cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Realtime State Estimation with Tactile and Visual Sensing for Inserting a Suction-held Object

We develop a real-time state estimation system to recover the pose and contact formation of an object relative to its environment. In this paper, we focus on the application of inserting an object picked by a suction cup into a tight space, a key technology for robotic packaging. We propose a framework that fuses tactile and visual sensing. Visual sensing is versatile and non-intrusive, but suffers from occlusions and limited accuracy, especially for tasks involving contact. Tactile sensing is local, but provides accuracy and robustness to occlusions. The proposed algorithm to fuse them is based on iSAM, an on-line estimation technique, which we use to incorporate kinematic measurements from the robot, contact geometry of the object and the container, and visual tracking. In this paper, we generalize previous results in planar settings [1] to a 3D task with more complex contact interactions. A key challenge is that we do not observe contact locations between the suction-held object and the container directly. We propose a data-driven method to infer the contact formation, which is then used in real-time by the state estimator. We demonstrate and evaluate the algorithm in a setup instrumented to provide groundtruth.
Personalized Donor-Recipient Matching for Organ Transplantation

Organ transplants can improve the life expectancy and quality of life for the recipient but carry the risk of serious post-operative complications, such as septic shock and organ rejection. The probability of a successful transplant depends in a very subtle fashion on compatibility between the donor and the recipient - but current medical practice is short of domain knowledge regarding the complex nature of recipient-donor compatibility. Hence a data-driven approach for learning compatibility has the potential for significant improvements in match quality. This paper proposes a novel system (ConfidentMatch) that is trained using data from electronic health records. ConfidentMatch predicts the success of an organ transplant (in terms of the 3-year survival rates) on the basis of clinical and demographic traits of the donor and recipient. ConfidentMatch captures the heterogeneity of the donor and recipient traits by optimally dividing the feature space into clusters and constructing different optimal predictive models to each cluster. The system controls the complexity of the learned predictive model in a way that allows for assuring more granular and accurate predictions for a larger number of potential recipient-donor pairs, thereby ensuring that predictions are "personalized" and tailored to individual characteristics to the finest possible granularity. Experiments conducted on the UNOS heart transplant dataset show the superiority of the prognostic value of ConfidentMatch to other competing benchmarks; ConfidentMatch can provide predictions of success with 95% accuracy for 5,489 patients of a total population of 9,620 patients, which corresponds to 410 more patients than the most competitive benchmark algorithm (DeepBoost).
Exceptional sequences and clusters

Abstract We show that exceptional sequences for hereditary algebras are characterized by the fact that the product of the corresponding reflections is the inverse Coxeter element in the Weyl group. We use this result to give a new combinatorial characterization of clusters tilting sets in the cluster category in the case where the hereditary algebra is of finite type.
Asynchronous Neighbor Discovery Using Coupled Compressive Sensing

The neighbor discovery paradigm finds wide application in Internet of Things networks, where the number of active devices is orders of magnitude smaller than the total device population. Designing low-complexity schemes for asynchronous neighbor discovery has recently gained significant attention from the research community. Concurrently, a divide-and-conquer framework, referred to as coupled compressive sensing, has been introduced for the synchronous massive random access channel. This work adapts this novel algorithm to the problem of asynchronous neighbor discovery with unknown transmission delays. Simulation results suggest that the proposed scheme requires much fewer transmissions to achieve a performance level akin to that of state-of-the-art techniques.
Deciphering solar magnetic activity: on grand minima in solar activity

The Sun provides the energy necessary to sustain our existence. While the Sun provides for us, it is also capable of taking away. The weather and climatic scales of solar evolution and the Sun-Earth connection are not well understood. There has been tremendous progress in the century since the discovery of solar magnetism - magnetism that ultimately drives the electromagnetic, particulate and eruptive forcing of our planetary system. There is contemporary evidence of a decrease in solar magnetism, perhaps even indicators of a significant downward trend, over recent decades. Are we entering a minimum in solar activity that is deeper and longer than a typical solar minimum, a "grand minimum"? How could we tell if we are? What is a grand minimum and how does the Sun recover? These are very pertinent questions for modern civilization. In this paper we present a hypothetical demonstration of entry and exit from grand minimum conditions based on a recent analysis of solar features over the past 20 years and their possible connection to the origins of the 11(-ish) year solar activity cycle.
What the collapse of the ensemble Kalman filter tells us about particle filters

The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is a reliable data assimilation tool for high-dimensional meteorological problems. On the other hand, the EnKF can be interpreted as a particle filter, and particle filters (PF) collapse in high-dimensional problems. We explain that these seemingly contradictory statements offer insights about how PF function in certain high-dimensional problems, and in particular support recent efforts in meteorology to ‘localize’ particle filters, i.e. to restrict the influence of an observation to its neighbourhood.
Spaces with complexity one

