cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Enhancing connectivity for spectrum-agile Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks in fading channels

In Vehicular Ad hoc NETwork (VANET) safety applications, connectivity among vehicles is important to disseminate the upcoming traffic information (e.g., warning messages generated by a source vehicle that detects an accident) to other following vehicles to notify drivers in a timely manner. Because of the highly dynamic VANET topology and the short transmission range mandated for Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) by Federal Communications Commission (FCC), communication links among vehicles are short-lived especially in sparse vehicular density, making the task of establishing (through connection setup process) and maintaining the communications for fast-moving vehicles difficult. Furthermore, when a fixed transmission range is used in dynamically changing VANET, network could be easily suffered by a “broadcast-storm” in dense vehicular density while vehicles in VANET could be disconnected frequently in sparse vehicular density. In addition, when communication channels are overcrowded in VANET, vehicles should be able to switch from one radio frequency (RF) bands to another to make robust communication using spectrum-agile wireless environment. In this paper, we study the connectivity for spectrum-agile VANET in fading channels. Specifically, connectivity enhancement for vehicle-to-vehicle communications for vehicles traveling in opposite directions and for vehicles traveling in same direction is investigated using mathematical analysis and simulation results. Performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using numerical and simulation results.
The mechanical design of a kinematic mount for the Mid Infrared Instrument Focal Plane Module on the James Webb Space Telescope

The detector assembly for the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is mechanically supported in the Focal Plane Module (FPM) Assembly with an efficient hexapod design. The kinematic mount design allows for precision adjustment of the detector boresight to assembly alignment fiducials and maintains optical alignment requirements during flight conditions of launch and cryogenic operations below 7 Kelvin. This kinematic mounting technique is able to be implemented in a variety of optical-mechanical designs and is capable of micron level adjustment control and stability over wide dynamic and temperature ranges.
A Technique to Salvage a Single Implant-Supported Fixed Dental Prosthesis Having a Nonretrievable Implant Screw Fragment

An implant screw fracture is one of the common problems associated with the implant components. In some situations, it may not be possible to retrieve the fractured implant screws. As a result, clinicians either remove the implant or the implant may need to be covered over with soft tissue. The salvage of an implant with a nonretrievable screw fragment may be highly beneficial to the patients. This report describes a technique to salvage an implant-supported single restoration that has a nonretrievable implant screw fragment.
Interactive information visualization of a million items

Existing information visualization techniques are usually limited to the display of a few thousand items. This article describes new interactive techniques capable of handling a million items (effectively visible and manageable on screen). We evaluate the use of hardware-based techniques available with newer graphics cards, as well as new animation techniques and non-standard graphical features such as stereovision and overlap count. These techniques have been applied to two popular information visualizations: treemaps and scatter plot diagrams; but are generic enough to be applied to other 2D representations as well.
Dose escalation model for limited-stage small-cell lung cancer

Abstract Background and purpose To construct a model for the local dose–response relationship of limited-stage small-cell lung cancer (LS-SCLC) along with subsequent models for dose-per-fraction escalation. Materials and methods Reported doses and 2-year progression free survival ( PFS 2year ) rates from LS-SCLC studies were used to construct a dose–response model. Modeling incorporated effects of chemotherapy, incomplete repair of sublethal damage and variations in both kick-off time for rapid reproliferation and effective tumor cell doubling time. Response was modeled as a function of overall treatment duration in order to shed light on the optimum radiotherapy treatment duration. Subsequent models were constructed for more aggressive radiotherapy by means of dose-per-fraction escalation for once a day (QD) and twice a day (BID) fractionation schedules. Results Modeling response as a function of treatment duration resulted in an optimum treatment duration of 3 weeks for both fractionation schedules. Modeling for dose-per-fraction escalation resulted in an increase in the expected local PFS 2year for both fractionation schedules with possible gains in a BID schedule with lower expected late complication rates than a QD schedule yielding the same expected local PFS 2year . Conclusions This modeling suggests more aggressive treatment through escalation of dose-per-fraction, which may result in substantial gains in local PFS 2year . This points towards treatment durations of 3 weeks as being optimal with a BID schedule predicting possible gains in local PFS 2year at lower rates of expected late complications than a QD schedule.
Basal dislocation interactions with a forest of non-basal dislocations in zinc

The mobility of basal dislocations in 99•999% pure zinc crystals with controlled densities of non-basal forest dislocations has been measured as a function of stress at temperatures of 298°K and 84°K. The range of the forest dislocation density was 10^2 to 10^6cm^(−2) and the range of the resolved shear stress was 0 to 34•2 × 10^6 dyne/cm^2. The mobility of dislocations was characterized by three distinct regions: a low-stress region showing no dislocation motion, a high-stress region with a linear velocity-stress relationship and, in between, a transition region, in accordance with theoretical predictions. The critical stress for basal edge dislocation motion was found to be proportional to the square root of the forest density and to be temperature-independent. A temperature-dependent critical stress for basal screw dislocations was observed. A strong interaction between basal dislocations and forest dislocations is indicated. In the high-stress region where dislocation velocity is a linear function of the stress the velocity is independent of the forest density. The values of drag coefficient B in this region are in good agreement with those previously reported for specimens with low forest densities (10^2 to 10^3 cm^(−2)).
Plastic properties of thin films on substrates as measured by submicron indentation hardness and substrate curvature techniques

