cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Restart services for highly available systems

This paper proposes a design methodology for building highly available systems. In addition, we describe a set of operating system services that can be used to achieve this goal. The techniques described are intended for a parallel environment and can be generalized for any distributed system. We describe a methodology for providing basic services for high availability, specific services for restart and an implementation of these services.
Über die Reaktion von Schwefel mit N,N'-Dimethyl-äthylendiamin und Formaldehyd. Eine neue Methode zur Herstellung von 1, 3-Dimethylimidazolidin-2-thion und N-Formyl-N'-thioformyl-N, N'-dimethyl-äthylen-1,2-diamin

The reaction of sulfur with N, N'-dimethylethylenediamine and formaldehyde has been studied. A simple, one step process for the preparation of N-formyl-N'-thioformyl-N, N'-dimethylethylene-1, 2-diamine (I) and 1, 3-dimethylimidazolidine-2-thione (II) is reported. The physical properties and 1H-NMR. spectra of I and II are given.
Mechanical Properties of Photomultiplier Tube Glasses for Neutrino Detection

Photomultiplier tubes (PMT) are one of the primary components of water Cherenkov neutrino detection for the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE). Thousands of 10- to 12-inch diameter PMT bulbs are placed in the inner wall of a detection tank or a reservoir (e.g., deep mine) filled with 10,000 gallons of high purity water with a resistivity of 11–18.24 MΩ-cm. Long-term service of PMTs is vital to the success of neutrino detection projects. We report our results of our investigation on mechanical properties of PMT glasses from two vendors and the effect of ion exchange on their mechanical strength. Vickers indentation, four-point bend test, and ring-on-ring biaxial flexural strength test were used for evaluation of the mechanical strength. Chemical (potassium–sodium ion exchange) strengthening results show increased strength of 46% in one vendor glass and a 57% increase in the other, with no significant reduction in optical transmission in the ultraviolet-visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum that is critical to neutrino detection. Our results also show narrowing of the distribution of strength calculated using Weibull statistics with chemical strengthening for comparable exchange depths of 22–28 μm.
CESR - An Electron Positron Colliding Beam Facility at Cornell

A proposal to modify the Cornell 12 GeV electron synchrotron facility to produce colliding beams of electrons and positrons was submitted to the National Science Foundation in May 1975. Subsequently, approval for design and prototype work was given and funding for the project is being requested by the NSF. Our goal is to complete this facility modification by October 1979. The status of the design and prototype work is described in this presentation.
Intergovernmentalization of Health Care Reform: The Limits of the Devolution Revolution

Though the states appear to be the focal points for reform of the health care delivery system, the national government is setting the limits within which they must operate This is occurring despite the general opposition to national involvement by states' rights advocates, insurance companies, health maintenance organizations, pharmaceutical companies, small business interests, and some segments of corporate America National constraints on state initiatives are a function of two conditions First, expanded participation in federally funded programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid, has broadened the pool of those eligible for coverage Second, care providers-that is, medical practitioners and hospitals-often prefer national regulations to state guidelines or no governmental rules at all The support for national regulations increasingly has led to the unusual situation in which the care providers and the populations they serve often share a common interest in maintaining a regulatory framework within which ...
A high-speed capacitance extraction algorithm for multi-level VLSI interconnects

The authors present preliminary results of a novel stochastic algorithm for high-speed capacitance extraction in multi-level VLSI interconnects. The algorithm is related to a statistical procedure for solving Laplace's equation known as a floating random-walk method. Benchmark calculations for three-dimensional cross-wire geometries were performed on a MAC IIfx personal computer, operating at 0.3 MFLOPS. Execution times were typically 40 s for an accuracy of less that 5%. Overall computational efficiency stems from various factors: suitability to rectilinear geometries, statistical-error cancellation, selective integration over Gaussian surfaces, and direct capacitance-matrix evaluation. >
Multichannel SBS Slow Light Using Spectrally Sliced Incoherent Pumping

We propose and experimentally demonstrate the use of an incoherent spectrally sliced amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source as the pump for broadband stimulated Brillouin scattering-based slow light. Both 2.5-Gb/s on-off-keyed and differential-phase-shift-keyed signals are continuously delayed by as much as 170 ps, with less than 4-dB power penalty at 10-9 bit error rate. A 2-GHz and a 4-GHz spectrally sliced pump are compared, emphasizing the need of optimizing the slow-light spectral-width according to the signal bandwidth. Furthermore, independent and simultaneous delay on multiple data channels with different modulation formats within a single slow-light medium is proposed and experimentally demonstrated by using a periodically spectrally sliced ASE source. Our approach might be useful in future heterogeneous multiformat, multibit-rate, and multichannel fiber-optic communication systems and networks.
Electrical conductivity of polymers containing carbon black

