cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Utility of Intraoperative Frozen Section in Large Thyroid Nodules.

ObjectiveTo determine if the routine use of intraoperative frozen section (iFS) results in cost savings among patients with nodules >4 cm with nonmalignant cytology undergoing a thyroid lobectomy.S...
Influence of tip modification on performance characteristics of involute spur gears

Spur gears for many applications make use of profile shapes that are modifications of the mathematically defined involute to avoid premature tooth contact and unfavourable transmission error. It is...
Chitosan-functionalized nanofibers: A comprehensive review on challenges and prospects for food applications

Chitosan exhibits outstanding properties, which allow a wide range of applications. For this reason, chitosan-based biomaterials have been developed over the years and, among these biomaterials, chitosan-based nanomaterials may significantly change the material properties, which could result in some exceptional features. Indeed, chitosan-based nanofibers have a larger surface area:volume ratio than the bulk materials at macro scale. Moreover, chitosan-based nanofibers could lead to enhanced porosity and mechanical properties, which could also improve surface functionalities, and consequently, the range of applications. However, the diversity in sources of raw materials and the production processes for the development of chitosan might provide distinct physicochemical characteristics. Because the varieties of chitosan have been limited in the most part the nanofibers synthesis, the current review describes an extensive research concerning the development of chitosan-based nanofibers and summarizes the different techniques for the nanofibers production; in addition to point out the effects of chitosan characteristics on the spinnability of the solution. Furthermore, the present review explores some potential studies in relation to the chitosan-based nanofibers applied to food technology, including active food packaging, nanofood carrier and enzyme immobilization.
Compressing the Dynamic Range and Statistics of Optical Signals

We describe a new concept in photonics in which the dynamic range and signal's statistical distribution is optically engineered. We discuss how it improves light detection and means to implement it.
Evaluation of a staff well-being program in a pediatric oncology, hematology, and palliative care services group

Purpose Challenges experienced by staff in the Oncology Services Group at Queensland Children's Hospital led to issues with staff retention, well-being, and stress on team culture. Therefore, a customized program was developed through a needs analysis to improve the well-being and resilience of oncology staff, enabling them to cope with stressors and critical incidents inherent in their everyday work and to flourish. The program included education, on-site counselors, mindfulness sessions, debriefing, well-being resources, and improved engagement, support, and communication. Methods Evaluation of the program in the first year examined program participation, staff feedback following education workshops and mindfulness sessions, staff retention rates, and the results of an annual organizational staff survey and a program outcome survey. Results Approximately 76% of staff attended the Introduction to Well-being workshop, and 98% of responses to survey questions were positive. Staff also provided positive feedback on the other well-being workshops and sessions embedded within existing education programs. Employee Assistance Program counseling sessions had an 81% uptake, with a wide variety of presenting issues, 62% related to work. All participants in mindfulness sessions agreed that it was a valuable tool to improve clinical practice, 94% said it had an immediate positive impact on their well-being, and 70% agreed that they were applying mindfulness principles outside the sessions. Staff retention and turnover improved. Staff reported a positive effect on awareness of self-care, addressing risks to resilience, seeking support from trusted colleagues, coping with critical incidents, and the ability to interact positively with patients and families. Conclusion The evaluation showed a positive impact on staff well-being. Although there was a wide variety of successful interventions reported in the literature, sustainability needs to be considered. Feedback on this program found that staff appreciated being listened to, valued, and supported through the strategies, and the ongoing program will continue to monitor staff needs and be responsive in building their resilience and well-being.
Scaling up Inference in MLNs with Spark

Typically, inference algorithms for big data address non-relational data. However, clearly, a lot of real-world data such as social network data, healthcare data, etc. are relational in nature. Therefore, we need more powerful techniques that can scale up richer inference algorithms on relational data. Markov Logic Networks (MLNs) are arguably one of the most popular statistical relational models that can represent complex, uncertain knowledge succinctly. In this paper, we scale up inference algorithms for MLNs to big relational data. Specifically, the probabilistic graphical model underlying an MLN is typically extremely large even for small-sized problems, and performing inference on this model is highly challenging. A pre-dominant approach that is used to improve scalability is to perform lifted inference that does not construct the full graphical model underlying the MLN. Instead, the idea in lifted inference is to use symmetries in the distribution to reduce the size of the model, thus improving scalability. A popular approach to perform lifting utilizes clustering techniques to group together variables with similar distributional characteristics. However, for big relational data, it quickly becomes infeasible to identify these symmetries scalably. In this paper, we design a novel lifted inference system built on top of Spark that takes advantage of parallelism to identify symmetries in the MLN. Thus our work unifies advances in inference for relational data with advances in big data processing technologies. Utilizing the power of Spark, we show that we can perform more accurate inference and scale up relational inference to orders of magnitude larger sized datasets than currently possible by state-of-the-art MLN systems.
All in the Family? Pan-Netherlandic Nationalism, Neo-Calvinist Christian Nationalism, and Afrikaner Nationalism in South Africa

