cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The institution of ‘consensus’ in the European Union: Formal versus informal decision-making in the Council

Although many have studied European Union (EU) decision-making in order to evaluate where the locus of power is, most studies have relied on the formal decision-making rules in the first pillar to theorize the workings of the EU. This assumption is somewhat problematic given that the informal norms of consensus are the primary mode of decision- making (81 per cent of decisions are made by consensus). This article examines the institu- tion of consensus in the EU. It argues that the informal norm of consensus renders implausible the fundamental assumption of the rational institutionalist literature, challeng- ing the validity of its claims. Finally, the costs and benefits to the EU's perceived legitimacy are examined with the argument that the putative benefits of consensual deci- sion-making do not obtain in the EU and that the institution of consensus - the lack of voting and thus accountability - actually contributes to the perception of a democratic deficit in the Council.
Thermodynamics and kinetics for base-pair opening in the P1 duplex of the Tetrahymena group I ribozyme

The thermodynamics and kinetics for base-pair opening of the P1 duplex of the Tetrahymena group I ribozyme were studied by NMR hydrogen exchange experiments. The apparent equilibrium constants for base pair opening were measured for most of the imino protons in the P1 duplex using the base catalysts NH3, HPO 2� 4 or TRIS. These equilibrium constants were also measured for several modified P1 duplexes, and the C-2� G23 base pair was the most stable base pair in all the duplexes. The conserved U-1� G22 base pair is required for activity of the ribozyme and the data here show that this wobble base pair destabilizes neighboring base pairs on only one side of the wobble. A 2 0 -OMe modification on the U-3 residue stabilized its own base pair but had little effect on the neighboring base pairs. Three base pairs, U-1� G22, C-2� G23 and A2� U21 showed unusual equilibrium constants for opening and possible implications of the opening thermodynamics of these base pairs on the undocking rates of the P1 helix with catalytic core are discussed.
Who’s calling? The impact of Caller ID on telephone survey response

The Gallup Organization conducted a caller ID randomized study with a pre-and postexperimental design to test the impact of different caller ID displays (names) on the response, contact, and cooper...
Simulation of the Last 21 000 Years Using Accelerated Transient Boundary Conditions

Abstract The earth system model of intermediate complexity ECBilt-CLIO has been used for transient simulations of the last deglaciation and the Holocene. The forcing effects of the ice sheets, greenhouse gas concentrations, and orbital configurations are prescribed as time-varying boundary conditions. In this study two key aspects of the transient simulations are investigated, which are of broader relevance for long-term transient paleoclimate modeling: the effect of using accelerated boundary conditions and of uncertainties in the initial state. Simulations with nonaccelerated boundary conditions and an acceleration factor 10 were integrated. These simulations show that the acceleration can have a significant impact on the local climate history. In the outcropping regions of the high southern latitudes and the convective regions in the North Atlantic, the acceleration leads to damped and delayed temperature response to the boundary conditions. Furthermore, uncertainties in the initial state can strongly ...
Effect of tuned dampers on vibrations of simple structures.

The application of a tuned viscoelastic vibration absorber to undamped cantilever and clamped-clamped beams is discussed analytically. The cantilever beam is excited by a harmonically varying force at the free end, at which point the absorber also is attached. The clamped-clamped beam is excited by a harmonically varying displacement of the clamped ends, of constant amplitude, and the absorber is attached at the center. The absorbers are tuned to suppress only the fundamental mode, and effective loss factors are denned for the beam-damper systems, based on the computed transmissibility spectra. The effects of systematic variations of the absorber mass, stiffness, and loss factor on the effective loss factor are discussed. Experimental investigations of shaker excited cantilever and clamped-clamped beams, with tuned dampers placed at the end or the center, respectively, are described, and it is shown that the main conclusions of the analysis are verified.
Identification of pathogen and host-response markers correlated with periodontal disease.

Background: Periodontitis is the major cause of tooth loss in adults and is linked to systemic illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease and stroke. The development of rapid point-of-care (POC) chairside diagnostics has the potential for the early detection of periodontal infection and progression to identify incipient disease and reduce health care costs. However, validation of effective diagnostics requires the identification and verification of biomarkers correlated with disease progression. This clinical study sought to determine the ability of putative host- and microbially derived biomarkers to identify periodontal disease status from whole saliva and plaque biofilm.Methods: One hundred human subjects were equally recruited into a healthy/gingivitis group or a periodontitis population. Whole saliva was collected from all subjects and analyzed using antibody arrays to measure the levels of multiple proinflammatory cytokines and bone resorptive/turnover markers.Results: Salivary biomarker data were co...
Local Meanings of Global Discourses: A Structural Approach to the Comparative Study of Institutional Meaning Systems

