cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Acute interstitial nephritis and DRESS syndrome without eosinophilia associated with cefepime.

The drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS syndrome) is a potentially life-threatening drug-induced reaction characterised by a severe skin eruption, fever, haematological abnormalities (eosinophilia or atypical lymphocytes) and internal organ involvement (liver is the most common). These manifestations are thought to be a type IV hypersensitivity with a delayed onset of usually 2–6 weeks after the initiation of drug therapy.1 2 While the pathogenesis of this condition is not well understood, mechanisms such as detoxification defects leading to reactive metabolite formation and subsequent immunological reactions, slow acetylation and reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus and human herpesvirus 6 and 7 have been proposed.2 The most common drugs …
Biblical Interpretation: Old and New Testaments, a New Hermeneutic(s)?

Does mimetic theory involve or presuppose a new hermeneutic? At least in the sense that Girardian mimetic theory presupposes and uses a continuation or adaptation of the kind of figural or typological interpretation that characterized much Christian reading of the Bible from Antiquity to the onset of Modernity, the answer is no. But on the other hand, it is only fairly recently that something such as figural or typological interpretation has been undertaken in an age of, and in conversation with, scientifically verifiable critical realism and historical criticism—which is often, at the outset, assumed to have supplanted or invalidated figural or typological interpretation. In that sense, mimetic theory, especially in the ways in which it has been recently developing in the writings of both Girard and his Christian interpreters, does involve what can seem to be a “new” hermeneutic.
Effects of fluorine contamination on spin-on dielectric thickness in semiconductor manufacturing

In the recent semiconductor industry, as the device shrinks, spin-on dielectric (SOD) has been adopted as a widely used material because of its excellent gap-fill, efficient throughput on mass production. SOD film must be uniformly thin, homogeneous and free of particle defects because it has been perfectly perserved after chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) and etching process. Spin coating is one of the most common techniques for applying SOD thin films to substrates. In spin coating process, the film thickness and uniformity are strong function of the solution viscosity, the final spin speed and the surface properties. Especially, airborne molecular contaminants (AMCs), such as HF, HCl and NH3, are known to change to surface wetting characteristics. In this work, we study the SOD film thickness as a function of fluorine contamination on the wafer surface. To examine the effects of airborne molecular contamination, the wafers are directly exposed to HF fume followed by SOD coating. It appears that the film thickness decreases by higher contact angle on the wafer surface due to fluorine contamination. The thickness of the SOD film decreased with increasing fluorine contamination on the wafer surface. It means that the wafer surface with more hydrophobic property generates less hydrogen bonding with the functional group of Si-NH in polysilazane(PSZ)-SOD film. Therefore, the wetting properties of silicon wafer surfaces can be degraded by inorganic contamination in SOD coating process.
Site-Specific Propagation Prediction for PCS System Design

Wireless communications has been plagued by our inability to fully understand how radio waves behave in complicated channels. In the past, anti-fading and anti-multipath techniques such as diversity and equalization have been used to combat the random small-scale fluctuations induced by radio channels, and propagation models were developed to help the communication engineer design radio links in a statistical sense, without much hope for complete understanding of the channel conditions at any particular time or location. Given the difficulty of predicting instantaneous channel conditions, a common thread in radio communication system design has historically been that first there must be good firstorder models to successfully deploy radio system links, and then some form of diversity or equalization must be used to ensure a particular outage criterion is met during rapid changes in the channel.
Spirituality, Humor, and Resilience After Natural and Technological Disasters

Purpose Multiple exposures to disaster are associated with high levels of stress and with long-term consequences for survivors. However, little is known about coping and resilience in multiple disaster contexts. In this study, we focused on spiritual and secular coping resources and the roles they may play in postdisaster resilience. Methods Participants were noncoastal and coastal residents exposed to the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Psychosocial predictors of central interest were (a) spiritual support and (b) use of coping through humor, and both were hypothesized to be associated with resilience. Covariates included group, gender, education, income, social engagement, charitable work done for others, and lifetime trauma. Findings Logistic regression analyses confirmed that spiritual support (odds ratio [OR] = 1.11, p ≤ .01) and use of coping through humor (OR = 1.17, p ≤ .01) were independently and positively associated with resilience. Disruption in charitable work done for others in a typical year before the hurricanes (OR = 0.49, p ≤ .05) and income of less than $2,000 per month were negatively associated with resilience (OR = 0.47, p ≤ .05). Conclusions These data show that spirituality, humor, disruptions in charitable work, and low income were all independently associated with resilience in the years after consecutive disasters. Clinical relevance Experiencing one or more disasters can create chronic psychosocial stress in an individual, which is associated with long-term health effects such as inflammation and weakened immune function. Recognizing which coping resources bolster resilience rather than harm is important for improving quality of life in disaster victims.
Assessment of a structured longitudinal professional identity development curriculum for pharmacy students.

