cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of anxiety sensitivity among daily adult smokers using item response theory analysis.

Abstract The present investigation applied Item Response Theory (IRT) methodology to the 16-item Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) [Reiss, S., Peterson, R. A., Gursky, M., & McNally, R. J. (1986). Anxiety sensitivity, anxiety frequency, and the prediction of fearfulness. Behaviour Research and Therapy , 24 , 1–8] for a sample of 475 daily adult smokers (52% women; M age = 26.9, S.D. = 11.1, range = 18–65). Using non-parametric item response analysis, all 16 ASI items were evaluated. Evaluation of the option characteristic curves for each item revealed 4 poorly discriminating ASI items (1: “It is important not to appear nervous;” 5: “It is important to me to stay in control of my emotions;” 7: “It embarrasses me when my stomach growls;” 9: “When I notice my heart beating rapidly, I worry that I might be having a heart attack”), which were dropped from analysis. Upon repeat analysis, the remaining items appeared to make adequate separations within levels of anxiety sensitivity in this sample. Graded response modeling data indicated important differences in ASI items’ capacity to discriminate between, and provide information about, latent levels of anxiety sensitivity. Specifically, three items best discriminated and provided the most information regarding latent levels of AS—items 3, 15, and 16. Items 1, 5, 7, and 9 were omitted due to their limited capacity to discriminate between latent levels of anxiety sensitivity; items 8, 12, and 13 also performed poorly. Overall, current findings suggest that evaluation of anxiety sensitivity among adult smokers using the 16-item ASI may usefully choose to focus on items that performed well in these IRT analyses (items: 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, and 16).
The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica

The title is misleading for a non—“OAE” (Old Antarctic Explorer, to whom “The Ice” is Antarctica) because The Ice is about far more than just ice. It does indeed cover just about all you'd want to know (or more) about Antarctic ice, from the vast south polar sheets and glaciers to the great tabular bergs, bergy bits, brash ice, pancake ice, frazil ice, and the pack of the polar seas; but it also explores nearly every aspect of this “Last of Lands” in an unusually comprehensive coverage. From the “Heroic Ages” of early 20th-century explorers Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and Roald Amundsen to the present “Cruise Ship Age,”Antarctica has produced a wealth of literature in the “Journey to…” style — which Pyne's is not. Instead, his product from one short (3-month) visit under a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship takes all readers o n a webwork journey through time, space, ice, and rocks for an appreciation of “ The Ice” in a way found in no other book. This, his fifth book (another one is Fire in America, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1982), is a significant contribution to the literature of Antarctica. Pyne's prose cannot be paraphrased for a review, as the reader will be able to appreciate from the excerpts to follow.
IR fluorescence yields from UV excitation of nitric acid, benzene, naphthalene and methyl derivatives

Abstract Infrared (IR) fluorescences from ultraviolet (UV) excitation of HONO 2 , C 6 H 6 , C 6 H 5 CH 3 , C 10 H 8 , and C 10 H 7 CH 3 are observed. The absolute fluorescence cross-section of HONO 2 is measured in the 1.5–4.0 μm region, and used as a calibration standard for measuring the fluorescence cross-sections of aromatic molecules. The quantum yields for fluorescences at 3.1–3.7 μm from photoexcitation of benzene, p-xylene, naphthalene, and 1-methylnaphthalene at 193 nm are determined to be (1.2, 1.3, 4.2, and 1.2)×10 −4 respectively.
Measurement of Rat Brain Kynurenine Aminotransferase at Physiological Kynurenine Concentrations

The production of the neuroinhibitory and neuroprotective metabolite kynurenic acid (KYNA) was investigated in rat brain by examining its biosynthetic enzyme, kynurenine aminotransferase (KAT). By using physiological (low micromolar) concentrations of the substrate L-kynurenine (KYN) and by determining the irreversible conversion of [3H] KYN to [3H] KYNA as a measure of KAT activity, a novel, simple, and sensitive assay was developed which permitted the detailed characterization of the enzyme. Only a single protein, which under routine assay conditions showed approximately equal activity with 2-oxoglutarate and pyruvate as the aminoacceptor, was found in rat brain. The enzyme was distributed heterogeneously between the nine brain regions studied, with the KAT-rich olfactory bulb displaying approximately five times higher activity than the cerebellum, the area with lowest KAT activity. In subcellular fractionation studies, the majority of KAT was recovered in mitochondria. In contrast to many known aminotransferases, partially purified KAT was shown to be highly substrate-specific. Thus, of the amino acids tested, only α-aminoadipate and tryptophan displayed moderate competition with KYN. Notably, 3-hydroxykynurenine, reportedly a very good substrate of KAT, competed rather poorly with KYN as well. Aminooxyacetic acid, a nonspecific transaminase inhibitor, blocked KAT activity with an apparent Ki of 5 μM. Kinetic analyses with partially purified rat brain KAT revealed a Km of 17 μMfor KYN with 1 mM 2-oxoglutarate, but a much higher Km(910 μM) with 1 mM pyruvate. Km values for 2-oxoglutarate and pyruvate were 150 and 160 μM, respectively. The cellular localization of KAT was examined in striatal homogenates obtained from rats 7 days after an intrastriatal injection of quinolinate. At that time of almost complete neuronal destruction and pronounced astrocytic proliferation, enzyme activity in the lesioned striatum was almost twice as high as in controls, suggesting a preferential astroglial localization of brain KAT. The characteristics of KAT described here are compatible with a central role of the enzyme in brain KYNA function in vivo. Abnormal KAT activity, therefore, should be considered as an etiological factor in pathological phenomena related to dysfunction of excitatory amino acid receptors in the brain.
Cultural exposure, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence: An exploratory study