An $A$-cellular space is a space built from $A$ and its suspensions, analogously to the way that $CW$-complexes are built from $S^0$ and its suspensions. The $A$-cellular approximation of a space $X$ is an $A$-cellular space $CW_{A}X$ which is closest to $X$ among all $A$-cellular spaces. The $A$-complexity of a space $X$ is an ordinal number that quantifies how difficult it is to build an $A$-cellular approximation of $X$. In this paper, we study spaces with low complexity. In particular we show that if $A$ is a sphere localized at a set of primes then the $A$-complexity of each space $X$ is at most 1.
Botnet detection using social graph analysis

Signature-based botnet detection methods identify botnets by recognizing Command and Control (C&C) traffic and can be ineffective for botnets that use new and sophisticate mechanisms for such communications. To address these limitations, we propose a novel botnet detection method that analyzes the social relationships among nodes. The method consists of two stages: (i) anomaly detection in an "interaction" graph among nodes using large deviations results on the degree distribution, and (ii) community detection in a social "correlation" graph whose edges connect nodes with highly correlated communications. The latter stage uses a refined modularity measure and formulates the problem as a non-convex optimization problem for which appropriate relaxation strategies are developed. We apply our method to real-world botnet traffic and compare its performance with other community detection methods. The results show that our approach works effectively and the refined modularity measure improves the detection accuracy.
Truncated abelian lattice-ordered groups II: the pointfree (Madden) representation

Abstract This is the second of three articles on the topic of truncation as an operation on divisible abelian lattice-ordered groups, or simply l-groups. This article uses the notation and terminology of the first article and assumes its results. In particular, we refer to an l-group with truncation as a truncated l-group, or simply a trunc, and denote the category of truncs with truncation homomorphisms by AT. Here we develop the analog for AT of Madden's pointfree representation for W, the category of archimedean l-groups with designated order unit. More explicitly, for every archimedean trunc A there is a regular Lindelof frame L equipped with a designated point ⁎ : L → 2 , a subtrunc A ˆ of R 0 L , the trunc of pointed frame maps O 0 R → L , and a trunc isomorphism A → A ˆ . A pointed frame map is just a frame map between frames which commutes with their designated points, and O 0 R stands for the pointed frame which is the topology O R of the real numbers equipped with the frame map of the insertion 0 → R . ( L , ⁎ ) is unique up to pointed frame isomorphism with respect to its properties. Finally, we reprove an important result from the first article, namely that W is a non-full monoreflective subcategory of AT.
Autoduality of compactified Jacobians for curves with plane singularities

Let C be an integral projective curve with planar singularities. Consider its Jacobian J and the compactified Jacobian J'. We construct a flat family P of Cohen-Macaulay sheaves on J' parametrized by J'; over J, the family P is the Poincare line bundle. We prove that the Fourier-Mukai transform given by P is an auto-equivalence of the derived category of J'.
A putative enoyl-CoA hydratase contributes to biofilm formation and the antibiotic tolerance of Achromobacter xylosoxidans

Achromobacter xylosoxidans has attracted increasing attention as an emerging pathogen in patients with cystic fibrosis. Intrinsic resistance to several classes of antimicrobials and the ability to form robust biofilms in vivo contribute to the clinical manifestations of persistent A. xylosoxidans infection. Still, much of A. xylosoxidans biofilm formation remains uncharacterized due to the scarcity of existing genetic tools. Here we demonstrate a promising genetic system for use in A. xylosoxidans; generating a transposon mutant library which was then used to identify genes involved in biofilm development in vitro. We further described the effects of one of the genes found in the mutagenesis screen, encoding a putative enoyl-CoA hydratase, on biofilm structure and tolerance to antimicrobials. Through additional analysis, we find that a fatty acid signaling compound is essential to A. xylosoxidans biofilm ultrastructure and maintenance. This work describes methods for the genetic manipulation of A. xylosoxidans and demonstrated their use to improve our understanding of A. xylosoxidans pathophysiology.
Miltefosine increases macrophage cholesterol release and inhibits NLRP3-inflammasome assembly and IL-1β release.

Miltefosine is an FDA approved oral drug for treating cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis. Leishmania is a flagellated protozoa, which infects and differentiates in macrophages. Here, we studied the effects of Miltefosine on macrophage’s lipid homeostasis, autophagy, and NLRP3 inflammasome assembly/activity. Miltefosine treatment conferred multiple effects on macrophage lipid homeostasis leading to increased cholesterol release from cells, increased lipid-raft disruption, decreased phosphatidylserine (PS) flip from the cell-surface, and redistribution of phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) from the plasma membrane to actin rich regions in the cells. Enhanced basal autophagy, lipophagy and mitophagy was observed in cells treated with Miltefosine vs. control. Miltefosine treated cells showed marked increased in phosphorylation of kinases involved in autophagy induction such as; Adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and Unc-51 like autophagy activating kinase (ULK1). The Toll like receptor (TLR) signaling pathway was blunted by Miltefosine treatment, resulting in decreased TLR4 recruitment to cell-surface and ~75% reduction in LPS induced pro-IL-1β mRNA levels. Miltefosine reduced endotoxin-mediated mitochondrial reactive oxygen species and protected the mitochondrial membrane potential. Miltefosine treatment induced mitophagy and dampened NLRP3 inflammasome assembly. Collectively, our data shows that Miltefosine induced ABCA1 mediated cholesterol release, induced AMPK phosphorylation and mitophagy, while dampening NLRP3 inflammasome assembly and IL-1β release.
On fast convergence of proximal algorithms for SQRT-lasso optimization: Don’t worry about its nonsmooth loss function

