cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Electromechanical response of electrorheological fluids and poly(dimethylsiloxane) networks

A novel type of electromechanical actuator that utilizes the speed of electrorheological fluids (ERFs) coupled with the elastic response of polymeric gels has been investigated. ERF's were made using polyaniline (PANI) particles suspended in a trimethyl-terminated poly(dimethylsiloxane) (3MPDMS) fluid. These ERF's were then cured into matrices of both ordered and randomly cross-linked PDMS networks (XPDMS). Electric fields were applied to these systems using flexible electrodes. Both electrode displacement and compression modulus of the composite gels were measured as a function of cross-link density of the gels, viscosity, and electrical properties of the 3MPDMS fluid, conductivity and dielectric constant of both the pure PANI and the gel matrix, weight percent PANI in the ERF, volume percent ERF in the final gel composite, and applied electric field strength. The dc electric field required to move the electrodes toward each other by a fixed distance depended more on the type and amount of cross-linking ...
Curative percutaneous catheter ablation using radiofrequency energy for accessory pathways in all locations : results in 100 consecutive patients

Patients with accessory pathway-mediated supraventricular tachycardia have typically been treated with drugs or surgery. Although catheter ablation using high voltage direct current shocks has been used to treat patients with drug-refractory supraventricular tachycardia, there are associated disadvantages, including damage due to barotrauma as well as the need for general anesthesia. Recently, transcatheter radiofrequency energy has evolved as an alternative to direct current shock or surgery to ablate accessory pathways. Percutaneous catheter ablation of 109 accessory pathways with use of radiofrequency energy was attempted in 100 consecutive patients. Patient age ranged from 3 to 67 years. The patients had been treated for recurrent tachycardia with a mean of 2.7 +/- 0.2 antiarrhythmic agents that either proved ineffective or caused unacceptable side effects. In seven patients previous attempts at accessory pathway ablation with use of direct current shock had been unsuccessful. Forty-five (41%) of the pathways were left free wall, 43 (40%) were septal and 21 (19%) were right free wall. Eighty-nine (89%) of the 100 patients had successful radiofrequency ablation at the time of hospital discharge. In all but 12 patients the ablation was accomplished in a single session. Complications attributable to the procedure, but not to the ablation itself, occurred in four patients (4%). No patient developed atrioventricular block or other cardiac arrhythmias. Over a mean follow-up period of 10 months, nine patients had some return of accessory pathway conduction; a repeat ablation procedure was successful in all five patients in whom it was attempted. It is concluded that a catheter ablation procedure using radiofrequency energy can be performed on accessory pathways in all locations. The procedure is effective and safer, less costly and more convenient than cardiac surgery and can be considered as an alternative to lifelong medical therapy in any patient with symptomatic accessory pathway-mediated tachycardia.
Chiral N-Phosphonyl Imine Chemistry: Asymmetric Additions of Ester Enolates for the Synthesis of β-Amino Acids

Chiral phosphonyl imines attached by 1-naphthyl protection group were found to react with lithium ester enolates smoothly and give chiral beta-amino esters in good yields (70-88%) and up to excellent diastereoselectivity (>99:1 dr). Triisopropoxytitanium (IV) chloride was found to enhance diastereoseletivity when used as the Lewis acid promoter. The chiral auxiliary can be readily removed by treating with HBr to give free amino esters. The absolute structure has been unambiguously determined by converting one of the products into an authentic sample. This reaction provides an easy access to beta-amino acid derivatives.
The effect of affine transformation on redundancy analysis

Canonical redundancy analysis provides an estimate of the amount of shared variance between two sets of variables and provides an alternative to canonical correlation. The proof that the total redundancy is equal to the average squared multiple correlation coefficient obtained by regressing each variable in the criterion set on all variables in the predictor set is generalized to the case in which there are a larger number of criterion than predictor variables. It is then shown that the redundancy for the criterion set of variables is invariant under affine transformation of the predictor variables, but not invariant under transformation of the criterion variables.
Bone remodeling in osteoarthritis: subchondral and osteophytic responses

OSTEOARTHRITIS can be considered a collective endstage for heterogeneous etiopathologic conditions a#ecting joint tissues. Such etiopathologic factors are multifactorial and include biochemical, enzymatic, genetic and biomechanical factors amongst others. Characteristic pathologic findings include joint space narrowing, peripheral osteophytes, subchondral bony sclerosis and cyst formation. Although commonly considered a disease primarily involving cartilage, studies support variable roles for synovium, muscle, ligaments and bone. Radin and co-workers [1, 2] suggested an important role for subchondral bone changes as an etiologic factor in the early development of degenerative joint disease. Repetitive impulsive loading resulted in early responses characterized by increased bone formation, associated with relative sti#ening of bone; articular cartilage degeneration followed [3]. Subchondral bone changes preceding cartilage damage in osteoarthritis have been demonstrated in other animal models. Examination of trabecular bone within the femoral head of Hartley strain guinea pigs, a strain predisposed to osteoarthritis, demonstrated subchondral trabecular remodeling as an early event in this model of OA [4]. Serial observations in this model utilizing magnetic resonance imaging revealed significant progression of subchondral sclerosis as well as osteophytes during disease development [5]. A longitudinal study of subchondral bone responses in dogs undergoing anterior cruciate ligament transection revealed subchondral sclerosis at 18 months and 54 months, but not at 3 months; findings were associated with loss of subchondral trabecular bone at all three time points. Findings suggested that bony changes were associated with progression of cartilage degeneration, rather than initial development [6]. Experimentally induced osteoarthritis following partial meniscectomy (PM) in the rabbit was associated with prominent osteophyte formation [7]. Increased cellular replication was noted early (at
Executable Grammars in Newspeak

