatment on wildtype (WT) organoid growth. In addition, pSTAT3 levels are inversely associated with increased AOM/DSS induced colon tumorigenesis in AhR KO mice. These findings indicate that AhR function is required for optimal IL22 signaling in colonic epithelial cells and provide rationale for targeting AhR as a means of reducing colon cancer risk.