Many machine learning techniques sacrifice convenient computational structures to gain estimation robustness and modeling flexibility. However, by exploring the modeling structures, we find these "sacrifices" do not always require more computational efforts. To shed light on such a "free-lunch" phenomenon, we study the square-root-Lasso (SQRT-Lasso) type regression problem. Specifically, we show that the nonsmooth loss functions of SQRT-Lasso type regression ease tuning effort and gain adaptivity to inhomogeneous noise, but is not necessarily more challenging than Lasso in computation. We can directly apply proximal algorithms (e.g. proximal gradient descent, proximal Newton, and proximal Quasi-Newton algorithms) without worrying the nonsmoothness of the loss function. Theoretically, we prove that the proximal algorithms combined with the pathwise optimization scheme enjoy fast convergence guarantees with high probability. Numerical results are provided to support our theory.
On the Braverman–Kazhdan proposal for local factors : spherical case

In this paper, we study the Braverman-Kazhdan proposal for the local spherical situation. In the $p$-adic case, we give a definition of the spherical component of conjectural space $S_{\rho}(G,K)$ and the $\rho$-Fourier transform kernel $\Phi^{K}_{\rho}$, and verify several conjectures in [BK00] in this situation. In the archimedean case, we study the asymptotic of the basic function $1_{\rho,s}$ and the $\rho$-Fourier transform kernel $\Phi^{K}_{\rho,s}$.
Archive assisted archival fixity verification framework

The number of public and private web archives has increased, and we implicitly trust content delivered by these archives. Fixity is checked to ensure an archived resource has remained unaltered since the time it was captured. Some web archives do not allow users to access fixity information and, more importantly, even if fixity information is available, it is provided by the same archive from which the archived resources are requested. In this research, we propose two approaches, namely Atomic and Block, to establish and check fixity of archived resources. In the Atomic approach, the fixity information of each archived web page is stored in a JSON file (or a manifest), and published in a well-known web location (an Archival Fixity server) before it is disseminated to several on-demand web archives. In the Block approach, we first batch together fixity information of multiple archived pages in a single binary-searchable file (or a block) before it is published and disseminated to archives. In both approaches, the fixity information is not obtained directly from archives. Instead, we compute the fixity information (e.g., hash values) based on the playback of archived resources. One advantage of the Atomic approach is the ability to verify fixity of archived pages even with the absence of the Archival Fixity server. The Block approach requires pushing fewer resources into archives, and it performs fixity verification faster than the Atomic approach. On average, it takes about 1.25X, 4X and 36X longer to disseminate a manifest to perma.cc, archive.org, and webcitation.org, respectively, than archive.is, while it takes 3.5X longer to disseminate a block to archive.org than perma.cc. The Block approach performs 4.46X faster than the Atomic approach on verifying the fixity of archived pages.
Towards Bit-Width-Independent Proofs in SMT Solvers

Many SMT solvers implement efficient SAT-based procedures for solving fixed-size bit-vector formulas. These approaches, however, cannot be used directly to reason about bit-vectors of symbolic bit-width. To address this shortcoming, we propose a translation from bit-vector formulas with parametric bit-width to formulas in a logic supported by SMT solvers that includes non-linear integer arithmetic, uninterpreted functions, and universal quantification. While this logic is undecidable, this approach can still solve many formulas by capitalizing on advances in SMT solving for non-linear arithmetic and universally quantified formulas. We provide several case studies in which we have applied this approach with promising results, including the bit-width independent verification of invertibility conditions, compiler optimizations, and bit-vector rewrites.
A way around the exploration-exploitation dilemma

The exploration-exploitation dilemma is a fundamental but intractable problem in the learning and decision sciences. In this problem the goal of exploration and exploitation is to maximize reward. Here we challenge this basic form. We conjecture the dilemma can be viewed as a competition between exploiting known rewards or exploring to learn a world model, a simplified concept of memory borrowed from computer science. We prove this competition is tractable. It can be solved by a simple greedy algorithm. And this solution has the properties expected of an optimal solution to original dilemma--finding maximum value with no regret.
Applications of Multimode Fibers for Spectroscopy and Polarization Control

A multimode-fiber-based spectrometer is developed with ultrahigh resolution and extremely broad bandwidth. Shaping the input wavefront of a coherent beam enables an effective control of output polarization states of a multimode fiber.
Visual dynamics cues in learning complex physical interactions.

