cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Grid Point Pooling in Extreme Value Analysis of Hurricane Hindcast Data

Grid point pooling is a commonly used method to account for hurricane track variability in extreme value analysis. This paper presents a simplified mathematical interpretation of grid point pooling. Through logical arguments and numerical experiments, some general guidelines are then developed for a selection of grid points to include in the statistical pool.
Hexose Transport in Microvascular Endothelial Cells Cultured from Bovine Retina

Abstract The nature of glucose transport at the microvascular blood-retinal barrier was studied using primary cultures of microvascular endothelial cells from bovine retina. Uptake of 3-O-methyl- d -glucose (3MG), a non-metabolizable glucose analogue, was rapid and equilibrative. 3MG uptake could be inhibited by traditional glucose transport inhibitors such as phloretin, phlorizin and cytochalasin B but not by agents that deplete intracellular ATP (2,4-dinitrophenol) or that abolish the sodium gradient (ouabain). Uptake of 3MG by the cells could be stimulated by preloading with 50 m m -glucose, a phenomenon known as counter-transport. Insulin had no effect on 3MG uptake in the cells even after prolonged insulin deprivation. These results demonstrate the existence of a facilitative-diffusion type of glucose transport system in endothelial cells of the retinal microvasculature. Studies with 2-deoxy- d -glucose demonstrated that transport was not rate limiting for metabolism and that the endothelial cells contain free sugar when exposed to an extracellular sugar concentration in the physiologic range. The presence of this free sugar within the cell is necessary for efficient transendothelial transfer of glucose from blood to retina but it could also provide the basis for capillary damage in diabetes mellitus.
Class B Amplifiers Considered from the Conventional Class a Standpoint

The wave form of the output current of an ideal tube is analyzed when plate current cut-off occurs between zero and 180 degrees of the cycle. The theory thus developed is applied to practical tubes, and it is shown that one of the tubes operated in series may be represented as a hypothetical class A amplifier provided that twice the plate load resistance cuts off the plate current for the input voltage used. It is also shown that a diagram may be constructed from the characteristics of a tube for any operating condition from class A to class B with half the wave cut off. The load resistance used may then be transferred back to the characteristic. This load resistance shows conditions under which each tube is operating and explains why it is possible to obtain more than twice the power output under some conditions with two tubes than with one tube under the same conditions.
Pneumothorax in a dog caused by necrotizing pneumonia secondary to heatstroke.

Objective To describe the clinical course, diagnostic findings, medical and surgical treatments, and outcome in a dog with spontaneous pneumothorax secondary to necrotizing pneumonia thought to be a delayed complication of heatstroke. Case Summary A 1.5-year-old Labrador Retriever developed spontaneous pneumothorax 12 days after an episode of exertional heat stroke. Computed tomography was performed and showed bilateral pneumothorax and multifocal pulmonary consolidation, especially at the lung periphery. A median sternotomy was performed, and multifocal, well-demarcated areas of consolidated pulmonary tissue with purple discoloration were identified and resected from the right middle, right caudal, and accessory lung lobes. Histologic examination of the resected pulmonary tissue indicated necrotizing pneumonia, and bacteriologic culture of the tissue resulted in growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Examination of tissue from a pectoral muscle biopsy performed at this time showed necrotizing myopathy. The dog was discharged 7 days after surgery and made a full recovery. New or Unique Information Provided This case report describes pneumothorax and multifocal necrotizing pneumonia as a delayed complication of heatstroke, and provides the first description of the computed tomography appearance of histologically confirmed necrotizing pneumonia in a dog. Multifocal necrotizing pneumonia with or without pneumothorax should be considered in dogs that develop respiratory distress following severe systemic illness.
A review of factors influencing utilization of home and community-based long-term care: trends and implications to the nursing workforce

Over the past several decades, home- and community-based services (HCBS) have played an increasingly important role in providing care to patients with complex health problems and functional impairments, and in enabling patients to remain independent in their own homes. This article identifies developments in U.S. health care policy during the past three decades that have led to increases in demand for and utilization of home- and community-based health care. We discuss the implications of these policy developments, societal trends, and the unique opportunities they present for the nursing workforce. Descriptive analyses of data from the 2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (N = 28,402) reveal significant differences between nurses employed in HCBS and hospital settings, and provide little evidence that the nursing workforce has responded to the shifting needs for nursing resources in HCBS.
Polystyrene degradation during combustion

