cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Structural characterization of a high-temperature, ionic conducting ceramic using perturbed angular correlation spectroscopy.

Perturbed angular correlation (PAC) spectroscopy has been used to characterize several structural aspects of a high-temperature, ionic conducting ceramic, ${\mathrm{CaZr}}_{3.95}$${\mathrm{Hf}}_{0.05}$${\mathrm{P}}_{6}$${\mathrm{O}}_{24}$. Hafnium was introduced into the material to provide the PAC probe nuclei, $^{181}\mathrm{Hf}$${/}^{181}$Ta, which were located primarily at Zr sites. PAC measurements were made over a range of temperatures from 77 to 1180 K, and they have been analyzed and interpreted using several simple models. The distorted octahedral crystal field at the Zr site produced a (low-frequency) static electric quadrupole interaction which can be accurately described by the point-charge model. But, the temperature dependence of the associated electric field gradient (EFG) cannot be described accurately by purely static considerations via the point-charge model and high-temperature x-ray diffraction data. Although a high-frequency static interaction was also observed, the measurements were not sufficiently accurate to identify its origin unambiguously. Some of the high-temperature measurements show evidence of a time-varying interaction, which may result from ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{2+}$-ion jumping. But, jump frequencies derived classically from high-temperature electrical dc conductivity measurements are too low to agree with those indicated by the PAC data. However, the dc conductivity measurements support a simple model of thermally activated ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{2+}$-ion transport. The temperature dependence of the EFG (corresponding to the low-frequency interaction) was used to determine an effective Debye-Waller factor. As a result of using this approach to analyze this type of PAC data, this factor was shown also to agree qualitatively with the predictions of the Debye crystal model, although significant theoretical limitations were encountered. These particular results suggest that the PAC technique may provide new insights into understanding advanced ceramic materials.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the factor structure of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The sample included 107 patients with RA, 88 females and seven males, with an average age of 56.09 years, recruited from the greater Southern California area. Confirmatory factor analysis evaluated single, two- and three-factor models. The single factor solution yielded a poor fit to the data. While the three-factor solution had the best fit, the two-factor solution, comprised of sleep efficiency and perceived sleep quality factors, was optimal because it had very good fit, and acceptable reliability for its individual factors. Clinical indices were consistently correlated with the sleep quality factor, but not with the sleep efficiency factor.
Engineers and engineering in the US and Japan: a critical review of the literature and suggestions for a new research agenda

Researchers have identified a number of interesting differences between engineers and the practice of engineering in Japan and the US (and, to a lesser extent, other countries). They have found that: Japan graduates more engineers per capita than the US; Japanese engineers seem to stay in the practice of engineering longer than their US counterparts; Japanese firms perform more of the post bachelor degree level education and training of engineers than US firms; Japanese universities seem to emphasize teamwork more and business education less than US universities; Japanese firms have less rigid job boundaries than US firms; high performing Japanese firms have more overlap between functions and have developed distinctive ways of handling new product development such as the use of heavy weight project managers. On the other hand, empirical studies so far do not seem to show that "culture" has made much difference in the practice of engineering between the US and Japan. This paper reviews these findings and the implications that have been drawn from them. It goes on to suggest that while this research has provided many useful ideas and models for US managers, in other areas it has stopped short of examining the consequences of what has been found. The result has been the loss of opportunities for policy makers, educators, managers, and social theorists.
Scalable Algorithms for String Kernels with Inexact Matching

We present a new family of linear time algorithms for string comparison with mismatches under the string kernels framework. Based on sufficient statistics, our algorithms improve theoretical complexity bounds of existing approaches while scaling well in sequence alphabet size, the number of allowed mismatches and the size of the dataset. In particular, on large alphabets and under loose mismatch constraints our algorithms are several orders of magnitude faster than the existing algorithms for string comparison under the mismatch similarity measure. We evaluate our algorithms on synthetic data and real applications in music genre classification, protein remote homology detection and protein fold prediction. The scalability of the algorithms allows us to consider complex sequence transformations, modeled using longer string features and larger numbers of mismatches, leading to a state-of-the-art performance with significantly reduced running times.
A micropower OTA for digitally calibrated algorithmic ADCs

The paper presents techniques to realize micropower OTAs using the inversion coefficient design methodology. Such OTAs find use in low speed moderate resolution algorithmic ADCs where use of digital calibration relaxes the analog performance requirements while simultaneously demanding low voltage operation to reduce the power dissipation of the added digital circuitry. A prototype switched OTA sample and hold and gain-by-two stages was fabricated in 0.5-mum CMOS. Measured results indicate that the fabricated prototype gain-by-two amplifier dissipates 30 muW at 1.5 V and shows a gain of 1.84 V/V when switched at 100 KHz
A Pareto-Optimal Approach to Multimaterial Topology Optimization