Substrate curvature and submicron indentation measurements have been used recently to study plastic deformation in thin films on substrates. In the present work both of these techniques have been employed to study the strength of aluminum and tungsten thin films on silicon substrates. In the case of aluminum films on silicon substrates, the film strength is found to increase with decreasing thickness. Grain size variations with film thickness do not account for the variations in strength. Wafer curvature measurements give strengths higher than those predicted from hardness measurements suggesting the substrate plays a role in strengthening the film. The observed strengthening effect with decreased thickness may be due to image forces on dislocations in the film due to the elastically stiffer silicon substrate. For sputtered tungsten films, where the substrate is less stiff than the film, the film strength decreases with decreasing film thickness.
Mining significant pairs of patterns from graph structures with class labels

In recent years, the problem of mining association rules over frequent itemsets in transactional data has been frequently studied and yielded several algorithms that can find association rules within a limited amount of time. Also more complex patterns have been considered such as ordered trees, unordered trees, or labeled graphs. Although some approaches can efficiently derive all frequent subgraphs from a massive dataset of graphs, a subgraph or subtree that is mathematically defined is not necessarily a better knowledge representation. We propose an efficient approach to discover significant rules to classify positive and negative graph examples by estimating a tight upper bound on the statistical metric. This approach abandons unimportant rules earlier in the computations, and thereby accelerates the overall performance. The performance has been evaluated using real world datasets, and the efficiency and effect of our approach has been confirmed with respect to the amount of data and the computation time.
A Framework for Enabling User-Controlled Persona in Online Social Networks

As the use of personal information in social network sites seems manifold, including the representation of an individual's digital persona (or social role) and identification, so does the abuse or misuse of the information. The issue of privacy is critically important in this context. In this paper we present a novel framework for enabling user-controlled sharing of sensitive personal information for better privacy protection in current online social networks. Specifically, the framework called U-Control is proposed to facilitate digital persona and privacy management (DPPM) in a user-centric way that it can satisfy diverse privacy requirements and specification, and social network environments. We discuss the design of a security system based on the proposed framework. Finally we discuss a proof-of-concept implementation, along with performance evaluation.
The accuracy of the CHARMM22/CMAP and AMBER ff99SB force fields for modelling the antimicrobial peptide cecropin P1

Secondary structures of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) play an important role in their activity. The AMP cecropin P1, like most other anti-microbial peptides, is known to form a helix at the interface of bacterial cell membranes. This structure is fundamental to its activity and its ability to destroy the membrane. In contrast, as reported in experimental measurements, this peptide unfolds in bulk water. We analysed this behaviour using two different force fields, CHARMM22/CMAP and AMBER ff99SB. Although these two force fields are commonly used in molecular dynamics (MD) and have been extensively validated, we observed two sharply different results. A sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) micelle was used to model the bacterial membrane using MD simulations. CHARMM22 resulted in a peptide that stays mostly folded in both environments (bulk water and SDS), while AMBER correctly predicted the unfolding in bulk water and produced results that closely match the available experimental data. We further computed the free...
The effect of reintegrating Actigraph accelerometer counts in preschool children: Comparison using different epoch lengths

Abstract Objectives The purpose of this study was to determine whether ActiGraph accelerometer activity counts and estimates of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity collected at a single larger epoch are comparable to those collected at smaller epochs reintegrated into a larger epoch. Design A cross-sectional study design. Methods Thirty-one preschoolers (3–5 years) concurrently wore four accelerometers that were each initialized at four different epoch lengths (1 s, 15 s, 30 s, and 60 s) during a full preschool day. Counts collected at 1 s, 15 s, and 30 s epoch were each reintegrated and compared to those collected at a larger epoch (e.g., counts from one 15 s epoch vs. consecutive sum of counts from fifteen 1 s epochs). Six sets of cut-points (Pate, Freedson, Sirard, Van Cauwenberghe, Evenson and Puyau) were applied to estimate moderate-to-vigorous physical activity minutes. Paired t-test and Cohen's d were used to compare group mean differences. Absolute percent errors Bland–Altman plots with limits of agreement were used to compare individual differences. Results Minimal group mean differences were found for counts and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity estimates between larger and reintegrated epochs. Relatively smaller absolute percent errors (6.2–9.2%) and limits of agreements (−15.52%, 18.00% to −28.27%, 28.02%) were observed for counts than absolute percent errors (10.1–50.3%) and limits of agreements (−27.3%, 33.3% to −156.9%, 137.9%) for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity estimates. Conclusions Smaller individual differences in activity counts tended to yield larger individual variations in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity estimates, despite minimal group mean differences. Therefore, researchers reintegrating smaller epochs into a larger epoch should be conscious of possible differences in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity estimates obtained from a single larger epoch.
An evaluation of wavelet filters performance for steganalysis