This study examines the influence of cultural exposure on emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence. Because of the importance of international experience in organizations, and the ease of travel, understanding the impact of exposure to other cultures is critical. In this study, cultural exposure is examined in a variety of ways, such as a binary measure, breadth measure, and depth measure, as well as the interaction between breadth and depth. The sample included 485 participants from a large university in the northeast part of the United States. Regression analysis was conducted and findings indicated that cultural exposure in all forms had an impact on cultural intelligence, while it did not have an impact on emotional intelligence.
The Effect of Atmospheric Water Vapor Content on the Performance of Future Wide-Swath Ocean Altimetry Measurement

AbstractMeasurement of sea surface height (SSH) over a finite swath along satellite tracks has been planned for future space missions. The effect of water vapor in the troposphere on the delay of radar signal must be corrected for in the SSH measurement. The efficacy of a nadir-looking radiometer that has been the approach for conventional altimetry is examined in the study. The focus is placed on the cross-track variability of water vapor that is not measured by the nadir-looking radiometer. Simulations of the 2D field of water vapor were performed by spectral analysis of existing radiometer data. The residual error from the application of the correction made by a nadir-looking radiometer was computed over the global ocean and compared to the SSH signal estimated from satellite altimeter data. Global maps of the signal-to-error ratio (the square root of spectral variance at wavelengths shorter than 500 km) were created, showing values of 20–50 in the regions of high SSH variability of the boundary curren...
TuneFPGA: post-silicon tuning of dual-Vdd FPGAs

Modern CMOS manufacturing processes have significant variability, which necessitates guard banding to achieve reasonable yield. We study an FPGA architecture with a dual voltage supply wherein the supply voltage for individual CLBs can be assigned after fabrication; this yields a mechanism for fixing chips that fail because of manufactured transistors being slower than designed. The fundamental advance our work makes is that we assign voltages based on manufactured data rather than designed values. The key contributions of our work are a CAD methodology and a detailed quantitative study using realistic data on the latest process technologies of the impact of post-manufacturing tuning on yield and power for dual-Vdd FPGAs. We find that, for a representative modern process, post-manufacturing tuning can increase the yield by up to 10 x compared with a conventional dual-Vdd design that selects the voltage supply pre-manufacturing, even with guard banding. Overall, the geometric mean of yield/power ratio is 27% greater using post- manufacturing tuning.
Exploring the Use of Category and Scale to Scope a Biological Functional Model

The natural world provides numerous cases for analogy and inspiration in engineering design. Biological organisms, phenomena and strategies, herein referred to as biological systems, are, in essence, living engineered systems. These living systems provide insight into sustainable and adaptable design and offer engineers billions of years of valuable experience, which can be used to inspire engineering innovation. This research presents a general method for functionally representing biological systems through systematic design techniques, affording conceptualization of biologically-inspired, engineering designs. Functional representation and abstraction techniques are utilized to translate biological systems into an engineering context. Thus, the biological system information is accessible to engineering designers with varying biological knowledge, but a common understanding of engineering design methods. Functional modeling is typically driven by customer needs or product re-designs; however, these cannot be applied to biological systems. Thus, we propose the use of biological category and scale to guide the design process. Mimicry categories and scales, in addition to answering a design question, aid the designer with defining boundaries or scope when developing a biological functional model. Biological category assists with framing the information in the right perspective, where as, biological scale deals with how much detail is required for an adequate representation of the biological system to utilize the information with a chosen engineering design method. In our case, the engineering design method is function-based design. Choosing a category serves to refine the boundary, but, like scale, its consideration might prompt the designer to consider the same biological system in a new and unique way leading to new ideas. General guidelines for modeling biological systems at varying scales and categories are given, along with two modeling examples.Copyright © 2010 by ASME
Pseudo-Circuit: Accelerating Communication for On-Chip Interconnection Networks