As additive manufacturing (AM) expands into multimaterial, there is a demand for efficient multimaterial topology optimization (MMTO), where one must simultaneously optimize the topology and the distribution of various materials within the topology. The classic approach to multimaterial optimization is to minimize compliance or stress while imposing two sets of constraints: (1) a total volume constraint and (2) individual volume-fraction constraint on each of the material constituents. The latter can artificially restrict the design space. Instead, the total mass and compliance are treated as conflicting objectives, and the corresponding Pareto curve is traced; no additional constraint is imposed on the material composition. To trace the Pareto curve, first-order element sensitivity fields are computed, and a two-step algorithm is proposed. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated through illustrative examples in 3D.
Bird Sounds of Madagascar: an Audio Guide to the Island's Unique Birds

British Library of Wild Sounds/National Sound Archive, St Pancras, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB, UK; e-mail: sound-archive@bl.uk Audio CD, 4 pages, running time: 77 minutes ISBN 9780712305341, price £9.95 Ostrich 2008, 79(2): 253
Understanding the Farm Problem: Six Common Errors in Presenting Farm Statistics

Farm statistics are regularly quoted in the press and in policy circles, often in misleading ways. This, in turn, can easily lead to mistaken policies. Two examples of misleading statistical presentation include the common refrain that farm incomes are now higher than non-farm incomes, so there is little justification, from either an equity or a social justice perspective, for funding farm programs. Another is the oft-quoted statement that 60% of farmers and ranchers never get any government support at all (Environmental Working Group 2004). It is not just the press and advocacy organizations that present data in misleading ways. Noted agricultural economist Bruce Gardner, in a recent New York Times article, argued that small family farms were thriving. He cited the slowed rates of farm loss and the growth of â€œnon-traditionalâ€ small farms sustained by off-farm income. As he noted, 90% of farm household income is from off-farm sources, and as a result farmers now enjoy living standards above the national average (Gardner 2005). All of the above statements are true â€“ and truly misleading. The same data present a very different story when treated more carefully. Small and mid-sized full-time family farms have incomes at or below the national average, and less than half of that income is from their full-time-farming activities. A large majority of this group, which accounts for over three-quarters of full-time farmers, receives government farm-support payments of some sort, and many depend on them to stay above the poverty line and to stay in farming. The largest group of farms in the United States today are so-called â€œrural residence farms,â€ which are indeed thriving as Gardner points out, but are doing so primarily because they are part-time operations with ample outside sources of income, from retirement or from full-time non-farm careers. This paper is intended to both highlight some of the common errors in depicting the farm sector and present a more accura (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Legal Change and Child Custody Awards

This article compares custody award patterns in a sample of contested child custody cases filed in one jurisdiction of Colorado in 1966 and 1976, a time period which is prior to and follows the adoption of a sex neutral statute that stresses the best interest of the child in the judicial award of child custody. We find that legal change has had limited impact in the behavior of judges, evaluators, and couples themselves with mothers routinely acquiring custodial rights of the children following divorce unless shown to be unfit to parent. We also find an increase in the proportion of shared, joint, and split custody arrangements in 1976 and evidence that the new legal standards may be inspiring men to play a more aggressive role in contested child custody cases. This suggests that while new sex neutral standards may not translate into more father-only awards, they will mean greater paternal participation in custody in the years to come.
Dimensions of Culture (Geert H. Hofstede) – Masculinity

According to, masculinity (MAS) is a cultural dimension with a focus on ambition, acquisition of wealth, and distinctly differentiated roles for men and women. Cultures low in MAS (and hence higher in femininity) are more likely to emphasize nurturing behaviors, caring, more flexible gender roles, and equality of the sexes. Hofstede has suggested that success in high MAS cultures is defined by winning, whether in academic, work, or leisure activities. Low MAS (femininity) tends to be associated with greater concern for quality of life as an indicator of success (some scholars have characterized high and low MAS as quantity of life and quality of life). Put another way, individuals in high MAS cultures are motivated by an interest in being the best, whereas those in low MAS cultures are motivated to like what they do. Keywords: Geert Hofstede; masculinities
Pharmacologic evidence for a cardiac sphincter mechanism in the cat.

