cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
American Indians and the American Revolution, 1775–1783

Scholars of Indian history have often neglected the impact of the American Revolution on American Indians, preferring to lump the Revolution together with the other wars and calamities of the late eighteenth century and pointing out that replacing King George III with President George Washington meant little to Indian peoples whose struggle to preserve their lands and cultures continued. But the Revolution was a devastating experience for many Indian people and marked the beginning of a new era in their history.
Flat space S matrix from the AdS/CFT correspondence?

We investigate recovery of the bulk S matrix from the AdS/CFT correspondence, at large radius. It was recently argued that some of the elements of the S matrix might be read from CFT correlators, given a particular singularity structure of the latter, but leaving the question of more general S matrix elements. Since in AdS/CFT, data must be specified on the boundary, we find certain limitations on the corresponding bulk wave packets and on their localization properties. In particular, those we have found that approximately localize have low-energy tails, and corresponding power-law tails in position space. When their scattering is compared to that of 'sharper' wave packets typically used in scattering theory, one finds apparently significant differences, suggesting a possible lack of resolution via these wave packets. We also give arguments that construction of the sharper wave packets may require nonperturbative control of the boundary theory, and particularly of the N{sup 2} matrix degrees of freedom. These observations thus raise interesting questions about what principle would guarantee the appropriate control, and about how a boundary CFT can accurately approximate the flat space S matrix.
A Validation Test of an Accessibility Evaluation Method

Digital materials have become a popular medium for information access, and attracted a diverse group of users, such as college students, who benefit from the low cost of, and portable access to, the materials. However, college students with disabilities may have difficulty accessing electronic materials if the materials were not developed appropriately. Laws and standards provide guidance on making digital documents accessible, but these regulations are implemented slowly. As a result, published materials on the market may have accessibility issues. Efforts have been made to produce evaluation methods for eBooks. For example, automated tools have been used to check for accessibility aspects in multiple studies, but using automated tools to evaluate accessibility of electronic materials is not enough due to the complexity of the checkpoints. Thus, human evaluators are needed. This study assessed a newly developed accessibility evaluation methodology that was designed for e-textbooks, and examined whether books that were rated as higher in accessibility versus books that were rated lower in accessibility resulted in differences in user experience and performance. This study consisted of 6 students with visual impairments and 6 students with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, who read and interacted with eBooks. User experience and performance were measured using subjective questionnaires, reading time, and accuracy to content-related questions. We found differences in user experience ratings for eBooks that were rated as high or low in accessibility; however, we found no differences in users’ task performance as a function of the accessibility level of the eBook.
David Oliver: Towards a GP consensus on the future of UK general practice

As a hospital doctor, I rarely write about general practice unless it’s to defend, celebrate, or support it. Primary care is the engine room of the NHS and underpins its equity, efficiency, and access. But it’s underfunded, understaffed, and overstretched by rising demand.1 I’m breaking my “no primary care columns” rule and asking where GPs themselves think that UK general practice should go next. I speak to and read pieces by many GPs, and I see universal agreement that general practice needs better funding and staffing. I admired the clarity of the Royal College of General Practitioners’ paper on The 2022 GP: a Vision for General Practice in the Future NHS 2 and have been enlightened by many of the college’s campaigns …
Idiotypic specificity as a probe for investigating persistence and changes in clones of cells producing immunoglobulins.

In this article we will review recent work, from other laboratories as well as our own, on the persistence during extended immunization of antibody molecules of a given idiotypic specificity. We will first discuss some of the basic concepts underlying these experiments.
Mind the (sr)GAP - roles of Slit-Robo GAPs in neurons, brains and beyond.

The Slit–Robo GTPase-activating proteins (srGAPs) were first identified as potential Slit–Robo effectors that influence growth cone guidance. Given their N-terminal F-BAR, central GAP and C-terminal SH3 domains, srGAPs have the potential to affect membrane dynamics, Rho family GTPase activity and other binding partners. Recent research has clarified how srGAP family members act in distinct ways at the cell membrane, and has expanded our understanding of the roles of srGAPs in neuronal and non-neuronal cells. Gene duplication of the human-specific paralog of srGAP2 has resulted in srGAP2 family proteins that may have increased the density of dendritic spines and promoted neoteny of the human brain during crucial periods of human evolution, underscoring the importance of srGAPs in the unique sculpting of the human brain. Importantly, srGAPs also play roles outside of the nervous system, including during contact inhibition of cell movement and in establishing and maintaining cell adhesions in epithelia. Changes in srGAP expression may contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders, cancer metastasis and inflammation. As discussed in this Review, much remains to be discovered about how this interesting family of proteins functions in a diverse set of processes in metazoans and the functional roles srGAPs play in human disease.
Domesticating Religious “Fanaticism” in Eighteenth-Century Germany

