cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Latino Residential Isolation and the Risk of Obesity in Utah: The Role of Neighborhood Socioeconomic, Built-Environmental, and Subcultural Context

The prevalence rate of obesity in the United States has been persistently high in recent decades, and disparities in obesity risks are routinely observed. Both individual and contextual factors should be considered when addressing health disparities. This study examines how Latino-white spatial segregation is associated with the risk of obesity for Latinos and whites, whether neighborhood socioeconomic resources, the built environment, and subcultural orientation serve as the underlying mechanisms, and whether neighborhood context helps explain obesity disparities across ethnic and immigrant groups. The study was based on an extensive database containing self-reported BMI measures obtained from driver license records in Utah merged with census data and several GIS-based data. Multilevel analyses were performed to examine the research questions. For both men and women, Latino residential isolation is significantly and positively linked to the risk of obesity; after controlling for immigrant concentration, this effect gets amplified. Moreover, for men and women, the segregation effect is partly attributable to neighborhood SES and the built environment; and only for women is it partly attributable to obesity prevalence in the neighborhood. Place matters for individual risk of obesity for both men and women and there are multifarious pathways linking residence to obesity. Among the demographic, socioeconomic, physical, and cultural aspects of neighborhood context examined in this study, perhaps the most modifiable environment features that could prevent weight gain and its associated problems would be the built environmental factors such as greenness, park access, and mixed land use.
Coupled atmosphere ocean climate model simulations in the Mediterranean region: effect of a high-resolution marine model on cyclones and precipitation

Abstract. In this study we investigate the importance of an eddy-permitting Mediterranean Sea circulation model on the simulation of atmospheric cyclones and precipitation in a climate model. This is done by analyzing results of two fully coupled GCM (general circulation models) simulations, differing only for the presence/absence of an interactive marine module, at very high-resolution (~ 1/16°), for the simulation of the 3-D circulation of the Mediterranean Sea. Cyclones are tracked by applying an objective Lagrangian algorithm to the MSLP (mean sea level pressure) field. On annual basis, we find a statistically significant difference in vast cyclogenesis regions (northern Adriatic, Sirte Gulf, Aegean Sea and southern Turkey) and in lifetime, giving evidence of the effect of both land–sea contrast and surface heat flux intensity and spatial distribution on cyclone characteristics. Moreover, annual mean convective precipitation changes significantly in the two model climatologies as a consequence of differences in both air–sea interaction strength and frequency of cyclogenesis in the two analyzed simulations.
On the connectivity of large multi-channel cognitive radio networks

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) have become promising network components to improve spectrum utilization efficiency, where secondary (unlicensed) users exploit spectrum opportunistically without interfering with the coexisting primary users. A challenging yet open question is how to ensure that information can be disseminated to the entire CRN, which is a prerequisite to applications of wireless networks. In this paper, we address the connectivity of large multi-channel CRNs. Particularly, we study full connectivity and percolation of secondary networks. The former is the existence of a communication path between any two nodes and the latter is the existence of a large component of secondary users. We find that the sufficient and necessary condition to achieve full connectivity is λ = Θ(log n/πr2 P s ), where λ is the density, n is the number and r is the transmission range of secondary users respectively, and P s is the probability that any two secondary users can communicate with each other without interfering with primary users. We further show that the required density for percolation is a constant, and identify an upper bound on λ, above which the network is percolated and a lower bound on λ below which the network is not percolated. Our results provide a theoretical understanding of connectivity in large multi-channel cognitive radio networks.
Involving Students and Faculty in Preparing a Departmental History

This article describes researching and writing institutional histories and focuses on preparing a psychology department history. Topics discussed include time requirements for the research, project formats, sources for historical information, methods for doing historical research, and the benefits to students and faculty derived from these projects.
Palatability of marine macro‐holoplankton: Nematocysts, nutritional quality, and chemistry as defenses against consumers

Chemical defenses against consumers have been hypothesized to be common among marine macro-holoplankton, but few studies have assessed macro-holoplankton susceptibility to predators or the traits affecting palatability. We used generalist fishes to determine the palatability of fresh tissues, freeze-dried homogenates, and chemical extracts from 19 species of macro-holoplankton. Fishes rejected fresh tissues of all the cnidarians, ctenophores, and cyanobacteria we examined but consumed salp and chaetognath tissues. In contrast, fishes consumed homogenates and chemical extracts of all macro-holoplankton except for the cyanobacterium Trichodesmium sp. We examined nematocysts and low nutritional quality as mechanisms causing rejection of fresh tissues. Once nematocysts were deactivated, fishes consumed cnidarian tentacles, indicating that nematocysts served as defenses. The nutritional quality of macro-holoplankton varied almost 500-fold among species and was strongly bimodal, with most macroholoplankton species having ≪0.7 mg soluble protein ml-1 or ≫7 mg ml-1. In laboratory assays, there was a significant positive relationship between the nutritional quality of artificial foods and their acceptability to fishes. In field assays, reef fishes avoided experimental foods that had a protein content similar to low-quality macroholoplankton but fed rapidly on higher quality foods. Furthermore, macro-holoplankton that were high in protein content possessed defensive traits that low-protein species lacked. Although fresh tissues of most macro-holoplankton were rejected by generalist fishes, we found evidence of chemical defense only in a cyanobacterium. Thus, chemical defenses were rare among macro-holoplankton, and rejection for ≫90% of the species we assessed was due to nematocysts or low nutritional quality.
Multistep Phosphorelay Proteins Transmit Oxidative Stress Signals to the Fission Yeast Stress-activated Protein Kinase

