cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Screening Sigmoidoscopy: Can the Road to Colonoscopy Be Less Traveled?

In this issue, Imperiale and colleagues take a systematic approach to examining clinical and flexible sigmoidoscopy findings that identify patients who have the lowest risk for advanced adenomas in...
Synthetic circuit for exact adaptation and fold-change detection

Biological organisms use their sensory systems to detect changes in their environment. The ability of sensory systems to adapt to static inputs allows wide dynamic range as well as sensitivity to input changes including fold-change detection, a response that depends only on fold changes in input, and not on absolute changes. This input scale invariance underlies an important strategy for search that depends solely on the spatial profile of the input. Synthetic efforts to reproduce the architecture and response of cellular circuits provide an important step to foster understanding at the molecular level. We report the bottom-up assembly of biochemical systems that show exact adaptation and fold-change detection. Using a malachite green aptamer as the output, a synthetic transcriptional circuit with the connectivity of an incoherent feed-forward loop motif exhibits pulse generation and exact adaptation. A simple mathematical model was used to assess the amplitude and duration of pulse response as well as the parameter regimes required for fold-change detection. Upon parameter tuning, this synthetic circuit exhibits fold-change detection for four successive rounds of two-fold input changes. The experimental realization of fold-change detection circuit highlights the programmability of transcriptional switches and the ability to obtain predictive dynamical systems in a cell-free environment for technological applications.
Dos obras en balnearios

casas en la costa / Obras que pertenecen a un programa muy establecido, indiscutido por su situacion privilegiada: estar en el borde, en el limite mismo del territorio, una situacion exigente. Vivimos en un pais de montanas como Grecia, donde todos los santuarios y grandes ciudades estan referidos de alguna manera al mar. Vivimos en valles interiores, cercados con horizontes proximos, altos, en calles amuralladas o cercadas por arboles que se tragan el espacio. La llegada a la costa al encuentro de ese horizonte lejano sin medida, de profundidad infinita, es una linea en tension, inalterable, permanente, cuando se muestra. Vacio sin habitar, pero una superficie con vida propia, siempre cambiante, variando de opaco a brillante; de color saturado al reflejar todos los dibujos y colores del cielo o jugar con el sol todas las posibilidades de la luz. Una extension abierta que nos fascina con su temperamento enigmatico. Una casa que se instala en este borde destacado, es un gran desafio, para enfrentarlo con humildad y sobriedad.
Innovative blended delivery and learning: exploring student choice, experience, and level of satisfaction in a hyflex course

Blended education is an approach that is becoming more prevalent in education. This study explores student choice, experience, and level of satisfaction in a unique blended approach, the hyflex model. With this model, students are responsible for making decisions regarding the best blend of online and face-to-face activities. The study findings suggest that when given the opportunity to choose the best blend, students will select activities based on flexibility, convenience, and learning style and needs. As such, when well developed, the hyflex model can ensure choice, a more active approach to learning, and a high level of course satisfaction.
Appendix and Bone Marrow Cell Synergism in Early Antibody Response to Sheep Erythrocytes

With regard to the problem of whether the rabbit appendix is a central or peripheral lymphoid organ, the evidence from our laboratory indicates that the first possibility is the more likely. Our recent experiments have shown that the early response of rabbits to sheep red blood cells (SRBC) requires the presence of both appendix and bone marrow cells.
Thalamic Locus Mediates Hypoxic Inhibition of Breathing in Fetal Sheep

Koos, Brian J., Andrew Chau, Masahiko Matsuura, Oscar Punla, and Lawrence Kruger. Thalamic locus mediates hypoxic inhibition of breathing in fetal sheep. J. Neurophysiol. 79: 2383–2393, 1998. The e...
A zip code study of socioeconomic, demographic, and household gendered influence on the residential energy sector

Abstract This study investigates the influence of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the population on residential energy utilization patterns at the ZIP code level in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. The City of San Antonio, Texas is the seventh most populous city in the United States and second in the State. Variables analyzed include gender, median age, median income, educational attainment, occupancy, population density, total energy, per capita energy and per home energy. Statistically significant relationships between variables are discovered and highlighted in support of public policy development to ensure long-term, and cost-effective energy management.
Synthesis of activated 3′-amino-3′-deoxy-2-thio-thymidine, a superior substrate for the nonenzymatic copying of nucleic acid templates

We present a scalable synthesis of 3′-amino-3′-deoxy-2-thio-thymidine-5′-phosphoro-2-methylimidazolide, an activated monomer that can copy adenosine residues in nucleic acid templates rapidly without a polymerase. The sulfur atom substitution enhances the rate of template copying by 5-fold compared with the 3′-amino-3′-deoxy-T monomer, while the 3′-amino monomers exhibit a 2- to 30-fold enhancement compared with their ribonucleotide counterparts.
A new method to identify earthquake swarms applied to seismicity near the San Jacinto Fault, California