Abstract Background and purpose To describe and assess a longitudinal Professional Identity Development (PID) curriculum at Northeast Ohio Medical Universities (NEOMED) College of Pharmacy. Educational activity and setting Northeast Ohio Medical University, a four-year professional program, has assimilated its career development and advising program into the curriculum as a primary element of the Pharmacist Patient Care Experience (PPCE) course. The concept of PID focuses on student pharmacist career development. The goals for the PID module include guided self-assessment and goal-setting related to career choice with attention to work-life balance, community engagement and leadership. Students also work in small groups, called Professional Development Advising Teams (PDAT), led by a PDAT clinical advisor who is a practicing pharmacist. These meetings provide a forum to debrief self-assessment work and clinical experiences and make connections between the two. Findings A voluntary survey was administered to six classes of NEOMED alumni (2011–2016) to evaluate the longitudinal PID curriculum. Respondents found many aspects of the PID curriculum to be beneficial in the development of their professional identity and career planning journey. Most felt that PID sessions enabled them to effectively prepare for a career in pharmacy, with goal setting, Curriculum Vitae (CV) review, and career exploration most helpful in planning for their future careers. Discussion PID curricula are resource-intensive and require a firm commitment from administration and the faculty. Elements of the program can be adapted and utilized in a variety of different ways, making this model accessible to all pharmacy schools.
Bispecific Antibodies for the Treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Bispecific antibodies combine antigen recognition sites from two or more antibodies into a single construct allowing simultaneous binding to multiple targets. Bispecific antibodies exist which can redirect immune effector cells against acute myeloid leukemia (AML) targets. This review will highlight the progress to date and the challenges in developing bispecific antibodies for the treatment of AML. Currently, a number of bispecific antibody formats including bispecific T cell engagers, dual affinity retargeting proteins, and tandem diabodies are in clinical development for AML. These antibodies target antigens present on AML blasts, including CD33, and the low affinity IL3 receptor, CD123. T cell redirecting bispecific antibodies in early phase clinical trials for AML include AG330, flotetuzumab, JNJ-63709178, and AMV564. Bispecific antibodies represent a promising immunotherapeutic approach for the treatment of cancer. The results of ongoing studies in AML will elucidate the potential for these agents in AML.
Challenges of Constructing a Multiple-Perspective Domain Analysis of Neurodiversity

When constructing a domain analysis of a phenomenon, researchers will likely encounter complexity in the method and resulting outcome, such as a taxonomy or thesaurus. This paper reflects upon a recent endeavor to conduct a domain analysis of neurodiversity with a focus on Autism Spectrum Disorder. Through the construction of this multi-faceted taxonomy, the researchers faced challenges regarding framing the perspectives represented by the taxonomy and addressing gaps and changes in the taxonomy. These challenges raise methodological, ethical, and technical issues. Ultimately, the researchers’ biases are inherent in their editorial decisions and are influential, yet often hidden, factors in the domain analysis.
David Oliver: Lessons from the Babylon Health saga

The long awaited evaluation of Babylon Health’s GP at Hand service has been published.1 It found that patients had fewer health problems than conventional users of GP services, were younger, and yet were higher users of services such as NHS 111 and urgent care.2 The report noted that GP at Hand didn’t provide the full range of services that conventional general practices do and that expanding such a model would have considerable implications for IT, infrastructure, and the GP workforce. But it could “not fully assess whether GP at Hand is affordable or sustainable.”3 GP at Hand’s presence in Hammersmith and Fulham Clinical Commissioning Group has reportedly faced big and growing costs (estimated at £10m so far) from hosting GP at Hand, which supports patients living in other parts of London—putting general practice delivery …
Detecting political bias trolls in Twitter data

Ever since Russian trolls have been brought to light, their interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections has been monitored and studied. These Russian trolls employ fake accounts registered on several major social media sites to influence public opinion in other countries. Our work involves discovering patterns in these tweets and classifying them by training different machine learning models such as Support Vector Machines, Word2vec, Google BERT, and neural network models, and then applying them to several large Twitter datasets to compare the effectiveness of the different models. Two classification tasks are utilized for this purpose. The first one is used to classify any given tweet as either troll or non-troll tweet. The second model classifies specific tweets as coming from left trolls or right trolls, based on apparent extreme political orientations. On the given data sets, Google BERT provides the best results, with an accuracy of 89.4% for the left/right troll detector and 99% for the troll/non-troll detector. Temporal, geographic, and sentiment analyses were also performed and results were visualized.
Cognition of complexity and trade-offs in a wildfire-prone social-ecological system