A novel driven-rod, radiant pyrolysis technique has been used to study steady-state linear regression of vertically mounted polystyrene rods degrading under high-flux, nonflaming conditions that simulate those of combustion. With this technique a reliable, reproducible temperature-depth profile (identical for combustion and radiant pyrolysis) for polystyrene has been obtained and used to successfully calculate the observed mass loss rate. Residues and volatiles have been analyzed. Mechanistic treatment of these results indicates that degradation of polystyrene under these rapid-heating conditions is similar to that under more conventional slow-heating conditions in the absence of oxygen. Oxidation is unimportant in the condensed-phase degradation of polystyrene in this configuration. This radiant pyrolysis technique has also been used to obtain the heat of gasification of polystyrene.
Estimating the Monetizable Safety Benefits of Prototype Air Traffic Control Technologies

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) utilizes a formal investment analysis process to support the development, procurement and deployment of new air traffic control technologies. It is often unclear how to estimate the impacts of a new technology on aviation safety, both in terms of the probability that incidents and accidents could be prevented and in terms of the potential financial savings associated with reduced aircraft damage and personal injuries. With this in mind, the focus of this paper is twofold: (1) demonstrating the application of a method for generating probabilistic estimates of safety benefits for a future air traffic control technology, and (2) monetizing and extrapolating safety impacts from historical data to provide a quantitative estimate of savings over the lifetime of a new technology. The technologies explored in this analysis involve electronic flight data, enhanced surveillance and decision support tools for the air traffic control tower environment. From this initial analysis, the estimated total monetizable safety benefit of deploying all of these capabilities in a new system with an expected 2015-2035 lifetime across a set of major airports in the US ranges from $155 million to $2.1 billion. Implications of key data assumptions driving the lower and upper-bound estimates are discussed. Language: en
MODELING OF PLASMA GENERATION IN REPETITIVE ULTRA-SHORT DC, MICROWAVE, AND LASER PULSES

Reduction of the power budget for sustaining a prescribed electron density in plasmas generated by DC or oscillating electric fields can be achieved if high-energy electrons are generated in these plasmas, which requires the ratio E/N in the DC case, or the ratio E/co in low-pressure microwave or laser plasmas, to be very high. Applying the strong field for only a short time, and then allowing the plasma to decay is the essence of the concept of ultra-short repetitive pulse ionization explored in this paper. Modeling of repetitive pulses show that there is an optimum electric field that minimizes the power budget. This minimum power budget is much lower than that in a continuous DC or RF plasma, but still substantially higher than in plasmas sustained by electron beams. Modeling of spatio-tempor al dynamics of plasmas in nanosecond pulses shows strong coupling between non-local dynamics of high-energy electrons, ionization and electric field. At high gas pressures, cathode sheath phenomena and ionization non-uniformity are suppressed. With an appropriate choice of frequency and amplitude, the efficient repetitive-pulse ionization method can be extended to electromagnetic waves, i.e., to electrodeless systems. At low gas density, highpower nanosecond microwave pulses at frequency 10-100 GHz can accelerate electrons to ~ 1 keV energy, resulting in much more efficient ionization than that in conventional low-power systems. Moreover, most of the ionization would occur after the pulse, as the high-energy electrons produced during the pulse lose their energy on ionization. In principle, the method of plasma generation by ultrashort repetitive highpower electromagnetic pulses can be extended to high gas densities, and the requirements for the laser source are estimated in the paper.
Influences of Fruit Diversity and Abundance on Bird Use of Two Shaded Coffee Plantations

ABSTRACT We studied avian foraging at two shaded coffee plantations in Ciales, Puerto Rico. Both coffee plantations contained patches of second-growth forest but differed in shade types; one was a rustic plantation with a species-diverse shade including many fruiting plant species and the other was a commercial polyculture shaded almost solely by Inga vera. We quantified foraging activity of five fruit-eating bird species (Euphonia musica, Loxigilla portoricensis, Nesospingus speculiferus, Spindalis portoricensis, and Vireo altiloquous) and monthly fruit abundance in the coffee plantation and adjacent second-growth forest habitats at each site. Fruits comprised more than 50 percent of the diets for four of five focal bird species. We found a significant difference in the number of foraging records for focal bird species between coffee and forest habitats in the commercial polyculture but found few differences between these habitats in the rustic coffee farm. Overall, foraging activity was positively corre...
Food Animal Veterinary Medicine: Leading A Changing Profession

The veterinary profession has gone through periods of profound change in response to economic and social changes. We are currently in another such period: profound change is required in order for the profession to remain relevant in a marketplace where a rapidly expanding knowledge base and new technologies demand an ever-increasing level of expertise in a greater variety of areas. However, the veterinary profession is perceived both internally and by the public as possessing a narrow set of skills that supports a narrow group of careers focused on salvaging ill or injured companion animals. It will be necessary to dramatically change the way veterinary students are recruited and trained, as well as how graduate veterinarians are licensed and provided continuing education, in order for the veterinary profession to capitalize on our historical strengths and provide service and leadership in a greater diversity of career paths. Even though the number of veterinarians needed to provide primary care for livestock is decreasing, both the level of expertise demanded by livestock owners and the value of veterinary involvement on livestock farms are increasing. Colleges of veterinary medicine appear challenged to meet the changing needs for veterinary services in animal agriculture because of the declining percentage of veterinary students interested in food animal careers. Fortunately for animal agriculture, the skill set needed by food animal veterinarians is also needed by several emerging segments of the veterinary profession that have tremendous potential for rapid growth, including employment in all segments of food production systems, environmental monitoring and management, bio-security and disease eradication, laboratory diagnostics, and federal regulatory and bio-defense roles. Like previous periods of profound change, this moment in history will require creative thought, open discussion, and a willingness to step into the unknown.
Identifying procedural structure in Cobol programs