In response to oxidative stress, eukaryotic cells induce transcription of genes required for detoxification of oxidants. Here we present evidence that oxidative stress stimuli are transmitted by a multistep phosphorelay system to the Spc1/Sty1 stress-activated protein kinase in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The fission yeast mpr1+ gene encodes a novel protein with a histidine-containing phosphotransfer domain homologous to the budding yeast Ypd1. Spc1 activation upon oxidative stress is severely impaired in the Δmpr1 mutant as well as in the mpr1HQ strain, in which the putative phosphorylation site Mpr1-His221 is substituted with glutamine. In response to oxidative stress, Mpr1 binds to the Mcs4 response regulator that functions upstream of the Spc1 cascade, suggesting that Mcs4 is a cognate response regulator for Mpr1. Unexpectedly, when exposed to hydrogen peroxide, Δmpr1 cells can induce the catalase gene ctt1+, one of the transcriptional targets of the Spc1 pathway, and survive oxidative stress in the absence of significant Spc1 activation. We have found that Pap1, a bZIP transcription factor homologous to human c-Jun, can mediate induction of ctt1+ expression upon oxidative stress independently of the Spc1 stress-activated protein kinase. These studies show that oxidative stress stimuli are transmitted by multiple pathways to induce specific gene expression.
A Pilot Study of the Use of Guided Imagery for the Treatment of Recurrent Abdominal Pain in Children

Few effective therapies are available for children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP). Relaxation and guided imagery have been shown to impact the autonomic nervous system, which is altered in patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders. Ten children with RAP were enrolled in the study after evaluation by a pediatric gastroenterologist. They were trained in relaxation and guided imagery during 4 weekly 50-minute sessions. Pain diaries were completed at 0, 1, and 2 months. Children and parents also completed psychological questionnaires at enrollment. Although refractory to conventional treatment by their physician and pediatric gastroenterologist, the children experienced a 67% decrease in pain during the therapy (chi-square for trend, p < 0.001). No baseline psychological characteristics impacted the response to therapy. The use of relaxation along with guided imagery is an effective and safe treatment for childhood RAP.
Lactoferrin: the path from protein to gene

This review focuses on the basic research that was performed on the lactoferrin protein and gene that was conducted in my laboratory over the past 25 years. This manuscript will outline how we discovered that lactoferrin is a target gene for estrogen, and how the first mouse lactoferrin cDNA, promoter and gene was cloned. Additionally, study was further extended to investigating the human lactoferrin protein and gene. Lastly the expression of lactoferrin in various tissues of both human and rodent under various physiological conditions were examined.
ANALYZING AND DESIGNING THE GROUP COGNITION EXPERIENCE

More than we realize it, knowledge is often constructed through interactions among people in small groups. The Internet, by allowing people to communicate globally in limitless combinations, has opened enormous opportunities for the creation of knowledge and understanding. A major barrier today is the poverty of adequate groupware. To design more powerful software that can facilitate the building of collaborative knowledge, we need to better understand the nature of group cognition — the processes whereby ideas are developed by small groups. We need to analyze interaction at both the individual and the group unit of analysis in order to understand the variety of processes that groupware should be supporting. This paper will look closely at an empirical example of an online group problem-solving experience and suggest implications for groupware design.
Why Communism Collapses: The Moral and Material Failures of Command Economies are Intertwined

Communism is vulgar capitalism; that is, the communist command economy is based on mistaken notions of how capitalism grew by exploiting workers. Command economies not capitalism fulfil Marx's predictions, collapsing because they are unproductive and immoral, basing economic choices on corrupted personal relations. Without competition, decision in command economies are unproductive through negative selection, and immoral, being based on corrupt personal relations. Each and every Marxist and neo-Marxist prediction about capitalism, from commodity fetishism to the alienation of the citizen from the state, comes true under communism. The explanation is straightforward: Marxist assumptions about the state and the economy are far more true for communist than for capitalist countries.
Representative payee programs for persons with mental illness in Illinois