Wildfire risk is a defining environmental challenge throughout much of the American West, as well as in other regions where complex social and ecological dynamics defy simple policy or management solutions. In such settings, diverse forms of land use, livelihoods, and accompanying values provide the conditions for trade-offs (e.g., between protecting homes from uncontrollable fires and restoring low-severity fire to ecosystems as a natural disturbance process). Effective wildfire risk mitigation requires grappling with these trade-offs at multiple levels—given the need for action by individuals as well as by large and diverse stakeholder groups—and under conditions of considerable complexity. We evaluated how individual and collective perception of trade-offs varies as a function of complexity through analysis of the cognitive maps—representations of perceived causal relationships among factors that structure an individual's understanding of a system—of 111 stakeholders in the Eastern Cascades Ecoregion of central Oregon. Bayesian statistical analyses revealed a strong tendency against perception of trade-offs in individual maps, but not in a collective map that resulted from the aggregation of all individual cognitive maps. Furthermore, we found that lags (the number of factors that mediated the effect of an action on multiple valued outcomes) limited perception of trade-offs. Each additional intervening factor decreased the likelihood of a trade-off by approximately 52% in individual cognitive maps and by 10% in the collective cognitive map. However, the heterogeneity of these factors increased the likelihood of perception of trade-offs, particularly among individual cognitive maps, for which each unit increase of the Shannon diversity index translated into a 20-fold increase in the likelihood of perception of trade-offs. Taken together, these results suggest that features of complexity have distinct effects on individual- as well as collective-level perception of trade-offs. We discuss implications for wildfire risk decision-making in central Oregon and in other complex wildfire-prone social-ecological systems.
The psychometric properties of a version of the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire for assessing motivations for responsible drinking.

Objective: The aim of the present studies was to provide a psychometric evaluation of a version of the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire (TSRQ) for assessing motivations derived from self-det...
Small-molecule drug repurposing to target DNA damage repair and response pathways

For decades genotoxic therapy has been a mainstay in the treatment of cancer, based on the understanding that the deregulated growth and genomic instability that drive malignancy also confer a shared vulnerability. Although chemotherapy and radiation can be curative, only a fraction of patients benefit, while nearly all are subjected to the harmful side-effects. Drug repurposing, defined here as retooling existing drugs and compounds as chemo or radiosensitizers, offers an attractive route to identifying otherwise non-toxic agents that can potentiate the benefits of genotoxic cancer therapy to enhance the therapeutic ratio. This review seeks to highlight recent progress in defining cellular mechanisms of the DNA damage response including damage sensing, chromatin modification, DNA repair, checkpoint signaling, and downstream survival and death pathways, as a framework to determine which drugs and natural products may offer the most potential for repurposing as chemo- and/or radiosensitizers. We point to classical examples and recent progress that have identified drugs that disrupt cellular responses to DNA damage and may offer the greatest clinical potential. The most important next steps may be to initiate prospective clinical trials toward translating these laboratory discoveries to benefit patients.
Isolation and Characterization of Two Novel (Per)Chlorate-Reducing Bacteria from Swine Waste Lagoons

Microbial chlorate (ClO3 −) and perchlorate (ClO4 −) reduction has recently been recognized as an important form of microbial metabolism for the removal of chlorine oxyanion contamination in the environment.1 Chlorine oxyanions have many industrial applications including use as bleaching agents by the paper and pulp industry,2,3 as disinfectants and defoliants by the agricultural industry,4 and as components of explosives and rocket propellants by the aerospace and defense industries.5 Chlorates can also be formed as a result of ozonation of drinking waters which have been treated with chlorine6 or photodecomposition of chlorite or chlorine dioxide7 which are used in addition to chlorine for water disinfection.
Robert Alden Fales, the fifteen-year-old criminal chloroformist

Abstract An ex-employee of a Newark straw hat factory, 15-year-old Robert Alden Fales battered the factory's cashier Thomas Haydon on the head multiple times with a wooden staff. Fales then applied a chloroform-soaked handkerchief to Haydon's nose until the cashier stopped moving. Arrested and convicted of murder, Fales had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. At 23 years of age, the criminal chloroformist died in jail from tuberculosis.
Silicon Microring Resonator Driven by High-Mobility Conductive Oxide Capacitor

