cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Development of a model of the tobacco industry’s interference with tobacco control programmes

Objective: To construct a conceptual model of tobacco industry tactics to undermine tobacco control programmes for the purposes of: (1) developing measures to evaluate industry tactics, (2) improving tobacco control planning, and (3) supplementing current or future frameworks used to classify and analyse tobacco industry documents. Design: Web based concept mapping was conducted, including expert brainstorming, sorting, and rating of statements describing industry tactics. Statistical analyses used multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. Interpretation of the resulting maps was accomplished by an expert panel during a face-to-face meeting. Subjects: 34 experts, selected because of their previous encounters with industry resistance or because of their research into industry tactics, took part in some or all phases of the project. Results: Maps with eight non-overlapping clusters in two dimensional space were developed, with importance ratings of the statements and clusters. Cluster and quadrant labels were agreed upon by the experts. Conclusions: The conceptual maps summarise the tactics used by the industry and their relationships to each other, and suggest a possible hierarchy for measures that can be used in statistical modelling of industry tactics and for review of industry documents. Finally, the maps enable hypothesis of a likely progression of industry reactions as public health programmes become more successful, and therefore more threatening to industry profits.
A symmetric positive definite formulation for monolithic fluid structure interaction

In this paper we consider a strongly coupled (monolithic) fluid structure interaction framework for incompressible flow, as opposed to a loosely coupled (partitioned) method. This requires solving a single linear system that combines the unknown velocities of the structure with the unknown pressures of the fluid. In our previous work, we were able to obtain a symmetric formulation of this coupled system; however, it was also indefinite, making it more difficult to solve. In fact in practice there have been cases where we have been unable to invert the system. In this paper we take a novel approach that consists of factoring the damping matrix of deformable structures and show that this can be used to obtain a symmetric positive definite system, at least to the extent that the uncoupled systems were symmetric positive definite. We use a traditional MAC grid discretization of the fluid and a fully Lagrangian discretization of the structures for the sake of exposition, noting that our procedure can be generalized to other scenarios. For the special case of rigid bodies, where there are no internal damping forces, we exactly recover the system of Batty et al. (2007) 4].
Stretching agile to fit CMMI level 3 - the story of creating MSF for CMMI/spl reg/ process improvement at Microsoft corporation

Agile practitioners pride themselves on highly productive, responsive, low ceremony, lightweight, tacit knowledge processes with little waste, adaptive planning and frequent iterative delivery of value. It is often assumed that CMMI compliant processes need to be heavyweight, bureaucratic, slow moving, high ceremony and plan driven. Agile developers often skeptically perceive formal process improvement initiatives as management generated inefficiency that gets in the way of productivity. At Microsoft, we've adopted the teachings of W. Edwards Deming and stretched our MSF for agile software development method to fit the requirements for CMMI level 3. The resultant MSF for CMMI process improvement is a highly iterative, adaptive planning method, light on documentation, and heavily automated through tooling. It enables management and organization of software engineering through use of agile metrics such as velocity and cumulative flow but with an added dimension of an understanding of variation - adapted from Deming's teachings. This is the story of how mixing Deming with Agile produced a lightweight CMMI solution for .Net developers everywhere.
A Novel Method That Markedly Increases the Sensitivity of the Erythrocyte Acetylcholinesterase Assay, Suitable for Use in Pesticide-Treated Rats

Although the specific activity of rat erythrocyte acetylcholinesterase activity is reasonably high, use of the standard spectrophotometric assay presents special problems due primarily to the interference of hemoglobin with the absorbance spectrum of the assay product, 5-thio-2-nitrobenzoic acid. To limit the hemoglobin interference, the erythrocyte sample is diluted at least 20- to 25-fold before assay, but this dilution decreases the level of measured activity. We have sought to increase the sensitivity of the rat erythrocyte acetylcholinesterase assay by employing a standard technique to release [using phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C (PiPLC)] the acetylcholinesterase molecules from the erythrocyte surface without lysis of the erythrocytes. The present group of studies determined if the inhibition of the acetylcholinesterase activity that had been stripped off the erythrocytes taken from pesticide-treated rats reflected the acetylcholinesterase inhibition in the unstripped erythrocytes of ...
Pepsin and Carbonic Anhydrase Isoenzyme III as Diagnostic Markers for Laryngopharyngeal Reflux Disease