The principal control-flow abstraction mechanism in the Cobol language is the perform statement. Normally, perform statements are used in a straightforward manner to define parameterless procedures (where global variables are used to pass data into and out of procedure bodies). However, unlike most procedural constructs, distinct performed procedures can share code in arbitrarily complicated ways. In addition, performs can also be used in such a way as to cause transfers of control that do not correspond to normal call/return semantics.In this paper, we show how a Cobol program can be efficiently transformed into a semantically-equivalent procedurally well-structured representation, in which conventional procedures (i.e., with the usual call and return semantics and without code sharing) and procedure call statements replace performed code and perform statements. This transformation process properly accounts for the non-procedural control flow that can result from ill-behaved perform statements.The program representation derived from our analysis can be used directly in program understanding applications, program restructuring tools, and inter-language translators. In addition, it can be used as the starting point for a variety of context-sensitive program analyses, e.g., program slicing.
Oligocene-Miocene Kailas basin, southwestern Tibet: Record of postcollisional upper-plate extension in the Indus-Yarlung suture zone

The Kailas basin developed during late Oligocene–early Miocene time along the Indus-Yarlung suture zone in southwestern Tibet. The >2.5-km-thick basin-filling Kailas Formation consists of a lower coarse-grained proximal conglomerate and more distal fluvial sandstone member, a lacustrine shale and sandstone member, and an upper red-bed clastic member. Felsic tuffs and trachyandesite layers are locally present. Detrital and igneous zircon U-Pb ages indicate deposition of most of the Kailas Formation between ca. 26 and 24 Ma. The Kailas Formation was deposited by alluvial-fan, low-sinuosity fluvial, and deep lacustrine depositional systems in buttress unconformity upon andesitic volcanic (ca. 67 Ma) and granitoid (ca. 55 Ma) rocks of the Gangdese magmatic arc. Abundant organic material, fish and amphibian fossils, and sparse palynomorphs suggest that Kailas lakes developed in a warm tropical climate, quite different from coeval basins in central Tibet, which formed at high elevation in a dry climate. Provenance and paleocurrent data indicate that the bulk of the Kailas Formation was derived from the northerly Gangdese magmatic arc (Kailas magmatic complex). Only during the latest stages of basin filling was abundant sediment derived from the southerly Tethyan Himalayan thrust belt in the hanging wall of the Great Counter thrust. Kailas basin stratigraphy resembles a classic lacustrine sandwich and is most consistent with deposition in an extensional or transtensional rift that developed along the suture zone some 30 m.y. after the onset of Indo-Eurasian intercontinental collision. Correlative coarse-grained syntectonic strata similar to the Kailas Formation crop out along a >1300 km length of the Indus-Yarlung suture zone, suggesting that the basin-forming mechanism recorded by the Kailas Formation was of regional significance and not exclusively related to local kinematics near the southeastern end of the Karakoram fault. We propose that extension of the southern edge of the Eurasian plate was caused by southward rollback of underthrusting Indian continental lithosphere, followed by slab break-off. Alternating episodes of hard and soft collision, associated with regional contraction and extension, respectively, in the Tibetan-Himalayan orogenic system may have been related to changing dynamics of the subducting/underthrusting Indian plate.
Prolonged penile erection in the newborn

An extensive review of the literature suggests that priapism or prolonged penile erection is extremely rare in the newborn. We present a term newborn whose clinical course of prolonged penile erection was a result of polycythemia. In the past, only 3 cases appear to have been associated with polycythemia. However, two of these cases had several other complicating factors. The remaining episodes have been described as idiopathic (7), or attributed to infection (1) or central nervous system insult (1). The recognition of this phenomenon and its historical record of clinical course is important in the newborn so inappropriate approaches to treatment may be avoided. Because of spontaneous detumescence in many instances, observation or nonsurgical management is advocated for the newborn with prolonged penile erection.
X-Ray Free-Electron-Laser Interaction with Materials

The high-intensity ultrashort radiation of x-ray free electron lasers allows accessing a new regime of ultrafast x-ray-matter interaction. We discuss this interaction physics and the consequences for optics and diagnostics.
A reply to Swann and Palladino's critique of Folsom and Teply's model survey

