cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICS OF REVENUE REFORM: A CASE STUDY

The 1990s witnessed unprecedented economic growth and state revenue growth. Many states used this strong growth to improve their financial position by building their “rainy day” funds and/or to cut taxes. This paper presents a case study of a state which experienced strong economic and revenue growth and was able to build its Budget Reserve Trust Fund, while also cutting taxes. This Case Study focuses on a Governor who understood that strong economic and revenue growth was not sustainable and that his state needed to ensure an elastic General Fund revenue base as protection against an economic downturn, thus proposing a revenue reform package that would increase taxes and enhance the adequacy of the state’s General Fund. This paper presents a historical development of the revenue reform package from the time it was submitted as part of the state budget through the end of the legislative session. This paper provides a series of “lessons learned” that can be helpful to public policy makers in other jurisdictions.
Preoperative PROMIS Scores Predict Postoperative Success in Foot and Ankle Patients

Background:The use of patient-reported outcomes continues to expand beyond the scope of clinical research to involve standard of care assessments across orthopedic practices. It is currently unclea...
High-Throughput Yeast Strain Sequencing

The original yeast genome sequencing project was a monumental task, spanning several years, which resulted in the first sequenced eukaryotic genome. The 12 Mbp reference sequence was generated from yeast strain S288c and was of extremely high quality. In the years since it was published, sequencing technology has advanced apace, such that it is within the reach of most labs to sequence yeast strains of interest almost as a matter of standard practice, either via core facilities at their institution or through commercial sequencing services. Because of the availability of the high-quality reference sequence (which itself has received approximately 1500 updates derived from high-throughput sequencing data), reliable identification of differences between a strain of interest and the reference is relatively straightforward, at least for the nonrepetitive regions of the genome. In this introduction, we describe current high-throughput sequencing technology and methods for analysis of the resulting data.
Evidence inconclusive - comment on article by Schoenfeld et al

This article comments on the study by Schoenfeld, et al. entitled “The effect of protein timing on muscle strength and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis” and discusses how the methodology led to inconclusive results.
FUNNEL-GSEA: FUNctioNal ELastic-net regression in time-course gene set enrichment analysis.

Motivation: Gene set enrichment analyses (GSEAs) are widely used in genomic research to identify underlying biological mechanisms (defined by the gene sets), such as Gene Ontology terms and molecular pathways. There are two caveats in the currently available methods: (i) they are typically designed for group comparisons or regression analyses, which do not utilize temporal information efficiently in time-series of transcriptomics measurements; and (ii) genes overlapping in multiple molecular pathways are considered multiple times in hypothesis testing. Results: We propose an inferential framework for GSEA based on functional data analysis, which utilizes the temporal information based on functional principal component analysis, and disentangles the effects of overlapping genes by a functional extension of the elastic-net regression. Furthermore, the hypothesis testing for the gene sets is performed by an extension of Mann-Whitney U test which is based on weighted rank sums computed from correlated observations. By using both simulated datasets and a large-scale time-course gene expression data on human influenza infection, we demonstrate that our method has uniformly better receiver operating characteristic curves, and identifies more pathways relevant to immune-response to human influenza infection than the competing approaches. Availability and Implementation: The methods are implemented in R package FUNNEL, freely and publicly available at: https://github.com/yunzhang813/FUNNEL-GSEA-R-Package. Contact: xing_qiu@urmc.rochester.edu or juilee_thakar@urmc.rochester.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Malignant Skeletal Pain: Mechanisms and Potential Therapeutic Opportunities

Publisher Summary For the first time, animal models of cancer pain are now available and effectively mirror the clinical picture observed in humans with bone cancer pain. Information generated from these models has begun to provide insight into the mechanisms that generate and maintain bone cancer pain and helped target potential mechanism-based therapies to treat this chronic pain state. It is noteworthy that in these models analgesics such as a bisphosphonate, osteoprotegerin and a cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor appear to influence disease progression in the tumor-bearing bone. Together these and other studies using models of bone cancer suggest that it may be possible to develop novel mechanism-based therapies that not only reduce tumor-induced bone pain but may provide added benefit in synergistically reducing disease progression. Successful development and clinical use of these therapies has the potential not only to positively impact survival, but also to improve the cancer patient's quality of life.
Sparse waveform design for all-spectrum channelization

We introduce maximum-SINR sparse-binary waveforms that modulate data information symbols from any finite alphabet and span the whole continuum of the available/device-accessible spectrum. We offer an optimal algorithm that designs the proposed waveforms by maximizing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the output of the maximum-SINR linear receiver. In addition, we offer a suboptimal algorithm for the same problem with significantly reduced computational complexity. The post-filtering SINR improvements attained by the proposed waveforms in a single-input single-output (SISO) communication system with colored interference are presented analytically. Simulation studies compare the proposed waveforms with their conventional non-sparse counterparts and demonstrate their superior SINR performance.
Echocardiographic Features and Clinical Outcomes of Flail Mitral Leaflet without Severe Mitral Regurgitation