Summary Evidence is presented that epinephrine constricts the lower segment of esophagus, whereas acetylcholine and vagal stimulation relax the circular muscle component of this area. The action of these autonomic mediators is localized and discrete and clearly delineates the cardiac sphincter in the cat.
Dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMV): A CNS site that directly regulates activity of the lower esophageal sphincters

INTRODUCTION: Concurrent transient relaxations of both the lower esophageal sphincters (LES) and crural diaphragm (CD) have been shown to be associated with gastroesophageal reflux. The purpose of the present study was to determine if the DMV regulates the activity of the both esophageal sphincters by a direct projection to these end organs. Additionally, since these sphincters act in tandem, we were interested to know the degree of their co-innervation by the DMV.
DPack: Disk scheduler for highly consolidated cloud

Virtualization allows us to consolidate multiple servers onto a single physical machine, saving infrastructure cost. Yet, consolidation can lead to performance degradation, jeopardizing Service Level Agreement (SLA). In this paper, we analyze and identify the factors to the performance degradation due to consolidation - that is the wait time and the ready time. The wait time is the queuing time caused by other virtual machines (VMs). The ready time is the time the resource takes to be ready to service, such as the seek time incurred in traditional storage. The ready time can substantially deteriorate the request response time. Unfortunately, existing schedulers can only manage the wait time, but not the ready time. To control both quantities, we propose an adaptive disk scheduler called DPack. DPack schedules the VMs based on the likelihood of the VM failing the SLAs. DPack then adjusts the exclusive access time based on the VM resource access prediction. DPack considers the workload changes and request arrival to enhance robustness. We develop DPack based on the default disk scheduler in KVM and evaluate it against several existing disk schedulers available in KVM and Xen. The results show that DPack can improve the 99th percentile response time up to 76%. In the highly consolidated environment, DPack can also satisfy all the SLAs, while the other schedulers cannot meet the SLAs for at least 50% of the VMs.
Statistical timing analysis based on simulation of lithographic process

The length of poly-gate printed on silicon depends on exposure dose, depth of focus, photo-resist thickness and planarity of the surface. In sub-wavelength lithography, polygate length also varies with layout topology. Poly-gate length determines the effective channel length of a transistor, which determines its performance. Since the sources of error are hard to control, statistical analysis can be used to measure the impact on circuit timing characteristics. Typical lithography-aware methodologies consider only systematic variation such as across chip linewidth variation (ACLV). In this paper we propose a statistical technique for timing yield prediction, based on variational lithography modeling of physical circuit layout. By statistically varying lithographic process parameters we estimate the difference in timing yield estimation of a design. Our simulation results show that if manufacturing process parameters follow a Gaussian distribution, resulting transistors follow a skewed normal distribution, where a greater number of them will have shorter channel length. This led us to investigate whether Statistical Static Timing Analysis (SSTA) is overly pessimistic. The baseline delay model assumed for SSTA in out approach is a Gaussian delay model fitted to skew normal distribution data obtained from statistical litho simulation. Our experiments showed that even after re-centering Gaussian delay model to fit the channel length data with minimum error, it is still overly pessimistic and significantly underestimates circuit performance.
Blind deconvolution based criteria for parameter estimation with noisy data

The author considers the problem of estimating the parameters of a stable, scalar ARMA(p,q) signal model (causal or noncausal, minimum phase or mixed phase), driven by an independent and identically distributed nonGaussian sequence. The driving noise sequence is not observed. A class of criteria that involve explicit higher order whitening, where higher order cumulants of deconvolved data are exploited at a finite number of lags excluding the zero lag, is proposed. In the presence of a class of measurement noise of unknown covariance/cumulant function, the criteria are shown to yield strongly consistent parameter estimators. Computer simulations illustrate the approach. >
Chronic Advanced Liver Disease and Impotence: Cause and Effect?

The prevalence of impotence is increased in males who chronically abuse alcohol. Further, impotence may occur in the absence of liver disease in such men. In contrast, no data is available concerning the prevalence of impotence in nonalcoholic men with advanced liver disease. To investigate the relationship between alcohol and impotence in cirrhotic men, a self-administered questionnaire was completed by male alcoholic cirrhotics admitted to the medical service as well as by nonalcoholic cirrhotic liver transplant candidates admitted to the medical and surgical services of Presbyterian-University Hospital. Each participant was asked whether or not he had experienced impotence and if so, to report the frequency and duration of his impotence. The frequency of impotence was recorded on a weighted scale with four gradations: 4 = always; 3 = usually; 2 = sometimes; 1 = seldom. In addition, measures of hepatic injury and function as well as measures of the functional integrity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis for each subject evaluated were obtained. Fourteen of the 20 alcoholics with cirrhosis and 10 of the 40 nonalcoholic liver transplant candidates with cirrhosis reported a history of impotence. The association between impotence and alcohol abuse was significant. The impotence index developed by multiplying the frequency by the duration of impotency for each individual demonstrated a more severe degree of impotence in the alcoholics as compared to the nonalcoholics (p less than 0.01). The alcoholics also had lower plasma levels of testosterone and greater plasma levels of gonadotropins as compared to the nonalcoholics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Potential slack: an effective metric of combinational circuit performance