The extent to which related peoples and their ideas shaped modern Afrikaner nationalism remains highly contested. One school has stressed German, especially Nazi influence, another Dutch Calvinism, especially Dutch churchman-politician Abraham Kuypers Neo-Calvinist Christian nationalism. Afrikaner historian Hermann Giliomee dismisses either factor in mainstream Afrikaner nationalism, such as that of Daniel Malans National Party (which introduced apartheid); Dutch historian Gerhard Schutte asserts that in the 1930s and 1940s German-oriented volks-nationalism was more important than Neo-Calvinism. Drawing on scholarly monographs and articles, Afrikaans and Dutch newspapers, parliamentary records, memoirs, speeches, and pamphlets, this paper revisits this debate, focusing on Dutch-Afrikaner links. It argues that Dutch Neo-Calvinist Christian nationalism affected mainstream Afrikaner nationalism from the National Partys beginnings, but so did pan-Netherlandic nationalism - and Netherlanders and Afrikaners most attracted to German volks-nationalism embraced pan-Netherlandic nationalism. Afrikaner (and Dutch) pan-Netherlandic nationalists, however, borrowed from Neo-Calvinism. Key ideas and policies of a mainstream Afrikaner nationalist such as Malan, Dutch-trained and, like Kuyper, a churchman-politician, show similarly overlapping trans-national influences. Although Pan-Netherlandic nationalists were discredited in the Netherlands by frequent collaboration with Nazi occupiers during World War II and Afrikaner nationalists refusal to back the Allies, Neo-Calvinist Dutch-Afrikaner links survived into the apartheid era. / / /
Scaling in vitro activity of CYP3A7 suggests human fetal livers do not clear retinoic acid entering from maternal circulation

All-trans-retinoic acid (atRA), the active metabolite of vitamin A, is a critical signaling molecule during embryonic and fetal development and is necessary for maternal health. Fetal exposure to endogenous atRA is tightly regulated during gestation in a tissue specific manner and maternal exposure to exogenous retinoids during pregnancy is teratogenic. The clearance of atRA is primarily mediated by the cytochrome P450 (CYP) 26 enzymes, which play an essential role in controlling retinoid gradients during organogenesis. We hypothesized that CYP26 enzymes in the human fetal liver also function as a protective barrier to prevent maternal atRA reaching fetal circulation. Using human fetal liver tissue, we found that the mRNA of CYP26A1 and CYP26B1 enzymes is expressed in the human fetal liver. However, based on inhibition studies, metabolite profiles and correlation of atRA metabolism with testosterone hydroxylation, clearance of atRA in the fetal livers was mediated by CYP3A7. Based on in vitro-to-in vivo scaling, atRA clearance in the fetal liver was quantitatively minimal, thus providing an insufficient maternal-fetal barrier for atRA exposure.
Subdissociative‐dose Ketamine Is Effective for Treating Acute Exacerbations of Chronic Pain

BACKGROUND Subdissociative-dose ketamine (SDDK) is used to treat acute pain. We sought to determine if SDDK is effective in relieving acute exacerbations of chronic pain. METHODS This study was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial conducted May 2017 to June 2018 at a public teaching hospital (ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT02920528). The primary endpoint was a 20-mm decrease on a 100-mm visual analog scale (VAS) at 60 minutes. Power analysis using three groups (0.5 mg/kg ketamine, 0.25 mg/kg ketamine, or placebo infused over 20 minutes) estimated that 96 subjects were needed for 90% power. Inclusion criteria included age > 18 years, chronic pain > 3 months, and acute exacerbation (VAS ≥ 70 mm). Pain, agitation, and sedation were assessed by VAS at baseline and 20, 40, and 60 minutes after initiation of study drug. Telephone follow-up at 24 to 48 hours used a 10-point numeric rating scale for pain. RESULTS A total of 106 subjects were recruited, with three excluded for baseline pain < 70 mm. After randomization, 35 received 0.5 mg/kg ketamine, 36 received 0.25 mg/kg ketamine, and 35 received placebo. Three subjects receiving 0.5 mg/kg withdrew during the infusion due to adverse effects, and one subject in each group had incomplete data, leaving 97 for analysis. Initial pain scores (91.9 ± 8.9 mm), age (46.5 ± 12.6 years), sex distribution, and types of pain reported were similar. Primary endpoint analysis found that 25 of 30 (83%) improved with 0.5 mg/kg ketamine, 28 of 35 (80%) with 0.25 mg/kg ketamine, and 13 of 32 (41%) with placebo (p = 0.001). More adverse effects occurred in the ketamine groups with one subject in the 0.25 mg/kg group requiring a restraint code for agitation. A total of 89% of subjects were contacted at 24 to 48 hours, and no difference in pain level was detected between groups. CONCLUSION Ketamine infusions at both 0.5 and 0.25 mg/kg over 20 minutes were effective in treating acute exacerbations of chronic pain but resulted in more adverse effects compared to placebo. Ketamine did not demonstrate longer-term pain control over the next 24 to 48 hours.
Adaptive Feedback Noise Control for Wide, Square, and Tall Systems

