cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Will Florida be saved

The state of Florida is typical of all the low-lying densely populated coastal areas around the world that are threatened by present and future rising sea level. These coastal areas will become destructively flooded by sea level rise due to melting of the world’s glacial ice if fossil fuel consumption and resulting global warming are not strongly limited. Efforts to achieve this limitation in a timely way might not be successful because of cultural inertia, opposition by vested interests, and the difficulties in developing alternative sources of renewable energy on a large scale. However, the rising sea level could be reversed to a more rapidly falling sea level at least temporarily if a previously unrecognized tipping point in the changing climate is reached in coming decades. This tipping point is the onset of rapid new glacial ice sheet growth in northeastern Canada, Greenland, and the Barents Sea. The cause would be an order of magnitude increase in regional precipitation. Much evidence for that event is found in the geological records of the initiation of the last ice age 120,000yrs ago. The precursors for a similar future event are in place and are identified in modern oceanic records. These precursors include the increasing salinity of the Mediterranean Sea and the observed increasing penetration of the Spitsbergen-Atlantic Current into the polar ocean, which suggests that the tipping point may be reached before the end of this century. If so, the flooding may occur on only a small scale. However if so, a sharp 500yr cooling would be expected in eastern Canada and northern Europe, and greenhouse warming elsewhere would continue unless fossil fuel usage is reduced. This paper supports the suggestion by Giff Miller and Anne de Vernal in a 1992 letter to Nature that global warming and an ice age may occur simultaneously.
Commentary on "clinical efficacy of tranexamic acid administration via different routes during total hip arthroplasty: study protocol for a prospective randomized controlled trial"

Perioperative blood loss is a major complication of total hip arthroplasties. The use of tranexamic acid (TXA) is considered during total hip arthroplasties for its antifibrinolytic effects, reducing blood loss and anemia following these surgeries. In order to compare the efficacy of different forms of TXA administration on reducing blood loss, Zhou et al. have designed a randomized, controlled, double-blinded clinical trial comparing the use of intravenous TXA versus topical TXA administration. By employing a large sample size and an effective paired study design, the protocol of Zhou et al. may be effective in producing significant results on the relative efficacy of these two forms of TXA administration for reducing blood loss. This commentary addresses the strengths and drawbacks of this protocol, while also highlighting potential areas for improvement. With corrections, the study could prove clinically valuable to both patients and surgeons, since the use of topical TXA may result in fewer thromboembolic complications than intravenous administration.
A Novel Electrocardiogram Algorithm Utilizing St-segment Instability for Detection of Cardiopulmonary Arrest in Single Ventricle Physiology: A Retrospective Study

Objective: We evaluated ST-segment monitoring to detect clinical decompensation in infants with single ventricle anatomy. We proposed a signal processing algorithm for ST-segment instability and hypothesized that instability is associated with cardiopulmonary arrests. Design: Retrospective, observational study. Setting: Tertiary children’s hospital 21-bed cardiovascular ICU and 36-bed step-down unit. Patients: Twenty single ventricle infants who received stage 1 palliation surgery between January 2013 and January 2014. Twenty rapid response events resulting in cardiopulmonary arrests (arrest group) were recorded in 13 subjects, and nine subjects had no interstage cardiopulmonary arrest (control group). Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: Arrest data were collected over the 4-hour time window prior to cardiopulmonary arrest. Control data were collected from subjects with no interstage arrest using the 4-hour time window prior to cardiovascular ICU discharge. A paired subgroup analysis was performed comparing subject 4-hour windows prior to arrest (prearrest group) with 4-hour windows prior to discharge (postarrest group). Raw values of ST segments were compared between groups. A 3D ST-segment vector was created using three quasi-orthogonal leads (II, aVL, and V5). Magnitude and instability of this continuous vector were compared between groups. There was no significant difference in mean unprocessed ST-segment values in the arrest and control groups. Utilizing signal processing, there was an increase in the ST-vector magnitude (p = 0.02) and instability (p = 0.008) in the arrest group. In the paired subgroup analysis, there was an increase in the ST-vector magnitude (p = 0.05) and instability (p = 0.05) in the prearrest state compared with the postarrest state prior to discharge. Conclusions: In single ventricle patients, increased ST instability and magnitude were associated with rapid response events that required intervention for cardiopulmonary arrest, whereas conventional ST-segment monitoring did not differentiate an arrest from control state.
Physiological and perceptual effects of a cooling garment during simulated industrial work in the heat

Abstract Objective Evaluate physiological and perceptual responses using a phase change cooling (PCC) garment during simulated work in the heat. Methods Twenty males wearing compression undergarments, coverall suit, gloves, and hard-hat, completed two randomly assigned trials (with PCC inserts or control, CON) of simulated industrial tasks in the heat (34.2 ± 0.05 °C, 54.7 ± 0.3%RH). Trials consisted of two 20 min work bouts, a maximum performance bout, and 10 min of recovery. Results Physiological strain index (PSI) was lower during PCC after the second work bout and during recovery (all P Conclusions PCC during work in the heat attenuated thermal, physiological, and perceptual strain. This PCC garment could increase safety and reduce occupational heat illness risk.
Effect of bronchodilators in healthy individuals receiving lumacaftor/ivacaftor combination therapy