Objectives/Hypothesis: The objective was to investigate the potential use of pepsin and carbonic anhydrase isoenzyme III (CA-III) as diagnostic markers for laryngopharyngeal reflux disease. Study Design: Prospective cell biological investigation was conducted of laryngeal biopsy specimens taken from 9 patients with laryngopharyngeal reflux disease and 12 normal control subjects using antibodies specific for human pepsin (produced in the authors' laboratory within the Department of Otolaryngology at Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC) and CA-III. Methods: Laryngeal biopsy specimens were frozen in liquid nitrogen for Western blot analysis and fixed in formalin for pepsin immunohistochemical study. Specimens between two groups (patients with laryngopharyngeal reflux disease and control subjects) were compared for the presence of pepsin. Further analyses investigated the correlation between pepsin, CA-III depletion, and pH testing data. Results: Analysis revealed that the level of pepsin was significantly different between the two groups (P <.001). Secondary analyses demonstrated that presence of pepsin correlated with CA-III depletion in the laryngeal vocal fold and ventricle (P <.001) and with pH testing data in individuals with laryngopharyngeal reflux disease. Conclusion: Pepsin was detected in 8 of 9 patients with laryngopharyngeal reflux disease, but not in normal control subjects (0 of 12). The presence of pepsin was associated with CA-III depletion in the laryngeal vocal fold and ventricle. Given the correlation between laryngopharyngeal reflux disease and CA-III depletion, it is highly plausible that CA-III depletion, as a result of pepsin exposure during laryngopharyngeal reflux, predisposes laryngeal mucosa to reflux-related inflammatory damage.
Using wavelets for fast Monte Carlo simulation of Ising systems with distribution matching

A new wavelet-based method is presented that improves the accuracy of a previously published wavelet-accelerated Monte Carlo analysis of the two-dimensional Ising model by one to two orders of magnitude in the critical and paramagnetic regions, and is up to ten times faster than the standard Metropolis algorithm. In the context of lattice simulations, successive levels of upscaling reduce the number of degrees of freedom, with corresponding gains in computational speed. Empirical results, for a variety of temperatures for a 32 × 32 lattice of binary spins, show that the resulting computational errors are reduced by running simulations at the thermody-namic temperature that minimizes the information-theoretic divergence between the Boltzmann equilibrium distributions of the original and coarse-grained systems. This optimal temperature relationship Monte Carlo method (OTRMC) may also benefit image processing applications, such as image restoration, that employ Monte Carlo simulations of Markov random fields.
156 Molecular dynamics studies of HTLV-1 Rex responsive element aptamer recognition.

Rex protein recognition of the Rex responsive element (RxRE) is a critical step in the retroviral lifecycle of human T-cell leukemia type 1. The Rex peptide is known to have a higher binding affini...
Reconstruction of Complex Lip Defects

Lip reconstruction is challenging even for an experienced surgeon in that the lips play a major esthetic and functional role in the lower third of the face. Fullness of the lips symbolizes beauty particularly in females in many cultures. The lips provide an oral aperture where food is first introduced into the gastrointestinal tract and initiate peristalsis in coordination with the tongue and the palate by closing of the mouth. They also participate in articulation of speech and expression of intimacy and serve a crucial role in human interactions. Without the proper functioning of the lips, purely labial consonants (b, p, m, and w) and dentolabial consonants (f and v) cannot be pronounced.
Harmonistic Readings in the Old Syriac Gospels

There are two extant copies of the Old Syriac gospels, the evangelion da-mepharreshe. One, the Curetonian Codex (=C), was discovered by William Cureton and edited by him in 1858. It dates to the middle or later part of the fifth century. The other, the Sinaitic Codex (=S), was discovered by Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis and her sister Mrs. Margaret Dunlop Gibson at St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. It dates to the later part of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century. Both MSS have a number of lacunae. In combination, however, they preserve most of the text of the four gospels. Although they are not identical their agreements are sufficient to show that they belong to the same translation. S is generally thought to preserve the original text better than C. C, however, sometimes preserves older readings than S.
Reliability and Associated Risk Factors for Performance on the Vestibular/Ocular Motor Screening (VOMS) Tool in Healthy Collegiate Athletes:

Background:The Vestibular/Ocular Motor Screening (VOMS) is a newly developed screening tool that evaluates vestibular and ocular motor symptom (eg, headache, dizziness, nausea, fogginess) provocation after a sport-related concussion. Baseline data on the VOMS are needed to extend the application of this measure to broad age groups and to document normal variations in performance.Purpose:The primary purpose of this study was to examine the internal consistency of the VOMS in a large sample of healthy, nonconcussed collegiate athletes. The secondary purpose was to investigate the effects of patient sex and history of motion sickness, migraines, and concussions on baseline VOMS scores.Study Design:Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2.Methods:A total of 263 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletes (mean ± SD age, 19.85 ± 1.35 years) completed self-reported demographic and medical history at preseason physical examinations and baseline screening. Internal consistency of the VOMS was assessed ...
ArF Excimer Laser-Enhanced Photochemical Vapor Deposition of Homoepitaxial Silicon from Disilane