This article is a reply to a critique of the authors’ model survey relating to generic names and brand names in trademark litigation. The article lists several critiques by two leading members of the trademark bar and responds to each of those critiques. The article starts by discussing the primary significance test, which in general, describes how to determine whether the primary significance of a word is a generic term or a trademark. It then moves on to explain how the primary significance test should be applied when consumers understand a word to be both a generic term and a trademark. The final areas that the article covers are the role of potential consumer confusion in the primary significance test, how the survey should be conducted, and what should be included in the survey.
Effects of Maternal Parenting and Mother-Child Relationship Quality on Short-Term Longitudinal Change in Self-Regulation in Early Adolescence

The purpose of the present study was to explore the degree to which short-term longitudinal change in adolescent self-regulation was attributable to maternal parenting and mother-child relationship quality. A total of 821 mother-adolescent dyads provided data in the 1992 and 1994 waves of the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (52.5% male; 24.2% Hispanic, 36.7% African American, 39.1% European American; adolescents’ initial age range = 10-12 years). Consistent with hypotheses, longitudinal improvements in young adolescents’ self-regulation were associated with high levels of mother-child relationship quality and low levels of maternal discipline. The association between self-regulation in 1992 and 1994 was moderated by child sex and maternal discipline. Thus, this study provides further evidence favoring the exploration of the parent-child relational context in addition to discrete parenting behaviors in studies on self-regulation during the early adolescent years.
Influence of three different training programs on strength and speed of a limb movement.

Abstract The experiment was designed to compare the effects of isometric-isotonic (A), dynamic-overload (B), and free swing (C) exercise programs on the speed and strength of a lateral arm movement The 26 college men in each group—three experimental and one control—were given pre- and post-training speed and strength trials. Each experimental group performed its assigned exercise twice a week during the 10-week training period. Reliability coefficients for both strength and speed of movement measurements were found to be high. Following training there were significant speed increases in both the isometric-isotonic and dynamic-overload groups (t=10.06 and 8.10; however, the difference in speed gain between conditions was nonsignificant (F=.10). Also, strength increases in both of these groups were significant (t=8.81 and 3.08), with that of the isometric-isotonic group significantly greater than the dynamic-overload group (F=5.11). No significant speed or strength gains were registered by either the free s...
Vision-based pedestrian behavior analysis at intersections

This work presents a vision-based data collection system for pedestrian behavior analysis at intersections that include crossing counts, waiting time, crossing speed, and facility utilization. The tracking system uses contextual fusion of motion and appearance cues to more reliably track pedestrians during stop-and-go movements at intersections. Moreover, the pedestrian tracking system is improved through cooperation of two different tracking algorithms: bipartite graph match and optical flow algorithms. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated separately at the detection and tracking steps followed by behavior analyses of pedestrians for three different intersection videos of Las Vegas. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed system and intersection utilization is depicted through heat maps.
Functional interaction of protein kinase CK2 and c-Myc in lymphomagenesis

Protein kinase CK2 (formerly casein kinase II) is frequently upregulated in human cancers, and transgenic expression of CK2α in lymphocytes is oncogenic. Lymphomagenesis is dramatically acclerated by co-expression of a c-myctransgene, suggestive of a synergistic interaction between the kinase and the transcription factor. Since c-myccan be phosphorylated by CK2, we hypothesized that the synergy between CK2 and c-mycmight be due to a functional interaction of the two molecules. Pharmacologic inhibition of CK2 activity in cell lines established from CK2α transgenic T cell lymphomas reduces their proliferation and concomitantly with this, the steady state levels of c-mycprotein decline. This is caused by acclerated c-mycprotein turnover, which occurs in a proteasome-dependent manner. Transfection of cells with sense or anti-sense CK2 constructs modulates c-mycprotein levels in concert with the alteration in CK2 activity, validating the findings obtained using the kinase inhibitors. Thus, CK2 is a critical regulator of c-mycprotein stability and of the proliferation of these T cell lymphomas.
SmartSIM ‐ a virtual reality simulator for laparoscopy training using a generic physics engine

Virtual reality (VR) training simulators have started playing a vital role in enhancing surgical skills, such as hand-eye coordination in laparoscopy, and practicing surgical scenarios that cannot be easily created using physical models. We describe a new VR simulator for basic training in laparoscopy, i.e. SmartSIM, which has been developed using a generic open-source physics engine called the simulation open framework architecture (SOFA). This paper describes the systems perspective of SmartSIM including design details of both hardware and software components, while highlighting the critical design decisions. Some of the distinguishing features of SmartSIM include: (i) an easy-to-fabricate custom-built hardware interface; (ii) use of a generic physics engine to facilitate wider accessibility of our work and flexibility in terms of using various graphical modelling algorithms and their implementations; and (iii) an intelligent and smart evaluation mechanism that facilitates unsupervised and independent learning.
The Gender of Piety: Family, Faith, and Colonial Rule in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe

The Gender of Piety is an innovative, illuminating, in-depth study of the Brethren in Christ Church (BICC) based in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe since 1898. A North American Protestant mission church, th...
Searches for new physics at the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment

We investigate the ability of the upcoming Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) neutrino experiment to detect new physics phenomena beyond the standard, three-massive-neutrinos paradigm; namely, the existence of a fourth, sterile neutrino or weaker-than-weak, nonstandard neutrino interactions. With both beam-based neutrinos from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) and atmospheric neutrinos, Hyper-K is capable of exploring new ranges of parameter space in these new-physics scenarios. We find that Hyper-K has comparable capability to the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), and that combining both beam- and atmospheric-based data can clear up degeneracies in the parameter spaces of interest. We also comment on the potential improvement in searches for new physics if a combined analysis were performed using Hyper-K and DUNE data.
Size Matters: Chemical Synthesis of a Homogenous Arabinogalactan 92-mer.

Chemical synthesis of oligosaccharides has reached the stage where access to highly complex structures is becoming a reality. The recent synthesis of a 92-mer oligosaccharide is a record-breaking achievement of preparative carbohydrate chemistry and creates opportunities to study complex biological phenomena with atomic precision not previously available.
Changes in Neuronal Signaling and Cell Stress Response Pathways are Associated with a Multigenic Response of Drosophila melanogaster to DDT Selection

The adaptation of insect populations to insecticidal control is a continual threat to human health and sustainable agricultural practices, but many complex genomic mechanisms involved in this adaption remain poorly understood. This study applied a systems approach to investigate the interconnections between structural and functional variance in response to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) within the Drosophila melanogaster strain 91-R. Directional selection in 6 selective sweeps coincided with constitutive gene expression differences in DDT resistant flies, including the most highly upregulated transcript, Unc-115 b, which plays a central role in axon guidance, and the most highly downregulated transcript, the angiopoietin-like CG31832, which is involved in directing vascular branching and dendrite outgrowth but likely may be under trans-regulatory control. Direct functions and protein-protein interactions mediated by differentially expressed transcripts control changes in cell migration, signal transduction, and gene regulatory cascades that impact the nervous system. Although changes to cellular stress response pathways involve 8 different cytochrome P450s, stress response, and apoptosis is controlled by a multifacetted regulatory mechanism. These data demonstrate that DDT selection in 91-R may have resulted in genome-wide adaptations that impacts genetic and signal transduction pathways that converge to modify stress response, cell survival, and neurological functions. This study implicates the involvement of a multigenic mechanism in the adaptation to a chemical insecticide, which impact interconnected regulatory cascades. We propose that DDT selection within 91-R might act systemically, wherein pathway interactions function to reinforce the epistatic effects of individual adaptive changes on an additive or nonadditive basis.
Dose rate dependence of Cr precipitation in an ion-irradiated Fe18Cr alloy

Abstract Precipitation of α′ in Fe Cr alloys under neutron irradiation is thermodynamically driven while being accelerated by radiation-enhanced diffusion. However, similar alloys under ion irradiation at high dose rates (> 10− 4 dpa/s) fail to exhibit α′ precipitation. Here, the microstructure of an Fe 18Cr alloy under ion or neutron-irradiation at 300 °C at dose rates from ~ 10− 7 to 10− 4 dpa/s was analyzed by atom probe tomography. The steady-state composition content of the clusters depends on the ion irradiation dose and dose rate, confirming the contribution of ballistic mixing in diluting the Cr concentration in non-equilibrium α′ precipitates.
Avian Carnivore, Ungulate, and Effects on Bone

This chapter describes the effects of vertebrate bone-modifiers other than mammalian and reptilian carnivores, including the disparate impacts of raptorial bird families, bone-consuming and bone-trampling herbivores and omnivores, and rodents. Many such actors create distinctive bone surface modifications or patterns of skeletal element destruction that allow the zooarchaeologist to identify their action on individual specimens or their bone accumulations. Reading aggregate archaeofaunal data from contexts where both humans and other bone accumulators could have resided requires knowledge of these actors’ distinctive traces on elements of species both could have accumulated. This chapter discusses whether and how microfauna accumulated by raptors can be used to reconstruct ancient environments, citing computer modeling of time-averaged accumulations in relation to natural fluctuations in rodent populations. Hoofed animals treading on skeletal elements may leave traces resembling cut marks, and the chapter reports on experimentally derived approaches to distinguish trample marks from hominid-inflicted cut marks at relatively low magnifications, using a few diagnostic variables visible at low magnifications. The chapter also discusses modifications to tusks and antlers during life that be mistaken for human artifacts, providing illustrations and references.
Thiolate Adducts of the Myoglobin Cavity Mutant H93G as Models for Cytochrome P-450

