cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Applications of Neurophysiological Biomarkers in CNS Drug Development: Focus on Psychoses

Abstract Drug development for therapeutic agents for central nervous system (CNS) applications is challenging, costly, and fraught with a high rate of failure, even at a time where there is a growing need for novel agents. Biomarker-informed therapeutic development is becoming a trend for developing new drug pipelines; for CNS disease the use of neurophysiological biomarkers holds promise for bridging the preclinical-to-clinical gap in translational neuroscience. Using electroencephalographic (EEG) biomarkers to screen new targets in model systems, confirm target engagement in early phase clinical trials, and track functional outcomes is a powerful platform for accelerating the pace of CNS therapeutic development. In this chapter, we illustrate how mismatch negativity, a leading candidate event-related potential biomarker, is poised to drive drug development for novel treatments that target improving neurocognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia and related neuropsychiatric disorders.
Abstract 5226: Non-canonical functions of TERT in glioblastoma pathobiology

Mutations in the promotor region of TERT are the most common non-coding mutations across cancers, especially in glioblastoma (GBM), which has a TERT mutation frequency rate over 80%. In the absence of any effective molecular targeting therapy for GBM, elucidating oncogenic signaling of TERT could open new avenues in GBM treatment. Canonically, mutations of TERT, which result in TERT upregulation, maintain telomere length in the nucleus and promote indefinite proliferation of cancer cells. However, a non-canonical function of TERT in the mitochondria has recently been suggested. We screened GBM cell models against a novel small molecule inhibitor (RG1534, Reglagene Inc.) that interferes with the functionality of a mutated hTERT promoter. RG1534 selectively suppresses glioma cell viability without affecting non-transformed normal human astrocytes. More interestingly, RG1534 treatment leads to rapid apoptosis induction in glioma cell lines that does not correlate with the time course of the telomere shortening effect. We further validated this rapid apoptosis behavior in glioma cell lines using siRNA and CRISPR/Cas-9 mediated hTERT knockdown. We also measured the protein expression of TERT in subcellular fractions of glioma cell lines and demonstrated the presence of higher TERT expression in mitochondrial extract compared to the nuclear extract. Finally, using MitoSOX dye we demonstrated significant increase of ROS generation in glioma cells treated with RG1534 as compared to control. In summary, our results demonstrate that non-canonical functions of TERT may play critical role in glioma pathobiology and require more detail investigation. Citation Format: Shayesteh R. Ferdosi, Saumya Bollam, Sen Peng, Brett Taylor, Vijay Gokhale, Laurence Hurley, Michael Berens, Harshil Dhruv. Non-canonical functions of TERT in glioblastoma pathobiology [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5226.
Sex and age differences in the association between sympathetic outflow and central elastic artery wall thickness in humans.

Increased wall thickness of the large elastic arteries serves as a graded marker for cardiovascular disease risk and progression of atherosclerosis. Findings from the present study establish an ind...
Variants of the HDG Method

In this section, we introduce a variant of the HDG method with very much the same convergence properties as the original one, without the additional need of a postprocessing step. To distinguish the methods easily, we will refer to this scheme as the HDG+ method and refer to the previously studied scheme as the classical HDG method. This method involves a projection in the numerical flux, an idea that can be traced back to the work of Lehrenfeld and Schoberl [87]. In the following table, we compare the spaces for the hybridizable formulations of RT and BDM with HDG and the new variant of HDG that we will be discussing.
Alpha-Final Offer Arbitration: The Best Way to Avoid Negotiation Failure

Under the arbitration mechanisms most used in the field, Final-Offer Arbitration (FOA) and Conventional Arbitration (CA), the negotiators still do not reach high agreement rates by themselves. This paper presents an experiment to evaluate a new arbitration mechanism: α-Final Offer Arbitration (α-FOA). This mechanism is similar to a second-price auction, which punishes the loser with a value (α) proportional to the difference between her final offer and the arbitrator’s fair settlement. The experiment also divides the pool of subjects within a session into two groups according to their estimated risk preferences in order to assess how the contract zone depends on the relative risk preferences of the subjects involved in negotiation. Although agreement rates overall are low, the results show that α-FOA has a significantly higher agreement rate than both CA and FOA. Contrary to theoretical prediction, the more-risk-averse group of subjects does not have a higher agreement rate than the less-risk-averse group.
TCT-450 Impact of Atrial Fibrillation on Short-Term Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Percutaneous Mitral Valve Repair