We describe the design and implementation of a parser combinator library in Newspeak, a new language in the Smalltalk family. Parsers written using our library are remarkably similar to BNF; they are almost entirely free of solution-space (i.e., programming language) artifacts. Our system allows the grammar to be specified as a separate class or mixin, independent of tools that rely upon it such as parsers, syntax colorizers etc. Thus, our grammars serve as a shared executable specification for a variety of language processing tools. This motivates our use of the term executable grammar. We discuss the language features that enable these pleasing results, and, in contrast, the challenge our library poses for static type systems.
Energy efficient canonical huffman encoding

As data centers are increasingly focused on energy efficiency, it becomes important to develop low power implementations of the various applications that run on them. Data compression plays a critical role in data centers to mitigate storage and communication costs. This work focuses on building a low power, high performance implementation for canonical Huffman encoding. We develop a number of different hardware and software implementations targeting Xilinx Zynq FPGA, ARM Cortex-A9, and Intel Core i7. Despite its sequential nature, we show that our hardware accelerated implementation is substantially more energy efficient than both the ARM and Intel Core i7 implementations. When compared to highly optimized software running on the ARM processor, our hardware accelerated implementation has approximately 15 times more throughput with 10% higher power usage, resulting in an 8X benefit in energy efficiency (measured in encodings/Watt). Additionally, our hardware accelerated implementation is up to 80% faster and over 230 times more energy efficient than a highly optimized Core i7 implementation.
Fermentation of hydrolysate detoxified by pervaporation through block copolymer membranes

The large-scale use of lignocellulosic hydrolysate as a fermentation broth has been impeded due to its high concentration of organic inhibitors to fermentation. In this study, pervaporation with polystyrene-block-polydimethylsiloxane-block-polystyrene (SDS) block copolymer membranes was shown to be an effective method for separating volatile inhibitors from dilute acid pretreated hydrolysate, thus detoxifying hydrolysate for subsequent fermentation. We report the separation of inhibitors from hydrolysate thermodynamically and quantitatively by detailing their concentrations in the hydrolysate before and after detoxification by pervaporation. Specifically, we report >99% removal of furfural and 27% removal of acetic acid with this method. Additionally, we quantitatively report that the membrane is selective for organic inhibitor compounds over water, despite water's smaller molecular size. Because its inhibitors were removed but its sugars left intact, pervaporation-detoxified hydrolysate was suitable for fermentation. In our fermentation experiments, Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain SA-1 consumed the glucose in pervaporation-detoxified hydrolysate, producing ethanol. In contrast, under the same conditions, a control hydrolysate was unsuitable for fermentation; no ethanol was produced and no glucose was consumed. This work demonstrates progress toward economical lignocellulosic hydrolysate fermentation.
Remote attestation to dynamic system properties: Towards providing complete system integrity evidence

Remote attestation of system integrity is an essential part of trusted computing. However, current remote attestation techniques only provide integrity proofs of static properties of the system. To address this problem we present a novel remote dynamic attestation system named ReDAS (Remote Dynamic Attestation System) that provides integrity evidence for dynamic system properties. Such dynamic system properties represent the runtime behavior of the attested system, and enable an attester to prove its runtime integrity to a remote party. ReDAS currently provides two types of dynamic system properties for running applications: structural integrity and global data integrity. In this work, we present the challenges of remote dynamic attestation, provide an in-depth security analysis and introduce a first step towards providing a complete runtime dynamic attestation framework. Our prototype implementation and evaluation with real-world applications show that we can improve on current static attestation techniques with an average performance overhead of 8%.
Oil price shocks, unemployement, investment and the current account: an intertemporal disequilibrium analysis

Recent work on macroeconomics of price increases of intermediate imports while theoretical rigorous and elegant, is still unable to explain the stylized facts. This paper attempts to remedy the shortcomings of earlier papers by using a two-period model to properly analyse investment and savings behaviour and hence the current account. This model also incorporates disequilibrium in first-period labour and goods markets to compare the response of countries in different disequilibrium regimes to shocks in intermediate input prices.
Serum sex hormone-binding globulin and serum nonsex hormone-binding globulin-bound testosterone fractions in prepubertal boys with chronic renal failure.

