cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Gender Differences in a Post-Socialist Labor Market: Russia, 1991–1997

We examine how the shift from state socialism affects gender inequality in the labor market using multivariate models of employment exit, employment entry, job mobility and new job quality for 3,580 Russian adults from 1991 through 1997. Gender differences changed in a complex fashion. Relative to men, women gained greater access to employment, but female disadvantage in the quality of new jobs widened. Although these two trends appear to be opposite, they are closely related. Both are connected to the introduction of market institutions, not gender differences in human capital or structural location in the labor market. How does the shift from state socialism affect gender inequality in the labor market? Many predicted that surging unemployment and the reallocation of jobs across economic branches and sectors would hurt women disproportionately. Others argued that market reforms would benefit women. Most studies addressing this question analyze gender wage gaps with cross-sectional data. We advance the debate by examining how gender differences in rates of labor market transitions (entry to or exit from employment, job mobility) and in the quality of new jobs change over time. We analyze employment histories spanning 1991-1997 from a representative sample of 3,580 Russians using hazard models for labor market transitions and logistic regressions for new job quality. Women are disadvantaged on the labor market to the extent that, relative to men, they have higher rates of layoff and voluntary employment exit, lower rates of employment entry and job mobility, higher odds that their new jobs are low-quality positions, and lower odds that they are high-quality. We model changes in the "gross" (zero-order) and "net" (controlling for covariates) effects of gender on these outcomes after market reforms. We compare gross and net effects to see if observable human capital and structural location in the labor market produce gender inequality. We find gross and net gender effects of similar magnitude throughout the period. These effects change over time, but in a manner that defies simple characterization as beneficial or detrimental to women. Relative to men, women gained greater access to jobs; however, female disadvantage in the quality of new jobs widened.
Children's Response to Sequential Dental Visits

Behavioral, self-report, and physiological measures were used to study the response of young children to their initial series of dental visits. Their negative response increased from the examination visit through the third treatment visit, then decreased during the fourth treatment visit and the polish visit. Initially, dental experience appeared to sensitize the child to dental procedures. Experience may also allow the child to accurately distinguish between stressful and nonstressful procedures.
Coyuntura Crítica y Cambio Institucional en Salud: Argentina en los Años '40

The 1940s witnessed deep changes in Argentina health care policies. This summary presents the proposal led in Santa Fe by Abelardo Yrigoyen Freyre, minister of Public Health and Labor between 1941 and 1943. This article emphasizes the need to deepen the study of both national and provincial processes of institutional change, starting from uniform concepts and categories, so as to enhance history's explanation capability through comparative analyses.
Assessing interannual variation in MODIS-based estimates of gross primary production

Global estimates of terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) are now operationally produced from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) imagery at the 1-km spatial resolution and eight-day temporal resolution. In this study, MODIS GPP products were compared with ground-based GPP estimates over multiple years at three sites-a boreal conifer forest, a temperate deciduous forest, and a desert grassland. The ground-based estimates relied on measurements at eddy covariance flux towers, fine resolution remote sensing, and modeling. The MODIS GPP showed seasonal variation that was generally consistent with the in situ observations. The sign and magnitude of year-to-year variation in the MODIS products agreed with that of the ground observations at two of the three sites. Examination of the inputs to the MODIS GPP algorithm-notably the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) that is absorbed by the canopy), minimum temperature scalar, and vapor pressure deficit scalar-provided explanations for cases of disagreement between the MODIS and ground-based GPP estimates. Continued evaluation of interannual variation in MODIS products and related climate variables will aid in assessing potential biospheric feedbacks to climate change
Knock, Knock: Who’s There? Nox1

It has become apparent that major sources of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in mammalian cells are the NADPH oxidases. These multimeric enzymes are composed of membrane-bound catalytic subunits, or Nox enzymes, and a small docking subunit called p22phox. Depending on the Nox isoform, cytosolic regulatory subunits also play a role in their activation. There are 7 Nox isoforms. The first identified was Nox2, also called gp91 phox , which is present in phagocytic cells and is responsible for the oxidative burst. Unlike Nox2, the other Nox enzymes exhibit sustained production of ROS at somewhat lower levels. Their modes of activation differ, as do their cellular distributions. Nox1 through Nox4 are expressed in vascular cells in rodents. Nox5 has been identified in atherosclerotic lesions of humans but is not expressed in rodents. Stimulation of cells with angiotensin II, cytokines, catecholamines, high glucose, or mechanical stretch promotes NADPH oxidase activation, in large part as a result of recruitment of cytosolic subunits to the membrane subunit, leading to the formation of the functional enzyme complex that can transfer electrons to molecular oxygen and the formation of superoxide (O2·−).1 O2·−serves as a progenitor for other ROS, including hydrogen peroxide, peroxynitrite, and hypochlorous acid. Enhanced activity of the NADPH oxidases and increased expression of its subunits occur in many pathological conditions, including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, cardiac hypertrophy, and heart failure. Studies of genetically altered mice have shown that the deletion of various NADPH oxidase subunits protects against these diseases and their overexpression promotes pathology.2−4 Article see p 1888 A consequence of excessive ROS formation is loss of endothelial nitric oxide (NO), which can occur by rapid radical-radical reactions with O2·− and other radicals or as a result of dysfunction of the endothelial NO synthase. …
Making the Business Case for Employee Resource Groups

© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ert.21409 There has been an evolution and growth of employee resource groups (ERGs) over the last 30 years. First, the name has changed. Once called affinity groups, they are referred to as not only ERGs, but also business resource groups, resource groups, and employee networks. The name change signifies a movement away from their original goals of supporting diversity and inclusion to being broader and more business-focused. As the name transforms, the number of ERGs also is on the rise. A 2011 report by Mercer1 and a similar study by Catalyst in 20092 noted that, even when the economy was slowing down, interest in ERGs was on the rise. More companies are adding ERGs, and those that have them are creating more groups. Per the Mercer report, new ERGs are forming based on job responsibility, environment (green), community service/volunteerism, cancer support, elder care, adoptive parents, generational interests, and wellness. The other trend is globalization of ERGs. ERGs are important yet not well understood. The academic literature is almost void of research exploring ERGs, and while there are practitioner reports and surveys on the extent of ERG usage, the details are very limited compared with work done on other HR-related topics. In this article, our goal is to supplement the work on ERGs through several different data-gathering approaches. In 2012, we worked with the Center for Effective Organizations to hold the first ERG Leadership Summit. This two-day event brought together leaders of ERGs in numerous organizations as well as diversity and inclusive executives. Our purpose was to learn about the ERG journey through data and extensive dialogue with several organizations. The participating companies were at different points in their ERG journey. One participant organization had just recently started its ERGs, whereas others had extensive experience with numerous ERGs. In this article, we share our key learnings from the research data we collected and from the ERG summit held in El Segundo, California. With over 50 participants from 11 companies at this two-day event, we were able to leverage a shared-learning approach that helped drive organizational action. The work we did during the program went beyond fact finding. We strove to understand how ERGs can help develop new leaders in organizations, how ERG leaders can assist their members in advancing their own careers, and how ERGs can pursue multiple goals to drive individual, ERG team, and organization performance. Above all, participants focused on how this work would translate into actions within their own organizations. Making the Business Case for Employee Resource Groups
A paraxial formulation for the viscosity solution of quasi-P eikonal equations

Stationary quasi-P eikonal equations, stationary Hamilton-Jacobi equations, arise from the asymptotic approximation of anisotropic wave propagation. A paraxial formulation of the quasi-P eikonal equation results in a paraxial quasi-P eikonal equation, an evolution Hamilton-Jacobi equation in a preferred direction, which provides a fast and e-cient way for computing viscosity solutions of quasi-P eikonal equations. Under the assumption that the initial condition is continuous (and possibly unbounded), the (unbounded) viscosity solution exists and is unique for the paraxial quasi-P eikonal equations. c ∞ 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
FECCA-a new access algorithm for an ATM ring network with destination removal

The authors propose and study a protocol for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks, called the fair and efficient cyclic control algorithm (FECCA), which combines the advantages of both global and local fairness schemes, to achieve a fair access mechanism while yielding high network throughput levels for a full-duplex ring network with spatial reuse. In addition, through the use of queuing models and analytical approximations, they present an analytical method for evaluating the network throughput performance for a special network topology. The analytical performance results are shown to be close to those obtained by simulations. >
Early Greek Astronomy

It is the purpose of Book IV to present a survey of the fragmentary data from the early stages of Greek astronomy. About six centuries have to be covered by such an attempt, beginning with the calendaric cycles of Meton and his school in the fifth century B.C. to Ptolemy in the second A.D. Only in two areas is our information substantial enough to make a separate discussion desirable: early planetary and lunar theory on the evidence of tables preserved on papyri of the hellenistic and Roman period (cf. below V A) and the work of the direct predecessors of the Almagest, Apollonius. and Hipparchus (above I D and I E, respectively). For the material left to be included in Book IV we must frequently operate with fragmentary data transmitted by authors of very limited technical competence. The little one can extract from these sources hardly deserves the name “history.”
Age-related changes in the sleep-dependent reorganization of declarative memories