OBJECTIVE: Representative payee programs can improve the community tenure of persons with mental illness by ensuring that their basic needs, such as housing, are met. The authors conducted a survey to assess the extent to which representative payee programs are provided by community mental health centers and the criteria used in enrolling clients in these services. METHODS: Community mental health centers under contract to the Illinois Department of Human Services participated in a census survey. Survey questions concerned provision of representative payee programs, service characteristics, and criteria for enrollment in the programs. RESULTS: Representative payee programs were directly provided by 59 percent of the 95 community mental health centers in the sample. More than a third of clients who were receiving intensive services had a representative payee. More than three times as many such clients had a representative payee when agencies provided representative payee programs directly rather than throu...
Utility of surveillance blood cultures in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Surveillance blood cultures are often obtained in hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) patients for detection of bloodstream infection. The major aims of this retrospective cohort study were to determine the utility of the practice of obtaining surveillance blood cultures from asymptomatic patients during the first 100 post-transplant days and to determine if obtaining more than one positive blood culture helps in the diagnosis of bloodstream infection. We conducted a 17-month retrospective analysis of all blood cultures obtained for patients admitted to the hospital for HSCT from January 2010 to June 2011. Each patient’s clinical course, vital signs, diagnostic testing, treatment, and response to treatment were reviewed. The association between number of positive blood cultures and the final diagnosis was analyzed. Blood culture results for 205 patients were reviewed. Cultures obtained when symptoms of infection were present (clinical cultures) accounted for 1,033 culture sets, whereas 2,474 culture sets were classified as surveillance cultures (no symptoms of infection were present). The total number of positive blood cultures was 185 sets (5.3% of cultures obtained) and accounted for 84 positive culture episodes. Incidence of infection in autologous, related allogeneic and unrelated allogeneic transplants was 8.3%, 20.0%, and 28.6% respectively. Coagulase-negative staphylococci were the most common organisms isolated. Based on our application of predefined criteria there were 29 infections and 55 episodes of positive blood cultures that were not infections. None of the patients who developed infection were diagnosed by surveillance blood cultures. None of the uninfected patients with positive blood cultures showed any clinical changes after receiving antibiotics. There was a significant difference between the incidence of BSI in the first and second 50-day periods post-HSCT. There was no association between the number of positive blood cultures and the final diagnosis. Surveillance blood cultures in patients who have undergone HSCT do not identify bloodstream infections. The number of positive blood cultures was not helpful in determining which patients had infection. Patients are at higher risk of infection in the first 50 days post-transplant period.
REVOLUTIONARY INDUSTRIAL CHANGE IN AIR TRANSPORT — RESEARCH AND STRATEGIC APPLICATION

This paper summarizes and interprets several years of research that considered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's assertion that the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) will become an economical alternative to automobile and airline travel — a radical paradigmatic shift. However, the literature suggests that revolutionary changes to major techno-economic paradigms should not always be made in singular radical disruptions, but rather, through the commercialization of technologies in series of market niches chosen wisely. Therefore, hypothetical SATS aircraft cost and technical performance characteristics were computer-modeled to simulate SATS in the corporate aviation environment, and in the air taxi industry. Results of exploratory research based on these models are reviewed. From the standpoint of traditional Strategic Management theory, implications are offered regarding the successful incubation of this emerging industry.
Manufacturer governance of foreign distributor relationships: do relational norms enhance competitiveness in the export market?

Research on international marketing channels accentuates the importance of relational norms and trust-building activities between buyers and sellers. Indeed, cultural and country differences may limit the use and effectiveness of traditional tools (such as market incentives and authoritative control) that govern the relationship between an exporting manufacturer and its foreign distributor. Consequently, exporting manufacturers need to emphasize relationships with their foreign distributors. This research finds evidence that supports both direct and indirect effects between the manufacturer's use of governance via relational norms and its competitiveness in the export market. The indirect effect results from the mediating role of trust, a finding that makes a key contribution to the understanding of the role of relational governance in cross-border relationships.
432Gbit/s O-OFDM QPSK signal transmission over 400km SMF-28 with EDFA-only amplification

432Gbit/s O-OFDM QPSK transmitter has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. After transmission over 400km standard single-mode fiber (SMF), the measured BER is smaller than 2 × 10−5.
Primary Bone Marrow Progenitors of Both Granulocytic and Monocytic Lineages Are Susceptible to Infection with the Agent of Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis

Human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) is an emerging tickborne infection resulting in an acute febrile illness associated with cytopenias and characteristic intracellular organisms within peripheral blood granulocytes. The etiologic agent of HGE has recently been isolated and cultivated in the HL-60 promyelocytic leukemia cell line, but the spectrum of host cells that it naturally infects remains unknown. To determine if normal hematopoietic progenitors could be targets of infection, CD34 + primary human bone marrow cells, stimulated to differentiate along myelomonocytic lineages, were incubated with the HGE agent. Immature marrow progenitors and, remarkably, not only granulocytic but also CD14 + monocytic cells from these cultures supported replication of the HGE agent, suggesting that all are potential targets of infection in vivo. Infection of bone marrow progenitors may contribute to the hematologic manifestations of HGE. Furthermore, the ability of the agent to interact with monocytes has significant implications regarding disease pathogenesis and host response.
Community Reinvestment: A Review of Urban Outcomes and Challenges