Background Flail mitral leaflet is a common complication of degenerative mitral regurgitation (MR) and is generally equated with severe MR. However, a flail mitral leaflet is not always associated with severe MR. The hemodynamic and clinical significance of a flail leaflet in the absence of severe MR has not been characterized. The authors identified cases of flail mitral leaflet associated with only mild or moderate MR and evaluated their echocardiographic features and clinical outcomes. Methods The echocardiography database at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was queried for reports of flail mitral valve leaflet. Cases of possible flail and ≤3+ MR were identified and adjudicated for the presence of definite flail and ≤2+ MR. These patients were retrospectively evaluated by chart review to determine clinical outcomes. Results Seven hundred six cases of possible flail were identified, of which 143 were identified as having ≤3+ MR. Of these, 14 cases were identified with definitive echocardiographic evidence of a flail mitral leaflet and ≤2+ MR. Over a median of 361 days of follow-up, MR progressed in severity in only one patient, in association with endocarditis and death. All other patients were free of progression of MR, heart failure, or mortality during follow-up. Conclusions A flail mitral leaflet is not synonymous with severe MR and can be associated with only mild or moderate MR. Furthermore, patients with flail mitral leaflet and only mild to moderate MR were clinically stable. Thus, an integrated, multiparametric approach should be used to assess MR severity, even in the presence of a flail mitral leaflet.
SOTB (Silicon on Thin Buried Oxide): More than Moore technology for IoT and Automotive

Ultra low power performance is indispensable for Micro Controller Unit (MCU) used as wireless sensor and communication nodes which needs battery maintenance free and energy harvesting operation in the Internet of things (IoT) era. The Silicon on Thin Buried Oxide (SOTB) is one of the most suitable CMOS technology for ultra low power MCU because of its small variability and back bias controllability. This paper describes the mechanism of ultra low power performance of SOTB, performance demonstration of transistor, SRAM and MCU test chip, and what SOTB will realize for IoT and Automotive. SOTB will have less than 1/10 of power efficiency by low leakage current at standby mode and low current consumption at operation mode which today's technology cannot realize.
Auditory Neural Activity in Congenitally Deaf Mice Induced by Infrared Neural Stimulation.

To determine whether responses during infrared neural stimulation (INS) result from the direct interaction with spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs), we tested three genetically modified deaf mouse models: Atoh1-cre; Atoh1 f/f (Atoh1 conditional knockout, CKO), Atoh1-cre; Atoh1 f/kiNeurog1 (Neurog1 knockin, KI), and the Vglut3 knockout (Vglut3 −/−) mice. All animals were exposed to tone bursts and clicks up to 107 dB (re 20 µPa) and to INS, delivered with a 200 µm optical fiber. The wavelength (λ) was 1860 nm, the radiant energy (Q) 0-800 µJ/pulse, and the pulse width (PW) 100–500 µs. No auditory responses to acoustic stimuli could be evoked in any of these animals. INS could not evoke auditory brainstem responses in Atoh1 CKO mice but could in Neurog1 KI and Vglut3 −/− mice. X-ray micro-computed tomography of the cochleae showed that responses correlated with the presence of SGNs and hair cells. Results in Neurog1 KI mice do not support a mechanical stimulation through the vibration of the basilar membrane, but cannot rule out the direct activation of the inner hair cells. Results in Vglut3 −/− mice, which have no synaptic transmission between inner hair cells and SGNs, suggested that hair cells are not required.
Prospective validation of the Ottawa Ankle Rules in a deployed military population.

ABSTRACT This study prospectively validated the Ottawa Ankle Rules (OAR) in patients presenting with acute ankle trauma to a deployed military clinic at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The treating physician determined whether the patient met OAR criteria. The decision to obtain radiographs was left to the discretion of the physician. All radiographs were read by a radiologist blinded to the study. Patients who were not evaluated by radiographs received follow-up in the orthopedic clinic or by telephone. Forty-five consecutive patients were enrolled over a 3-month period. Twenty-nine (64%) patients met the OAR criteria, 32 (71%) received radiographs, and 5 (11%) fractures were identified. All fractures were predicted by the OAR. The sensitivity of the OAR was 1.0 and specificity was 0.40. Negative predictive value was 1.0, positive predictive value was 0.17, likelihood ratio positive value was 1.67, and likelihood ratio negative value was 0.0. The OAR correctly predicted all ankle fractures in the...
The development of ground unmanned vehicles, driver assistance systems and components according to patent publications

The paper contains the analysis of the main trends in the patenting of ground unmanned vehicles, driver assistance systems (ADAS) and unmanned vehicle components abroad during the period from 2010 to 2016. The conclusion was made that the intensity of their patenting abroad increased.
Malicious or Selfish? Analysis of Carrier Sense Misbehavior in IEEE 802.11 WLAN