Advancing methodological approaches to the comparative study of institutional meaning systems is vital for institutional analysis in a globalizing world where cultural resources such as concepts and models of organization circulate across institutional fields. This article illustrates a structural approach to the comparative study of local meanings of global concepts. It demonstrates the use of semantic network analysis (SNA) as a suitable methodological approach to study local meaning structures across nations and institutional fields, by investigating the relationship between institutional logics and local meanings of the industry cluster concept in public discourse in eight countries. The article concludes with recommendations for further applications of SNA to research on institutional meaning systems.
Attribution of Recovery in Lower-Stratospheric Ozone

Multiple satellite and ground-based observations provide consistent evidence that the thickness of Earth's protective ozone layer has stopped declining since 1997, close to the time of peak stratospheric halogen loading. Regression analyses with Effective Equivalent Stratospheric Chlorine (EESC) in conjunction with further analyses using more sophisticated photochemical model calculations constrained by satellite data demonstrate that the cessation of ozone depletion between 18-25 km altitude is consistent with a leveling off of stratospheric abundances of chlorine and bromine, due to the Montreal Protocol and its amendments. However, ozone increases in the lowest part of the stratosphere, from the tropopause to 18 km, account for about half of the improvement in total column ozone during the past 9 years at northern hemisphere mid-latitudes. The increase in ozone for altitudes below 18 km is most likely driven by changes in transport, rather than driven by declining chlorine and bromine. Even with this evidence that the Montreal Protocol and its amendments are having the desired, positive effect on ozone above 18 km, total column ozone is recovering faster than expected due to the apparent transport driven changes at lower altitudes. Accurate prediction of future levels of stratospheric ozone will require comprehensive understanding of the factors that drive temporal changes at various altitudes, and partitioning of the recent transport-driven increases between natural variability and changes in atmospheric structure perhaps related to anthropogenic climate change.
Multiculturalism and “American” Religion: The Case of Hindu Indian Americans

How non-Christian religious groups should be politically recognized within Western multicultural societies has proved to be a pressing contemporary issue. This article examines some ways in which American policies regarding religion and multiculturalism have shaped Hindu Indian American organizations, forms of public expression and activism. Specifically, I look at three examples of the impact of such policies on Hindu Indian Americans representing strategic arenas in the socio-political recognition of ethnic groups, and also crucial moments in the institutionalization of an American Hinduism. I also show how the activism of Hindu Americans is reshaping the contours of religion, society and politics in the United States.
Death by a thousand cuts: the challenges and diverse landscape of lignocellulosic hydrolysate inhibitors.

Lignocellulosic hydrolysate (LCH) inhibitors are a large class of bioactive molecules that arise from pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation of plant biomass. These diverse compounds reduce lignocellulosic biofuel yields by inhibiting cellular processes and diverting energy into cellular responses. LCH inhibitors present one of the most significant challenges to efficient biofuel production by microbes. Development of new strains that lessen the effects of LCH inhibitors is an economically favorable strategy relative to expensive detoxification methods that also can reduce sugar content in deconstructed biomass. Systems biology analyses and metabolic modeling combined with directed evolution and synthetic biology are successful strategies for biocatalyst development, and methods that leverage state-of-the-art tools are needed to overcome inhibitors more completely. This perspective considers the energetic costs of LCH inhibitors and technologies that can be used to overcome their drain on conversion efficiency. We suggest academic and commercial research groups could benefit by sharing data on LCH inhibitors and implementing “translational biofuel research.”
PERINEURAL INVASION IN RADICAL PROSTATECTOMY SPECIMENS: LACK OF PROGNOSTIC SIGNIFICANCE

ABSTRACTPurpose: The prognostic significance of perineural invasion in radical prostatectomy specimens is uncertain. We evaluated the relationship between perineural invasion and other pathological characteristics in whole mount radical retropubic prostatectomy specimens as well as prostate specific antigen (PSA) recurrence postoperatively.Materials and Methods: Between 1999 and 2003, 364 consecutive patients were treated with radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer. Radical prostatectomy specimens were processed by the whole mount technique. The relationship of perineural invasion and various clinicopathological characteristics to PSA recurrence was analyzed.Results: Perineural invasion was present in 287 specimens (79%). Specimens with perineural invasion were associated with smaller prostate weight (p <0.0001), greater pathological stage (p <0.0001), larger tumor volume (p <0.0001), higher Gleason score (p <0.0001), a higher incidence of extraprostatic extension (p <0.0001) and seminal vesi...
Use of Stable Isotopes to Test Literature-based Trophic Classifications of Small-bodied Stream Fishes