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 was designed to increase the availability of credit and financial services to lower income and minority borrowers and their communities and to improve on the ways that depository institutions approach lending in these communities. This article examines the literature on the effects of the CRA on lending patterns in urban areas and discusses challenges to community reinvestment regulation in the future.
Fun! Fun! Fun! In the User Experience

A funny thing happened to me on the way to writing this chapter. I began to ask myself, what exactly constitutes fun in the user-experience of products and services?
Reason Analysis and Improvement Measures for Crack of Wheel Spads of Wuling mini-truck(D150)

Aiming at the problem of wheel spad cracking of a mini-car arised during the 10 000 km road reliability test,based on the practical investigations and related theories,using finite element software,the strength and stiffness of wheel spad were analyzed.The reasons for crack of wheel spads were found out,the improvement measures,including a reasonable selection of materials,structure-design and welding quality were proposed,the problem of cracking of the wheel spad was completely solved.
Cyclic evasion in the three bug problem

In this note, we present a simple proof that three bugs involved in cyclic evasion converge to an equilateral triangle configuration. The approach relies on an energy-type estimate that makes use o...
Environmental hypotheses of Pliocene human evolution

Substantial evolutionary change in Pliocene hominins affected a suite of behaviors and anatomical features related to mobility, foraging, and diet – all related to the ways in which hominins interacted with their biotic and physical surroundings. The influence of environment on evolutionary change can be stated as a series of hypotheses. Adaptation hypotheses include the following: novel adaptations emerged in hominins and contemporaneous mammals (1) within relatively stable habitats; (2) during progressive shifts from one habitat type to another; and (3) due to significant rises in environmental variability. These ideas further suggest the “adaptability hypothesis”: (4) since adaptations potentially evolved in environmentally stable, progressively changing, or highly variable periods, lineages have differed in their ability to endure environmental fluctuation. Thus, extinction of certain adaptations (and lineages) should have corresponded with heightened environmental variability, while new adaptations evolved during those periods should have enabled a lineage to persist (and spread) through a novel range of habitats. Turnover hypotheses, on the other hand, concern the timing and processes of species origination and extinction in multiple clades. These hypotheses state that species turnover; (5) was concentrated in a narrow interval of time related to a major climate shift; (6) spanned several hundred thousand years of climate change, and occurred in a predictable manner dependent on the nature of species adaptations; and (7) took place gradually over a long period as lineages originated, persisted, or went extinct within a changing mosaic of habitats. A separate, biogeographic hypothesis regarding faunal change posits that; (8) substantial climatic and tectonic disruptions resulted in multiple episodes of faunal community formation (assembly) and breakup (disassembly). This assembly–disassembly process may have had profound effects on Pliocene and Pleistocene faunas of Africa and on researchers’ ability to infer significant events of faunal evolution from fossil sequences at the basin or sub-basin scale. Since all ideas about environmental effects on evolution depend on temporal correlation, an important challenge is to match faunal sampling to the precessional (∼20 Kyr) and obliquity (41 Kyr) scale of Pliocene climate dynamics. Key Events in Pliocene Human Evolution This chapter describes the range of hypotheses that relate early human evolution and environmental change in the Pliocene. Agecalibrated data sets now tell us a lot about African Pliocene environmental dynamics. Yet this information becomes relevant to questions of human origins only if we can identify what the pivotal events of hominin evolution were and when precisely they occurred. Likewise, evaluating how environmental change shaped
Focus: the foundations and future of law, religion and human rights in Africa

The Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR) at the Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, USA, under the auspices of a project titled 'Law, religion and human rights in international perspective', funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, convened a conference on 'Law, religion and human rights in Africa' in Durban, South Africa, from 30 April to 3 May 2008. Participants in the conference included 13 leading religious liberty scholars and activists from nine African countries. The conference was the first of several regional conferences designed to identify ongoing and future problem areas relating to the relationships between church and state and the interaction of religion and law in countries of the world.
Feedback or Research: Separating Pre-purchase from Post-purchase Consumer Reviews

Consumer reviews provide a wealth of information about products and services that, if properly identified and extracted, could be of immense value to businesses. While classification of reviews according to sentiment polarity has been extensively studied in previous work, more focused types of review analysis are needed to assist companies in making business decisions. In this work, we introduce a novel text classification problem of separating post-purchase from pre-purchase review fragments that can facilitate identification of immediate actionable insights based on the feedback from the customers, who actually purchased and own a product. To address this problem, we propose the features, which are based on the dictionaries and part-of-speech (POS) tags. Experimental results on the publicly available gold standard indicate that the proposed features allow to achieve nearly 75 % accuracy for this problem and improve the performance of classifiers relative to using only lexical features.
Evaluation Set Size and Purchase: Evidence from a Product Search Engine ☆