This paper considers MIMO feedback noise control in a three-dimensional acoustic space, where the plant may be wide, tall, or square. The goal is to investigate the implications of the plant aspect ratio within the context of retrospective cost adaptive control (RCAC), which is susceptible to canceling unmodeled nonminimum-phase transmission zeros. To obtain the necessary modeling information, each control speaker is impulsed, and the data from the resulting impulse response is used to construct the intercalated target model needed by RCAC. No additional system identification or analytical modeling is used for controller implementation. Laboratory experiments are used to evaluate the ability of RCAC to reject disturbances for wide, square, and tall sensor/actuator configurations.
The effects of dietary soybean hulls particle size and diet form on nursery and finishing pig performance

Two experiments were conducted to investigate increasing unground and finely ground soybean hulls fed in meal or pelleted form on nursery and finishing pig performance. In experiment 1, 1,100 nursery pigs (initially 6.8 ± 0.1 kg and 28 d of age) were used in a 42-d study with 11 replicates per treatment. Treatments were arranged in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial with main effects of soybean hulls (10% vs. 20%), grind type (unground, 617 µ vs. ground, 398 µ), and diet type (pelleted vs. meal form). No three-way or soybean hull level × grind type interactions were observed. Overall, average daily gain (ADG) was increased (P < 0.05) by pelleting, decreased (P < 0.05) by grinding, but unaffected by soybean hull levels. Grind type × diet form interactions were observed (P < 0.05) for gain:feed ratio (G:F) and a tendency for average daily feed intake (ADFI; P < 0.10). This was because grinding soybean hulls decreased (P < 0.05) ADFI and increased (P < 0.05) G:F when fed in meal form; however, grinding did not affect ADFI and decreased (P < 0.05) G:F when diets were pelleted. Increasing soybean hulls increased (P < 0.05) ADFI and decreased (P < 0.05) G:F when diets were fed in meal form, but these effects were not observed when diets were pelleted (diet form × soybean hull level interaction, P < 0.06). In experiment 2, 1,215 pigs (initially 21.1 ± 0.1 kg) were used in a 118-d study with nine replications per treatment. Treatments were a corn-soybean meal-based control diet and four diets arranged in a 2 × 2 factorial with the main effects of soybean hulls (7.5% vs. 15%) and grind type (unground, 787 µ vs. ground, 370 µ). All diets were fed in meal form. No soybean hull level × grind type interactions were observed for any growth or carcass responses. Increasing dietary soybean hulls from 0% to 15%, regardless of particle size, did not affect ADG or ADFI, but decreased (linear, P < 0.02) G:F. Carcass yield, hot carcass weight, and backfat depth decreased (linear, P < 0.03) whereas percentage lean increased (linear, P < 0.01) with increasing soybean hulls. Pigs fed ground soybean hulls had increased backfat depth (P < 0.01) and decreased (P < 0.01) percentage lean and fat-free lean index. In summary, increasing soybean hulls up to 20% decreased G:F in nursery and finishing pigs, whereas pelleting nursery diets improved ADG and eliminated the negative effect of increasing soybean hulls on G:F. Grinding soybean hulls reduced growth performance in nursery and finishing pigs.
Bias, Jobs, and Fake News

AI devices and programs, when used for facial recognition or for determination of how and to what extent current and former persons convicted of crimes are to be sentenced, are subject to inherent biases. It is well documented that individuals with darker complexions fare major biases by AI programs likely due to lack of data more available to persons of lighter complexion. We discuss the oft-used COMPAS programs which have gone through several evolutions but which lend to possible abuses by defense attorneys’ inability to question the validity of assumptions made and the use of this and other AI-based programs. We then proceed to the very important issue of the extent to which jobs are affected by AI-based robots and programs which potentially have the capability of displacing over half of all jobs presently accomplished by human persons. We end the chapter with the politically charged issue of fake news and AI connection thereto.
Reconstruction of Charged Particle Tracks in Realistic Detector Geometry Using a Vectorized and Parallelized Kalman Filter Algorithm