Abstract In an open-label, single-center phase 1 pharmacokinetic study in healthy subjects who received lumacaftor (LUM) in combination with ivacaftor (IVA), review of spirometry data showed a transient decline in percent predicted forced expiratory volume in 1s (ppFEV 1 ) within 4h of drug administration. An additional cohort of healthy subjects with normal baseline ppFEV 1 values was studied to evaluate the ppFEV 1 response to LUM/IVA administration and assess the effect of long-acting bronchodilators (LABDs) and short-acting bronchodilators (SABDs) on ppFEV 1 response. The ppFEV 1 decline observed at 4h was attenuated following administration of an LABD and reversed following administration of an SABD. Concomitant administration of LUM/IVA with bronchodilators was well tolerated. These data show that a transient decline in ppFEV 1 was observed in healthy subjects following administration of LUM/IVA combination therapy, which can be ameliorated with LABDs or SABDs.
Disclosure and Its Discontents: Protecting Privacy in a Time of Surveillance

Today, in the wake of the Snowden disclosures, these concerns seem quaint. With powerful agencies monitoring our electronic communication, ours is a world of frequent and deep intrusions. Nosy neighbors are the least of our worries.
Two Stage Stochastic Linear Programs

Over the past several decades, linear programming (LP) has established itself as one of the most fundamental tools for planning. Its applications have become routine in several disciplines including those within engineering, business, economics, environmental studies and many others. One may attribute this wide spread acceptance to: (a) an understanding of the power and scope of LP among practitioners, (b) good algorithms, and (c) widely available and reliable software. Furthermore, research on specialized problems (e.g. assignment, transportation, networks etc.) has made LP methodology indispensible to numerous industries including transportation, energy, manufacturing and telecommunications, to name a few. Notwithstanding its success, we note that traditional LP models are deterministic models. That is, all objective function and constraint coefficients are assumed to be known with precision. The assumption that all model parameters are known with certainty serves to limit the usefulness of the approach when planning under uncertainty.
Motion planning for persistent traveling solar-powered unmanned ground vehicles

This paper examines a mission planning problem for a solar-powered unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) which requires the vehicle to visit a series of objective points in minimal time subject to a strict net-energy change constraint. Though related to the Traveling Salesperson Problem, the mission planning problem discussed herein imposes further complexity through additional coupled mixed-variable sets and the strict energy constraint. A scalar field representing the solar radiation of the mission environment is first characterized from a visual-spectrum image. A cascaded particle swarm optimization algorithm, coupled with the integer linear programming technique, is used to generate a time-optimized motion plan and power schedules for the UGV, which guides it to visit the assigned objective points with optimized sequence and paths, and then return to its starting location and orientation while guaranteeing compliance with the net energy gain constraint.
Feedback for reinforcement learning based brain–machine interfaces using confidence metrics

Objective For brain-machine interfaces (BMI) to be used in activities of daily living by paralyzed individuals, the BMI should be as autonomous as possible. One of the challenges is how the feedback is extracted and utilized in the BMI. Our long-term goal is to create autonomous BMIs that can utilize an evaluative feedback from the brain to update the decoding algorithm and use it intelligently in order to adapt the decoder. In this study, we show how to extract the necessary evaluative feedback from a biologically realistic (synthetic) source, use both the quantity and the quality of the feedback, and how that feedback information can be incorporated into a reinforcement learning (RL) controller architecture to maximize its performance. Approach Motivated by the perception-action-reward cycle (PARC) in the brain which links reward for cognitive decision making and goal-directed behavior, we used a reward-based RL architecture named Actor-Critic RL as the model. Instead of using an error signal towards building an autonomous BMI, we envision to use a reward signal from the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) which plays a key role in the linking of reward to motor behaviors. To deal with the complexity and non-stationarity of biological reward signals, we used a confidence metric which was used to indicate the degree of feedback accuracy. This confidence was added to the Actor's weight update equation in the RL controller architecture. If the confidence was high (>0.2), the BMI decoder used this feedback to update its parameters. However, when the confidence was low, the BMI decoder ignored the feedback and did not update its parameters. The range between high confidence and low confidence was termed as the 'ambiguous' region. When the feedback was within this region, the BMI decoder updated its weight at a lower rate than when fully confident, which was decided by the confidence. We used two biologically realistic models to generate synthetic data for MI (Izhikevich model) and NAcc (Humphries model) to validate proposed controller architecture. Main results In this work, we show how the overall performance of the BMI was improved by using a threshold close to the decision boundary to reject erroneous feedback. Additionally, we show the stability of the system improved when the feedback was used with a threshold. Significance The result of this study is a step towards making BMIs autonomous. While our method is not fully autonomous, the results demonstrate that extensive training times necessary at the beginning of each BMI session can be significantly decreased. In our approach, decoder training time was only limited to 10 trials in the first BMI session. Subsequent sessions used previous session weights to initialize the decoder. We also present a method where the use of a threshold can be applied to any decoder with a feedback signal that is less than perfect so that erroneous feedback can be avoided and the stability of the system can be increased.
Rapid Prototyping of Embedded Microcontrollers for Mechatronic Systems