Consolidation of declarative memories has been associated with slow wave sleep in young adults. Previous work suggests that, in spite of changes in sleep, sleep-dependent consolidation of declarative memories may be preserved with aging, although reduced relative to young adults. Previous work on young adults shows that, with consolidation, retrieval of declarative memories gradually becomes independent of the hippocampus. To investigate whether memories are similarly reorganized over sleep at the neural level, we compared functional brain activation associated with word pair recall following a nap and equivalent wake in young and older adults. SWS during the nap predicted better subsequent memory recall and was negatively associated with retrieval-related hippocampal activation in young adults. In contrast, in older adults there was no relationship between sleep and memory performance or with retrieval-related hippocampal activation. Furthermore, compared with young adults, postnap memory retrieval in older adults required strong functional connectivity of the hippocampus with the PFC, whereas there were no differences between young and older adults in the functional connectivity of the hippocampus following wakefulness. These results suggest that, although neural reorganization takes place over sleep in older adults, the shift is unique from that seen in young adults, perhaps reflecting memories at an earlier stage of stabilization.
Development of a Material-Testing Machine for Study of Friction: Experimental Analysis of Machine Dynamics and Friction of Rock

Experimental investigation of the coefficient of sliding friction in rock at normal stress and sliding velocity of typical earthquakes (10–100 MPa and 0.01–1 m/s) is necessary to develop velocity-dependent constitutive relations useful for earthquake rupture simulations. The velocity dependence of rock friction is best explored in parametric studies of interfacial friction by imposing step-like changes in velocity and measuring the frictional force, but such experiments are technically challenging. We present a testing-machine incorporating a prototype loading system designed to achieve high accelerations (up to 100 g) in test samples at earthquake conditions. A 3-degree-of-freedom model representing dynamics and vibrations of the machine is developed to assess machine–sample interactions and the capability to achieve step-changes in velocity. In addition, the prototype loading-system is instrumented with several sensors and operated in order to validate model analyses. Several preliminary experiments on test-samples that display different behaviors were conducted with the prototype system to document machine-sample interactions. The results show that for an impulse-type loading condition associated with dramatic weakening of test-samples, undesirable vibrations of the system can be significant. The dynamic model is modified to identify and treat the source of vibrations accurately, and is used to improve the design of the ultimate loading-system to minimize vibrations and best emulate load paths appropriate to earthquake slip. Finally, a set of sliding friction experiments on rock is presented and the weakening micro-mechanism is investigated. The results suggest that flash weakening at asperity contact points can be a dominant weakening mechanism in earthquake slip.
A Formal Solution for Slit Corrections in Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering.

Slit shaped apertures are usually used in small-angle x-ray scattering measurements in order to obtain easily measured intensities of scattered radiation. As a result, the scattering intensity at a given angle determined by the camera, the center of the sample, and the central incident x-ray beam is not simply related to the scattering from the sample only at that angle. The experimentally determined intensities Ĩ(x) are related to the true scattering intensities by the following integral equation: I ˜ ( x ) = ∫ - ∞ ∞ I [ ( x 2 + t 2 ) 1 / 2 ] W ( t ) d t . This integral equation has been previously solved only for certain simplified functional forms for W(t) and Ĩ(x). In this paper, a formal procedure is developed for calculating I(x) from the observed angular measurements, which does not necessitate making any a priori assumption about the form of W(t) and Ĩ(x).
Visual Function in West Syndrome

The range and severity of visual abnormalities in 25 infants with West syndrome, and their relation to seizures, EEG patterns and brain lesions were studied at Catholic University, Rome; University of Pisa; and University of Pavia, Italy.
DEVELOPMENT AND FLIGHT TESTING OF GNC ALGORITHMS USING A RAPID FLIGHT TEST PROTOTYPING SYSTEM

This paper describes applications of a rapid prototyping system for flight-testing of guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) algorithms for unmanned air vehicles and parachutes. RFTPS provides researchers with abil- ity to rapidly prototype new theoretical concepts and flight-test their performance in realistic mission scenar- ios. The paper describes the software and hardware tools adopted for system development and discusses their application to a proof of concept flight test dem- onstration of a number of GNC algorithms for the Frog UAV and G-12 cargo parachute. This paper describes the development of a Rapid Flight Test Prototyping System (RFTPS) used at Naval Post- graduate School to develop and flight test a number of GNC algorithms for Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV's) and parachutes. The paper starts with a general discus- sion of the RFTPS including the main motivation be- hind its development, system capabilities and hardware description. The second part focuses on the RFTPS applications including identification of the Frog UAV dynamics, development and flight testing of integrated guidance and control algorithms for precise trajectory tracking, development and flight testing of navigation algorithm for determining relative position and orienta- tion of an UAV with respect to a ship and, finally, de- velopment and flight testing of GNC algorithms for autonomous parachute.
Application of GIS in power communication resource management system

With the fast development of power grid,the management of network resource is becoming more important.In this paper,the basic concepts of GIS are introduced,the functions of power communication resource management system are studied,and the application of GIS in resource management system is analyzed.
Urinary incontinence in the elderly.