This paper proposes the concept of potential slack and shows that it is an effective metric of combinational circuit performance. We provide several methods for estimating potential slack and prove one (a maximal-independent-set based algorithm) in particular which works best. Experiments in gate sizing show that potential slack provides 100% correct prediction for circuit area optimization. We also explore the role of potential slack in timing-driven placement.
A Survey of Electronic Research Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw in Law Firms

Ms. Justiss conducted a survey of law firm librarians in 2010 that identified electronic research database alternatives to LexisNexis and Westlaw and ranked them by subscription frequency. The survey also generated information regarding suggested or mandated legal research policies in law firms for the use of alternatives to LexisNexis and Westlaw and examined their applicability to billable and nonbillable research. Lastly, it examined the prevalence in firms of flat-rate pricing agreements with LexisNexis and Westlaw.
Computer literacy via Scheme and web programming

We describe an approach to introducing non-science majors to programming and computation in part by teaching them applets, servlets, and groupware applications. The course uses a dialect of didactic Scheme that is implemented in, and tightly integrated with, Java. The declarative nature of our approach allows non-science majors with no programming background to develop surprisingly complex web applications in about half a semester. This level of programming provides a context for a deeper understanding of computation than is usually feasible in a Computer Literacy course.
Emulsions as materials with adjustable dielectric properties

Emulsions are examined as materials with adjustable electrical properties (relative permittivity and conductivity). The emulsions are simple mixtures of oil, saline solution, and a stabilizing agent (emulsifier). The relative permittivity of oil is around two, while that of water is around 80. Thus, a wide range of relative permittivity can be obtained by mixing these components. The conductivity of the emulsion can be adjusted by changing the concentration of the electrolyte, sodium chloride, in the aqueous phase. Bruggeman's theoretical formula for the electrical constitutive parameters of a heterogeneous system is applied to the emulsions. A series of oil-in-water emulsions has been formulated for use in scale models; this involves the selection of an appropriate emulsifier. The electrical constitutive parameters of these emulsions are predicted by the simplified Bruggeman's formula for a wide range of volume fraction of oil and normality of the saline solution. >
Location Preferences of Family Firms: Strategic Decision Making or “Home Sweet Home”?

Selecting a business location is among the most important strategic decisions for family firms. Yet the separate demands of the family and the business often prove difficult to balance. A comparison of location preferences in family and nonfamily firms provides insight into the family influence on strategic decision making.
Synthesis, Structure and Dielectric Properties of Na2SnTeO6

A new perovskite was recovered from the high pressure-high temperature treatment of the α-TlSbO3 form of Na2SnTeO6 at 7 GPa and 950 °C for 30 minutes. Synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction data show the space group is P21/n with a=5.40361 (5), b=5.46152(5), c=7.69288(7) A and s=90.034(3)°. Using disk samples of both polymorphs, the dielectric properties were measured as a function of temperature. At ambient conditions, the perovskite form has a more than 1.5 fold enhancement in dielectric constant compared to the α-TlSbO3 form while the molar volume and the molecular polarizability decrease.
Two New Genera of Tydeidae (Acarina)

The new genera, ORIOLA , type-species Oriola farbae , n. sp., and MEYERELLA , type-species Tydeus bifurcatus Baker, are described. The family Tydeidae now includes 19 genera.
Religion and Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia

The coming of age of the study of religion and politics in Latin America is clearly demonstrated by Daniel H. Levine's excellent book. Up until the late 1960s, such studies tended to use models derived from North American or European contexts and to depend on the repetition of a limited set of ideas concerning the Catholic Church in Latin America. While Levine maintains the institutional focus of these studies by rooting his data in interviews of the Colombian and Venezuelan bishops, his analysis is far more sophisticated, insightful, and sensitive to the human element. Levine also has a dispassionate feel for the institution and the people involved in it and touched by it. Although the author himself wonders how a non-Christian, non-Latin had the temerity to undertake such a study, he has clearly turned this to advantage, for the work does not suffer from the tendency of some other recent studies to give expression to frustrations generated by individual disenchantment with the Catholic Church. Levine focuses on evolving images of the Church and their effect on the manner in which religious faith influences social and political activism; the recent emergence within the Catholic Church of more dynamic views of change and the role of the Church in the world; and how concepts of power, force, and violence determine the attitudes of Church people towards class conflict. The author aptly describes the dynamism of change within the Catholic Church over the past two to three decades without becoming enamoured with a vision of the Church as a revolutionary institution. Rather, he clearly perceives the weight of the traditional sectors, particularly among church elites. Levine also realizes that even these have undergone substantial permutations and relates these to attitudes and behavior towards church administration, authority, social and political action, as well as to the clerical and lay bases of the Church. The author notes that the post-Vatican 11 (1962-65) and post-Medellin (1968) enthusiasm for social action and renewal of church structures quickly declined in favor of preoccupation with lessened unity in the Church and intensification of evangelization. While Levine does not focus specifically on the base Christian communities (although he is currently engaged in such a study), his work suggests that such innovations were very much part of the desire to renew the Church by incorporating into it substantial numbers of the relatively unevangelized in the face of increasingly strong appeals from both religious and secular competitors. This conservative tactic has spawned mechanisms that have promoted societal and ecclesial change. Such developments, at the same time that the Catholic Church was receiving an infusion of
The Association of the Temperature-Sensitive Phenotype with Viral Attenuation in Animals and Humans: Implications for the Development and Use of Live Virus Vaccines