This paper presents an evaluation of wavelet filters performance for the task of steganalysis. We analyzed six different wavelet filters namely Daubachies, Coiflets, Symlets, Discrete Meyer, Biorthogonal and Reverse Biorthogonal families for feature extraction in a wavelet based steganalysis technique. Two publicly available steganography tools, namely the F5 steganography and the Model Based steganography were used to embed messages in a database of clean images to develop steganographic database of images. A Fisher Linear Discriminant classifier is trained using all six feature sets extracted from both clean and steganographic images separately and subsequently used for classification. Experiments revealed that the features using the ‘Haar(db1)’ wavelet filter gave the best steganalysis performance.
Glucose transport in the malarial (Plasmodium lophurae) infected erythrocyte.

SYNOPSIS Plasmodium lophurae-infected red blood cells utilized considerably greater quantities of glucose than did uninfected duckling red cells. Kinetic analysis of glucose transport showed: (A). Below a concentration of 2 mM in the medium the uptake process followed Michaelis-Menten kinetics (carrier-mediated facilitated diffusion) whereas at concentrations greater than this simple diffusion became the main mode of entry. (B). The apparent transport constants, Kt, for normal and infected cells were similar. However there was an 8-fold increase in the maximal velocity, Vmax, for infected cells. (C). “Free” malaria parasites had a significantly lower Kt and a higher Vmax than did normal or infected red cells. Entry and exit studies with the nonmetabolizable sugar analog, 3-0-methyl glucose, demonstrated that the enhanced rate of uptake by infected cells involved an increase in the simple diffusion component and the degree of enhancement was correlated with the size of the intracellular parasite. Competition experiments suggested that in the malaria-infected cell one locus is involved in the carrier-mediated transport of glucose, mannose and galactose whereas another locus transports fructose and/or glycerol. These results indicate that the enhanced entry of glucose into the malaria-infected red cell is a consequence of factors other than increased glucose catabolism by the host-parasite complex, and the host cell's capacity to take up greater quantities of sugar directly involves the growing intracellular plasmodium.
Flexible and Formal Modeling of Microprocessors with Application to Retargetable Simulation

Given the growth in application-specific processors, there is a strong need for a retargetable modeling framework that is capable of accurately capturing complex processor behaviors and generating efficient simulators. We propose the operation state machine (OSM) computation model to serve as the foundation of such a modeling framework. The OSM model separates the processor into two interacting layers: the operation layer where operation semantics and timing are modeled, and the hardware layer where disciplined hardware units interact. This declarative model allows for direct synthesis of micro-architecture simulators as it encapsulates precise concurrency semantics of microprocessors. We illustrate the practical benefits of this model through two case studies - the StrongARM core and the PowerPC-750 superscalar processor. The experimental results demonstrate that the OSM model has excellent modeling productivity and model efficiency. Additional applications of this modeling framework include derivation of information required by compilers and formal analysis for processor validation.
Deep-level defects, recombination mechanisms, and their correlation to the performance of low-energy proton-irradiated AlGaAs&#8212;GaAs solar cells

A detailed study of deep-level defects, recombination mechanisms, and performance characteristics in low-energy proton-irradiated AlGaAs-GaAs solar cells has been carried out for several proton energies (i.e., 50, 100, 200, and 290 keV) and fluences (i.e., 1010, 1011, 1012, and 1013p/cm2) using the deep-level transient spectroscopy (DLTS), current-voltage ( I-V ), capacitance-voltage ( C-V ), and the scanning-electron microscopy operating in electron-beam induced current (SEM-EBIC) methods. Important defect parameters such as densities and energy levels of defects, thermal emission rates and capture cross sections of electrons and holes in each trap level as well as hole diffusion lengths in n-GaAs LPE layer were determined from these measurements. It is shown that the forward bias dark current was dominated by the recombination of electron-hole pairs via the proton-induced deep-level defects in the junction space-charge region of the cell. The increase in the dark current is directly related to the increase of trap density with increasing proton fluence in the irradiated solar cells. A quantitative correlation between the measured defect parameters and the performance characteristics of the proton-irradiated AlGaAs-GaAs solar cells was obtained from this study.
Publicly available US national surveys that capture lost productivity.