Changes in volume resistivity with temperature of carbon-black-filled polymers and a random copolymer of styrene and butyl methacrylate were measured. For polystyrene containing 20 wt % carbon black, of surface area 24 m2/g, the resistivity changes abruptly from 1013 to 106 ohm-cm above 150°C. Poly(butyl methacrylate) did not show well-defined changes in resistivity on heating. The random copolymer containing 16.7 or 28.6 wt % carbon black, of surface area 24 m2/g, showed a resistivity exceeding 1013 ohm-cm, that decreased to about 107 ohm-cm on heating above 120°C. This Copolymer containing 16.7 wt % carbon black, of surface area 625 m2/g, shows a resistivity of about 108 ohm-cm that decreases sharply to 103 ohm-cm by 150°C. Decreases in resistivity on increasing the temperature in the quiescent state are correlated with the observation of a yield stress at low shear rates in rheological studies. It is suggested that carbon black agglomerates at elevated temperature and forms an independent conductive network that prevents flow.
Changes In The Regional Responsiveness To Federal Reserve Policy Shocks And The Declining Importance Of Interest Rate Sensitive Industry Sectors

This paper extends the existing research on regional economic responses to federal-reserve policy shocks along two dimensions. First, we focus on the evolution over time of a particular region’s responsiveness to federal funds shocks. This differs from prior work that analyzed differences across regions in their responsiveness to a federal funds shock over a single sample period. For the state of Delaware, we track how the declining importance of manufacturing and construction alters the region’s income response to both federal funds rate and oil price shocks. Delaware was selected for analysis because of the large decline since the 1970’s in the share of its Gross State Product coming from construction and manufacturing. This paper’s second extension of the literature is its use of sequential updating of the data set. Prior research utilized quarterly data sets starting in the late 1950’s and ending in the early 1990’s. We construct a parsimonious structural VAR model and first estimate the model over the 1958Q1 to 1992 Q4 period. Over this period our results are consistent with earlier findings. Next, we roll the sample period forward one year at a time, keeping the time period’s length constant, up through 2004 Q2 and re-estimate the model after each resetting of the sample period. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that declines in the importance of interest rate sensitive sectors will lead to declines in the responsiveness of a region’s income growth to federal funds rate shocks, but the magnitude of the observed decline in income sensitivity is considerably smaller than what one would forecast based upon the earlier cross-sectional based research. The impact of oil price shocks, however, was contrary to ‘conventional wisdom’ expectations. Despite the declining share of manufacturing in GSP for Delaware over the rolling sample periods, there was a modest increase in the sensitivity of Delaware real personal income to oil price shocks as the sample period rolled forward.
Accuracy assessment for detection of leafy spurge with hyperspectral imagery

When flowering, leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula L.) has conspicuous yellow-green bracts that are spectrally distinct from other vegetation and may be distinguished with hyperspectral remote sensing. In July 1999, Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data were acquired in northeastern Wyoming, near Devils Tower National Monument. Using the reflectance spectrum of flowering leafy spurge, leafy spurge occurrence was determined using a new method of spectral mixture analysis, Mixture Tuned Matched Filtering (MTMF). Ground reference data (146 sites) were obtained 2 weeks before and after AVIRIS overflight to test the classification accuracy of leafy spurge. For 3 land cover types: mixed prairie, riparian, and coniferous woodlands, the presence or absence leafy spurge was detected with an overall accuracy of 95% using a 0.10 threshold for detection. Differences in classification thresholds resulted in a trade-off between false positives, pixels that were mapped as leafy spurge but did not contain leafy spurge on the ground, and false negatives, areas that had leafy spurge on the ground but were not mapped as leafy spurge. Detection of leafy spurge occurrence was best for mixed prairie and riparian cover types, and somewhat less successful for conifer woodlands because of interference from tree crowns and their shadows. The advantage of the MTMF technique is it allows automated processing of hyperspectral imagery to generate accurate maps of leafy spurge occurrence.
Ovarian hormones modulate endothelin A and B receptor expression.

Abstract Aims The study aims to determine the modulatory roles of ovarian hormones, estrogen (E 2 ) and progesterone (P), on the expression of endothelin A (ET A ) and B (ET B ) receptors in lung, liver and kidney tissues. Main methods Female Sprague–Dawley rats were subjected to bilateral ovariectomy and divided into four groups ovariectomized (OVX), OVX + E 2 , OVX + P, and OVX + E 2 + P. A separate group of rats underwent sham surgery and served as a control. Three weeks after OVX or sham surgery, tissues from lungs, liver, renal cortex, and inner medulla were collected, snap-frozen, and kept at − 80 °C for assessment of ET A and ET B receptor expression using real-time PCR. Key findings E 2 -treated OVX animals had significantly lower expression of ET A receptors in the lungs, compared to OVX rats. Pulmonary ET B receptor mRNA was not measurably affected by any of the interventions. Hepatic ET A and ET B were significantly increased in OVX + E 2 + P rats, compared to sham rats. Renal inner medullary ET A and ET B receptor expressions were significantly elevated in OVX compared to sham, an effect that was prevented by co-supplementation of OVX with E 2 and P. Additionally, both ET A and ET B receptor expression in the renal cortex were significantly attenuated by ovariectomy, and this reduction was not evident in OVX + E 2 rats. Significance These data suggest that ovarian hormones regulate ET receptor expression and may contribute to sex differences in cardiovascular and renal health.
Nonconvex Global Optimization for Latent-Variable Models

