cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Determination of Reduced Inorganic Sulfur Forms as Sulfide by Zinc-Hydrochloric Acid Distillation

Abstract A simple, rapid method for the estimation of reduced inorganic sulfur in reduced environments such as lake sediments was developed. The method involves distillation in the presence of granular zinc and hydrochloric acid and determination of sulfide as the methylene blue complex. The method gives quantitative recovery of elemental sulfur, sulfide and thiosulfate, and partial recovery of other reduced forms of inorganic sulfur. Sulfate, persulfate and organic forms of sulfur are not determined by the method developed. The method is sensitive and highly precise, and has been found to be very useful in evaluating the sulfur status of lake sediments.
Water, Geopolitics, and Economic Development in the Conceptualization of a Region

Two U.S.-based geographers outline three dimensions (geopolitical, economical, and biophysical) used to define the basin of the Mekong River as a region, which reveal multi-scalar water governance policies and discourses that lie at the core of current challenges and tensions within the basin. Drawing on their extensive knowledge and fieldwork, the authors demonstrate that processes integral to the framing of the Mekong as a region of economic integration and international cooperation (water resource development through construction of large dams) conflict sharply with the functioning of the Mekong as a region of highly connected biophysical processes. The approach utilized in the paper can be applied to the study of other transboundary river-basin regions in Eurasia and elsewhere facing similar contradictions among the geopolitical, economic, and biophysical dimensions used to define them. By focusing on a region as constructed simultaneously through multiple social and biophysical processes, the authors...
What surgeons need to know to help patients receive quality medical care in managed care settings.

background Americans spend more than $3,300 per person per year on health care, an amount businesses, government, and citizens alike consider too high. material reviewed Managed care attempts to offer services at a lower cost, about 10% below that of indemnity insurance, and attempts to controls costs by modifying decisions historically made by physician and patient. Many techniques have been used to modify the decision-making process, with varying effects on quality. conclusions Surgeons can help sustain easily accessible, high-quality care through various personal behaviors and through choosing their managed care partners well.
Distribution of neutral organic compounds between n-heptane and fluorine-containing alcohols.

Abstract Partition coefficients for a number of varied compounds were determined for n -heptane-2,2,2-trifluoroethanol and n -heptane-1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-propanol and used to derive a general model for the distribution of neutral compounds in the biphasic systems. The partition coefficient, log K p , was correlated through the solvation parameter model giving log K p = 0.160 + 1.190 V + 0.856 E − 1.538 S − 1.325 A − 2.965 B for the n -heptane-2,2,2-trifluoroethanol system with a multiple correlation coefficient of 0.988, standard error of the estimate 0.136, and Fischer statistic 599 for 77 compounds. For n -heptane-1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-propanol, the model is log K p = −0.225 + 1.161 V + 0.720 E − 1.357 S − 0.577 A − 2.819 B with a multiple correlation coefficient of 0.982, standard error of the estimate 0.148, and Fischer statistic 421 for 84 compounds. In the models, the solute descriptors are excess molar refraction E , dipolarity/polarizability S , overall hydrogen bond acidity and basicity A and B , respectively, and McGowan's characteristic volume V . Either model is expected to be able to estimate further values of the partition coefficient to about 0.13 log units and is applicable to a wide range of compounds. Applications include the choice of partitioning systems for sample clean-up and countercurrent chromatography and for estimating solute descriptors for water insoluble or reactive compounds.
Cerumen Occlusion Lowers Infrared Tympanic Membrane Temperature Measurement

OBJECTIVE: To examine the effect that cerumen occlusion of the ear canal has on infrared tympanic membrane temperature measurement. METHODS: A prospective, randomized, single-blind human study was carried out in a university hospital observation unit. The subjects were a convenience sample of human volunteers ages 18 years or older who did not have cerumen occlusion or scarred tympanic membranes. A paraffin-coated human cerumen plug was placed in one randomly chosen ear, and after 20 minutes of equilibration the temperature of each ear was measured with an infrared thermometer. Analysis of the difference in mean temperature between the occluded and nonoccluded ears was by Student's paired t-test. RESULTS: Infrared tympanic membrane temperatures were measured in 43 subjects aged 21 to 58 years. The mean temperature of the occluded ear canal was 0.3 degrees C lower than that of the opposite ear canal (p = 0.0001, 95% CI 0.16-0.45 degrees C). CONCLUSION: Cerumen occlusion of the ear canal causes underestimation of body temperature measure by infrared tympanic membrane thermometry.
Two Theorems for Time-Dependent Dynamical Systems