As the number of cores on a single chip increases with more recent technologies, a packet-switched on-chip interconnection network has become a de facto communication paradigm for chip multiprocessors (CMPs). However, it is inevitable to suffer from high communication latency due to the increasing number of hops. In this paper, we attempt to accelerate network communication by exploiting communication temporal locality with minimal additional hardware cost in the existing state-of-the-art router architecture. We observe that packets frequently traverse through the same path chosen by previous packets due to repeated communication patterns, such as frequent pair-wise communication. Motivated by our observation, we propose a pseudo-circuit scheme. With previous communication patterns, the scheme reserves crossbar connections creating pseudo-circuits, sharable partial circuits within a single router. It reuses the previous arbitration information to bypass switch arbitration if the next flit traverses through the same pseudo-circuit. To accelerate communication performance further, we also propose two aggressive schemes, pseudo-circuit speculation and buffer bypassing. Pseudo-circuit speculation creates more pseudo-circuits using unallocated crossbar connections while buffer bypassing skips buffer writes to eliminate one pipeline stage.
Evaluation of engineering camouflage effectiveness based on human visual attention mechanisms

To evaluate the engineering camouflage effectiveness impersonally and exactly, based on the theory of human visual apperceive, the model is constituted on the human visual attention mechanisms. The feature maps of spatial scales are presented upon the distilled intensity, color and orientation from the input picture. The saliency map is gained from the combination of conspicuity maps. The shift of focus of attention (FOA) are selected and measured in the mechanisms winner-take-all (WTA) and inhibition of return. The relation between the shift of FOA and target detection probability is constituted upon back propagation (BP) neural network, and the target camouflage effectiveness can be measured exactly. The experiment result shows this model possesses advantages such as exact elements, high determinability and operability.
Chronic exposure to nicotine impairs cholinergic angiogenesis

Cholinergic angiogenesis is mediated by an endothelial nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (EC nAChR). Short-term administration of nicotine stimulates angiogenesis via EC nAChRs.The long-term effects of nicotine upon cholinergic angiogenesis are unknown. The objective of this study was to determine whether chronic nicotine exposure blunts angiogenesis. We exposed C57/Bl6 male mice (n = 42) to nicotine (200 microg/ml drinking water) or vehicle for 8 or 16 weeks. Subsequently, hindlimb ischemia was induced by ligation of the left femoral artery. After surgery, animals in the vehicle-treated group were re-randomized to vehicle (vehicle group) or nicotine (acute exposure group) for 2 weeks; whereas animals that had been previously treated (for 8 or 16 weeks with nicotine) continued to receive nicotine (8 WK or 16 WK groups). After 2 weeks, animals were sacrificed for immunohistochemical, gene expression, and angiogenesis studies. Capillary density of the ischemic hindlimb was increased by nicotine in naive animals (vehicle vs acute exposure: 2.40 +/- 0.09 vs 2.82 +/- 0.10 capillaries/myocyte, p < 0.05). However, prior exposure to nicotine for 16 weeks (16 WK) abolished the effects of nicotine to increase capillary density in the ischemic hindlimb (acute vs 16 WK: 2.82 +/- 0.10 vs 2.47 +/- 0.03 capillaries/ myocyte; p < 0.05). The impairment of cholinergic angiogenesis was associated with a reduction in nAChR expression and plasma VEGF levels. Chronic exposure to nicotine impaired capillary sprouting of aortic segments ex vivo (vehicle vs 16 WK: 0.303 +/- 0.029 vs 0.204 +/- 0.017 mm(2), p < 0.05, n = 3 in each group). In conclusion, the current study shows for the first time that chronic exposure to nicotine impairs cholinergic angiogenesis, an effect mediated by downregulation of the vascular nAChR, and attenuation of nicotine-induced VEGF release. These studies may explain the impairment in angiogenic processes observed in long-term smokers.
A bio-oceanographic filter to larval dispersal in a reef-building coral

Gene flow was shown to be limited between western and eastern Caribbean populations of the reef-building coral, Acropora palmata. However, some mixing was detected among populations near Puerto Rico. Our genetic analyses categorize A. palmata samples from the east coast of the Dominican Republic with the western Caribbean population, suggesting a filter to gene flow east of the Dominican Republic. To test the hypothesis of a present day bio-oceanographic filter occurring between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic (i.e., in the Mona Passage), we used a Lagrangian stochastic model (LSM) of larval dispersal, coupling coral life history characteristics with physical forcing. The model operated at two spatial scales: Caribbean-wide and focusing on the Mona Passage area. Results from the Caribbean-wide study showed no significant virtual larval exchange between the two populations. The small-scale model indicated that virtual larvae do not readily traverse the Mona Passage during the corals' reproductive season. Larvae released from Mona Island, in the center of the passage, are retained in the lee within topographically steered eddies, which act, together with the larval competency period, as a de facto filter to dispersal. Combined, our findings reveal the location of a seasonal filter to gene flow and its mechanism.
International Relations 2.0: The Implications of New Media for an Old Profession

The International Relations (IR) profession has not fully taken stock of the way in which user-driven information technologies—including Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia—are reshaping our professional activities, our subject matter, and even the constitutive rules of the discipline itself. In this study, we reflect on the ways in which our own roles and identities as IR scholars have evolved since the advent of “Web 2.0”: the second revolution in communications technology that redefined the relationship between producers and consumers of online information. We focus on two types of new media particularly relevant to the practice and the profession of IR: blogs and social networking sites.
Shape Optimization with F-Function Balancing for Reducing the Sonic Boom Initial Shock Pressure Rise