Viruses that possess temperature-sensitive mutations are consistently attenuated in vivo compared with the wild-type parental strains. Such temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants are currently used in several live attenuated virus vaccines and have been proposed for use against several additional viral diseases, including influenza. This paper reviews the following: (1) the evidence that the ts mutation itself is responsible for attenuation; (2) experimental infection of animals and humans with ts mutant viruses; (3) the experience of humans with naturally occurring ts mutants; and (4) the rationale for the use of ts mutants in live virus vaccines. In addition, the potential of ts mutants to produce altered patterns of disease is considered. After the known and potential benefits and possible risks involved in the use of ts mutant viruses are weighed, the continuing use and development of vaccines using live attenuated ts virus seems warranted.
Titanium 6/4 Single Lap Shear Adhesive Performance of Polyimide Homopolymers and Poly(Siloxane Imide) Segmented Copolymers

Polyimides are attractive candidates for advanced electronic and space applications due to their high performance thermal and mechanical properties. However, the typical intractability and insolubility of polyimides has been a disadvantage. Utilization of the soluble intermediate amic acid can, to some extent, circumvent this problem. However, drawbacks to this approach include the hydrolytic instability of the amic acid and the liberation of water during its subsequent thermal cyclization. Residual stress build-up at the imide-substrate interface may occur due to swelling and drying cycles caused by the loss of water and solvent. In addition, the liberation of volatiles from a polyimide adhesive or coating can lead to the creation of voids which may significantly detract from mechanical properties. Polymeric adhesives must flow in order to provide good wetting of adherend surfaces and consolidation of the bond components. Thus, fully imidized, melt and solution processable, high Tg aromatic polyimides are of great interest.
Neutralization Rates for Low-Energy Ions Scattered From Solid Surfaces

Calculations of the angular distributions of scattered ions were used to simulate impact collision ion scattering spectrometry (ICISS) experiments. The calculations were performed first for 2–keV Na+ ions incident on the Pt(111) surface in the azimuth. The fitting of these calculations to the experimental data provided information about the surface structure of the sample and the trajectories of the incident ions. The inclusion of a first-order decay model for Auger neutralization with the calculations for Na+ allowed the simulation of 2-keV Ne+ ions in the ICISS mode on the same Pt surface. From these simulations it was possible to extract the Auger neutralization halflife for Ne+, found to be 1.30 ± 0.10 femtoseconds.
Guns Don't Kill People, 3D Printing Does? Why the Technology is a Distraction from Effective Gun Controls

3D printing is technology that allows three-dimensional physical objects to be created by using a relatively small and inexpensive machine that looks much like a desktop paper printer. 3D printers have already been used to create guns and shotgun cartridges (but not ammunition), and the prospect that criminals will be able to “print” operational weapons at home has regulators in a tizzy. Some argue that 3D printing should be highly regulated to avoid such dangers. In this Essay invoking Bewitched as the theoretical example of instantaneous 3D printing, Professor Little argues that gun control advocates should focus primarily on regulating criminal use of guns, and not on the technology used to manufacture them. Paper printers can be used to create instruments of fraud, but we do not ban paper printing at home. New technology has always stimulated fears. But criminal law properly focuses on the products of technology and their criminal uses. We should celebrate technological innovation and attempt to regulate its misuse without inhibiting creative development.
Variation in Preventive Care in Children Receiving Chronic Glucocorticoid Therapy

Objective To assess preventive care measure prescribing in children exposed to glucocorticoids and identify prescribing variation according to subspecialty and patient characteristics. Study design Retrospective cohort study of children initiating chronic glucocorticoids in the gastroenterology, nephrology, and rheumatology divisions at a pediatric tertiary care center. Outcomes included 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) and lipid testing, pneumococcal polysaccharide (PPV) and influenza vaccination, and stress dose hydrocortisone prescriptions. Results A total of 701 children were followed for a median of 589 days. 25OHD testing was performed in 73%, lipid screening in 29%, and PPV and influenza vaccination in 16% and 78%, respectively. Hydrocortisone was prescribed in 2%. Across specialties, 25OHD, lipid screening, and PPV prescribing varied significantly (all P P P P P = .04). Conclusions Among children chronically exposed to glucocorticoids, 25OHD testing and influenza vaccination were common, but lipid screening, pneumococcal vaccination, and stress dose hydrocortisone prescribing were infrequent. Except for influenza vaccination, preventive care measure use varied significantly across specialties. Quality improvement efforts are needed to optimize preventive care in this high-risk population.
Characterization of timing jitter in a quantum dot passively mode-locked laser at low offset frequency