One of the most computationally challenging problems expected for the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is finding and fitting particle tracks during event reconstruction. Algorithms used at the LHC today rely on Kalman filtering, which builds physical trajectories incrementally while incorporating material effects and error estimation. Recognizing the need for faster computational throughput, we have adapted Kalman-filter-based methods for highly parallel, many-core SIMD and SIMT architectures that are now prevalent in high-performance hardware. Previously we observed significant parallel speedups, with physics performance comparable to CMS standard tracking, on Intel Xeon, Intel Xeon Phi, and (to a limited extent) NVIDIA GPUs. While early tests were based on artificial events occurring inside an idealized barrel detector, we showed subsequently that our mkFit software builds tracks successfully from complex simulated events (including detector pileup) occurring inside a geometrically accurate representation of the CMS-2017 tracker. Here, we report on advances in both the computational and physics performance of mkFit, as well as progress toward integration with CMS production software. Recently we have improved the overall efficiency of the algorithm by preserving short track candidates at a relatively early stage rather than attempting to extend them over many layers. Moreover, mkFit formerly produced an excess of duplicate tracks; these are now explicitly removed in an additional processing step. We demonstrate that with these enhancements, mkFit becomes a suitable choice for the first iteration of CMS tracking, and eventually for later iterations as well. We plan to test this capability in the CMS High Level Trigger during Run 3 of the LHC, with an ultimate goal of using it in both the CMS HLT and offline reconstruction for the HL-LHC CMS tracker.
Guest Inclusion of Pyridine Molecules into a Copper (II)-Bilayer Hydrogen-Bonded Metal–Organic Framework

In this study, the continued investigation of a copper (II) complex that yields an extended hydrogen-bonded bilayer framework and it’s ability to include guest molecules, particularly pyridine molecules. Our previous study has shown the ability of this framework to include long-chanined alkyl alcohol molecules and now the copper-based framework has the ability to include pyridine molecules, via non-coordinative and coordinative inclusion. The description of three guest included hydrogen-bonded frameworks that will be discussed: (1) [α-methylbenzylammonium]2Cu(PDCA)2(H2O)·(pyridine), (2) [α-methylbenzylammonium]2Cu(PDCA)2(H2O)·(4-methylpyridine), (3) [α-methylbenzylammonium]2Cu(PDCA)2(H2O)·(4-tert-butylpyridine). The guest included frameworks will be discussed based on X-ray crystallography structures and thermogravimetric analysis data. The creation of a hydrogen-bonded metal-organic bilayer framework that allows for coordinative and non-coordinative guest inclusion of pyridine and pyridine derivatives.
Doubt Versus Trust: Framing Effects of the News About the 2018 Trump‒Kim Jong Un Summit in Singapore on American College Students

This article examines the effects of trust versus doubt news frames during the 2018 denuclearization summit between the United States and North Korea in June 2018, an issue that is characterized by negative media coverage about North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un. An experimental study conducted in 2018 at a public university in the United States found that participants ( N = 297) showed a more negative attitude toward North Korea if they read an article framed as doubt compared with an article framed as trust . Exposure to the doubt-framed article was significantly related to participants’ strong support for maintaining sanctions against North Korea and weak support for deepening diplomatic ties with the country. The analysis also reveals that low “need to evaluate” individuals were more affected by the doubt-framed news about North Korea than the trust-framed news.
Wing serial homologues and the diversification of insect outgrowths: insights from the pupae of scarab beetles.

Modification of serially homologous structures is a common avenue towards functional innovation in developmental evolution, yet ancestral affinities among serial homologues may be obscured as struc...
Interprofessional Education: Current State in Psychology Training

Healthcare reform has led to the consideration of interprofessional team-based, collaborative care as a way to provide comprehensive, high-quality care to patients and families. Interprofessional education is the mechanism by which the next generation health professional workforce is preparing for the future of health care—team-based, collaborative care. This literature review explored the extent and content of published studies documenting Interprofessional Education (IPE) activities with psychology trainees across learner level. A systematic review following PRISMA guidelines was conducted of studies describing IPE involving psychology learners. Electronic databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, and EMBASE) were searched for the following terms: inter/multi-professional education/practice, inter/multidisciplinary education/practice, and psychology/psychologists. Thirty-seven articles were identified that included psychology in clinical outcome studies or other reviews of interprofessional education initiatives. The review addresses the nature of current IPE learning activities, the impact of IPE activities on participating trainees, opportunities for, and challenges of, involving psychology trainees in IPE, and future directions for research. This review illuminates the relative paucity of the literature about IPE in psychology training. Given the trend toward increasing team-based collaborative care, the limited inclusion of psychology in the IPE literature is concerning. The next generation of health professional trainees is learning about, from, and with each other with the objective of building collaboration and teamwork. Given the few articles documenting psychology trainees’ involvement in IPE, future health professionals quite possibly will have limited understanding of, and contact with, psychologists. Our findings are a call to action for greater psychology involvement in IPE.
Fine-grained Geolocation Prediction of Tweets with Human Machine Collaboration.