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the popularity of product search engines, yet the analysis of consumer behavior at such sites remains a challenging research problem despite its timeliness and importance. In this article, we develop and estimate a copula model of evaluation set size and purchase behavior employing data from 3,182 hotel searches by customers at a large travel search engine. The model allows us to jointly study purchase behavior, evaluation sets, and their antecedents. Our results reveal that evaluation set size and purchase are negatively correlated and that factors typically presumed to be associated with purchase—i.e., when users sort search results by price or quality, request many rooms, disclose that there are many guests in their party, or arrive from other search engines and/or partner sites—actually relate to larger evaluation sets but lower purchase probability. In contrast, when users filter the search results, we observe smaller evaluation sets and higher purchase probability. The theoretical background and practical implications of our findings suggest that efforts to increase purchases need not necessarily be predicated on cultivating larger evaluation sets.
Identification of rocket‐induced acoustic waves in the ionosphere

Acoustic waves can create plasma disturbances in the ionosphere, but the number of observations is limited. Large amplitude acoustic waves generated by energetic sources like large earthquakes and tsunamis are more readily observed than acoustic waves generated by weaker sources. New observations of plasma displacements caused by rocket-generated acoustic waves were made using the Vertically Incident Pulsed Ionospheric Radar (VIPIR), an advanced high frequency (HF) radar. Rocket-induced acoustic waves which are characterized by low amplitudes relative to those induced by more energetic sources can be detected in the ionosphere using the phase data from fixed frequency radar observations of a plasma layer. This work is important for increasing the number and quality of observations of acoustic waves in the ionosphere and could help improve the understanding of energy transport from the lower atmosphere to the thermosphere.
Richard R. Rubin, PhD: An Ambassador for Behavioral Science in Diabetes.

Richard Roy Rubin, PhD, (“Dick” to many of his friends) was born in Lima, Peru, to Goldie (Possoff) and Morton Rubin. Goldie attended Temple University, while Morton attended Penn State and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he specialized in southern hemisphere weather. Morton’s job of forecasting weather for Pan American-Grace Airways (Panagra) afforded the young couple the opportunity to relocate several times in their early years. They were living in Lima when Richard was born in 1943 and in Santiago, Chile, when Richard's brother John was born in 1946. It was back to the U.S. (Waltham, MA) in 1948, where sister Mary Sue was born the following year. The now-complete family moved to Pretoria, South Africa, in 1954. Mary Sue relates that one of Richard's favorite memories was when Morton took the boys to Kruger National Park, about 250 miles from Pretoria, where they slept in thatched huts and listened to lions, hyenas, and other wildlife throughout the night. Though Morton and Goldie were of Lithuanian and Ukrainian descent and spoke English and Yiddish, all the family members became quite fluent in Spanish during their years in South America. The family came back to the U.S. in 1955 and eventually settled in Bethesda, MD, in 1959. That same year, after 16 months of research in Antarctica, Morton Rubin arrived home to find his 9-year-old daughter in the hospital with a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Richard remembered it as a devastating blow to the family (Mary Sue was the first in her extended family to be diagnosed with the disease [1]). Mary Sue’s diagnosis, and later Richard's own son’s diagnosis, would be reason enough to turn his career path to the field of diabetes. In 1961, Richard moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Initially, …
Multiparticle Systems: Momentum Space Description

In chapter 9, we saw how to use symmetric or antisymmetric tensor products to describe a fixed number of identical quantum systems (for instance, free particles). From very early on in the history of quantum mechanics, it became clear that at least certain kinds of quantum particles, photons, required a formalism that could describe arbitrary numbers of particles, as well as phenomena involving their creation and annihilation. This could be accomplished by thinking of photons as quantized excitations of a classical electromagnetic field. In our modern understanding of fundamental physics, all elementary particles, not just photons, are best described in this way, by quantum theories of fields. For free particles, the necessary theory can be understood as the quantum theory of the harmonic oscillator, but with an infinite number of degrees of freedom, one for each possible value of the momentum (or, Fourier transforming, each possible value of the position).
Intraoperative Assessment of Parathyroid Viability using Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging.