Many models in NLP involve latent variables, such as unknown parses, tags, or alignments. Finding the optimal model parameters is then usually a difficult nonconvex optimization problem. The usual practice is to settle for local optimization methods such as EM or gradient ascent. We explore how one might instead search for a global optimum in parameter space, using branch-and-bound. Our method would eventually find the global maximum (up to a user-specified ) if run for long enough, but at any point can return a suboptimal solution together with an upper bound on the global maximum. As an illustrative case, we study a generative model for dependency parsing. We search for the maximum-likelihood model parameters and corpus parse, subject to posterior constraints. We show how to formulate this as a mixed integer quadratic programming problem with nonlinear constraints. We use the Reformulation Linearization Technique to produce convex relaxations during branch-and-bound. Although these techniques do not yet provide a practical solution to our instance of this NP-hard problem, they sometimes find better solutions than Viterbi EM with random restarts, in the same time.
A Prospective Comparison of the Effects of Interfractional Variations on Proton Therapy and Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy for Prostate Cancer.

Purpose To quantify and compare the impact of interfractional setup and anatomic variations on proton therapy (PT) and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for prostate cancer. Methods and Materials Twenty patients with low-risk or intermediate-risk prostate cancer randomized to receive passive-scattering PT (n=10) and IMRT (n=10) were selected. For both modalities, clinical treatment plans included 50.4 Gy(RBE) to prostate and proximal seminal vesicles, and prostate-only boost to 79.2 Gy(RBE) in 1.8 Gy(RBE) per fraction. Implanted fiducials were used for prostate localization and endorectal balloons were used for immobilization. Patients in PT and IMRT arms received weekly computed tomography (CT) and cone beam CT (CBCT) scans, respectively. The planned dose was recalculated on each weekly image, scaled, and mapped onto the planning CT using deformable registration. The resulting accumulated dose distribution over the entire treatment course was compared with the planned dose using dose-volume histogram (DVH) and γ analysis. Results The target conformity index remained acceptable after accumulation. The largest decrease in the average prostate D 98 was 2.2 and 0.7 Gy for PT and IMRT, respectively. On average, the mean dose to bladder increased by 3.26 ± 7.51 Gy and 1.97 ± 6.84 Gy for PT and IMRT, respectively. These values were 0.74 ± 2.37 and 0.56 ± 1.90 for rectum. Differences between changes in DVH indices were not statistically significant between modalities. All volume indices remained within the protocol tolerances after accumulation. The average pass rate for the γ analysis, assuming tolerances of 3 mm and 3%, for clinical target volume, bladder, rectum, and whole patient for PT/IMRT were 100/100, 92.6/99, 99.2/100, and 97.2/99.4, respectively. Conclusion The differences in target coverage and organs at risk dose deviations for PT and IMRT were not statistically significant under the guidelines of this protocol.
Social psychological dynamics of hostage negotiation: forensic psychology, suicide intervention, police intelligence/counterintelligence, and tactical entry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review several major components of hostage negotiation including: the different types of hostage situations; the prediction of the behavioral patterns of the hostage taker; the collection and the use of police intelligence in hostage incidents; and the application of forensic psychology during the hostage negotiations process. Design/methodology/approach – Emphasis on the social psychological aspects of creating attitude change and gaining compliance with the hostage taker are introduced to assist in developing an effective crisis communication approach during the hostage negotiations process. Findings – The paper also discusses trends in hostage negotiation strategies within incidents of domestic violence, suicide by cop, school shootings, and suicide/homicide bombings. Practical implications – Limitations and advancements in the field of hostage negotiations are also discussed as well as suggestions for the use of tactical entry to resolve unsuccessful hostage n...
Thermodynamic properties of strong electrolytes: The HBr−NH4Br−H2O system at 25°C

Activity coefficients for HBr in HBr−NH4Br−H2O at 25°C have been measured at constant total molalities of 0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 mole-kg−1. The electromotive-force measurements of cells containing the hydrogen and the silver-silver bromide electrode were used to determine the variation of the logarithm of the activity coefficient of hydrobromic acid with the change in the amount of ammonium bromide in the solution. The results have been interpreted in terms of the Pitzer treatment of mixed electrolytes and are compared with those of Harned and Hamer for the HBr−KBr−H2O and HBr−NaBr−H2O systems. It is found that Harned's rule is a good description for both electrolytes.
The PDA Journal--at the Confluence of Academia, Government, and Industry.