With the limited resources available, healthcare purchasers need to be able to determine the value of the pharmaceuticals or healthcare interventions that they purchase and their beneficiaries receive. From a purchaser’s perspective, at least part of the benefit resulting from interventions may be the associated decreased lost productivity among their beneficiaries. However, the ability to value lost productivity at a population level is dependent on the availability of productivity data. This review provides a taxonomy of productivity measures within the currently available, national databases and surveys within the USA that capture lost productivity data. As the field of productivity measurement matures, with more precise data and methods to estimate patients’ lost productivity in national survey data, healthcare employers and policy-makers will be able to make better-informed decisions concerning the medications that have an impact on the effects of diseases at a population level.
The Puzzle of Private Rulemaking: Expertise, Flexibility, and Blame Avoidance in U.S. Regulation

The standard federal regulatory process in the United States involves notice and comment by government bureaus. This traditional agency model of public rulemaking faces difficulties in taking full advantage of the expertise of stakeholders, and it has been criticized as being slow and inflexible; therefore, it is not surprising that alternative institutional forms involving the delegation of rulemaking to stakeholders have appeared. Yet it is surprising that private rulemaking has been used to allocate valuable goods such as transplant organs. Why is private rulemaking used as an allocative institution of governance? The answer recognizes the advantages it offers in certain rapidly changing circumstances in which essential expertise inheres in the stakeholders, as well as the asymmetric political rewards involved in the allocation of highly valued goods, which create incentives for politicians to avoid blame by delegating substantive rulemaking authority to nongovernmental organizations.
An efficient bandwidth management scheme for real-time Internet applications

Differentiated services (DiffServ) has been proposed as a scalable solution for Internet QoS. Within the DiffServ architecture, premium services is a service class which is proposed for interactive real-time applications such as real-time voice and video over the Internet. In order to ensure the service quality of premium services, each DiffServ domain need to appropriately negotiate a service level agreement (SLA) with its customers and neighboring domains. Because the resources for premium service are usually a small part of the total network bandwidth, dynamic SLA negotiation is preferred to maximize the resource utilization. However, a completely dynamic SLA negotiation scheme introduces a scalability problem for the bandwidth broker (BB). We introduce the concept of the "pipe" as a viable solution that avoids the scalability problem while managing the Internet bandwidth efficiently. A threshold-based updating scheme for the pipe is used which minimizes the updating overhead for the BB while maintaining a high utilization for the pipe.
Failure of Cholestyramine to Prevent Bile Salt Injury to Mouse Gastric Mucosa

Abstract Bile salts have been implicated in the pathogenesis of gastritis and gastric ulcer. Because the bile salt binding agent cholestyramine has been suggested as a possible therapy for gastric ulcer, we studied the effects of cholestyramine, in the form of Questran, on bile salt-induced injury to mouse gastric mucosa. Solutions of taurocholate or of glycochenodeoxycholate, with or without added Questran, were instilled into the stomachs of fasted mice at p H 1, 3, 5, and 7. Taurocholate damaged the mucosa only at p H 1, whereas glycochenodeoxycholate caused injury at p H 1 and 3. Questran failed to prevent mucosal damage by either bile salt. The ineffectiveness of cholestyramine to prevent injury may be due to the nonionized fraction of bile salts at p H's below their p K α 's which will not be sequestered by the anion exchange resin. This phenomenon may help explain the insignificant effect of Questran treatment in promoting healing of gastric ulcers in a previous clinical trial.
A Concurrent Auction Model for Transmission Congestion Contracts

Network interactions in the electricity system create externalities that have precluded the development of a workable system of fully decentralized “physical” property rights for controlling use of the transmission system in an open access, competitive electricity market.2 Transmission congestion contracts provide a well-defined alternative mechanism to serve in the place of strictly physical property rights related to transmission usage. Any of a number of methods could provide an initial allocation of transmission congestion contracts. For instance, existing users might receive a designated set of contracts based on historical usage patterns, and then the remainder could be assigned to new users. With the availability of well defined transmission congestion contracts, it would be natural to employ an auction for allocating part or all of the contracts to allow for non-discriminatory access through a market mechanism.
A General Analytical Framework for Estimating the Production Function for Crops Using Irrigation Water

HE primary objective of this paper is to develop an analytic methodology which can serve as a basis to estimate the production function for crops using irrigation water. Within this methodology we will attempt to show how it is possible to impute a value to the irrigation water applied within any one irrigation cycle. A further objective is to develop a model to determine an optimum irrigation program which could bring into account varying water prices and changing commodity prices during the growing season.
Predicting older adults who return to the hospital or die within 30 days of emergency department care using the ISAR tool: subjective versus objective risk factors.