Twitter is a useful resource to analyze peoples' opinions on various topics. Often these topics are correlated or associated with locations from where these Tweet posts are made. For example, restaurant owners may need to know where their target customers eat with respect to the sentiment of the posts made related to food, policy planners may need to analyze citizens' opinion on relevant issues such as crime, safety, congestion, etc. with respect to specific parts of the city, or county or state. As promising as this is, less than $1\%$ of the crawled Tweet posts come with geolocation tags. That makes accurate prediction of Tweet posts for the non geo-tagged tweets very critical to analyze data in various domains. In this research, we utilized millions of Twitter posts and end-users domain expertise to build a set of deep neural network models using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, that predicts the geolocation of non geo-tagged Tweet posts at various level of granularities such as neighborhood, zipcode, and longitude with latitudes. With multiple neural architecture experiments, and a collaborative human-machine workflow design, our ongoing work on geolocation detection shows promising results that empower end-users to correlate relationship between variables of choice with the location information.
Fractal motor activity regulation and sex differences in preclinical Alzheimer's disease pathology

Introduction Degradation in fractal motor activity regulation (FMAR), a measure of multiscale self-similarity of motor control, occurs in aging and accelerates with clinical progression to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Whether FMAR changes occur during the pre-symptomatic phase of the disease in women and men remains unknown. Methods FMAR was assessed in cognitively normal participants (n = 178) who underwent 7 to 14 days of home actigraphy. Preclinical AD pathology was determined by amyloid imaging-Pittsburgh compound B (PiB) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) phosphorylated-tau181 (p-tau) to amyloid beta 42 (Aβ42) ratio. Results Degradation in daytime FMAR was overall significantly associated with preclinical amyloid plaque pathology via PiB+ imaging (beta coefficient β = 0.217, standard error [SE] = 0.101, P = .034) and increasing CSF tau181-Aβ42 ratio (β = 0.220, SE = 0.084, P = .009). In subset analysis by sex, the effect sizes were significant in women for PiB+ (β = 0.279, SE = 0.112, P = .015) and CSF (β = 0.245, SE = 0.094, P = .011) but not in men (both Ps > .05). These associations remained after inclusion of daily activity level, apolipoprotein E e4 carrier status, and rest/activity patterns. Discussion Changes in daytime FMAR from actigraphy appear to be present in women early in preclinical AD. This may be a combination of earlier pathology changes in females reflected in daytime FMAR, and a relatively underpowered male group. Further studies are warranted to test FMAR as an early noncognitive physiological biomarker that precedes the onset of cognitive symptoms.
A data-driven approach to modeling cancer cell mechanics during microcirculatory transport.

In order to understand the effect of cellular level features on the transport of circulating cancer cells in the microcirculation, there has been an increasing reliance on high-resolution in silico models. Accurate simulation of cancer cells flowing with blood cells requires resolving cellular-scale interactions in 3D, which is a significant computational undertaking warranting a cancer cell model that is both computationally efficient yet sufficiently complex to capture relevant behavior. Given that the characteristics of metastatic spread are known to depend on cancer type, it is crucial to account for mechanistic behavior representative of a specific cancer’s cells. To address this gap, in the present work we develop and validate a means by which an efficient and popular membrane model-based approach can be used to simulate deformable cancer cells and reproduce experimental data from specific cell lines. Here, cells are modeled using the immersed boundary method (IBM) within a lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) fluid solver, and the finite element method (FEM) is used to model cell membrane resistance to deformation. Through detailed comparisons with experiments, we (i) validate this model to represent cancer cells undergoing large deformation, (ii) outline a systematic approach to parameterize different cell lines to optimally fit experimental data over a range of deformations, and (iii) provide new insight into nucleated vs. non-nucleated cell models and their ability to match experiments. While many works have used the membrane-model based method employed here to model generic cancer cells, no quantitative comparisons with experiments exist in the literature for specific cell lines undergoing large deformation. Here, we describe a phenomenological, data-driven approach that can not only yield good agreement for large deformations, but explicitly detail how it can be used to represent different cancer cell lines. This model is readily incorporated into cell-resolved hemodynamic transport simulations, and thus offers significant potential to complement experiments towards providing new insights into various aspects of cancer progression.
A CLASS OF LOCAL INTERPOLATING SPLINES

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses a general class of splines having some useful characteristics for design purposes. Some known splines are special cases of these splines. Of particular interest, however, is the subclass of these splines, which is local and interpolating. The chapter discusses the following parameters for blending polynomials to demonstrate a class of splines: differentiability, degree of polynomials to be blended , the localness of the spline, which determines whether it interpolates or approximates, and the type of blending function. By taking the Cartesian cross product of two splines, one can get a bivariate surface that interpolates a grid of points.
Rational-expectations econometric analysis of changes in regime: An investigation of the term structure of interest rates