Recently our profession has been rocked by the senseless deaths of several dozen patients, with hundreds more sickened by contaminated steroid injections. The incident is still under investigation, but it will certainly alter the regulatory landscape for the future. Such a devastating incident
Characterizing the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer through electrical methods

Summary The Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer lies beneath a surface area of about 500 square miles in south-central Oklahoma, USA and is a major source of water for local use. It is also the source for spring fed streams in the area. Although current withdrawal rates from the aquifer are low, rapid growth of the metropolitan area around the aquifer has focused attention on the aquifer as a source of water for a larger geographical area in the future. As part of an ongoing study to map and charac terize the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer, an electrical resistivity sounding study was conducted in Johnston County, Oklahoma, USA, to map the subsurface of a small area of the carbonate aquifer. The main aim is to obtain constraints on the location of faults, and to understand how they influence groundwater hydrology in the region. Data from electrical resistivity soundings were interpreted using a combination of resistivity curve fitting and inversion analysis to estimate resistivity of the shallow subsurface and depth to the groundwater table. The interpreted resistivity section along the N-S line indicates that the water table in the region is deepening to the south and probably bounded by a south dipping fault. This interpretation is independently corroborated by groundwater well data from the study area and supports the interpretation that a southward-dipping fault may confine the aquifer at depth. Inverse modeling of Electrical Re sistivity Tomography (ERT) data acquired at two other locations within the study area indicate shallow, fractured Arbuckle group rocks saturated with water adjacent to dry rocks. Additional work is being conducted for detailed imaging of the faults and fracture systems in the area and to characterize the aquifer.
What happened to the “War on Women?”

Deana A. Rohlinger contrasts the war on women with the war for women–or at least their votes.
A Study of Experimental Methods for Teaching Emotionally Disturbed, Brain Damaged, Retarded Readers

IN RECENT YEARS there has been a growing awareness that there is a distinct syndrome f r e quently associated with children who are slow learners, especially retarded readers, which has been characterized under such headings as "hyper kinetic disorder" (Laufer, Denhoff and Solomons, 1957), "minimally brain damaged" (Burks, 1957), "visual-motor impairment" (Strauss and Lehtinen, 1947), and "primary reading disturb ance" (Rabinovitch et al., 1956). Generally, these children are thought to have some central nervous system abnormality of function, subcortical or cor tical or both, which has interfered with their abil ity to receive or retain and reproduce visual, audi tory or motor cues, as well as inducing the behav ioral syndrome. Behaviorally, these children can often be identified in that they have a short atten tion span, are hyperactive, easily distracted, and readily overwhelmed by anything new or different. They reveal tendencies to perseverate, with con siderable difficulty in shifting, and poor ability to abstract and to generalize. In reading they often reverse words (such as "saw" for "was"), are unable to pronounce words and fail to develop effi cient techniques in reading new words. Their spell ing is usually quite poor because they have no un derstanding of letter sounds and have a poor con cept of phonics; there may be mirror writing with out awareness and their handwriting is often hard ly legible. These symptoms have been given de tailed attention by Strauss and Lehtinen (1947) and Strauss and Kephart (1955), and descriptions of these children can be found in recent artic les by Laufer et al., (1957) and Rabinovitch et al., (1956). The purpose of the present paper is to describe a remedial educational approach that has been found useful with children who evidence such diffi culties. This experimentation has been conducted at the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital, which is a residential treatment center for emotionally dis turbed children who have the potential of at 1 e a s t normal intelligence.
Nested Narratives Final Report

In cybersecurity forensics and incident response, the story of what has happened is the most impor- tant artifact yet the one least supported by tools and techniques. Existing tools focus on gathering and manipulating low-level data to allow an analyst to investigate exactly what happened on a host system or a network. Higher-level analysis is usually left to whatever ad hoc tools and techniques an individual may have developed. We discuss visual representations of narrative in the context of cybersecurity incidents with an eye toward multi-scale illustration of actions and actors. We envision that this representation could smoothly encompass individual packets on a wire at the lowest level and nation-state-level actors at the highest. We present progress to date, discuss the impact of technical risk on this project and highlight opportunities for future work.
Steam Soot-blowing Wear Calculation & Application Comparison of the Boiler Tube