This study investigated the role of visual dynamics cues (VDCs) in learning to interact with a complex physical system. Manual gait training was used as an exemplary case, as it requires therapists to control the non-trivial locomotor dynamics of patients. A virtual analog was developed that allowed naive subjects to manipulate the leg of a virtual stroke survivor (a virtual patient; VP) walking on a treadmill using a small robotic manipulandum. The task was to make the VP’s leg pass through early, mid, and late swing gait targets. One group of subjects (n = 17) started practice seeing the VP’s affected thigh and shank (i.e., VDCs); a second control group (n = 16) only saw the point-of-contact (VP ankle). It was hypothesized that, if seeing the VP’s leg provides beneficial dynamics information, the VDC group would have better task performance and generalization than controls. Results were not supportive. Both groups had similar task performance, and for the late swing gait target, a decrement in manipulative accuracy was observed when VDCs were removed in a generalization task. This suggests that when learning to manipulate complex dynamics, VDCs can create a dependency that negatively affects generalization if the visual context is changed.
Spatial Soft-Core Caching

We propose a decentralized spatial soft-core cache placement (SSCC) policy for wireless networks. SSCC yields a spatially balanced sampling via negative dependence across caches, and can be tuned to satisfy cache size constraints with high probability. Given a desired cache hit probability, we compare the 95% confidence intervals of the required cache sizes for independent placement, hard-core placement and SSCC policies. We demonstrate that in terms of the required cache storage size, SSCC can provide up to more than 180% and 100% gains with respect to the independent and hard-core placement policies, respectively. SSCC can be used to enable proximity-based applications such as device-to-device communications and peer-to-peer networking as it promotes the item diversity and reciprocation among the nodes.
Angiogenin generates specific stress-induced tRNA halves and is not involved in tRF-3–mediated gene silencing

tRNA fragments (tRFs) and tRNA halves have been implicated in various cellular processes, including gene silencing, translation, stress granule assembly, cell differentiation, retrotransposon activity, symbiosis, apoptosis, and more. Overexpressed angiogenin (ANG) cleaves tRNA anticodons and produces tRNA halves similar to those produced in response to stress. However, it is not clear whether endogenous ANG is essential for producing the stress-induced tRNA halves. It is also not clear whether smaller tRFs are generated from the tRNA halves. Here, using global short RNA-Seq approach, we found that ANG overexpression selectively cleaves a subset of tRNAs, including tRNAGlu, tRNAGly, tRNALys, tRNAVal, tRNAHis, tRNAAsp, and tRNASeC to produce tRNA halves and tRF-5s that are 26–30 bases long. Surprisingly, ANG knockout revealed that the majority of stress-induced tRNA halves, except for the 5′ half from tRNAHisGTG and the 3′ half from tRNAAspGTC, are ANG independent, suggesting there are other RNases that produce tRNA halves. We also found that the 17–25 bases–long tRF-3s and tRF-5s that could enter into Argonaute complexes are not induced by ANG overexpression, suggesting that they are generated independently from tRNA halves. Consistent with this, ANG knockout did not decrease tRF-3 levels or gene-silencing activity. We conclude that ANG cleaves specific tRNAs and is not the only RNase that creates tRNA halves and that the shorter tRFs are not generated from the tRNA halves or from independent tRNA cleavage by ANG.
Climate Change, Innovation, and Economic Growth: The Contributions of William Nordhaus and Paul Romer

William Nordhaus and Paul Romer shared the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work on long-run macroeconomic analysis. Nordhaus adapted the neocla...
Exploring the dynamics in the environmental discourse: the longitudinal interaction among public opinion, presidential opinion, media coverage, policymaking in 3 decades and an integrated model of media effects

Using data on environmental issues drawn from 41 series of poll questions and federal outlay in 43 years (1965–2007) and a content analysis of newspaper articles, television news summaries, and presidential documents in 28 years (1980–2007), with the multivariate Granger causality test based on vector autoregression models and bivariate Granger causality (F and χ2) tests, the study finds that public opinion has little influences on federal environmental expenditure in the past several decades, if the interaction from the president and the media is also considered in the analysis. It also finds that for the presidents, the media, and the public, their agendas (volume of information) cause a change in their attitudes (tone toward the environment) and that the casualties in the agenda and frame building and setting processes are essentially confirmed with the multivariate test, but feedback influences are also identified through the bivariate tests. The multivariate test also shows an influence from the presidential agenda to the public agenda on environmental issues, with no influence identified the other way around. The implications of the proposed five-level integrated model of media effects are also discussed.
The Role of Prostate Specific Antigen Monitoring after Holmium Laser Enucleation of the Prostate.

Purpose:Prostate specific antigen screening for prostate cancer has recently been challenged due to poor sensitivity. In addition to prostate cancer, a number of conditions elevate prostate specifi...
Mitochondrial-specific autophagy linked to mitochondrial dysfunction following traumatic freeze injury in mice.