Urinary incontinence is not a geriatric inevitability. In individuals of any age beyond early childhood, it is a symptom of urinary tract dysfunction and mandates a serious effort to identify the c...
Tourette Syndrome Maturational Changes

Tourette syndrome is considered a model neuropsychiatric disorder of childhood, reflecting an interaction between genetic and environmental factors, in a review of clinical characteristics, heredity and vulnerability, and neuroanatomy and neurochemistry, from the Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Quantification of prosodic entrainment in affective spontaneous spoken interactions of married couples.

Interaction synchrony among interlocutors happens naturally as people adapt their speaking style gradually to promote efficient communication. In this work, we quantify one aspect of interaction synchrony prosodic entrainment, specifically pitch and energy, in married couples’ problem-solving interactions using speech signal-derived measures. Statistical testings demonstrate that some of these measures capture useful information; they show higher values in interactions with couples having high positive attitude compared to high negative attitude. Further, by using quantized entrainment measures employed with statistical symbol sequence matching in a maximum likelihood framework, we obtained 76% accuracy in predicting positive affect vs. negative affect.
An Advanced Space Propulsion Concept

The propulsion system in a vehicle is to provide thrust (or force) for overcoming the resistance to or the inertia of the motion of a vehicle. In the high vacuum environment of outer space, there is no dissipative resistance, and thrust is required primarily to overcome inertia or potential barrier. A self-contained propulsion system on board the vehicle can produce thrust only through the reaction of the time rate of ejection of momentum from the vehicle\(T=\dot{m}V\) where T is the reactive thrust (dynes) \( \dot{m} \) is the mass efflux rate (gm/sec.), and \( \dot{m} \overline{V} \) is the velocity (cm/sec.) of the ejected mass relative to the vehicle. The kinetic energy of the mass ejected in unit time is the jet power, $$ {{P}_{j}}=\frac{1}{2}\dot{m}\left( \overline{V}\cdot \overline{V} \right)\gtrsim \frac{{{T}^{2}}}{2\dot{m}} $$ (16-1) The rate of total energy efflux or the power which the propulsive unit has to supply is necessarily larger than the jet power because the ejected mass must carry with it many different forms of internal energy e, such as ionization, dissociation, etc., that do not contribute to the thrust. The propulsion system must deplete its mass and energy in providing thrust.
“Are Your Tanks Filled with Orca Tears?”: Crisis Frames and Message Convergence in SeaWorld’s Tanked Twitter Campaign

Issues and crises often have multiple frames constructed by organizations and the media. While organizations may try to shape the narrative to their benefit, their ability to do so is often limited. The #AskSeaWorld crisis illustrates this challenge as the online question-and-answer session gone awry generated competing frames from SeaWorld, PETA, and the media. Using a framework of issues management, crisis framing, and message convergence and drawing from organizational documents, media reports, and an interview with PETA, this paper examines the different frames that emerged from the crisis and the extent to which they converged. The findings position SeaWorld as an organization that “protests too much” (Ashforth and Gibbs, Org Sci 1(2):177–194, 1990) and invited a digital crisis by publicly responding to value challenges (Hirsch and Andrews, Leadership and organizational culture, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1984). This study also illustrates how a hashtag-based campaign attracts critical publics, such as activists, who can challenge organizational reputations using social media, which may be amplified by media reports. Because many of the media reports reflected content relayed by activists, rather than SeaWorld, this convergence lent legitimacy to activists’ claims, heightening SeaWorld’s legitimacy challenges.
Bone accrual in oligo-amenorrheic athletes, eumenorrheic athletes and non-athletes.

Abstract Background Mechanical loading improves bone mineral density (BMD) and strength while decreasing fracture risk. Cross-sectional studies show that exercise advantage is lost in oligo-amenorrheic athletes (OA). Longitudinal studies examining the opposing effects of exercise and hypogonadism on bone are lacking in adolescents/young adults. Objective Evaluate differences in bone accrual over 12 months in OA, eumenorrheic athletes (EA) and non-athletes (NA). We hypothesized that bone accrual would be lower in OA than EA and NA, with differences most pronounced at non-weight bearing trabecular sites. Methods 27 OA, 29 EA, and 22 NA, 14–25 years old, completed 12-months of the prospective study. Athletes were weight-bearing endurance athletes. Subjects were assessed for areal BMD and bone mineral content (BMC) using DXA at the femoral neck, total hip, lumbar spine and whole body (WB). Failure load (a strength estimate) at the distal radius and tibia was assessed using microfinite element analysis of data obtained via high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HRpQCT). The primary analysis was a comparison of changes in areal BMD, BMC, and failure load across groups over 12-months at the respective sites. Results Groups did not differ for baseline age, height or BMI. Percent body fat was lower in both OA and EA compared to NA. OA attained menarche later than EA and NA. Over the follow-up period, OA gained 1.9 ± 2.7 kg of weight compared to 0.5 ± 2.4 kg and 0.8 ± 2.3 kg in EA and NA respectively (p = 0.09); 39% of OA resumed menses. Changes in BMD, BMD Z-scores, and tibial failure load over 12-months did not differ among groups. At follow up, EA had higher femoral neck, hip and WB BMD Z-scores than NA, and higher hip BMD Z-scores than OA (p Conclusion Despite weight gain and menses recovery in many OA during follow-up, residual deficits persist without catch-up raising concerns for suboptimal peak bone mass acquisition.
Widely used benzalkonium chloride disinfectants can promote antibiotic resistance