Background We sought to evaluate the ability of the Identification of Seniors At Risk (ISAR) tool to differentiate between older adult patients having a poor outcome within 30 days of emergency department (ED) care and those who do not. We compare prognostic accuracy of subjective versus objective risk factors. Methods 202 community-dwelling patients age 65 years and older presenting to two EDs were prospectively enrolled. Participants completed the six-question ISAR and objective testing (cognition, ambulation, vision). We reviewed electronic medical records for current medications, hospitalisations in the past six months, ED disposition, length of hospital stay, subsequent ED visits or inpatient admissions or death at 30 days. Participants were given a point for each risk factor present; subjective and objective risk factors were scored separately. We tested ability of individual risk factors and scores to predict a composite outcome of subsequent ED visit, postdischarge hospitalisation or death by day 30 after the index ED visit. We computed receiver operating curve area under the curves (AUC) to determine tool discrimination. Results 23% of participants had a poor 30-day outcome. The optimum subjective ISAR cut-off score for screening was ≥2, which was present in 84% of participants, had a sensitivity of 91% and specificity of 19%. Using the subjective ISAR tool, the AUC was 0.66. The optimum objective ISAR-related risk cut-off score for screening was ≥3, which was present in 82% of participants, had a sensitivity of 87% and specificity of 40%. Using the objective ISAR-related tool, the AUC was 0.69. Conclusions The self-reported ISAR tool did not discriminate well between older adults with or without 30-day hospital revisit or death. An optimum score of ≥2 would identify many older adults at no apparent increased risk of poor outcomes at 30 days. Using objective ISAR-related risk factors did not improve overall discrimination.
Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story; Elvis Presley: A Southern Life

Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley were undeniably Southern boys. But they were poor boys with hardscrabble backgrounds, little formal education, and limited social skills. Their shared experiences ...
Myosin light chain kinase transference induces myosin light chain activation and endothelial hyperpermeability

The actomyosin complex is the major cytoskeletal component that controls cell contraction. In this study, we investigated the effects of actomyosin interaction on endothelial barrier function and gap formation. Activated myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) protein was transferred into coronary venular endothelial cell (CVEC) monolayers. Uptake of the activated protein resulted in a significant shift in myosin light chain (MLC) from an unphosphorylated to a diphosphorylated form. In addition, MLCK induced a hyperpermeability response of the monolayer as measured by albumin transendothelial flux. Microscopic examination of MLCK-treated CVECs revealed widespread gap formation in the monolayer, loss of peripheral β-catenin, and increases in actin stress fibers. Inhibition of all of the above responses by a specific MLCK inhibitor suggests they are the direct result of exogenously added MLCK. These data suggest that activation of MLCK in CVECs causes phosphorylation of MLC and contraction of CVECs, resulting in gap formation and concomitant increases in permeability. This study uses a novel technique to measure the effects of an activated kinase on both its substrate and cellular morphology and function through direct transference into endothelial cells.
Research and analysis of diversity of Xinjiang hemorrhagic fever nature foci in the Tarim River, Xinjiang(I)

Objective To realize diversity of Xinjiang hemorrhagic fever natural foci in the Tarim River in Xinjiang.Methods According to the geographical features of the Tarim River, the studied sample plot of plant communities and soil condition were collected at the upper, middle and lower reaches in the Tarim River. The characteristic of the plant communities and soil type in different geological landscape were analyzed with ecological methods. Results In the Tarim River,Xinjiang hemorrhagic fever natural foci comprised marshland, grassy marshland, saline land, sandy saline desert and saline wind erosion desert, and the constitute and distribution of plant communities in these lands were consistent with the distribution of soil geological types. The community structure was rich diversity, and it changed with soil type. Conclusions The perfect plant community structure and rich species diversity in arid and semi-arid sandy saline desert are important factors that Xinjiang hemorrhagic fever could be continuously prevalent in Xinjiang hemorrhagic fever natural foci.
Social Identity and College Student Experiences in the United States: Introduction to the Issue

The experiences of Latino/as in higher education are more complex and nuanced than can be understood by overgeneralizing about all students of a particular race. As the introduction to a special issue on Latino/as who attend US institutions of higher education, we argue that multiple social identities in conjunction with race frame student experiences. Complicating the notion of a singular student experience, we encourage scholars to explore how different subpopulations of Latino/as experience higher education.
Lower Urogenital Tract Dysfunction in Men and Women

Publisher Summary The components of the lower urinary tract in both men and women are the bladder and the urethra. Gender-specific differences in anatomy predispose men and women to different conditions. Women have a shorter urethra (3–4 cm), making them more prone to urinary tract infections and incontinence. The male urethra is much longer and has four parts: the penile urethra, bulbous urethra (which passes through the scrotum), membranous urethra (located at the external urethral sphincter), and the prostatic urethra. Due to its length the male urethra is more prone than the female urethra to traumatic injury and stricture formation. Conditions of the prostate comprise a significant part of lower urogenital dysfunction in men. Previously, lower urinary tract symptoms in aging men, such as weak stream and urinary frequency, were thought to be exclusively as a consequence of an enlarged prostate and were referred to as “prostatism.” It is clear now that these symptoms are not only a consequence of an enlarging prostate and obstruction, but also the effects of aging on the lower urinary tract. Furthermore, as men and women age, the prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) increases. Paul Abrams has coined the phrase lower urinary tract symptoms to replace the misleading and gender-specific term “prostatism.” There are many classification systems for lower urinary tract dysfunction. One that is widely accepted is the International Continence Society (ICS) system. It is based on the distinction between the storage and voiding phases as well as between bladder and urethral function.
The Role and Potential of Surrogate Outcomes in Clinical Trials: Have We Made Any Progress in the Past Decade?