The decline of “fanaticism” in eighteenth-century Germany, a myth propagated by self-proclaimed proponents of Enlightenment, continues to shape historians’ representations of the ascendancy of “religious” Enlightenment. To discredit this myth and suggest a means of replacing it, this essay departs from the conventional attention to university theology as a history of ideas and proposes adding a book-historical perspective. Its focus is the German Pietist theologian Joachim Lange (1670–1744). Condemned by critics as a “fanatic” by virtue of his alleged intellectual kinship with French Reformed theologian Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), Lange is best known today for his vehement and ultimately ineffectual opposition to Enlightenment’s theological standard-bearers at the University of Halle. But Lange’s kinship with Poiret was only partial, and the stark contrast between the careers of two of Lange’s textbooks reveals that although his theological star was falling by the 1730s, elements of Lange’s ostensibly outmoded theology continued to find an audience into the nineteenth century, through the enormous commercial success of his Latin grammar.
The State of Prophylactic Mesh Augmentation.

Prophylactic mesh augmentation (PMA) is the implantation of mesh during closure of an index laparotomy to decrease a patient's risk for developing incisional hernia (IH). The current body of evidence lacks refined guidelines for patient selection, mesh placement, and material choice. The purpose of this study is to summarize the literature and identify areas of research needed to foster responsible and appropriate use of PMA as an emerging technique. We conducted a comprehensive review of Scopus, Cochrane, PubMed, and clinicaltrials.gov for articles and trials related to using PMA for IH risk reduction. We further supplemented our review by including select papers on patient-reported outcomes, cost utility, risk modeling, surgical techniques, and available materials highly relevant to PMA. Five-hundred-fifty-one unique articles and 357 trials were reviewed. Multiple studies note a significant decrease in IH incidence with PMA compared with primary suture-only-based closure. No multicenter randomized control trial has been conducted in the United States, and only two such trials are currently active worldwide. Evidence exists supporting the use of PMA, with practical cost utility and models for selecting high-risk patients, but standard PMA guidelines are lacking. Although Europe has progressed with this technique, widespread adoption of PMA requires large-scale pragmatic randomized control trial research, strong evidence-based guidelines, current procedural terminology coding, and resolution of several barriers.
Komplexe Zahlen und Zahlenfolgen

Die komplexe Variable z sei in der Form z, = x, + iy, = r e iϑ (x, y, r, ϑ reell, r≧0, ϑ mod. 2ϐ genommen) geschrieben. Dann heist x = Jz der Realteil von z, y = | z | der Imaginarteil von z, r = I z der absolute Betrag von z, ϑ = arcz der Arcus von z.
Genetics: Sixty Years in the Making: A Multifactorial Mouse Model of Seizure Susceptibility

C57BL/6 (B6) and DBA/2 (D2) inbred strains of mice are well known for their difference in seizure susceptibility and have been used together for over 60 years as a model to study epilepsy. The relative resistance of B6 mice to a wide variety of experimentally induced seizures has been studied in relation to the susceptibility of D2 mice in many ways, including direct comparisons of brain anatomy, chemistry, and physiology. Such comparisons have so far failed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the remarkable strain differences in seizure susceptibility. On the other hand, genetic studies involving quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping have been more successful in probing the mechanisms underlying this animal model. Currently, it is known that important genetic influences in the model emanate from the telomeric region of chromosome 1 and mid-chromosome 4 and quantitative trait genes (QTG) at these loci have been identified provisionally as Kcnj10 and Mpdz, respectively. Other QTLs in the model have also been identified and work is ongoing to translate them into QTGs, as well as to translate QTGs into clinical studies on epilepsy patients. The recent success in translating provisionally identified Kcnj10 seizure QTG on chromosome 1 into a susceptibility allele for common forms of human epilepsy underscores the potential power of this research strategy. Future work on B6 and D2 mice will allow the model to be exploited further and continue to advance our understanding of the biological mechanisms of seizure susceptibility and epilepsy in humans and aid in the development of new treatments.
Meta-Learning Related Tasks with Recurrent Networks: Optimization and Generalization