While the misuse of antibiotics has clearly contributed to the emergence and proliferation of resistant bacterial pathogens, with major health consequences, it remains less clear if the widespread use of disinfectants, such as benzalkonium chlorides (BAC), a different class of biocides than antibiotics, has contributed to this problem. Here, we provide evidence that exposure to BAC coselects for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and describe the underlying genetic mechanisms. After inoculation with river sediment, BAC-fed bioreactors selected for several bacterial taxa, including the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, that were more resistant to several antibiotics than their counterparts in a control (no BAC) bioreactor. A metagenomic analysis of the bioreactor microbial communities, confirmed by gene cloning experiments with the derived isolates, suggested that integrative and conjugative elements encoding a BAC efflux pump together with antibiotic resistance genes were responsible for these results. Furthermore, the exposure of the P. aeruginosa isolates to increasing concentrations of BAC selected for mutations in pmrB (polymyxin resistance) and physiological adaptations that contributed to a higher tolerance to polymyxin B and other antibiotics. The physiological adaptations included the overexpression of mexCD-oprJ multidrug efflux pump genes when BAC was added in the growth medium at subinhibitory concentrations. Collectively, our results demonstrated that disinfectants promote antibiotic resistance via several mechanisms and highlight the need to remediate (degrade) disinfectants in nontarget environments to further restrain the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.IMPORTANCE Benzalkonium chlorides (BAC) are biocides broadly used in disinfectant solutions. Disinfectants are widely used in food processing lines, domestic households, and pharmaceutical products and are typically designed to have a different mode of action than antibiotics to avoid interfering with the use of the latter. Whether exposure to BAC makes bacteria more resistant to antibiotics remains an unresolved issue of obvious practical consequences for public health. Using an integrated approach that combines metagenomics of natural microbial communities with gene cloning experiments with isolates and experimental evolution assays, we show that the widely used benzalkonium chloride disinfectants promote clinically relevant antibiotic resistance. Therefore, more attention should be given to the usage of these disinfectants, and their fate in nontarget environments should be monitored more tightly.
Integrating Visual and Textual Affective Descriptors for Sentiment Analysis of Social Media Posts

Social media posts often contain a mixture of images and texts. This paper proposes an affective visual descriptor and an integrated visual-textual classification method for sentiment analysis in social media. Firstly a set of affective visual features is explored based on the theory of psychology and art. Secondly, a structured forest is proposed to generate bag of affective words (BoAW) from the joint distribution of ANP. The generated BoAW provides basic “visual cues” for sentiment analysis. Then a set of sentiment part (SSP) feature is introduced to integrate the visual and textual descriptors on multiple statistic manifolds. Multi-scale sentiment classification is finally applied through metric learning on the manifold kernels. In the proposed method, the re-trained class-activation map (CAM) on ILSVRC 2014 is applied and re-trained on an Adjective-Noun-Pair (ANP) labelled affective visual data set. The global average pooling (GAP) layer of CAM is used for discriminative localization, and the fully-connected layer is able to generate objective visual descriptors. 300 tweets with mixed images and texts are manually labelled and evaluated. The proposed structured forest is evaluated on ANP labelled image data set. Promising experimental results have been obtained, which shows the effectiveness of the proposed method for sentiment analysis on social media posts.
Bases of Inductions of Recoveries and Protections from Amnesias

In 1987, I celebrated my 40th anniversary as a student of inductions of recoveries of functions after injuries to the central nervous system. I think I know a fair amount about it. At least I have had a lot of practice with the subject and have only infrequently succumbed to temptations to give it up and study something else. I believe that I have come to some significant conclusions and propose in this discussion to say what they were and how they were finally arrived at. Then I contrast them with the views of other workers in our vineyard and do that by giving my reactions to statements that were made in a recent review of research on the neural mechanisms of memory.
Poisson Random Processes

A random process that is useful for modeling events occurring in time is the Poisson random process. A typical realization is shown in Figure 21.1 in which the events, indicated by the “x”s, occur randomly in time. The random process, whose realization is a set of times, is called the Poisson random process. The random process that counts the number of events in the time interval [0,t], and which is denoted by N(t), is called the Poisson counting random process.
Some Important Distributions

This chapter presents some properties of normally distributed random variables and also derives certain distribution functions that are important in statistics. It presents a proof of theorem for the distribution of the sum of independent, absolutely continuous random variables. In addition of independent normal random variables, one considers the two independently and normally distributed random variables X 1 and X 2 , and admits the possibility that their means and variances are different. The Chi-Square distribution discusses the determination of the distribution function of the sum of squares of independent normal random variables. This chapter also presents a proof for Student's distribution.
Transrectal ultrasonography of infertile men.