There is a growing aggregation of papers related to the search for invariants, or first integrals, of time-dependent dynamical systems. The citation of all such work since the seminal papers by LewisIl•) would be prohibitively lengthy in a short note. Two short review papers by Ray3),.) contain many references to recent literature on this subject. We will refer here only to key papers selected to serve the main points of the present paper. Our purpose is to prove two theorems which pertain to the equations of motion of dynamical systems recently discussed in the literature. The proof of the theorems will show that an auxiliary variable is naturally associated with these equations of motion, will reveal the origin of useful rescaling variables and will lead to direct determination of an associated invariant of the motion, The discussion of time-dependent systems is frequently presented in terms of an auxiliary function p(t), say, where t denotes the independent variable time. For many such systems the function p (t) is any solution to the specific nonlinear differential equation
The role of peer interaction in the social construction of mathematical knowledge

Abstract Observations from a study of collaborative problem solving are used to demonstrate the processes of informal and implicit teaching or proleptic instruction, that occur in peer work groups. These observations illustrate how two students with different initial stances toward a complex task can help each other incorporate new experimentation and reasoning strategies into their repertoire. The findings from the study indicate that peers can serve as teachers and students for each other. In addition, the findings show how children can take an active role in discovering and applying mathematical concepts.
CHROMOSOME ABERRATIONS ARISING SPONTANEOUSLY AND INDUCED IN MEIOTIC CELLS AT LOW LEVELS OF RADIATION IN TRADESCANTIA.

Data are compared from an analysis of chromosome mutations arising spontaneously in Tradescantia paludosa and the frequency of micronuclei induced in meiotic cells of Tradescantia by doses of x radiation ranging from 0.3 to 6.0 r. It is suggested that the possibility of unexpectedly high meiotic sensitivity should be taken into account in setting standards for radiation tolerance for man, and panticularly for the human female where immature ova remain at rest in meiotic prophase. (C.H.)
Meralgia paresthetica and large abdomens.

Excerpt To the editor: We read with great interest the letter by Radvan and Vidikan (1) on meralgia paresthetica in patients with liver disease, in which they suggested that entrapment of the later...
Corona poling of PZT ceramics and flexible piezoelectric composites

Abstract In the conventional poling method, piezoelectric ceramics and composites are poled by applying a large D.C. voltage directly to the sample. The poling of composites having a polymer matrix with 0–3 connectivity is especially difficult because the electric field within the high dielectric constant grains is far smaller than in the low dielectric constant polymer matrix. Therefore, very large electric fields are required to align the piezoelectric grains. Unfortunately, such large electric fields often cause localized dielectric breakdown of the samples which effectively prevents further poling.
Functional heterogeneity of pituitary gonadotropes in response to a variety of neuromodulators

Agents previously implicated in control of the hypothalamo-pituitary-gonadal axis were screened for their ability to regulate male rat gonadotropes directly. GnRH-evoked gonadotropin release is accompanied by oscillations of intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) and of an outward K+ current that is activated by Ca2+. Substances that caused current responses similar to those with GnRH were hypothesized to evoke secretion. Endothelin-1, oxytocin, neurotensin, pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide, and serotonin raised [Ca2+]i and evoked LH release as assayed by the reverse hemolytic plaque assay. These agents affected only subpopulations of gonadotropes establishing functional heterogeneity of pituitary gonadotropes. One neuromodulator (ATP) evoked ionic current in all gonadotropes but the current was different than that evoked by GnRH. Many other substances, including galanin and neuropeptide Y, caused no changes in currents and were considered not to affect [Ca2+]i and not to be secretagogues for gonadotropes.
Visual data exploration of soil bacteria susceptible to engineered nanomaterials

The impact of ZnO and TiO 2 nanoparticles (NPs) on soil bacterial communities for different exposure times and NP doses was explored via data visualization techniques. Interrelationships between NP and responses of bacterial taxa were illustrated by bipartite graphs, allowing fast identification of important soil bacterial taxa that are susceptible to NPs. Hierarchical clustering and nonmetric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS) of the dataset demonstrated that, high dose of ZnO and TiO 2 NPs caused significant compositional changes in soil bacterial communities. The suitability of family level for NP impact assessment was demonstrated by the simplified NMDSs and the distance correlation between NP impacts summarized at different taxonomic levels. The present study demonstrates that visual exploration could potentially assist in knowledge discovery and interpretation of data on soil bacterial communities exposed to NPs and thus evaluate potential environmental impacts.
Risk factors for and knowledge of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection among drug users in substance abuse treatment.