This paper adopts the numerical calculation to obtain the boiler tube gas velocity facing the wind under physical and geometric working condition. And according to the empirical formula, the boiler tube wear speed is calculated under various operating conditions which is compared with the actual wear speed under the same operating conditions
Cerebral Edema in Traumatic Brain Injury: Pathophysiology and Prospective Therapeutic Targets

Traumatic brain injury is a heterogeneous disorder resulting from an external force applied to the head. The development of cerebral edema plays a central role in the evolution of injury following brain trauma and is closely associated with neurologic outcomes. Recent advances in the understanding of the molecular and cellular pathways contributing to the posttraumatic development of cerebral edema have led to the identification of multiple prospective therapeutic targets. The authors summarize the pathogenic mechanisms underlying cerebral edema and highlight the molecular pathways that may be therapeutically targeted to mitigate cerebral edema and associated sequelae following traumatic brain injury.
Differential Coexpression Analysis Reveals Extensive Rewiring of Arabidopsis Gene Coexpression in Response to Pseudomonas syringae Infection

Plant defense responses to pathogens involve massive transcriptional reprogramming. Recently, differential coexpression analysis has been developed to study the rewiring of gene networks through microarray data, which is becoming an important complement to traditional differential expression analysis. Using time-series microarray data of Arabidopsis thaliana infected with Pseudomonas syringae, we analyzed Arabidopsis defense responses to P. syringae through differential coexpression analysis. Overall, we found that differential coexpression was a common phenomenon of plant immunity. Genes that were frequently involved in differential coexpression tend to be related to plant immune responses. Importantly, many of those genes have similar average expression levels between normal plant growth and pathogen infection but have different coexpression partners. By integrating the Arabidopsis regulatory network into our analysis, we identified several transcription factors that may be regulators of differential coexpression during plant immune responses. We also observed extensive differential coexpression between genes within the same metabolic pathways. Several metabolic pathways, such as photosynthesis light reactions, exhibited significant changes in expression correlation between normal growth and pathogen infection. Taken together, differential coexpression analysis provides a new strategy for analyzing transcriptional data related to plant defense responses and new insights into the understanding of plant-pathogen interactions.
Power Series Methods

Thus far in our study of linear differential equations, we have imposed severe restrictions on the coefficient functions in order to find solution methods. Two special classes of note are the constant coefficient and Cauchy–Euler differential equations. The Laplace transform method was also useful in solving some differential equations where the coefficients were linear. Outside of special cases such as these, linear second order differential equations with variable coefficients can be very difficult to solve.
Muscle cooling delays activation of the muscle metaboreflex in humans

Elevation of muscle temperature has been shown to increase muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) during isometric exercise in humans. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect ...
Cyanogenic Glycosides and Cyanolipids

The ability to produce cyanide or cyanogenesis has long been recognized in plants. At least 2650 species, from more than 550 genera, and 130 families possess the ability to make cyanogenic glycosides (Hegnauer, 1986; Seigler, 1991). Most reports of cyanogenesis are based on two simple, but reasonably specific, color tests—the Guignard (alkaline picric acid) and the Feigl-Anger methods (Feigl and Anger, 1966; Seigler, 1991; Tantisewie et al., 1969).
Sunitinib represses regulatory T cells to overcome immunotolerance in a murine model of hepatocellular cancer

Successful development of immunotherapeutic strategies for hepatocellular cancer (HCC) has been impeded by limited understanding of tumor-induced profound tolerance and lack of a clinically faithful HCC model. Recently, we developed a novel model that recapitulates typical features of human HCC. Using this clinically relevant model, we demonstrate that tumor growth impairs host immunity and causes a profound exhaustion of tumor antigen-specific (TAS) CD8+ T cells. Increase in frequency and suppressive function of regulatory T cells (Tregs) is critically involved in this tumor-induced immune dysfunction. We further demonstrate that sunitinib suppresses Tregs and prevents tumor-induced immune tolerance, allowing TAS immunization to activate endogenous CD8+ T cells. As a result, this combinational strategy delays tumor growth. Importantly, the additional integration of exogenous naive TAS CD8+ T cells by adoptive cell transfer (ACT) leads to the elimination of the established tumors without recurrence and promotes long-term survival of the treated mice. Mechanistically, sunitinib treatment primes the antitumor immune response by significantly decreasing Treg frequency, reducing TGF-β and IL-10 production by Tregs, and also protecting TAS CD8+ T cells from tumor-induced deletion in the setting of HCC. Taken together, sunitinib quantitatively and qualitatively modifies Tregs to overcome tumor-induced immune deficiency, suggesting the potential of sunitinib as a therapeutic immune activator for HCC control.
Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma Genetics in African Americans.