There have been recent interest in meta-learning systems: i.e., networks that are trained to learn across multiple tasks. This paper focuses on optimization and generalization of a meta-learning system based on recurrent networks. The optimization investigates the influence of diverse structures and parameters on its performance. We demonstrate the generalization (robustness) of our meta-learning system to learn across multiple tasks including tasks unseen during the metatraining phase. We introduce a meta-cost function (Mean Squared Fair Error) that enhances the performance of the system by not penalizing it during transitions to learning a new task. Evaluation results are presented for Boolean and quadratic functions datasets. The best performance is obtained using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) topology without a forget gate and with a clipped memory cell. The results demonstrate i) the impact of different LSTM architectures, parameters, and error functions on the meta-learning process; ii) that the mean squared fair error function does improve performance for best learning; and iii) the robustness of our meta-learning framework as it generalizes well when tested on tasks unseen during meta-training. Comparison between No-Forget-Gate LSTM and Gated Recurrent Unit also suggest that absence of a memory cell tends to degrade performance.
Real-time visualization of GaN/AlGaN high electron mobility transistor failure at off-state

Degradation and failure phenomena in high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are complex functions of electrical, thermal, and mechanical stresses as well as the quality of the device materials and their interfaces. Thus, it is difficult to predict or identify the dominant mechanism under various test protocols adopted in the literature. We propose that real-time visualization of the device microstructure can shift this paradigm. This is demonstrated by operating electron transparent AlGaN/GaN HEMTs inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM). Through the bright-field, diffraction, and energy dispersive spectroscopy techniques, we show that it is possible to characterize the lattice defects and diffusion of the various elements and thus monitor the microstructural quality during the transistor failure. Off-state failure studies in the TEM clearly show the critical role of defects and interfaces that lead to punch-through mechanisms at the drain and even source sides. The “seeing while measuring” approach presented in this study can be useful in pinpointing the dominant failure mechanisms and their fundamental origin.Degradation and failure phenomena in high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are complex functions of electrical, thermal, and mechanical stresses as well as the quality of the device materials and their interfaces. Thus, it is difficult to predict or identify the dominant mechanism under various test protocols adopted in the literature. We propose that real-time visualization of the device microstructure can shift this paradigm. This is demonstrated by operating electron transparent AlGaN/GaN HEMTs inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM). Through the bright-field, diffraction, and energy dispersive spectroscopy techniques, we show that it is possible to characterize the lattice defects and diffusion of the various elements and thus monitor the microstructural quality during the transistor failure. Off-state failure studies in the TEM clearly show the critical role of defects and interfaces that lead to punch-through mechanisms at the drain and even source sides. The “seeing while measuring” ap...
Introduction: Representing Victorian Environmental Nightmares

This chapter offers a concise introduction to Victorian Environmental Nightmares and presents a critical context for the volume. We conceived this collection as a continuation of and supplement to our previous collections, Victorian Writers and the Environment: Ecocritical Perspectives (Routledge, 2017) and Animals in Victorian literature and Culture: Contexts for Criticism (Palgrave, 2017). Although ecocriticism and animal studies have evolved into distinct enterprises that have had a complicated and sometimes antagonistic relationship in the past, we consider these critical orientations closely linked, and essays in the new collection frequently turn to the literary representations of nonhuman animals. As we completed the two earlier collections, we were struck by the ways in which Victorian literary responses to environmental change often moved beyond realistic depictions of natural disasters, air and water pollution, or the unchecked growth of urban environments (among other examples). As the new collection demonstrates, writers focusing on Victorian environments might include depictions of such events and activities in realistic fiction or polemical poetry, but environmental nightmares—both real and imaged—often strained the limits of traditional genre and canonical categories. Thus, the essays in the current volume often employ genre categories that are considered less significant or problematic, such as children’s literature, travel literature, science fiction, and fairy tales. Moreover, the volume includes work on literary figures not typically associated with ecocriticism (including Frances Trollope, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ouida, and Oscar Wilde, among others). In addition, “environmental nightmares” are not only restricted to depictions of British environments but also include depictions of environments in the Americas and in Australia as well. Thus, we have chosen a simple but effective organizing scheme for the volume, placing essays into the categories “At Home,” “Abroad,” and “Imagined Landscapes.” In selecting essays for the volume, we attempted to address some basic oversimplifications and exclusions of ecocriticism as articulated by Jesse Oak Taylor in a 2015 review essay. We have commissioned essays that avoid “the celebration of a de-historicized ‘Nature,’ idealizing wilderness rather than engaging with urban environments, uncritical and often largely metaphorical absorption of scientific terminology, inadequate attention to race and empire, and … a fixation on essences and abstractions rather than the dimensions of scale.” The essays in this new collection consistently address the very categories and topics that Taylor asserts have frequently been missing from a sophisticated version of Victorian ecocriticism. The Introduction also includes a brief overview of several recent collections of essays on Victorian literature from an ecocritical perspective. The Introduction concludes with a concise overview of the twelve essays that make up the collection.
CNV Association of Diverse Clinical Phenotypes from eMERGE reveals novel disease biology underlying cardiovascular disease