The 193 nm output of an ArF excimer laser has been used to selectively photodissociate Si2H6 to deposit homoepitaxial Si films in the temperature range of 250°C to 350°C. Photolytic decomposition of Si2H6 results in the generation and adsorption of growth precursors on a hydrogenated Si surface. A simple growth kinetic model has been developed based on the most likely primary photofragments upon single-photon absorption by Si2H6 at the ArF excimer laser wavelength of 193 nm, and gas kinetic transport of the resulting photofragments to the substrate surface. Growth rates are observed to vary linearly with laser beam power and Si2H6 partial pressure when the laser beam is tangentially positioned less than 0.5 mm from the Si substrate for Si2H6 partial pressures less than 40 mTorr, total chamber pressures of 600 mTorr, and laser beam photon flux densities less than 2 x 1016 photons/cm2.pulse. Under these conditions, gas-phase diffusion dominates over chemical reaction rates and laser beam absorption is in the optically thin limit. The model then reduces to a simple form that predicts a linear dependence of growth rate on Si2H6 partial pressure and gives an accurate estimate of the expected growth rate. The epitaxial films are specular, and appear to have very low defect density in terms of stacking faults, as determined by modified Schimmel etching and Nomarski microscopy, and dislocation loops as determined by TEM (less than 105 loops/cm2). The crystallinity has been confirmed both by in situ RHEED, where we see a (lxl) streaky pattern, as well as selected electron diffraction, which shows a (100) crystalline orientation.
Slowly emerging glycinergic transmission enhances inhibition in the sound localization pathway of the avian auditory system.

Localization of low-frequency acoustic stimuli is processed in dedicated neural pathways where coincidence-detecting neurons compare the arrival time of sound stimuli at the two ears, or interaural time disparity (ITD). ITDs occur in the submillisecond range, and vertebrates have evolved specialized excitatory and inhibitory circuitry to compute these differences. Glycinergic inhibition is a computationally significant and prominent component of the mammalian ITD pathway. However, evidence for glycinergic transmission is limited in birds, where GABAergic inhibition has been thought to be the dominant or exclusive inhibitory transmitter. Indeed, previous work showed that GABA antagonists completely eliminate inhibition in avian nuclei specialized for processing temporal features of sound, nucleus magnocellularis (NM) and nucleus laminaris (NL). However, more recent work shows that glycine is coexpressed with GABA in synaptic terminals apposed to neurons in both nuclei (Coleman WL, Fischl MJ, Weimann SR, Burger RM. J Neurophysiol 105: 2405–2420, 2011; Kuo SP, Bradley LA, Trussell LO. J Neurosci 29: 9625–9634, 2009). Here we show complementary evidence of functional glycine receptor (GlyR) expression in NM and NL. Additionally, we show that glycinergic input can be evoked under particular stimulus conditions. Stimulation at high but physiologically relevant rates evokes a slowly emerging glycinergic response in NM and NL that builds over the course of the stimulus. Glycinergic response magnitude was stimulus rate dependent, representing 18% and 7% of the total inhibitory current in NM and NL, respectively, at the end of the 50-pulse, 200-Hz stimulus. Finally, we show that the glycinergic component is functionally relevant, as its elimination reduced inhibition of discharges evoked by current injection into NM neurons.
In-situ and ex-situ investigation of lateral current density variations in a pem fuel cell with serpentine flow field

One of the most common types of flow field designs used in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is the serpentine flow field. It is used for its simplicity of design, its effectiveness in distributing reactants and its water removal capabilities. The knowledge about where current density is higher, under the land or the channel, is critical for flow field design and optimization. Yet, no direct measurement data are available for serpentine flow fields. In this study a fuel cell with a single channel serpentine flow field is used to separately measure the current density under the land and channel on the cathode. In this manner, a systematic study is conducted under a wide variety of conditions and a series of comparisons are made between land and channel current density. Results show that under most operating conditions, current density is higher under the land than that under the channel. However, at low voltage, a rapid drop off in current density occurs under the land due to concentration losses. In order to investigate the cause of the variations of current density under the land and channel and series of ex-situ and in-situ experiments were conducted. In the ex-situ portion of the study, the contact resistance between the gas diffusion electrode (GDE) and the graphite flow plate were measured using an ex-situ impedance spectroscopy technique. The values of the contact resistance under the channel were found to be larger than that under the land. This implies that the contact resistance under the land and channel vary greatly, likely due to variations in compression under different section of the flow field. These variations in turn cause current density variations under the land and channel.© 2009 ASME
Quantitative Characterization of Operational- Environmental Performance for Terminal Areas

Methodological improvements for the characterization of operational and environmental performance of terminal areas are proposed, leveraging on recent advances in modeling and simulation, established statistical analysis techni ques, and state of the art data visualization schemes. The proposed approach aims to quantitatively characterize performance and explicitly capture the significance of endogenous a nd exogenous factors and the interactions between them, so that key tradeoffs of interest tha t would otherwise be obfuscated and indiscernible amidst systemic complexity can be rea dily conveyed. The techniques in question are demonstrated using a major U.S. hub as an illustrative example.
Drinking motives and PTSD-related alcohol expectancies among combat veterans