The behavior of selfish users, which does not respect the backoff procedure of IEEE 802.11 WLAN, has been nicely studied in game-theoretic frameworks. However, in these studies, the effect of physical carrier sense has not been properly incorporated into the analysis. In this paper, we study the problem of how carrier sense misbehavior can affect network performance in addition to backoff misbehavior. Our analysis shows that a cheater can increase its throughput by ignoring the carrier sense mechanism while a well-behaved user significantly loses its throughput. Consequently, not only a malicious user, but also a selfish one is motivated to disregard the carrier sense mechanism, which will result in significant throughput degradation of well-behaved ones. Our analysis also shows that carrier sense misbehavior corresponds to the case of virtually increasing the channel access probability of the cheater in the backoff procedure. We provide our preliminary simulation results, which verify our analysis.
Albumin in Nutrition and Transport

As pointed out in Section 1.1, albumin literally means egg white. A distinctive characteristic of albumin, noted early, is the fact that it is coagulated by heat. This was observed when eggs were boiled. When milk was boiled, the film of coagulate, formed at the surface, was recognized as albumin, as distinct from casein which does not coagulate with heat. It was also recognized that urine from some patients formed a coagulate with heat. To distinguish this coagulate from other precipitates which form, the urine is heated after adding a few drops of acetic acid. The presence of albumin in the urine as an indication of kidney disease has been noted from the middle of the 19th century.
Statistics and Sampling Distributions

This chapter helps make the transition between probability and inferential statistics. Given a sample of \( n \) observations from a population, we will be calculating estimates of the population mean, median, standard deviation, and various other population characteristics (parameters).
Use of PD-1 pathway inhibitors among patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and preexisting autoimmune disorders.

9081Background: Since patients (pts) with NSCLC and autoimmune (AI) disease were largely excluded from immune checkpoint inhibitor clinical trials, we aimed to determine the safety of PD-1 inhibito...
Temperature and voltage-bias dependent two-step photon absorption in InAs/GaAsl Al 0.3 GaAs quantum dot in a well solar cells

The realization of the concept of the intermediate band solar cell (IBSC) requires that two-step photon absorption dominates at room temperature. To increase two step photon absorption (TSPA), an InAs/GaAs/Alo.3GaAs quantum dot in a well (Dwell) structure is used to reduce thermal escape of carriers. The Dwell structure shows decreased TSPA with increasing temperature because of faster thermal escape. With an increased electron ground state barrier height relative to Al 0.3 GaAs, the observable TSPA occurs up to 80K. The extracted thermal activation energy from temperature dependent TSPA is between 80−95 me V, which is associated with holes escape processes. Charge separation along the growth direction reduces the recombination rate in the IB. The stable TSPA observed at −2V reverse bias may be a balance between the reduced recombination rate and increased tunneling rate.
Association of inflammation and clinical outcomes (CO) in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) patients (pts) treated with cabozantinib (cabo).

612Background: Ratios of neutrophils, monocytes, and platelets to lymphocytes (NLR, MLR, and PLR) are associated with poor CO in cancer pts. We investigated the association of NLR, MLR, and PLR and...
ESG, Material Credit Events, and Credit Risk

A growing body of research has extended the analysis of the materiality of ESG criteria from the perspective of equity investors to creditors. Past research and analysis have demonstrated the link between better management of ESG criteria and better management of risk overall. Despite this growing consensus and consistent evidence that ESG performance is correlated with credit risk, no empirical evidence has yet linked ESG performance to cost or expense variances or revenue shortfalls that could explain these correlations. The authors attempt to address this lack of mechanism‐based empirical evidence by citing and then building on a number of well‐publicized cases with analysis of two major ESG issues—indigenous land claims and biodiversity—as they affect the global project finance and agriculture sectors. Broadening these single‐sector results, the authors use a novel dataset providing systematic coding of material events reported in the media across a variety of empirical settings to produce the first large‐sample empirical evidence of the mechanisms linking ESG performance to credit risk.
Communication and Budget Participation

Gathering and communicating information are important managerial tasks. The production manager has superior information and insight in the production sphere, just as the product line manager is in the best position to forecast demand. Product development teams often combine engineering, manufacturing, industrial design, and marketing experts. Various managers are likely to have insights into competitor strengths and weaknesses. The manager faced with a budget shortfall is likely to know better than most the major events that led to the shortfall. The same manager probably contributed important information when the budget was originally set.
Monitoring situation of eliminating malaria in Shaoguan City from 2001 to 2014