Individuals of African descent are at highest risk for developing primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), a devastating disease and major contributor of blindness worldwide. Currently, there is a large dearth of knowledge in this area despite a critical need for better understanding the underlying genetic and environmental factors afflicting this population. Here, we highlight the current literature exploring the genetics of POAG in African Americans. Current studies have yet to replicate European POAG index variants (i.e., CDKN2B-AS1 and SIX1/SIX6) in African Americans or to definitely exclude that these loci contribute to risk in African-descent populations. Recent studies have evaluated clinical features that may account for some differences in POAG risk between African Americans and European Americans. In summary, little headway has been made in elucidating the genetics of primary open-angle glaucoma in African Americans and other individuals of African descent.
Is the Informal Sector Politically Different? (Null) Answers from Latin America

Summary Scholars have produced a limited understanding of the effect of informal labor status on a worker’s political attitudes and behavior. We present descriptive evidence on the micropolitical correlates of informality using direct measures of the concept in public opinion surveys from 18 Latin American countries. We test three scholarly impressions of informal workers—that they are less politically engaged, more right-leaning, and more favorable toward noncontributory social programs than formal-sector workers. These are grounded in a dualist conception of labor markets that views the formal and informal sectors as having little overlap. We find minimal evidence for these impressions and argue that recent empirical findings consistent with a revisionist view of informality better account for our null results. According to this view, informal and formal labor markets are highly integrated, which, we argue, melds together the economic interests and political preferences of individuals in both sectors. We also provide evidence that casts doubt on alternative explanations that would attribute our null results to the timing of our surveys, to arational sources of political behavior, or to measurement error.
Evaluating factored evolutionary algorithm performance on binary deceptive functions

Factored Evolutionary Algorithms (FEA) have been shown to be an effective method to optimize objective functions by partitioning the search space into overlapping subpopulations, or factors. FEA is comprised of three main steps: Update, Compete, and Share. While there exists previous work exploring FEA's convergence properties, it is still unknown where FEA obtains most of its performance gains. In this paper, we examine FEA performance by evaluating FEA on a set of commonly used deceptive unitation functions as well as several versions of the Royal Road problem. These problems provide a complex landscape for the search algorithm to explore but are well understood and researched. In evaluating FEA on these problems, we discovered that FEA's Compete step contributes the most to its performance effectiveness. Additionally, we identify a class of problems that may degrade the performance of FEA.
Markov chain models of cancer metastasis

We describe the use of Markov chain models for the purpose of quantitative forecasting of metastatic cancer progression. Each site (node) in the Markov network (directed graph) is an organ site where a secondary tumor could develop with some probability. The Markov matrix is an N x N matrix where each entry represents a transition probability of the disease progressing from one site to another during the course of the disease. The initial state-vector has a 1 at the position corresponding to the primary tumor, and 0s elsewhere (no initial metastases). The spread of the disease to other sites (metastases) is modeled as a directed random walk on the Markov network, moving from site to site with the estimated transition probabilities obtained from longitudinal data. The stochastic model produces probabilistic predictions of the likelihood of each metastatic pathway and corresponding time sequences obtained from computer Monte Carlo simulations. The main challenge is to empirically estimate the N^2 transition probabilities in the Markov matrix using appropriate longitudinal data.
Involvement of Protein Kinases in the Regulation of Carbohydrate Transport and Metabolism

This chapter discusses futile cycles of sugar uptake and efflux in Escherichia coli ( E. coli) and S. Lactis . In 1962, before the discovery of the phosphotransferase system, Hoffee and Englesberg examined the effects of various energy sources and inhibitors on the kinetics of methyl α-glucoside accumulation in S. typhimurium , and compared the results with those obtained for β-galactoside uptake via the lactose permease in E. coli . They showed that while respiratory activity enhanced the level of β-galactoside uptake, it depressed the extent of accumulation of methyl α-glucoside. Because anaerobic sugar fermentation had the reciprocal effect, two distinct mechanisms of uptake were proposed. On the basis of these and other results, they suggested that a chemical energy source—such as adenosine triphosphate—is required not only for methyl α-glucoside uptake but also for the exit reaction. The chapter also discusses physiological characterization of inducer expulsion. In gram-positive bacteria, the process of inducer expulsion has been studied in detail. The first careful study of this phenomenon was published by Reizer and Panos in 1980.
Automated analysis of Learner's Research Article writing and feedback generation through Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing

Teaching academic writing in English to native and non-native speakers is a challenging task. Quite a variety of computer-aided instruction tools have arisen in the form of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) systems to help students in this regard. This thesis describes my contribution towards the implementation of the Research Writing Tutor (RWT), an AWE tool that aids students with academic research writing by analyzing a learner's text at the discourse level. It offers tailored feedback after analysis based on discipline-aware corpora. At the core of RWT lie two different computational models built using machine learning algorithms to identify the rhetorical structure of a text. RWT extends previous research on a similar AWE tool, the Intelligent Academic Discourse Evaluator (IADE) (Cotos, 2010), designed to analyze articles at the move level of discourse. As a result of the present research, RWT analyzes further at the level of discourse steps, which are the granular communicative functions that constitute a particular move. Based on features extracted from a corpus of expert-annotated research article introductions, the learning algorithm classifies each sentence of a document with a particular rhetorical move and a step. Currently, RWT analyzes the introduction section of a research article, but this work generalizes to handle the other sections of an article, including Methods, Results and Discussion/Conclusion. This research describes RWT’s unique software architecture for analyzing academic writing. This architecture consists of a database schema, a specific choice of classification features, our computational model training procedure, our approach to testing for performance evaluation, and finally the method of applying the models to a learner’s writing
Excision of a recurrent retrorectal tailgut cyst after 58 years.

A 58-year-old woman presented to the outpatient department with a 6-month history of recurrent discharging abscesses in the sacral area. Of note in her past surgical history, she underwent excision of a presacral mass as an infant. On examination a 2×2 cm fistula opening was visible at the left
Division of Labor: Function Shifts and Realigned Responsibilities in the Evolving Mental Health Services System

The past several decades have witnessed tumultuous changes in the delivery of public mental health services in the United States. These changes resulted more from policy developments in the health and social welfare sectors than from the mental health services sector itself, notably the passage of Medicare and Medicaid legislation and expanded Social Security benefits. In the process, functions in the custody, treatment, and social control areas once served mostly by state mental hospitals were transferred to agencies outside the direct control of state mental health authorities. The resultant mental health services landscape expanded enormously but without central or coherent policy direction. Efforts to overcome the resulting fragmentation focused on a variety of clinical, management, and funding initiatives including renewed efforts to integrate primary care and behavioral health. Current evidence supports primary care integration for depression and other common mental disorders. However, specialty-based behavioral health services still appear optimal for persons with severe mental illness; whatever advances in psychiatric treatments might occur in future years, social welfare policies and supports will continue to shape their life chances and well-being.
A geospatial analysis of water-related risk to international security: an assessment of five countries

This paper assesses countries with transboundary water resources that are at risk for instability. Water security, a term we use in our work to refer to an individual’s, community’s or state’s access to freshwater resources at the right time, quality, and quantity, is becoming of increasing concern due to rising populations, development, and climate change. Building upon the Basins at Risk project at Oregon State University, we used updated Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database geospatial physical, social, and hydrological data to assess the water-related stability of countries in transboundary freshwater basins. We selected five countries to conduct case studies by assessing three parameters: percentage of territory within a shared basin, number of shared basins, and/or dependency ratio of a country on water resources originating from outside its borders. Given the availability of data and to cover a wider geographic distribution, we selected Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Moldova, and Sudan as our case studies. We created a series of 30 maps at 2 scales to spatially analyze the population density, institutional capacity, and water withdrawals, in addition to assessing each country’s water profile. We developed a resiliency tool to analyze these parameters and scored each country to determine whether a country is at risk for water-related instability. We found that while China has a high water-related resilience, Iraq has a low water-related resilience and Afghanistan, Moldova, and Sudan fall within a low to mid-low resilience range.
Alpha-calcitonin gene-related peptide prevents pressure-overload induced heart failure: role of apoptosis and oxidative stress.

Alpha-calcitonin gene-related peptide (α-CGRP) is a 37-amino acid neuropeptide that plays an important protective role in modulating cardiovascular diseases. Deletion of the α-CGRP gene increases the vulnerability of the heart to pressure-induced heart failure and the administration of a modified α-CGRP agonist decreases this vulnerability. Systemic administration of α-CGRP decreases blood pressure in normotensive and hypertensive animals and humans. Here we examined the protective effect of long-term administration of native α-CGRP against pressure-overload heart failure and the likely mechanism(s) of its action. Transverse aortic constriction (TAC) was performed to induce pressure-overload heart failure in mice. We found that TAC significantly decreased left ventricular (LV) fractional shortening, ejection fraction, and α-CGRP content, and increased hypertrophy, dilation, and fibrosis compared to sham mice. Administration of α-CGRP-filled mini-osmotic pumps (4 mg/kg bwt/day) in TAC mice preserved cardiac function and LV α-CGRP levels, and reduced LV hypertrophy, dilation, and fibrosis to levels comparable to sham mice. Additionally, TAC pressure-overload significantly increased LV apoptosis and oxidative stress compared to the sham mice but these increases were prevented by α-CGRP administration. α-CGRP administration in TAC animals decreased LV AMPK phosphorylation levels and the expression of sirt1, both of which are regulatory markers of oxidative stress and energy metabolism. These results demonstrate that native α-CGRP is protective against pressure-overload induced heart failure. The mechanism of this cardio-protection is likely through the prevention of apoptosis and oxidative stress, possibly mediated by sirt1 and AMPK. Thus, α-CGRP is a potential therapeutic agent in preventing the progression to heart failure, and the cardio-protective action of α-CGRP is likely the result of a direct cellular effect; however, a partial vasodilatory blood pressure-dependent mechanism of α-CGRP cannot be excluded.
Differential blood count as triage tool in evaluation of pelvic masses