Randomized clinical trials are the standard method for evaluating new interventions or comparing existing ones. Trials which use clinical outcomes as the primary outcome can be large, require lengthy follow-up, and can be expensive. For these reasons, researchers have sought to use intermediate outcomes such as biomarkers as a substitute or surrogate for the clinical outcome. Over a decade ago, this practice had become common. Fleming and DeMets (Ann Intern Med 125:605–613, 1996) reported many cases where the use of a biomarker as a surrogate outcome failed to reliably assess the effect of the intervention, in some cases missing harmful effects including mortality. Recently, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reviewed the state of the art and came to similar conclusions that biomarkers have often proved to be unreliable as a surrogate [Committee on Qualifications of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease, Michael C, Ball J (eds) (2010) Evaluation of biomarkers and surrogate endpoints in chronic disease. National Academies Press, Washington]. They proposed that biomarkers must meet certain criteria including analytic validity, strong correlation with the clinical outcome and the ability to capture the full effects of the intervention. The use of a biomarker as a surrogate must be done so in the context of its intended use, and done so with great caution. While the IOM report further clarifies the necessary requirements of a potential biomarker as a surrogate, the report still recommends caution in using surrogate outcomes in final phases of intervention evaluation as did Fleming and DeMets (Ann Intern Med 125:605–613, 2004).
FTAs in the Americas

A substantial number of countries of the Americas, in addition to the United States, have free-trade agreements with each other, with countries from other continents, as well as being part of regional agreements. Canada and Mexico, the other parties to NAFTA, each have negotiated several FTAs although not all have significant environmental provisions — that is, those other than the exceptions related to GATT Article XX. With the exception of Mexico, countries that have negotiated trade agreements with the US or Canada have tended to include some environmental provisions in many of their other agreements, although Mexico has included provisions in some of its more recent FTAs. Historically, there were a number of regional agreements in Latin America aimed at economic integration, but until recently few have been effective at liberalizing trade to a significant degree and environmental measures were not a factor in their activities, although ALADI (Spanish acronym for Latin American Integration Association) did mention the environment as an area for potential further integration.1 It was only after NAFTA that Canada and Mexico (as well as the United States), followed by other hemispheric countries, became active in negotiating FTAs with, in some cases, environmental provisions.
Emergence of a Competence-Reducing Filamentous Phage from the Genome of Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1.