OBJECTIVE To analyze the malaria monitoring situation in Shaoguan City from 2001 to 2014, and evaluate the efficacy of the malaria control and prevention work, so as to provide the evidence for formulating the effective eliminating malaria measures. METHODS The microscopic examination monitoring points of "four-fever" patients were established in medical institutions at all levels in Shaoguan City from 2001 to 2014, and the fever patients were examined by microscopy and the active case monitoring was performed. By using the epidemiology method, the malaria incidence and classification of cases were described and analyzed statistically. RESULTS From 2001 to 2014, 91 381 "four-fever" patients were monitored and 22 malaria patients were found with the average positive rate of 0.02%. Among the 22 malaria patients, 20 were imported (90.91%) and 2 were local cases (9.09%). The local patients were infected with Plasmodium vivax, and among the imported patients, 16 patients were infected with P. vivax, 2 infected with P. falciparum and 2 infected with P. ovale. No local infection cases were found since 2006. All the patients were timely treated and no second generation cases were found. From 2011 to 2014, 2 611 person-times were actively investigated in 7 counties (city) and no malaria patients were found. CONCLUSIONS In Shaoguan City, there are remarkable achievements in the malaria prevention and control work. However, there are still imported cases in recent years, and therefore, the monitoring system should be perfected and the effective monitoring should be strengthened.
Aspirin in the Treatment and Prevention of Migraine Headaches: Possible Additional Clinical Options for Primary Healthcare Providers

Abstract Migraine headaches are among the most common and potentially debilitating disorders encountered by primary healthcare providers. In the treatment of acute migraine and the prevention of recurrent attacks, there are prescription drugs of proven benefit. However, for those without health insurance or high co-pays, these drugs may be neither available nor affordable and, for all patients, they may be either poorly tolerated or contraindicated. The totality of evidence, which includes data from randomized trials, suggests that high-dose aspirin, in doses from 900 to 1300 mg, taken at the onset of symptoms, is an effective and safe treatment option for acute migraine headaches. In addition, the totality of evidence, including some, but not all, randomized trials, suggests the possibility that daily aspirin, in doses from 81 to 325 mg, may be an effective and safe treatment option for the prevention of recurrent migraine headaches. The relatively favorable side effect profile of aspirin and extremely low costs compared with other prescription drug therapies may provide additional options for primary healthcare providers in the treatment of both acute and recurrent migraine headaches.
Factors Correlating to Burnout among Otolaryngology Residents.

Objectives:Physicians have high rates of burnout with an Otolaryngology burnout rate of 42%. The most studied burnout correlation is increased work hours. More recently, mindfulness training progra...
Dynamic Postural Stability in Active, Adolescent Males Following Repeated Bouts of Aerobic Exercise in Hot and Temperate Environments: A Pilot Study.

INTRODUCTION Proper jump-landing neuromuscular control is crucial in mitigating lower-extremity musculoskeletal injuries. The presence of fatigue, especially in extreme environments, may degrade dynamic postural stability (DPS) and result in lower-extremity injuries. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of moderate intensity exercise in hot (HOT) and temperate (TEMP) ambient temperatures and residual effects of a previous bout on DPS during a single-legged jump-landing. It was hypothesized that the participants would display worse DPS after HOT compared to TEMP. METHODS Six recreationally active young males (16.8 ± 0.7 year, 1.88 ± 0.12 m, 83.8 ± 19.8 kg) completed two, 60-minute bouts of exercise with 60 minutes of rest between bouts in both HOT (35°C) and TEMP (22.2°C). Heart rate and core body temperature (Tc) were monitored continuously, and DPS was assessed before and after each bout. RESULTS The DPS time and condition effects were not identified (p > 0.05), but HOT elicited some notable (d > 0.20) increases in heart rate, Tc, and DPS compared to TEMP. CONCLUSIONS The DPS decrements varied between subjects suggesting individual-specific etiology. Repeated bouts of exercise in HOT may place an individual at a greater risk for injury than TEMP if proper prevention strategies are not used.
Mechanism Design with Bandit Feedback.

We study a multi-round welfare-maximising mechanism design problem in instances where agents do not know their values. On each round, a mechanism assigns an allocation each to a set of agents and charges them a price; then the agents provide (stochastic) feedback to the mechanism for the allocation they received. This is motivated by applications in cloud markets and online advertising where an agent may know her value for an allocation only after experiencing it. Therefore, the mechanism needs to explore different allocations for each agent, while simultaneously attempting to find the socially optimal set of allocations. Our focus is on truthful and individually rational mechanisms which imitate the classical VCG mechanism in the long run. To that end, we define three notions of regret for the welfare, the individual utilities of each agent and that of the mechanism. We show that these three terms are interdependent via an $\Omega(T^{\frac{2}{3}})$ lower bound for the maximum of these three terms after $T$ rounds of allocations, and describe a family of anytime algorithms which achieve this rate. Our framework provides flexibility to control the pricing scheme so as to trade-off between the agent and seller regrets, and additionally to control the degree of truthfulness and individual rationality.
Implications for the use of telehealth in surgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has brought rapid changes to the way care must be delivered to keep patients and providers safe while simultaneously managing limited resources. Multiple fields have used telemedicine to continue care while maintaining social distancing and quarantine practices in the pandemic. Presented in this paper is a review describing the application of telemedicine in caring for surgical patients, and methods for potential implications of telehealthcare for surgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. A review of the PubMed Central and Medline provides articles examining the role of telemedicine for preoperative, postoperative, and follow up evaluation of surgical patients encompassing the past two decades. Additionally, articles examining the financial and legal considerations of telemedicine, and the effect COVID-19 has had on the current legislature were included. We report the summarized findings of these studies, the financial and HIPAA considerations of using telemedicine, potential benefits, pitfalls and strategies for the utilization of telemedicine into the clinical practice of general surgery and its subspecialties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Calibration Methods for High Precision Robot Assisted Industrial Automation