Objective. To determine the prevalence, incidence and risk factors for Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, as well as to assess TB knowledge and attitudes, among a group of known drug users in a city with low TB incidence (11.3 per 100 000 in 1995). Methods. Patients of an urban drug treatment facility enrolled in opioid substitution, opioid antagonist and other drug treatment programs were screened for TB, including tuberculin skin testing and standardized data collection on TB risk factors. A subsample of clients was interviewed about TB knowledge and attitudes. Results. Between 1 June 1995 and 31 May 1996, 1055 individuals were screened. The prevalence of infection was 15.7% (CI: 13.2-18.2%). PPD positivity was associated with older age (per annum, OR = 1.08, CI: 1.05-1.11), non-white race (OR = 2.81, CI: 1.72-4.60), foreign birth (OR = 4.24, CI: 2.35-7.62) and a history of injecting drug use (OR = 1.89, CI: 1.14,3.12). The incidence of infection was 2.9 per 100 person-years (CI:1.8-4.7). Thirty-two per cent of 79 drug users interviewed about TB knowledge and attitudes thought TB could be prevented by bleaching or not sharing needles/syringes. Fifty-one per cent thought anyone with a positive TB skin test was contagious. Conclusion. M. tuberculosis infection was common in this population and associated with injecting drugs and several demographic factors. The incidence of new infection was relatively low. In this non-endemic environment, the detection and treatment of latent infection are important aspects of TB control. Misconceptions about TB transmission were also widespread in this population. Drug treatment programs can play a key role by undertaking screening programs that educate about TB and identify infected subjects who would benefit from preventive therapy.
A method for abstracting newspaper articles by using surface clues

This paper describes a system which automatically creates an abstract of a newspaper article by selecting important sentences of a given text. To determine the importance of a sentence, several superficial features are considered, and weights for features are determined by multiple-regression analysis of a hand processed corpus.
Ignaz Seipel as European Statesman

European historians and statesmen of the postwar period have little inclination to admire the statesmen of the period between the two world wars. In history books one reads again and again of the mediocrity, if not inadequacy, of those who presided over European affairs at that time. This judgment may apply to most of the statesmen of Great Britain and France and also to the majority of those in the Weimar Republic and its sister republic, Austria. When Hermann Bahr prepared the young priest, Ignaz Seipel, for a political career, he warned him of the “shortage” of “literate politicians” in Austria. And yet one should not too quickly generalize this phenomenon of mediocrity.
The changing spatial distribution of social classes in a metropolitan area.

This article combines the two central issues in the literature of the geographic dispersal of social classes in a metropolitan area: suburban-central city differences and inter- suburban difference...
Function of phospholipids in axons: depletion of membrane phosphorus by treatment with phospholipase C.

Abstract Earlier studies with snake venom phospholipase A (PhA) had shown that its ability to increase permeability thereby rendering axons sensitive to curare and acetylcholine, and its ability in higher concentrations to irreversibly block conduction are not due to direct disruption of phospholipids but are due to the production within the membrane of lysophosphatides, which have detergent properties. In contrast phospholipase C (PhC) from Clostri- dium welchii toxin had no marked effect on axonal conduction or permeability of the squid axon even though it induced a greater percent splitting of the phospholipids than was observed with PhA. The products of PhC action, diglycerides and phosphorylated bases are not toxic to the axon. We now find that depending on experimental conditions 85 to 100 per cent of the evolved phosphorylated bases leave the membrane appearing in the external incubate whereas 87 to 93 per cent of the diglycerides remain within the membrane. Extensive splitting of phospholipids appears compatible with axonal function, which casts some doubt on various functions which have been proposed for membranal phospholipids. Our findings also support the suggestion that the charged groups of the phospholipids are at the surface of the membrane, and that hydrophobic rather than ionic forces are mainly responsible for holding the membrane constituents together.
Ionic conductivity of Li4GeO4, Li2GeO3 and Li2Ge7O15

Abstract The ionic conductivity of polycrystalline samples of three lithium germanates: Li 4 GeO 4 , Li 2 GeO 3 , and Li 2 Ge 7 O 15 , has been determined using a c techniques and complex plane analysis. Conductivities at 400°C are 8.7 × 10 −5 , 1.5 × 10 −5 , and 1.4 × 10 −7 (Ω· cm ) −1 respectively. The conductivity of Li 4 GeO 4 rises appreciably in the range 700–750°C.
Characterization of a Novel High-Affinity Monoclonal Immunoglobulin G Antibody against the Ricin B Subunit

There is an urgent need for the development of a passive immunotherapy against the category B select agent ricin, a lethal ribosome-inactivating toxin composed of an enzymatic A subunit (RTA) and a single binding B subunit (RTB). To date, only one monoclonal antibody (MAb), a mouse immunoglobulin G (IgG1) against RTA called R70, has been deemed sufficiently potent in animal models to warrant further testing in humans. In this study, we have identified and characterized MAb 24B11, a murine IgG1 directed against RTB. In a Vero cell cytotoxicity assay, 24B11 was approximately two times more effective at neutralizing ricin than was R70. The equilibrium dissociation constants of 24B11 (KD = 4.2 × 10−9 M) and R70 (KD = 3.2 × 10−9 M) were virtually identical, suggesting that the difference in neutralization activity between the two MAbs was not due to differing affinities for the toxin. 24B11 blocked ricin attachment to galactoside receptors on primary mouse splenocytes and on the apical surfaces of human mucosal epithelial cell monolayers. Surprisingly, R70 also effectively interfered with ricin attachment to receptors on cell surfaces. Using a phage-displayed peptide library, we determined that 24B11 binds an epitope on RTB adjacent to, but not within, one of the two galactose binding domains. Finally, we demonstrate that R70 and 24B11, when combined, function synergistically to neutralize ricin in vitro, raising the possibility that these two MAbs could serve as a novel immunotherapeutic in vivo.
Dimensions of active cytochrome c oxidase in reconstituted liposomes using a gold ball shadow width standard: a freeze-etch electron microscopy study.