Understanding earthquake clustering in space and time is important but also challenging because of complexities in earthquake patterns and the large and diverse nature of earthquake catalogues. Swarms are of particular interest because they likely result from physical changes in the crust, such as slow slip or fluid flow. Both swarms and clusters resulting from aftershock sequences can span a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Here we test and implement a new method to identify seismicity clusters of varying sizes and discriminate them from randomly occurring background seismicity. Our method searches for the closest neighbouring earthquakes in space and time and compares the number of neighbours to the background events in larger space/time windows. Applying our method to California's San Jacinto Fault Zone (SJFZ), we find a total of 89 swarm-like groups. These groups range in size from 0.14 to 7.23 km and last from 15 min to 22 d. The most striking spatial pattern is the larger fraction of swarms at the northern and southern ends of the SJFZ than its central segment, which may be related to more normal-faulting events at the two ends. In order to explore possible driving mechanisms, we study the spatial migration of events in swarms containing at least 20 events by fitting with both linear and diffusion migration models. Our results suggest that SJFZ swarms are better explained by fluid flow because their estimated linear migration velocities are far smaller than those of typical creep events while large values of best-fitting hydraulic diffusivity are found.
Advancing Toward Sustainability Goals at the University of California, Irvine

The carbon reduction and sustainability goals of the University of California, Irvine require increased penetrations of intermittent renewables on the campus microgrid. These increased intermittent renewables create operational challenges related to conventional energy resources. To study these operational challenges, a holistic campus resource dispatch model was developed. The campus energy resources consist of a microgrid with ten 12 kV circuits emanating from one substation, 4 MW of solar photovoltaic, a central combined heat and power plant (19 MW), a district heating and cooling system, and an electric chiller-thermal energy storage system that provide electricity, heat, and cooling. The holistic model includes dynamic models of the combined heat and power (CHP) plant, the electric chiller-thermal energy storage system, and various renewable resources. In addition, models for complimentary technologies were also created to investigate their potential to increase renewable penetration on the campus microgrid. These include battery energy storage, demand response, and energy efficiency. Simulations with the holistic campus resource model revealed several important conclusions: (1) Regardless of renewable resource type, impacts on the CHP plant remains the same, i.e., increased renewable penetrations create reduced CHP plant capacity factors; (2) Local two axis CPV provides lower costs of electricity than local fixed PV at renewable penetrations below 23% after which local fixed PV provides a lower cost of electricity (3) Introduction of a battery into the campus microgrid achieves higher renewable penetrations and improves the operation of CHP plant; and (4) Electric energy storage does not always prove cost effective (i.e., At low renewable penetrations, electric energy storage is not cost effective; At 17% renewable penetration, electric energy storage begins to become cost effective).© 2014 ASME
Make Every Frame Count

This paper presents a case study of the possibilities of slow photojournalism. Over the past decade, award-winning photojournalist David Burnett has used a 60-year-old Speed Graphic film camera to document US political events, several Olympic Games, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, among other projects. His photographs reveal a significantly different aesthetic from contemporary photojournalism and he is celebrated for the perspective his analog photographs offer. This analysis is based on two points of examination: first, a textual analysis of articles and videos discussing the work; and second, a semiotic analysis of the imagery. The examination suggests Burnett’s photo aesthetic signifies a longing for an imagined analog, journalistic utopia of yore, where individual journalists had the time and freedom to put care and attention into their work.
Unusual bleeding during pregnancy: report of a case due to hypoprothrombinemia and hypoproconvertinemia.

A case of transient hypoprothrombinemia and hypoproconvertinemia associated with bleeding and occurring during the eighteenth and nineteenth weeks of a twin pregnancy has been described. The coagulation defect responded to intravenous K1, therapy but not to water soluble K. Death of one fetus and complete infarction of its placenta occurred during the eighteenth week. It is suggested that these events, or their cause, may have adversely influenced liver cell function and precipitated the severe deficiencies of prothrombin and proconvertin.
Remix: online detection and repair of cache contention for the JVM