Post-surgical hypoparathyroidism and hypocalcemia are known to occur after nearly 50% of all thyroid surgeries as a result of accidental disruption of blood supply to healthy parathyroid glands, which are responsible for regulating calcium. However, there are currently no clinical methods for accurately identifying compromised glands and the surgeon relies on visual assessment alone to determine if any gland(s) should be excised and auto-transplanted. Here, we present Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) for real-time assessment of parathyroid viability. Taking an experienced surgeon’s visual assessment as the gold standard, LSCI can be used to distinguish between well vascularized (n = 32) and compromised (n = 27) parathyroid glands during thyroid surgery with an accuracy of 91.5%. Ability to detect vascular compromise with LSCI was validated in parathyroidectomies. Results showed that this technique is able to detect parathyroid gland devascularization before it is visually apparent to the surgeon. Measurements can be performed in real-time and without the need to turn off operating room lights. LSCI shows promise as a real-time, contrast-free, objective method for helping reduce hypoparathyroidism after thyroid surgery.
A novel algorithm for optimal matching of elastic shapes with landmark constraints

An important problem in statistical shape analysis is the matching of geometric features across shapes, known as registration. In short, given two objects, one wants to know the correspondence of points on one shape to points on another. Such a matching problem, with various levels of complexity, is present regardless of the shape's mathematical representation. A recent framework for shape analysis of n-dimensional curves combines an infinite-dimensional functional curve representation with landmark information encoding important curve features. In this setting, shape matching is performed by minimizing an objective function with constraints, which respect landmark correspondences. Currently, the minimizer in this approach is found using piecewise dynamic programming; this does not respect the smoothness requirement of the matching function. Thus, the solution is not really a member of the group of registration functions. In this work, we present a landmark-constrained gradient descent algorithm, which searches for a smooth matching function and respects landmark locations. We compare the proposed method to the previously used approach using examples from the MPEG-7 dataset.
The molecular weight of J chains derived from human immunoglobulin M.

J chain was isolated from sulphonated human immunoglobulin M molecules by electrophoresis on polyacrylamide gels. When determined by electrophoresis in sodium dodecyl sulphate–polyacrylamide gels, the molecular weight of the protein was about 27000. After suspension in 5m-guanidine hydrochloride solution for 21 days, two groups of three bands appeared on the gels. Most of the protein dissociated to components of molecular weight 15000. The molecular weight of purified J chain was also determined by ultracentrifugation. In borate–saline solution the average weight-average molecular weight was about 29000. The molecular weight slowly decreased upon prolonged exposure to guanidine hydrochloride, and after 14 days the minimum molecular weight was about 15000. Some association between chains still existed. These data suggest that J chain derived from the paraprotein exists in borate–saline solution as dimers held by strong non-covalent forces.
Transtheoretical Approaches: Treatment Planning and the Initial Interview

Researchers have yet to address every interaction suggested in Paul’s question of what treatment works for whom, but transtheoretical approaches examine some of the permutations: Beutler, Consoli, and Lane (2005) focus on client characteristics, while Prochaska and DiClemente (2005) focus on a client’s readiness for therapy. Both approaches agree integration should be at the level of intervention principles rather than techniques: e.g., Prochaska and DiClemente suggest “that integration across a diversity of therapy systems most likely would occur at an intermediate level of analysis, between theory and techniques” (p. 148).
Trial Consulting and Discrimination Law: An Untapped Opportunity

The intention of this interdisciplinary discussion is to review the logic of the fundamental legal models of discrimination, especially employment discrimination, and identify places in the law where trial consultants can be useful to attorneys who litigate these types of cases. We present to trial consultants the basic outline of employment discrimination and offer to attorneys new ways to think about using trial consultants in discrimination proceedings. This chapter identifies some new and interesting ways in which psychologists can assist attorneys in discrimination proceedings. We distinguish between efforts that are substantive in their contributions, that is, those that may include expert witnesses and those in which social scientists act as more traditional trial consultants. Examples showing how social scientists did act or could have acted as consultants appear within the discussion of each type of discrimination model.
Rortex based velocity gradient tensor decomposition

Recently, a vector named Rortex was proposed to represent the local fluid rotation [C. Liu et al., “Rortex—A new vortex vector definition and vorticity tensor and vector decompositions,” Phys. Fluids 30, 035103 (2018)]. In this paper, a universal Rortex based velocity gradient tensor decomposition is proposed and the relevant local velocity increment decomposition is provided. Vortex structures in boundary layer transition on a flat plate are analyzed to quantify the local rotational, compression-stretching, and shearing effects. The results demonstrate that vorticity is shearing-dominant, while the rotational part or Rortex in general occupies a small part of vorticity in most areas of this case. In other words, vorticity is a quality representing shearing rather than rotation or vortex in most regions of this case.
The rising politics of sea level: demarcating territory in a vertically relative world

Sea level rise has destructive material impacts on coastal communities and low-lying nations. While it is largely perceived and experienced via these impacts, the level of the sea is less often tho...
Classification of Epileptoid Oscillations in EEG Using Shannon’s Entropy Amplitude Probability Distribution

This paper presents an additional tool the authors have developed to continue merging the fields of computational neuroscience with medical based neurodiagnostic clinical research, particularly those associated with machine learning in Big Electroencephalogram (EEG) Data. The authors introduce a means to identify various types of epileptic pathologic oscillations using a parameter based on the Shannon entropy of the probability distribution of the amplitudes within EEG signals. Multiple entropy and entropy-like measures have been explored to aid in epileptic seizure classification including Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, spectral entropy, Renyi entropy, approximate entropy, and equal frequency discretization. Here we propose a more computational efficient measure which calculates a discrete probability distribution directly from the recorded amplitudes of an EEG recording over a specified window and uses an entropy-like calculation to reduce dimensionality.
Sweet corrosion inhibition on carbon steel using waste activated sludge extract

Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) was extracted from waste activated sludge (WAS) and tested as a green corrosion inhibitor on carbon steel in 3.64% NaCl saturated with CO 2 at 25°C using the potentiodynamic polarization scan technique. The inhibition performance was 78.9% with 1000 ppm of inhibitor applied. The corrosion inhibitor preparation was done by heating the WAS followed by freeze-thaw process for five times. The extracted EPS was scanned with FTIR and it was assumed that the major functional groups, O-H, N-H, C-N, $\mathbf{C}=\mathbf{O}$ , and C-H groups, were adsorbed on the metal surface, forming biofilm to slow down corrosion.
Modeling and simulation of carbon composite ballistic and blast behavior

The design of the next generation of aeronautical vehicles is driven by the vastly increased cost of fuel and the resultant imperative for greater fuel efficiency. Carbon fiber composites have been...
The Factor XI Receptor on Collagen Activated Platelets Is gC1qR/P33.

Factor XI (FXI) binds to high affinity sites on the surface of thrombin-stimulated platelets where it is efficiently activated by thrombin. We have previously shown that FXI binding to thrombin-activated platelets is mediated by residues in the FXI Apple 3 (A3) domain interacting with leucine-rich repeat sequences within the NH 2 -terminal globular domain of glycoprotein (GP) Ibα (J. Biol. Chem.277:1662–1668, 2002; J. Biol. Chem.279:45470–45476, 2004; J. Biol. Chem.279:49323–49329, 2004). The cell surface receptor protein gC1qR/P33, expressed on collagen-stimulated platelets, binds FXII and high molecular weight kininogen (HK). We now provide evidence that the FXI binding site on collagen-activated platelets is gC1qR/P33: 1) two anti-gC1qR/P33 mAbs, 60.11 and 74.5.2, inhibited FXI binding to collagen-stimulated platelets whereas SZ-2 (a monoclonal antibody directed against GPIbα) does not; 2) by surface plasmon resonance, FXI was bound specifically to gC1qR/P33 in a Zn 2+ -dependent fashion (K d app ~5 nM); 3) soluble gC1qR/P33 inhibited the binding of FXI to collagen-stimulated platelets with an IC 50 ~10 nM. Optimal binding of FXI to collagen-activated platelets (~1,500 binding sites per platelet; K d ~10 nM) was achieved in the absence of HK. A synthetic peptide comprising residues Asn 235-Arg 266 within the FXI A3 domain inhibited FXI binding to collagen-activated platelets with a K i ~10 nM which is identical to the K d for FXI binding to platelets, whereas A1, A2 and A4 peptides had no effect. We then investigated whether gC1qR/P33 could promote activation of FXI by thrombin or FXIIa. In the presence of Zn 2+ and Ca 2+ ions, and the absence of HK, FXI was activated by thrombin in the presence of gC1qR/P33 at rates comparable to those seen in the presence of thrombin-activated platelets, whereas rates of FXI activation by FXIIa in the presence of gC1qR/P33 were 8-fold lower. Thus, thrombin is the preferred activator of FXI bound to gC1qR/P33. We conclude that whereas FXI binds to GPIbα on thrombin-activated platelets, it binds to gC1qR/P33 on collagen-activated platelets. Finally, we show here that both collagen and vonWillebrand factor can inhibit FXI binding to GPIbα, suggesting that on collagen-activated platelets gC1qR serves as an alternative FXI receptor that promotes FXI activation by thrombin.
Two-Stage Strategy for Development of Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras and its Application for Estrogen Receptor Degraders

Proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) have emerged as useful chemical probes and potential therapeutics by taking advantage of the ubiquitin-proteasome system to degrade intracellular disease-associated proteins. PROTACs are heterobifunctional molecules composed of a target protein ligand, E3 ubiquitin ligase ligand, and a linker between them. The generation of efficient PROTACs requires screening of many parameters, especially the lengths and types of the linkers. We report our proof-of-concept study using a two-stage strategy to facilitate the development of PROTACs against the estrogen receptor (ER). In stage one, a library of close to 100 PROTACs was synthesized by simply mixing a library of ERα ligands containing a hydrazide functional group at different positions with a preassembled library of E3 ligase ligands bearing different types and lengths of linkers with a terminal aldehyde group in a 1:1 ratio. Cell-based screening occurred without further purification, because the formation of the acylhydrazone linkage is highly efficient and produces water as the only byproduct. Compound A3 was the most potent ER degrader in two ER+ cell lines (DC50= ∼ 10 nM, Dmax= ≥ 95%). Stage two involved transformation to a more stable amide linker to generate a more drug-like molecule. The new compound, AM-A3, showed comparable biological activity (DC50 = 1.1 nM, Dmax = 98%) and induced potent antiproliferation (IC50= 13.2 nM, Imax= 69%) in MCF-7. This proof-of -concept study demonstrates that the two-stage strategy can significantly facilitate the development of PROTACs against ER without the tedious process of making large numbers of PROTACs one by one. It has the potential to be expanded to many other targets.
Nitrogen addition does not reduce belowground competition in a salt marsh clonal plant community in Mississippi (USA)