We demonstrated a silicon microring resonator driven by titanium-doped indium oxide capacitor, achieving a tunability of 42 pm/V with a high quality factor above 3600. Analysis indicates that it potentially can achieve an extreme electro-optic tunability of 330 pm/V with a high quality factor above 5000.
Changes in Social Media Impact of the Radiological Literature During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Purpose The objective of this study was to determine how the social media impact of the radiological literature has changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods Altmetric Attention scores were collected for all articles in five leading radiology journals over a 5-year period ending in June 2020, and temporal smoothing yielded the filtered Altmetric Attention (fAA) score. Natural language processing methods were used to label articles with major topic areas. A forecasting model was used to identify periods of outlier behavior in the fAA score aggregated across all journals, for each journal individually, and stratified by article topic area. The distributions of fAA scores prior to the onset of the pandemic were statistically compared to those during the pandemic. For journals exhibiting increased fAA scores, the frequency distributions of articles not related to Covid-19 was compared to that prior to the pandemic. Results During the pandemic, we found sustained outliers and statistically significant increases in the aggregate fAA score across all five journals, as well as for Radiology, American Journal of Roentgenology, and Academic Radiology individually. Articles related to Covid-19, thoracic imaging, and radiology education also experienced significantly increased fAA scores during the pandemic period. We did not find significantly decreased rates of publication of non-Covid articles in the journals experiencing elevated fAA scores. Conclusion Social media engagement with the radiological literature significantly increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. This preferentially affected certain journals and articles addressing specific topics, reflecting the intense public interest in the diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19.
Clinical Development of Natural Killer Cells Expressing Chimeric Antigen Receptors

Both natural killer (NK) cells and T cells demonstrate potent antitumor responses in many settings. NK cells, unlike T cells, are not the primary mediators of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Redirection of T cells with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) has helped to overcome tumor escape from endogenous T cells. NK cells expressing CARs are a promising new therapy to treat malignancy. Clinical biomanufacturing of CAR NK cells can begin with NK cells derived from many different sources including adult peripheral blood-derived NK cells, cord blood-derived NK cells, cell line-derived NK cells, or stem cell-derived NK cells. Manufacturing protocols may include isolation of NK cells, activation, expansion, and genetic modification to express the chimeric antigen receptors. Clinical trials have tested both unmodified and CAR NK cells with encouraging results. The next stage in clinical development of CAR NK cells represents a highly exciting new frontier in clinical cell therapy as well as understanding basic NK cell biology. The purpose of this review is to provide the reader with a fundamental understanding of the core concepts in CAR NK cell manufacturing, specifically highlighting differences between CAR T cell manufacturing and focusing on future directions in the field.
The impact of parental trauma, parenting difficulty, and planned family separation on the behavioral health of West African immigrant children in New York City.

OBJECTIVE The association between parental mental health difficulties and poor child outcomes is well documented. Few studies have investigated the intergenerational effects of trauma in immigrant populations. This study examined the relationships among parental trauma, parenting difficulty, duration of planned family separation, and child externalizing behavior in an archival dataset of West African voluntary and forced immigrants in New York City. We hypothesized that parenting difficulty would mediate the association between parental posttraumatic stress and child externalizing behavior and that this association would be stronger for parent-child dyads that had undergone lengthier separations during migration. METHOD Ninety-one parents reported on their posttraumatic stress symptoms using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) and on the behavioral health of one child between the ages of 5 and 12 years using the externalizing items of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL Externalizing). A 4-item self-report scale assessed difficulty parenting in the last month. RESULTS Linear regression analyses showed that parenting difficulty partially mediated the relationship between HTQ and CBCL scores. The relationship between HTQ and CBCL scores was not significant for parents separated from their children for one year or less but was significant for those never separated or separated for longer than 1 year. Higher HTQ scores were most strongly associated with higher CBCL Externalizing scores for those separated longer than one year. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest that children of immigrants recovering from trauma are at risk of exhibiting behavioral symptoms and highlight a potential intervention target for improving child outcomes in immigrant families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Elastin-like Polypeptides as a Purification Tag for Recombinant Proteins

This unit presents a recombinant protein purification method that employs an Elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) as a purification tag. ELPs undergo a sharp and reversible phase transition when heated above their lower critical solution temperature (LCST). ELPs retain this behavior when they are fused to a protein, and thereby provide a simple method to isolate a recombinant ELP fusion protein from cell contaminants by cycling the solution through the insoluble and soluble phase of the ELP fusion protein by a method that we have termed Inverse Transition Cycling (ITC). This method does not require the use of chromatography, so that it is cost-effective, easy to scale up and to multiplex.
Coping flexibility, forward focus and trauma focus in older widows and widowers

AbstractCoping strategies play a significant role in overall adjustment to bereavement, and recent emphasis has been placed on flexibility in coping versus unilateral strategies that are seemingly beneficial or maladaptive. The Dual Process Model of coping informed the conceptualisation of coping flexibility as the oscillation between ‘trauma focus’ and ‘forward focus’ coping strategies. The primary aim of the present study was to assess whether trauma focus and forward focus coping strategies, and using strategies from both flexibly, would predict grief severity. Trauma focus and forward focus were assessed using the Perceived Ability to Cope with Trauma (PACT) scale, measured cross-sectionally in older widows and widowers. In addition, we modeled symptoms of loneliness, yearning and perceived stress from PACT scale scores. Results showed that greater forward focus and coping flexibility predicted lower grief severity, and also predicted lower yearning, loneliness, and perceived stress. Additionally, len...
Suppression of T and B cell responses by myeloid derived suppressor cells after natural CD4 T regulatory cell depletion and LP-BM5 retrovirus infection (VIR7P.1057)