Abstract Engineering development of a sophisticated mechatronics system often requires team effort of engineers with control, computer, electronics and mechanical engineering as well as systems engineering management backgrounds. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of mechatronics, it became clear that there is a true need for an engineering tool to systemize the process of the development. In this paper we present one such new tool called ASCET-SD Schematic Development Environment, that allows mechatronics team members to readily communicate with one another through computer simulation, controller emulation, on-line testing and evaluation of embedded controllers. The bottom line is that the integrated environment allows the whole team engineers to readily take hold of the project from concept to realization of the mechatronic system
Do current quality measures truly reflect the quality of dialysis

The US End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Program, which came into existence in 1973, was initially envisioned to provide needed financial coverage for about 50 000 patients through Medicare. Over the past 45 years the evolution of the ESRD program has been quite different, and it now serves over one half million dialysis and transplant patients. The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) of 2008 Section 153(c) requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop and implement quality measures for dialysis patients as part of the ESRD Quality Incentive Program (QIP) beginning in payment year (PY) 2012. The annual ESRD Prospective Payment System (PPS) rulemaking process allows CMS to create ESRD QIP rules that specify the measures, scoring methods, and payment reduction ranges applicable to the respective PY. CMS assesses each facility's performance and calculates a score for each measure, according to the method detailed for that PY. Scores for each measure are combined to create the Total Performance Score (TPS) for each facility. If a facility's TPS does not meet or exceed the performance standards established during the earlier comparison period, the facility will incur a payment reduction of up to 2% for the entire PY. The QIP program has evolved over the several years since its inception. There have been deletions and additions of various measures. CMS uses additional measures in its Dialysis Facility Compare (DFC) website which is available to the public and forms the basis of the 5-star rating system for dialysis facilities. The evidence underlying inclusion many of these measures in the QIP and DFC remains an area of debate. In this review, we discuss the evolution of these measures and their appropriateness. We recommend that some of the current QIP and DFC measures should not be used for public reporting and/or payment as unintended consequences may occur. Nonetheless, all the current QIP and DFC measures and others are suitable for internal quality review.
Development and Prospects of Hybrid Rice Breeding

Hybrid rice had helped China to increase rice pro duction nearly 200 million tons from 1976 to 1991. It has proved practically on large scale for many years that hybrid rice has more than 30% yield advantage over conventional pure line varieties (Table 1). In 1991 the area under hybrid rice was 17.6 million ha which covered 55% of the total rice area in China and the production of hybrid rice was 66% of the total rice output. In the meantime, the technology of hybrid rice seed production has been well developed to give an average seed yield of 2.3 t/ha. The field area ratio between A line multipli cation, hybrid seed production and F1 commercial culti vation is 1:50:5000.
Pearls for Your Practice: A Clinician’s Guide to Recently Published Guidelines and Position Statements

Of little surprise to the readership of Diabetes Spectrum , diabetes and prediabetes remain major health concerns in the United States, as well as globally. According to 2017 estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, >9% of the U.S. population (a staggering 30.3 million individuals) currently lives with diabetes (1). Given the vast number of people with diabetes requiring medical care, diabetes is largely a condition managed in the primary care setting. One of many challenges facing diabetes educators and primary care providers (PCPs) is remaining current on the multitude of medical guidelines and position statements that are published each year, with diabetes constituting merely one of a myriad of chronic conditions managed within the primary care setting. The Institute of Medicine defines clinical practice guidelines as “. . . statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care that are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and harms of alternative care options” (2). Clinical guidelines serve a variety of purposes but ultimately aim to provide clinicians …
Resilient Communication, Object Classification and Data Fusion in Unmanned Aerial Systems

This paper researches robust data fusion, descriptive reality and control solutions. Cognitive autonomy, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-ground communication, as well as wireless hybrid mobile mesh networks are considered. In dynamic and contested environments, the nodes and autonomous swarms must transmit and assess states, evaluate shared data, adapt to dynamic countermeasures, reconfigure, and, ensure secure communication. Robust algorithms and protocols must accomplish data management, perform vulnerability analysis, support data trustworthiness assessment, support physical-virtual reality, and evaluate functionality. Reliability of information sources and communication should be guaranteed despite adversary electronic warfare and disruptive actions. We examine science and technology of communication and data management in distributed processing, control and autonomy applications typifying adversarial environments. Our results ensure sufficient throughput, low latency, robustness, connectivity and secure communication. Topics on target recognition, object classification and dynamic tracking are researched with experimental substantiations.
Fighting together? understanding bilateral cooperation in the realm of counterterrorism