A recent development in the field of heme proteins has been the engineering of cavity mutants in which the axial coordinating residue is replaced by a smaller, noncoordinating residue, leaving a cavity that can then be filled by exogenous ligands. In this manner, potential models for the cysteinate-ligated cytochrome P-450 monooxygenases have been prepared using the H93G cavity mutant of sperm whale myoglobin in which the coordinating histidine has been replaced by glycine. Magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectroscopy has been used for structural characterization of several ferric and ferrous thiolate-H93G adducts. Ferric mixed-ligand complexes can be prepared with neutral sixth ligands. The model breaks down in two cases: (i) when anionic ligands are added to the ferric-thiolate complex and (ii) on reduction of the ferric-thiolate complex. Results are discussed in the context of the H93C mutants of myoglobin and the stabilizing influences on the cytochrome P-450 heme-cysteinate complex.
Cannulation and Clinical Concerns for Cardiopulmonary Bypass Access

Diversion of blood into an extracorporeal circuit for facilitation of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) and return to the patient is commonplace in today’s cardiothoracic theater. However, of late, many new cannula options are allowing remote or noncentral cannulation for specialized procedures, as well as innovative technology to improve existing techniques. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the principles, concepts, and possibilities for various cannulation sites and techniques, coupled with an understanding of flow dynamics necessary for successful implementation of CPB.
Attribute-oriented fuzzy generalization in proximity- and similarity-based relational database systems: Research Articles

In this article we investigate an attribute-oriented induction approach for acquisition of abstract knowledge from data stored in a fuzzy database environment. We utilize a proximity-based fuzzy database schema as the medium carrying the original information, where lack of precise information about an entity can be reflected via multiple attribute values, and the classical equivalence relation is replaced with the broader fuzzy proximity relation. We analyze in detail the process of attribute-oriented induction by concept hierarchies, utilizing the original properties of fuzzy databases to support this established data mining technique. In our approach we take full advantage of the implicit knowledge about the similarity of original attribute values, included by default in the investigated fuzzy database schemas. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 763–779, 2007.
How to Select Your Animal Model for Osteoporosis Research

The rising burden of osteoporotic fractures increases morbidity and mortality in the aging population, imposing a significant cost on society.
Cultural Competence in Therapy with African Americans

African Americans experience unique obstacles when interfacing with mental health services. Evidence of persistent disparities in treatment engagement, utilization, and quality between African Americans and European Americans has led many to conclude that treatment must be culturally tailored for African Americans. Underlying calls for increased cultural competence are assumptions regarding the effectiveness of standard treatment approaches with African Americans and the ubiquitous benefits of cultural tailoring. In this chapter, we critically assess these assumptions and review the empirical literature on treatment outcomes with African Americans and the effects of culturally tailored interventions. Overall, we find that psychotherapy, including standard and culturally tailored treatment, is generally effective with African Americans. Additionally, we show that although cultural tailoring can enhance treatment outcomes, not all forms of tailoring are equally efficacious and some types can even attenuate outcomes. Based on the empirical evidence, we provide recommendations for tailoring treatment and improving the quality of mental health services for African Americans.
Electrical Derivative Analysis on Current Leakage in Buried-Heterostructure Lasers

A full 2-D simulation was performed to investigate electrical derivative characteristics of 1.3μm AlGaInAs/InP buried-heterostructure semiconductor lasers with different current leakage paths and to explain their physical root causes. The simulation results match with experimental data under several different cases, and therefore could be used as guideline to explain device performance without any destructive failure analysis. Parameters extracted from electrical derivatives could be used as screening to catch devices with inferior performance and potential reliability risk.
Taking the Baby Before It’s Born: Termination of the Parental Rights of Women Who Use Illegal Drugs While Pregnant

Several states allow a mother and child to be permanently separated for something the mother did before the child was born; these states have made the use of illegal drugs while pregnant a ground for terminating a mother's parental rights. The intuition motivating such a policy is that drug users are bad parents, and the state protects children by removing them from such parents. This presumption in favor of termination is fundamentally ill conceived. Termination of parental rights is a drastic and unwise response to the public health problems caused by illegal drug use: drug use or addiction does not, ipso facto, make someone unfit to care for a child, although it may cause behaviors which constitute bad parenting. If those behaviors do emerge and they rise to the level of abuse or neglect, they would be sufficient legal ground for government intervention to protect the child in every state in the nation. So, making drug use itself a ground for breaking up a family is unnecessary. Given that it also has various negative effects, including trammeling the constitutional rights of mothers and creating legal orphans, the policy should be abandoned. In this article, I argue that legal schemes that allow the termination of parental rights for prenatal drug use violate women's Fourteenth Amendment procedural and substantive due process rights. The procedural due process issue is that, under these schemes, drug use during pregnancy creates a presumption that precludes an individualized determination as to parental fitness. The substantive due process problem is that these schemes fail the strict judicial scrutiny they deserve because there are alternative means to serve the proffered ends that are less restrictive of individuals' fundamental rights. This article argues that laws terminating parental rights for prenatal drug use violate due process and should be struck down.
Spherical harmonics for modeling shape transformations of breasts following breast surgery