This paper presents calibration methods for high precision robot assisted industrial automation process. The methods considers two calibration procedures namely the calibration using an object and the planar constraints. The proposed estimated procedures are based on both iterative and optimization solvers. The calibration methods are validated in a robotic simulation environment to visualize the transformations before and after calibration. The results show that the two calibration solvers are able to detect the exact poses from a simulated data set. Second, the method is applied to robot assisted drilling for nut-plate installation in aerospace manufacturing process which is composed of a laser profile from Acuity mounted on Mitsubishi RV-6SDL manipulator. The calibration procedure using a sharp tool to show that the most accurate simulation and experimental results can be achieved under the effect of noise.
Exercise protocol induces muscle, tendon, and bone adaptations in the rat shoulder.

Background a rat model of supraspinatus overuse has suggested mechanisms governing tendon degeneration; however, delineating which changes are pathologic or simply physiologic adaptations to increased loading remains a question. The objective of this study was to develop and characterize a rat exercise model that induces systemic and local shoulder adaptations without mechanical injury to the supraspinatus tendon. Methods exercise rats completed a treadmill training protocol for 12 weeks. Body, fat pad, and heart weights were determined. Supraspinatus tendon collagen content, cross-sectional area, and mechanical properties were measured. Supraspinatus muscle cross-sectional area, weight, and the expression of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) proteins were measured. Humeri were analyzed with μCT and mechanically tested. Results exercise decreased fat pad mass. Supraspinatus muscle hypertrophied and had increased OXPHOS proteins. Humerus trabecular bone had increased anisotropic orientation, and cortical bone showed increased bone and tissue mineral density. Importantly, the supraspinatus tendon did not have diminished mechanical properties, indicating that this protocol was not injurious to the tendon. Conclusion this study establishes the first rat exercise protocol that induces adaptations in the shoulder. Future research can use this as a comparison model to study how the supraspinatus tendon adapts to loading and undergoes degeneration with overuse.
Do male chairs of surgery have implicit gender bias in the residency application process

Abstract Introduction Medical students applying for general surgery residencies often require a letter of recommendation (LOR) from the Surgical Chair. However, LORs may reveal gender and ethnic bias. This study examines the presence of implicit bias in general surgery resident selection by evaluating chair LORs. Methods A retrospective study of 149 LORs for categorical general surgery residents, at an academic institution, written by surgery chairs from 1980 to 2013 was performed. Two independent reviewers scored each letter for overall quality, mention of personality, academic deficiencies, technical skills, and standout adjectives. Scores were compared across gender and race and statistical analysis performed using SPSS. Results Males comprised 85% of the applicants; racial makeup was Caucasian (90%), black (4%), Asian (4%), and Hispanic (2%). Male chairs wrote all letters. Letters for female students received higher overall scores than males (4.13 ± 0.16, 3.59 ± 0.08, p = 0.005). Discussion of personality was significantly less for Asian students (1.28 ± 0.08, 1.83 ± 0.48, 0.5 ± 0.224, 1.67 ± 0.67, p 0.050). No difference was present in mention of academic deficiencies, technical skills, or standout adjectives. Discussion Female medical students invited to interview at a top academic general surgery residency had higher quality LORs than their male counterparts. Asian applicants had statistically significant less discussion of personality. Further examination of residency selection processes is necessary to implement changes that mitigate implicit bias in trainee selection.
Acute Kidney Injury During Hospitalization Increases the Risk of VTE.