SUMMARY The preparation and characterization of a distribution of gold balls on a thin, flat carbon film is described. The relation of the platinum carbon shadow width distribution means to a gold ball size is reported. Freeze-etched cytochrome oxidase vesicles and gold ball calibration grids were simultaneously shadowed with platinum/carbon. The shadow width distribution of the cytochrome oxidase located in and spanning the membrane was measured. The membrane fracture face edge and cross-fractured bilayer membrane edge were also measured. Dimensions of the cytochrome oxidase were found to be 5·8 ± 0·3 nm in diameter parallel to the membrane and 8·2 ± 0·3 nm long across the membrane. The bilayer membrane dimensions were 3·0 ± 0·3 nm for the half bilayer and 5·8 ± 0·3 nm for the cross-fractured bilayer membrane edge thickness. The length of the cytochrome oxidase was observed to span the bilayer membrane. Previous X-ray diffraction measurements on similar hydrated liquid crystalline artificial membranes were found to be in good agreement with the freeze-etched results. Membrane widths from thin-sectioned cytochrome oxidase vesicles were measured and found to be 5·8–5·9 nm in non-post-stained sections. Post-staining with uranyl acetate and/or lead citrate was shown to increase this average thickness. The technique of freeze-etching electron microscopy in conjunction with the gold ball shadow width calibration experiment has been shown to provide accurate and precise measurements of membranes and a functional intramembrane protein in a hydrated non-crystalline sample.
Cold-War Cleavages as Seen from the United Nations General Assembly: 1947-1967

T his is a cold-war study of the nations of the world based upon roll-call votes cast in the United Nations General Assembly between 1947 and 1967. Its major purpose is to shed light upon the East-West orientation of individual states and groups of states and, only incidentally, on the orientation of the world organization itself. The Assembly serves here mainly as a stage, as a convenient and strategic meeting hall for observing the reactions of states to this crucial issue. Some 330 roll calls on the cold war were employed to construct indexes to gauge the cold-war policies of states and groups of states thought relevant to the cold war and to test the homogeneity of these groups. The relation between this issue and others that have come before the Assembly was tested by the use of correlations (250 more roll calls were used here). Roll calls have been used in other published writings to shed light upon foreign policy, and their use for this purpose has been defended.' A unique feature of the present study, however, is its formulation of yearly
IN VITRO PERCUTANEOUS ABSORPTION OF ACRYLAMIDE AND STYRENE FROM COSMETIC VEHICLES THROUGH FUZZY RAT AND HUMAN SKIN

ABSTRACTAcrylamide (ACR) and styrene (STY) are residual monomers that remain as impurities in polymers used in hair, nail, and skin care products. These residual monomers may be substantially absorbed through skin. Acrylamide is known to be a neurotoxin in humans and a carcinogen in animals, while styrene has been reported to cause neurotoxic effects in humans and animals and carcinogenic effects in rodents. Therefore, studies were conducted to measure the extent of ACR and STY absorption in fuzzy rat and human skin relevant to exposures from personal care products using in vitro diffusion cell techniques. [14C]-ACR was applied to skin in flow through diffusion cells for 24 h using an oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion at doses of 2.2 and 13.3 μg/cm2 (fuzzy rat skin) and 0.2, 2.2, and 13.3 μg/cm2 (human skin). [14C]-ACR was also applied to human skin using a 2% polyacrylamide gel cream at a dose of 0.3 μg/cm2. [14C]-STY was applied to fuzzy rat and human skin using the O/W emulsion at a dose of 4.1 μg/cm2. The t...
The Development of Scientific Talent in Westinghouse Finalists and Members of the National Academy of Sciences

This paper reports the results of two studies on the development of scientific talent among the scientific elite: finalists in the Westinghouse Science Competition and members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Sampling four cohorts of finalists, we examined whether these gifted teenagers actually do go on to be the best scientists of the next generation by coding education and career outcomes. Finalists were quite successful and stayed mostly within science and medicine for their career choice. A rather high—although marginally unequal—portion of male (91%) and female (74%) finalists earned a doctoral degree. Women were also more likely to change to non-scientific professions than men. Among the most compelling findings from the NAS study were: age that scientific talent was recognized by self and others was an important predictor of early publication, which in turn was an important predictor of lifetime productivity. Growth curve analyses suggested a cubic model best fit productivity data over time. Moreover, in both samples there was an association between scientific achievement and recent immigrant status. Various theoretical models are discussed as possible explanations for the developmental, gender, and immigrant-status findings on scientific talent.
UCFS - a novel User-space, high performance, Customized File System for Web proxy servers