We had previously reported that serum sex hormone binding-globulin (SHBG) decreases and serum non-SHBG-bound testosterone (T) and free T increase significantly from infancy to late prepuberty in normal prepubertal children of both sexes. We had also shown an age-related delay in these changes in hypopituitary boys, which was reversed by GH treatment. Stunted growth and delayed puberty are conspicuous features of chronic renal failure (CRF). As another model of delay of growth and development, serum SHBG and serum T fractions were determined in 13 boys with CRF on chronic dialysis. In CRF, mean serum SHBG was significantly higher (99.1 ± 68.9 nmol/L; P < 0.05) than in 31 control (C) children of similar ages (66.2 ± 34.9 nmol/L), while serum non-SHBG-bound T and free T were significantly lower (0.16 ± 0.12 in CRF vs. 0.24 ± 0.12 in C and 0.010 ± 0.005 in CRF vs. 0,016 ± 0.01 in C, respectively). On the other hand, serum total T (1.31 ± 0.88 in CRF vs. 1.08 ± 0.56 in C) and serum insulin-like growth factor-I...
The Urban Neighborhood and Cognitive Functioning in Late Middle Age

This study examines the association of cognitive functioning with urban neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and racial/ethnic segregation for a U.S. national sample of persons in late middle age, a time in the life course when cognitive deficits begin to emerge. The key hypothesis is that effects of neighborhood on cognitive functioning are not uniform but are most pronounced among subgroups of the population defined by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity. Data are from the third wave of the Health and Retirement Survey for the birth cohort of 1931 to 1941, which was 55 to 65 years of age in 1996 (analytic N = 4,525), and the 1990 U.S. Census. Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage has an especially large negative impact on cognitive functioning among persons who are themselves poor, an instance of compound disadvantage. These findings have policy implications supporting "upstream" interventions to enhance cognitive functioning, especially among those most adversely affected by neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage.
The Asthma-COPD Overlap Syndrome: A Common Clinical Problem in the Elderly

Many patients with breathlessness and chronic obstructive lung disease are diagnosed with either asthma, COPD, or—frequently—mixed disease. More commonly, patients with uncharacterized breathlessness are treated with therapies that target asthma and COPD rather than one of these diseases. This common practice represents the difficulty in distinguishing these disorders clinically, particularly in patients with a history that does not easily differentiate asthma from COPD. A common clinical scenario is an older former smoker with partially reversible or fixed airflow obstruction and evidence of atopy, demonstrating “overlap” features of asthma and COPD. We stress that asthma-COPD overlap syndrome becomes more prevalent with advancing age as patients respond less favorably to guideline-recommended drug therapy. We review the similarities and differences in clinical characteristics between these disorders, and their physiologic and inflammatory profiles within the context of the aging patient. We underscore the difficulties in differentiating asthma from COPD in current or former smokers, share our institutional experience with overlap syndrome, and highlight the need for new research to better characterize and investigate this important clinical phenotype.
Measurements on Beam-Beam Interaction at SPEAR

Measurements of luminosity at SPEAR, which were performed at different operational conditions of the storage ring are shown and discussed. The parameters varied are: the current in both beams, the minimum betatron amplitude functions at the collision point, the energy and the vertical betatron frequencies. As a result of these measurements we found that the maximum achievable luminosity is much higher than predicted by the incoherent beam-beam limit using ?v = 0.025. We also found that the maximum achievable luminosity is a strong function of the betatron frequencies. After computing the largest linear tuneshifts, we found that the quarter resonance seems to be the limiting effect for beam-beam collision.
High serum IFN-alpha activity is a heritable risk factor for systemic lupus erythematosus.

Interferon α (IFN-α) levels are elevated in many patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); however it is not known whether high serum IFN-α activity is a cause or a result of the disease. We studied 266 SLE patients and 405 of their healthy relatives, and frequently found high serum IFN-α activity in both patients and healthy relatives as compared to healthy unrelated individuals. High IFN-α activity was clustered in specific families in both SLE patients and their healthy first-degree relatives, suggesting a heritable trait. Heritability was also supported by quantitative familial correlation of IFN-α activity, concordance in affected sib pairs and frequent transmission of the high IFN-α activity trait from parents to offspring. Autoantibodies to RNA-binding proteins and double-stranded DNA were associated with high IFN-α activity in SLE patients; however these autoantibodies were very uncommon in healthy family members and did not explain the observed familial correlations. The frequency of high IFN-α activity was similar across all studied ethnic backgrounds. These data suggest that high serum IFN-α activity is a complex heritable trait, which plays a primary role in SLE pathogenesis.
The strength of vortex and swirling core flows