The timing jitter performance of quantum dot passively mode-locked lasers at different harmonics is investigated. The corner frequency of the phase noise spectral density improves 20-fold under optical feedback stabilization.
Impacts of histology-assessed tissue structures on ultrasound clutter

Despite the widespread use of ultrasound, the modality often suffers from image degradation. This study seeks to model and understand the mechanism behind reverberation, a source of clutter. Water tank experiments were performed on ex vivo goat abdominal wall tissue to measure magnitude of reverberation clutter. In addition, matched stained cross-sections of the goat abdominal wall samples were used to evaluate tissue factors such as relative amount of tissue types, tissue thickness, and number of tissue layers. A nested model analysis was performed to explore which factors affect clutter magnitude. Most of the variability was attributed to depth (R-squared of 0.777 with depth alone), although histology factors were found to significantly improve the model (R-squared of 0.861 including histology factors).
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation-coil design with improved focality

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a technique for neuromodulation that can be used as a non-invasive therapy for various neurological disorders. In TMS, a time varying magnetic field generated from an electromagnetic coil placed on the scalp is used to induce an electric field inside the brain. TMS coil geometry plays an important role in determining the focality and depth of penetration of the induced electric field responsible for stimulation. Clinicians and basic scientists are interested in stimulating a localized area of the brain, while minimizing the stimulation of surrounding neural networks. In this paper, a novel coil has been proposed, namely Quadruple Butterfly Coil (QBC) with an improved focality over the commercial Figure-8 coil. Finite element simulations were conducted with both the QBC and the conventional Figure-8 coil. The two coil’s stimulation profiles were assessed with 50 anatomically realistic MRI derived head models. The coils were positioned on the vertex and the scalp over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to stimulate the brain. Computer modeling of the coils has been done to determine the parameters of interest-volume of stimulation, maximum electric field, location of maximum electric field and area of stimulation across all 50 head models for both coils.
Concentrating Properties of Simple Two-Dimensional Geometries for Isotropic Light

Nuclear-pumped flashlamps can be a very efficient way to couple nuclear energy to laser media. The specific design of the flashlamp is dependent upon the photon density of the fluorescence source and the intensity threshold properties of the laser. For nuclear-pumped flashlamps, it appears that efficient energy coupling is required along with methods to concentrate the light. This paper investigates coupling efficiency and concentration properties of various irregular geometries.
Laser shock peening induced residual stresses and the effect on crack propagation behavior

Abstract Laser shock peening (LSP), as a powerful surface engineering technique to improve the fatigue performance of metallic components, requires elaborately designed process pattern to maximize its benefits. In this study, a numerical method, combining finite element method (FEM) and residual stress intensity factor (SIF) analysis, was used to predict the effect of LSP pattern on the crack propagation behavior of the compact tension (CT) samples. The 3D FEM model was fully benchmarked using the mesh sensitivity study and time step calibration. The model was further validated using residual stresses data measured using the X-ray diffraction method. After that, the simulation of LSP of CT sample was conducted using five representative cases, and the corresponding residual stress fields were obtained. A mixed-mode SIF model was then applied to evaluate the effect of the residual stress field in resisting crack propagation. Based on the calculated residual SIFs from different LSP patterns, the best LSP patterns in terms slowing crack propagation speed were identified. To validate the simulation results, LSP experiments were conducted on CT samples using two identified LSP patterns and the crack growth rates were tested. The experiment results were consistent with the numerical prediction. This work demonstrates that FEM model combining residual SIF analysis can be applied to design appropriate LSP patterns on components with complex geometries.
Energy efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions reduction opportunities in the US iron and steel sector

Abstract This article presents an in-depth analysis of cost-effective energy efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions reduction opportunities in the US iron and steel industry. We show that physical energy intensity for iron and steelmaking (at the aggregate level, standard Industrial Classification 331, 332) dropped 27%, from 35.6 GJ/tonne to 25.9 GJ/tonne between 1958 and 1994, while carbon dioxide intensity (carbon dioxide emissions expressed in tonnes of carbon per tonne of steel) dropped 39%. We provide a baseline for 1994 energy use and carbon dioxide emissions from US blast furnaces and steel mills (SIC 3312) disaggregated by the processes used in steelmaking. Energy-efficient practices and technologies are identified and analyzed for each of these processes. Examination of 47 specific energy efficiency technologies and measures found a total cost-effective reduction potential of 3.8 GJ/t, having a payback period of three years or less. This is equivalent to a potential energy efficiency improvement of 18% of 1994 US iron and steel energy use and is roughly equivalent to 19% reduction of 1994 US iron and steel carbon dioxide emissions. The measures have been ranked in a bottom-up energy conservation supply-curve.
Characterizing the nonlinear response of elastomeric material systems under critical point constraints