Breast shape aesthetic is most desired outcome of cosmetic and reconstructive breast surgery. Post-operative (post-op) patient satisfaction largely depends on patient expectations, hence appropriately communicating information about surgical options to patients and moderating patient expectations is critical in surgical planning. Breast modeling and computational simulation can help mitigate this challenge and provide an effective tool for presenting potential surgical outcomes and eliciting patient preferences. Most available computational models lack the ability to provide realistic estimation of breast shape changes. We have previously developed a Fourier spherical harmonics (SPHARM) based computational approach to model breast shape1. SPHARM modeling results in 1320 coefficients that are effective descriptors of the 3D breast shape. In this study, we develop a framework to transform the SPHARM coefficients of the pre-operative (pre-op) breast to generate an estimation of the post-op breast shape for cosmetic (e.g. implant-based augmentation) and reconstructive (e.g. implant, autologous tissue, etc.) surgery procedures. Least squares optimization was used to realize the transformation between the pre- and post-op SPHARM coefficients. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach using data from patients who have undergone bilateral implant-based breast reconstruction as part of cancer treatment. We trained a random forest regression2 function using SPHARM coefficients and their corresponding shape transformation vectors for 21 preop breasts and validated the regressor using a test dataset of 41 breasts. Our preliminary results demonstrate feasibility of the proposed data-driven approach to model transformation of the pre-op breast to its post-op form for a given surgical procedure.
Online learning with Corrupted context: Corrupted Contextual Bandits.

We consider a novel variant of the contextual bandit problem (i.e., the multi-armed bandit with side-information, or context, available to a decision-maker) where the context used at each decision may be corrupted ("useless context"). This new problem is motivated by certain on-line settings including clinical trial and ad recommendation applications. In order to address the corrupted-context setting,we propose to combine the standard contextual bandit approach with a classical multi-armed bandit mechanism. Unlike standard contextual bandit methods, we are able to learn from all iteration, even those with corrupted context, by improving the computing of the expectation for each arm. Promising empirical results are obtained on several real-life datasets.
Constant-Gate-Charge Scaling for Increased Short-Circuit Withstand Time in SiC Power Devices

SiC unipolar power devices have ~350× lower drift region resistance than silicon devices at a given blocking voltage, but their higher power density reduces their short-circuit withstand time (SCWT). We propose to increase the SCWT of SiC MOSFETs and IGBTs by reducing their oxide thickness and gate drive voltage, keeping the gate charge and oxide field constant. This increases their SCWT with no impact on on-state or blocking performance, and requires no changes to existing designs or mask sets.
Assessing the Vulnerability of Military Installations in the Coterminous United States to Potential Biome Shifts Resulting from Rapid Climate Change

Climate-change impacts to Department of Defense (DoD) installations will challenge military mission and natural resource stewardship efforts by increasing vulnerability to flooding, drought, altered fire regimes, and invasive species. We developed biome classifications based on current climate for the coterminous United States using the Holdridge Life Zone system to assess potential change on DoD lands. We validated classifications using comparisons to existing ecoregional classifications, the distribution of major forest types, and tree species in eastern North America. We projected future life zones for mid- and late-century time periods under three greenhouse gas emission scenarios (low—B1, moderate—A1B, and high—A2) using an ensemble of global climate models. To assess installation vulnerability (n = 529), we analyzed biome shifts using spatial cluster analysis to characterize interregional variation, and identified representative installations for subsequent landscape-level analyses. Although mean annual temperatures are expected to increase, installations located in the Northeast, Lake States, and western Great Plains are likely to experience the largest proportional increases in temperature. Accordingly, forest and grassland communities at these installations managed to support a wide range of training, and environmental objectives may be adversely affected by altered disturbance regimes, heat, and moisture stress. However, precipitation is projected to increase in the Northeast and Lake States mitigating some effects of increased temperatures on biological communities. Given the uncertain response to climate change in different ecoregions, additional environmental and stewardship attributes are needed within a decision-support framework to understand vulnerabilities and provide appropriate responses.
Active Deception using Factored Interactive POMDPs to Recognize Cyber Attacker's Intent.