As ever more computation shifts onto multicore architectures, it is increasingly critical to find effective ways of dealing with multithreaded performance bugs like true and false sharing. Previous approaches to fixing false sharing in unmanaged languages have employed highly-invasive runtime program modifications. We observe that managed language runtimes, with garbage collection and JIT code compilation, present unique opportunities to repair such bugs directly, mirroring the techniques used in manual repairs. We present Remix, a modified version of the Oracle HotSpot JVM which can detect cache contention bugs and repair false sharing at runtime. Remix's detection mechanism leverages recent performance counter improvements on Intel platforms, which allow for precise, unobtrusive monitoring of cache contention at the hardware level. Remix can detect and repair known false sharing issues in the LMAX Disruptor high-performance inter-thread messaging library and the Spring Reactor event-processing framework, automatically providing 1.5-2x speedups over unoptimized code and matching the performance of hand-optimization. Remix also finds a new false sharing bug in SPECjvm2008, and uncovers a true sharing bug in the HotSpot JVM that, when fixed, improves the performance of three NAS Parallel Benchmarks by 7-25x. Remix incurs no statistically-significant performance overhead on other benchmarks that do not exhibit cache contention, making Remix practical for always-on use.
Chapter 6 Dispute Settlement, Compliance and Domestic Politics

Many functionalist models of international cooperation rely on punishment by states to enforce cooperation. However, the empirical record suggests that such state-based accounts offer an incomplete explanation of international trade cooperation. We argue that when theoretical approaches are adjusted to incorporate aspects of domestic politics and institutions, two key insights emerge. First, political pressure from domestic industries can be key in creating demand for violations of trade agreements. Since such pressure is affected by stochastic shocks, the temptation of leaders to commit trade violations can vary over time. The presence of a dispute settlement procedure (DSP) provides flexibility that allows leaders to respond to such pressure by occasionally committing violations and then compensating their trading partners, if the DSP finds that the violation was not subject to exceptions in the trading agreement. This flexibility enhances the willingness of leaders to sign cooperative agreements in the first place. Second, domestic politics can function as an enforcement mechanism for ensuring compliance with international trade agreements and DSP rulings. Voters can condition their electoral decisions on whether their leader complies with socially beneficial trade agreements. The DSP plays an important role in this account as an information-provider. For voters to hold their leaders accountable, they need information about what choices their leader has made and whether his actions constitute compliance with an international agreement. The DSP provides transparency and reduces uncertainty about these factors.
Little (X), Malcolm

Born: May 19, 1925, Omaha, NE Education: Junior high school, Lansing, MI Died: February 21, 1965, New York, NY The most influential black nationalist of the 1960s, Malcolm rose from poverty and delinquency. While incarcerated, he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI), was national spokesman until parting with imam Elijah Muhammad, and founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964. Using Muhammad Speaks , mass rallies, or mainstream media, he spoke out. Calling whites devils, Malcolm censured the US “white power structure” for racism, colonialism, and imperialism. He condemned the civil rights movement for black self-hatred, thus seeking racial integration. Rather blacks must disavow a slave mentality and join NOI, which stressed blacks’ culture and advancing their businesses, families, schools, and communities. Citing racist attacks on peaceful demonstrators and police brutality, he urged self-defense “by any means necessary.” He was both respected and reviled. Many civil rights activists revered him, some organizing the Revolutionary Action Movement (1963). Others embraced OAAU and, in the wake of his assassination, formed vanguards of the Black Power and Pan-African movements. Still, many in the press considered Malcolm a demagogue who espoused race hate and violence, for example blaming him for riots that engulfed New York and six other cities in 1964. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) became a best-selling nonfiction book.
Part II: Decadence in Architecture

I analyze four buildings that symbolize the decadent history of the city more broadly. The four buildings contain profound layers and expressions of the past and the future, and all of them continue to exist in some way, shape, or form in the contemporary city. By exploring their histories and their differing statuses in the present, I shed light on how time and space interact in the unique context of Rio de Janeiro. Elaborating a cultural rather than architectural perspective, I analyze the Hotel Gloria, the Copacabana Palace, the Ministry Building, and the Maracana stadium. Each building, in a different way, contains and reflects moments of the city’s history and critiques the dominant discourse of “progress” that has been ever-present in the city since 1889.
Consortial Leadership Toward Large-Scale Change

Many funders, policymakers, and higher education stakeholders are interested in bringing to scale fundamental changes in higher education (Kezar, 2011; Zemsky, 2013). Yet academe has a history of i...
Review of Sequential Logic Circuits

This is the first chapter that illustrates the proper logic design technique that will be used until the rest of the book: how to develop architectural blocks using timing diagrams, and how to build a controller from a timing diagram to govern data flow.
David Oliver: "Progressive dwindling," frailty, and realistic expectations.