Background Kidney disease has been linked to risk for hospitalization-related (HR) VTE, but the effect size and differences across types of kidney disease are described poorly. Research Question Can the risk for HR VTE among patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease be quantified, and if so, how? Study Design and Methods We prospectively collected data on hospitalized adult patients and documented HR VTE events. We recorded creatinine clearance (CrCl) daily throughout hospitalization and modeled the effects that admission CrCl, peak CrCl, average CrCl, and AKI had on HR VTE. We controlled for known VTE risk factors and daily administration of chemoprophylaxis. Results Of the 6,552 admissions that met our inclusion criteria, 184 (2.81%) patients experienced an HR VTE. Surgery, AKI, chemical prophylaxis, and admission albumin all were associated with HR VTE in univariate analysis, but neither admission CrCl nor average CrCl (throughout the hospitalization) increased the odds of HR VTE. Kaplan-Meier curves showed AKI, whether it occurred before or during the hospitalization, was associated significantly with time to HR VTE. Cox regression analysis found that AKI was associated independently with HR VTE, as was surgery during admission, enoxaparin dose, and admission albumin. Sensitivity analyses showed that AKI lost significance when only patients with traumatic injuries were assessed. Interpretation We found that AKI increases the risk for HR VTE in a large, heterogeneous population that included medical and surgical patients. However, this relationship was not seen in patients with traumatic injuries.
Carotid Terminus Occlusion

Carotid terminus occlusions have unique clinical and radiographic factors. Associated with more severe neurological deficits and a worse natural history, they may also manifest as “carotid pseudo-occlusion” on CT angiography. An approach utilizing direct aspiration of the thrombus is described.
Low-risk human papilloma virus positive oropharyngeal cancer with one positive lymph node: Equivalent outcomes in patients treated with surgery and radiation therapy versus surgery alone.

BACKGROUND For human papilloma virus positive (HPV+) oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC), management recommendations for patients with a single metastatic lymph node <6 cm in diameter remain nebulous, leading to treatment heterogeneity in this common subgroup of patients. METHODS We utilized the National Cancer Database to perform survival and multivariable analyses of patients with HPV+ OPSCC with one positive lymph node <6 cm and negative surgical margins. RESULTS We found that 5-year survival is comparable between patients who receive surgery and adjuvant radiation versus surgery alone. In multivariable analyses, we found no significant difference in the hazard ratio of overall survival after adjusting for various potential confounders. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that patients with margin-negative HPV+ OPSCC with a single positive lymph node <6 cm have comparable survival with or without adjuvant radiation. Future studies exploring outcomes for this specific group in randomized-controlled trials will be critical for further evaluating these initial observations.
Pineal gland metastasis from uterine serous carcinoma: A case report and review of the literature.

Abstract Uterine papillary serous carcinoma (UPSC) is a highly aggressive endometrial cancer histology with a propensity for distant metastasis. Despite the aggressive nature of UPSC, central nervous system metastasis is a rare occurrence with few cases reported in the literature. We present a case of a 58-year-old woman with a history of Stage IIIA UPSC who was diagnosed with recurrent, metastatic disease in the pineal gland more than 6 years after her initial diagnosis.
Pluralistic Ignorance Research in Psychology: A Scoping Review of Topic and Method Variation and Directions for Future Research:

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when group members mistakenly believe others’ cognitions and/or behaviors are systematically different from their own. More than 20 years have passed since the last rev...
Oxygen injection during fast vs slow passivation in aqueous solution

Abstract The typical defect reactions at the metal/oxide interface, which explain the growth and breakdown of passive oxide films in corrosion, include creating metal and oxygen vacancies. While the creation and coalescence of metal vacancies are well documented, there are relatively few observations on the nanoscale details of oxygen transport near the metal/oxide interface. We report here a new mechanism of oxygen injection into the metal. Fast and slow passivation (i.e., corrosion involving both oxide film growth and direct dissolution) of NiCr and NiCrMo alloys was performed by galvanostat experiments in 0.1 M NaCl (pH 4) deaerated solution. Localized regions of an unexpected nonequilibrium metal-based oxygen solid solution were observed beneath the outer (externally formed) oxides, and the saturated oxygen atoms distorted the fcc metallic lattices. Oxygen injection into the metal is more significant at a fast growth rate due to a large passivation current density for the NiCr alloy. In this case, there is a high volume of rock salt Ni(Cr)O nanocrystals in the O-rich Ni(Cr) substrate, which is consistent with greater susceptibility to chloride-induced breakdown found in potentiostat experiments. The addition of Mo promotes the formation of the corundum phase in the outer oxide layer for NiCrMo, which changes the transport mechanism as well as the diffusivity of oxygen through the oxide film and across the metal/oxide interface.
Civil Reconciliation Tort Theory: Making Torts Private Again

