cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Consumer Affect and Type of Water Recycling Projects: Implementation at Airports

Previous studies have shown that the level of contact with recycled water has a significant impact on users’ attitude and perceptions toward its use. Recycled water is an engineering process that allows water to be reused for various processes and can mitigate the consumption of freshwater resources used by the airport. The current study aims to determine whether affect mediates the relationship between the type of water recycling projects and a person’s preference toward the use of that airport. Participants were presented with a scenario of an airport that uses recycled water for their sprinkler system or for their drinking fountains. This study found that affect was a significant mediator that mediated the relationship between the type of water recycling project and a person’s preference towards using that airport. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this data.
The Cubic — To — Hexagonal Transformation to Toughen Sic

Silicon carbide is a desirable high temperature structural material, however, its poor fracture toughness at room temperature has limited its practical application. Recent processing developments have toughened the microstructure with interlocking, plate-like grains and an ~1 nm thick amorphous grain boundary. Intergranular fracture around these elongated grains leads to crack deflection and elastic bridging behind an advancing crack tip, thereby giving rise to the fracture resistance. (Kc > 9 MPa m1/2.) Furthermore, the increase in interlocking that develops with the high aspect ratio results in an increase in room temperature strength even as grains grow. The plate-like microstructure arises from the cubic-to-hexagonal transformation in SiC, which must be judiciously controlled in order to insure full densification, to obtain a high aspect ratio, and to optimize the microstructure of the sintering additives. Thus this work evaluates this transformation using XRD, SEM and high resolution TEM. Although a multitude of literature discusses a transformation invoked by the motion of stacking faults and partial dislocations, this study has characterized a growth-induced transformation, with the initial beta grain acting as a seed on which the alpha grows. Further growth of dual-phase grains develops asymmetric faceting on the plate-like surfaces, which, coupled with crystalline triple junction phases, complicate the intergranular crack path and increase the effect of interlocking.
High-Performance and Energy-Efficient Network-on-Chip Architectures for Graph Analytics

With its applicability spanning numerous data-driven fields, the implementation of graph analytics on multicore platforms is gaining momentum. One of the most important components of a multicore chip is its communication backbone. Due to inherent irregularities in data movements manifested by graph-based applications, it is essential to design efficient on-chip interconnection architectures for multicore chips performing graph analytics. In this article, we present a detailed analysis of the traffic patterns generated by graph-based applications when mapped to multicore chips. Based on this analysis, we explore the design-space for the Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture to enable an efficient implementation of graph analytics. We principally consider three types of NoC architectures, viz., traditional mesh, small-world, and high-radix networks. We demonstrate that the small-world-network-enabled wireless NoC (WiNoC) is the most suitable platform for executing the considered graph applications. The WiNoC achieves an average of 38p and 18p full-system Energy Delay Product savings compared to wireline-mesh and high-radix NoCs, respectively.
Multi-objective optimization of transesterification in biodiesel production catalyzed by immobilized lipase

Modeling and Analysis Multi-objective optimization of transesterifi cation in biodiesel production catalyzed by immobilized lipase Mahmoud Karimi, Arak University, Iran and Stanford University, CA, USA Bryan Jenkins and Pieter Stroeve, University of California Davis, CA, USA Received December 15, 2015; revised July 24, 2016; and accepted July 25, 2016 View online September 14, 2016 at Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com); DOI: 10.1002/bbb.1706; Biofuels, Bioprod. Bioref. 10:804–818 (2016) Abstract: In order to comply with criteria of green energy concepts and sustainability, a multi-objective analysis was performed for the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) using immobilized lipase. Response surface methodology and artificial neural networks, followed by multiple response optimiza- tion through a desirability function approach were applied to individually and simultaneously evaluate the fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) content and the exergy effi ciency. Reaction time and concentra- tions of methanol, immobilized lipase and water were considered as the design variables in maximiz- ing FAME content and exergy effi ciency. The maximum individual desirability of FAME content was predicted to be 95.7% corresponding to a methanol to WCO molar ratio of 6.7, catalyst concentration of 45%, water content of 9% and reaction time of 25 h. However, based on the simultaneously optimi- zation of both the FAME content and the exergy effi ciency, the maximum overall desirability was found at a methanol to WCO molar ratio of 6.7, catalyst concentration of 35%, water content of 12% and reaction time of 20 h to achieve FAME content of 88.6% and exergy effi ciency of 80.1%, respectively. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Keywords: thermodynamic analysis; enzymatic transesterifi cation; lipase immobilization; optimization; biodiesel; exergy Introduction imited energy reserves and increasing environmental pressure on greenhouse gases (GHGs) from fossil fuels has caused biodiesel (fatty acid alkyl esters) to become a topic of interest in and target of energy policy in many countries. 1,2 Biodiesel has drawn attention in the last decade as a low toxicity, biodegradable, renewable source L of fuel with generally lower exhaust emissions and reduced lifecycle GHG implications for CO, CO 2 and SO x in com- parison with petroleum fuels. Th erefore biodiesel is mostly considered an environmentally friendly alternative liquid fuel and energy product. 1,3 Biodiesel is produced by esterification of fatty acids or transesterification of triglycerides with short chain alco- hols like methanol and ethanol. Methanol is mostly used Correspondence to: Mahmoud Karimi, Department of Biosystem Engineering, Arak University, Arak, Iran 38156 – 879 or 105 Keck Science, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. 94305, USA. E-mail: mkarimi2@stanford.edu or m-karimi@araku.ac.ir © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Miniature fully-passive brain implant for wireless real-time neuropotential monitoring