ABSTRACT Bacterial genomes commonly contain prophage sequences as a result of past infections with lysogenic phages. Many of these integrated viral sequences are believed to be cryptic, but prophage genes are sometimes coopted by the host, and some prophages may be reactivated to form infectious particles when cells are stressed or mutate. We found that a previously uncharacterized filamentous phage emerged from the genome of Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1 during a laboratory evolution experiment. This phage has a genetic organization similar to that of the Vibrio cholerae CTXϕ phage. The emergence of the ADP1 phage was associated with the evolution of reduced transformability in our experimental populations, so we named it the competence-reducing acinetobacter phage (CRAϕ). Knocking out ADP1 genes required for competence leads to resistance to CRAϕ infection. Although filamentous bacteriophages are known to target type IV pili, this is the first report of a phage that apparently uses a competence pilus as a receptor. A. baylyi may be especially susceptible to this route of infection because every cell is competent during normal growth, whereas competence is induced only under certain environmental conditions or in a subpopulation of cells in other bacterial species. It is possible that CRAϕ-like phages restrict horizontal gene transfer in nature by inhibiting the growth of naturally transformable strains. We also found that prophages with homology to CRAϕ exist in several strains of Acinetobacter baumannii. These CRAϕ-like A. baumannii prophages encode toxins similar to CTXϕ that might contribute to the virulence of this opportunistic multidrug-resistant pathogen. IMPORTANCE We observed the emergence of a novel filamentous phage (CRAϕ) from the genome of Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1 during a long-term laboratory evolution experiment. CRAϕ is the first bacteriophage reported to require the molecular machinery involved in the uptake of environmental DNA for infection. Reactivation and evolution of CRAϕ reduced the potential for horizontal transfer of genes via natural transformation in our experiment. Risk of infection by similar phages may limit the expression and maintenance of bacterial competence in nature. The closest studied relative of CRAϕ is the Vibrio cholerae CTXϕ phage. Variants of CRAϕ are found in the genomes of Acinetobacter baumannii strains, and it is possible that phage-encoded toxins contribute to the virulence of this opportunistic multidrug-resistant pathogen.
FRI0312 Predictors of Incident Episodes of Proteinuria among Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Background Lupus nephritis remains one of the most devastating SLE complications, occurring in over 50% of the patients. It is important to identify clinical conditions that precede nephritis for the purposes of patient care and to identify preventive strategies. Most previous studies of predictors of incident nephritis in SLE are cross-sectional or do not incorporate time-varying predictors. Objectives We leveraged a large clinical cohort which evaluated patients quarterly to identify fixed and time-varying predictors of lupus nephritis. Methods Since 2006, the urine protein/creatinine ratio was measured quarterly in patients in our SLE cohort. This analysis was based on cohort follow-up after 2006 in patients who did not have a history of diabetes and who did not have a prior episode of sustained elevated proteinuria, nor a history of nephritis, renal insufficiency, or failure. Among these patients, we defined an incident case of proteinuria as two or more measures of urine protein/creatinine (or 24-hour protein measure) greater than 0.5 in two visits separated by more than 30 days and less than 180 days, among patients with no prior episodes of proteinuria. We estimated rates of incident proteinuria in subgroups of patients defined by time-invariant and time-varying predictors. Results Among 895 patients included in the analysis, 840 (94%) were female, and 518 (58%) were Caucasian, 304 (34%) African-American, with mean age of 42 at the start of follow-up. We observed 58 incident cases of proteinura over a span of 4669 person-years of cohort follow-up. The overall rate of incident proteinuria was 12.4 per 1000 person-years. The Table shows the association between select predictors and the rate incident proteinuria. The rate was significantly lower among those of older age, and significantly higher among those who were not Caucasian. Among those with a history of low C3, the rate was 8 times higher, and highest among those with a recent measure of low C3. The rate among those prescribed hydroxychloroquine was similar to those not prescribed hydroxychloroquine. Among those taking medicine for hypertension, the rate among those prescribed ACE inhibitor or ARB was similar to the rate among those prescribed other treatments. Conclusions Older SLE patients who have not previously had renal involvement are at low risk for developing proteinuria. The highest rates of incident proteinuria were among those with recent low complement. There was not strong evidence that hydroxychloroquine or ACE inhibitor9s reduced the risk of proteinuria. Disclosure of Interest None declared
Block parallel programming for real-time applications on multi-core processors

This thesis presents a streaming block-parallel programming language for describing applications with hard real-time constraints and several transformations for parallelizing and mapping such applications to many-core architectures. The language parameterizes the data movement within the application in such a manner as to enable simple application analysis and rapid software development. Key enhancements for both programmer productivity and application analyzability include the use of native two-dimensional data streams to simplify image processing algorithms, flexible control distribution for intuitive and analyzable synchronous and asynchronous control, explicit data dependency edges for specifying limited parallelism, and multiple computation methods per kernel. The benefits of this application description are shown through the intuitive analyses and manipulations required to parallelize, buffer, and map such applications to a many-core architecture while insuring that they meet their real-time computation requirements. To evaluate this programming approach, a program analysis and manipulation framework and a cycle-accurate simulation environment were constructed. These were used to automatically analyze, parallelize, buffer, and execute a variety of test programs to ensure that they met their specified real-time constraints. The results suggest that this block-parallel programming approach is both easier to use and analyze than previous streaming programming models.
Forensic investigation on crane accidents

Crane accidents often result in the significant loss of assets and human lives. Forensic investigation on crane accidents is necessary to determine the root causes of the accidents and relevant liabilities of parties involved, and to recommend effective measures to prevent recurrence of similar accidents. Forensic investigation should meet the requirements of high professional standards in providing technical support to all kinds of litigations. This article reviews common failure modes and root causes of crane accidents, and presents investigation methodologies. Some typical crane accident cases (mobile crane toppling, hoist wire rope breakage and boom/jib collapse of tower crane) are studied and discussed to demonstrate the investigation practice.
A qualitative, interprofessional analysis of barriers to and facilitators of implementation of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Clostridium difficile prevention bundle using a human factors engineering approach.

Background Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is increasingly prevalent, severe, and costly. Adherence to infection prevention practices remains suboptimal. More effective strategies to implement guidelines and evidence are needed. Methods Interprofessional focus groups consisting of physicians, resident physicians, nurses, and health technicians were conducted for a quality improvement project evaluating adherence to the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) nationally mandated C difficile prevention bundle. Qualitative analysis with a visual matrix display identified barrier and facilitator themes guided by the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety model, a human factors engineering approach. Results Several themes, encompassing both barriers and facilitators to bundle adherence, emerged. Rapid turnaround time of C difficile polymerase chain reaction testing was a facilitator of timely diagnosis. Too few, poorly located, and cluttered sinks were barriers to appropriate hand hygiene. Patient care workload and the time-consuming process of contact isolation precautions were also barriers to adherence. Multiple work system components serve as barriers to and facilitators of adherence to the VA CDI prevention bundle among an interprofessional group of health care workers. Organizational factors appear to significantly influence bundle adherence. Conclusion Interprofessional perspectives are needed to identify barriers to and facilitators of bundle implementation, which is a necessary first step to address adherence to bundled infection prevention practices.
Cr(VI) reduction and physiological toxicity are impacted by resource ratio in Desulfovibrio vulgaris