Previous studies have suggested that belowground competition for nutrients influences plant zonation in salt marshes. In this study, I tested the hypothesis that competition for nitrogen structured a clonal plant community in a nitrogen-limited salt marsh in coastal Mississippi, USA. In contrast to most previous field studies that have investigated mechanisms of competition, I examined clonal growth responses of established genets of a nitrogen-demanding low-intertidal species (Spartina alterniflora) to nitrogen addition and the removal of a nitrogen-conserving high-intertidal species (Juncus roemerianus). Nitrogen addition stimulated clonal invasion of the Juncus zone by Spartina but did not reduce the significant competitive effects of Juncus on Spartina. Simulated Juncus shade did not reduce invasion of the Juncus zone by Spartina, indicating that belowground competition reduced clonal invasion. In the last year of the study, the border shifted unexpectedly towards the Spartina zone, resulting in competitive displacement of Spartina by Juncus. Nitrogen addition did not prevent or slow this displacement, further contradicting the nitrogen competition hypothesis. Although growth rates were much more strongly limited by nitrogen in Spartina than in Juncus, nitrogen addition did not cause the displacement of Juncus by Spartina after three growing seasons. I conclude that zonation of Spartina and Juncus is maintained by preemption of space and greater tolerance of low nitrogen supplies by Juncus in the high marsh. These results contrast sharply with findings of reduced belowground competition with nutrient addition in previous studies and highlight the important role of nutrient-mediated competition for space between clonal plants.
Chapter 10 – Discrete and Fast Fourier Transforms (DFT, FFT)

Publisher Summary This chapter opens the discrete and fast Fourier transforms which explains the way sequence of sampled data computes with frequency content sampled data sequence. It shows the powerful tool when it is used in signal processing applications. To understand the functions, the chapter tries to probe deeper in DFT and IDFT equations. Numerous treatments of the equation with different operators help to understand the magnitude of coefficients through various examples. At the end of the chapter, an effort has been made to check the FFTs and how multiplier precision of input can be increased and loss is avoided. Bit reversal addressing is the last discussion that helps on how DSP processors concede to special instructions in supporting FFT implementations.
Hepatic gene therapy for haemophilia B.

Summary. Early retroviral-mediated factor IX gene transfer into deficient dogs showed that constitutive expression of low levels of factor IX which has led to persistent improvement of clinically relevant parameters such as the WBCT and PTT. Conversely, in vivo adenoviral mediated delivery of the factor IX cDNA into hepatocytes of haemophilia B dogs has resulted in greater than wild-type plasma concentrations of clotting factor with complete, albeit transient normalization of haemostasis for a short time. An immune response directed against the vector transduced cells presented a big obstacle to clinical application. However, the future of gene therapy for factor IX deficiency appears bright with the development of fully adenoviral-gene deleted vectors, rAAV and lentiviral vectors which seem to offer safety, therapeutic levels of factor IX and relatively long-term persistence. We must proceed with cautious optimism as these vector systems undergo further scrutiny.
Brick-and-Platform: Listing Labor in the Digital Vintage Economy:

Vintage goods are valued for their nostalgic association with pre-digital modes of production, but their contemporary trafficking is increasingly organized by processes of platformization. The cent...
Elucidating the Influence of Side-Chain Circular Distribution on the Crack Onset Strain and Hole Mobility of Near-Amorphous Indacenodithiophene Copolymers

Poly(indacenodithiophene-benzothiadiazole) has received significant interest because of its exceptional hole mobility despite its near-amorphous thin-film morphology and brittleness at low Mn. In c...
A high efficiency and low vibration liquid nitrogen cooling system for silicon crystal based x-ray optics

A compact low-cost cryocooling system has been designed, constructed, and tested at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The cooling power is provided by natural convection and phase change of the liquid nitrogen. The initial application was to cool silicon crystal optics to the sub-100 K range. A silicon crystal of dimension (width × depth × height) 50 × 50 × 30 mm3 has been used with an electric heater on the top surface in this prototyping test. This system can effectively provide more than 80 W of cooling power to the optics with a consumption of liquid nitrogen less than 2.1 l/h. The vibration of the silicon crystal was monitored during the tests with added electric heater power on the crystal. The vibration of the silicon crystal due to liquid nitrogen boiling is negligible.