This note presents a discussion of the roles of axial momentum flux, flow force, angular momentum flux and circulation in determining the strength and hence characterizing the structure of such narrow rotating axisymmetric core flows as swirling jets, vortex jets, sink vortices and vortex wakes. The salient (though sometimes neglected) features of these core flows are that perturbation pressure plays an essential role both in the coupling of axial and azimuthal velocity fields and in the transmission of force along the core, and that flux of angular momentum is invariant only along cores with zero gross circulation. A number of existing solutions are brought into relationship by the discussion, including Long's similarity solution for draining vortices and Reynolds’ dimensional treatment of swirling wakes.
Colored Dissolved Organic Matter Dynamics in the Northern Gulf of Mexico from Ocean Color and Numerical Model Results

Chaichitehrani, N.; D’Sa, E.J.; Ko, D.S.; Walker, N.D.; Osburn, C.L., and Chen, R.F., 2014. Colored dissolved organic matter dynamics in the Northern Gulf of Mexico from ocean color and numerical model results. Journal of Coastal Research, 30(4), 800–814. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) absorption and salinity relationships were assessed and used in conjunction with the salinity and current outputs of a numerical model (Navy Coastal Ocean Model [NCOM]) to study CDOM dynamics in the northern Gulf of Mexico. In situ CDOM absorption and salinity obtained from multiple field campaigns were inversely correlated seasonally (winter–spring and summer) and latitudinally (inner- and outer-shelf zones), suggesting conservative behavior of CDOM distribution. A weaker correlation, during summer in the outer-shelf zone, however, indicated stronger effects of photooxidation and lower masking effects from riverine CDOM. Applying these relationships to simulated salinity resulted in hourly maps of CDOM that revealed similarities to CDOM patterns derived from SeaWiFS satellite imagery. Further, matchup comparisons between model-derived and in situ CDOM absorption were statistically sound for the summer (bias ¼� 0.016, root mean square error ¼ 0.059, r 2 ¼ 0.51 SI ¼ 0.28) and the winter–spring periods (bias ¼ 0.033, root mean square error ¼ 0.099, r 2 ¼ 0.52, SI ¼ 0.21). Overlaying the modelderived CDOM maps on the simulated currents revealed the strong influence of currents on CDOM advection. Downcoast currents during the nonsummer months led to persistent advection of CDOM westward interrupted by frequent cold front events that flush CDOM-laden waters out of the coastal bays onto the inner and outer continental shelves. In contrast, the upcoast current regime, though less well organized, produces a more significant seaward advection of CDOM, likely due to the Ekman transport and subsequent entrainment by mesoscale eddies over the continental slope.
Shock-based approach for indexing of image databases using shape

Projected shape of objects is a significant cue in fast and robust selection of images in response to visual content queries. Yet, existing methods for indexing into digital image libraries do not take full advantage of shape, primarily because this ultimately involves fundamentally difficult vision problems such as segmentation and recognition. These problems are difficult because realistic images depict objects in occlusion relationship, boundaries of objects are not clearly defined and often become ambiguous among spurious boundaries, boundaries change relative orientation in articulated objects, etc. We present a symmetry- based and contour-based representation of shape, (ii) a propagation-based method to extract partial symmetries from real images, (iii) transforms to augment this representation with that of its 'neighboring' shapes, (iv) the generation of user-sketched queries using intuitive shape deformations, and (v) multistage inexact graph-matching to extract and rank images containing objects similar to the user-defined query.
Do higher salaries lower physician migration

It is believed that low wages are an important reason why doctors and nurses in developing countries migrate, and this has led to a call for higher wages for health professionals in developing countries. In this paper, we provide some of the first estimates of the impact of raising health workers' salaries on migration. Using aggregate panel data on the stock of foreign doctors in 16 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, we explore the effect of a wage increase programme in Ghana on physician migration. We find evidence that 6 years after the implementation of this programme, the foreign stock of Ghanaian doctors abroad had fallen by approximately 10% relative to the estimated counterfactual. This result should be interpreted with caution, however, given the sensitivity of the results to changes in model specification.
A possible (. ) single-muon trigger for B-physics at the SSC

This is a progress report on the authors' SSC studies on the possibility of a B-physics trigger arrangement simply demanding low multiplicity and one or more muons into a forward TASTER detector, in conjunction with sophisticated on-line processing. The goal is to provide 1-10 eventssec onto tape of genuine gg ..-->.. BB-bar where both B's decay into TASTER with vertices measurably displaced from the primary interaction vertex, one of the B's decays to ..mu.. + X, and the other B decays into anything that one desires to study (rare decays such as K..pi.. and K..mu mu.., mixing, CP violations in self-conjugate modes such as ..pi../sup +/..pi../sup -/ and K/sup +/K/sup -/, ,etc.), and to do it with less than or equal to 10% background. For this study the authors presume 10/sup 32/ luminosity with a general ''minimum-bias type'' pp cross-section of 100mb (10/sup 7/ interactionssec), a gg ..-->.. BB-bar cross-section of 400..mu..b (4X10/sup 4/sec), and one forward TASTER (silicon strips, tracking, magnetic field, fast RICH, calorimetry, and muon detection; approximately as described in the Snowmass 86 Heavy Flavor Report) from 1/sup 0/ to 20/sup 0/. This yields about 600 eventssec with both B's into TASTER and one of them decayingmore » into ..mu..+X. The authors' preliminary results thus far (combining information from our beginning Monte Carlo studies using ''PYTHIA'' the Lund program for pp interactions, the Snowmass 86 reports, etc.) are encouraging, but not yet conclusive. Tentatively, it appears that the trigger rates from actual pp interactions (100 mb), including some ''junk'' particles with each beam crossing, may be tractable. It is more difficult to tell whether the completely ''fake'' trigger rate from ''junk'' particles in each beam crossing is handleable.« less
North–South trade and income inequality