A shape optimization methodology for reducing the initial shock pressure rise (ISPR) on the ground of a supersonic aircraft is presented. This methodology combines elements from the linearized aerodynamic theory such as Whitham's F-function with elements from the nonlinear aerodynamic theory such as the prediction of lift distribution by an Euler or a Navier-Stokes flow solver. It also features a concept of F-function lobe balancing that locates suitable positive and negative lobe pairs of the F-function, and modifies the shape of the aircraft to balance the areas of these lobes. The latter feature accelerates the convergence of the optimization procedure and forces it to generate an aircraft shape with a multi-shock ground signature, which reduces further the ISPR. This shaping technology is illustrated with an application to the Point of Departure aircraft developed by Lockheed-Martin for Phase I of DARPA's Quiet Supersonic Platform program. At M∞ = 1.5, a twenty-fold reduction of the ISPR on the ground, from 1.616 psf to 0.083 psf, is demonstrated while maintaining constant length, lift (weight), and inviscid drag. At M∞ = 2.0, a six-fold reduction of the ISPR on the ground, from 1.866 psf to 0.324 psf, is also demonstrated while maintaining constant length, lift (weight), and inviscid drag.
Co-training with noisy perceptual observations

Many perception problems involve datasets that are naturally comprised of multiple streams or modalities for which supervised training data is only sparsely available. In cases where there is a degree of conditional independence between such views, a class of semi-supervised learning techniques that are based on maximizing view agreement over unlabeled data has been proven successful in a wide range of machine learning domains. However, these `co-training' or `multi-view' learning methods have had relatively limited application in vision, due in part to the assumption of constant per-channel noise models. In this paper we propose a probabilistic heteroscedastic approach to co-training that simultaneously discovers the amount of noise on a per-sample basis, while solving the classification task. This results in high performance in the presence of occlusion or other complex observation noise processes. We demonstrate our approach in two domains, multi-view object recognition from low-fidelity sensor networks and audio-visual classification.
Substring-based Transliteration with Conditional Random Fields

Motivated by phrase-based translation research, we present a transliteration system where characters are grouped into substrings to be mapped atomically into the target language. We show how this substring representation can be incorporated into a Conditional Random Field model that uses local context and phonemic information.
Helicobacter pylori FlhA Binds the Sensor Kinase and Flagellar Gene Regulatory Protein FlgS with High Affinity

Flagellar biogenesis is a complex process that involves multiple checkpoints to coordinate transcription of flagellar genes with the assembly of the flagellum. In Helicobacter pylori, transcription of the genes needed in the middle stage of flagellar biogenesis is governed by RpoN and the two-component system consisting of the histidine kinase FlgS and response regulator FlgR. In response to an unknown signal, FlgS autophosphorylates and transfers the phosphate to FlgR, initiating transcription from RpoN-dependent promoters. In the present study, export apparatus protein FlhA was examined as a potential signal protein. Deletion of its N-terminal cytoplasmic sequence dramatically decreased expression of two RpoN-dependent genes, flaB and flgE. Optical biosensing demonstrated a high-affinity interaction between FlgS and a peptide consisting of residues 1 to 25 of FlhA (FlhANT). The KD (equilibrium dissociation constant) was 21 nM and was characterized by fast-on (kon = 2.9 × 104 M−1s−1) and slow-off (koff = 6.2 × 10−4 s−1) kinetics. FlgS did not bind peptides consisting of smaller fragments of the FlhANT sequence. Analysis of binding to purified fragments of FlgS demonstrated that the C-terminal portion of the protein containing the kinase domain binds FlhANT. FlhANT binding did not stimulate FlgS autophosphorylation in vitro, suggesting that FlhA facilitates interactions between FlgS and other structures required to stimulate autophosphorylation. IMPORTANCE The high-affinity binding of FlgS to FlhA characterized in this study points to an additional role for FlhA in flagellar assembly. Beyond its necessity for type III secretion, the N-terminal cytoplasmic sequence of FlhA is required for RpoN-dependent gene expression via interaction with the C-terminal kinase domain of FlgS.
Noncognate DNA damage prevents the formation of the active conformation of the Y‐family DNA polymerases DinB and DNA polymerase κ