Immunomodulatory cellular subsets, including myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) and T regulatory cells (Tregs), contribute to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment and have been targets of immunotherapy, but their role in retrovirus-associated immunosuppression is less understood. Tregs are associated with HIV-infected patients, however it remains unclear whether Tregs suppress the anti-viral immune response or dampen HIV viral spread; and also unclear is the stage(s) of infection of Treg involvement. MDSCs have only recently been identified in HIV-infected patients, and thus the phenotype and mechanism(s) of suppression are still being defined. Due to known crosstalk between Tregs and MDSCs in the tumor microenvironment, it is of interest to look at the interplay between these cellular types during LP-BM5-induced murine AIDS (MAIDS). Following in vivo nTreg depletion, using adoptive transfer approaches, and subsequent LP-BM5 retroviral infection, enriched MDSCs from infected nTreg-depleted mice exhibit increased suppression of T cell, but not B cell, responses, as compared to MDSCs derived from non-depleted LP-BM5 infected controls. In addition, MDSCs from LP-BM5-infected nTreg-depleted mice have altered phenotypic subsets, which may correlate with functional differences. These collective data may provide insight into the possible immunotherapeutic targeting of Tregs and MDSCs during retroviral infection. (NIH AI007363, CA50157)
Pediatric trauma at an Adult Trauma Center

Background: Accidental traumatic injury is the number 1 cause of morbidity and mortality in the pediatric population. In this study, we aim to prove that certain pediatric patients can be treated with good outcomes at an adult level 1 trauma center. Methods: Retrospective analysis using the Howard University Hospital trauma registry identified 71 patients treated at Howard University Hospital between the ages of 1 and 17 years old. Specific variables were identified and collected for each patient. Results: The majority of pediatric traumas treated at Howard University Hospital between June 2004 and May 2005 had high survival rates (93%). The patients who did not survive (7%) included 3 patients who were dead on arrival and 2 who died shortly after arrival to the hospital. Conclusions: Certain pediatric populations who present with minor and/or isolated injuries can be treated in an adult level 1 trauma center with similar outcomes to treatment in a pediatric level 1 trauma center.
THE CHEMICAL BONDING OF Re3Cl9 AND REVEALED BY THE ADAPTIVE NATURAL DENSITY PARTITIONING ANALYSES

Chemical bonding of neutral rhenium trichloride Re3Cl9 and doubly charged has been brought into question in the current work. Despite recently reported propositions of π-aromaticity of neutral Re3Cl9 based on negative nuclear independent chemical shift (NICS) values[ 1 , 2 ] to the contrary, it is shown to be a purely classical chemical molecule, according to the results of the recently developed Adaptive Natural Density Partitioning (AdNDP) analysis.[ 3-5 ] The formation of three consecutive double bonds in a triatomic cycle formed by rhenium atoms that was initially predicted by Cotton et al.[ 6-8 ] is confirmed. The chemical bonding picture changes dramatically upon addition of two excess electrons to Re3Cl9. The rhenium atoms of the resulting doubly charged cluster are shown to be held together via three single Re-Re σ-bonds, three Re-Cl-Re σ-bonds, and a totally delocalized π-bond based on valence d atomic orbitals (d-AO) of rhenium atoms with minor contributions coming from the density associated wi...
EU Policies and African Human Capital Development

Brain Circulation between the European Union (EU) and Sub-Saharan Africa is a crucial ingredient in Human Capital formation in the latter. A major constraint to African development is the very low base of skilled and highly educated workers and professionals. The production of skilled workers has been low, and only recently has seen a dramatic increase. Recent papers by many authors have indicated that a channel for human capital growth has been, paradoxically, the possibility of the brain drain which serves as both an incentive mechanism and which results in higher human capital when the drainers return. After a review of some of the literature, these insights are applied to the debates raging today on European Union migration policy: the Blue Card, Migration Con-tracts, anti-Brain Drain legislation, etc. This paper argues that a careful calibration of the EU policies may enable faster Human Capital growth in Africa, while, at the same time, being beneficial to the EU by supplying critically needed skills into the EU economy. By carefully planning the production of human capital and the consequent flow of skilled migrants into Europe, the EU can assist in the development of vitally needed numbers of trained or skilled workers in Africa.
The cross-reactivity of IgE antibodies with pollen allergens: II. Analyses of various species of ragweed and other fall weed pollens

Although the antigenic composition of short ragweed pollen has been extensively investigated, very few studies have analyzed the allergenic cross-reactivity among various types of ragweed pollens. Using a serum pool from patients sensitive to short ragweed, we studied the cross-reactivity of IgE antibodies to six ragweeds by the radioallergosorbent test. Extracts were analyzed for their inhibitory activities with solid-phase allergens prepared from all of the ragweed pollens. Also, samples of serum were absorbed with the various solid-phase allergens and the reactivity of the remaining IgE antibodies was determined. Two patterns of reactivity were observed. Short, giant, western, and false ragweeds displayed comparable reactivity in both inhibition and absorption experiments. Slender and southern ragweed were considerably less active, indicating that they lacked allergenic groupings possessed by the other species. These same patterns of cross-reactivity were found using ragweed pollens from four commercial sources. Knowledge of these patterns of cross-allergenicity is of importance for diagnosis and treatment of sensitive patients as well as for in vitro standardization of extracts.
Immunocytochemical Localization of Prohormone Convertase 1/3 and 2 in Thyroid C-Cells and Medullary Thyroid Carcinomas.