Since September 11, there has been marked rise in research on the transnational aspect of terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. However, there has been little ...
The Persistence Landscape and Some of Its Properties

Persistence landscapes map persistence diagrams into a function space, which may often be taken to be a Banach space or even a Hilbert space. In the latter case, it is a feature map and there is an associated kernel. The main advantage of this summary is that it allows one to apply tools from statistics and machine learning. Furthermore, the mapping from persistence diagrams to persistence landscapes is stable and invertible. We introduce a weighted version of the persistence landscape and define a one-parameter family of Poisson-weighted persistence landscape kernels that may be useful for learning. We also demonstrate some additional properties of the persistence landscape. First, the persistence landscape may be viewed as a tropical rational function. Second, in many cases it is possible to exactly reconstruct all of the component persistence diagrams from an average persistence landscape. It follows that the persistence landscape kernel is characteristic for certain generic empirical measures. Finally, the persistence landscape distance may be arbitrarily small compared to the interleaving distance.
Gastrointestinal manifestations of amyloidosis. Review of the problem with report of a representative case.

A case of primary systemic amyloidosis in which the diagnosis was made antemortem is presented. Unusual gastroenterologic features included epigastric pain as the presenting complaint, proved gastric and duodenal ulceration, an episode of acute pancreatitis, and terminal jaundice. The usual gastrointestinal features included diffuse gastrointestinal tract involvement, hepatomegaly, changes in serum protein, and essentially normal liver-function tests.
Direct stereoselective synthesis of beta-thiomannosides.

A highly diastereoselective synthesis of β-thiomannopyranosides is described in which S-phenyl 2,3-di-O-benzyl-4,6-O-benzylidene-1-deoxy-1-thia-α-d-mannopyranoside S-oxide is treated with triflic anhydride and 2,6-di-tert-butyl-4-methylpyridine in CH2Cl2 at −78 °C leading to the formation of an intermediate α-mannosyl triflate. Addition of primary, secondary, or tertiary thiols then leads to the β-thiomannosides, by an SN2-like displacement, in good yield and with excellent stereoselectivity. Deprotection is achieved either by Birch reduction or by Zemplen deacetylation, of the acetyl protected aglycons, followed by hydrogenolysis over Pearlman's catalyst. The assignment of configuration of the β-thiomannopyranosides is discussed in terms of the chemical shift of the mannose H5 resonance and the 1JCH of the mannose anomeric carbon.
Facilitating Model–Based Design and Evaluation for Sustainability

Relating various models of a system is an essential part of model transformation, model composition, and other metamodeling tasks. The objective of this doctoral research is to create a provably correct approach to this problem.
Stability of a Nonlinear Volterra Equation

This chapter describes the stability of a nonlinear Volterra equation. The stability and asymptotic of the identically zero solution of the scalar Volterra equation , where ' = d / dt , denoted by (1.1), on the interval 0 t . Equation (1.1) arises in several applications and has been studied by Levin and Nohel under hypotheses that are considerably more restrictive than required, both with respect to the positivity of a ( t ) and the smoothness of g ( x ) and f ( t , x ). The generalization is possible because of results concerning the behavior of solutions of the equation (1.1) when ƒ ( t, x ) is independent of x and in L 1 / (0 , ∞ ) with respect to t . The method used to study the equation (1.1) combines energy functions with the frequency domain method.
Reliability of MTurk Data From Masters and Workers

Abstract. Previous research has supported the use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) for online data collection in individual differences research. Although MTurk Masters have reached an elite sta...
Jump load and landing patterns of collegiate female volleyball players during practice and competition.

Background Overuse lower extremity injuries are common in women's court volleyball players and are likely due to the repetitive jumping and landing the sport requires. The purpose of this study was to quantify jump load during collegiate women's volleyball, describe the quantity of double-leg (DL) to single-leg (SL) landing strategies, and compare loads and landing strategies between games and practices. Methods Fourteen collegiate Division-1 women's court volleyball players participated in the study. Volleyball-specific activity demands were quantified using video analysis from three consecutive practices and one match. Investigators recorded the total frequency of jump landings, and the frequency and percentage of double-leg (DL) landings and single-leg (SL) landings of fourteen collegiate Division-1 women's court volleyball players. Repeated measures ANOVAs identified differences in jumping load and percentages of DL and SL landings among practices and between practices and games (P Results On average, there was a significantly higher overall jumping load (P=0.01) and frequency of DL (P=0.03) and SL (P=0.04) landings during practice than games, yet no differences between practices (P>0.05). Approximately 75% of all landings were DL, and individual patterns of DL to SL landings were consistent across events (P>0.05). Conclusions Women's collegiate volleyball demands high volumes of repetitive jumping and landing with SL and DL support that may make these athletes susceptible to overuse injuries, especially during practice.
Exploring the Public Perception of Depression: Interplay between the Attribution of Cause and Narrative Persuasion.