Abstract Background Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Consequently, individuals who are genetically predisposed for high risk of cardiovascular disease would benefit most from prevention and early intervention approaches. Among common health risk factors affecting adult populations, we evaluated 23 cardiovascular disease-related traits, including BMI, glucose levels and lipid profiling to determine their associations with low-frequency recurrent copy number variations (CNV) (population frequency Results We examined 10,619 unrelated subjects of European ancestry from the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network who were genotyped with 657,366 markers genome-wide on the Illumina Infinium Quad 660 array. We performed CNV calling based on array marker intensity and evaluated data quality, ancestry stratification, and relatedness to ensure unbiased association discovery. Using a segment-based scoring approach, we assessed the association of all CNVs with each trait. In this large genome-wide analysis of low-frequency CNVs, we observed 11 novel genome-wide significant associations of low-frequency CNVs with major cardiovascular disease traits. Conclusion In one of the largest genome-wide studies for low-frequency recurrent CNVs, we identified 11 loci associated with cardiovascular disease and related traits at the genome-wide significance level that may serve as biomarkers for prevention and early intervention studies in subjects who are at elevated risk. Our study further supports the role of low-frequency recurrent CNVs in the pathogenesis of common complex disease traits.
Distinct cachexia profiles in response to human pancreatic tumours in mouse limb and respiratory muscle

Background Cancer cachexia is a life-threatening metabolic syndrome that causes significant loss of skeletal muscle mass and significantly increases mortality in cancer patients. Currently, there is an urgent need for better understanding of the molecular pathophysiology of this disease so that effective therapies can be developed. The majority of pre-clinical studies evaluating skeletal muscle's response to cancer have focused on one or two pre-clinical models, and almost all have focused specifically on limb muscles. In the current study, we reveal key differences in the histology and transcriptomic signatures of a limb muscle and a respiratory muscle in orthotopic pancreatic cancer patient-derived xenograft (PDX) mice. Methods To create four cohorts of PDX mice evaluated in this study, tumours resected from four pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients were portioned and attached to the pancreas of immunodeficient NSG mice. Results Body weight, muscle mass, and fat mass were significantly decreased in each PDX line. Histological assessment of cryosections taken from the tibialis anterior (TA) and diaphragm (DIA) revealed differential effects of tumour burden on their morphology. Subsequent genome-wide microarray analysis on TA and DIA also revealed key differences between their transcriptomes in response to cancer. Genes up-regulated in the DIA were enriched for extracellular matrix protein-encoding genes and genes related to the inflammatory response, while down-regulated genes were enriched for mitochondria related protein-encoding genes. Conversely, the TA showed up-regulation of canonical atrophy-associated pathways such as ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation and apoptosis, and down-regulation of genes encoding extracellular matrix proteins. Conclusions These data suggest that distinct biological processes may account for wasting in different skeletal muscles in response to the same tumour burden. Further investigation into these differences will be critical for the future development of effective clinical strategies to counter cancer cachexia.
In Situ Hydrogen Plasma Exposure for Varying the Stoichiometry of Atomic Layer Deposited Niobium Oxide Films for Use in Neuromorphic Computing Applications.

Niobium oxide (NbOx) materials of various compositions are of interest for neuromorphic systems that rely on memristive device behavior. In this study, we vary the composition of NbOx thin films deposited via atomic layer deposition (ALD) by incorporating one or more in situ hydrogen plasma exposure steps during the ALD supercycle. Films with compositions ranging from Nb2O5 to NbO2 were deposited, with film composition dependent on the duration of the plasma exposure step, the number of plasma exposure steps per ALD supercycle, and the hydrogen content of the plasma. The chemical and optical properties of the ALD NbOx films were probed using spectral ellipsometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and optical transmission spectroscopy. Two-terminal electrical devices fabricated from ALD Nb2O5 and NbO2 thin films exhibited memristive switching behavior, with switching in the NbO2 devices achieved without a high-field electroforming step. The ability to controllably tune the composition of ALD-grown NbOx films opens new opportunities for realizing a variety of device structures relevant for neuromorphic computing and other emerging electronic and optoelectronic applications.
Assimilation, Acculturation, and Allostatic Load in U.S.- and Foreign-Born Hispanics.