Web proxy caching servers play a key role in today's Web infrastructure. Previous studies have shown that disk I/O is one of the major performance bottlenecks of proxy servers. Most conventional file systems do not work well for proxy server workloads and have high overheads. This paper presents a novel, User-space, Customized File System, called UCFS, that can drastically improve the I/O performance of proxy servers. UCFS is a user-level software component of a proxy server which manages data on a raw disk or disk partition. Since the entire system runs in the user space, it is easy and inexpensive to implement. It also has good portability and maintainability. UCFS uses efficient in-memory meta-data tables to eliminate almost all I/O overhead of meta-data searches and updates. It also includes a novel file system called Cluster-structured File System (CFS). Similarly to the Log-structured File Systems (LFS), CFS uses large disk transfers to significantly improve disk write performance. However, CFS can also markedly improve file read operations and it does not generate garbage. Comprehensive simulation experiments using five representative real-world traces show that UCFS can significantly improve proxy server performance. For example, UCFS achieves 8-19 times better I/O performance than the state-of-the-art SQUID server running on a Unix Fast File System (FFS), 4-7.5 times better than SQUID on asynchronous FFS, and 3-9 times better than the improved SQUIDML.
Microcomputer Repairs: A Study of Policy and Response in an English LEA:

Microcomputer repairs are a neglected aspect ofeducational resource management, this article argues. Organisational structure and mnanagement data needed to make rational decisions on repairs are patchy or missing. It shows how LEAs could produce a more efficient and economical repair system. The study was undertaken in the School of Education, University of Reading.
Reversion-induced LIM interaction with Src reveals a novel Src inactivation cycle

Aberrant Src activation plays prominent roles in cancer progression. However, how Src is activated in cancer cells is largely unknown. Genetic Src-activating mutations are rare and, therefore, are insufficient to account for Src activation commonly found in human cancers. In this study, we show that reversion-induced LIM (RIL), which is frequently lost in colon and other cancers as a result of epigenetic silencing, suppresses Src activation. Mechanistically, RIL suppresses Src activation through interacting with Src and PTPL1, allowing PTPL1-dependent dephosphorylation of Src at the activation loop. Importantly, the binding of RIL to Src is drastically reduced upon Src inactivation. Our results reveal a novel Src inactivation cycle in which RIL preferentially recognizes active Src and facilitates PTPL1-mediated inactivation of Src. Inactivation of Src, in turn, promotes dissociation of RIL from Src, allowing the initiation of a new Src inactivation cycle. Epigenetic silencing of RIL breaks this Src inactivation cycle and thereby contributes to aberrant Src activation in human cancers.
Treatment adherence in cognitive processing therapy for combat-related PTSD with history of mild TBI.

Objective: This retrospective study examined treatment adherence in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) with and without history of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Method: Medical record review of consecutive referrals to an outpatient PTSD clinic identified veterans diagnosed with combat-related PTSD who began treatment with CPT. The sample (N 136) was grouped according to positive (n 44) and negative (n 92) mTBI history. Groups were compared in terms of presenting symptoms and treatment adherence. Results: The groups were not different on a pretreatment measure of depression, but self-reported and clinician-rated PTSD symptoms were higher in veterans with history of mTBI. The treatment completion rate was greater than 61% in both groups. The number of sessions attended averaged 9.6 for the PTSD group and 7.9 for the mTBI/PTSD group (p .05). Implications: Given the lack of marked group differences in treatment adherence, these initial findings suggest that standard CPT for PTSD may be a tolerable treatment for OEF/OIF veterans with a history of PTSD and mTBI as well as veterans with PTSD alone.
Temperature tolerance in the goldfish, Carassius auratus

Abstract 1. Lower and upper temperature tolerances of 240 goldfish, Carassius auratus , were measured at constant acclimation temperatures of 5, 15, 25 and 35 °C via critical thermal methodology. 2. Mean critical thermal minima and maxima ranged from 0.3 to12.6 °C and 30.8 to 43.6 ° C, respectively, and were significantly linearly related to acclimation temperature. Acclimation temperature accounted for approximately 90% of the variance in temperature tolerance. Ultimate critical thermal minimum and maximum equaled 0.3 and 43.6 °C, respectively. 3. Integrating the temperature tolerance polygon yielded an area of temperature tolerance of 1429 °C 2 , which is approximately 17% larger than the polygon measured via the incipient lethal temperature approach. This difference is explained by methodological differences in these two techniques to quantify temperature tolerance.
Exact solution for four-order acousto-optic Bragg diffraction with arbitrary initial conditions

An exact solution to the four-order acousto-optic (AO) Bragg diffraction problem with arbitrary initial conditions compatible with exact Bragg angle incident light is developed. The solution, obtained by solving a 4th-order differential equation, is formalized into a transition matrix operator predicting diffracted light orders at the exit of the AO cell in terms of the same diffracted light orders at the entrance. It is shown that the transition matrix is unitary and that this unitary matrix condition is sufficient to guarantee energy conservation. A comparison of analytical solutions with numerical predictions validates the formalism. Although not directly related to the approach used to obtain the solution, it was discovered that all four generated eigenvalues from the four-order AO differential matrix operator are expressed simply in terms of Euclid's Divine Proportion.
Atavisms and the homology of hyobranchial elements in lower vertebrates.