Prohormone convertases (PCs) are the key enzymes in the regulated pathways for the posttranslational processing of peptide hormones and are involved in converting larger prohormones to smaller, biologically active hormones. Immunolocalization of PC1/3 and PC2 was performed with thyroid C-cells from normal thyroid glands and medullary thyroid carcinomas (MTCs); thyroid C-cells were not consistently positive for PCs, whereas MTCs were consistently positive for PCs. Positive staining for PCs included tumor cell nests adjacent to the main MTCs in cases of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2. Procalcitonin was originally detected in MTCs and a large amount of procalcitonin was present together with abundant PCs in MTCs. Thus, immunocytochemical staining for PCs may be another characteristic of MTCs.
Medical management of skeletal metastasis.

Bone involvement with tumor has a large impact on quality of life because of the potential for pathologic fractures, spinal cord compromise, hypercalcemia, and pain [1]. Tumor metastases to bone are far more common than primary bone tumors. Although virtually any solid tumor or hematologic malignancy can metastasize to bone, multiple myeloma and cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, kidney, and thyroid are particularly likely to do so [2–8]. Patients with multiple myeloma, metastatic prostate cancer, and breast cancer with bone-only metastases have a prolonged clinical course and may live with skeletal metastasis for several years before succumbing to their disease. Management of the signs and symptoms of bone metastasis in these patients is thus important for maintaining quality of life and mental well-being. Treatment of skeletal metastasis requires input from multiple disciplines, including radiation oncology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, anesthesia, and medical oncology. This article discusses general principles of medical management of bone metastases, including diagnosis and follow-up; management of specific symptoms; options for systemic treatment, including bisphosphonates; specific details about each cancer type; and future directions in therapy.
Kinetic mechanism of histidine-tagged homocitrate synthase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Kinetic data have been collected suggesting a preferred sequential ordered kinetic mechanism for the histidine-tagged homocitrate synthase (HCS) from Saccharomyces cerevisiae with α-ketoglutarate b...
Design considerations of high voltage and high frequency transformer for solid state transformer application

This paper presents overall design considerations of the high-voltage and high-frequency (HV-HF) transformer in dc/dc converter stages of solid state transformer (SST). SST is a new concept of an interface for direct connection between the distribution line and local customers which can be considered as another generation source as well from the local smart-grid point of view. Therefore, the size and weight reduction are the main objectives of this system. Therefore, increasing operating frequency to minimize the bulky magnetic elements and solid insulation become necessary. Especially, the inductance of transformer plays a crucial role in Dual-Active Bridge (DAB) converter to determine the power transfer, therefore, the inductance optimization depending on winding structures is investigated and a high voltage insulation is carefully designed to support 15kV in this paper. A comprehensive electromagnetic analysis is conducted to validate the proposed design by finite element analysis (FEA) and experimental result with 2kVA scale-down transformer is analyzed first and, finally, 3 versions of 7kVA HV-HF transformer are built and tested for SST application.
Application of a Mortality Model to Subsidized Housing

New construction and rehabilitation of subsidized housing units are directly compared against the common objective of extending the useful life of the inventory. A model is developed and applied to the case of public housing in the United States of America. Results suggest that rehabilitation is not justified if costs exceed 5–10% of new construction costs. The article concludes with a discussion of limitations of the model and of prospects for further development.
High Speed Microprocessor Based System for Drift Chamber Data Acquisition

An 8×300 microprocessor with a 250 nsec., instruction cycle time was used to scan data from 512 drift chamber wires, and send only valid data to a central computer, all in less than 2 milsec. The speed, size, cost performance trade-offs which influenced the choice of data organization, scan method and electronics will be presented. Factors influencing the selection of the 8×300 as the microprocessor best suited for this application will be mentioned. Operation of hardware and software will be discussed, touching on speed vs. memory requirements. Included will be a brief discussion of microprocessor development systems.
Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion and multiple dose of insulin regimen display similar patterns of blood glucose excursions in pediatric type 1 diabetes.