Abstract Introduction Combat veterans are at increased risk for PTSD and alcohol misuse, and expectancies and motives for drinking may help explain the link between these comorbid issues. This investigation explored the relationships between PTSD symptoms, PTSD-related alcohol expectancies, motives for drinking, and alcohol consumption/misuse. Method 67 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) participated in this project. We examined correlations between PTSD severity, alcohol misuse, drinking motives, PTSD alcohol expectancies, and tested models of mediation and moderation. Results Coping-anxiety drinking motives and positive PTSD-related alcohol expectancies were associated with alcohol misuse and alcohol-related consequences, but not with consumption. Each PTSD symptom cluster was associated with positive and negative PTSD alcohol expectancies, and coping-anxiety was specifically related to reexperiencing and avoidance. Drinking to cope mediated the relationship between PTSD symptoms and hazardous drinking. Moderation analyses showed that a positive relationship between PTSD severity and hazardous drinking existed among those with moderate and higher levels of positive PTSD-alcohol expectancies. Discussion Our findings point to surprising, and in some cases complex, relationships between PTSD and alcohol use. Although related, PTSD alcohol expectancies and drinking motives seem to function differently in the relationship between PTSD and alcohol misuse.
P0040 Binding of carbamylated peptides to alleles associated with susceptibility and resistance to rheumatoid arthritis

Aim HLA-DRB1 is a strong genetic component of RA and also strongly correlates with the presence of antibodies against citrullinated proteins. Additionally, antibodies against carbamylated proteins are also detected in the RA synovium, and often these antibodies cross-react between citrullinated and carbamylated antigens. We have previously demonstrated the importance of individual shared epitope amino acids in RA susceptibility and resistance. Our aim is to examine the potential contribution of carbamylation to RA through peptide binding analysis of carbamylated peptides to alleles associated with RA susceptibility and resistance. Methods We measured binding of native, citrullinated and carbamylated forms of vimentin 66–78 and fibrinogen; and native and carbamylated type II collagen 259–273 , to alleles associated with RA susceptibility (DRB1 ∗ 04:01) and resistance (DRB1 ∗ 04:02 and ∗ 08:01). Additionally, we measured peptide binding to alleles of loci in linkage disequilibrium with DRB1, as they may be contributing cis elements to disease development. Results Carbamylated vimentin, fibrinogen and collagen were bound effectively by susceptible allele ∗ 04:01. DRB1 ∗ 04:02 was similarly able to bind carbamylated vimentin and fibrinogen, but unable to bind any form of collagen. DRB1 ∗ 08:01 was able to bind both native and carbamylated forms of vimentin and fibrinogen, but lacked collagen binding. DRB4 ∗ 01:01, a locus in linkage disequilibrium with DRB1 ∗ 04:01, exhibited the strongest preference for carbamylated fibrinogen and vimentin. Conclusions Based on the preference for carbamylated peptides, it is possible that DRB4 ∗ 01:01 plays a role in RA pathogenesis that has not been appreciated due to linkage. Download high-res image (188KB) Download full-size image
Is Pet Ownership Helpful in Reducing the Risk and Severity of Geriatric Depression

Many community-dwelling older adults are searching for ways to remain mentally and physically healthy as they age. One frequently offered suggestion is for older people to adopt a pet to avoid loneliness, to stay socially engaged, and to stave off depression. Despite the ubiquity of this advice in popular culture, research findings are equivocal on whether pet ownership is beneficial to the physical and psychological health of older adults. This article evaluates published data relating to pet ownership and its possible impact on depression and related symptoms in the elderly.
Abstract 1542: Targeting KIF3a and primary cilia differentially affects sonic hedgehog sensitivity and the rate of glioblastoma progression

Adults diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) typically have a median survival less than 15 months. GBM patient biopsies and derived cell lines contain subsets of cells extending primary cilia, microtubular antennae that mediate signaling events reported to influence cell proliferation and tumor cell growth. However, it remains unclear how cilia contribute to the phenotypic characteristics of GBM. To determine whether cilia influence GBM tumor progression, we generated several stable patient-derived cell lines devoid of cilia by expressing a dominant-negative form of Kif3a (dnKif3a), a protein normally essential for ciliogenesis. Depending on the line, mice receiving intracranial implants of dnKif3a-expressing cells survived shorter, as long as, or significantly longer than mice implanted with control cells. To determine if ciliated cells derived from different GBM tumors share similar sensitivities to sonic hedgehog (SHH), a mitogen present in adult brain that activates receptor signaling cascades within cilia, we exposed control and dnKif3a-expressing cells in vitro to vehicle or recombinant SHH. Interestingly, only the cell line that prolonged survival in vivo displayed significant increases in proliferation following exposure to SHH, an effect that was blocked by either dnKif3a or pretreatment of the cells with cyclopamine, an inhibitor of the SHH cascade. All cell lines tested appeared to respond to SHH as evidenced by activation of downstream SHH signaling components in their cilia. Collectively, our data suggest that strategies to disrupt primary cilia in GBM patients could lead to inhibition or enhancement of tumor growth potentially by altering cell sensitivity to the extracellular environment. Citation Format: Lan Hoang-Minh, Dorit Siebzehnrubl, Loic Deleyrolle, George Ugartemendia, Hunter Futch, Benjamin Griffith, Joshua Breunig, Susan Semple-Rowland, Brent Reynolds, Matthew Sarkisian. Targeting KIF3a and primary cilia differentially affects sonic hedgehog sensitivity and the rate of glioblastoma progression. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1542. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1542
Church-Sect Typology and Organizational Precariousness