This article is largely a reaction to civil recourse tort theory and an attempt to recapture a tort theory that is more thoroughly private. The competing civil recourse and corrective justice conceptions of tort law as private are near the heart of this article, hence its title. While corrective justice and civil recourse theories both see tort law as essentially private, civil recourse theorists argue that tort is private, at least in part, because it is victim-initiated. An important thesis of this article is that tort is victim-initiated because it is private, not vice-versa. The Aristotelian conception of corrective justice suggests that corrective justice, unlike distributive justice, is an essentially private affair, and, indeed, perhaps the very private nature of tort law provides the simplest answer to civil recourse theory -- tort law is essentially private and is structured to encourage the private resolution of any disequilibrium created by the tortfeasor’s conduct. When a putative tortfeasor chooses to avoid injurious conduct (the heart of instrumentalist tort theory), this is a private decision. When a tortfeasor voluntarily repairs harm that he caused, this is an essentially private resolution of the problem. But when a victim acts against the tortfeasor through the courts, the state necessarily gets involved. In this way, civil recourse theory is less private than corrective justice theory. This article proceeds as follows. First, it surveys the three most popular contemporary tort theories, corrective justice, instrumentalism, and civil recourse theory, along with the theory proposed here, civil reconciliation theory. Second, the nature of each tort theory is illuminated by associating each theory with a different stage of a putative tortious interaction. Finally, a partial taxonomy of civil reconciliation tort theory terminology is presented, followed by a brief conclusion.
An Automated Tool for Analysis and Tuning of GPU-Accelerated Code in HPC Applications

The US Department of Energy’s fastest supercomputers and forthcoming exascale systems employ Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to increase the computational performance of compute nodes. However, the complexity of GPU architectures makes tailoring sophisticated applications to achieve high performance on GPU-accelerated systems a major challenge. At best, prior performance tools for GPU code only provide coarse-grained tuning advice at the kernel level. In this article, we describe GPA, a performance advisor that suggests potential code optimizations at a hierarchy of levels, including individual lines, loops, and functions. To gather the fine-grained measurements needed to produce such insights, GPA uses instruction sampling and binary instrumentation to monitor execution of GPU code. At the time of this writing, GPU instruction sampling is only available on NVIDIA GPUs. To understand performance losses, GPA uses data flow analysis to approximately attribute measured instruction stalls back to their causes. GPA then analyzes patterns of stalls using information about a program’s structure and the GPU architecture to identify optimization strategies that address inefficiencies observed. GPA then employs detailed performance models to estimate the potential speedup that each optimization might provide. Experiments with benchmarks and applications show that GPA provides useful advice for tuning GPU code. We applied GPA to analyze and tune a collection of codes on NVIDIA V100 and A100 GPUs. GPA suggested optimizations that it estimates will accelerate performance across the set of codes by a geometric mean of 1.21×. Applying these optimizations suggested by GPA accelerated these codes by a geometric mean of 1.19×.
Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore

Reviewed Medium: book Authors: Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas Year: 2007 Pages: 272 Publisher: Utah State University Press ISBN: 978-0-87421-636-3 (soft cover). Prices: $24.95 USD(soft cover).
The property rights doctrine and demand revelation under incomplete information

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses an approach to demand revelation, which achieves efficiency and avoids the waste of resources in the incentive payments. Now, optimal resource allocation will not be achieved by a competitive market system if there are technological externalities. These are goods for which no market can be formed. A conclusion that is usually drawn from the presence of externalities not mediated through competitive markets is that the state has to intervene in some form to improve resource allocation, whether in the form of taxes and subsidies or other regulatory forms. There has been opposition to the property rights thesis stating that in principle clear definition of property rights is sufficient to ensure efficiency. The property rights theorists do not usually set out their underlying assumptions with the utmost clarity; their basic postulate is the same one that underlies the theory of cooperative games. This argument depends crucially on the unstated assumption that every player knows every other player's payoff (utility, profit, whatever) as a function of the strategies played. In the case of bargaining over externalities, the strategies might be offers and counteroffer strategies, that is, plans beforehand to make a counteroffer as a function of the initial offer. Strategy-proof procedures are possible if the orderings are restricted; this assumption is in fact the basis of most of the demand revelation procedures.
Modification of a selenium toxicity in chicks by dietary silver and copper

Studies were conducted to determine the effects of high levels of dietary silver nitrate and copper sulfate on the response of chicks to toxic levels of dietary selenium. Adding 5 ppm or more selenium to a basal stock diet significantly reduced growth rate, and 40 ppm or higher significantly increased mortality during the 2-week experiments. Dietary silver or copper (1,000 ppm) counteracted the growth depression and prevented mortality at the higher levels of selenium. Hepatic selenium reached a maximum in chicks fed the basal diet with 10 ppm dietary selenium. Hepatic selenium of chicks fed silver was less than that of the control chicks when diets containing 10 ppm or less selenium were fed. Adding copper to the diet resulted in considerable accumulation of selenium in the liver, which was evident even at the lower levels of added selenium. Results of an experiment to determine the effects of dietary silver and copper on the distribution of /sup 75/Se administered either orally or intramuscularly showed that silver interfered with absorption of selenium. The results of these experiments suggest that silver modified selenium toxicity both by interfering with selenium absorption and by causing the accumulation of a nondeleterious selenium compound in themore » tissues. Copper modifies selenium toxicity primarily by causing the accumulation of a nondeleterious compound in the tissues.« less
Review of R. H. Helmholz: ‘The Spirit of the Classical Canon Law’