Abstract Defining the trophic position of stream organisms is a first step in understanding the ecology of lotic systems. Whereas trophic positions of stream fishes have been traditionally assigned based on dietary analysis, stable isotope ratios may provide additional information on the validity of this approach and may be used to verify energy acquisition assumed from dietary studies. In this study, we assessed the concordance of literature-based trophic classifications and isotopic δ15N signatures for small-bodied fishes from four streams in Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. ANOVA results revealed no significant difference (F2,27 = 1.71, P = 0.201) in trophic position based on δ15N values among three broad trophic classifications derived from literature sources (algivores/detritivores, omnivores and invertivores). Both the prevalence of omnivory in stream fishes and potential biases associated with isotope fractionation at different trophic levels poses potential problems when classifying lotic fish int...
Alcohol effect on microwave-ultrasound enhanced transesterification reaction

Abstract The effect of alcohol on transesterification of used vegetable oil under simultaneous microwave and ultrasound irradiations was studied. Ethanol or methanol was used as an alcohol. The synergistic effect of microwaves and ultrasound was evaluated and compared through a series of experimental studies. A molar ratio of 9:1 (alcohol to oil) was found to be optimum for both ethanol and methanol with approximately 98% and 96% biodiesel yields respectively. Similarly, a catalyst weight of 0.75% resulted in maximum biodiesel yields of 97% and 96% for methanol and ethanol respectively. A reaction time of 2 min was adequate for the transesterification reaction either using methanol or ethanol as a reactant. Higher reaction time severely affected the biodiesel yields when ethanol was used as a reactant. The synergistic effect studies showed that an equal rate of microwave and ultrasound exposure resulted in higher biodiesel yields for both reactants while ethanol produced superior results when microwaves or ultrasound irradiations were used as energy sources individually. There were more polyunsaturated fatty acids in the biodiesel composition for FAMEs compared to FAEEs. Power density tests optimized energy utilization by matching the energy output rates and the reaction volumes for transesterification reaction.
PocketTrend: Timely Identification and Delivery of Trending Search Content to Mobile Users

Trending search topics cause unpredictable query load spikes that hurt the end-user search experience, particularly the mobile one, by introducing longer delays. To understand how trending search topics are formed and evolve over time, we analyze 21 million queries submitted during periods where popular events caused search query volume spikes. Based on our findings, we design and evaluate PocketTrend, a system that automatically detects trending topics in real time, identifies the search content associated to the topics, and then intelligently pushes this content to users in a timely manner. In that way, PocketTrend enables a client-side search engine that can instantly answer user queries related to trending events, while at the same time reducing the impact of these trends on the datacenter workload. Our results, using real mobile search logs, show that in the presence of a trending event, up to 13-17% of the overall search traffic can be eliminated from the datacenter, with as many as 19% of all users benefiting from PocketTrend.
The Concept of Responsibility in the Thought of Martin Buber

Buber's thought in all its wealth and wide-ranging scope is formulated in terms of one fundamental insight which is then applied to the manifold domains of our culture, there to be refracted by the special categories and problems of each domain. One can understand and appreciate, therefore, Buber's thought in any one particular domain only in terms of this fundamental insight, for the specific concepts receive their essential meaning, and their treatment is guided and circumscribed, by the considerations and requirements which this fundamental insight imposes.
Food Tax Repeal Would Not Have Ended Regressivity for South Dakota's Tax System

The author looks at the regressivity of South Dakota's tax system and at voters' rejection of an end to the sales tax on food in the November election. She writes that proponents of the food tax initiative should have paid more attention to opponents' arguments that it would be difficult to replace the revenue from the tax on food. The real question should not have been about repealing the tax on food but about diversifying the state's tax system, the author says.
ICAM-1 is involved in the mechanism of alcohol-induced liver injury: studies with knockout mice

To test the hypothesis that leukocyte infiltration mediated by intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-1 is involved in early alcohol-induced liver injury, male wild-type or ICAM-1 knockout mice wer...
Statistical Lobe Hierarchy Constraint in Surface-based Reservoir Modeling

Surface-based geomodeling produces realistic and complex stratigraphy of hydrocarbon reservoirs by imitating the underlying physics with depositional rules. However, conventional rules utilized in surface-based models are designed based on qualitative understandings, which are normally implemented with a large number of tuning parameters. The increment of tuning parameters increases workloads in model conditioning and history matching. Moreover, there is no quantitative criterion to validate reproduction of the qualitative rules in model realizations. This work aims to introduce a set of simple random walk based depositional rules for lobate environments such that the number of empirical coefficients and parameters are minimized while the realism of the model is maintained. A quantitative characterization of the qualitative concept of lobe stacking pattern is also defined based on hierarchical clustering analysis. Demonstrations show that realizations of the new model were hierarchically similar to the input lobe sequence.
Management issues related to library systems migrations. A Report of the ALCTS CaMMS Heads of Cataloging Interest Group Meeting. American Library Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, June 2015