We present a 8.7 mm × 10 mm fully-passive brain implant transceiver, capable of neuropotential acquisition as low as 20 μVpp. This high sensitivity wireless implant implies that, for the first time, most neuropotentials generated by the human brain can be read in a wireless and fully-passive manner. Concurrently, the proposed implant is 63% smaller than previously reported fully-passive neurorecorders. The neuropotential recording system consists of the brain implant and an exterior interrogator. Unique aspects of our design include: a) an Anti-Parallel Diode Pair (APDP) mixer within the implant for efficient harmonic mixing, and b) a set of highly-coupled miniature implanted and exterior antennas. This leads to >30 dB sensitivity improvement over previous implants. Overall, this is a game-changing capability for studying several conditions (epilepsy, tremor, addictions, etc.).
Lasing Using Bound States in the Continuum

We have designed a high quality factor cavity that is based on a bound state in the continuum and harnessed its properties to demonstrate a novel type of surface emitting laser in the c-band (~1550nm). We have experimentally demonstrated lasing action in this compact nanophotonic laser at room temperature with a very low threshold power.
Vector-Valued Kernels of Bergman Type

Bergman reproducing integral formulas can be obtained for holomorphic mappings \(f{:}\,{\mathbb {B}}\rightarrow {\mathbb {C}}^n,\,{\mathbb {B}}\) the open unit ball of \({\mathbb {C}}^n\), by applying the well-known formulas for scalar-valued functions on \({\mathbb {B}}\) to each coordinate function of f, provided those coordinate functions each lie in an appropriate Bergman space. Here, we consider an alternative formulation whereby f is reproduced as the integral of the product of a fixed vector-valued kernel and the scalar expression \(\langle f(z),z \rangle ,\,z\in {\mathbb {B}}\), where \(\langle \cdot ,\cdot \rangle \) is the Hermitian inner product in \({\mathbb {C}}^n\). We provide two different classes of vector-valued kernels that reproduce holomorphic mappings lying in spaces properly containing the weighted vector-valued Bergman spaces. An analysis of these larger spaces is given. The first set of kernels arises naturally from the scalar-valued Bergman kernels, while the second yields the orthogonal projection onto an isomorphic space of scalar-valued functions in the unweighted case.
Time for Retirement ‘SeLFIES’?

To address the looming retirement crisis, many governments are introducing new pension programmes tied to employment for uncovered workers (NEST in the UK and Secure Choice in some US states). These attempt to improve access to pensions, and continue a trend of transferring responsibility for retirement security from governments and employers (via defined benefit [DB] plans) to the individual (via defined contribution [DC] plans), as neither governments nor companies are willing to bear the liabilities associated with pension obligations. This shift requires new thinking about how portfolios are managed and which instruments are available to investors. Our proposed SeLFIES (Standard of Living indexed, Forward-starting, Income-only Securities) make individuals self-reliant and are also advantageous for governments.
Total abdominal colectomy vs. restorative total proctocolectomy as the initial approach to medically refractory ulcerative colitis

There is scant data assessing the consequences of staging restorative proctocolectomy for ulcerative colitis. The aim of the study is to compare outcomes of initial vs. staged restorative proctocolectomy. Patients completing restorative proctocolectomy, including ileostomy reversal, during 2006–2012 were identified from an IRB-approved database. Demographics, treatment variables, and perioperative outcomes were assessed. Out of 521 patients, 322 (62%) underwent initial total abdominal colectomy before restorative proctectomy. This group was associated with more common preoperative anemia, leukocytosis, hypoalbuminemia, severe colitis, steroids and biologics use, decreased proximal ileostomy rate at the time of completion restorative proctectomy (92.5 vs 97.5%, p = 0.023), shorter hospital stay (6.6 vs 7.8, p < 0.001), and marginally decreased pelvic sepsis rate (6.2 vs 11.1%, p = 0.05) compared with patients having initial restorative proctocolectomy. However, they also required longer combined postoperative hospital stays (17 vs 12 days, p < 0.001) and treatment span (10.4 vs 5.7 months, p < 0.001) to complete all surgical stages and they were associated with increased overall postoperative surgical site infection, hemorrhage, and small bowel obstruction rates. Pouch function and QOL were comparable between the groups, except for increased nightly bowel movements in the initial abdominal colectomy group (2.5 ± 2.2 vs 2.1 ± 1.8, p = 0.012). Patients undergoing initial total abdominal colectomy require longer treatment time and experience increased overall morbidity, but ultimately experience comparable ileal pouch outcomes when compared to patients undergoing initial restorative proctocolectomy.
National identity, religious tolerance, and group conflict: Insights from a survey experiment in Pakistan:

Can highlighting the national contributions of a religiously marginalized group increase tolerance toward that group, even when its presence in the national identity is disputed? Research shows tha...
Recherche en éthique du marketing: thèmes récurrents et émergents:

Cet article aborde les themes de recherche de longue date et emergents dans le domaine de l’ethique du marketing. Il debute par les definitions, puis s’interesse a l’analyse de la recherche sur : l...
Global morphogenetic flow is accurately predicted by the spatial distribution of myosin motors

During embryogenesis tissue layers undergo morphogenetic flow rearranging and folding into specific shapes. While developmental biology has identified key genes and local cellular processes, global coordination of tissue remodeling at the organ scale remains unclear. Here, we combine in toto light-sheet microscopy of the Drosophila embryo with quantitative analysis and physical modeling to relate cellular flow with the patterns of force generation during the gastrulation process. We find that the complex spatio-temporal flow pattern can be predicted from the measured meso-scale myosin density and anisotropy using a simple, effective viscous model of the tissue, achieving close to 90% accuracy with one time dependent and two constant parameters. Our analysis uncovers the importance of a) spatial modulation of myosin distribution on the scale of the embryo and b) the non-locality of its effect due to mechanical interaction of cells, demonstrating the need for the global perspective in the study of morphogenetic flow.
Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects in the Presence of (Correlated) Neighborhood Interactions: Model and Stata Implementation via Ntreatreg:

In this article, I present a counterfactual model identifying average treatment effects by conditional mean independence when considering peer- or neighborhood-correlated effects, and I provide a new command, ntreatreg, that implements such models in practical applications. The model and its accompanying command provide an estimation of average treatment effects when the stable unit treatment-value assumption is relaxed under specific conditions. I present two instructional applications: the first is a simulation exercise that shows both model implementation and ntreatreg correctness; the second is an application to real data, aimed at measuring the effect of housing location on crime in the presence of social interactions. In the second application, results are compared with a no-interaction setting.
Supporting instructional change in mathematics: using social network analysis to understand online support processes following professional development workshops

Studies continually show benefits of active learning in college classrooms, yet it is difficult to get faculty to adopt these methods. Particularly challenging is the final step of the instructional change process, “refreezing,” when after making initial changes in instructional methods, instructors decide whether to continue with new instructional methods or return to their previous methods. Though this stage is important, it is not well studied. Most available studies about ongoing support following professional development on teaching merely state that facilitators made an effort to offer support, or report how frequently participants engaged with online support mechanisms through counting postings on listservs or message boards. Such measures do not show evidence that participants actually received positive reinforcement or intellectual and emotional support, which are crucial to refreezing, nor do these frequency analyses help other professional developers learn how to create productive ongoing support mechanisms that yield high participant engagement. This workshop for 35 college mathematics instructors used online and in-person communities to provide support to participants during the post-workshop period of “refreezing.” Almost all workshop attendees participated in “e-mentoring” (94%), primarily through a productive, engaging group email listserv. By combining qualitative coding of message content with the techniques of social network analysis, we reveal how facilitators and participants on the group listserv provided intellectual and emotional support, as well as positive reinforcement through feedback loops. The analysis also shows how the facilitators made this a helpful group and maintained participant engagement through frequent encouragement, deliberate community building, and thoughtfully timed responses. Though many professional development workshops offer online support through email listservs, there is little evidence that these listservs successfully engage and support participants. Applying the analytic approach of social network analysis allowed us to model the conversation threads in one highly engaged and supportive listserv following a mathematics professional development workshop. This method revealed the processes of ongoing support in ways that traditional frequency-based analyses cannot. This method also revealed lessons for how other professional developers can create productive, helpful online support listservs. Since this is an innovative application of social network analysis, we describe the method in detail.
Dose-dependent pharmacokinetics of MK-417, a potent carbonic anhydrase inhibitor, in experimental polycythemic and anemic rats.