The homology of branchial arch segments in salamanders has been a matter of controversy since the last century. Many investigators term the most medial paired elements of salamander branchial arches "ceratobran- chials" and the next distal paired elements "epibranchials." This suggests that the first two segmental elements of the salamander branchial arch are not homologous with elements occupying the same position in ray-finned fishes, Latimeria, "rhipidistians," and lungfishes, in which these bones are called hypobranchials and ceratobranchials, respectively. Three lines of evi- dence suggest that it is more parsimonious to interpret urodele branchial arch segments as being homologous with those of other vertebrate clades-1) com- parative osteology, 2) comparative myology, and 3) the discovery of cartilagi- nous structures forming a third segmental unit that we interpret as atavistic epibranchials of the branchial arch in one population of the salamander Note phthalmus uiridescens. These structures possess all the defining attributes of atavisms, and illustrate the special role that atavistic features play in resolv- ing questions of homology recognition.
Separating Genuine Cases of Reading Disability From Reading Deficits Caused by Predominantly Inattentive ADHD Behavior

Conventional methods of differentiating reading disability (RD) caused by deficits in decoding skills or comprehension from poor reading performance caused by inconsistent attention associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have produced equivocal results. This study presents a model of differential diagnosis of attentional problems and RD that differs from these conventional approaches. The new diagnostic procedure uses intraindividual differences seen in the performance of at-risk learners on tasks related to reading that vary in their sensitivity to the sustained attention required for successful performance. The hypothesis is that children with inconsistent attention would perform more poorly on tests that require sustained attention, such as listening comprehension, than on tests that are more tolerant of inattention, such as reading comprehension. Such differences would not be seen in the test scores of children who have only RD, because their performance is determined more by the difficulty level of the reading tests than by the degree of sensitivity of the task to attention. The validity of this new model was evaluated by determining the capability of the differences seen in the scores of tests that differ in their sensitivity to sustained attention to predict the degree of inconsistency in sustained attention as measured by a continuous performance test. The data obtained from 39 children who are at risk for RD suggest that this is a viable model.
Dynamic load balancing for distributed memory multiprocessors

In this paper we study diffusion schemes for dynamic load balancing on message passing multiprocessor networks. One of the main results concerns conditions under which these dynamic schemes converge and their rates of convergence for arbitrary topologies. These results use the eigenstructure of the iteration matrices that arise in dynamic load balancing. We completely analyze the hypercube network by explicitly computing the eigenstructure of its node adjacency matrix. Using a realistic model of interprocessor communications, we show that a diffusion approach to load balancing on a hypercube multiprocessor is inferior to another approach which we call the dimension exchange method. For a d-dimensional hypercube, we compute the rate of convergence to a uniform work distribution and show that after d + 1 iterations of a diffusion type approach, we can guarantee that the work distribution is approximately within e-* of the uniform distribution independent of the hypercube dimension d. Both static and dynamic random models of work distribution are studied. o
Automated Media: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Algorithmic Media Production and Consumption

Communication scholars have recently begun to recognize and investigate the importance of algorithms to a wide range of processes related to the production and consumption of media content. There have been few efforts thus far, though, to connect these developments to potentially relevant bodies of existing theory and research. This article seeks to address this gap by exploring the utility of institutional theory as a potentially useful analytical framework for continued inquiry into the role of algorithms in the operation of media systems, and by offering some suggestions for ways in which an institutional analytical frame can be extended into algorithmic contexts.
miR-27b inhibits LDLR and ABCA1 expression but does not influence plasma and hepatic lipid levels in mice

Rationale Recently, there has been significant interest in the therapeutic administration of miRNA mimics and inhibitors to treat cardiovascular disease. In particular, miR-27b has emerged as a regulatory hub in cholesterol and lipid metabolism and potential therapeutic target for treating atherosclerosis. Despite this, the impact of miR-27b on lipid levels in vivo remains to be determined. As such, here we set out to further characterize the role of miR-27b in regulating cholesterol metabolism in vitro and to determine the effect of miR-27b overexpression and inhibition on circulating and hepatic lipids in mice.
The Offering, Scheduling and Maintenance of Elective Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences

The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) provides standards for colleges of pharmacy to assist in the provision of pharmacy education to student pharmacists. An integral part of all college educational programs includes the provision of experiential learning. Experiential learning allows students to gain real-world experience in direct patient care during completion of the curriculum. All college of pharmacy programs provide several Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs), which include a balance between the four required experiences and a number of other required or elective APPEs. Required APPEs include advanced community, advanced institutional, ambulatory care, and general medicine. The elective APPEs include a myriad of opportunities to help provide a balanced education in experiential learning for student pharmacists. These unique opportunities help to expose student pharmacists to different career tracks that they may not have been able to experience otherwise. Not all colleges offer enough elective APPEs to enable the student pharmacist to obtain experiences in a defined area. Such an approach is required to produce skilled pharmacy graduates that are capable to enter practice in various settings. Elective APPEs are scheduled logically and are based upon student career interest and site availability. This article describes the offering, scheduling and maintenance of different elective APPEs offered by The University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy.
Sustainability in the Boardroom: A 2013 Update

In this study, The Conference Board assesses how and to what extent social and environmental issues are integrated into the strategic agenda of the board of directors of U.S. public companies. Topics covered include: the delegation of responsibility for sustainability oversight; sustainability-related items including in board agendas; types of (and the role of the board in) sustainability reporting; whether the company adopts metrics to assess management performance vis-a-vis certain environmental and social objectives; whether the company deploys a pay-for-sustainability performance policy; and the adoption of policies on political contribution oversight.The article is based on findings from a survey of 359 SEC-registered business corporations conducted by The Conference Board in collaboration with NASDAQ OMX and NYSE Euronext. Data are categorized and analyzed according to 22 industry groups (using their Standard Industrial Classification [SIC] codes), seven annual revenue groups (based on data received from manufacturing and nonfinancial services companies) and five asset value groups (based on data reported by financial companies, which tend to use this type of benchmarking).The study updates a previous edition of “Sustainability in the Boardroom,” released by The Conference Board in June 2010.
Offline policy evaluation across representations with applications to educational games

Consider an autonomous teacher agent trying to adaptively sequence material to best keep a student engaged, or a medical agent trying to help suggest treatments to maximize patient outcomes. To solve these complex reinforcement learning problems, we must first decide on a policy representation. But determining the best representation can be challenging, since the environment includes many poorly-understood processes (such as student engagement) and is therefore difficult to accurately simulate. These domains are also high stakes, making it infeasible to evaluate candidate representations by running them online. Instead, one must leverage existing data to learn and evaluate new policies for future use. In this paper, we present a data-driven methodology for comparing and validating policies offline. Our method is unbiased, agnostic to representation, and focuses on the ability of each policy to generalize to new data. We apply this methodology to a partially-observable, high-dimensional concept sequencing problem in an educational game. Guided by our evaluation methodology, we propose a novel feature compaction method that substantially improves policy performance on this problem. We deploy the best-performing policies to 2,000 real students and show that the learned adaptive policy shows statistically significant improvement over random and expert baselines, improving our achievement-based reward measure by 32%.
Design Considerations and Operational Strategies of a Commercial Glucose Isomerase Reactor System

Relatively few reports in the literature address the problems of large-scale industrial reactor design and operation. Several important design considerations and process engineering problems are discussed in this communication. A commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) production facility, including an immobilized glucose isomerase reactor, forms the basis of this discussion.
Methodology for Runway-Level DNL Contour Calibration in ANGIM to Capture Impacts of Deviation from Standard Day Sea-Level Atmosphere

The Airport Noise Grid Integration Method (ANGIM) was developed to enable rapid airport and fleet-level noise contour analysis, but the savings in computational speed over higher-fidelity noise models such as the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) are accomplished by requiring a few simplifying assumptions. These assumptions limit the robustness of ANGIM under varying atmospheric and operational conditions. The underlying concept of ANGIM is rooted in the fact that Day-Night Average Level (DNL) noise grids calculated by a detailed noise tool are simply logarithmic additions of all the Sound Exposure Level (SEL) events occurring during a given flight schedule. ANGIM enables rapid calculation of airport-level DNL grids by pre-calculating SEL grids for individual aircraft at standard day sea-level atmospheric conditions and maintaining a repository of these grids. To enable calculation of DNL grids in ANGIM under atmospheric uncertainty would require generating and storing grids for every aircraft under every possible atmospheric condition, which would be both time and cost prohibitive. Previous studies demonstrated a methodology for calibration of standard day sea-level SEL grids for varying atmospheric conditions using neural nets. Implementing that method, however, would still require vehicle-level calibration for every vehicle in the fleet, which could greatly increase computational time. This study instead explores introducing this calibration after the runway-level DNL contours are calculated, which would be much less computationally demanding than calibrating each aircraft SEL grid. To create this runway-level calibration requires running mixture DOEs for a set of representative vehicles at various atmospheric conditions, and then constructing a neural net calibration as a function of the mixture, the volume of operations, and the atmospheric conditions. A notional study of an airport schedule with three unique aircraft is explored to test the feasibility of calibrating runway-level DNL grids for varying atmospheric conditions. Accuracy of the calibration method with respect to the actual results are compared through contour area calculations as well as visual overlays of the calibrated runway level contours and the actual runway level contours.
Pest Management and Pesticide Impacts