Abstract This paper is of interest both for its methodological contribution of new tools for analyzing rational-expectations models and for its substantive conclusions concerning the term structure of interest rates during the monetary experiment of October 1979. The paper studies systems subject to changes in regime, interpreted here as occasional, discrete shifts in the parameters governing the time series behavior of exogenous economic variables. The specification is shown to be quite tractable both theoretically and empirically. The technique is used to analyze yields on three-month Treasury bills and ten-year Treasury bonds during 1962 to 1987. A constant-parameter linear model for short-term rates is shown to be inconsistent both with the univariate time series properties of short rates and with the observed bivariate relation between long and short rates under the expectations hypothesis of the term structure. AN alternative nonlinear model that admits the possibility of changes in regime affords a much better description of the univariate process for short rates. Moreover, the cross-equation restrictions implied by the expectations hypothesis of the term structure are consistent with the nonlinear specification. Indeed, the residuals of the restricted relation have a standard error of only 0.8 basis points. This is a third less than that of a completely unrestricted linear regression of long rates on short rates, and compares with an unconditional standard deviation of long rates of 142 basis points. I conclude that once the recognition by bond traders of changes in regime is taken into account, the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates holds up fairly well for these data.
Anti-Slavery Courts and the Dawn of International Human Rights Law

Between 1817 and 1871, bilateral treaties between Britain and several other countries (eventually including the United States) led to the establishment of international courts for the suppression of the slave trade. Though all but forgotten today, these anti-slavery courts were the first international human rights courts. They were made up of judges from different countries. They sat on a permanent, continuing basis and applied international law. They were explicitly aimed at promoting humanitarian objectives. Over the lifespan of the treaties, the courts heard more than 600 cases and freed almost 80,000 slaves found aboard illegal slave trading vessels. During their peak years of operation, the courts heard cases that may have involved as many as one out of every four or five ships involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.These international anti-slavery courts have been given scant attention by historians, and have been almost completely ignored by legal scholars. Most legal scholars view international courts and international human rights law as largely a post-World War II phenomenon, with the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals as the seminal moment in the turn to international law as a mechanism for protecting individual rights. But in fact, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the nineteenth century slavery abolition movement was the first successful international human rights campaign, and international treaties and courts were its central features. In addition to being of intrinsic historical interest, the story of the anti-slavery courts has important implications for contemporary issues in international law. The history of the anti-slavery courts reveals a more complex interrelationship between state power, moral ideas, and domestic and international legal institutions than many contemporary theories of international law and relations acknowledge. Moreover, the anti-slavery movement's use of international law and legal institutions as part of a broader social, political and military strategy can help us better understand the potential role of international law today in bringing about improvements in human rights.
The Effect of Interleukin 3 and GM-CSA-2 on Megakaryocyte and Myeloid Clonal Colony Formation

Two separate helper T cell-derived lymphokines, interleukin 3 and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating activity-2, were found to stimulate a broad and similar range of hemopoietic colonies in in vitro soft agar cultures including granulocyte, macrophage, granulocyte-macrophage, megakaryocyte, and mixed megakaryocyte colonies. Both lymphokines were potent stimulators of in vitro megakaryocyte colony formation. At plateau levels of IL-3, megakaryocyte colony formation was increased by biologic activity in pokeweed mitogen spleen-conditioned media.
Trends in CT Utilization for Pediatric Fall Patients in US Emergency Departments.

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: Falls are a common cause of emergency department (ED) visits in the United States. We evaluated trends in computed tomography (CT) utilization for pediatric fall victims in the United States from 2001 to 2010. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey from 2001 to 2010, we identified all visits of pediatric (aged RESULTS: A total of 9763 unweighted observations for a total of 32,432,686 pediatric fall patients were seen in US EDs from 2001 to 2010. The proportion of pediatric fall patients receiving CT increased from 5.3% in 2001 to a peak of 16.6% in 2009 and decreased to 11.3% in 2010, whereas the proportion of pediatric fall patients with life-threatening conditions fluctuated between 1.2% and 3.3% during this period. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, each increasing year was independently associated with CT utilization (odds ratio [OR], 1.15; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.14-1.16). Patients aged 0-1 years had higher odds of CT utilization than patients aged 13-17 years (OR, 2.27; 95% CI, 2.26-2.27). CONCLUSIONS: There was a twofold increase in CT utilization among pediatric fall visits from 2001 to 2010. When controlling for demographic and clinical variables, increasing year was independently associated with CT utilization. These findings suggest that CT may be overutilized among pediatric fall patients. Language: en
Two Loci Controlling Genetic Cellular Resistance to Avian Leukosis-Sarcoma Viruses