The church-sect typology was originally framed as a measure of organizational precariousness. The concepts refer to organizational characteristics rather than attitude traits of individuals. The concepts of church-sect have become imprecise and non-operational. There is little definitional consensus among those who use the concepts as to the specific differentiating characteristics of church-sect. A return to the original heuristic intent of Weber, Troeltsch and Niebuhr in their use of church-sect typology can provide a clear operational meaning to the concepts as measures of organizational precariousness.
Yeast dynamin Vps1 associates with clathrin to facilitate vesicular trafficking and controls Golgi homeostasis

The yeast dynamin Vps1 acts cooperatively with many proteins at diverse cellular locations for endocytosis, protein sorting, and membrane fusion and fission. It has been proposed that Vps1 is functionally linked to clathrin heavy chain 1 (Chc1), but the question of how, where, and when they function together remains unknown. Here we report that Vps1 arrives at the Golgi after clathrin, and that loss of Vps1 leads to a shift in the cellular localization of clathrin to the late endosome and vacuole, not vice versa. Our two-hybrid-based approach provides evidence that full-length Vps1 and its truncated versions bind to the C-terminal region of the Chc1. Cells lacking both Vps1 and Chc1 displayed more severe defects in carboxypeptidase Y (CPY) sorting at the Golgi than those in Vps1-deficient cells. Further, these Vps1 fragments became dominant-negative for CPY sorting upon overexpression. These results suggest that Vps1 binds to Chc1 and functions together at the Golgi for efficient Golgi-to-endosome membrane trafficking. In addition, we found that Vps1, without the aid of clathrin, plays a role in controlling the number and turnover of late Golgi.
Smoke-free soccer, healthy kids, healthy communities

In 1996, the United States national women’s soccer team captured an Olympic gold medal before a crowd of 76 500 in Athens, Georgia. The debut of women’s soccer in the Olympics and the sport’s growing popularity worldwide highlight the prominence of women’s athletics both as spectator sports and as positive activities for young girls. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and represents a potentially powerful partner for the tobacco control community. During the summer of 1999, the Third Women’s World Cup Soccer competition will be held in the United States. It is an opportunity for the tobacco control community to make ‘Smoke-free soccer’ an international campaign that links the tobacco control community in an alliance with the millions of girls worldwide who enjoy and participate in this most popular and egalitarian of sports.
Regional left ventricular myocardial dysfunction as a predictor of incident cardiovascular events MESA (multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis).

Objectives We sought to examine the prognostic value of subclinical left ventricular (LV) regional myocardial dysfunction (RMD) measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) among asymptomatic individuals. Background LV RMD, defined as segmental impairment in systolic wall thickening, predicts adverse events in patients with established cardiovascular disease. MRI is highly accurate for detecting subtle RMD, of which the prognostic significance in a large multiethnic asymptomatic population is not known. Methods We used MRI to evaluate baseline regional LV myocardial function and prospectively followed a multiethnic (African American, Caucasian, Chinese, and Hispanic) population-based sample of 4,510 men and women without cardiovascular disease for a mean of 4.6 years. Regional myocardial dysfunction was defined as the presence of impaired systolic wall thickening ( Results Baseline prevalence of RMD was 25.6%. Heart failure developed in 34 (1.0%) and 30 (2.6%) participants without and with RMD, respectively (p Conclusions Among an asymptomatic multiethnic American cohort, RMD is an independent predictor beyond traditional risk factors and global LV assessment for incident heart failure and atherosclerotic cardiovascular events. The clinical utility of early recognition of this subclinical phenotype deserves further investigation. (Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis [MESA]; NCT00005487)
Strangulation as a Felony Offense: A New Penalty Under W. Va. Code § 61-2-9D