The objective of this study was to interrogate the link between mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial-specific autophagy in skeletal muscle. C57BL/6J mice were used to establish a time course...
More nonabelian mirrors and some two-dimensional dualities

In this paper, we extend the non-Abelian mirror proposal of two of the authors from two-dimensional gauge theories with connected gauge groups to the case of O(k) gauge groups with discrete theta a...
Lelong numbers of bidegree (1, 1) currents on multiprojective spaces

Let T be a positive closed current of bidegree (1, 1) on a multiprojective space \(X={\mathbb P}^{n_1}\times \cdots \times {{\mathbb {P}}}^{n_k}\). For certain values of \(\alpha \), which depend on the cohomology class of T, we show that the set of points of X where the Lelong numbers of T exceed \(\alpha \) have certain geometric properties. We also describe the currents T that have the largest possible Lelong number in a given cohomology class, and the set of points where this number is assumed.
A regularization approach for solving Poisson’s equation with singular charge sources and diffuse interfaces

Abstract Singular charge sources in terms of Dirac delta functions present a well-known numerical challenge for solving Poisson’s equation. For a sharp interface between inhomogeneous media, singular charges could be analytically treated by fundamental solutions or regularization methods. However, no analytical treatment is known in the literature in case of a diffuse interface of complex shape. This letter reports the first such regularization method that represents the Coulomb potential component analytically by Green’s functions to account for singular charges. The other component, i.e., the reaction field potential, then satisfies a regularized Poisson equation with a smooth source and the original elliptic operator. The regularized equation can then be simply solved by any numerical method. By considering two benchmark problems, the proposed regularization method is numerically validated and compared with a semi-analytical quasi-harmonic method.
Antibody cross-reactivity accounts for widespread appearance of m 1 A in 5'UTRs

N1-methyladenosine (m1A) was proposed to be a highly prevalent modification in mRNA 5’UTRs based on mapping studies using an m1A-binding antibody. We developed a bioinformatic approach to discover m1A and other modifications in mRNA throughout the transcriptome by analyzing preexisting ultra-deep RNA-Seq data for modification-induced misincorporations. Using this approach, we detected appreciable levels of m1A only in one mRNA: the mitochondrial MT-ND5 transcript. As an alternative approach, we also developed an antibody-based m1A-mapping approach to detect m1A at single-nucleotide resolution, and confirmed that the commonly used m1A antibody maps sites to the transcription-start site in mRNA 5’UTRs. However, further analysis revealed that these were false-positives caused by binding of the antibody to the m7G-cap. A different m1A antibody that lacks cap-binding cross-reactivity does not show enriched binding in 5’UTRs. These results demonstrate that high-stoichiometry m1A sites are exceedingly rare in mRNAs and that previous mappings of m1A to 5’UTRs were the result of antibody cross-reactivity to the 5’ cap. N1-methyladenosine (m1A) was recently reported as a new mRNA modification but its prevalence has been controversial. Here the authors showed that m1A, if present in mRNA, is at very low stoichiometry, with the notable exception of MT-ND5. Further, they show that the previously reported enrichment of m1A near the start of transcripts are false-positive identifications due to cross-reactivity of the commonly used m1A antibody with mRNA caps.
Time series experimental design under one-shot sampling: The importance of condition diversity

Many biological data sets are prepared using one-shot sampling, in which each individual organism is sampled at most once. Time series therefore do not follow trajectories of individuals over time. However, samples collected at different times from individuals grown under the same conditions share the same perturbations of the biological processes, and hence behave as surrogates for multiple samples from a single individual at different times. This implies the importance of growing individuals under multiple conditions if one-shot sampling is used. This paper models the condition effect explicitly by using condition-dependent nominal mRNA production amounts for each gene, it quantifies the performance of network structure estimators both analytically and numerically, and it illustrates the difficulty in network reconstruction under one-shot sampling when the condition effect is absent. A case study of an Arabidopsis circadian clock network model is also included.
Phonetic differences in glottalic consonants

Abstract: Data on glottalic consonants in a number of languages were examined. Data on implosives come from Hausa, Degema, and three Eastern Ịjọ languages, all spoken in Nigeria. Ejective data come from Hausa and Navaho. The implosives in Degema and the Ịjọ languages are similar. They show a strong positive correlation between the closure duration and the intensity of implosion (r = 0.9; p
Imaginary cone and reflection subgroups of Coxeter groups

The imaginary cone of a Kac-Moody Lie algebra is the convex hull of zero and the positive imaginary roots. This paper studies the imaginary cone for a class of root systems of general Coxeter groups W. It is shown that the imaginary cone of a reflection subgroup of W is contained in that of W, and that for irreducible infinite W of finite rank, the closed imaginary cone is the only non-zero, closed, pointed W-stable cone contained in the pointed cone spanned by the simple roots. For W of finite rank, various natural notions of faces of the imaginary cone are shown to coincide, the face lattice is explicitly described in terms of the lattice of facial reflection subgroups and it is shown that the Tits cone and imaginary cone are related by a duality closely analogous to the standard duality for polyhedral cones, even though neither of them is a closed cone in general. Some of these results have application, to be given in sequels to this paper, to dominance order of Coxeter groups, associated automata, and construction of modules for generic Iwahori-Hecke algebras.
Association of pubovisceral muscle tear with functional capacity of urethral closure: evaluating maternal recovery from labor and delivery.