Objective To determine normal transrectal ultrasonographic anatomy in young men and the frequency of abnormalities in the infertile population. Design Transrectal ultrasonography was performed upon 30 fertile volunteers and 150 consecutive men referred for male factor infertility. Setting A male fertility center. Results Transrectal ultrasonography was normal in 60% of controls and 53% of infertile group. The frequency of hyperechoic lesions within the prostate was similar in controls (40%) and infertile men (39%). Mullerian duct cysts were present in 11% of the infertile men and none of the volunteers. Rectal exam was normal in all of the men. Conclusions Transrectal ultrasonography is more sensitive at detecting abnormalities of the seminal vesicles and prostate than rectal exam. Hyperechoic lesions within the prostate is frequently a normal finding. Mullerian duct cysts are more frequently observed in infertile men and may be a cause of ejaculatory duct obstruction.
Structural Comparison of Human Anti-HIV-1 gp120 V3 Monoclonal Antibodies of the Same Gene Usage Induced by Vaccination and Chronic Infection.

Elucidating the structural basis of antibody (Ab) gene usage and affinity maturation of vaccine-induced Abs can inform the design of immunogens for inducing desired Ab responses in HIV vaccine development. Analyses of monoclonal Abs (MAbs) encoded by the same immunoglobulin genes at different stages of maturation can help to elucidate the maturation process. We have analyzed four human anti-V3 MAbs with the same VH1-3*01 and VL3-10*01 gene usage. Two MAbs, TA6 and TA7, were developed from a vaccinee in the HIV vaccine phase I trial DP6-001 with a polyvalent DNA prime/protein boost regimen, and two others, 311-11D and 1334, were developed from HIV-infected patients. The somatic hypermutation (SHM) rates in VH of vaccine-induced MAbs are lower than in chronic HIV infection-induced MAbs, while those in VL are comparable. Crystal structures of the antigen-binding fragments (Fabs) in complex with V3 peptides show that these MAbs bind the V3 epitope with a new cradle-binding mode and that the V3 β-hairpin lies along the antigen-binding groove, which consists of residues from both heavy and light chains. Residues conserved from the germ line sequences form specific binding pockets accommodating conserved structural elements of the V3 crown hairpin, predetermining the Ab gene selection, while somatically mutated residues create additional hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions, and van der Waals contacts, correlating with an increased binding affinity. Our data provide a unique example of germ line sequences determining the primordial antigen-binding sites and SHMs correlating with affinity maturation of Abs induced by vaccine and natural HIV infection. IMPORTANCE Understanding the structural basis of gene usage and affinity maturation for anti-HIV-1 antibodies may help vaccine design and development. Antibodies targeting the highly immunogenic third variable loop (V3) of HIV-1 gp120 provide a unique opportunity for detailed structural investigations. By comparing the sequences and structures of four anti-V3 MAbs at different stages of affinity maturation but of the same V gene usage, two induced by vaccination and another two by chronic infection, we provide a fine example of how germ line sequence determines the essential elements for epitope recognition and how affinity maturation improves the antibody's recognition of its epitope.
Social ontogeny in the communication system of an insect

In humans and some other mammals and birds, the development of communication systems requires social feedback. How do such systems evolve from ancestral states featuring innate developmental mechanisms? We report evidence of a novel form of social ontogeny in the communication system of Enchenopa treehoppers that suggests an answer to this question. These insects use plant-borne vibrational signals throughout their lives. Signal repertoires of nymphs and adults differed and showed sexually dimorphic ontogenetic trajectories; individual differences projected into some of the features of adult signals and mate preferences. Signals and mate preferences differed between adults reared in isolation and adults reared in groups, but even individuals reared in isolation developed species-typical signals. In this type of social ontogeny, peer inputs cause variation in signals and preferences. Thus, even innate communication systems can be socially malleable. This may set the stage for the evolution of obligate social feedbacks in communication: the starting point is already socially plastic and does not require learning to arise de novo.
Effects of Adaptive Servoventilation Therapy for Central Sleep Apnea on Health Care Utilization and Mortality: A Population-Based Study.