Objective Triaging patients with presumptive ovarian cancer to the appropriate specialist may improve survival. Therefore, there is increasing interest in complementary diagnostic markers to the standard serum CA125. In patients with pelvic masses, we examined the ability of epidemiologic variables and preoperative differential blood counts to improve detection of ovarian cancer over CA125 alone. Methods From pathology reports, patients were classified as having: epithelial ovarian cancer (n=743), including fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancer, non-epithelial ovarian cancers (n=46), non-ovarian cancers (n=122), or benign disease (1,129). From women with epithelial ovarian cancer, we excluded those who received prior neoadjuvant chemotherapy (n=19). Women were also excluded if they did not have a serum CA125 or complete blood count measured within 180 days prior to surgery (n=1099) or did not have both tests within 90 days of each other (n=13). Categorizing patients by menopausal status, we calculated Pearson correlations between differential counts or ratios and CA125, and used t tests to identity univariate predictors of malignancy and stepwise logistic regression and likelihood ratio tests to create models best distinguishing epithelial ovarian cancer from benign disease. Results 337 women with epithelial ovarian cancer and 365 with benign disease were included in the analysis. Compared with cancers, women with benign disease had lower average: age, 52.5 versus 58.4 years (p Conclusions Epidemiologic variables and differential counts or ratios better distinguished between benign and malignant disease when compared with serum CA125 alone using separate models for pre- and postmenopausal women.
The Visual Word Form Area compensates for auditory working memory dysfunction in schizophrenia

Auditory working memory impairments feature prominently in schizophrenia. However, the existence of altered and perhaps compensatory neural dynamics, sub-serving auditory working memory, remains largely unexplored. We compared the dynamics of induced high gamma power (iHGP) across cortex in humans during speech-sound working memory in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy comparison subjects (HC) using magnetoencephalography (MEG). SZ showed similar task performance to HC while utilizing different brain regions. During encoding of speech sounds, SZ lacked the correlation of iHGP with task performance in posterior superior temporal gyrus (STGp) that was observed in healthy subjects. Instead, SZ recruited the visual word form area (VWFA) during both stimulus encoding and response preparation. Importantly, VWFA activity during encoding correlated with the magnitude of SZ hallucinations, task performance and an independent measure of verbal working memory. These findings suggest that VWFA plasticity is harnessed to compensate for STGp dysfunction in schizophrenia patients with hallucinations.
FT-IR Determination of degree of esterification in polycarboxylic acid cross-link finishing of cotton

Cross-linking of cotton with polycarboxylic acids, applied with catalysts based on phosphorus-containing inorganic acids, produces fabrics with excellent smooth-drying properties and which release no formaldehyde at any stage of preparation or on storage. The reaction produces cellulose ester linkages and unreacted carboxylic acid groups. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to determine the degree of esterification of polycarboxylic acids that occurred on cross-linking of cotton. The height of the carbonyl peak at 1730 cm −1 was determined on the same treated fabrics after soaking in dilute acid to convert ionized groups to free acid and then in dilute base to convert free acid to carboxylate ion. The carbonyl peak for the base rinsed fabric (ester only) was ratioed against the same peak for the acid-rinsed fabric (total carbonyl, ester plus acid) to obtain a measure of the degree of esterification. This ratio minimizes the problems of different molar extinction coefficients that are encountered when peaks from different functional groups are used.
Immunosuppression considerations in simultaneous organ transplant

Solid organ transplantation is a life-saving procedure for patients in the end stage of heart, lung, kidney, and liver failure. For patients with more than one failing organ, simultaneous organ transplantation has emerged as a viable treatment option. Immunosuppression strategies and outcomes for simultaneous organ transplant recipients have been reported, but often involve limited populations. Transplanting dual organs poses challenges in terms of balancing immunosuppression with immunologic risk and allograft damage from surgical complications. Furthermore, transplanting certain organs can impose considerations on the management of immunosuppression. For example, liver allografts may confer immunologic privilege and lower rates of rejection of other allografts. This review article evaluates immunosuppression strategies for simultaneous kidney-pancreas, liver-kidney, heart-kidney, heart-liver, heart-lung, lung-liver, and lung-kidney transplants. To date, no comprehensive review exists to address immunosuppressive strategies in simultaneous organ transplant populations. Our review summarizes the available literature and provides evidence-based recommendations regarding immunosuppression strategies in simultaneous organ transplant recipients.