Abstract Background Vaginal birth is a risk factor for pubovisceral muscle tear, decreased urethral closure pressure, and urinary incontinence. The relationship between these three factors is complicated. Urinary continence relies on maintaining urethral closure pressure; particularly when low urethral closure pressure can usefully be augmented by a volitional pelvic muscle (Kegel) contraction just before and during stress events like a cough. However, it is unknown whether a torn pubovisceral muscle decreases the ability to increase urethral closure during an attempted pelvic muscle contraction. Objective We tested the null hypothesis that a pubovisceral muscle tear does not affect the ability to increase urethral closure pressure during a volitional pelvic muscle contraction in the Evaluating Maternal Recovery from Labor and Delivery (EMRLD) study. Study Design We studied 56 women 8 months after their first vaginal birth. All had at least one risk factor for pubovisceral muscle tear (e.g., forceps and long 2nd stage). A tear was assessed bilaterally by magnetic resonance imaging. Urethral closure pressure was measured both at rest and during an attempted volitional pelvic muscle contraction. Student’s t test was used to compare urethral closure pressures. Multiple linear regression was used to estimate the effect of a magnetic resonance imaging-confirmed pubovisceral muscle tear on volitionally contracted urethral closure pressure after adjusting for resting urethral closure pressure. Results The mean age was just over 30 years with the majority being Caucasian. By magnetic resonance imaging measure, unadjusted for other factors, the 21 women with tear had significantly lower urethral closure pressure during an attempted contraction compared to the 35 women without tear (65.9 vs 86.8 cm H2O respectively, P=.004), leading us to reject the null hypothesis. No significant group difference was found in resting urethral closure pressure. After adjusting for resting urethral closure pressure, pubovisceral muscle tear was associated with lower urethral closure pressure (beta = - 21.1, P=.001). Conclusions In the first postpartum year the presence of a pubovisceral muscle tear did not influence resting urethral closure. However, women with a pubovisceral muscle tear achieved a 25% lower urethral closure pressure during an attempted pelvic muscle contraction than those without a pubovisceral muscle tear. These women with pubovisceral muscle tear may not respond to classic behavioral interventions, such as “squeeze when you sneeze” or strengthen through repetitive pelvic muscle exercises. When a rapid rise to maximum urethral pressure is used as a conscious volitional maneuver, it appears to be reliant on ability to recruit the intact pubovisceral muscle in order to simultaneously contract the urethral striated muscle.
Strangeness production via parton cascade

We study pre-equilibrium strangeness production at RHIC energies in a new parton cascade. Starting with the turbulent glue HIJING initial conditions we investigate the interplay between mini-jet and soft beam jet gluons for strangeness production prior to hadronization, and show the importance of soft beam jet gluons in the strangeness production.
Invariant Metrics on the Complex Ellipsoid

We provide a class of geometric convex domains on which the Caratheodory–Reiffen metric, the Bergman metric, the complete Kahler–Einstein metric of negative scalar curvature are uniformly equivalent, but not proportional to each other. In a two-dimensional case, we provide a full description of curvature tensors of the Bergman metric on the weakly pseudoconvex boundary point and show that invariant metrics are proportional to each other if and only if the geometric convex domain is the Euclidean ball.
An ultrasensitive fiveplex activity assay for cellular kinases.

Protein kinases are enzymes whose abundance, protein-protein interactions, and posttranslational modifications together determine net signaling activity in cells. Large-scale data on cellular kinase activity are limited, because existing assays are cumbersome, poorly sensitive, low throughput, and restricted to measuring one kinase at a time. Here, we surmount the conventional hurdles of activity measurement with a multiplexing approach that leverages the selectivity of individual kinase-substrate pairs. We demonstrate proof of concept by designing an assay that jointly measures activity of five pleiotropic signaling kinases: Akt, IκB kinase (IKK), c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-extracellular regulated kinase kinase (MEK), and MAPK-activated protein kinase-2 (MK2). The assay operates in a 96-well format and specifically measures endogenous kinase activation with coefficients of variation less than 20%. Multiplex tracking of kinase-substrate pairs reduces input requirements by 25-fold, with ~75 µg of cellular extract sufficient for fiveplex activity profiling. We applied the assay to monitor kinase signaling during coxsackievirus B3 infection of two different host-cell types and identified multiple differences in pathway dynamics and coordination that warrant future study. Because the Akt–IKK–JNK–MEK–MK2 pathways regulate many important cellular functions, the fiveplex assay should find applications in inflammation, environmental-stress, and cancer research.
ALBERT: A Lite BERT for Self-supervised Learning of Language Representations