The Heads of Cataloging Interest Group (IG) convened on Monday, June 29, during the 2015 annual conference of the American Library Association in San Francisco. Approximately 120 persons were in at...
Progress in Two-Dimensional Arrays for Real-Time Volumetric Imaging

The design, fabrication, and evaluation of two dimensional array transducers for real-time volumetric imaging are described. The transducers we have previously described operated at frequencies below 3 MHz and were unwieldy to the operator because of the interconnect schemes used in connecting to the transducer handle. Several new transducers have been developed using new connection technology. A 40 X 40 = 1,600 element, 3.5 MHz array was fabricated with 256 transmit and 256 receive elements. A 60 x 60 3,600 element 5.0 MHz array was constructed with 248 transmit and 256 receive elements. An 80 x80 = 6,400 element, 2.5 MHz array was fabricated with 256 transmit and 208 receive elements. 2-D transducer arrays were also developed for volumetric scanning in an intracardiac catheter, a 10 X 10 = 100 element 5.0 MHz forward-looking array and an 1 1 x 13 = 143 element 5.0 MHz side-scanning array. The-6 dB fractional bandwidths for the different arrays varied from 50% to 63%, and the 50 Ω insertion loss for all the transducers was about -64 dB, The transducers were used to generate real-time volumetric images in phantoms and in vivo using the Duke University real time volumetric imaging system, which is capable of generating multiple planes at any desired angle and depth within the pyramidal volume.
Current Epidemiologic Trends of the Nontuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM)

The nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are waterborne opportunistic pathogens of humans. They are normal inhabitants of premise plumbing, found, for example, in household and hospital shower heads, water taps, aerators, and hot tubs. The hydrophobic NTM are readily aerosolized, and pulmonary infections and hypersensitivity pneumonitis have been traced to the presence of NTM in shower heads. Hypersensitivity pneumonitis in automotive workers was traced to the presence of NTM in metal recovery fluid used in grinding operations. Recently, NTM bacteremia in heart transplant patients has been traced to the presence of NTM in water reservoirs of instruments employed in operating rooms to heat and cool patient blood during periods of mechanical circulation. Although NTM are difficult to eradicate from premise plumbing as a consequence of their disinfectant-resistance and formation of biofilms, measures such as reduction of turbidity and reduction in carbon and nitrogen for growth and the installation of microbiological filters can reduce exposure of NTM to susceptible individuals.
Abstract A32: Implementing a breast cancer treatment patient decision aid in a medically underserved population in Texas

Background: Decision aids are designed to help patients make informed decisions about medical treatment options. We developed and evaluated the effectiveness of culturally and linguistically appropriate breast cancer patient decision aid, “A Patchwork of Life” (PLife), targeted at medically underserved women with limited literacy. The PLife is a computer-based learning environment that involves two key components, soap opera segments and related learning modules designed to support breast cancer (Stages I-IIIA) surgery decision-making and to encourage communication about treatment decision with their provider, relatives and friends. The objectives of the current project are to implement the Plife program at one of the National Community Cancer Center Program (NCCCP) sites, in Austin Texas to: 1) evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of the PLife program at the NCCCP clinic site by conducting an assessment of program outcomes with various stakeholders – patients, physicians, and patient navigator; 2) evaluate patients’ and providers9perceptions of the usefulness of the intervention for aiding in their decision-making. Experimental Procedures: We will recruit 60 patients diagnosed with Stage I-IIIA breast cancer over 18 months. Patients will be identified through pathology and other medical records and physician referrals. Those who consent will complete all baseline assessments before implementation of the PLife decision aid. A Patient Navigator will arrange for a convenient time for the patient to view the program. Immediately after viewing the program, patients will answer a questionnaire rating the program. Follow-up data collection with patients will take place via phone 2-weeks after viewing the program. Measures to be collected at the 2-week follow up include breast cancer knowledge, decisional conflict, and treatment preferences, and provider perception questionnaires. Questionnaires will be administered in Spanish and English. Expected Results and Conclusions: The proposed project will enable the NCCCP site to significantly enhance breast cancer education, awareness and navigation for the underserved breast cancer patients who currently do not receive education or navigation services utilizing a tool that has been proven to assist patients with limited literacy in making informed breast cancer treatment decisions. Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2011;20(10 Suppl):A32.
Pediatric flexible airway endoscopy.