In March of 2016, the West Virginia Legislature passed a law adding a new section to W. Va. Code § 61-2-1 et al. to specifically criminalize strangulation as a felony offense. Such offenses would have previously been charged under the West Virginia Code's provisions for domestic battery, malicious wounding, or attempted murder. The law's passage was the culmination of efforts by the legislature during the prior year. The primary motivation to punish this behavior originated in medical studies which revealed a substantially higher likelihood of homicide occurring in domestic relationships when strangulation previously occurred. Upon taking effect in June of 2016, West Virginia joined the majority of states which punish strangulation as a separate offense. Although the language used in the West Virginia Code was similar to many other jurisdictions, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has yet to interpret the provision's language requiring loss of consciousness or bodily injury as the threshold for conviction. As a result, how the law is applied varies widely among prosecutors, lower courts, and law enforcement. In addition, the rate of charges being filed under the new statute varied considerably, with some counties filing none and others doing so on dozens of occasions. The purpose of this article is to compare the approaches of other jurisdictions on what constitutes "bodily injury" and also proposals for future interpretations and revisions to the law.
Time (and space) in the hippocampus.

There is considerable recent evidence that, in addition to its representation of space, the hippocampus also represents the temporal organization of memories. Time plays a central role in episodic memory, and studies have identified the hippocampus as playing an essential role in the temporal organization of memories in humans and animals. Temporal organization is supported by a gradually changing temporal context signal in the hippocampus, and this changing context signal involves ‘time cells’ in the hippocampus that code sequential moments in temporally organized experiences. Finally, hippocampal temporal context representations involve mechanisms in intrinsic circuitry and oscillatory patterns throughout hippocampal subfields and depend on inputs from parahippocampal cortical areas as well as a widespread temporal processing system in the neocortex.
Brief Research Report: Growth Models With Small Samples and Missing Data

ABSTRACTSmall samples are common in growth models due to financial and logistical difficulties of following people longitudinally. For similar reasons, longitudinal studies often contain missing data. Though full information maximum likelihood (FIML) is popular to accommodate missing data, the limited number of studies in this area have found that FIML tends to perform poorly with small-sample growth models. This report demonstrates that the fault lies not with how FIML accommodates missingness but rather with maximum likelihood estimation itself. We discuss how the less popular restricted likelihood form of FIML, along with small-sample-appropriate methods, yields trustworthy estimates for growth models with small samples and missing data. That is, previously reported small sample issues with FIML are attributable to finite sample bias of maximum likelihood estimation not direct likelihood. Estimation issues pertinent to joint multiple imputation and predictive mean matching are also included and discussed.
Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI)

Since the 1980s, diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) as a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique has been widely used to track the effective diffusion of water molecules, which is hindered by many obstacles (e.g., fibers or membranes), in the human brain in vivo. Because water molecules tend to diffuse slowly across white matter fibers and diffuse fast along such fibers, the use of dMRI to track water diffusion allows one to map the microstructure and organization of those white matter pathways (17). Quantitatively measuring the diffusion process is critical for a quantitative assessment of the integrity of anatomical connectivity in white matter and its association with brain functional connectivity. Its clinical applications include normal brain maturation and aging, cerebral ischemia, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, metabolic disorders, and brain tumors, among many others. Although there are several nice review papers and monographies on dMRI (15, 5, 101, 81), this chapter was written for the readers who are interested in the theoretical underpinning of various mathematical and statistical methods associated with dMRI. Due to limitations of space, we are unable to cite all important papers in the dMRI literature.
Pediatric sleep medicine: priorities for research, patient care, policy and education.

STUDY OBJECTIVE To achieve consensus among pediatric sleep medicine practitioners on recommendations for the advancement of the field in the areas of research, clinical practice, education, and public policy. METHODS Leading pediatric sleep medicine researchers and clinicians, in collaboration with Brown Medical School, convened a conference to discuss the state of the field. Participants engaged in multiple discussion panels and work groups, ultimately creating recommendations to advance basic and clinical research, clinical practice, sleep education, and public policy. RESULTS Participants reached agreement on the major challenges facing the field. Key points of consensus were the need to conduct long-term epidemiologic studies of sleep patterns and sleep disorders in children, standardize polysomnography and other sleep-measurement methodologies, examine the links between insufficient and disrupted sleep in the pediatric population and physical and mental health outcomes, and develop clinical standards of practice. Attendees also agreed on the need to educate more medical health practitioners and the public on pediatric sleep. The importance of research on sleep in children and adolescents to inform public policy decisions was also endorsed. CONCLUSIONS Pediatric sleep medicine is a related, but unique, discipline within the broader field of sleep medicine. Additional research, both basic and clinical, on all aspects of children's sleep is necessary to elucidate the neurophysiologic basis of normal sleep development; to establish a solid foundation for the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric sleep disorders; and to formulate evidence-based public policy in sleep health.
Employees Losing Power, Losing Jobs: Making the Case for Mediating Power in the Era of Buy-ins and Bailouts