Background: Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) is believed to decrease glycemic variability and clinical hypoglycemia compared with the multiple daily insulin (MDI) regimen. To compare...
Fetal rat brain damage caused by maternal seizure activity : Prevention by magnesium sulfate

Abstract Objective: Our purpose was to determine whether maternal rat seizure activity was associated with fetal histopathologic brain changes and whether magnesium sulfate reduced these changes. Study Design: Electrodes were stereotaxically implanted into the hippocampus of nonpregnant rats 1 week before breeding. Pregnant rats were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups: (1) sodium chloride solution and no seizure (n = 2), (2) magnesium sulfate and no seizure (n = 2), (3) sodium chloride solution and seizure (n = 5), and (4) magnesium sulfate and seizure (n = 5). On gestational days 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19, subcutaneous doses of sodium chloride solution or magnesium sulfate were administered to all rats every 20 minutes for 4 hours (loading-maintenance-loading), followed by seizure induction. On gestational day 20, the rats were perfused with formalin and fetuses were delivered via cesarean. Fetuses were perfused with formalin, brains were obtained and embedded in paraffin, and the forebrain and hindbrain were sectioned in the coronal plane and stained with hematoxylin and eosin. A neuropathologist masked to the protocol performed histopathologic grading of each section, including extent and nature of cellular damage. Eleven brain regions were examined in each section. Scores were expressed as mean ± SD. Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance was used, and P Results: We evaluated 26 fetal brains in group 1, 9 in group 2, 72 in group 3, and 45 in group 4. Fetuses in the sodium chloride solution–and–seizure group (group 3) presented significantly higher grades of neuronal damage in the hippocampus (group 1, 0.50 ± 0.88; group 2, 0.22 ± 0.66; group 3, 1.01 ± 1.17; and group 4, 0.48 ± 0.72) and in the tegmentum region (group 1, 1.0 ± 1.0; group 2, 0.8 ± 1.0; group 3, 1.7 ± 0.7; and group 4, 1.5 ± 0.8) ( P Conclusions: Maternal rat seizure activity was associated with histologic brain injury in the fetus. Maternal administration of magnesium sulfate before seizure prevented or significantly decreased this effect. (Am J Obstet Gynecol 1999;181:828-34.)
Band structures of all polycrystalline forms of silicon dioxide

The band structures and density of states of all polycrystalline forms of ${\mathrm{SiO}}_{2}$ with known crystal structures are calculated using a first-principles orthogonalized linear combination of atomic orbitals method. These include 4:2-coordinated polymorphs of \ensuremath{\alpha}-quartz, \ensuremath{\beta}-quartz, \ensuremath{\beta}-tridymite, \ensuremath{\alpha}-crystobalite, \ensuremath{\beta}-crystobalite, keatite, coesite, and two idealized forms of \ensuremath{\beta}-crystobalites, as well as the 6:3-coordinated stishovite. Linear relations between the band gaps and the average Si--O bond lengths and the minimum Si--O--Si angles are firmly established. The electronic structure of stishovite is found to be very much different from the 4:2-coordinated oxides and shows more covalency in the bonding character.
Using human induced pluripotent stem cells for modeling schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder

There are inherent difficulties in developing well-defined experimental systems to study complex psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. Advances have been made utilizing animal models; however, limitations in their ability to fully recapitulate the human disease exist. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from patients have the potential to revolutionize disease modeling for schizophrenia research and to provide a valuable resource for identification of crucial molecular pathways, biomarkers and for therapeutic drug screening.
Discovery of soft X-ray pulsations from the γ-ray source Geminga

Soft X-ray observations of the Geminga field using Rosat have been used to detect coherent pulsations from 1E0630 + 178 at a period of 0.237 s. This result confirms suggestions that Geminga is, like Vela, a gamma-ray pulsar. It is speculated that Geminga is somewhat the older of the two.
Recurrent ischaemic stroke unveils polycythaemia vera.

Polycythaemia vera is a recognised cause of ischaemic stroke. If not treated, this condition may result in recurrent strokes. This is a case of a 61-year-old Caucasian man presenting with the inability to ambulate for 3 days. Brain imaging revealed acute and chronic infarctions in the brain stem and the cerebrum. Polycythaemia vera was diagnosed and treated during the admission. The unique mechanisms and management issues of ischaemic stroke associated with polycythaemia vera are discussed.
Education begins in the cradle for young Peruvians

An idea far more revolutionary than the drastic land reform decrees introduced in Peru by the military Government after the 1968 coup d'etat was one concerning children that education should start in the cradle and not in the classroom. So determined was the Revolutionary Government to introduce drastic educational reforms to parallel the sweeping agrarian reforms that it gave the measure equally high priority, despite the misgivings of some critics. In fact, the special Committee for Educational Reform, which began work shortly after the new regime was installed, had to endure many jokes at its own expense. Some teachers asked if they would have classes of new-born babies, other if they were expected to be nurses instead of educators. A few even mockingly inquired if they were expected to give toilet training in the new curriculum. The Peruvian Government soon showed it was no joke, but a policy to be applied in deadly earnest, as part of a deliberate strategy to wrest power from the landed oligarchy of that time and place it in the hands of the people, creating a more egalitarian society. The measures were aimed especially at bringing the Indian population of Peru more into the mainstream of public life and to ensure that they were no longer an under-privileged group, as had been the case ever since Pizarro and the Conquistadores crushed the Inca's power early in the 16th Century.
Pulmonary injury after total or partial cardiopulmonary bypass with thromboxane synthesis inhibition