Increasing model size when pretraining natural language representations often results in improved performance on downstream tasks. However, at some point further model increases become harder due to GPU/TPU memory limitations, longer training times, and unexpected model degradation. To address these problems, we present two parameter-reduction techniques to lower memory consumption and increase the training speed of BERT. Comprehensive empirical evidence shows that our proposed methods lead to models that scale much better compared to the original BERT. We also use a self-supervised loss that focuses on modeling inter-sentence coherence, and show it consistently helps downstream tasks with multi-sentence inputs. As a result, our best model establishes new state-of-the-art results on the GLUE, RACE, and SQuAD benchmarks while having fewer parameters compared to BERT-large.
Intriguing Properties of Adversarial Training at Scale

Adversarial training is one of the main defenses against adversarial attacks. In this paper, we provide the first rigorous study on diagnosing elements of large-scale adversarial training on ImageNet, which reveals two intriguing properties. First, we study the role of normalization. Batch normalization (BN) is a crucial element for achieving state-of-the-art performance on many vision tasks, but we show it may prevent networks from obtaining strong robustness in adversarial training. One unexpected observation is that, for models trained with BN, simply removing clean images from training data largely boosts adversarial robustness, i.e., 18.3%. We relate this phenomenon to the hypothesis that clean images and adversarial images are drawn from two different domains. This two-domain hypothesis may explain the issue of BN when training with a mixture of clean and adversarial images, as estimating normalization statistics of this mixture distribution is challenging. Guided by this two-domain hypothesis, we show disentangling the mixture distribution for normalization, i.e., applying separate BNs to clean and adversarial images for statistics estimation, achieves much stronger robustness. Additionally, we find that enforcing BNs to behave consistently at training and testing can further enhance robustness. Second, we study the role of network capacity. We find our so-called "deep" networks are still shallow for the task of adversarial learning. Unlike traditional classification tasks where accuracy is only marginally improved by adding more layers to "deep" networks (e.g., ResNet-152), adversarial training exhibits a much stronger demand on deeper networks to achieve higher adversarial robustness. This robustness improvement can be observed substantially and consistently even by pushing the network capacity to an unprecedented scale, i.e., ResNet-638.
Nanostructured Materials:Reaction Kinetics and Stability

An important consequence of the expanding study of the nanocrystalline state is the recognition of new behavior that is exposed at the nanometer length scale, but this also requires the recognition of the scaling of conventional behavior. The synthesis pathways further emphasize the importance of reaction kinetics and especially nucleation processes where the nanometer length scale is central to the kinetics. Similarly, the observed phase selection during nanostructure synthesis is often different than that expected from the thermodynamics of bulk phase stability, but can be analyzed in terms of a scaling of the hierarchy of equilibrium and the influence of large characteristic driving free energies. At the same time, the reaction pathways that yield different phase states and microstructures can be described in terms of open or closed system conditions that reflect the manner in which the excess free energy is developed during synthesis. The principles that govern the genesis of nanostructured materials and the key issues concerning the reaction kinetics and stability are illustrated from the observed behavior in specific amorphous alloys, but the treatment also applies in general to materials systems.
Mating Behavioral Function of Preoptic Galanin Neurons Is Shared between Fish with Alternative Male Reproductive Tactics and Tetrapods

Understanding the contribution of neuropeptide-containing neurons to variation in social behavior remains critically important. Galanin has gained increased attention because of the demonstration that galanin neurons in the preoptic area (POA) promote mating and parental care in mammals. How widespread these mechanisms are among vertebrates essentially remains unexplored, especially among teleost fishes, which comprise nearly one-half of living vertebrate species. Teleosts with alternative reproductive tactics exhibit stereotyped patterns of social behavior that diverge widely between individuals within a sex. This includes midshipman that have two male morphs. Type I males mate using either acoustic courtship to attract females to enter a nest they guard or cuckoldry during which they steal fertilizations from a nest-holding male using a sneak or satellite spawning tactic, whereas type II males only cuckold. Using the neural activity marker phospho-S6, we show increased galanin neuron activation in courting type I males during mating that is not explained by their courtship vocalizations, parental care of eggs, or nest defense against cuckolders. This increase is not observed during mating in cuckolders of either morph or females (none of which show parental care). Together with their role in mating in male mammals, the results demonstrate an unexpectedly specific and deep-rooted, phylogenetically shared behavioral function for POA galanin neurons. The results also point to galanin-dependent circuitry as a potential substrate for the evolution of divergent phenotypes within one sex and provide new functional insights into how POA populations in teleosts compare to the POA and anterior hypothalamus of tetrapods.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Studies of neuropeptide regulation of vertebrate social behavior have mainly focused on the vasopressin-oxytocin family. Recently, galanin has received attention as a regulator of social behavior largely because of studies demonstrating that galanin neurons in the preoptic area (POA) promote mating and parental care in mammals. Species with alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) exhibit robust, consistent differences in behavioral phenotypes between individuals within a sex. Taking advantage of this trait, we show POA galanin neurons are specifically active during mating in one of two male reproductive tactics, but not other mating-related behaviors in a fish with ARTs. The results demonstrate a deep, phylogenetically shared role for POA galanin neurons in reproductive-related social behaviors with implications for the evolution of ARTs.
Ethnic attrition, assimilation, and the measured health outcomes of Mexican Americans