Female chickens known to be heterozygous for resistance to subgroups A and B of the avian leukosis-sarcoma viruses were mated to males known to be homozygously resistant to both. The progeny were assayed both on the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) and in tissue culture for resistance to representative viruses of the A, B, and tentatively defined C subgroups. Segregation ratios of resistance to A and B subgroup viruses agreed with the previously suggested hypothesis of single-autosomal-recessive genes controlling resistance to each subgroup. Mixed infection on the CAM and replicate plate infection in tissue culture with subgroup A and B viruses showed that resistance to the A and B subgroups was inherited independently. Assays with viruses tentatively classified as subgroup C indicated that they were largely composed of a mixture of subgroup A and B viruses or of particles possessing the host range specificity of both. However, virus stocks of the subgroup C category, as well as some stocks classified as subgroup B, produced small numbers of pocks or foci on individuals known to be resistant to subgroup A and B viruses. It is suggested that these Rous sarcoma virus stocks carry between 1 and 10% of a true subgroup C virus.
6 Light microscopy techniques for bacterial cell biology

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of the uses of immunofluorescence microscopy and GFP in bacterial systems. The techniques presented require a microscope equipped for epifluorescence and a high power (60x or 100x) DIC objective with a high numerical aperture. Depending on the brightness of the sample, images can be captured either with a standard 35mm camera mounted on the microscope or with a high resolution, high sensitivity CCD (charged coupled device) camera in conjunction with a digital imaging system. A list of sources of materials and reagents as well as a table of filter sets for visualizing the different fluorophores are provided in the chapter. The protocols presented here represent the collected efforts of investigators at all levels working on a diverse array of biological problems. Largely through these efforts bacteria are no longer viewed as the proverbial swimming pool of enzymes; instead they are seen as possessing a level of subcellular organization as complex as that of any eukaryotic cell. These labors, therefore, have been the basis for what can be viewed as a revolution in bacterial cell biology.
Follow Your Nose: A Basic Semantic Web Agent

Developing applications on the Semantic Web requires a set of complex skills, yet this skill set does land itself on some basic techniques. In the previous chapter, we have learned some basics, and in this chapter, we will continue to learned some more.
Giant Cardiac Cavernous Hemangioma

We report the case of an asymptomatic giant cardiac cavernous hemangioma in a 71-year-old man. The intracardiac mass was discovered incidentally during surveillance for his prostate cancer; however, the patient initially declined intervention. On presentation to our institution 7 years later, the lesion had enlarged significantly, and the patient consented to excision. At surgery, an 8 × 6.5 × 4.8 cm intracardiac mass located on the inferior heart border was excised with an intact capsule through a median sternotomy approach. The patient had an uneventful postoperative course. We discuss the diagnostic workup, treatment, and characteristics of this rare cardiac tumor.
Diffusion of Emergency Warning: Comparing Empirical and Simulation Results

As officials consider emergency warning systems to alert the public to potential danger in areas surrounding hazardous facilities, the issue of warning system effectiveness is of critical importance. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an analysis on the timing of warning system information dissemination including the alert of the public and delivery of a warning message. A general model of the diffusion of emergency warning is specified as a logistic function. Alternative warning systems are characterized in terms of the parameters of the model, which generally constrain the diffusion process to account for judged maximum penetration of each system for various locations and likelihood of the public’s being in those places by time of day. The results indicate that either telephone ring-down warning systems or tone-alert radio systems combined with sirens provide the most effective warning system under conditions of either very rapid onset, close proximity or both. These results indicate that single technology system provide adequate warning effectiveness when available warning time (after detection and the decision to warn) extends to as much as an hour. Moreover, telephone ring-down systems provide similar coverage at approximately 30 minutes of available public warning time.
Antenna-plasma coupling theory for ICRF heating of large tokamaks

The coupling characteristics of antenna structure are studied by analyzing a model where a thin current sheet is placed between a fully conducting wall and a sheet of anisotropic conductivity representing the screen. The inhomogeneous plasma in the shadow of the limiter is assumed to extend from the screen onwards away from the antenna. The excitation of the fields inside the plasma are found by analyzing the radiation properties of this current sheet antenna. We assume that the current distribution of the antenna is given and that the fields excited inside the plasma are absorbed in a single pass. In all experiments to-date the cross-sectional plasmas are relatively small so that the rf conductor is a half-loop around the plasma in the poloidal direction. However, for reactor size plasmas this cannot be done and the antenna dimensions will be small compared to the plasma cross-sections. We, thus, assume an antenna of finite poloidal and toroidal extent with dimensions small compared to the plasma minor radius. We further approximate the coupling geometry by a slab model. The x-axis is taken to be along the plasma inhomogeneity, the y-axis along the poloidal direction and the x-axis along the toroidal magnetic field.
Electromagnetic scattering from material coated PEC objects: a hybrid volume and surface integral equation approach