Previous studies have shown an increase in left atrial plasma thromboxane (TBX) level and associated increase in lung injury parameters after total cardiopulmonary bypass (t-CPB) but not after partial cardiopulmonary bypass (p-CPB). We used dazmegrel to study the effect of TBX synthesis inhibition on lung injury after t-CPB compared with p-CPB. Sheep were placed on t-CPB without ventilation and with pulmonary artery occlusion (n = 7) or p-CPB with ventilation and an unrestricted pulmonary artery (n = 7). All sheep were treated with dazmegrel. After 90 minutes we separated the sheep from CPB. Plasma TBX, platelets, white blood cells, protein concentration, lung lymph protein, flow, and pulmonary vascular resistance were measured before and after CPB. Lung biopsies were also obtained. Minimal derangement of these pulmonary parameters was seen after either p-CPB or t-CPB. Inhibition of TBX synthesis virtually eliminated the lung injury previously reported after t-CPB, when compared with p-CPB. Clearly TBX has an important role in mediating lung injury after t-CPB.
Objectives to direct the training of emergency medicine residents in pediatric emergency medicine

This article outlines the objectives for a resident rotation on a pediatric emergency medicine service that is geographically separate from adult-oriented facilities. In this setting, pediatric emergency department care is considered an off service. However, these objectives incorporate key pediatric knowledge and techniques in a practical format for emergency medicine trainees who have no separate pediatric emergency department experience. The content of the pediatric emergency department educational exposure can be attained in a concentrated 2-month exposure at a pediatric facility or extracted throughout the course of multiple pediatric encounters at a general emergency department. These objectives are a part of a continuing series on the goals and objectives to direct emergency medicine resident training on off-service rotations.
Optics In Laser Fusion

A new approach to controlled thermonuclear fusion has recently become of interest. Laser light is used to compress and heat a small pellet containing deuterium and tritium. Energy is released in short times at high density, in contrast to the magnetic confinement approach utilizing long times at low density. Initial experiments are now underway to determine if this method is scientifically feasible. At the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, a series of ever-larger Nd3+ glass lasers is being built in support of this effort. The culmination of this program will be the SHIVA laser system, a $20 million device which will put well over 1013 watts uniformly on a 200 pm target sphere. The design of such a laser system is governed by the desire to maximize the power per dollar, while avoiding damage to the laser. In addition, the target requires extremely uniform illumination and must be protected against destruction before the arrival of the main pulse. We consider the target requirements, laser design problems, point and focus system, and focusing optics of the SHIVA system.© (1975) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Eyeball retraction latency in the conscious rabbit measured with a new photodiode technique.

A new technique is described for accurate, reliable measurement of eyeball retraction in the rabbit. A narrow film strip, on which a linear light intensity grating has been exposed, is attached to a contact lens which is placed on the animal's cornea. The other end of the intensity grating slides between a photodiode and an LED. The contact lens-film grating assembly moves freely with eyeball retraction and relaxation, causing changes in photodiode output. This device appears to be well tolerated by the animal. Large amplitude eyeball retractions occur in response to air puff stimulation directed at the upper or lower eyelid and to periorbital shock. Average eye retraction latency to stimulation of the abducens (VI) nerve with a chronically implanted stimulating electrode was 5.3 ms (S.D. = 0.75 ms) in the conscious rabbit as measured with our device. Latency to periorbital electrical shock was 9.3 ms (S.D. = 2.1 ms). Eye retraction latency decreased with increasing shock amplitudes. Rabbits readily acquired classically conditioned eyeball retractions, monitored with this device, when a white noise auditory stimulus was paired with an air puff directed at the eyelid.
Effects of boundary conditions on numerical solution of implicit hyperbolic difference equations

Abstract A linear hyperbolic partial differential equation has been approximated by an implicit finite difference scheme. The difference equations are represented by matrices and an analysis of the numerical solution has been performed to investigate how errors in boundary conditions may affect the solution.
Process of Infection with øX174: Effect of Exonucleases on the Replicative Form

When a preparation containing the DNA of the bacteriophage oX174 in its replicative form together with DNA from Escherichia coli is treated with exonucleases, the replicative form retains its characteristic physical properties, while the bacterial DNA is degraded. The evidence suggests that the mature replicative form exists as a closed ring.