Market economics of the last few decades has rallied modern American workplace management around a global corporate power initiative, operating through the phenomenon of corporate self-regulation, often defined as the “coordination of internal or ‘self-regulatory’ compliance structures with the external law of the workplace.” Self-regulation is the newest paradigm for internal management of private sector workplace ethics. As such, it is an amalgam of social, legal, and business trends combining to orchestrate the appearance of pioneering efforts toward corporate compliance with industry standards and legal norms of ethical business management. In reality, this amalgam of trends is a primary mechanism in the advancement of economic globalization and a veneer covering diminished employee protections worldwide. As a mechanism of globalization, self-regulation anchors the modern American employment experience, labeled by scholars as the era of the “boundaryless workplace.” In the boundaryless workplace, the private
Measuring Physical Activity in Spinal Cord Injury Using Wrist-Worn Accelerometers

OBJECTIVE. Our objective was to evaluate interunit agreement and construct validity of two activity monitors (Actiwatch Score and PRO-Diary) in people with and without spinal cord injury. METHOD. Thirty-eight participants (19 with spinal cord injury; 19 age- and sex-matched controls; mean age = 49 yr) wore both monitors and completed tasks during one visit ranging in physical intensity. To compare activity by group and monitor, we conducted t tests. We assessed interunit agreement using intraclass correlations and Bland–Altman plots. RESULTS. Both monitors demonstrated significantly different increasing physical activity levels with higher intensity tasks. Participants with spinal cord injury had similar activity counts within tasks compared with controls except for walking–wheeling. Agreement was high between monitors across tasks (interclass correlation coefficients = .78–.97). CONCLUSION. Both monitors demonstrated good construct validity for measuring physical activity across activities and high agreement. Either monitor is appropriate to examine physical activity patterns in people with spinal cord injury.
Deregulation of Biologically Significant Genes and Associated Molecular Pathways in the Oral Epithelium of Electronic Cigarette Users

We have investigated the regulation of genes and associated molecular pathways, genome-wide, in oral cells of electronic cigarette (e-cigs) users and cigarette smokers as compared to non-smokers. Interrogation of the oral transcriptome by RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis showed significant number of aberrantly expressed transcripts in both e-cig users (vapers) and smokers relative to non-smokers; however, smokers had ~50% more differentially expressed transcripts than vapers (1726 versus 1152). Whereas the deregulated transcripts in smokers were predominately from protein-coding genes (79% versus 53% in vapers), nearly 28% of the aberrantly expressed transcripts in vapers (versus 8% in smokers) belonged to regulatory non-coding RNAs, including long intergenic non-coding, antisense, small nucleolar and misc RNA (P < 0.0001). Molecular pathway and functional network analyses revealed that “cancer” was the top disease associated with the deregulated genes in both e-cig users and smokers (~62% versus 79%). Examination of the canonical pathways and networks modulated in either e-cig users or smokers identified the “Wnt/Ca+ pathway” in vapers and the “integrin signaling pathway” in smokers as the most affected pathways. Amongst the overlapping functional pathways impacted in both e-cig users and smokers, the “Rho family GTPases signaling pathway” was the top disrupted pathway, although the number of affected targets was three times higher in smokers than vapers. In conclusion, we observed deregulation of critically important genes and associated molecular pathways in the oral epithelium of vapers that bears both resemblances and differences with that of smokers. Our findings have significant implications for public health and tobacco regulatory science.
The Worst Jamming Distribution for Securely Precoded OFDM

In this paper, we address the problem of finding the worst jamming distribution in terms of channel capacity for the securely precoded OFDM (SP-OFDM) system, so as to evaluate the performance of SP- OFDM under destructive hostile jamming. We consider a practical communication scenario, where the transmitting symbols are uniformly distributed over a discrete and finite alphabet, and the jamming interference is subject to both average and peak power constraints. Using tools in functional analysis and complex analysis, first, we show the existence and uniqueness of the worst jamming distribution; then we further prove that the worst jamming distribution is discrete in amplitude with a finite number of mass points. Numerical examples are provided under different scenarios to demonstrate our theoretical results.
Utilization of Bio-Ontologies for Enhancing Patent Information Retrieval

The ability to access existing patents and patent-related information can have significant impacts on technology development and commercial markets. While such information is now available online, requesting the information about a specific technology remains a nontrivial task. The reason is that the online information often resides in different storage sources, is based on different modeling paradigms, and is managed by different independent entities. Ontology is one modeling paradigm that can capture semantically rich knowledge about a specific domain and its existing patents. That knowledge can be used to facilitate information sharing and information interoperability. This paper focuses on the bio-medical domain, where numerous patents have been filed in recent years. Specifically, this paper describes a computational framework that can facilitate the retrieval of intellectual property (IP-) related information in the bio-medical domain.
Patients’ Reactions to Hypnosis on a Burn Unit

The adjunctive use of hypnosis in the treatment of 20 patients on a burn unit is described, including its effectiveness in paving the way toward positive transference, trust, support, and a generally psychotherapeutic environment. The author also discusses the reactions (both positive and negative) of patients and relatives to hypnosis, the attitude of the staff, counter-transference on a burn unit, and the need to guard against omnipotent fantasies.
Neurodegenerative Disease-Associated Variants in TREM2 Destabilize the Apical Ligand-Binding Region of the Immunoglobulin Domain.