Flexible airway endoscopy has been used in clinical and research investigations of pediatric airway and pulmonary disorders for nearly 25 years. Not only has clinical use of the flexible bronchoscope improved our evaluation and management of a variety of airway and pulmonary diseases in children, bu
Safe sedation of children for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures

There is an increasing use of sedation in children requiring imaging and other minor procedures. This article will discuss how sedation can be safely performed. The depth of sedation has been classified into minimal, moderate and deep according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Amongst others, benefits of sedation include increased parental and child satisfaction, increased cost benefits for the hospital and reduced adverse effects of general anaesthesia such as emergence delirium and postoperative nausea and vomiting. Safe sedation can be used for a wide range of procedures, most commonly for CT and MRI. Others include removing drains, changing burns dressings, simple plastic surgery procedures and endoscopy. Drugs can be used as sole agents or in combination to produce the desired level of sedation appropriate for the procedure. The children must be monitored according to the depth of sedation and personnel should be trained in the management of potential complications.
Batch Sample Design from Databases for Logistic Regression

The prevalence of large observational databases offers potential for identifying predictive relationships among variables of interest, although observational data are generally far less informative and less reliable than experimental data. We consider the problem of selecting a subset of records from a large observational database, for the purpose of designing a small but powerful experiment involving the selected records. It is assumed that the database contains the predictor variables but is missing the response variable, and that the purpose is to fit a logistic regression model after the response is obtained via the experiment. Active learning methods, which treat a similar problem, usually select records sequentially and focus on the single objective of classification accuracy. In contrast, many emerging applications require batch sample designs and have a variety of objectives that may include classification accuracy or accuracy of the estimated parameters, the latter being more in line with the optimal design of experiments (DOE) paradigm. The aim of this paper is to explore batch sampling from databases from a DOE perspective, particularly regarding the configuration, performance, and robustness of the designs that result from the different criteria. Through extensive simulation, we show that DOE-based batch sampling methods can substantially outperform random sampling and the entropy method that is popular in active learning. We also provide insight and guidelines for selecting appropriate design criteria and modeling assumptions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wistful and Admiring: The Rhetoric of Combination

In the opening sentence of the preface to the second edition of The Writer’s Options, Daiker, Kerek, and Morenberg refer to the “composing process,” 1 and there is, I think, a useful distinction to be made here. If the composing process refers to the quirks and behaviors, the observable drama of a writer’s work on a text, the combining process refers to an intellectual activity, perhaps an activity of the imagination, that is sometimes linguistic and sometimes rhetorical. The purpose of this paper is to examine the outlines and the potential of a combinatory rhetoric, a rhetoric of combinations. While The Writer’s Options allows for such a rhetoric (and I want to suggest that it is, at least potentially, a radical rhetoric), I am not sure that it teaches it overtly. But, as Emerson reminded the American scholar, “One must be an inventor to read well” and, by reading well, to free a lesson from its educational package.
Beyond Visual Literacy: Part Three Omniphasism in the Classroom Through Visual Literacy Toward a New Educational Model

AbstractIn this article Williams builds on Parts One and Two of the series Beyond Visual Literacy (JVL vl9 n2 Autumn 1999 and JVL v20 nl Spring 2000) and introduces the innovative techniques that he designed and teaches to help develop rational and intuitive intelligences as complimentary and equally significant components of whole mind cogntive processing. He proposes an interdisciplinary educational model and explores why and how educators might apply his theory and techniques to integrate Omniphasic practice into the larger academic community.
A new rationale for setting light source luminous efficacy requirements

The photopic luminous efficiency function (V(λ)) is used internationally for the definition of light output from electric light sources (lumens) and thereby for regulating minimum luminous efficacy...
Sterility of Selected Operative Sites During Total Laparoscopic Hysterectomy.

Abstract Study Objective To describe the type and quantity of bacteria found intraoperatively on the abdomen, vagina, surgical gloves, instrument tips, and uterus at distinct time points during total laparoscopic hysterectomy (TLH). Design Observational study (Canadian Task Force classification III). Setting Academic affiliated hospital. Patients Thirty-one women undergoing TLH for benign indications in 2016. Interventions After antibiotic prophylaxis and chlorhexidine preparation, swabs were collected from the vaginal fornices and abdomen. During subsequent TLH, additional swabs were collected from the following sites: surgeon's gloves after placement of the uterine manipulator, tips of instruments used to close the vaginal cuff, uterine fundus after extraction, and surgeon's gloves after removal of the uterus. A calibrated loop was used to inoculate each specimen onto 5% blood and chocolate agars for growth of aerobes and onto Brucella blood, phenylethyl alcohol, kanamycin vancomycin, and Bacteroides bile esculin agars for growth of anaerobes. Manual colony counts were tabulated for all positive cultures and reported in colony-forming units per milliliter (CFU/mL). Measurements and Main Results Anaerobic growth was not seen on the instrument tips, in the vagina, or on the abdomen of any patient. Aerobic bacterial growth was not seen in the vagina of any patient. On the surgeon's gloves after uterine manipulator placement, no patients demonstrated sufficient bacterial growth to potentially cause surgical site infection (≥5000 CFU/mL). On the surgeon's gloves following uterine extraction, 1 patient demonstrated sufficient growth to potentially cause infection. None of the patients developed surgical site infections postoperatively. Conclusion Cultures from multiple operative sites yielded bacterial growth, but the bacterial concentrations did not exceed the threshold for infection in 98.9% of cultures. Given absent growth from vaginal cultures and rare growth from abdominal cultures, chlorhexidine gluconate 4% is considered an appropriate surgical preparation for use in laparoscopic hysterectomy.
Optimal generalized overmodulation for multiphase PMSM drives