Abstract Engineered materials that dissipate large shock and vibration through tailoring microscopic properties are of growing interest. To this end, reversible buckling of slender, elastomeric beams serving as microscopic constituents of engineered material systems is shown to be effective to tune the mechanical properties. Yet, the viscoelasticity and nonlinear deformations inherent in an engineered, elastomeric material system having critically constrained internal constituents challenge the understanding of the macroscopic dynamic properties borne out of such intersection of complex characteristics. This research undertakes analytical and experimental efforts considering a model specimen to illuminate how criticality, viscoelasticity, and nonlinearity interact to yield the macroscopic dynamic behavior of engineered, elastomeric material systems subjected to harmonic forcing. The analysis reveals that large strain of the internal beam constituents is a predominant mode of harmonic energy dissipation for more elastically dominated material characteristics. In contrast, a more equitable balance of viscous and elastic phenomena results in dissipation properties that involve history dependent reactions in tandem with the instantaneous strain on the constituents. Nonlinear deformations induced by critical constraints on the internal viscoelastic beams are discovered to strongly govern the relative amplitude of force transmission and significance of frequency tuning observed macroscopically. Experiments validate the findings and emphasize the non-intuitive character of elastomeric material system behaviors by virtue of the intersection of viscoelasticity, nonlinearity, and critical point constraints.
Harnessing Invariant NKT Cells to Improve Influenza Vaccines: A Pig Perspective

Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are an "innate-like" T cell lineage that recognize glycolipid rather than peptide antigens by their semi-invariant T cell receptors. Because iNKT cells can stimulate an extensive array of immune responses, there is considerable interest in targeting these cells to enhance human vaccines against a wide range of microbial pathogens. However, long overlooked is the potential to harness iNKT cell antigens as vaccine adjuvants for domestic animal species that express the iNKT cell-CD1d system. In this review, we discuss the prospect of targeting porcine iNKT cells as a strategy to enhance the efficiency of swine influenza vaccines. In addition, we compare the phenotype and tissue distribution of porcine iNKT cells. Finally, we discuss the challenges that must be overcome before iNKT cell agonists can be contemplated for veterinary use in livestock.
Off the Beaten Path: Resiliency and Associated Risk

Large-scale electric grids remain an indispensable critical infrastructure, and the vast majority of people will continue to receive most of their electric energy from such grids for decades to come. The impacts of the loss of a portion of the electric grid range from minor inconveniences for most users when the outage is on a small scale and short lived to potentially catastrophic situations when the blackout covers a large region for a long duration. Since the inception of the first electric grids in the 1880s, much has been done to reduce the likelihood and extent of blackouts. However, they cannot be totally eliminated, and there is usually a tradeoff between reduced blackout risk and increased cost. The focus of this article is on costeffective ways to reduce this risk and, consequently, improve resiliency.
Cohesive-Zone Modeling of Adhesive Joints

Two distinct failure criteria have traditionally been used to model adhesive joints: a strength-based criterion using the cohesive strength of the adhesive, and an energy-based criterion using the toughness of the adhesive. In practice there are conditions under which the properties of a joint may be controlled by either one of these criteria, or by both. Cohesive-zone models have an advantage in that they incorporate both criteria simultaneously, automatically allowing whichever one is dominant to control fracture in a numerical analysis. Cohesive-zone models are particularly useful for problems involving adhesive joints in which the crack path is generally known; there is a natural convenience in being able to assign the entire deformation of the adhesive layer to the cohesive process, and to distinguish this deformation from that of the adherends. It is recognized that such an approach means that the cohesive law may be affected by details of the geometry, such as adhesive thickness [1], but similar limitations are accepted when using linear-elastic fracture mechanics to describe fracture.
Duration and Timing

In describing of the profile of the speech patterns of a community, segmental duration is a revealing aspect of the sound system (Lehiste 1970, Klatt 1976). Quantitative duration differences serve a function at every level in the grammar, from syllable (vowels are longer before voiced consonants in English) to utterance level (final lengthening). The implementation of local differences in duration mark a wide range of phenomena: in the realization of metric structure and stress, of prosodic position-in-word and -utterance, focus and intonation, markedness, and extra-linguistic phenomena such as speech rate. Duration is a quantitative measure explicitly associated with different phonological, prosodic and psychological phenomena, making it one of the more problematic aspects of an interface between phonetics and phonology. In the same vein, duration effects are also to a large degree language specific. In many languages with metric stress systems, unstressed vowels are shorter than stressed ones, but the implmentation of that reduction vary cross-linguistically (Lehiste 1970, Crosswhite 2001). That is to say, duration, while quantitative, is not determined by purely physiological phenomena. This means that specific information about duration and lengthening must be encoded in the implementation of lexical representations. In particular, because of the close association of lengthening with the expression of metric stress, pitch accent and prosodic features like intonation and focus, the prosodic organization of a language will be explicitly reflected to one extent or another in its duration profile, in a similar way that a pitch contour reflects tonal structure.
Diagnosis and treatment of halitosis