Single nucleotide variations in Triggering Receptor Expressed on Myeloid Cells 2 (TREM2) have been linked to both late-onset Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the latter presenting either in isolation or with cystic bone lesions in a condition called Nasu-Hakola disease. Models of the extracellular domain of TREM2 show that Nasu-Hakola disease-associated mutations are grossly inactivating by truncation, frameshift, or unfolding, that Alzheimer's disease (AD)-associated variants localize to a putative ligand-interacting region (PLIR) on the extracellular surface, and that FTD-associated variants are found in the hydrophobic core. However, while these disease-associated residues are predicted to play some role in disrupting ligand binding to the extracellular domain of TREM2, how they ultimately lead to disease remains unknown. Here, we used in silico molecular modeling to investigate all-atom models of TREM2 and characterize the effects on conformation and dynamical motion of AD-associated R47H and R62H as well as FTD-associated T96K, D86V, and T66M variants compared to the benign N68K variant and the common variant. Our model, which is based on a published 2.2 A resolution crystal structure of the TREM2 extracellular domain, finds that both AD- and FTD-associated variants cause localized instability in three loops adjacent to the PLIR that correspond to the complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) of antibodies. This instability ultimately disrupts tethering between these CDRs and the core of the immunoglobulin domain, exposing a group of otherwise-buried, negatively charged residues. This instability and exposure of negatively charged residues is most severe following introduction of the T66M variant that has been described as causing FTD even in the heterozygous state and is less severe following introduction of variants that are less strongly tied to FTD or of those associated with AD. Thus, our results provide further evidence that the proposed loss-of-function caused by neurodegenerative disease-associated variants may be driven by altered conformational stability of the ligand-interacting CDR and, ultimately, loss of affinity or specificity for TREM2 ligands.
Sleep duration and musculoskeletal injury incidence in physically active men and women: A study of U.S. Army Special Operation Forces soldiers.

Abstract Purpose In physically demanding occupations or athletic populations, sleep has been shown to be an important factor for both performance and recovery. However, evidence is limited on sleep duration and its association with musculoskeletal injury risk in physically active populations. Therefore, the purpose of this analysis was to evaluate the relationship between sleep duration and musculoskeletal injury incidence in a population of physically active men and women. Methods Data were collected via electronic survey and analyzed for 7,576 soldiers from the United States Army Special Operations Command. Results This population was mostly men (95%) ≤ 35 years old (70%). The incidence of musculoskeletal injury was 53% over the twelve months before survey administration. After adjusting for other covariates, soldiers who slept ≤ 4 hours were 2.35 (95% CI: 1.89-2.93, p 35 years), older men were found to have significantly higher risk of a musculoskeletal injury than their younger counterparts across all sleep duration groups. Conclusions These findings suggest that sleep duration may be inversely related to risk of musculoskeletal injury. It is possible that interventions targeted at sleep may have a positive impact on prevention of musculoskeletal injuries within physically active populations.
Radiation-induced curcumin release from curcumin─chitosan polymer films

The probability of human exposure to damaging radiation is increased in activities associated with long-term space flight, medical radiation therapies, and responses to nuclear accidents. However, the development of responsive countermeasures to combat radiation damage to biological tissue is lagging behind rates of human exposure. Herein, we report a radiation-responsive drug delivery system that releases doses of curcumin from a chitosan polymer/film in response to low level gamma radiation exposure. As a fibrous chitosan–curcumin polymer, 1 Gy gamma irradiation (137Cs) released 5 ± 1% of conjugated curcumin, while 6 Gy exposure releases 98 ± 1% of conjugated curcumin. The same polymer was formed into a film through solvent casting. The films showed similar, albeit attenuated behavior in water (100% released) and isopropyl alcohol (32% released) with statistically significant drug release following 2 Gy irradiation. ATR FT-IR studies confirmed glycosidic bond cleavage in the chitosan–curcumin polymer in response to gamma radiation exposure. Similar behavior was noted upon exposure of the polymer to 20 cGy (1 GeV amu−1, at 20 cGy min−1) high linear energy transfer (LET) 56Fe radiation based on FTIR studies. Density Functional Theory calculations indicate homolytic bond scission as the primary mechanism for polymer disintegration upon radiation exposure. Films did not change in thickness during the course of radiation exposure. The successful demonstration of radiation-triggered drug release may lead to new classes of radio-protective platforms for developing countermeasures to biological damage from ionizing radiation.