Abstract This paper investigates the effects of North–South trade on international income inequality. While empirical studies suggest that trade liberalization encourages income convergence and reduces the per capita income gap between poor and rich countries, North–South trade is shown to increase the income gap between the two regions. On the other hand, trade liberalization by either region increases the welfare of both regions, and does not necessarily reduce the gap in “real income” or utility.
Behavioral analysis of anorexia produced by hindbrain injections of AMPA receptor antagonist NBQX in rats.

The caudal brain stem integrates short-term feedback signals from the oral cavity and the food-handling abdominal viscera, as well as long-term homeostatic, cognitive, and emotional signals from th...
A synthesis of 4-hydroxy-2-trans-nonenal and 4-(3H) 4-hydroxy-2-trans-nonenal

4-Hydroxy-2-trans-nonenal, the most abundant and toxic unsaturated aldehyde generated during membrane lipid peroxidation, was synthesized starting from fumaraldehyde dimethyl acetal. In the first step of the synthesis, the fumaraldehyde dimethyl acetal was partially hydrolyzed using amberlyst catalyst to obtain the monoacetal. The 4-hydroxy-2-trans-nonenal was synthesized by the Grignard reaction of the fumaraldehyde monoacetal with 1-bromopentane. 4-Hydroxy-2-trans-nonenal, obtained as its dimethylacetal, was oxidized to its corresponding 4-keto derivative using pyridinium chlorochromate buffered with sodium acetate as the oxidizing agent. 4-(3H) 4-Hydroxy-2-trans-nonenal was obtained in one step by the sodium borotriteride reduction of the 4-keto derivative.
Single Equations Can Draw Pictures

Analytic geometry is more powerful than Euclidean geometry, but students find that analytic geometry leaves many of the familiar objects of Euclidean geometry behind. Thus, any ellipse has a polynomial defining it, but where's the polynomial defining a triangle or a square or two intersecting circles? The purpose of this paper is to bring the two worlds of Euclidean and analytic geometry a little closer by one of the themes of higher mathematics?the versatility of polynomials. In high school I'd just learned the equation of a circle. During a school assembly a friend and I tried unsuccessfully to find a single equation that would give two concentric circles. The next day my friend appeared in math class like one bearing a rare treasure. He'd asked his father who, conveniently, was a mathematics professor. On a piece of paper there was neatly written: The equation of two circles of radii 1 and 2, centered at the origin, is
Presbycusis: do we have a third ear?

Introduction Age-related hearing changes are the most frequent cause of sensorineural hearing loss in adults. In the literature no studies exist concerning the importance of speechreading in individuals with presbycusis. Equally, no such studies have been carried out with speakers of the Portuguese (Portugal) language. Objectives To evaluate whether the intelligibility of words in presbycusis is improved by speechreading, in such a way that looking at the interlocutor's face while he is talking functions like a “third ear”, and to determine the statistical relevance of the intelligibility improvement by speechreading. Methods Eleven individuals (22 ears) with bilateral and symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss compatible with presbycusis were evaluated. The subjects were aged between 57 and 82 years, with an average of 70 ± 11.51 years and median of 69.5 years. A complete medical and audiological profile of each patient was created and all patients were submitted to a vocal audiogram, without and with observation of the audiologist's face. A descriptive and analytical statistical analysis was performed (Shapiro–Wilk and t pairs tests) adopting the significance level of 0.05 (5%). Results We noticed better performance in intelligibility with speechreading. The p-value was zero (p < 0.05), so we rejected the null hypothesis, showing that there was statistically significant difference with speechreading; the same conclusion was obtained by analysis of the confidence intervals. Conclusions Individuals with presbycusis in this study, performed better on spoken word intelligibility when the hearing of those words was associated with speechreading. This phenomenon helps in such a way that observation of the interlocutor's face works like a “third ear”.
Diffusion-Induced Dislocations in Silicon

The stresses in a silicon wafer which has undergone diffusion by a high concentration of boron are partially relaxed by the generation of dislocations in the boron-diffused regions of Si. It is found that these dislocations nucleate at the Si surface as dissociated half-loops lying on {111} planes inclined to the surface. Expansion of the half-loops to the diffused/virgin Si interface produce segments of misfit dislocations which are of the dissociated 60o type. These misfit dislocations move deeper into the crystal as the diffusion front moves further in the wafer and often intersect other misfit dislocations on intersecting glide planes. In this paper, the misfit dislocations and the reactions between them are characterized and discussed.
Hydrated Excess Protons Can Create Their Own Water Wires.