The present study assessed how the adaptation to American culture by United States (U.S.)-born and foreign-born Hispanics living in the U.S. may influence stress-related physiological aspects that may impair health. Data on 8,360 Hispanics living in the U.S. categorized as U.S.-born (n = 3347) and foreign-born (n = 5013) from NHANES 1999–2010 (ages 18–85) were used. Stress-related physiological impact was measured by the allostatic load index (ALoad). Adaptation to American culture was evaluated through three acculturation-related measures. The average age was 39.39 years in a sample where 51% were males. ALoad was classified as no load (15.41%), low load (55.33%), and high load (29.24%). The U.S.-born Hispanics showed higher ALoad compared to foreign-born Hispanics (p < 0.001). Among foreign-born Hispanics, length of residence (LOR) and age of arrival in the U.S. (AOA) were associated with higher ALoad scores (p < 0.05), and in U.S.-born Hispanics, age and sex were positively associated and education was negatively associated with ALoad scores (p < 0.05). Adaptation to American culture in foreign-born Hispanics living in the U.S. appears to influence levels of ALoad in this population.
CCL5 mediates CD40-driven CD4 + T cell tumor infiltration and immunity

The role CD4+ T cells play in tumor immunity is less well appreciated than the cytotoxic role of CD8+ T cells. Despite clear evidence for CD4+ T cell dependency across multiple immunotherapies, the mechanisms by which CD4+ T cells infiltrate tumors remain poorly understood. Prior studies by our group have shown in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer that systemic activation of the cell surface TNF superfamily member CD40 drives T cell infiltration into tumors and, in combination with immune checkpoint blockade, leads to durable tumor regressions and cures that depend on both CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. Here, we used single-cell transcriptomics to examine the tumor microenvironment following treatment with agonist CD40 antibody with or without immune checkpoint blockade. We show that intratumor myeloid cells produce the chemokine CCL5 in response to CD40 agonist and that CCL5 mediates an influx of CD4+ T cells into the tumor microenvironment. Disruption of CCL5 genetically or pharmacologically mitigates the influx of CD4+ but not CD8+ T cells into tumors and blunts the therapeutic efficacy of immunotherapy. These findings highlight a previously unappreciated role for CCL5 in selectively mediating CD4+ T cell tumor infiltration in response to effective immunotherapy.
ADENOSINE RECEPTORS ON HUMAN BASOPHILS AND LUNG MAST CELLS: 122

5'-N-ethylcarboxamide (NECA) > 2-chloroadenosine (2-C1A)> adenosine (A) > (−)-N6-(R-phenylisopropyl)-adenosine {(−)-R-PIA}> (+)-S-PIA, in μ M concentrations, inhibited the release of histamine and immunoreactive leukotriene C4 (LTC4) from human basophils challenged with anti-IgE or antigen. The effect of NECA, 2-C1A and A was potentiated by dipyridamole and inhibited by low concentrations of theophylline (T). In contrast, NECA, 2-C1A, A and (−)-R-PIA, in μ M concentrations, enhanced the release of both histamine and LTC4 from mast cells purified from human lung. The effect of A and its analogs was not blocked by dipyridamole and partially inhibited by T. These results support the hypothesis that adenosine and its analogs produce distinct biological effect in the modulation of mediator release from human basophils and lung mast cells.
Stitch It Up: Using Progressive Data Storage to Scale Science

Generally, scientific simulations load the entire simulation domain into memory because most, if not all, of the data changes with each time step. This has driven application structures that have, in turn, affected the design of popular IO libraries, such as HDF-5, ADIOS, and NetCDF. This assumption makes sense for many cases, but there is also a significant collection of simulations where this approach results in vast swaths of unchanged data written each time step.This paper explores a new IO approach that is capable of stitching together a coherent global view of the total simulation space at any given time. This benefit is achieved with no performance penalty compared to running with the full data set in memory, at a radically smaller process requirement, and results in radical data reduction with no fidelity loss. Additionally, the structures employed enable online simulation monitoring.
YOLACT++: Better Real-time Instance Segmentation.

We present a simple, fully-convolutional model for real-time (> 30 fps) instance segmentation that achieves competitive results on MS COCO evaluated on a single Titan Xp, which is significantly faster than any previous state-of-the-art approach. We accomplish this by breaking instance segmentation into two parallel subtasks: (1) generating a set of prototype masks and (2) predicting per-instance mask coefficients. Then we produce instance masks by linearly combining the prototypes with the mask coefficients. We find that because this process doesn't depend on repooling, this approach produces very high-quality masks and exhibits temporal stability for free. Furthermore, we analyze the emergent behavior of our prototypes and show they learn to localize instances on their own in a translation variant manner, despite being fully-convolutional. We also propose Fast NMS, a drop-in 12 ms faster replacement for standard NMS that only has a marginal performance penalty. Finally, by incorporating deformable convolutions into the backbone network, optimizing the prediction head with better anchor scales and aspect ratios, and adding a novel fast mask re-scoring branch, our YOLACT++ model can achieve 34.1 mAP on MS COCO at 33.5 fps, which is fairly close to the state-of-the-art approaches while still running at real-time.
How might place be pedagogical in Appalachia? New possibilities for early childhood classrooms in the Anthropocene