Improving awareness and mitigating stigma related to depression have been a concern to both health communicators and practitioners. This study conducted a 2 (narrative vs. non-narrative) × 2 (high ...
Addressing the problem of disappearing cultural landscapes in archaeological research using multi-scalar survey

Climate change and anthropogenic activities are actively destroying the archaeological record. The dramatic disappearance of archaeological landscapes becomes particularly problematic when they are...
Pharmacist perceptions of CliftonStrengths® themes important for success in advanced cardiovascular life support

WHAT IS KNOWN AND OBJECTIVE Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) is an integrated, team-based approach to optimizing patient outcomes during acute cardiovascular events. Due to the fast-paced, high-stress environment, inherent strengths may impact performance and confidence with ACLS skills. The objective of this study was to assess pharmacist perceptions regarding strengths deemed important during emergency cardiovascular response. METHODS An electronic survey was administered to members of the American College of Clinical Pharmacists Critical Care, Cardiology, Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics Practice and Research Network listservs. The survey assessed the top 5 strengths deemed important for being part of an emergency response team, a pharmacist's role in ACLS and a team leader's role in ACLS. The primary outcome was top strengths required for pharmacist involvement in ACLS. Descriptive statistics were used to present survey results. RESULTS Of the 359 responses included, nearly all respondents had been certified by the American Heart Association in ACLS and/or Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS). The top CliftonStrengths® themes considered important for a pharmacist's role in ACLS were communication, adaptability, analytical, focus and responsibility. The top CliftonStrengths® themes considered important for the team leader's role in ACLS were communication, command, analytical, focus and adaptability. The top CliftonStrengths® themes important for an emergency response team were communication, adaptability, focus, analytical and command. WHAT IS NEW AND CONCLUSIONS By determining the personality traits perceived to be associated with high performance in ACLS, approaches can be taken to personalize student learning in order to train "practice-ready" pharmacists that can be integral members of the ACLS team.
Gamma Tocotrienol Protects Mice From Targeted Thoracic Radiation Injury.

Radiation injury will result in multiorgan dysfuntion leading to multiorgan failure. In addition to many factors such as radiation dose, dose rate, the severity of the injury will also depend on organ systems which are exposed. Here, we report the protective property of gamma tocotrienol (GT3) in total as well as partial body irradiation (PBI) model in C3H/HeN male mice. We have carried out PBI by targeting thoracic region (lung-PBI) using Small Animal Radiation Research Platform (SARRP), an X-ray irradiator with capabilities of an image guided irradiation with a variable collimator with minimized exposure to non-targeted tissues and organs. Precise and accurate irradiation of lungs was carried out at either 14 or 16 Gy at an approximate dose rate of 2.6 Gy/ min. Though a low throughput model, it is amenable to changes the field size on the spot. No damage to other non-targeted organs was observed in histopathological evaluation. There was no significant change in peripheral blood counts of irradiated mice in comparison to naive mice. Femoral bone marrow cells had no damage in irradiated mice. As expected, damage to the targeted tissue was observed in the histopathological evaluation and non-targeted tissue was found normal. Regeneration and increase of cellularity and megakaryocytes on GT3 treatment was compared to significant loss of cellularity in saline group. Peak alveolitis was observed on day 14 post-PBI and protection from alveolitis by GT3 was noted. In irradiated lung tissue, thirty proteins were found to be differentially expressed but modulated by GT3 to reverse the effects of irradiation. We propose that possible mode of action of GT3 could be Angiopoietin 2-Tie2 pathway leading to AKT/ERK pathways resulting in disruption in cell survival/ angiogenesis.
Targeted Quality Measurement of Health Care Providers

Motivated by the problem of measuring the quality of cancer care delivered by providers across the US, we present a framework for institutional quality measurement which addresses the heterogeneity of the public they serve. For this, we conceptualize the task of quality measurement as a causal inference problem, decoupling estimands from estimators, making explicit the assumptions needed for identification, and helping to target flexible covariate profiles that can represent specific populations of interest. We propose methods for layered case-mix adjustments that combine weighting and regression modeling approaches in a sequential manner in order to reduce model extrapolation and allow for provider effect modification. We evaluate these methods in an extensive simulation study and highlight the practical utility of weighting methods that warn the investigator when case-mix adjustments are infeasible without some form of extrapolation that goes beyond the support of the data. Specifically, our constrained optimization approach to weighting constitutes a diagnostic of sparse or null data for a given provider relative to the target profiles. In our study of cancer care outcomes, we assess the performance of oncology practices for different profiles that correspond to different types of patients that may receive cancer care. We describe how the proposed methods may be particularly important for high-stakes quality measurement, such as public reporting or performance-based payments. They may also be important for individual patients seeking practices that provide high-quality care to patients like them. Our approach applies to other settings besides health care, including business and education, where instead of cancer practices, we have companies and schools.
Effects of power-law entrainment on bubble fragmentation cascades