Grotthuss shuttling of an excess proton charge defect through hydrogen bonded water networks has long been the focus of theoretical and experimental studies. In this work we show that there is a related process in which water molecules move (“shuttle”) through a hydrated excess proton charge defect in order to wet the path ahead for subsequent proton charge migration. This process is illustrated through reactive molecular dynamics simulations of proton transport through a hydrophobic nanotube, which penetrates through a hydrophobic region. Surprisingly, before the proton enters the nanotube, it starts “shooting” water molecules into the otherwise dry space via Grotthuss shuttling, effectively creating its own water wire where none existed before. As the proton enters the nanotube (by 2–3 A), it completes the solvation process, transitioning the nanotube to the fully wet state. By contrast, other monatomic cations (e.g., K+) have just the opposite effect, by blocking the wetting process and making the nano...
New Laws of Retail Gravitation

* I am indebted to Miss Janice Olbrich, Research Assistant in Marketing, and the staff of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research for statistical assistance in this study, and to my colleague, Professor Robert Mitchell, for reading and criticizing the manuscript. 1 William J. Reilly, The Law of Retail Gravitation (New York: William J. Reilly, 1931). as much trade as Champaign-Urbana. If Ba/Bb=.915 then the relative percentages can be derived by dividing .915 by 1.915. This gives 48 per cent to Bloomington and 52 per cent to Champaign-Urbana.2 A survey of consumers in Farmer City in 1942 found that Bloomington-Normal and ChampaignUrbana attracted trade from Farmer City in the proportion of 45 per cent to the former and 55 per cent to the latter. This formula is of considerable value in connection with another formula derived at the University of Illinois some years ago which determines the boundaries of a trading center's trade area. The formula (No. 2):
The C. Elegans Spermatheca as a Model System for Calcium Signaling in a Contractile Tube

Contractile tubes and valves are found in organisms across the animal kingdom. Careful regulation of these tubes ensures transit proceeds with proper pace and directionality. The spermatheca, a tissue in the nematode C. elegans, provides an ideal model for detailed studies of such tubes. 24 smooth muscle-like cells form a contractile tube, and 4 cells fuse to form a syncytial valve. During ovulation, the spermatheca is stretched significantly by oocyte entry, remains distended for a regulated period of time while the eggshell forms, and finally initiates coordinated contraction of the cells, opening the valve, and expelling the egg. The worm has many genetic and imaging benefits, including the ability to image activity in living, intact animals. With much of the calcium and contractile machineries known, and parallels with many smooth muscle systems, the spermatheca presents a ready model system for mechanobiology. Mechanisms at work in this tissue potentially represent fundamental biological responses applicable to other contractile tubes and valves.Using the genetically encoded calcium sensor GCaMP, we monitored calcium activity in the spermathecal cells during ovulation events. Refining established methods, we imaged live, intact animals on a widefield fluorescence microscope to acquire tissue-level GCaMP movies. To quantify our imaging data, we developed semi-automated image processing and analysis pipelines using Fiji and Matlab, and signal processing and analysis pipelines in Matlab. These pipelines extract metrics from the GCaMP data that reliably vary in worms mutant for components of the calcium or contractile machineries. Results demonstrate that our processing and analysis pipelines provide a platform to develop a deep quantitative understanding of this model contractile tube and valve. This platform and system could give us insights into fundamental mechanobiological processes in living, intact animals.
Why we customize the Web

Publisher Summary This chapter examines the landscape of Web customization, particularly for the Mozilla Firefox. It specifically focuses on browser-hosted customizations, but a serious limitation of this approach is that the user's customizations do not easily move with them, as they use different browsers on different computers. CoScripter has an advantage here, because it stores all scripts on a wiki so that any Firefox browser with CoScripter installed can access them. Mozilla Weave is an effort to solve this problem in general by synchronizing Firefox extensions and other preferences across multiple installations of the browser. Although developing team have made a distinction in this chapter between “desktop” and “Web,” in fact the Web platform considered might better be called the “Web desktop”—the Web as seen by a conventional Web browser such as Mozilla Firefox running on a conventional desktop or laptop with a big screen, keyboard, and pointing device. The future of the Web platform is much more diverse. Web browsers will turn up in a variety of different devices and contexts, including cell phones, netbooks, TV set-top boxes, home media servers, and wall displays. Mobile Web customization is already an active area of research, but much work remains to be done to give users the power to customize the Web of the future.
Editor's Highlight: Analysis of the Effects of Cell Stress and Cytotoxicity on In Vitro Assay Activity Across a Diverse Chemical and Assay Space.