Relatives of sick older patients have an understandable need to know why their loved ones are deteriorating or failing to recover, or exactly why they died. This can lead to misunderstandings, formal complaints, fraught meetings, or upsetting inquests. Over the years I’ve seen my share of this in my own practice. I’ve also worked on numerous cases as an independent investigator or expert witness. In some cases aspects of care were poor, sometimes indefensibly so. And even in someone with serious health problems, failings in care can worsen decline or cause avoidable harm and distress. Often, however, the medical care was good or exemplary, communication was open and frequent, but still the complaints and misunderstandings came. …
FINANCIALIZATION AND INVESTMENT: A SURVEY OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

An expanding literature analyses the implications of the postâ€ 1980 expansion of finance in advanced economies â€“ a process summarized as â€˜financializationâ€™ â€“ for capital accumulation. This paper surveys the empirical literature on financialization and investment to take stock of where we are and to identify questions for further research. Because â€˜financializationâ€™ is widely recognized to be ambiguously defined, I first introduce empirical indicators of financialization in this literature. This categorization elucidates three approaches to measuring financialization in the context of investment. The first two approaches emphasize rising income flows between nonfinancial corporations (NFCs) and finance: first, growth in NFCsâ€™ financial incomes and, second, growth in NFCsâ€™ payments to creditors and shareholders. Rising financial profits are, notably, widely used to suggest financial assets and incomes â€˜crowd outâ€™ physical investment. I contend that these flowâ€ based indicators of financialization capture important relationships between changes in firm financial behaviour and investment, but also raise questions about determinants underlying NFCsâ€™ changing portfolio and financing decisions. The third approach to defining financialization emphasizes the bestâ€ developed behavioural explanation linking financialization to reduced investment: shareholder value orientation. In future research, scope remains for further attention to behavioural drivers of the empirical trends summarizing financialization.
Thermal Properties and Phonon Spectral Characterization of Synthetic Boron Phosphide for High Thermal Conductivity Applications

Heat dissipation is an increasingly critical technological challenge in modern electronics and photonics as devices continue to shrink to the nanoscale. To address this challenge, high thermal conductivity materials that can efficiently dissipate heat from hot spots and improve device performance are urgently needed. Boron phosphide is a unique high thermal conductivity and refractory material with exceptional chemical inertness, hardness, and high thermal stability, which holds high promises for many practical applications. So far, however, challenges with boron phosphide synthesis and characterization have hampered the understanding of its fundamental properties and potential applications. Here, we describe a systematic thermal transport study based on a synergistic synthesis-experimental-modeling approach: we have chemically synthesized high-quality boron phosphide single crystals and measured their thermal conductivity as a record-high 460 W/mK at room temperature. Through nanoscale ballistic transpor...
Studies on Oberonia 2 (Orchidaceae: Malaxideae): Oberonia aureolabris , a new species discovered in cultivation

Oberonia aureolabris sp. nov . from western Java is described, having been studied using light and scanning electron microscopy. It is distinguished by a panduriform inflated disc, relatively short and widely separated epichile lobes on the lip, more or less equal length of the floral bracts over the entire floriferous portion of the inflorescence and orange colour.
It's not what I expected: The association between dual-earner couples' met expectations for the division of paid and family labor and well-being

Abstract The impact of dual-earner couples' unequal division of paid and family labor after the transition to parenthood is inconsistently linked to well-being outcomes. We argue that this relationship can be better understood by examining the congruence between the post-child division of labor and pre-child expectation for the division of labor. Based on a met expectations framework, this idea was tested with 137 dual-earner heterosexual couples with young children. Hypotheses were testing using polynomial regression analyses with well-being considered in both affective (career, marital, and family satisfaction) and health-related (depressive and physical health symptoms) terms. Results suggested that congruence in the paid labor and childcare domain mattered most for wives' well-being, whereas congruence with household labor mattered most for husbands' well-being. Crossover analyses revealed a similar trend in that wives' expectations-division of paid labor congruence was significantly related to husband's well-being and husbands' expectations-division of household labor congruence was significantly related to wives' well-being. Hypotheses were also tested with pre-child desires for division of labor instead of pre-child expectations. The pattern of results was similar albeit stronger for expectations. Implications include the importance of comprehensively assessing division of labor and the fact that pre-child attitudes are relevant to post-child outcomes.
Physical security assessment with convolutional neural network transfer learning

Deep learning techniques have demonstrated the ability to perform a variety of object recognition tasks using visible imager data; however, deep learning has not been implemented as a means to autonomously detect and assess targets of interest in a physical security system. We demonstrate the use of transfer learning on a convolutional neural network (CNN) to significantly reduce training time while keeping detection accuracy of physical security relevant targets high. Unlike many detection algorithms employed by video analytics within physical security systems, this method does not rely on temporal data to construct a background scene; targets of interest can halt motion indefinitely and still be detected by the implemented CNN. A key advantage of using deep learning is the ability for a network to improve over time. Periodic retraining can lead to better detection and higher confidence rates. We investigate training data size versus CNN test accuracy using physical security video data. Due to the large number of visible imagers, significant volume of data collected daily, and currently deployed human in the loop ground truth data, physical security systems present a unique environment that is well suited for analysis via CNNs. This could lead to the creation of algorithmic element that reduces human burden and decreases human analyzed nuisance alarms.
Synthesis and Characterization of Li4Ti5O12 Anode Materials with Enhanced High-Rate Performance in Lithium-Ion Batteries