Study Objectives:Adaptive servoventilation (ASV) is the suggested treatment for many forms of central sleep apnea (CSA). We aimed to evaluate the impact of treating CSA with ASV on health care util...
Gap-based automated vehicular speed guidance towards eco-driving at an unsignalized intersection

This paper develops a gap-based automated vehicular speed control algorithm towards eco-driving at an unsignalized intersection. The proposed algorithm takes the acceptable gaps as green times and ...
SCENTS: Collaborative Sensing in Proximity IoT Networks

Mobile applications commonly use on-device sensors to continuously provide context: temperature, position, sound, etc. By collaborating to sense context, devices can save energy and share rare capabilities with minimal tradeoffs in sensing quality. Further, by leveraging already active communication behaviors, ambient context information can be collected at very little cost. We present a generic collaborative sensing framework, SCENTS, to support collective sensing for mobile IoT applications. SCENTS leverages two truths about IoT networks: (1) devices participate continuously in low-level device discovery mechanisms and (2) nearby devices tend to have similar values for many ambient context properties. We show that SCENTS balances sensing fulfillment and the fairness of energy consumption across devices. We measure the performance of SCENTS using real IoT devices and real world smart-city scenarios.
Expectations alter recognition and event-related potentials (ERPs)

Abstract Two studies investigated the effect of recognition expectancies (Experiment 1) and decision criterion (Experiment 2) on event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants in both experiments studied meaningless pictures of abstract art and then completed three recognition memory tests with equal proportions of old and new items. To manipulate expectancies (Experiment 1), participants were told to expect equal numbers of old and new items (standard expectancy), more old items (old expectancy), or more new items (new expectancy). The meaningless stimuli did not elicit recognition ERPs under standard testing expectancies, whereas the same stimuli elicited old/new ERP effects in the FN400 and LPC time windows when participants expected more old items. Decision criterion manipulations (Experiment 2) produced different ERP patterns indicating that expectancies alter the decision criterion and produce unique effects on recognition. Collectively, these findings support theory that describes familiarity as an experience that arises from assessing the processing fluency relative to a set of expectations (Whittlesea & Williams, 2001a, 2001b).
Vocal Pitch Discrimination in Children with and without Vocal Fold Nodules

Vocal pitch discrimination abilities were compared in sixteen children with vocal fold nodules (CwVN) and sixteen matched controls with typical voices (CwTV). Vocal pitch discrimination was also evaluated in thirty-five vocally healthy children and twenty adults to examine potential changes as a function of maturation. CwTV were categorized as either younger (N = 15, 5.6–7.7 years) or older (N = 20, 8.2–11.7 years). Participants completed two-alternative, forced choice listening tasks in which they judged whether pairs of sustained /ɑ/ tokens were different in pitch. Each pair consisted of a base token with a fundamental frequency (fo) of 216.2 Hz and a test token with a fo that was adaptively modified, according to the participant’s prior judgments. There were no significant differences in pitch discrimination abilities between CwVN and CwTV. Pitch discrimination abilities were significantly poorer in younger and older CwTV as compared to adults. Additionally, younger CwTV had significantly poorer discrimination abilities than older CwTV. Findings from this study suggest that CwVN do not have differences in pitch discrimination abilities, yet, therapies designed for CwVN should consider this developmental trend in perceptual abilities.
The moral hazard problem with high stakes

Abstract We study the moral-hazard problem when the agent's reservation utility is large, but so is the agent's value to the principal. We show that the principal's cost of implementing effort has a very simple limiting form. For large enough outside option, the principal's cost is convex in the action, so the optimally-implemented action is unique, and optimal effort rises with the agent's ability, and falls with the agent's wealth and outside option. In a competitive market setting where heterogenous principals and agents match, positive sorting ensues and effort increases in match quality, despite conflicting forces.
Mobility Impairment in Patients New to Dialysis.

Background Impaired mobility is associated with functional dependence, frailty, and mortality in prevalent patients undergoing dialysis. We investigated risk factors for mobility impairment, (poor gait speed) in patients incident to dialysis, and changes in gait speed over time in a 2-year longitudinal study. Methods One hundred eighty-three patients enrolled within 6 months of dialysis initiation were followed up 6, 12, and 24 months later. Grip strength, health-related quality of life, and comorbidities were assessed at baseline. Outcomes were (a) baseline gait speed and (b) change in gait speed over time. Gait speed was assessed by 4-meter walk. Multivariate linear regression was used to identify risk factors for low gait speed at baseline. For longitudinal analyses, linear mixed effects modeling with gait speed modeled over time was used as the outcome. Results Participants were 54.7 ± 12.8 years old, 52.5% men, 73.9% black with mean dialysis vintage of 100.1 ± 46.9 days and median gait speed 0.78 (0.64-0.094) m/s. Lower health utility and grip strength, diabetic nephropathy, and walking aids were associated with lower baseline gait speed. Loss of 0.1 m/s gait speed occurred in 24% of subjects at 1 year. In multivariate mixed effects models, only age, walking aid use, lower health utility, and lower handgrip strength were significantly associated with gait speed loss. Conclusions In our cohort of incident dialysis patients, overall gait speed is very low and 54.2% of the subjects continue to lose gait speed over 2 years. Older age, lower handgrip strength, and quality of life are risk factors for slowness. Patients at highest risk of poor gait speed can be identified at dialysis initiation to allow targeted implementation of therapeutic options.
Validating a Holistic Rubric for Scoring Short Answer Reading Questions