Chemical toxicity can arise from disruption of specific biomolecular functions or through more generalized cell stress and cytotoxicity-mediated processes. Here, responses of 1060 chemicals including pharmaceuticals, natural products, pesticidals, consumer, and industrial chemicals across a battery of 815 in vitro assay endpoints from 7 high-throughput assay technology platforms were analyzed in order to distinguish between these types of activities. Both cell-based and cell-free assays showed a rapid increase in the frequency of responses at concentrations where cell stress/cytotoxicity responses were observed in cell-based assays. Chemicals that were positive on at least 2 viability/cytotoxicity assays within the concentration range tested (typically up to 100 μM) activated a median of 12% of assay endpoints whereas those that were not cytotoxic in this concentration range activated 1.3% of the assays endpoints. The results suggest that activity can be broadly divided into: (1) specific biomolecular interactions against one or more targets (eg, receptors or enzymes) at concentrations below which overt cytotoxicity-associated activity is observed; and (2) activity associated with cell stress or cytotoxicity, which may result from triggering specific cell stress pathways, chemical reactivity, physico-chemical disruption of proteins or membranes, or broad low-affinity non-covalent interactions. Chemicals showing a greater number of specific biomolecular interactions are generally designed to be bioactive (pharmaceuticals or pesticidal active ingredients), whereas intentional food-use chemicals tended to show the fewest specific interactions. The analyses presented here provide context for use of these data in ongoing studies to predict in vivo toxicity from chemicals lacking extensive hazard assessment.
Correlates of Serotype in Cryptococcus Neoformans

Serotypic differentiation of C. neoformans isolates was first reported by E. E. Evans in 1949, based upon agglutination reactions with absorbed rabbit serum (1). Evans studied only 12 isolates, 8 of which were designated as type A, 3 as type B and one as type C. Significantly, the author had collected his type B and C isolates from patients in California. It was later shown that only about one of 16 isolates from elsewhere in the USA are types B or C (2). A new serotype was reported in 1966 based upon fluorescent antibody studies with a human serum against one isolate of the new serotype (3). In 1968, existence of a fourth serotype was confirmed in five isolates, using agglutination by absorbed rabbit serum (4). Since this time, no new serotypes have been described.
Detection and imaging of chrome yellow (lead chromate) in latent prints, solid residues, and minerals by laser-desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI-MS).

In the past, chrome yellow (lead chromate, PbCrO4 ), a bright orange-red substance, has been widely used as an inorganic pigment in the production of paints, coatings, and plastics. Herein, we demonstrate that laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) is a powerful tool for the detection of lead chromate in solid residues. In fact, lead chromate in trace amounts is easily detectable by LDI-MS even from residues left as latent prints. For example, a latent print obtained by stamping the exposed laterally cut surface of a pencil over 50 years old on an acetonitrile-moistened paper, was successfully imaged for both lead and chromate using a Synapt G2 HDMS mass spectrometer. After rastering the print with a 355 nm laser beam and recording positive- and negative-ion mass spectra over the range m/z 50-1200, we generated false-color 'heat maps' (single-ion images) for 208 Pb+• (m/z 207.98) and Cr2 O6-• (m/z 199.85). The heat maps matched closely with the faint visual image of the pencil imprint. Moreover, our results confirmed that lead chromate was used in the pigment coatings of old pencils. Evidently, LDI-MS imaging is an efficient procedure to survey for the presence of lead and chromate in minerals and other materials. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Building Tools, Gathering Data: Precursors for Assessing Students' Programming Process (Abstract Only)

Computer programming is a process. Successful programming involves incrementally building and testing a solution. Students' ability to program is typically determined by an assessment of the end-product of a programming session rather than an examination of the actual process students are engaged in. A prerequisite to assessing a student's programming process is having access to that process. While direct one-on-one observation of students while they code has the potential to yield high-quality data, it does not scale well to large classes. One scalable approach is to automatically capture edit events through IDE instrumentation, and programmatically assess the resulting data. In this poster we report on our work to date in developing and deploying a plug-in for Eclipse's Java Development Tools (JDT), explore the data we have collected to date, compare our results with those reported in previous work, and discuss possible directions for future work in using this data for assessment of students' programming process.
Angular momentum transport with twisted exciton wave packets

A chain of cofacial molecules with ${C}_{N}$ or ${C}_{Nh}$ symmetry supports excitonic states with a screwlike structure. These can be quantified with the combination of an axial wave number and an azimuthal winding number. Combinations of these states can be used to construct excitonic wave packets that spiral down the chain with well-determined linear and angular momenta. These twisted exciton wave packets can be created and annihilated using laser pulses, and their angular momentum can be optically modified during transit. This allows for the creation of optoexcitonic circuits in which information, encoded in the angular momentum of light, is converted into excitonic wave packets that can be manipulated, transported, and then reemitted. A tight-binding paradigm is used to demonstrate the key ideas. The approach is then extended to quantify the evolution of twisted exciton wave packets in a many-body, multilevel time-domain density functional theory setting. In both settings, numerical methods are developed that allow the site-to-site transfer of angular momentum to be quantified.
Synthesis of 4-Azido-N-acetylhexosamine Uridine Diphosphate Donors: Clickable Glycosaminoglycans