The literature on immigrant assimilation and intergenerational progress has sometimes reached surprising conclusions, such as the puzzle of immigrant advantage which finds that Hispanic immigrants sometimes have better health than US-born Hispanics. While numerous studies have attempted to explain these patterns, almost all studies rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification to identify immigrants’ descendants. This can lead to bias due to “ethnic attrition,” which occurs whenever a US-born descendant of a Hispanic immigrant fails to self-identify as Hispanic. In this paper, we exploit information on parents’ and grandparents’ place of birth to show that Mexican ethnic attrition, operating through intermarriage, is sizable and positively selected on health, making subsequent generations of Mexican immigrants appear less healthy than they actually are. Consequently, conventional estimates of health disparities between Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites as well as those between Mexican Americans and recent Mexican immigrants have been significantly overstated.
Regular mappings and non-existence of bi-Lipschitz embeddings for slit carpets

Abstract We prove that the “slit carpet” studied by Merenkov does not admit a bi-Lipschitz embedding into any uniformly convex Banach space. In particular, this includes any space R n , but also spaces such as L p for p ∈ ( 1 , ∞ ) . This resolves Question 8 in the 1997 list by Heinonen and Semmes.
The Fourier extension method and discrete orthogonal polynomials on an arc of the circle

Abstract The Fourier extension method, also known as the Fourier continuation method, is a method for approximating non-periodic functions on an interval using truncated Fourier series with period larger than the interval on which the function is defined. When the function being approximated is known at only finitely many points, the approximation is constructed as a projection based on this discrete set of points. In this paper we address the issue of estimating the absolute error in the approximation. The error can be expressed in terms of a system of discrete orthogonal polynomials on an arc of the unit circle, and these polynomials are then evaluated asymptotically using Riemann–Hilbert methods.
Dynamic modeling of micro-satellite Spartnik's attitude

Spartnik is a micro-satellite under construction at San Jose State University. In order to control the satellite and ensure payloads and antenna are oriented properly a passive attitude control system has been developed. Like some other micro-satellites, Spartnik will combine spin stabilization with magnetic stabilization. Thus, Spartnik will "spin" due to solar radiation pressure and perform a controlled "tumble" due to the permanent magnets aligning with the magnetic field of the Earth. Concerns have been raised about the gyroscopic effect due to the spin of the satellite. A program has been developed that numerically integrates Euler's form of the equations of motion in order to explore the gyroscopic effect and finalize the hardware design of Spartnik. Simulations have been performed that reveal the dynamic response of Spartnik under a number of conditions. This paper includes a detailed discussion of these results.
Staffing Trends in Magnet and Non-Magnet Hospitals After State Legislation.

Background Evidence suggests that Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals differ with respect to quality of care. Purpose Our study examined registered nurse (RN) staffing over time in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals using unit-level, publicly available data in New Jersey. Methods A secondary analysis of longitudinal RN staffing data was conducted using mandated, publicly reported data of 64 hospitals representing 12 nursing specialties across 8 years (2008-2015). Staffing ratios were trended over time to compare RN staffing changes in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals. Results Staffing was comparable in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals for 9 of 12 specialties. On average, from 2008 until 2015, RN staffing slightly increased, with a greater percent increase in Magnet hospitals (6.9%) than in non-Magnet hospitals (4.7%). Conclusions Over 8 years in New Jersey, RN staffing improved in Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals. Although there was a slight increase for Magnet hospitals, there was no meaningful difference in staffing for all 12 specialties.
The Evolutionary Origins of Recurrent Pancreatic Cancer.

Surgery is the only curative option for stage I/II pancreatic cancer; nonetheless, most patients will experience a recurrence after surgery and die of their disease. To identify novel opportunities for management of recurrent pancreatic cancer, we performed whole-exome or targeted sequencing of 10 resected primary cancers and matched intrapancreatic recurrences or distant metastases. We identified that recurrent disease after adjuvant or first-line platinum therapy corresponds to an increased mutational burden. Recurrent disease is enriched for genetic alterations predicted to activate MAPK/ERK and PI3K-AKT signaling and develops from a monophyletic or polyphyletic origin. Treatment-induced genetic bottlenecks lead to a modified genetic landscape and subclonal heterogeneity for driver gene alterations in part due to intermetastatic seeding. In 1 patient what was believed to be recurrent disease was an independent (second) primary tumor. These findings suggest routine post-treatment sampling may have value in the management of recurrent pancreatic cancer. SIGNIFICANCE: The biological features or clinical vulnerabilities of recurrent pancreatic cancer after pancreaticoduodenectomy are unknown. Using whole-exome sequencing we find that recurrent disease has a distinct genomic landscape, intermetastatic genetic heterogeneity, diverse clonal origins, and higher mutational burden than found for treatment-naive disease.See related commentary by Bednar and Pasca di Magliano, p. 762.This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 747.