Li4Ti5O12 (LTO) represents a promising anode material for lithium ion batteries, however, it suffers from limitations associated with poor intrinsic electron conductivity as well as moderate ionic conductivity. Hence, to achieve the goal of creating LTO anodes with improved high-rate performance, we have put forth a number of targeted fundamental strategies. Herein we discuss the roles of controllably tuning (i) morphology, (ii) attachment modalities of carbon, and (iii) ion doping of the LTO material. In addition, we also demonstrated in situ studies of lithiation-driven structural transformations in LTO via a combination of X-ray absorption spectroscopy and ab initio calculations, which have been proven to be powerful tools to probe the negligible volume change and extraordinary stability of LTO upon repeated charge/discharge cycles.
From communism to anti-communism: photographs from the Boris Souvarine collection at the Graduate Institute, Geneva

The photomontage on the cover of this publication serves as a pictorial entree into the contents therein: photographs taken of Petrograd workers’ demonstrations in April and June of 1917; of delega...
Transarterial Radioembolization (TARE)

Transarterial radioembolization (TARE) refers to the delivery of radioactive microspheres directly into an artery that perfuses a tumor or tumor-bearing tissue. In current clinical practice, radioembolization is employed almost exclusively for liver tumors, which include primary liver tumors such as hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as metastatic tumors to the liver. The radioactive microspheres become lodged within and around the tumor, resulting in tumor cell death through the effects of radiation. TARE is an outpatient procedure that provides favorable and often dramatic clinical outcomes across the spectrum of hepatic tumors. The procedure is well tolerated with few side effects.
Adding ACE inhibitors or ARBs to standard therapy for stable ischemic heart disease

Are there clinical advantages to augmenting standard therapy for stable ischemic heart disease with an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB)?
Ivan Illich’s Philosophy of Technology: Introduction

Ivan Mich — philosopher, historian, educator, and social critic — was born in Vienna, Austria, on September 4, 1926. In the Fall term of 1990, the Penn State Science, Technology, and Society Program organized a symposium on Illich’s thought to celebrate his fifth year as our colleague and in anticipation of his sixty-fifth birthday in 1991. Rustum Roy put the idea in motion by urging several members of the STS faculty and invited guests to prepare informal talks on the key books in the Mich corpus and the major themes explored in them.
Gradual Variations and Partial Differential Equations

Numerically solving partial differential equations (PDE) has made a significant impact on science and engineering since the last century. The finite difference method and finite elements method are two main methods for numerical PDEs. This chapter presents a new method that uses gradually varied functions to solve partial differential equations, specifically in groundwater flow equations. In this chapter, we first introduce basic partial differential equations including elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic differential equations and the brief descriptions of their numerical solving methods. Second, we establish a mathematical model based on gradually varied functions for parabolic differential equations, then we use this method for groundwater data reconstruction. This model can also be used to solve elliptic differential equations. Lastly, we present a case study for solving hyperbolic differential equations using our new method.
Large-Scale Systems: Optimality vs. Reliability

Optimal control systems may become unstable if subject to structural perturbations whereby parts of the system are disconnected (and again connected) during operation. Multi-level schemes for controlling large-scale linear systems are proposed in this work, which provide a trade-off between reliability and optimality. By treating the interconnections among subsystems as perturbation terms, a two-level control strategy is developed. Local controls are used to optimize the decoupled subsystems with respect to quadratic costs, and global controls are applied to minimize the effects of interconnections. Although this control scheme results in a sub- optimal performance, it is inherently reliable.
High Self-Efficacy Is Associated with Prescription Contraceptive Use

Abstract Objectives In the United States, 45% of pregnancies continue to be unintended. Although many previous studies have focused on external barriers to contraceptive use such as cost or access, fewer studies have evaluated internal barriers such as individual characteristics. We hypothesize that high self-efficacy for contraception will be associated with use of more effective contraceptive methods. Study Design The analytic sample is 861 privately insured Pennsylvania women aged 18 to 40 years not intending pregnancy for 12 months at enrollment. Contraceptive self-efficacy (high vs. low) was measured using an eight-item scale. The association of self-efficacy with prescription contraceptive use was determined using multivariable logistic regression adjusting for future pregnancy intention, history of unintended pregnancy, number of live births, non-White race, frequency of sexual intercourse, marital status, and age group. Results Prescription contraceptive use was higher among those with high self-efficacy (adjusted odds ratio, 1.75; 95% confidence interval, 1.29–2.37). Conclusions Women with high self-efficacy for contraception had an increased use of prescription contraceptive methods compared with nonprescription methods. Strategies for encouraging effective contraceptive choices in women with low contraceptive self-efficacy should be further studied.
Increasing Leisure Reading Among University Students Using E-readers with Audio