Multiphase systems have the capability to achieve significantly higher drive voltages than what is possible with sinusoidal PWM or linear modulation/nth harmonic injection. However, overmodulation beyond that of the zero sequence yields large harmonic currents if not implemented properly. This paper presents a scheme that enables the full overmodulation range of the αβ voltage vector to be attained with the minimum theoretical excitation of the components in the higher-order dq (xy) plane(s). First, the maximum limits of overmodulation drive voltage amplitudes are defined for N > 3 phase systems using vector space interpretation of the DC bus voltage constraints. Next, the theoretical lower limits of harmonic sequences required for overmodulation are established for N > 3 phase systems by formulation of a parametric quadratic programming problem. With an overmodulation scheme that uses this optimized solution, a drive system's speed rating is improved due to the increased voltage, as it is with non-optimized overmodulation schemes. However, since the harmonic currents are minimized, the drive voltage improvement is less restricted when taking into account the system's current ratings. The resulting increased range of operation is demonstrated for a 9 phase PMSM model with RMS current constraints and is shown to be supplementary to flux weakening.
Act II. Dissipationless Work: Carnot

In 1824, two years after the long delayed printing of Fourier’s theory of heat in its final form, appeared Carnot’s booklet called Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power1. [Little of any consequence regarding this subject was then known. Anyone skeptical here need not resort to the writings of engineers, inventors, and constructors. Just eight years before Carnot’s work was published, a leading physicist2 of the day could give his readers in a whole chapter on steam engines no more than an illustrated description of the machines, embellished by a few scientific terms and some numerical data regarding them, followed by a sketch of their evolution during the preceding 111 years, and finish with a discussion of how much work a horse of mean strength can do in a day.
Nuclear data processing capabilities in OpenMC

This work describes newly developed features of the OpenMC code for nuclear data processing. OpenMC, in addition to being a transport code, includes a rich, extensible Python API that enables programmatic pre- and post-processing. A new openmc.data package in the Python API enables users to parse ENDF and ACE files and convert them to an HDF5 format. With this capability, the OpenMC transport solver now relies on HDF5 nuclear data files rather than ACE files produced from NJOY. Moving to a native format will give much greater flexibility for researchers to explore new methods and algorithms that rely on storing data that is not present in the ACE format. Additionally, the module may serve as an independent implementation of the proposed Generalized Nuclear Data (GND) format in the future.
Grant, Blanche of Castile: Queen of France (Yale University Press, 2016).

Review of Lindy Grant, Blanche of Castile: Queen of France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).
A Distinctive Platform System to Study the Effects of a Vestibular Prosthesis on Nonhuman Primate Postural Control

For the several millions of vestibular loss sufferers nationwide, daily-living is severely affected in that common everyday tasks, such as getting out of bed at night, maintaining balance on a moving bus, or walking on an uneven surface, may cause loss of stability leading to falls and injury. Aside from loss of balance, blurred vision and vertigo (perceived spinning sensation) are also extremely debilitating in vestibular impaired individuals. For the investigation of implants and prostheses that are being developed towards implementation in humans, non-human primates are a key component.The purpose of our study was to implement a distinctive balance platform-system to investigate postural responses for moderate to severe vestibular loss and invasive vestibular prosthesis-assisted non-human primates (rhesus monkeys) for test balance conditions of various task-difficulty levels. Although the need for vestibular rehabilitative solutions is apparent, postural responses for a broad range of peripheral vestibular function, and for various stationary and moving support conditions, have not been systematically investigated.The measurement system used in this research was unique in that it allowed us to conduct animal experiments, not investigated previously; such experiments are necessary towards the development on an invasive vestibular prosthesis to be used in humans suffering from vestibular loss. Our platform-system facilitated the study of rhesus monkey posture for stationary support surface conditions (i.e., quiet stance and head turns; more versus fewer footplate cues and large versus small base-of-support) and for dynamic support surface conditions (i.e., pseudorandom roll-tilts of the support surface). Further, the platform-system was used to systematically study postural responses that will serve as baseline measures for future vestibular-focused human and non-human primate posture studies.Copyright © 2017 by ASME
Review of Religious Experience and Self-Psychology: Korean Christianity and the 1907 Revival Movement (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2016) by Jung Eun Jang