Y-family DNA polymerases are specialized to copy damaged DNA, and are associated with increased mutagenesis, owing to their low fidelity. It is believed that the mechanism of nucleotide selection by Y-family DNA polymerases involves conformational changes preceding nucleotidyl transfer, but there is limited experimental evidence for such structural changes. In particular, nucleotide-induced conformational changes in bacterial or eukaryotic Y-family DNA polymerases have, to date, not been extensively characterized. Using hydrogen–deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, we demonstrate here that the Escherichia coli Y-family DNA polymerase DinB and its human ortholog DNA polymerase κ undergo a conserved nucleotide-induced conformational change in the presence of undamaged DNA and the correct incoming nucleotide. Notably, this holds true for damaged DNA containing N2-furfuryl-deoxyguanosine, which is efficiently copied by these two polymerases, but not for damaged DNA containing the major groove modification O6-methyl-deoxyguanosine, which is a poor substrate. Our observations suggest that DinB and DNA polymerase κ utilize a common mechanism for nucleotide selection involving a conserved prechemical conformational transition promoted by the correct nucleotide and only preferred DNA substrates.
Bub1 kinase activity drives error correction and mitotic checkpoint control but not tumor suppression

The mitotic checkpoint protein Bub1 is essential for embryogenesis and survival of proliferating cells, and bidirectional deviations from its normal level of expression cause chromosome missegregation, aneuploidy, and cancer predisposition in mice. To provide insight into the physiological significance of this critical mitotic regulator at a modular level, we generated Bub1 mutant mice that lack kinase activity using a knockin gene-targeting approach that preserves normal protein abundance. In this paper, we uncover that Bub1 kinase activity integrates attachment error correction and mitotic checkpoint signaling by controlling the localization and activity of Aurora B kinase through phosphorylation of histone H2A at threonine 121. Strikingly, despite substantial chromosome segregation errors and aneuploidization, mice deficient for Bub1 kinase activity do not exhibit increased susceptibility to spontaneous or carcinogen-induced tumorigenesis. These findings provide a unique example of a modular mitotic activity orchestrating two distinct networks that safeguard against whole chromosome instability and reveal the differential importance of distinct aneuploidy-causing Bub1 defects in tumor suppression.
Rex: Symbolic Regular Expression Explorer

Constraints in form regular expressions over strings are ubiquitous. They occur often in programming languages like Perl and C#, in SQL in form of LIKE expressions, and in web applications. Providing support for regular expression constraints in program analysis and testing has several useful applications. We introduce a method and a tool called Rex, for symbolically expressing and analyzing regular expression constraints. Rex is implemented using the SMT solver Z3, and we provide experimental evaluation of Rex.
Same-Sex Infidelity in Heterosexual Romantic Relationships: Investigating Emotional, Relational, and Communicative Responses

The present study explores emotional, relational, and communicative responses to different-sex and same-sex infidelity in heterosexual romantic relationships. Two-hundred and eighty-five men and women completed an online survey. Individuals were asked to read a scenario in which an imagined heterosexual partner engages in infidelity with a different-sex or same-sex person. Individuals were randomly assigned to one of these two conditions and then asked to complete several measures assessing their imagined emotions, communicative responses, and relational outcomes. Results revealed that both men and women experienced more negative emotional responses to different-sex infidelity versus same-sex infidelity. Additionally, men reported more sexual arousal in response to a woman's same-sex infidelity versus different-sex infidelity, while women's sexual arousal did not vary across conditions. Lastly, men's communicative responses to jealousy (CRJs) for same-sex and different-sex infidelity did not vary, though women reported that they were more likely to respond to same-sex infidelity than different-sex infidelity with denial, and more likely to respond to different-sex than same-sex infidelity with signs of possession. Several emotional responses to same-sex infidelity were also found to predict various CRJs. These findings and the implications of the study are discussed.
Lomariopsis ×farrarii: a new hybrid fern between L. japurensis and L. vestita (Lomariopsidaceae) from Costa Rica

A new hybrid,Lomariopsis ×farrarii, is illustrated and described from the La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. It is intermediate between its parents,L. japurensis andL. vestita in length and color of the rhizome scales, shape and number of the pinnae, and size and division of the juvenile leaves in a heteroblastic series.
Evolution of Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation for Immunoglobulin Light Chain Amyloidosis

Immunoglobulin light chain amyloidosis is the most common type of systemic amyloidosis. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) is an effective treatment option for AL however due to multi-organ involvement in this disease HCT is feasible in a minority of patients. To maximize the benefit and minimize toxicity it is of paramount importance to optimize the selection of patients for HCT. In this review we discuss evolution of HCT and its typical application to a case of AL amyloidosis.
Direct wavefront sensing for high-resolution in vivo imaging in scattering tissue

Direct wavefront sensing with laser ‘guide stars’ is used in astronomy and microscopy to correct for optical aberrations. Wang et al. use near-infrared guide stars to extend this approach to the highly scattering mouse brain, allowing high-resolution fluorescence imaging at 700μm depth.
The Sigma MD Program and a Generic Interface Applicable to Multi-Functional Programs with Complex, Hierarchical Command Structure

This article summarizes the Sigma program for molecular dynamics simulation and describes a generic web browser-based interface (“WASP”) applicable to programs with complex, hierarchical command structures. Use of the interface is illustrated with its application to the Sigma program (“Wigma”).
Double-Gated Singly-Addressable Polysilicon Tip Array Fabrication and Characterization