This work is a learned and lively account of the law of the medieval Catholic Church and the hundreds of learned commentaries and texts on these church laws, written by the jurists. R. H. Helmholz, leading historian of medieval canon law, reads these texts as a modern inquisitor who wants to know what his ancient brethren thought and taught about the most pressing legal questions of the day – concerning marriages and their dissolution, torts and their restitution, associations and their incorporation, and much more. His work shows both the diversity of ideas within the medieval canon law texts but also the sophisticated scholarly consensus that often emerged from their dialectical interaction. Helmholz’s volume is a brilliant guide to both the letter and the spirit of medieval canon law and viewed both as a living legal system in its day and as a critical scholarly resource for the Western legal tradition.
Muscle ribosome detachment factor. Does it have a role in the pathogenesis of Duchenne muscular dystrophy

A protein that detaches ribosomes from rough microsomal membranes ("detachment factor") (DF) was isolated from the cytosol fraction of rat and human muscle. The procedure of isolation included differential centrifugation, precipitation with ammonium sulfate and column chromatography with Sephadex G-100. The protein which is not completely homogenous, has a molecular weight of 50,000-60,000 daltons, is heat labile and has an optimum pH at 7.4-7.6. The DF activity of the protein is inhibited by soybean trypsin inhibitor (73%), pepstatin (67%), and leupeptin (42%), although no proteolysis could be measured. The DF activity was tested on muscle samples (rough microsomal membranes) obtained from Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients (7 cases) and normal controls (16 cases). The yield of membrane bound ribosomes (MBR) obtained from muscle samples of DMD patients by extraction with DF is 5-fold higher than from muscle samples of normal controls. The difference in MBR yield is not related to the type of DF. Similar values for MBR were obtained with rat and human (normal and dystrophic) DF. Ribosomal protein synthesis (RPS) with ribosomes extracted by DF showed values similar to the RPS of detergent extracted ribosomes. Our findings suggest the observed increase in membrane bound ribosomes in DMD probably results from increased levels of mRNAs coding for membrane and secretory proteins such as collagen.
Abstract: Propensity Score Matching in a Meta-Analysis Comparing Randomized and Non-Randomized Studies.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and nonrandomized observational studies (OSs) conducted to test causal effects can yield dissimilar results (e.g., Lipsey & Wilson, 1993; Becker, 1990). Such fin...
Impalement injuries of the palate in children: review of 131 cases

Impalement injuries of the soft palate and oropharynx are common injuries especially in children. Devastating neurologic sequelae secondary to thrombus propagation in the internal carotid artery are rare but well-documented complications of these innocuous appearing injuries. Neurologic sequelae have been reported anywhere from 3 to 60 hours after the injury. Protocols that include hospitalization up to 72 hours have been advocated. In order to evaluate the effectiveness and practicality of such protocols, all hospital admissions for palate injuries in the past 17 years were reviewed. Of the 131 cases reviewed, no complications were discovered during hospitalization, nor were there any complications in these patients seen in follow up. Based on this review, the majority of soft plate and oropharyngeal impalement injuries can be managed on an outpatient basis. Parental counseling, similar to instructions given in instances of mild head trauma, as well as close follow up in the office are felt to be a more reasonable and as well as a safe treatment plan. A suggested instruction form is presented.
What Measure of Lower Extremity Muscle Strength Best Explains Walking Independence

This study was conducted to determine if any one strength measure or combination of strength measures provided an explanation of ambulatory independence among 107 acute rehabilitation patients. This was a retrospective, descriptive, and correlational study where ambulatory function was quantified using the Functional Independence Measure (FIM). Lower extremity strength was quantified by sit to stand performance, and knee extension force measured by manual muscle testing and hand held dynamometry. Descriptive, correlational, and multiple regression statistical analysis were used. Correlation coefficients between ambulatory independence and the different strength measures ranged from .414 to .585. Sit to stand had the highest correlation coefficient with ambulatory independence (r=.585). However a combination of sit to stand performance and total knee extension force offered the best explanation of ambulatory independence (r=.617). A combination of functional and instrumental strength testing is therefore indicated in the prediction of ambulatory performance of patients in acute rehabilitation.
Developmental differences in intake and storage of visual information.

Abstract A partial report technique was used to determine how much visual information subjects of four ages (ranging from 5-year-olds to adults) were capable of taking in and what the course of information loss was over a 1-sec time period. Subjects were tachistoscopically presented eight items followed by an indicator at variable intervals after array offset and were required to report that item in the indicated position. No reliable age differences were found at the earliest “memory point,” 50 msec. There were, however, age differences both before and after this point. Results suggested an absence of age differences in visual intake capacity, but important differences in other stages of processing.