MK-417 is a potent carbonic anhydrase inhibitor currently under clinical investigation as a topical ocular hypotensive agent. While present in most of the tissues, carbonic anhydrase predominates in red blood cells. Earlier studies from our laboratory have demonstrated that carbonic anhydrase plays an important role in the elimination kinetics of MK-417 and that the enzyme can be saturated when MK-417 exceeds the stoichiometric concentration of the enzyme. Since carbonic anhydrase is an intracellular enzyme in erythrocytes, conditions which may change the hematocrit can alter the load of MK-417 needed to saturate carbonic anhydrase. It is, therefore, important to determine the effects of anemic and polycythemic states on the pharmacokinetics of MK-417. The anemic state in rats was obtained by replacing whole blood with donor plasma (12–15 ml), while polycythemia was induced by infusion of 12 to 15 ml of whole blood. At low doses (0.05 and 0.1 mg/kg), the pharmacokinetic parameters for MK-417 remained unchanged and there were no significant differences in the pharmacokinetic parameters among the anemic, polycythemic, and normal rats. The total blood clearance and apparent volume of distribution were increased markedly when the dose exceeded 0.2 mg/kg in anemic rats and 0.5 and 1 mg/kg in normal and polycythemic rats, respectively. Clearly, the dose of MK-417 required to saturate the enzyme was different among the three groups of animals. However, the terminal half-life was dose independent and not influenced by hematocrit. At high doses (1 and 2 mg/kg), significant differences in total blood clearance and apparent volume of distribution were observed in the three groups of rats with the following rank: anemic rats > normal rats > polycythemic rats. There was a strong inverse correlation between total blood clearance and hematocrit and between apparent volume of distribution and hematocrit.
Scanning probe microscopes

The principles behind scanning probe microscopy are outlined with the emphasis being on scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), and the details of STM instruments are presented. Some typical results are also shown. Other forms of scanning probe microscopes include the atomic force microscope and the near-field scanning optical microscope, both of which are described.
In the District and on the Desktop: School Libraries as Essential Elements of Effective Broadband Use in Schools.

Demands for the Internet in administrative, instructional, and learning tasks in schools are rising. Because adequate bandwidth in schools supports the home-school learning continuum, links to civic and governmental organizations, and situations in which home connectivity is scarce, reconsiderations in investments in connectivity supply and support are due. Yet, many school administrators report concerns about their bandwidth and employ strategies to level access among their teachers and students. Limited access in schools and classrooms results in stifled instructional creativity and few opportunities for students to gain twenty-first-century skills needed later academic and workplace success. Even when connectivity is adequate, educators and learners require support to make the most of the Internet. School librarians, on-site technology leaders with expertise in supporting digitally immersive learning, have great potential to help administrators, teachers, and students make the best use of the connectivity.
Management of Medical Technology (MMT): An Emerging Intellectual Space

The previous chapter offered some definitions for technology in general, and technology in organizations in particular. This chapter deals with the management of medical technology (MMT), as a subject of an emerging intellectual space.
SPINDLES+: An adaptive and personalized system for leg shake detection

Abstract For many people, the habit of leg shaking is an annoyance to themselves and people around them. In this work, we present SPINDLES+, a smartphone-based leg shaking detection application that detects and alerts users of leg shaking. In addition to being a low-power, low-latency, non-intrusive and high accuracy mobile application, SPINDLES+ extends the work of its predecessor, SPINDLES, by addressing the need for personalization in detecting a body motion that is unique to the individual. We show that SPINDLES+ is able to learn the characteristics that define an individual׳s leg shaking signature and allows the user to adjust the parameters of the detector, based on personal preference, to find an optimal point between accuracy, latency, and power consumption. Finally, we compare SPINDLES+ with related works to further illustrate improvements over the robustness and personalization aspects that SPINDLES+ affords. By providing leg shaking alerts in a timely manner, we hope to help users become more aware of and reduce the occurrence of this behavior.
NS-Alpha- and NS-Omega-Deconvolution Regularizations

Consider the NSE in rotational form: \(\begin{array}{rrr}\rm{u}_t+(\nabla\times \rm{u})\times\rm{u}-\rm{v}\triangle\rm{u}+\nabla P=f(\rm{x},t), \\ \nabla \cdot = 0, \\ \text{where} P = p + 1/2|u|_2\end{array}\)
Statistical classification of seafood quality

Discriminant function analysis (DFA) was used to classify the freshness quality of lean fish, fatty fish, and shrimp as either acceptable (Class 1), marginal (Class 2), or unacceptable (Class 3). Fresh and frozen survey samples were statistically classified following an initial precategorization using sensory, chemical, and microbiological indices as predictor variables. Computer elimination of nonsignificant predictor tests, p > 0.05, was used to optimize the test protocol. DFA correctly classified 98.5% of 67 preclassed lean fish samples (34 Class 1; 13 Class 2; 20 Class 3), 86.2% of 58 preclassed fatty fish samples (22 Class 1; 16 Class 2; 20 Class 3), and 98.7% of 79 preclassed shrimp samples (45 Class 1; 18 Class 2; 16 Class 3) by using all the quality indices. Computer selection of significant predictor indices at p < 0.05 yielded correct predicted classifications of 95.5, 81.0, and 97.5%, respectively. The number of tests required to effectively categorize quality were reduced from 15 to 3 for lean fish, from 13 to 3 for fatty fish, and from 11 to 6 for shrimp, with minimal losses in prediction accuracy and a substantial reduction in analysis time.
When civil engagement is part of the problem: Flawed anti-corruptionism in Russia and Ukraine