This paper presents an intelligent and adaptive agent that employs deception to recognize a cyber adversary's intent. Unlike previous approaches to cyber deception, which mainly focus on delaying or confusing the attackers, we focus on engaging with them to learn their intent. We model cyber deception as a sequential decision-making problem in a two-agent context. We introduce factored finitely nested interactive POMDPs (I-POMDPx) and use this framework to model the problem with multiple attacker types. Our approach models cyber attacks on a single honeypot host across multiple phases from the attacker's initial entry to reaching its adversarial objective. The defending I-POMDPx-based agent uses decoys to engage with the attacker at multiple phases to form increasingly accurate predictions of the attacker's behavior and intent. The use of I-POMDPs also enables us to model the adversary's mental state and investigate how deception affects their beliefs. Our experiments in both simulation and on a real host show that the I-POMDPx-based agent performs significantly better at intent recognition than commonly used deception strategies on honeypots.
Examining the Decision-Making Processes of Sex Tourists using On-line Data

Criminological research has increasingly focused on the decision-making processes of offenders in order to better understand criminal behavior as a whole. A small body of research has considered how the bounds or limits of offender decision-making are shaped by various factors. In addition, limited research has considered the role of preference and bounded rationality in crimes where long-range planning and careful consideration of options are possible. To that end, this study explores both the factors that influence individual decisions and the way that they interact with preference to shape the decision-making process of sex tourists or individuals who travel to foreign countries in order to have sex with prostitutes and others in or out of the sex trade. This study uses a qualitative analysis of posts from multiple web forums on-line used by individuals interested or actively involved in sex tourism across the globe to identify the salient factors that affect tourist decision-making during the planning and execution of a tour. The implications of this study for rational choice theory and the value of on-line data to examine the decision-making process will be discussed in depth.
Synergistic Rifabutin and Colistin Reduce Emergence of Resistance When Treating Acinetobacter baumannii.

Recently, we reported rifabutin hyper-activity against Acinetobacter baumannii We sought to characterize potential interactions between rifabutin and colistin, the last resort drug for carbapenem-resistant infections. Rifabutin and colistin were synergistic in vitro and in vivo, and low dose colistin significantly suppressed emergence of resistance to rifabutin. Thus, this combination is a promising therapeutic option for highly resistant A. baumannii infections.
Revisitando os Sete Mandamentos para Usuários de Métodos Multivariados

While multivariate methods are extremely relevant to marketing problems, it is not easy to successfully implement them in the research program of the organization due to their complexity and variety. Therefore, a number of practical guidelines are described below which should be followed by researchers if they are committed to the idea of integrating multivariate methods in their research programs.
Potential Cost Savings of Off-Site Regional Anesthesia for Minor Orthopedic Surgical Procedures

This study is limited by the fact that each hospital has different costs for staffing as well as ambiguous billing patterns that make it difficult to correctly appreciate the value of perioperative staffing and costs for the hospital, insurance company, and the patient. Additional costs, as noted above, that were not included in this study would be also added to the potential cost savings. Therefore, our results may in fact appreciate the true difference in costs between the operating room and treatment room anesthesia. As anesthesia providers, we are involved in the perioperative care of surgical patients. We must continuously improve our perioperative care to enhance patient safety while increasing efficiency and decreasing costs. Using regional anesthesia to minimize main operating room times may be an acceptable approach to achieving cost saving measures, as well as reducing unnecessary staffing and main operating resources.
Immunoglobulin G4-related masses surrounding coronary arteries: a case report.

Background Immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4)-related disease (IgG4-RD) is an immune-mediated fibroinflammatory condition with high serum IgG4 levels affecting various organs, such as the pancreas, lacrimal and salivary glands, thyroid, kidney, and lung. Typical cardiovascular manifestations of IgG4-RD include periaortitis, coronary arteritis, and pericarditis. However, reports of IgG4-RD associated with coronary arteritis are rare. Here, we report a case of IgG4-related masses surrounding the coronary arteries. Case summary A 59-year-old man was referred to our hospital because of mediastinal masses detected by computed tomography (CT). Coronary CT angiography revealed masses surrounding the right coronary artery and the left anterior descending coronary artery. An elevated serum level of IgG4 and histological findings led to the diagnosis of IgG4-related coronary arteritis with mass formation. Coronary angiography showed numerous feeding arteries to the masses, which were demonstrated as multiple microchannels in the intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) images. Discussion IgG4-RD involving the cardiovascular system has been reported. However, coronary artery disease associated with IgG4-RD is very rare, and the mechanism of mass formation in IgG4-related coronary arteritis is unclear. In our case, within the cardiovascular system, IgG4-RD was limited to the coronary arteries, suggesting that the affected coronary arteries may provide the necessary blood supply to the mass, thus, aiding its growth. These findings were supported by the images from coronary angiography and IVUS.