Desulfovibrio spp. are capable of heavy metal reduction and are well-studied systems for understanding metal fate and transport in anaerobic environments. Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough was grown under environmentally relevant conditions (i.e., temperature, nutrient limitation) to elucidate the impacts on Cr(VI) reduction on cellular physiology. Growth at 20 °C was slower than 30 °C and the presence of 50 μM Cr(VI) caused extended lag times for all conditions, but once growth resumed the growth rate was similar to that without Cr(VI). Cr(VI) reduction rates were greatly diminished at 20 °C for both 50 and 100 μM Cr(VI), particularly for the electron acceptor limited (EAL) condition in which Cr(VI) reduction was much slower, the growth lag much longer (200 h), and viability decreased compared to balanced (BAL) and electron donor limited (EDL) conditions. When sulfate levels were increased in the presence of Cr(VI), cellular responses improved via a shorter lag time to growth. Similar results were observed between the different resource (donor/acceptor) ratio conditions when the sulfate levels were normalized (10 mM), and these results indicated that resource ratio (donor/acceptor) impacted D. vulgaris response to Cr(VI) and not merely sulfate limitation. The results suggest that temperature and resource ratios greatly impacted the extent of Cr(VI) toxicity, Cr(VI) reduction, and the subsequent cellular health via Cr(VI) influx and overall metabolic rate. The results also emphasized the need to perform experiments at lower temperatures with nutrient limitation to make accurate predictions of heavy metal reduction rates as well as physiological states in the environment.
TCP Startup Performance in Large Bandwidth Delay Networks

Next generation networks with large bandwidth and long delay pose a major challenge to TCP performance, especially during the startup period. In this paper we evaluate the performance of TCP Reno/Newreno, Vegas and Hoe's modification in large bandwidth delay networks. We propose a modified Slow-start mechanism, called Adaptive Start (Astart), to improve the startup performance in such networks. When a connection initially begins or re-starts after a coarse timeout, Astart adaptively and repeatedly resets the Slow-start Threshold (ssthresh) based on an eligible sending rate estimation mechanism proposed in TCP Westwood. By adapting to network conditions during the startup phase, a sender is able to grow the congestion window (cwnd) fast without incurring risk of buffer overflow and multiple losses. Simulation experiments show that Astart can significantly improve the link utilization under various bandwidth, buffer size and round-trip propagation times. The method avoids both under-utilization due to premature Slow- start termination, as well as multiple losses due to initially setting ssthresh too high, or increasing cwnd too fast. Experiments also show that Astart achieves good fairness and friendliness toward TCP NewReno. Lab measurements using a FreeBSD Astart implementation are also reported in this paper, providing further evidence of the gains achievable via Astart.
Antecedents and Correlates of Adolescent Employment: Race as a Moderator of Psychological Predictors:

Adolescent employment during high school has become the norm in the United States, but studies of associated outcomes have yielded mixed results. These discrepant findings may be partly attributabl...
94 Pu 240 and Its Spontaneous Fission

Measurements of spontaneous fission of $_{94}\mathrm{Pu}^{239}$ show that neutron irradiation of this substance forms a body with a high spontaneous-fission rate. This substance is with practical certainty $_{94}\mathrm{Pu}^{240}$ and has a spontaneous-fission rate of approximately 1.6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{6}$ fissions/g hr. $_{94}\mathrm{Pu}^{239}$ itself has a spontaneous-fission rate of the order of 40 fissions/g hr.
Operationen bei Rektumkarzinom

Bestimmung der Tumorlokalisation. Nutzlicherweise wird die Hohe der Tumorlokalisation durch digitale Austastung in Knie-Ellenbogen-Lage festgestellt, unter Verwendung eines Proktosigmoidoskops mit Einstellung des Tumorunterrands und Ablesen der entsprechenden Markierung auf dem Endoskop. Dies entspricht dem Abstand zwischen Analrand und Tumorunterrand. Es mus jedoch beachtet werden, das die Lange des Analkanals und nicht die der Rektumschleimhaut selbst gemessen wird, da sich die Rektumschleimhaut mit dem Epithel der Analhaut in Hohe der Linea dentata trifft. Diese liegt 2–3 cm oberhalb des Analrands und 1 cm unterhalb des Analsphinkters. Der Analkanal selbst ist etwa 4 cm lang. Alle nachfolgend genannten Mase sind auf den Analrand bezogen.