Abstract In developing countries, the fight against corruption entails purges of political and business elites and the restructuring of electoral, financial, and social provision systems, all of which are costly for the incumbents and, therefore, unlikely without sustained pressure from civil society. In the absence of empirical analyses, scholars and practitioners have, therefore, assumes that civil society plays an unequivocally positive role in anti-corruptionism. In this article, we challenge this dominant assumption. Instead, we show that, under certain conditions, an engaged non-governmental community may, in fact, undermine the fight against corruption. Using the data from forty interviews with anti-corruption practitioners in Ukraine and Russia, as well as primary documentary sources, we present two models of anti-corruptionism whereby active civil engagement produces suboptimal outcomes. One is faux collaboration, defined as a facade of cooperation between the state and civil society, which hides the reality of one-sided reforms. The other model is that of non-collaborative co-presence, whereby the governance role is shared by the government and non-governmental activists without compromise-based solutions. In both cases, civil engagement helps perpetuate abuses of power and subvert such long-term goals of anti-corruption reforms as democratization and effective governance.
A planetary vision for one health.

In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission published a report: Safeguarding Human Health in the Anthropocene Epoch .1 This report outlines the extent to which human activities have degraded the earth’s ecosystems such that basic life support services have become threatened. Among the threats are greenhouse gases and resulting climate change, severe weather patterns, deforestation, desertification, ocean acidification, zoonotic disease outbreaks, biodiversity loss and particulate air pollution. The report concludes that these planetary phenomena pose a serious and urgent threat to human health, well-being and sustainability, and calls for immediate attention to critical multidisciplinary research, and evidence-based policy formulation and timely implementation. The Lancet Commission report has spawned a number of Planetary Health efforts, focused on policy, education and research, with initial support provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and more recently the Wellcome Trust.2 Activities include formation of a Planetary Health Alliance of over 95 universities, non-governmental organisations, government entities, research institutes and other partners, a website portal,3 an annual Planetary Health conference, and a new journal dedicated to the topic.4 Interest in the Planetary Health approach has led to a re-examination of similar existing approaches such as One Health5 and EcoHealth.6 One Health, an interdisciplinary approach stressing connections between human, animal and environmental health, gained momentum as a response to the steadily increasing drumbeat of emerging zoonotic disease outbreaks in recent decades, including the West Nile virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome, Nipah and Hendra viruses, Ebola, avian influenza, H1N1 2009 pandemic influenza,5 and most recently Ebola in West Africa, zika and yellow fever.7 The threat to global health from antimicrobial resistance, now understood to stem from overuse of antibiotics in both humans and animals, with environmental accumulation of antibiotic residues and resistant organisms and genes, has led to further support for One …
Exploration of Alternative State Vector Choices for Low-Thrust Trajectory Optimization

As is well known in celestial mechanics, coordinate choices have significant consequences in the analytical and computational approaches to solve the most fundamental initial value problem. The pre...
Using Multiple Criteria Optimization and Two-Stage Genetic Algorithms to Select a Population Management Strategy with Optimized Reliability

An important aspect of good management of inventory for many single-use populations or stockpiles is to develop an informed consumption strategy to use a collection of single-use units, with varied reliability as a function of age, during scheduled operations. We present a two-phase approach to balance multiple objectives for a consumption strategy to ensure good performance on the average reliability, consistency of unit reliability over time, and least uncertainty of the reliability estimates. In the first phase, a representative subset of units is selected to explore the impact of using units at different time points on reliability performance and to identify beneficial consumption patterns using a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm based on multiple objectives. In the second phase, the results from the first phase are projected back to the full stockpile as a starting point for determining best consumption strategies that emphasize the priorities of the manager. The method can be generalized to other criteria of interest and management optimization strategies. The method is illustrated with an example that shares characteristics with some munition stockpiles and demonstrates the substantial advantages of the two-phase approach on the quality of solutions and efficiency of finding them.
Community Asthma Initiative: Cost Analyses using Claims Data from a Medicaid Managed Care Organization

Objective: Use claims data to examine the cost benefit of the Community Asthma Initiative (CAI), a Boston area nurse-supervised community health worker (CHW) asthma home-visiting program. Methods: ...
But What Do The Students Think: Results of the CUNY Cross-Campus Zero-Textbook Cost Student Survey

The results of the first cross-campus survey of student opinions on Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses are in: City University of New York (CUNY) students like their ZTC courses, primarily for the cost savings and ease of access. The survey results yield rich data about how positively students feel about their Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses as well as ways to improve the design and delivery of Zero Textbook Cost courses to make them more beneficial for student learning.
Polylactic Acid-Based Nanocomposites: An Important Class of Biodegradable Composites