We consider the evolution of the bulk bubble-size distribution might provide information about the underlying entrainment size distribution.
Growth of Staphylococcus aureus Using a Rotary Cell Culture System

The Rotary Cell Culture System (RCCS) is an apparatus that was originally designed by NASA engineers to simulate microgravity conditions for growth of both eukaryotic and bacterial cell cultures. The RCCS growth environment is also characterized by low fluid shear stress, thereby also providing an in vitro growth condition relevant to certain in vivo environments encountered during bacterial infection. This chapter describes a method for growing Staphylococcus aureus under simulated microgravity conditions using the RCCS and disposable High Aspect Ratio Vessels (HARVs). Small samples can be removed and replaced with fresh media during the experiment (continuous sampling method) or the whole culture can be removed at the end of the experiment (end-point sampling method) for larger sample volumes required for follow-up studies such as RNAseq or proteomics.
Modeling Behavior by Coastal River Otter (Lontra Canadensis) in Response to Prey Availability in Prince William Sound, Alaska: A Spatially-Explicit Individual-Based Approach

Effects of climate change on animal behavior and cascading ecosystem responses are rarely evaluated. In coastal Alaska, social river otters (Lontra Canadensis), largely males, cooperatively forage on schooling fish and use latrine sites to communicate group associations and dominance. Conversely, solitary otters, mainly females, feed on intertidal-demersal fish and display mutual avoidance via scent marking. This behavioral variability creates “hotspots” of nutrient deposition and affects plant productivity and diversity on the terrestrial landscape. Because the abundance of schooling pelagic fish is predicted to decline with climate change, we developed a spatially-explicit individual-based model (IBM) of otter behavior and tested six scenarios based on potential shifts to distribution patterns of schooling fish. Emergent patterns from the IBM closely mimicked observed otter behavior and landscape use in the absence of explicit rules of intraspecific attraction or repulsion. Model results were most sensitive to rules regarding spatial memory and activity state following an encounter with a fish school. With declining availability of schooling fish, the number of social groups and the time simulated otters spent in the company of conspecifics declined. Concurrently, model results suggested an elevation of defecation rate, a 25% increase in nitrogen transport to the terrestrial landscape, and significant changes to the spatial distribution of “hotspots” with declines in schooling fish availability. However, reductions in availability of schooling fish could lead to declines in otter density over time.
Fatal arrow wounds.

Two instances of fatal arrow wounds are described, one by a field-tip (target arrowhead), the other by a broadhead (large-game hunting arrowhead). The essential characteristics of the two types of wounds are discussed. In particular, the field-tip can closely simulate a bullet wound by causing a circular entrance hole with abraded margins, whereas the broadhead can create unusual radiating incised wounds.
Reversal of MRP-1 mediated multi-drug resistance by sulindac sulfide and indomethacin

AACR Annual Meeting-- Apr 14-18, 2007; Los Angeles, CA 2282 Multi-drug resistance (MDR) is a phenomenon by which tumor cells display or develop resistance to a number of structurally and functionally distinct anticancer drugs and is a major clinical obstacle that contributes to the marginal efficacy of cancer chemotherapy. A significant factor that contributes to MDR is the overexpression of certain ATP-dependent transporter proteins in tumor cell membranes that cause the efflux of cytotoxic drugs; thereby reducing their intracellular concentration and limiting their effectiveness. Inhibition of membrane transporters is an attractive therapeutic strategy to enhance chemotherapy efficacy. P-gp has been well studied for the past two decades and a number of inhibitors have been evaluated in clinical trials. However, none have received FDA approval due mostly to excessive toxicity when combined with chemotherapy, which is believed to be caused by the interference with drug metabolism and elimination. By comparison, less is known regarding the binding and transport properties of MRP-1 and few selective inhibitors have been identified. As such, the aims of the present studies are 1) to identify known MRP-1 inhibitors with potential for clinical testing and 2) conduct a high throughput screening campaign towards identifying novel inhibitors. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been widely reported to have antineoplastic properties and several studies suggest the potential for certain NSAIDs to inhibit MRP-1. We performed cell culture studies to test the NSAIDs, sulindac sulfide and indomethacin, against the human small cell lung cancer cell line, H69, and a multi-drug resistant clone, H69AR that overexpresses MRP-1. The experiments revealed that non-cytotoxic doses of sulindac sulfide and indomethacin selectively enhanced toxicity to doxorubicin in the resistant line. For example, sulindac sulfide (5 μM) shifted the IC50 value of H69/AR line for doxorubicin from 5.2 to 0.2 μM. To determine the mechanism of the enhanced cytotoxicity, we took advantage of the fluorescent property of doxorubicin. Fluorescence microscopy revealed that both sulindac sulfide and indomethacin increased intracellular doxorubicin in the multi-drug resistant H69/AR cells. These data led us to conclude that NSAIDs such as sulindac sulfide or indomethacin may be clinically useful in the treatment of multi-drug resistant forms of cancer involving MRP-1. As part of a larger effort to identify additional MRP-1 inhibitors and to benchmark the activity of these drugs, we plan a high throughput screening campaign using the NIH Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network.
Mechanism of Action and Metabolic Fate of Vitamin D