This ethnographic research case study of five early childhood classrooms in rural Appalachia explores how the decline of the coal industry and shift to natural gas fracking impact classroom play sp...
Trends in pharmacy college admission test requirements and utilization across colleges and schools of pharmacy

Objective. To identify national trends among US pharmacy schools and colleges in their requirements for the Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) and underlying rationales for not requiring pharmacy school applicants to take it. Methods. An electronic survey regarding the following was sent to all US pharmacy programs: current and future PCAT requirements for applicants, use of the PCAT or other means to assess applicants’ written communication skills, use of unofficial PCAT scores, and, if applicable, the rationale for not requiring applicants to submit PCAT scores. Data analysis was performed using Excel. Results. One hundred five (73%) of 144 schools and colleges of pharmacy responded to the survey. Twelve institutions discontinued the PCAT requirement between the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 admissions cycles. The most commonly selected reason for discontinuation was a desire to increase pharmacy applications by reducing admission barriers. Pharmacy schools nationwide had concerns regarding high PCAT registration fees. The majority of pharmacy programs that used PCAT scores in their application process indicated that they always, often, or sometimes invited applicants for an interview before they had received the applicant’s official PCAT scores. The majority of pharmacy programs considered applicants’ PCAT writing score in making their admissions decisions. Other methods used included onsite essays and personal statements. Conclusion. At the time of this study the majority of US pharmacy schools required applicants to submit the PCAT scores before being considered for admission to pharmacy school; however, the use of this examination has declined nationally.
Information processing in tree networks of excitable elements

We study the collective response of small random tree networks of diffusively coupled excitable elements to stimuli applied to leaf nodes. Such networks model the morphology of certain sensory neurons that possess branched myelinated dendrites with excitable nodes of Ranvier at every branch point and at leaf nodes. Leaf nodes receive random inputs along with a stimulus and initiate action potentials that propagate through the tree. We quantify the collective response registered at the central node using mutual information. We show that in the strong-coupling limit, the statistics of the number of nodes and leaves determines the mutual information. At the same time, the collective response is insensitive to particular node connectivity and distribution of stimulus over leaf nodes. However, for intermediate coupling, the mutual information may strongly depend on the stimulus distribution among leaf nodes. We identify a mechanism behind the competition of leaf nodes that leads to nonmonotonous dependence of mutual information on coupling strength. We show that a localized stimulus given to a tree branch can be occluded by the background firing of unstimulated branches, thus suppressing mutual information. Nonetheless, the mutual information can be enhanced by a proper stimulus localization and tuning of coupling strength.
Myeloid cell-mediated targeting of LIF to dystrophic muscle causes transient increases in muscle fiber lesions by disrupting the recruitment and dispersion of macrophages in muscle.

Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) can influence development by increasing cell proliferation and inhibiting differentiation. Because of its potency for expanding stem cell populations, delivery of exogenous LIF to diseased tissue could have therapeutic value. However, systemic elevations of LIF can have negative, off-target effects. We tested whether inflammatory cells expressing a LIF transgene under control of a leukocyte-specific, CD11b promoter provide a strategy to target LIF to sites of damage in the mdx mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, leading to increased numbers of muscle stem cells and improved muscle regeneration. However, transgene expression in inflammatory cells did not increase muscle growth or increase numbers of stem cells required for regeneration. Instead, transgene expression disrupted the normal dispersion of macrophages in dystrophic muscles, leading to transient increases in muscle damage in foci where macrophages were highly-concentrated during early stages of pathology. The defect in inflammatory cell dispersion reflected impaired chemotaxis of macrophages to C-C motif chemokine ligand-2 and local increases of LIF production that produced large aggregations of cytolytic macrophages. Transgene expression also induced a shift in macrophage phenotype away from a CD206+, M2-biased phenotype that supports regeneration. However, at later stages of the disease when macrophage numbers declined, they dispersed in the muscle, leading to reductions in muscle fiber damage, compared to non-transgenic mdx mice. Together, the findings show that macrophage-mediated delivery of transgenic LIF exerts differential effects on macrophage dispersion and muscle damage depending on the stage of dystrophic pathology.
Impact of Cell of Origin on Outcomes After Autologous Hematopoietic Cell Transplant in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma

Germinal center B-cell-like diffuse large B cell lymphoma (GCB-DLBCL) at diagnosis is associated with superior long-term outcomes compared to non-GCB-DLBCL in patients treated with conventional chemo-immunotherapy. Whether cell of origin (COO) by Hans algorithm retains its prognostic significance in patients with (R/R) relapsed/refractory DLBCL undergoing autologous hematopoietic cell transplant (auto-HCT) is not well established. Three hundred and fifty-seven patients underwent auto-HCT between 2005 and 2018. The COO status was determined in 284 patients and these were included in the analysis. One hundred ninety-four patients had GCB-DLBCL while 90 had non-GCB-DLBCL. Median follow up was 1.7 (0-13) years. The GCB-DLBCL was associated with inferior 5-year overall survival at 44% (95%CI, 36-52) versus 64% (95%CI, 54-77) (P = .004) and a higher relapse incidence at 67% (95%CI, 58-74) versus 49% (95%CI, 35-60) (P = .01) in the non-GCB-DLBCL. The difference between GCB and non-GCB-DLBCL remained statistically significant in multivariate analysis. Additionally, response at the time of transplant was an independent prognostic factor. GCB-DLBCL was enriched in double-hit and triple hit phenotype based on available fluorescence in situ hybridization data. These results suggest an enrichment of high-risk genetic rearrangements in R/R GCB-DLBCL resulting in limited efficacy of auto-HCT.
Sudden death while attempting to conceal illegal drugs: laryngeal obstruction by a package of heroin.

Laryngeal obstruction by an aspirated foreign body is not an uncommon cause of sudden death. Accidentally aspirated objects usually are such items as food, chewing gum, and ballons. The following case is unusual in that the victim was attempting to conceal a bulk quantity of narcotics when the fatal aspiration occurred.
Mortality trends for chronic nephritis and infections of the kidney: A clinical and statistical comparison between mortality in New Haven, Connecticut and the United States, 1950–1960

Abstract The hypothesis is tested that, for the United States, in the absence of changes in diagnostic criteria, the combined death rates for chronic nephritis and infections of the kidney between 1950 and 1960 should have remained constant. The study population consisted of all residents of New Haven, Connecticut who died in New Haven during the triennia 1949–1951 and 1959–1961 from the underlying causes of chronic nephritis and infections of the kidney (ISC 592–594, 600) ( N = 99). All available clinical and autopsy records from the two major New Haven hospitals were abstracted. No significant change between the triennia was observed in diagnostic practice or in mortality even though in the United States as a whole mortality from these conditions have shown a marked decline. The data support the hypothesis that the decline in the combined rates between 1950 and 1960 in the U.S. was due primarily to alteration in diagnostic habits.
Growth mechanisms of silicalite-1

Abstract In-situ seeded dynamic light scattering growth experiments for silicalite-1 were performed for various solution pH's and electrolyte concentrations. The pH was controlled using ratios of TPAOH (Pr 4 NOH) and TPABr (Pr 4 NBr) while maintaining a constant TPA + concentration. The electrolyte concentration was varied through the addition of NaCl, CsCl, and CaCl 2 . The growth rate was found to decrease linearly with increasing pH and was unaffected by the presence of electrolytes, but at high enough salt concentrations the silicalite-1 particles experience a critical coagulation concentration. The growth rates were simulated using a transport model that incorporates a DLVO interparticle potential to account for the energy barrier for particle aggregation. The model is based on the assumption that the subcolloidal particles present in the solution directly add to the crystal surface. It was shown that the model can predict the, pH growth rates; however, the model overpredicts the screening effects of electrolytes in solution. Preliminary computations indicate that Stern-layer stabilization, due to the large size of adsorbing TPA, may be involved in the stability of the seeds and subcolloidal particles. This is the first time the predictive capability of the silicalite-1 growth model has been tested for a wide range of reaction conditions.
Study on the poly bump defect by TEM failure analysis

In this work we reported TEM failure analysis of an inline defect issue, nanosized poly bump defect formed during poly CVD process. Detailed TEM analysis was performed for the characterization of microstructure and composition of the nanosized defects by using various TEM FA techniques, including EDX, EELS analysis. It was found out that underneath the poly bump defect had a core-shell structure, i.e. oxide core with poly-Si shell. We demonstrated the importance of TEM sample preparation and the selection of suitable TEM FA techniques for the characterization of such nanosized defects for root-cause understanding.
Assembly and Inspection of Microelectronic Systems

Two experiments were performed to determine how human performance in the assembly and inspection of microelectronic devices might be improved. The first revealed that use of tools specifically designed to minimize the probability of human error resulted in significant reductions in errors in the handling of silicon wafers. The second indicated that providing the operator with a visual frame of reference resulted in detection of a significantly greater percentage of the defects present in photo masks of the type used in production of microelectronic circuits.
THE SOUTHERN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS ASSOCIATION AND RESIDENT INSTRUCTION