This chapter discusses the different classes of polylactic acid-based nanocomposites, their structure-property relationships and their wide range of potential applications in the various fields such as biomedical, food packaging, automobiles, agriculture and renewable sources.
Delivery of Immunotherapeutic Nanoparticles to Tumors via Enzyme‐Directed Assembly

Amphiphilic diblock copolymers are prepared by ring opening metathesis polymerization, with one block containing hydrophobic Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) agonists and one block containing hydrophilic peptides as substrates for matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). A fluorescent label is incorporated into the polymer chains for in vivo imaging. Upon dialysis against aqueous solution, polymers form 15 nm spherical micelles. Subsequent exposure to MMP-9 elicits a morphological change to yield immunostimulatory microscale assemblies. The intravenous (IV) administration of the formulation to mice bearing 4T1 breast cancer tumors results in nanoparticle accumulation in tumors, reduction in primary tumor growth, and inhibition of lung metastases, as compared to saline-treated animals. Mice administered the parent immunotherapeutic small molecule (1V209) experience significantly increased plasma levels of proinflammatory cytokines IL-6, IP-10, and MCP-1 at 2 h following IV administration, whereas the nanomaterial shows no increase over saline-treated controls. These data suggest that covalently packaging low molecular weight immunotherapeutics at high weight percent loadings in enzyme-responsive nanoparticles maintains drug efficacy while decreasing immunotoxicity, providing a platform for cancer immunotherapeutic delivery.
Using Modularity Metrics as Design Features to Guide Evolution in Genetic Programming.

Genetic Programming has advanced the state of the art in the field of software synthesis. However, it has still not been able to produce some of the more complex programs routinely written by humans. One of the heuristics human programmers use to build complex software is the organization of code into reusable modules. Ever since the introduction of the concept of Automatically Defined Functions (ADFs) by John Koza in the 1990s, the genetic programming community has also expressed the need to evolve modular programs, but despite this interest and several subsequent innovations, the goal of evolving large-scale software built on reusable modules has not yet been achieved. In this chapter, we first discuss two modularity metrics—Reuse and Repetition—and describe the procedure for calculating them from program code and corresponding execution traces. We then introduce the concept of design features, which can be used alongside error measures to guide evolution. We also demonstrate the use of modularity design features in parent selection.
Which mothers know that all babies cry? A randomized controlled trial of a child abuse prevention program for low-income new mothers

This study evaluated an intervention for low-income new mothers, half from Spanish-speaking homes, that provides education around infant crying and abusive head trauma (AHT). At enrollment, non-US-born mothers were less likely than US-born mothers to have heard of shaken baby syndrome (60% vs 89%, P ≤ .0001) or to know shaking babies could lead to brain damage or death (48% vs 80%, P < .0001). At follow-up, non-US-born intervention mothers had improved knowledge of the peak of crying (31% vs 4%, P = .009), improved knowledge that shaking a baby could lead to brain damage or death (36% vs 12%, P = .035), and identified more calming strategies for parenting stress compared with non-US-born control mothers (+0.8 [SD = 1.1] vs -0.4 [SD = 1.4]). This study identifies a gap in AHT knowledge at baseline of non-US-born mothers. These mothers had improved knowledge with intervention and are an important population for similar prevention efforts.
Russian Elites and Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism: Empirical Analysis of 2012 and 2016

The mounting tensions between Russia and the West over the Ukrainian crisis and Crimea's annexation in 2014; Russia's growing information warfare and cyberwarfare campaign, culminating in interference with the recent US presidential election; confrontation over the Syrian conflict, and many other events of that ilk --- have thrust Russia and the West into the reality of a new Cold War. The consistency and effectiveness of Russia's assertive foreign policy has earned Putin, both domestically and internationally, an image of a powerful and ambitious leader with strategic plan to reestablish the Russian empire and defend Russia's core national interests. Speculation regarding the presence of such "strategic plan" among scholars and practitioners make Alexander Dugin's conspiratorial neo-Eurasianism project especially appealing for research investigation. Surprisingly, so far, its major theoretical perspectives have had a good predictive power of Russia's contemporary policies, legitimately raising the question about the consistency of the elite's views with the theory's. I argue that by laying out a roadmap for Russia's contemporary imperialism and challenging the current international order, this theory remains quite popular among the Russian elites and could be partially used by them as guidance in policy-making. This paper explores key ideas of Dugin's neo-Eurasianism, as described in his "Foundations of Geopolitics", and empirically tests them with data from the "Survey of Russian Elites: 1993-2016" using a Bayesian Structural Equation approach.
Synergistic adsorption‑photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline by microcrystalline cellulose composite aerogel dopped with montmorillonite hosted methylene blue