This article reports on a study investigating leisure reading among university students using Kindle devices. The study employed a pre-post reading engagement survey of a cohort of twenty-one college students. Students participated in the study by completing self-reported surveys before and after a semester-long reading engagement program. The program involved preloaded audio and e-books on Kindle Fire devices, giving students the option to read, listen, or read and listen simultaneously. The students were selected by their enrollment in either a reading improvement class or a comparative literature class contained within a multilingual student course cluster. All students either struggled with English language skills, based on SAT scores, or were ESL students. Students indicated in the presurvey results that they spent less than one hour weekly reading material. In the postsurvey results, analysis shows that students were more interested in recreational reading materials, noting that they were likely or very likely to read or listen to books outside of class material in the future.
From Political Economy to Economics and Back Again

The study of the economy, which used to be called political economy changed to economics and the term political economy fell into disfavor. More recently, the term has experienced a revival, although not necessarily referring to the same thing as economics. It is argued in this paper that the term economics should be replaced with the earlier term political economy. To do so, the paper describes how the name change occurred and how the term returned, how political economy is distinguished from economics, the change in the nature of the study of economies that accompanied—though not precisely—the change in the name, the problems caused by these changes, and the reasons for the change.
Alpha-7 nicotinic receptor allosteric modulator PNU120596 prevents lipopolysaccharide-induced anxiety, cognitive deficit and depression-like behaviors in mice

Abstract Neuroinflammation is often associated with the development of major depressive disorder (MDD)-related symptoms. Previous studies have indicated that activation of glial cells, upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines and dysregulation of adrenergic system in the central nervous system (CNS) could be the key mediators to modulate depression-related behaviors after peripheral immune activation. Central α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR) has a role in the regulation of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. The present study determined the effects of PNU120596, α7 nAChR positive allosteric modulator (PAM), on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced anxiety, cognitive deficit, and depression-like behaviors in mice. These behaviors were evaluated 24 h after LPS (1 mg/kg) administration using elevated plus-maze, Y-maze, and forced swim test, respectively. The effects of PNU120596 on mRNA of neuroinflammatory markers and norepinephrine (NE) level in behaviorally-relevant brain regions such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex were examined. PNU120596 administration (1 or 4 mg/kg) showed anxiolytic, pro-cognitive, and antidepressant-like effects by preventing LPS-induced behavioral abnormalities. Following LPS treatment, PNU120596 hindered activation markers of the microglia and astrocytes (cluster of differentiation molecule 11b and glial fibrillary acidic protein) and upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1 beta and tumor necrosis factor-alpha in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. NE level that was reduced by peripheral LPS challenge was normalized by PNU120596 effects in both brain regions. Overall, the results in this study indicate that activation of α7 nAChR by PAM effectively prevents LPS-induced anxiety, cognitive deficit, and depression-like behaviors and regulates relevant neuroinflammatory markers in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
DEVELOPING A STATISTICAL LITERACY ASSESSMENT FOR THE MODERN INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS COURSE

The purpose of this study was to develop the Basic Literacy In Statistics (BLIS) assessment for students in an introductory statistics course, at the postsecondary level, that includes, to some extent, simulation-based methods. The definition of statistical literacy used in the development of the assessment was the ability to read, understand, and communicate statistical information. Multiple instruments were available to assess students in introductory statistics courses; however, there were no assessments available that focused on statistical literacy. Evidence of reliability and validity were collected during the development of the assessment. Evidence of reliability and validity was high; however, more items with high difficulty levels could increase the precision in estimating ability estimates for higher achieving students. First published November 2018 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives
High-Terrace Chert-Gravel Deposits in the Toledo Vicinity, Chase County, Kansas

This study examines high-terrace chert-gravel deposits preserved in several locations near and north of Toledo at the eastern edge of the Flint Hills in Chase County, Kansas. High-terrace gravel deposits are situated in ascending steps north of the Cottonwood River valley at three levels from approximately 90 to 150 feet (×28-45 m) above the Cottonwood River channel. All deposits contain exotic quartzite pebbles and represent the Old Osage River, which gradually shifted southward as it eroded into the modern valley. Assuming a late Pliocene age for the highest terrace gives a vertical incision rate of 1.5 cm/1000 years and a lateral migration rate of 2.2 m/1000 years. The Toledo vicinity provides confirmation for the asymmetric history of valley incision presumably due to regional crustal tilting downward to the south.
“I Know It When I See It”: Constructing Emotion and Emotional Labor in Social Justice News