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the mechanism of action and metabolic fate of vitamin D. The disease rickets, resulting from a deficiency of vitamin D, made its appearance in the human population as early as antiquity as a byproduct of civilization. The quantity of vitamin D to which an animal responds is vanishingly small, and highly sensitive methods of detection are required. It is necessary to rely on biological assay to achieve a reasonable degree of sensitivity. The biological assay provides neither precision nor a means of detecting nonbiologically active metabolites. Some vitamin D activity is found in blood, liver, and skin. The vitamin D activity secreted in the bile is clearly demonstrated by Heymann. The radioactive label helps in the detection of vitamin D metabolites and provides a sensitive method of detection of the vitamin itself. Two basic techniques play an essential role in the rapid advance in the area of vitamin D metabolism. One is the more sophisticated chromatographic methods available for the separation of vitamin D and its metabolites. The other is the development of mild but rather complete and effective extraction methods for lipids.
Immune Escape: Immunosuppressive Networks

Publisher Summary This chapter provides a framework for understanding how the immune response is altered in favor of forming a suppressive network in the tumor microenvironment, integrating different immune cell types and molecules. To induce tumor immunity, sufficient numbers of functional antigen-presenting cells (APCs) are required in situ, and they must be able to capture, process, and present the tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). APCs are also required to migrate to secondary lymphoid organs, and then stimulate the TAA-specific T cells. The TAA-specific T cells must then dwell to the tumor, recognize TAA on the tumor cells, and eradicate the tumor cells. The tumor microenvironment presents an arsenal of active immune imbalances, including an imbalance of the mature versus immature dendritic cells (DCs), stimulatory versus inhibitory B7 family molecules, and regulatory versus conventional T cells. The pathological interaction between the tumor and host immune system results in formation of a “tolerance network” through establishing these irregular immune balances in the tumor environment.
A 40-Gb/s 9.2-mW CMOS equalizer

A 40-Gb/s equalizer incorporates a one-stage CTLE with 5.5-dB boost, a one-tap discrete-time linear equalizer with 5.4-dB boost, a two-tap halfrate/quarter-rate DFE, and charge-steering techniques. Realized in 45-nm CMOS technology, the equalizer achieves BER < 10−12 with a clock phase margin of 0.28 UI with a channel loss of 20 dB at Nyquist.
Mapping Collaboration Networks in the World of Autism Research

In the era of globalization and with the emergence of autism spectrum disorder as a global concern, the landscape of autism research has expanded to encompass much of the world. Here, we seek to provide an overview of the world of autism research, by documenting collaboration underlying the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR), the pre-eminent annual scientific meeting devoted to the presentation of the latest autism research. We analyzed published abstracts presented at IMFAR meetings, between 2008 and 2013, to determine patterns of collaboration. We described collaboration networks on the individual, institutional, and international levels, and visually depicted these results on spatial network maps. Consistent with findings from other scientific disciplines, we found that collaboration is correlated with research productivity. Collaborative hotspots of autism research throughout the years were clustered on the East and West coasts of the U.S., Canada, and northern Europe. In years when conferences were held outside of North America, the proportion of abstracts from Europe and Asia increased. While IMFAR has traditionally been dominated by a large North American presence, greater global representation may be attained by shifting meeting locations to other regions of the world.
Multiple, Tandem Plasmid Integration in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Nonreplicating plasmids transform Saccharomyces cerevisiae by recombining with a homologous site in the genome. Frequently, multiple copies of the plasmid integrate in a tandem array. We show that, after transformation with restriction enzyme-cut plasmids, most, if not all, multimers arise by sequential integration of plasmid molecules into the same genomic location.
A Domain-Specific-Modeling Approach to Support Scenarios-Based Instructional Design

Over recent years, Model-Driven-Engineering has attracted growing interest as much as a research domain as an industrial process that can be applied to various educational domains. This article aims to discuss and propose such an application for learning-scenario-centered instructional design processes. Our proposition is based on a 3-domain categorization for learning scenarios. We also discuss and explain why we think Domain-Specific Modeling techniques are the future new trend in order to support the emergence of communities of practices for scenario-based instructional design. The originality resides in the support we propose to help communities of practitioners in building specific Visual Instructional Design Languages with dedicated editors instead of providing them with yet another language or editor.
Transport and modulation analysis of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL)