Abstract A flexible and recyclable metal-free photodynamic aerogel composite was synthesized by simple entrapping montmorillonite particles hosting methylene blue (MT-MB) into microcrystalline cellulose aerogel (MCC/MT-MB) without the use of chemical modifiers. The MT-MB particles act as adsorbent and photocatalyst for tetracycline for the first time. The mechanism of tetracycline adsorption and photodegradation by MCC/MT-MB aerogel was investigated by confocal imaging and radical scavenger experiment. Singlet oxygen was found to play a main role in the degradation confirming Type II photoexitation mechanism. The MCC/MT-MB aerogel exhibited 97% tetracycline removal efficiency within 120 min. This enhanced performance of the aerogels could be an integrated result of interconnected open porous aerogel structure, multi-adsorption mechanisms of the pollutant on the aerogel, and degradation and direct contact of methylene blue with tetracycline. Furthermore, MCC/MT-MB aerogel showed high stability and photocatalytic degradation recyclability upto 10 cycles of uses, and the recycling process was environmentally friendly. The degradation intermediate products were analyzed by HPLC-MS, and two photodegradation pathways were proposed. In addition, MCC/MT-MB aerogel showed tetracycline removal rate of 90% under red-light irradiation and > 90% under UVA or daylight irradiation from dairy manure samples collected from Central Valley California, USA, respectively. These results confirmed the advantageous functions and practicality of the photoactive porous aerogel in wastewater treatments.
Seeing is Believing

Or do we see something, because we believe it? Evidence suggests that personal experience is more likely to influence Americans with no strong beliefs about climate change than those with firm beliefs.
The Penn ADCC: Integrating Neurodegenerative Disease Research Across Disciplines, Conditions, and Population Groups

Around the world, countries are experiencing seismic demographic changes due to rapid increases in the “oldest old”, those over 85 years of age, and the young old “Baby Boomers” now aged 60–70 years (2014). While Americans are living longer and disability rates are declining, some 77 million began turning 60 in 2006, the time at which age-related early onset dementias begin. This, therefore, means that Alzheimer’s Dementia (AD) and other dementias will increase with ominous consequences if we do not develop therapies to treat/prevent them. Thus, the number of Americans with AD will increase to over 13 million and delaying the onset of AD by just 5 years would reduce the number of AD patients and the cost of their care about 50 % by 2050. Intense efforts are urgently needed to develop disease modifying therapies for AD. AD is the most common but by no means the only type of dementia seen in older adults. In one U.S. study, AD accounted for 69.9 % of all cases of dementias, followed by vascular dementia (VaD) in 17.4 %. The remaining 12.7 % of cases were attributed to Parkinson’s dementia (PD), normal-pressure hydrocephalus, frontal lobe dementia, alcoholic dementia, traumatic brain injury, and Lewy body dementia. Since there are shared mechanisms underlying many of these neurodegenerative diseases, there is much to be gained through joint research and clinical efforts and the sharing of data across disciplines, disease areas, and institutions.
Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933–1945: Allianz, Kurt Schmitt, and the Third Reich, 1933–1934

DISORDER AND DELUSION: AN ECONOMICS MINISTER FOR THE THIRD REICH the relations between Allianz executives and the National Socialists appear to have been limited to a very few persons at the top of the concern, and there is no record of how many of the concern's personnel were sympathetic to the Nazis or involved with them. Schmitt's dealings with Goring and Hitler had been private, and Allianz apparently banned partisan political activity or the wearing or carrying of party uniforms, insignia, and the like at work before January 30, 1933, and for as long as it could afterward. The only evidence found so far of official favor to the Party came from Munich, where Barerstrase 15, a building owned by Allianz, was used on November 30, 1930, for a meeting of the SA leadership. The NSDAP later owned the building and probably was already renting offices there. There is also very little information available about National Socialist activities within the company. It certainly had its National Socialist factory cell organization (NSBO), as did many other leading insurance companies and banks in Berlin and elsewhere. Thus, the National Socialist Angriff reported in December 1930 that the factory cell had held its monthly meeting at which a Party comrade (Pg.) Pfister gave a “convincing” talk on the financial program of the Party that allegedly resulted in new memberships.
Capturing User Intent for Analytic Process

We are working on the problem of modeling an analyst's intent in order to improve collaboration among intelligence analysts. Our approach is to infer the analyst's goals, commitment, and actions to improve the effectiveness of collaboration. This is a crucial problem to ensure successful collaboration because analyst intent provides a deeper understanding of what analysts are trying to achieve and how they are achieving their goals than simply modeling their interests. The novelty of our approach relies on modeling the process of committing to a goal as opposed to simply modeling topical interests. Additionally, we dynamically generate a goal hierarchy by exploring the relationships between concepts related to a goal. In this short paper, we present the formal framework of our intent model, and demonstrate how it is used to detect the common goals between analysts using the APEX dataset.
Implementation of a data fusion algorithm for RODS, a real-time outbreak and disease surveillance system.