Resident instruction is considered an imextension education or adult education. Acportant activity by many agricultural econtivities common to resident instruction inomists at academic institutions. Despite this clude: classroom teaching, curriculum importance, resident instruction has not endevelopment, academic advising, student rejoyed the institutional status and professional cruitment, career counseling, and student orvisibility of other professional activities ganization activities. While common to most (Broder; Schuh). This lack of status and visschools, resident instruction programs differ ibility derives, in part, from the personalized in structure and locus of responsibility. For nature of resident instruction, difficulties in example, some departments may take an acdocumenting and communicating teaching tive role in student recruitment and career ideas, and the structure of incentives and placement while others may delegate these rewards to resident instruction. responsibilities to collegeor university-wide This paper will critically examine the role agencies which specialize in these activities. of the Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) in resident instruction. More specifically, the objectives of this paper are CHARACTERISTICS OF RESIDENT to: INSTRUCTION 1. discuss the unique position of resident Professional Resources instruction in our profession, 2. examine what other professional assoA large portion of our academic profession . ciations in the Southern Association of is devoted to resident instruction. A comAgricultural Scientists (SAAS) are doing parison of agricultural economics faculty apin resident instruction, pointments at land-grant universities in the e t o Southern region emphasizes this responsi3. examine what other regional agricultur examine what other regional agribility. A recent survey (Broder and Ziemer, cultural economics associations are 1984) found that assistant, associate, and full doing in resident instruction, professors in the Southern region had average 4. discuss trends and issues in resident teaching appointments of 27.7, 20.2, and instruction which could have far-reach34.5 percent, respectively, Table 1.1 Among ing impacts on our profession, and all faculty ranks, the average teaching ap5. offer recommendations for more effecpointment was 29.2 percent, suggesting that tive involvement by the Southern Agalmost one-third of our academic responsiricultural Economics Association in bilities are devoted to resident instruction. resident instruction. Shown in Table 2 are the percentages of Resident instruction, as used here, refers faculty by region of employment who have to teaching and teaching related activities in teaching appointments. Data indicate that in departments of agricultural, food and/or rethe Southern region, 77 percent of the assource economics. Resident instruction fosistant professors, 57 percent of the associate cuses on the education of students who attend professors, and 89 percent of the full proclasses in residence as distinguished from fessors reported some teaching resppnsibil-
A Database Platform for Bioinformatics

In recent years, new developments in genetics have generated a lot of interest in genomic and proteomic data, investing international significance (and competition) in the fledgling discipline of bioinformatics. Researchers in pharmaceutical and biotech companies have found that database products can bring a wide range of relevant technologies to bear on their problems. Benefiting from a number of new technology enhancements, Oracle has emerged as a popular platform for pharmaceutical knowledge management and bioinformatics. We look at four powerful technologies that show promise for solving hitherto intractable problems in bioinformatics: the extensibility architecture to store gene sequence data natively and perform high-dimensional structure-searches in the database; warehousing technologies and data mining on genetic patterns; data integration technologies to enable heterogeneous queries across distributed biological sources, and internet portal technologies that allow life sciences information to be published and managed across intranets and the internet.
SPATIAL DEPENDENCE OF BROAD GROUP CROSS SECTION

The influence of resonance structure and non-separability of the flux as a function of space and energy on the spatial dependence of broad group cross sections was studied in a one-region, demonstration-plant-size, fast reactor.
Management Science for Marine Petroleum Logistics

Management Science modeling can assist marine petroleum transporters in planning and operating their fleet. By supporting the fleet’s integration into the supply chain of petroleum, it enables an optimal balance of profitability and customer service. Each of the small case studies presented here exposes an aspect of the business problem and shows the role of modeling in quantifying previously intuitive concepts, defining new performance measures and supporting routine decision making.
A tutorial on inferential control and its applications

In this tutorial, we discuss approaches to control of one or more primary variables in a process using secondary measurements. This approach is useful when the primary variable is not easily measured, or has large time delays or lags associated with it. It is also useful when the secondary measurements contain information about disturbances that affect the primary variable. We start by discussing some classical approaches to this problem. Then we present inferential control strategies that use process models to predict the effect of the disturbance variable on the primary output and use this prediction to regulate the process. Next we present a framework for incorporating the inferential control strategy within the framework of the often-used model predictive control (MPC). This framework, termed as model predictive inferential control (MPIC), is general enough to accommodate multiple secondary measurements as well as nonlinear estimators and controllers. The concept is also extended to end product quality control in batch processes using intermediate measurements available during the middle of the batch. The advantages of inferential control are established using the Shell challenge case study problem, which employs linear transfer function models. Problems of collinearity among the secondary measurements ( which frequently arises) is addressed using principal component analysis (PCA) during the construction of the dynamic estimator. Numerous applications demonstrate the advantages of the inferential control strategy.