Polysilicon-on-insulator singly-addressable arrays, consisting of double-gated field emission cells, were fabricated and tested. The field-emission tips were formed by a subtractive technique, using 2.5 µm thick polysilicon stripes on an insulating substrate. The tip structure was oxidized for dielectric isolation and coated with a 0.4 µm polysilicon layer as a first gate electrode. The polysilicon layer was then subsequently oxidized to provide a second isolation layer for separation from a 0.1 µm gold film, deposited as a second gate electrode. Finally, the 1.5 µm aperture was formed, combining wet etching of the silicon dioxide and dry etching of the polysilicon layers. The matrix allows addressing electrically any emission cell at the intersection of a cathode column and an extracting gate line. An independent voltage can be applied to the second gate during operation to focus the electron beam of an operating tip.
Reversal learning in gonadectomized marmosets with and without hormone replacement: are males more sensitive to punishment?

This study examined sex differences in executive function in middle-aged gonadectomized marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) with or without hormonal replacement. We tested ten castrated male (mean age 5.5 years) marmosets treated with testosterone cypionate (T, n = 5) or vehicle (n = 5) on Reversal Learning, which contributes to cognitive flexibility, and the Delayed Response task, measuring working memory. Their performance was compared to that of 11 ovariectomized females (mean age = 3.7 years) treated with Silastic capsules filled with 17-β estradiol (E2, n = 6) or empty capsules (n = 5), previously tested on the same tasks (Lacreuse et al. in J Neuroendocrinol 26:296–309, 2014. doi: 10.1111/jne.12147 ). Behavioral observations were conducted daily. Females exhibited more locomotor behaviors than males. Males and females did not differ in the number of trials taken to reach criterion on the reversals, but males had significantly longer response latencies, regardless of hormone replacement. They also had a greater number of refusals than females. Additionally, both control and T-treated males, but not females, had slower responses on incorrect trials, suggesting that males were making errors due to distraction, lack of motivation or uncertainty. Furthermore, although both males and females had slower responding following an incorrect compared to a correct trial, the sex difference in response latencies was disproportionally large following an incorrect trial. No sex difference was found in the Delayed Response task. Overall, slower response latencies in males than females during Reversal Learning, especially during and following an incorrect trial, may reflect greater sensitivity to punishment (omission of reward) and greater performance monitoring in males, compared to females. Because these differences occurred in gonadectomized animals and regardless of hormone replacement, they may be organized early in life.
Pseudomembranous Colitis Complicated by Bacteremia Due to Streptococcus faecalis

Syndrome. An 80-year-old man was given cefamandole iv for recurrent osteomyelitis while in the orthopedic ward. On day 20 of therapy he experienced an abrupt onset of fever (39.4 C), hypotension (systolic pressure, 80 mm Hg), and copious watery diarrhea. Sigmoidoscopy revealed findings that were compatible with a diagnosis of pseudomembranous colitis. No other source of fever was apparent. Cefamandole therapy was discontinued, fluid was administered iv, and four blood cultures were obtained before initiating therapy with oral vancomycin (500 mg every 6 hr). The patient had improved by the following day; however, two of the blood cultures yielded Streptococcus faecalis. Ampicillin (1.0 g iv every 4 hr) was added to the regimen of oral vancomycin, and both drugs were continued for 14 days. The fever subsided after four days and diarrhea ceased after seven days of therapy. Diagnosis. A stool specimen assayed for Clostridium difficile enterotoxin was positive, and C. difficile was recovered from culture. In vitro sensitivity testing of the organism using the modified broth-disk method revealed the following MICs: cefamandole, <12.0 pg/ml; ampicillin, <6.0 jAg/ml; and vancomycin, <1.5 jAg/ml. S. faecalis was resistant to cefamandole and sensitive to ampicillin by the Kirby-Bauer disk plate method.
Ureterocolic Diversion of Urine: Management of Some Difficult Problems

AbstractDuring the last 11 years 37 patients were treated with ureterocolic diversion of the urine by means other than classic ureterosigmoidostomy. By altering the technique of joining the ureters to the colon this method of internal urinary diversion is possible even in cases when it would not be feasible by more traditional methods.
Laparoscopic Treatment of Epiphrenic Diverticula

The laparoscopic repair of epiphrenic diverticulum is today considered the standard surgical approach that has replaced the traditional repair through a left thoracotomy. The laparoscopic approach has in fact several advantages over a left thoracotomy or thoracoscopy: it allows a cardiomyotomy extending far onto the stomach, contralateral to the diverticular staple line; it allows a partial fundoplication that prevents gastroesophageal reflux and covers the cardiomyotomy; and it avoids the discomfort of a chest tube postoperatively. This chapter illustrates the preoperative work-up and choice of surgical technique.
Establishing derived coordinated symmetrical and transitive gustatory-visual-auditory relations in children with autism and related intellectual disabilities using the PEAK-E curriculum ☆