We propose a hybrid integral equation approach that combines the volume integral equation (VIE) and the surface integral equation to model the mixed dielectric and conducting structures. The volume integral equation is applied to the material region and the surface integral equation (SIE) is enforced over the conducting surface. This results in a very general model as all the volume and surface regions are modeled properly. The advantage of this approach is that in the coated object scattering problem, the coating material can be inhomogeneous, and in the printed circuit and microstrip antenna simulation problem the substrate can be of finite size. Another advantage of this approach is the simplicity of the Green's function in both the VIE and SIE. However the additional cost here is the increase of the number of unknowns since the volume that is occupied by the dielectric material is meshed. This results in a larger memory requirement and longer solution time in solving the MoM matrix equation. But this deficiency can be overcome by applying fast integral equation solvers such as the multilevel fast multipole algorithm. We first give the formulation of the problem using the method of moments (MoM), and then show numerical simulation results to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.
Input Filter Design

It is nearly always required that a filter be added at the power input of a switching converter. By attenuating the switching harmonics that are present in the converter input current waveform, the input filter allows compliance with regulations that limit conducted electromagnetic interference (EMI). The input filter can also protect the converter and its load from transients that appear in the input voltage vg(t), thereby improving the system reliability.
Effect of crop rotation and tillage system on sclerotinia stem rot on soybean

Sclerotinia stem rot (SSR) of soybean is a major disease in the North Central region of the United States. A 3-year study was done to determine if crop rotation and tillage, moldboard plowing then mulch tillage (MP + MT), mulch tillage (MT), and no-till (NT), affected the population density of sclerotia and apothecia, incidence of SSR, and soybean yield. Crop rotation did not significantly affect the number or distribution of sclerotia or SSR incidence, but did affect the number of apothecia and the yield. The highest number of apothecia per square metre was observed in the plots in the continuous soybean rotation. Tillage affected both the number and distribution of sclerotia in the soil profile. Moldboard plowing lowered the number of sclerotia per litre of soil, compared to MT and NT plots, and buried the sclerotia deeper than 10 cm into the soil. Tillage did not affect the total number of apothecia observed, but moldboard plowing did delay emergence of apothecia compared to no-till. The MP + MT plots ...
Physiology and morphology indicate that individual spinal interneurons contribute to diverse limb movements

Overlapping neuronal networks have been shown to generate a variety of behaviors or motor patterns in invertebrates, but the evidence for this is more circumstantial in vertebrates. The turtle spinal cord can produce multiple forms of hindlimb scratching movements as well as hindlimb withdrawal, but it is still uncertain whether individual spinal cord interneurons contribute to the motor output for more than one type of limb motor pattern. In this study, individual spinal cord interneurons were recorded intracellularly in vivo in spinal immobilized turtles, and, after characterization, were filled with Neurobiotin. Interneurons that were rhythmically activated during multiple forms of ipsilateral fictive hindlimb scratching often had axon-terminal arborizations in the ventral horn of the spinal cord hindlimb enlargement. This provides some of the strongest evidence to date that interneurons involved in multiple forms of scratching contribute directly to hindlimb motor output. Moreover, most of these interneurons were also active during contralateral fictive scratching and during ipsilateral fictive hindlimb withdrawal, suggesting that they contribute to motor output for these additional behaviors as well. Such interneurons may provide the cellular basis for the contralateral contributions to ipsilateral scratching that have been demonstrated previously. Taken together, these findings suggest that diverse vertebrate limb movements are produced by spinal cord interneuronal networks that include some shared components.
Three-dimensional molecular simulation of electrophoretic separations

A three-dimensional stochastic simulation has been developed for electrophoretic separations. This simulation follows the trajectories of individual molecules by applying the fundamental equations of motion for diffusion, electroosmotic flow, and electrophoretic migration. The molecular zone profile may then be examined and characterized at any specified time or distance. The stochastic simulation has been validated by comparison with classical transport models, having average relative errors for the mean zone distance and variance of 0.01−0.04% and 2.67−4.36%, respectively. The simulation also shows excellent agreement with experimental results for the electrophoretic separation of the nucleotide monophosphates in phosphate buffer solution, having average relative errors for the mean zone distance and variance of 1.65% and 12.99%, respectively. This stochastic simulation provides an accurate and versatile means to examine and characterize transport processes in complex electrophoretic systems.
GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE COVERAGE FOR SURFACE APPLICATIONS OF DIFFERENTIAL GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM

The coverage issues surrounding the use of geostationary satellites for surface applications using Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) data are examined. The Federal Aviation Administration's Wide Area Augmentation System plan to use geostationary satellites to provide differential corrections for aviation users is presented. Impediments to coverage include man-made structures, irregular terrain (i.e., mountains), and attenuation or signal fading due to tree canopy. Each of the impediments is examined and an assessment is made of their effects on coverage. Various user groups require ubiquitous coverage, and a geostationary satellite broadcast of corrections does not provide this. Large gaps will exist in rural and urban areas, and signal fading due to tree canopy will be significant over much of the country. Alternative communication techniques, such as the U.S. Coast Guard Low Frequency Radiobeacon DGPS service, should be used to meet surface user requirements.