This exploratory study examines the roles journalists rely on when covering social justice topics and what these role conceptions reveal about emotion and self expression values in news production....
Partisanship and Autocratization: Polarization, Power Asymmetry, and Partisan Social Identities in Turkey

Although theories of partisanship were developed for the democratic context, partisanship can be important in electoral autocracies as well. We use survey data to analyze partisanship in an elector...
Genome-wide association study of grain mold resistance in sorghum association panel as affected by inoculation with Alternaria alternata alone and Alternaria alternata, Fusarium thapsinum, and Curvularia lunata combined

A total of 377 lines from Sorghum Association Panel (SAP) grouped into 10 subpopulations based on eight phenotypic traits, including flag leaf width, terminal branch length, flag leaf height, and flowering time and genetic data were evaluated for grain mold resistance by inoculating them with Alternaria alternata alone, a mixture of A. alternata, Fusarium thapsinum, and Curvularia lunata, and untreated water-sprayed control during 2010, 2013–2015 growing seasons at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Farm, Burleson County, Texas. Each accession was evaluated at least twice. Eleven accessions exhibited grain mold severity ratings of 2 or less, indicating that they were resistant to highly resistant to the disease when challenged with A. alternata alone, 7 lines identified as such when inoculated with a mixture of A. alternata, F. thapsinum, and C. lunata, and 17 resistant lines were identified under the untreated control. Three lines PI533871, PI576130, and PI656036 exhibited resistant to highly resistant response to grain mold across treatments. When the 10 subpopulations were compared for disease response, accessions within subpopulation 4 had the lowest overall grain mold severity ratings, indicating that this subpopulation (zerazera/caudatum racial type) harbors genes that may contribute to grain mold resistance. A genome-wide association study with over 79,000 single-nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) loci from a publicly available genotype by sequencing dataset available for the (SAP) lines was conducted to identify genomic regions associated with grain mold resistance response based on the individual and combined treatments. In most cases, the top-scoring SNPs were mapped to the nearest or a nearby annotated gene with precedence for a role in host defense.
Improving early stage system design under the uncertainty in reliability-wise structure

This paper is concerned with system reliability improvement at as early as the system's embodiment design stage. Design decisions made at this stage, including component reliability specifications,...
Beam gap transient analysis and mitigations in high-current storage rings for an electron-ion collider

The U.S. electron ion collider will utilize high current electron and ion storage rings with many bunches and large rf systems. Because of the dissimilarity of the two rings, the rf transients created by gaps or variations in the current distributions will be very different in the two rings. These transients cause a shift in the synchronous phase of the beams as a function of rf bucket position, can impact the luminosity through shifts in longitudinal position of the IP, will affect the performance of the rf and LLRF control loops, and may require significant rf power overhead to control. A machine design that uses superconducting crab cavities will also have sensitivity to gap transients and synchronous phase variations along the bunch train with variations in crab cavity voltage seen by each bunch, since the high $Q$ of the crab cavities precludes modulating them to compensate for the time of arrival shifts caused by the gap transients in the main rf systems. All these effects make the problem of managing gap transients crucial to the operation of the EIC. This work presents methods to study the dynamics of the rf and LLRF systems for these heavily beam loaded facilities. An illustrative machine design example is presented and used to investigate the expected magnitudes of the rf gap transients, and exploration of various possible remedies to match the gap transients in the two dissimilar EIC rings. In addition to the study of the power required and gap transients, this work also estimates longitudinal coupled-bunch instabilities due to the baseline cavity fundamental impedance. The work is motivated to emphasize the importance of tools and methods to estimate these effects as part of the early design phase of the Electron-Ion Collider or any high current storage ring design.
Risk factors for postoperative blood transfusion after shoulder arthroplasty

PurposeTo identify the effect of surgical indication, patient factors, and perioperative characteristics on transfusion after shoulder arthroplasty (SA).MethodsShoulder arthroplasties for osteoarth...
An evaluation of temperature stability and resistance in neonatal ventilator circuits.