We present a comprehensive one-dimensional analysis of VCSELs based on self-consistent solution of laser, carrier transport and Poisson equations. Based on gain spectrum calculations and thermal analysis of VCSELs, we investigate the modulation response of VCSELs.
Squamous Cell Carcinoma Detected by High-Molecular-Weight Cytokeratin Immunostaining Mimicking Atypical Fibroxanthoma

Abstract Atypical fibroxanthoma can mimic other tumors, particularly spindle cell squamous cell carcinoma and spindle cell or desmoplastic melanoma. We describe a patient with chronic lymphocytic l...
A Review of “The Survey of Academic Library Cataloging Practices, 2013 Edition”

This volume follows the format of other Primary Research Group publications by providing raw data from a questionnaire, in this case designed for and returned by a variety of academic library catal...
Polymer reactions, 8. Oxidative pyrolysis of poly(propylene)†‡

Poly(propylene) has been oxidized at temperatures between 240 and 289°C. The products were GC separated and on-line identified by an interfaced GC peak identification system. The major products are CO2, H2O, acetaldehyde, acetone, butanal, formaldehyde, methanol and other ketones and aldehydes. Most of the products can be accounted for by well-known reactions of alkoxyl and peroxyl radicals; the major products are derived from the secondary alkoxy and peroxy species. Oxygen starvation is manifested in diffusion limited products of olefins and dienes, and the increase of CO2 and H2O formation in pure oxygen atmosphere. The first order rate constant at 240°C is 2,4·10−3 S−1 with an overall activation energy of ca. 16 kcal·mol−1 (67 kJ·mol−1). If one assumes the oxidative pyrolysis to share the same reaction pathways as autoxidation at lower temperatures, then the observed rate constants and activation energy may be calculated from kinetic parameters measured earlier for autoxidation of poly(propylene) from 71 to 140°C. Good agreement was obtained implying a similarity of oxidative degradation of the polymers spanning a large temperature range.
Quasirelativistic quasilocal finite wave-function collapse model

A Markovian wave-function collapse model is presented where the collapse-inducing operator, constructed from quantum fields, is a manifestly covariant generalization of the mass-density operator utilized in the nonrelativistic continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) wave-function collapse model. However, the model is not Lorentz invariant because two such operators do not commute at spacelike separation, i.e., the time-ordering operation in one Lorentz frame, the ``preferred'' frame, is not the time-ordering operation in another frame. However, the characteristic spacelike distance over which the commutator decays is the particle's Compton wavelength so, since the commutator rapidly gets quite small, the model is ``almost'' relativistic. This quasirelativistic CSL (QRCSL) model is completely finite: unlike previous, relativistic, models, it has no (infinite) energy production from the vacuum state. QRCSL calculations are given of the collapse rate for a single free particle in a superposition of spatially separated packets, and of the energy production rate for any number of free particles: these reduce to the CSL rates if the particle's Compton wavelength is small compared to the model's distance parameter. One motivation for QRCSL is the realization that previous relativistic models entail excitation of nuclear states which exceeds that of experiment, whereas QRCSL does not; an example is given involving quadrupole excitation of the $^{74}\mathrm{Ge}$ nucleus.
Observation of Padé summability in divergent L 2 complex coordinate calculations of t-matrix amplitudes in the presence of long-range forces

The method of complex coordinates has long been known to allow ${L}^{2}$ calculations of $t$-matrix amplitudes for short-range potentials, but to yield divergent results for long-range forces. Using a spherical long-range potential as an example, it is shown here that the Pad\'e method of summation can be used in conjunction with the diverging complex-coordinate calculations to obtain accurate values of the scattering amplitude.
Posets with interval upper bound graphs

Competition graphs of transitive acyclic digraphs are strict upper bound graphs. This paper characterizes those posets, which can be considered transitive acyclic digraphs, which have upper bound graphs that are interval graphs. The results proved here may shed some light on the open question of those digraphs which have interval competition graphs.
Florida's EETT Leveraging Laptops Initiative and Its Impact on Teaching Practices

AbstractThis study measures changes in teaching practices that occurred during a school year that included laptop implementation and professional development. The changes were documented through direct observations of more than 400 classrooms in more than 50 K–12 schools in 11 Florida districts. Trained observers used two valid observation instruments to measure teaching practices and technology use. The Mantel-Haentzel procedure was used to infer statistical differences between fall and spring observations. Observed percentages, means, standard deviations and effect sizes are provided. Results suggest laptop implementation and professional development can lead to increased student-centered teaching, increased tool-based teaching, and increased meaningful use of technology. This research suggests that laptop implementation coupled with professional development may have an immediate impact on instructional practices.