MitraClip utilization in mitral valve repair is growing with promising results; however, multiple studies reported uncertain results in patients with atrial fibrillation. This study’s aim is to highlight the difference in short-term outcomes in patients undergoing percutaneous mitral valve repair
The potential for brackish water use in thermoelectric power generation in the American southwest

Abstract Threatened by a changing climate and the increased frequency of droughts and heat waves, more attention is being given to the sourcing of water resources. Especially in the American southwest, the frequency and severity of water shortages as well as elevated surface water temperatures has resulted in a series of threatened or imposed curtailments of thermoelectric power, the largest withdrawer of water in the United States. These cuts in generation can have important implications for the reliability and dispatchability of electric power, especially in summer months when electricity is needed most. This paper examines the potential for using brackish groundwater as a supplemental water source for thermoelectric power generation in seventeen western states and finds that the conversion of drought prone facilities to brackish backup systems would cost on the order of 60–70 thousand dollars per installed megawatt. Action from the federal government to foster basic research and technology readiness combined with state level action to require water resource contingency planning would encourage deployment of brackish water backup systems that would subsequently ensure resiliency and reliability of thermal generation during heat waves and in times of drought.
Aortopexy for the management of paediatric tracheomalacia - the Alder Hey experience.

BACKGROUND Whilst aortopexy is an accepted and established procedure, there remains considerable heterogeneity within the literature, with inconsistencies in both the approach taken and the technique employed. Furthermore, limited data exist on both patient selection and long-term outcomes. This study aimed to report the experience of managing severe tracheomalacia by way of aortopexy in a large UK paediatric centre. METHOD A retrospective case note review was conducted. Mean follow up was five years. RESULTS Twenty-five patients underwent aortopexy for severe tracheomalacia caused by external vascular compression. Acute life-threatening events precipitated investigation in 72 per cent of cases. Twenty-one patients initially presented to ENT services for investigation, which comprised upper airway endoscopy and imaging with computed tomography angiography. Post-operatively, the majority of patients demonstrated complete resolution of symptoms and were discharged from all associated services. Only four patients required a tracheostomy. CONCLUSION Aortopexy offers an effective method of treating severe tracheomalacia due to vascular compression.
Incentivizing Antibiotic Development: Why Isn’t the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act Working?

Antimicrobial resistance is of increasing global concern. To incentivize the creation of new treatments, the US Congress enacted the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act (GAIN Act) of 2012, which provides benefits to manufacturers of Qualified Infectious Disease Products (QIDPs) including 5 years of additional nonpatent exclusivity. The results of this program have so far been disappointing, largely because QIDP eligibility criteria were not sufficiently targeted to unmet need. The time value of money also means that QIDP exclusivity disproportionately rewards modifications to existing drugs rather than the creation of new drugs. To improve the outlook, GAIN Act criteria should be limited to a more narrowly tailored list of qualifying pathogens to ensure that QIDPs offer clinical value not available from existing treatments. Additional options for improvement include greater reliance on animal data when determining QIDP eligibility and conditioning GAIN Act benefits on the availability of companion diagnostics.
Cocktail party processing

Speech segregation, or the cocktail party problem, has proven to be an extremely challenging problem. This chapter describes a computational auditory scene analysis (CASA) approach to the cocktail party problem. This monaural approach performs auditory segmentation and grouping in a two-dimensional time-frequency representation that encodes proximity in frequency and time, periodicity, amplitude modulation, and onset/offset. In segmentation, our model decomposes the input mixture into contiguous time-frequency segments. Grouping is first performed for voiced speech where detected pitch contours are used to group voiced segments into a target stream and the background. In grouping voiced speech, resolved and unresolved harmonics are dealt with differently. Grouping of unvoiced segments is based on the Bayesian classification of acoustic-phonetic features. This CASA approach has led to major advances towards solving the cocktail party problem.
Novel R-type Lectin Domain-Containing Cytotoxins Comprise a Family of Virulence-Modifying Proteins in Pathogenic Leptospira