Halitosis or foetor ex ore is a frequent and complex problem with a multifactorial etiology. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases local oral conditions are the causes of the bad breath and therefore an extensive oral examination is the first step towards the identification of the source of malodor. A correct diagnosis will depend on analysis of data gathered from the patient's halitosis history, oral examination and additional laboratory and diagnostic tests.
Reflux from ileum to colon in the dog. Role of external ligamentous attachments.

In four dogs we quantified the role of external (“coloileal”) ligaments in preventing coloileal reflux. All animals were tested under control conditions, and then two had all external ligamentous attachments between ileum and colon divided; the other pair underwent a sham operation. Coloileal reflux was quantified scintigraphically at colonic pressures of 20, 40, and 60 mm Hg, and ileal motility was recorded concurrently. During control experiments and after sham operations, no dogs showed coloileal reflux at colonic pressures of 20 and 40 mm Hg. At a colonic pressure of 60 mm Hg, two control experiments and one in a dog after sham operation resulted in reflux of 9%, 4%, and 8% of counts, respectively. In contrast, both test dogs (after division of the ligaments) refluxed 30–70% of colonic content in all of four experiments at pressure below 20 mm Hg. In control dogs and in those with a continent ileocolonic junction, ileal motility consisted of scattered clusters of phasic contractions. In dogs with coloileal reflux, these clusters occurred with a similar frequency, but they lasted longer (P <0.005). Four weeks later, ileal motility indices in control dogs were significantly less (P <0.02) than in animals with divided coloileal ligaments. These observations establish an experimental model for coloileal reflux, support the hypothesis that external ligamentous attachments help maintain continence at the ileocolonic junction, and imply that coloileal reflux changes the motor pattern of the terminal ileum.
Fast and Efficient Compression of Next Generation Sequencing Data

Despite the large number of research papers and compression algorithms proposed for com- pressing FASTQ genomic data generated by sequencing machines, by far the most commonly used compression algorithm in the industry for FASTQ data is gzip. The main drawback of the proposed alternative special-purpose compression algorithms is the slow speed of either compression or de- compression or both, and also their brittleness by making various limiting assumptions about the input FASTQ format (for example, the structure of the headers or fixed lengths of the records [5]) in order to further improve their specialized compression. In this paper we propose using a simple modeling improvement combined with fast general purpose encoders, achieving 4X-40X speed improvements and 6%-11% more efficienct compression ratios for the compression and decompression of FASTQ genomic data compared to gzip and also being 5X faster than special-purpose FASTQ compressors like DSRC v2 and slimfastq.
Harmonizing speculative and non-speculative execution in architectures for ordered parallelism

Multicore systems should support both speculative and non-speculative parallelism. Speculative parallelism is easy to use and is crucial to scale many challenging applications, while non-speculative parallelism is more efficient and allows parallel irrevocable actions (e.g., parallel I/O). Unfortunately, prior techniques are far from this goal. Hardware transactional memory (HTM) systems support speculative (transactional) and non-speculative (non-transactional) work, but lack coordination mechanisms between the two, and are limited to unordered parallelism. Prior work has extended HTMs to avoid the limitations of speculative execution, e.g., through escape actions and open-nested transactions. But these mechanisms are incompatible with systems that exploit ordered parallelism, which parallelize a broader range of applications and are easier to use. We contribute two techniques that enable seamlessly composing and coordinating speculative and non-speculative work in the context of ordered parallelism: (i) a task-based execution model that efficiently coordinates concurrent speculative and non-speculative ordered tasks, allowing them to create tasks of either kind and to operate on shared data; and (ii) a safe way for speculative tasks to invoke software-managed speculative actions that avoid hardware version management and conflict detection. These contributions improve efficiency and enable new capabilities. Across several benchmarks, they allow the system to dynamically choose whether to execute tasks speculatively or non-speculatively, avoid needless conflicts among speculative tasks, and allow speculative tasks to safely invoke irrevocable actions.
Desegregation of remote sensing and GIS to characterize fluctuations in the surface water area of Afar Lakes, Ethiopia

Surface water reservoirs in Afar play an imperative role in water resource economics in Ethiopia. Salt mining, fishing, and recreation are the major practices in Afar lakes. However, Ethiopia is pr...