Although pesticides provide benefits in our battle to control pests that destroy more than a third of all food, the use of pesticides also results in significant costs to public health and the environment. As many as 500,000 humans are poisoned annually by pesticides in the world; the United States alone reports about 45,000 human pesticide poisonings. Pesticides have also caused many detrimental effects on agroecosystems and natural ecosystems. These include: (i) reducing and sometimes eliminating beneficial natural enemies that keep pest populations at low densities; (ii) increasing or decreasing reproduction in various animal populations; (iii) altering decomposition rates of soil organic matter; (iv) developing insecticide resistance in pests, which results in increased pesticide use and additional crop losses; and (v) eliminating honey bee and other bee populations in certain regions thus reducing crop yields and quality. Pesticides also have had major impacts on fish, bird and mammal populations.
From Inception to Present: The Diminishing Role of Women in the Congregação Cristã no Brasil

This article provides the first historical analysis of the role of women in the Congregacao Crista no Brasil, the oldest pentecostal church in Brazil and the largest in the state of Sao Paulo. Drawing on qualitative data, this study also explores the diverse views of church members and their attitudes in regard to the current status of women in the church. Although not long ago women were allowed to preach in the church and to hold ministerial positions such as cooperators, youth cooperators, deaconesses, musicians, music directors, and Bible school directors, in recent decades the role of women has quickly diminished. In addition to providing empirical data on this denominational group, the article engages the wider debate about the role of women in the pentecostal religious context.
El Concepto de Ladera Urbana

Closing the ninety-nineties Central America was drastically affected by the hydrometeorological phenomenon “Mitch”, the disaster exposed the structural weaknesses with which the human settlements were built for decades and especially the extreme vulnerability of the exposed population. Different international institutions and the national government have supported actions to reduce vulnerability and generated more knowledge and awareness about disaster risks and hazards; The OAS, CEPREDENAC, CEPAL, World Bank, IDB, UNDP, LA RED are among the ones with the largest presence in the region.The advances in the subject have clarified concepts, generated instruments for risk management and disaster prevention; this from the point of view that disasters are not natural, human intervention plays a fundamental role in deepening the effects of the hazards.This discussion is carried upon the need to include risk management as part of the urban planning matrix, and not as something external, is of particular interest the relationship between the geophysical landscape and the layout and land use of the human settlements. With the Concept of Urban Slopes, we delve into the specificity of this particular type of city that is common to many cities on the planet.Revista Ciencias Espaciales, Vol.4(1) 2011, 41-61
Chicago transit authority train noise exposure

ABSTRACTTo characterize noise exposure of riders on Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) trains, we measured noise levels twice on each segment of 7 of the 8 CTA train lines, which are named after colors, yielding 48 time-series measurements. We found the Blue Line has the highest noise levels compared to other train lines, with mean 76.9 dBA; and that the maximum noise level, 88.9 dBA occurred in the tunnel between the Chicago and Grand stations. Train segments involving travel through a tunnel had significantly higher noise levels than segments with travel on elevated and ground level tracks. While 8-hr doses inside the passenger cars were not estimated to exceed occupational exposure limits, train operators ride in a separate cab with operational windows and may therefore have higher noise exposures than riders. Despite the low risk of hearing loss for riders on CTA trains, in part because transit noise accounts for a small part of total daily noise exposure, 1-min average noise levels exceeded 85 dBA at ti...
Matrix Effects on Internal Energy in Desorption Ionization

Desorption ionization (DI) mass spectrometry encompasses a family of techniques in which energization of a condensed phase leads to ejection of ions into the vacuum with subsequent mass analysis and detection [1]. In contrast to the gas—phase ionization methods of electron, chemical, and photo- ionization, DI techniques are by their nature sensitive to the physical and chemical nature of the matrix from which the ions are ejected. Success in the analysis of nonvolatile and thermally fragile molecules has been enough to thrust these techniques into routine use in just a few years. DI spectra of pure compounds can often be interpreted in terms of known gas—phase ion chemistry. This provides evidence for the desorption, from the surface, of intact ions with some degree of internal excitation; the fragmentation processes undergone are then defined by the nature and the amount of the internal energy. Since the ion is in an isolated state, fragmentation processes should be the same as those undergone by ions of the same structure formed directly in the gas phase by chemical ionization [2]. MS/MS experiments have confirmed this premise for particular DI conditions. Ions are isolated by a first stage of mass analysis, and then activated by collision. The masses and relative abundances of the resultant fragment ions (determined by the second stage of mass analysis) match those of the DI spectra. Metastable ion transitions have also been directly observed in DI spectra.