Background Gas conditioning minimizes complications associated with invasive ventilation of neonates. Poorly conditioned gas contributes to humidity deficit, facilitates condensate pools, and contributes to safety events. The specific aim was to objectively quantify the temperature drop across the unheated portion of a neonatal circuit and the impact condensation has to resistance to flow in the ventilator circuit. Methods Ventilator circuits and filters were obtained, assembled according to manufacturer recommendations, and operational verification procedures were performed prior to data collection. A neonatal test lung was connected to each Servo-I ventilator with the following settings: pressure control IMV mode; inspiratory pressure: 14 cm H2O to achieve an exhaled tidal volume of 6.0 mL; PEEP: 5 cm H2O; pressure support: 5 cm H2O, FIO2: 0.21; set frequency 40/min; and inspiratory time: 0.4 s. The Fisher and Paykel MR850 and ChonchaTherm Neptune heaters were set at a temperature of 40°C. To evaluate both systems under similar conditions, the ChonchaTherm Neptune heater humidity control was set to midline. Heaters were turned on simultaneously and given 1 h to equilibrate. Readings for room temperature, airway temperature at the patient connection, airway resistance, exhaled tidal volume, and direct observation of circuit condensation and (or) pooling were recorded hourly for a 48-h period. Summary statistics were calculated for the variables of interest. Results Mean (±SD) air temperature was 26.3°C (±1.4) for the Fisher & Paykel MR850 system and 26.2°C (±1.5), for the ChonchaTherm Neptune system. Mean (±SD) airway resistance was 229.3 cm H2O/L/s (±81.0) for the Fisher & Paykel system and 196.2 cm H2O/L/s (±39.4) for the ChonchaTherm Neptune system. Mean (±SD) tidal volume for the Fisher & Paykel MR850 system was 6.5 mL (±0.4), and for the ChonchaTherm Neptune system was 7.2 mL (±0.6). Conclusion Circuit condensate increased tidal volume delivery and airway resistance. Temperature at the patient connection was lower than the temperature monitored by the system 12 inches distally, which can negatively impact gas conditioning.
Strategic Cost Management around Loan Financing

This paper examines how, if at all, managers engage in real cost management around loan financing. Compared with the matched control firms, loan financing firms reduce operating costs during pre-financing periods and exhibit an increase in their cost levels post financing. Moreover, cost management is asymmetric. Loan financing firms experiencing a sales decline manage cost downward to a greater extent than those experiencing a sales increase. In addition, the level of operating costs is negatively associated with the intensity of covenants that are based on earnings. The cost reversion post financing is not driven by financing firms’ working capital constraints, investment expenditure, sales growth or financial constraint. Portfolio analyses on buy-and-hold stock returns show that the benefits of loan financing outweigh the costs of deviating from past cost behavior. Results do not support earnings management behavior through accrual, overproduction, or abnormal asset sales. Overall, results suggest that managers engage in real cost management to improve cash flow and their actions are shaped by banks’ preferences.
Methods for Host-Based Intrusion Detection with Deep Learning

Host-based Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS) automatically detect events that indicate compromise by adversarial applications. HIDS are generally formulated as analyses of sequences of system events such as bash commands or system calls. Anomaly-based approaches to HIDS leverage models of normal (aka baseline) system behavior to detect and report abnormal events, and have the advantage of being able to detect novel attacks. In this paper we develop a new method for anomaly-based HIDS using deep learning predictions of sequence-to-sequence behavior in system calls. Our proposed method, called the ALAD algorithm, aggregates predictions at the application level to detect anomalies. We investigate the use of several deep learning architectures, including WaveNet and several recurrent networks. We show that ALAD empowered with deep learning significantly outperforms previous approaches. We train and evaluate our models using an existing dataset, ADFA-LD, and a new dataset of our own construction, PLAID. As deep learning models are black box in nature we use an alternate approach, allotaxonographs, to characterize and understand differences in baseline vs.~attack sequences in HIDS datasets such as PLAID.
Product Moment Correlation

The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient is an index of the degree of linear relationship between two variables. For two variables X and Y the correlation r is computed where r can be interpreted as the predicted standard deviation difference in Y for two observations that are different by one standard deviation in X. Rules of thumb for interpreting r are that population values of r = 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 (positive or negative) can be viewed as small, medium, and large effects, respectively. The significance of r in a sample of n observations can be tested using values from Student's t distribution with n–2 degrees of freedom. In general, r can range from −1 to +1. However, many factors can influence the magnitude of r, including nonlinear relationships, restrictions on the range of variables, dichotomization or unequal distributions of variables, outlying observations, and measurement error. Thus, while r is a useful summary of linear relationships between two variables, it may sometimes conceal more than it reveals. Creating a scatter plot of X and Y values is a useful tool to avoid misleading inferences from estimated correlation coefficients. Keywords: correlation; effect size; dichotomization; difference scores; coefficient of determination
Mutually Independent Commitments

We study the two-party commitment problem, where two players have secret values they wish to commit to each other. Traditional commitment schemes cannot be used here because they do not guarantee independence of the committed values. We present three increasingly strong definitions of independence in this setting and give practical protocols for each. Our work is related to work in non-malleable cryptography. However, the two-party commitment problem can be solved much more efficiently than by using non-malleability techniques.