Due to the nature of many infectious agents, such as anthrax, symptoms may either take several days to manifest or resemble those of less serious illnesses leading to misdiagnosis. Thus, bioterrorism attacks that include the release of such agents are particularly dangerous and potentially deadly. For this reason, a system is needed for the quick and correct identification of disease outbreaks. The Real-time Outbreak Disease Surveillance System (RODS), initially developed by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, was created to meet this need. The RODS software implements different classifiers for pertinent health surveillance data in order to determine whether or not an outbreak has occurred. In an effort to improve the capability of RODS at detecting outbreaks, we incorporate a data fusion method. Data fusion is used to improve the results of a single classification by combining the output of multiple classifiers. This paper documents the first stages of the development of a data fusion system that can combine the output of the classifiers included in RODS.
Psychosocial factors related to smoking: the midlife study.

Background There is limited research on the correlates of cigarette smoking in women in late midlife. Objectives The present study examined the associations between risk factors in several psychosocial domains and current cigarette smoking among women in their mid-60s. These domains included risks in personal attributes, family relationships, negative life events, financial stressors, contextual factors, and problematic alcohol use. Methods Data were from a cohort of women originally living in two upstate New York counties (N = 511) in late midlife (mean age = 65). Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted. Results The results supported our hypotheses. The cumulative psychosocial risk index was significantly associated with a greater likelihood of cigarette smoking [A.O.R. = 1.53; 95% C.I. (1.3–.181); p < .001] after controlling for age and educational level. Conclusions and Scientific Significance It is important to reduce the number of psychosocial risk factors faced by women in their 60s in order to reduce the likelihood of continued cigarette smoking. (Am J Addict 2014;23:423–428)
On the Motion and Appearance of Specularities in Image Sequences

Real scenes are full of specularities (highlights and reflections), and yet most vision algorithms ignore them. In order to capture the appearance of realistic scenes, we need to model specularities as separate layers. In this paper, we study the behavior of specularities in static scenes as the camera moves, and describe their dependence on varying surface geometry, orientation, and scene point and camera locations. For a rectilinear camera motion with constant velocity, we study how the specular motion deviates from a straight trajectory (disparity deviation) and how much it violates the epipolar constraint (epipolar deviation). Surprisingly, for surfaces that are convex or not highly undulating, these deviations are usually quite small. We also study the appearance of specularities, i.e., how they interact with the body reflection, and with the usual occlusion ordering constraints applicable to diffuse opaque layers. We present a taxonomy of specularities based on their photometric properties as a guide for designing separation techniques. Finally, we propose a technique to extract specularities as a separate layer, and demonstrate it using an image sequence of a complex scene.
Your collection is online and the honeymoon's over: now what?

If you think your job is done once you've scanned your stuff and built a nice digital collection, think again. You still have users, and they still need your help. Here's how one group chose to deal with this permanent relationship. Case study: the Historic Pittsburg Web site
I/O scalable Bregman co-clustering

Consider an MxN matrix, where the (i,j)th entry represents the affinity between the i_th entity of the first type and the j_th entity of the second type. Co-clustering is an approach to simultaneously cluster both types of entities, using the affinities as the information guiding the clustering. Co-clustering has been found to achieve clustering and dimensionality reduction at the same time, and therefore it is finding application in various problems. Bregman co-clustering algorithm, which has been recently proposed, converts the co-clustering task to the search for an optimal approximation matrix. It is much more scalable but memory-based implementations have a severe computational bottleneck. In this paper we show that a significant fraction of computations performed by the Bregman co-clustering algorithm naturally map to those performed by an on-line analytical processing (OLAP) engine, making the latter a well suited data management engine for the algorithm. Based on this observation, we have developed a version of Bregman co-clustering algorithm that works on top of OLAP. Our experiments show that this version is much more scalable, achieving an order of magnitude performance improvement over the memory-based implementation. We believe this unlocks the power of this novel technique for application to much larger datasets.
Kupffer's vesicle size threshold for robust left-right patterning of the zebrafish embryo.

Background: Motile cilia in the “organ of asymmetry” create directional fluid flows that are vital for left–right (LR) asymmetric patterning of vertebrate embryos. Organ function often depends on tightly regulated organ size control, but the role of organ of asymmetry size in LR patterning has remained unknown. Observations of the organ of asymmetry in the zebrafish, called Kupffer's vesicle (KV), have suggested significant variations in KV size in wild-type embryos, raising questions about the impact of KV organ size on LR patterning. Results: To understand the relationship between organ of asymmetry size and its function, we characterized variations in KV at several developmental stages and in several different zebrafish strains. We found that the number of KV cilia and the size of the KV lumen were highly variable, whereas the length of KV cilia showed less variation. These variabilities were similar among different genetic backgrounds. By specifically modulating KV size and analyzing individual embryos, we identified a size threshold that is necessary for KV function. Conclusions: Together these results indicate the KV organ of asymmetry size is not tightly controlled during development, but rather must only exceed a threshold to direct robust LR patterning of the zebrafish embryo. Developmental Dynamics 245:22–33, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.