Jung Eun Jang’s Religious Experience and Self-Psychology seeks to contribute to our understanding of the 1907 Korean Revival Movement that took place in Pyongyang, by applying to the movement self psychology, developed by Heinz Kohut. While the effort is laudable, it is compromised by an inexpert application of Kohut’s theory and a maladroit treatment of Korean history.
Experimental Investigation of Gas Flow and Hydrate Formation Within the Hydrate Stability Zone

Author(s): Meyer, DW; Flemings, PB; DiCarlo, D; You, K; Phillips, SC; Kneafsey, TJ | Abstract: We form methane hydrate by injecting methane gas into a brine-saturated, coarse-grained sample under hydrate-stable thermodynamic conditions. Hydrate forms to a saturation of 11%, which is much lower than that predicted assuming three-phase (gas-hydrate-brine) thermodynamic equilibrium (67%). During hydrate formation, there are temporary flow blockages. We interpret that a hydrate skin forms a physical barrier at the gas-brine interface. The skin fails periodically when the pressure differential exceeds the skin strength. Once the skin is present, further hydrate formation is limited by the rate that methane can diffuse through the solid skin. This process produces distinct thermodynamic states on either side of the skin that allows gas to flow through the sample. This study illuminates how gas can be transported through the hydrate stability zone and thus provides a mechanism for the formation of concentrated hydrate deposits in sand reservoirs. It also illustrates that models that assume local equilibrium at the core-scale and larger may not capture the fundamental behaviors of these gas flow and hydrate formation processes.
Field of Broken Dreams: The Quest for Rule of Law in Sports Litigation

This essay reviews Roger Abrams excellent book SPORTS JUSTICE: THE LAW AND BUSINESS OF SPORTS (2010), which describes and discusses, for a generalist audience, a number of leading cases involving professional and amateur athletics. The essay takes the opportunity to reconsider a question posed for the past two decades, "What is sports law?" Or, to put it another way, what is special about sports law, as opposed to any survey of various legal rules applicable to a particular industry? The answer, at various times, may be that: "sports law" involves a separate body of legal doctrine; is evolving as institutions create new bodies of sports jurisprudence or arbitration; or perhaps that sports law is worthy of special attention because it is a teaching moment for the public, which rarely pays attention to the nuances of, say, antitrust law, except, perhaps, when a professional sports season is on the line.I advance a different justification for the study of sports law: it provides a fantastic lens in which to study legal realism. Too often, judges in sports cases simply ignore established legal rules or bodies of law to reach results that appear driven by no more sophisticated principle than fan loyalty.
Pathophysiology of Obesity

Despite day-to-day variations in caloric intake and expenditure, the regulation of body weight is precisely controlled over long periods of time. To achieve this objective, the body possesses a wide and complex network of neuroendocrine signals originating in the gastrointestinal system, the central nervous system, and adipose tissue, among other sources to regulate both short- and long-term balances between energy intake and energy expenditure. A better understanding of the central and peripheral factors involved, particularly the role of gut hormones, will pave the way for development of improved treatment modalities for obesity.
Designing an abstraction instrument: lessons from efforts to validate the AHRQ patient safety indicators.

Article-at-a-Glance Background The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and other organizations have developed quality indicators based on hospital administrative data. Characteristics of effective abstraction instruments were identified for determining both the positive predictive value (PPV) of Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) and the extent to which hospitals and clinicians could have prevented adverse events. Methods Through an iterative process involving nurse abstractors, physicians, and nurses with quality improvement experience, and health services researchers, 25 abstraction instruments were designed for 12 AHRQ provider-level morbidity PSIs. Data were analyzed from 13 of these instruments, and data are being collected using several more. Findings Common problems in designing the instruments included avoiding uninformative questions and premature termination of the abstraction process, anticipating misinterpretation of questions, allowing an appropriate range of response options; using clear terminology, optimizing the flow of the abstraction process, balancing the utility of data against abstractor burden, and recognizing the needs of end users, such as hospitals and quality improvement professionals and researchers, for the abstracted information. Conclusions Designing medical record abstraction instruments for quality improvement research involves several potential pitfalls. Understanding how we addressed these challenges might help both investigators and users of outcome indicators to appreciate the strengths and limitations of outcome-based quality indicators and tools designed to validate or investigate such indicators within provider organizations.
A Code for Linear Stability Analysis