Unnatural chemically modified nucleotide sugars UDP-4-N3-GlcNAc and UDP-4-N3-GalNAc were chemically synthesized for the first time. These unnatural UDP sugar products were then tested for incorporation into hyaluronan, heparosan, or chondroitin using polysaccharide synthases. UDP-4-N3-GlcNAc served as a chain termination substrate for hyaluronan or heparosan synthases; the resulting 4-N3-GlcNAc-terminated hyaluronan and heparosan were then successfully conjugated with Alexa Fluor 488 DIBO alkyne, demonstrating that this approach is generally applicable for labeling and detection of suitable glycosaminoglycans.
Non-invasive method of monitoring retinal vasculitis in patients with birdshot chorioretinopathy using optical coherence tomography

Background/aims To investigate the utility of using montaged optical coherence tomography (OCT) thickness maps to monitor perivascular thickness as a marker of vasculitic activity in patients with large-vessel retinal vasculitis. Methods This is a retrospective cohort study of 22 eyes of 11 patients with a history of retinal vasculitis associated with birdshot chorioretinopathy (BCR). Patients had serial spectral domain 6×6 mm cube OCT scans centred on the fovea, optic nerve and proximal branches of the superior and inferior retinal vessels. OCT thickness change maps for each respective region were analysed. Changes in perivascular thickness were confirmed by assessing vasculitic activity on fluorescein angiography (FA), when clinically indicated. Results In three patients, montaged OCT scans were acquired at diagnosis and serially through initial treatment. In all three patients, montaged OCT demonstrated reduced perivascular thickening with oral prednisone treatment, which was confirmed by FA showing reduced vascular leakage in both eyes. Eight patients had serial montaged OCT scans after diagnosis and initial treatment of BCR. Four of these patients showed fluctuations in perivascular thickness during flares and treatment that were confirmed by either increased or decreased vascular leakage on FA. The other four patients remained quiet on their immunosuppressive treatment regimens, and no changes in perivascular thickness were detected. Conclusions Evaluating large-vessel perivascular thickness on OCT scans may be a useful method for non-invasively monitoring posterior pole large-vessel retinal vasculitis.
Comparing measurement response and inverted results of electrical resistivity tomography instruments

ABSTRACT In this investigation, we compare the results of electrical resistivity measurements made by six commercially available instruments on the same line of electrodes to determine if there are differences in the measured data or inverted results. These comparisons are important to determine whether measurements made between different instruments are consistent. We also degraded contact resistance on one quarter of the electrodes to study how each instrument responds to different electrical connection with the ground. We find that each instrument produced statistically similar apparent resistivity results, and that any conservative assessment of the final inverted resistivity models would result in a similar interpretation for each. We also note that inversions, as expected, are affected by measurement error weights. Increased measurement errors were most closely associated with degraded contact resistance in this set of experiments. In a separate test we recorded the full measured waveform for a sing...
A reservoir storage estimation algorithm using digital elevation data and image classifications

Due to the limited spatial resolution of past and existing satellite altimeters, only about 15% of global reservoirs (by storage capacity) can be monitored from space. To estimate the storage variations of more reservoirs via satellite observations, a 3-step algorithm using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images in combination with the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is developed. First, water surface area is estimated from MODIS via an enhanced classification procedure. Second, a water surface area — height (A-H) relationship is generated using DEM information by regressing the cumulative area against the elevation values within the delineated reservoir region. Third, the reservoir storage variations are calculated by applying the water surface area estimations to the A-H relationship. Here, the new algorithm is validated (against gauge observations) over three reservoirs which are not covered by any existing spaceborne altimeters. The coefficients of determination from the validation are 0.84, 0.90, and to 0.90 for these reservoirs. By applying this algorithm to South Asian reservoirs, a total of 27 reservoirs representing 45% of the region's overall storage capacity can be monitored.
The Radical Traditionalist: Naomi Mitchison, Aud the Deep-Minded and The Land the Ravens Found

The Radical Traditionalist: Naomi Mitchison, Aud the Deep-Minded and The Land the Ravens Found
A Comparison of Oral and Intravenous Mouse Models of Listeriosis

Listeria monocytogenes is one of several enteric microbes that is acquired orally, invades the gastric mucosa, and then disseminates to peripheral tissues to cause systemic disease in humans. Intravenous (i.v.) inoculation of mice with L. monocytogenes has been the most widely-used small animal model of listeriosis over the past few decades. The infection is highly reproducible and has been invaluable in deciphering mechanisms of adaptive immunity in vivo, particularly CD8⁺ T cell responses to intracellular pathogens. However, the i.v. model completely bypasses the gut phase of the infection. Recent advances in generating both humanized mice and murinized bacteria, as well as the development of a foodborne route of transmission has reignited interest in studying oral models of listeriosis. In this review, we analyze previously published reports to highlight both the similarities and differences in tissue colonization and host response to infection using either oral or i.v. inoculation.