Abstract Three children with autism or a related disabilities were taught to make coordinated cross-modal conditional discriminations involving gustatory, visual, and auditory stimuli, and test probes were conducted to evaluate the derivation of symmetrical and transitive relations. Participants were able to master the directly trained relations (gustatory-visual, visual-auditory) and consistently demonstrate symmetrical relations (auditory-visual). Two participants additionally demonstrated derived transitive relations (gustatory-auditory).
How Many Cultures Are Necessary to Identify Pathogens in the Management of Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Infections

ABSTRACT Background Identification of the infecting organism is critical to the successful management of deep prosthetic joint infections (PJI) about the hip and knee. However, the number of culture specimens and which culture specimens are best to identify these organisms is unknown. Additionally, surgeons are often asked to identify a single best culture to be selected for additional testing (i.e. fungal and mycobacterial) to maximize yield. Methods We evaluated 113 consecutive patients with infected THA/TKA and correlated the type of culture specimen and number of specimens taken during surgery to the likelihood of a positive culture result. From this data, we subsequently developed a model to maximize culture yield at the time of surgical intervention. Following exclusions, 74 patients meeting MSIS criteria were left for final analysis. Results From this cohort, 63 out of 74 patients had a positive culture (85%). The odds of a fluid culture being positive was 35/47 (0.75) while the likelihood of tissue cultures yielding a positive result was 164/245 (0.67) (p=0.313). The sample designated best culture specimen was the only positive culture in one case out of 48 cases in which a best culture was identified. The optimal number of cultures needed to yield a positive test result was 4 (specificity=0.61, sensitivity=0.63). Increasing the number of samples increases specificity but reduces sensitivity. Conclusion A minimum of 4 tissue cultures from representative areas is necessary to maximize the chance of identifying the infecting organism during management of the infected THA/TKA. The designation of the best culture specimen for additional testing is arbitrary and may not be clinically efficacious
LRP1-Dependent BMPER Signaling Regulates Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Vascular Inflammation

Objective— Bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide)-mediated sepsis involves dysregulated systemic inflammation, which injures the lung and other organs, often fatally. Vascular endothelial cells act as both targets and mediators of lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory responses. Dysfunction of endothelium results in increases of proinflammatory cytokine production and permeability leakage. BMPER (bone morphogenetic protein–binding endothelial regulator), an extracellular modulator of bone morphogenetic protein signaling, has been identified as a vital component in chronic endothelial inflammatory responses and atherosclerosis. However, it is unclear whether BMPER also regulates inflammatory response in an acute setting such as sepsis. To address this question, we investigated the role of BMPER during lipopolysaccharide-induced acute lung injury. Approach and Results— Mice missing 1 allele of BMPER (BMPER +/− mice used in the place of BMPER −/− mice that die at birth) were used for lipopolysaccharide challenge. Lipopolysaccharide-induced pulmonary inflammation and injury was reduced in BMPER +/ − mice as shown by several measures, including survival rate, infiltration of inflammatory cells, edema, and production of proinflammatory cytokines. Mechanistically, we have demonstrated that BMPER is required and sufficient for the activation of nuclear factor of activated T cells c1. This BMPER-induced nuclear factor of activated T cells activation is coordinated by multiple signaling pathways, including bone morphogenetic protein–independent low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1-extracellular signal-regulated kinase activation, calcineurin signaling, and low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1β–mediated nuclear factor 45 nuclear export in response to BMPER treatment. Conclusions— We conclude that BMPER plays a pivotal role in pulmonary inflammatory response, which provides new therapeutic options against sepsis shock. The new signaling pathway initiated by BMPER/low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1 axis broadens our understanding about BMPER’s role in vascular homeostasis.
Why Make the World Move

The next horizons of human-computer interaction promise a whirling world of digital bytes, physical bits, and their hybrids. Are human beings prepared to inhabit such cyber-physical, adaptive environments? Assuming an optimistic view, this chapter offers a reply, drawing from art and art history, environmental design, literature, psychology, and evolutionary anthropology, to identify wide-ranging motivations for the design of such “new places” of human-computer interaction. Moreover, the author makes a plea to researchers focused in the domain of adaptive environments to pause and take a longer, more comprehensive, more self-reflective view to see what we’re doing, to recognize where we are, and to possibly find ourselves and others within our designed artifacts and systems that make the world move.
A relapsing fever group Borrelia sp. is widely distributed among wild deer in Japan.