Linear.x is a spectral code for the analysis of the linear stability of some basic state. The code is generic and void of any particular physical problem yet provides for various common tasks: global — eigenvalue spectra, local — single eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, table — one- or more-dimensional tables of eigenvalues curve — (neutral) curves in parameter space and others. A specific physical problem can be defined in a set of usually very short files. Some of these files are included at compile time, while definitions, tasks, and parameters are read during run time. The code is written in Fortran 77. The standard version has been used in various Unix environments and under VAX-VMS. The code has been successfully used for a variety of classical stability problems and is currently utilized to analyze the stability of compressible flows.
Investigating the gender wealth gap in Ghana

This article explores the determinants of the substantial wealth gap between married men and women in Ghana across the wealth distribution. The data is part of the multi-country project, The Gender...
Aortic Dissection in a Pregnant Patient without Other Risk Factors

Background. An aortic dissection is a life-threatening condition in which the intima of the artery tears causing separation of the intima and media. Pregnancy places women at a significantly increased risk of common vascular events including venous thromboembolism, myocardial infarction, and stroke, while also increasing the risk of rarer vascular events such as aortic dissection and aortic rupture. Case. A 30-year-old previously healthy multiparous woman presenting at 36 weeks of pregnancy with a Type A aortic dissection. She underwent a combined emergent cesarean delivery followed by repair of her aortic root. Conclusions. Aortic dissection should be high on the differential for pregnant patients presenting with the characteristic complaints and physical exam findings given the high mortality rate associated with this vascular event. Teaching Points. (1) This report reviews the characteristic presentation, risk factors, and physical exam findings in a patient with an aortic dissection. (2) The report includes treatment options for pregnant patients based on the classification of the dissection.
Multiscale formulation of pore-scale compressible Darcy-Stokes flow

Abstract Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of fluid dynamics in digital images of porous materials is challenging due to the cut-off length issue where interstitial voids below the resolution of the imaging instrument cannot be resolved. Such subresolution microporosity can be critical for flow and transport because they could provide important flow pathways. A micro-continuum framework can be used to address this problem, which applies to the entire domain a single momentum equation, i.e., Darcy-Brinkman-Stokes (DBS) equation, that recovers Stokes equation in the resolved void space (i.e., macropores) and Darcy equation in the microporous regions. However, the DBS-based micro-continuum framework is computationally demanding. Here, we develop an efficient multiscale method for the compressible Darcy-Stokes flow arising from the micro-continuum approach. The method decomposes the domain into subdomains that either belong to the macropores or the microporous regions, on which Stokes or Darcy problems are solved locally, only once, to build basis functions. The nonlinearity from compressible flow is accounted for in a local correction problem on each subdomain. A global interface problem is solved to couple the local bases and correction functions to obtain an approximate global multiscale solution, which is in excellent agreement with the reference single-scale solution. The multiscale solution can be improved through an iterative strategy that guarantees convergence to the single-scale solution. The method is computationally efficient and well-suited for parallelization to simulate fluid dynamics in large high-resolution digital images of porous materials.
Effect of patient-related factors on clinical laboratory test results

Abstract A myriad of patient-related factors such as age, gender, dietary intake, and exercise can significantly impact clinical laboratory test results. These factors can be classified into two categories: non-modifiable patient-related factors (e.g., age) and modifiable patient-related factors (gender [to an extent], dietary intake, and exercise). Reference ranges have been established, in some cases, to account for the effects of age, and gender and the ranges are easily displayed by modern electronic laboratory information systems. Dietary intake has a marked effect on laboratory test results as noted by changes in lipid profiles, insulin, and glucose measurements. These changes reflect the metabolic and endocrine processes associated with food composition, amount, and intake intervals. The contribution of ethnicity/race, a social construct that is used as a surrogate marker for environmental, socio-economic/demographic, and/or genetic factors, on test results is debated. Only a few tests have widely used ethnic/race-specific reference intervals, with the exception of the estimated glomerular filtration rate calculation that is used in the United States. Other less known influences of fasting, special diets, nutraceuticals, genetic factors in the response to food and nutraceuticals, and cross-sex hormone regimens for transgender patients on laboratory tests are also discussed in this chapter.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens [the Western Pleasure Principle]

It is difficult to identify the contradictions that serve as the foundation for value propositions in the cultural branding model. To address this, I propose the use of psychoanalysissto analyze market- and cultural-level collectives. To demonstrate, I analyze a recent installment in the popular film franchise Star Wars in order to demonstrate how extant product preferences can be used as subjects of analysis much like dream images in traditional psychoanalysis. I find that the western market which enjoys the films likely does so due to a defense mechanism known as inversion. On the market level, this offers opportunities for identity-related branding. Implications for the cultural branding model and commercial mythologizing are discussed.