This study presents an investigation of the validity of a practical scoring procedure for short answer (sentence length) reading comprehension questions, using a holistic rubric for sets of responses rather than scoring individual responses, on a university-based English proficiency test. Thirty-three previously scored response sets were rescored by the researchers at the item level, with ratings for completion, fidelity to the source text, and overlap with source text language. Results confirm that holistic section-based scores are predicted by fidelity ratings only, providing evidence to support the scoring inference of the validity argument.
Assessing map accuracy from a suite of site-specific, non-site specific, and spatial distribution approaches.

Abstract Assessing a map's accuracy and efficacy requires careful consideration and calculation of a comprehensive set of measures, particularly when characteristics in geospatial datasets may be used for addressing multiple objectives. We describe a map accuracy assessment framework for categorical geospatial data over large areas that utilizes site-specific (plot-pixel), non-site specific (area estimates), and comparative accuracy (spatial and statistical distributions) methods. This comprehensive framework spans the range of approaches applied in most other studies, maximizing opportunities for both within- and between-study comparisons. The analysis framework incorporated recommended good practices for sampling design, response design, analysis protocols, and design-based inference for providing rigorous estimates of accuracy and precision. Further partitioning of disagreement allows users to assess the relative importance of spatial location versus total abundance of map classes to map error; we introduced a ratio of allocation disagreement to quantity disagreement for comparing relative importance of each across datasets. Assessment of fuzzy membership with linguistic scales may have minimal effect on overall accuracy, but can provide substantial improvement in user's accuracy and producer's accuracy for uncommon classes. We adapted non-site specific approaches to provide metrics and insights into spatial variability of map accuracy of thematic classes. Comparing estimates based on reference data and co-located samples of map data may reveal potential issues with reference data. We demonstrated example applications all components of the assessment framework for thematic maps of early successional forest and other land cover classes across the western Great Lakes region, USA.
Robustness of estimated access to opioid use disorder treatment providers in rural vs. urban areas of the United States

Background Effective, evidence-based treatments for opioid use disorder are not equally accessible to Americans. Recent studies have found urban/rural disparities in the driving times to the nearest opioid treatment providers. These disparities may be even worse than currently reported in the literature because patients may not be able to obtain appointments with their nearest provider. We examine the robustness of the opioid treatment infrastructure by estimating how driving times to treatment change as provider availability decreases. Methods We used public data from the federal government to estimate the driving time from each census tract centroid to the nearest 15 treatment providers. We summarized the median and interquartile range of driving times to increasingly distant providers (i.e., nearest, second nearest, etc.), stratified by urban/rural classification. Results The median driving time to the nearest provider was greater in rural areas than urban areas for both opioid treatment programs (12 min vs 61 min) and buprenorphine-waivered prescribers (5 min vs 21 min). Importantly, driving times in rural areas increased more steeply as nearer providers became unavailable. For example, the increase in driving time between the nearest provider and the fifth nearest provider was much greater in rural areas than in urban areas for both buprenorphine-waivered prescribers (23 min vs 4 min) and for opioid treatment programs (54 min vs 22 min). Conclusions Access to treatment for opioid use disorder is more robust in urban areas compared with rural areas. This disparity must be eliminated if the opioid overdose crisis is to be resolved.
The effect of gestures on the interpretation of plural references

During language comprehension, comprehenders build conceptual models of linguistic content. Despite their fundamental nature, relatively little is known about how plural expressions are realised in...
Automotive electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) - The key issues

A look at the historical perspective, trends, challenges and possible solutions unique to automotive EMC. Applications of advanced electronic systems to vehicle control, diagnostics and customer convenience functions have resulted in a growing awareness of the electromagnetic environment and the design requirements to assure total system compatibility. Past experience and current trends in system sophistication are addressed along with possible solutions to EMC problems.
Output Feedback Designs for Output Tracking

In Chapters 2 and 3, we developed adaptive state feedback control schemes for linear time-invariant plants with actuator failures characterized by some inputs being stuck at some values not influenced by control action, to achieve state tracking (Chapter 2) or output tracking (Chapter 3). The goal of this chapter is to develop an adaptive output feedback control scheme for systems with unknown parameters and unknown failures, to achieve output tracking. Some key issues such as controller structure, plant-model matching conditions, error model, adaptive law, stability analysis, and performance evaluation are addressed for output feedback based actuator failure compensation.