A relapsing fever group Borrelia sp. was detected from the blood of wild deer (Cervus nippon) in Japan. The Borrelia sp. was distributed nationwide among deer with an overall prevalence of 26% in blood samples. The prevalence of infection was significantly higher in fawns (48.4%) compared to adult deer (23.6%). Sequencing analysis reveals that this Borrelia sp. belongs to the hard tick-borne relapsing fever borreliae, and that it forms a single lineage based on sequences of the flagellin and glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase genes. Borrelial genome copy number was estimated at 8.8 × 103 genome copies/μl of blood. Other hard tick-borne relapsing fever borrelia (e.g. Borrelia miyamotoi) were not detected in deer blood in this study. These findings suggest that wild deer may act as reservoirs for this Borrelia sp. in Japan.
Mass Spectrometry-Based Fast Photochemical Oxidation of Proteins (FPOP) for Higher Order Structure Characterization

ConspectusAssessment of protein structure and interaction is crucial for understanding protein structure/function relationships. Compared to high-resolution structural tools, including X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-EM, and traditional low-resolution methods, such as circular dichroism, UV–vis, and florescence spectroscopy, mass spectrometry (MS)-based protein footprinting affords medium-to-high resolution (i.e., regional and residue-specific insights) by taking advantage of proteomics methods focused on the primary structure. The methodology relies on “painting” the reactive and solvent-exposed amino acid residues with chemical tags and using the pattern of modifications as footprints from analysis by bottom-up MS-based proteomics to deduce protein higher order structures. The outcome can refer to proteins in solution or even in cells and is complementary to those of X-ray crystallography and NMR. It is particularly useful in mapping protein–ligand interfaces and confor...
Modulation of endoplasmic reticulum stress and the unfolded protein response in cancerous and noncancerous cells.

Objectives:The bio-field array is a device that generates a dielectrophoretic electromagnetic field when placed in a hypotonic saline solution and a direct current of approximately 3 A is applied. ...
M-Adaptation Method for Acoustic Wave Equation on Rectangular Meshes

A novel discretization strategy, dubbed m-adaptation, is developed for solving the acoustic wave equation (in the time domain) on rectangular meshes. The developed method is based on a scheme that is second-order accurate in space and time but has the sixth-order numerical anisotropy on square meshes and the fourth order dispersion on rectangular meshes.
Lewis blood group antigen expression by cultured normal ureteral epithelial cells.

Abstract The importance of Lewis blood group antigens in recurrent urinary tract infections has led to a more detailed study of the expression of these antigens in an in vitro culture system. Expression of A, B, H, and Lewis blood group antigens by primary cultures of ureter epithelial cells was analyzed by flow cytometry. Cells maintained blood group determinants for up to 7 weeks in culture over three passages. In several specimens, the cells that exhibited expression of Lewis A (Le a ) and Lewis B (Le b ) antigens increased dramatically over 2-3 passages in culture. Lewis Y (Le y ) antigen expression was positive on all primary cultures tested. The effect of fetal bovine serum (FBS) on blood group antigen expression was evaluated. Increased concentrations of FBS in the growth media increased the expression of Le a and Le b antigens in certain specimens, but did not affect expression of the other blood group antigens. The effect of FBS on blood group antigen expression of cultured cells depended on the Lewis blood type of the individual donating the specimen. To evaluate the heterogeneity often seen in Le a and Le b antigen expression, dual staining of cells for Le a and Le b antigens was performed. The results of these studies show for the first time that Lewis blood group antigens are expressed by cultured normal ureteral epithelial cells and that the pattern of expression of Le a and Le b changes over time. Furthermore, an individual cell may simultaneously express more than one Lewis antigen on its surface.
AMERICAN POSTFEMINIST CINEMA: WOMEN, ROMANCE, AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE By Michele Schreiber. Edinburgh UP, 2015. 208 pp. £19.99 paper.

In her well-researched and cogently argued book, Michele Schreiber explores the disconnect between the reality of women's personal, economic, and social gains and cinematic representations of women...
Characterization of complex permittivity for consolidated core samples by utilization of mixing rules

Abstract Candidacy of any reservoir as a microwave absorber is predicated on the complex permittivity of the sample. Modeling both the penetration and absorption dynamics of the electromagnetic wave in the reservoir is dependent on realistic estimation of this parameter. Therefore, it becomes necessary to understand the inherent intricacies of complex permittivity in the reservoir. Reservoirs are comprised of both a void space represented by the porosity parameter as well as the rock matrix and can be treated as a binary mixture of the two. Mixing rules can then be introduced and have been shown to be a viable means of estimating the dielectric response. The behavior of the bulk material is considered to be an extension of the isolated contribution of the separate parts. Therefore, by characterizing the response of the individual components of the mixture, the overall response can be estimated. Utilization of mixing rules enables efficient estimation of the dielectric properties anywhere in the reservoir as a function of the rock matrix, fluid saturation, and porosity. The absorptive capacity of the reservoir can then be described which is used to screen the efficacy of the material for microwave introduction. Both the real and imaginary components of complex permittivity are measured on nine consolidated core samples of varying lithology and fluid saturation over the frequency range of 400 MHz to 6 GHz. Experimental data is compared to various mixing rules commonly implemented to determine validity and viability of the estimation of complex permittivity for consolidated samples.
Neonatal pain management.

Neonatal pain management is a challenge for the clinician. Research is just beginning to uncover the neonates’ capability of expression of pain, explore pharmacologic management strategies, and identify the spectrum of intrusions that may precipitate pain or distress in the critically ill neonate. This article reviews the neonatal biologic, behavioral, and physiologic responses to pain and describes recommendations for clinical management and decision-making.