Leptospirosis is a globally important neglected zoonotic disease subject to both small scale outbreaks and weather-driven, large-scale epidemics. Due to gaps in our understanding of Leptospirabiology, pathogenetic mechanisms of leptospirosis remain largely unknown. Previous data suggest that a gene family, PF07598, unique amongst most known bacterial pathogens and encoding so-called “Virulence-Modifying (VM)” proteins, are important virulence determinants. Here, we show that VM proteins are potent cytotoxins, sharing a distinct domain organization while exhibiting varied mechanisms of cellular toxicity. Structural homology searches using Phyre2 suggest that VM proteins are novel R-type lectins containing an N-terminal ricin B chain-like domain. As is known for native ricin B-chain, recombinant full-length rLA3490(most highly up-regulated in vivo) and an N-terminal fragment, t3490, containing a partial ricin B-domain, bound to asialofetuin and directly competed for asialofetuin binding with recombinant ricin B chain. While t3490bound to the HeLa cell surface but was neither internalized nor cytotoxic, rLA3490bound to the HeLa cell surface, was rapidly internalized, translocated to the nucleus inducing chromosomal fragmentation, and was rapidly cytolethal, providing strong evidence that LeptospiraVM proteins are bona fidecytotoxins. Because monoclonal antibodies impeding cell entry or intracellular trafficking of ricin holotoxin clearly mitigate its toxicity, that VM proteins share binding and intracellular trafficking mechanisms suggests that anti-VM-protein antibody-based (anti-toxin) therapeutics could ameliorate severe complications of leptospirosis thereby improving prognosis. As most VM proteins are restricted to high-virulence Leptospiraspecies with some, e.g., LA3490, being exceptionally potent, their level in serum might be a potentially useful indicator of a poor prognosis, thus identifying high risk patients.
Post-implementation Critical Narratives

In this chapter the focus is on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, whose genesis narrative is the War on drugs narrative of the early 1970s. As a fully institutionalized narrative, the agency attracts critical commentary as expressed in the Futility narrative and in various conspiracy narratives that criticize the maintenance of status quo practices. The scheduling of illegal drugs is discussed, as is pressure from members of Congress to influence the DEA’s enforcement or non-enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act with respect to state-level medical cannabis legalization. The DEA is required to implement other agencies’ determinations regarding the medical status of cannabis. Congress is able to withhold funding for would-be DEA efforts to enforce cannabis in states that have legalized it.
Uretero-Enteric Anastomotic Stricture Following Radical Cystectomy: A Comparison of Open, Robotic Extracorporeal, And Robotic Intracorporeal Approaches

Abstract Objectives To compare the incidence of benign uretero-enteric anastomotic strictures between open cystectomy, robotic cystectomy with extracorporeal urinary diversion, and robotic cystectomy with intracorporeal urinary diversion. The effect of surgeon learning curve on stricture incidence following intracorporeal diversion was investigated as a secondary outcome. Patients and Methods Patients who underwent radical cystectomy at an academic hospital between 2011 and 2018 were retrospectively reviewed. The primary outcome, incidence of anastomotic stricture over time, was assessed by a multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression. A Cox regression model adjusting for sequential case number in a surgeon's experience was used to assess intracorporeal learning curve. Results Nine hundred sixty-eight patients were included: 279 open, 382 robotic extracorporeal, and 307 robotic intracorporeal. Benign stricture incidence was 11.3% overall: 26 (9.3%) after open, 43 (11.3%) after robotic extracorporeal, and 40 (13.0%) after robotic intracorporeal. An intracorporeal approach was associated with anastomotic stricture on multivariable analysis (HR 1.66; P = .05). After 75 intracorporeal cases, stricture incidence declined from 17.5% to 4.9%. Higher sequential case volume was independently associated with reduced stricture incidence (Hazard Ratio per 10 cases: 0.90; P = .02). Conclusion An intracorporeal approach to urinary reconstruction following robotic radical cystectomy was associated with an increased risk of benign uretero-enteric anastomotic stricture. In surgeons’ early experience with intracorporeal diversion the difference in stricture incidence was more pronounced compared to alternative approaches; however, increased intracorporeal case volume was associated with a decline in stricture incidence leading to a modest difference between the 3 surgical approaches overall.
Abstract PO-026: The mitochondrial calcium uniporter contributes to PDAC development and invasion

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has an exceptionally poor prognosis, with about 50,000 new cases and 45,000 deaths each year. While novel chemotherapeutics targeted to driver pathways and immune responses have increased the overall survival rate of cancer patients in general, these improvements are rarely seen in PDAC. PDAC often metastasizes early, and metastases ultimately lead to death in many PDAC patients. A stronger understanding of disease mechanisms and new therapeutic modalities are desperately needed to improve outcomes for many patients. Previously, we showed that cancer cell lines of multiple types are “addicted” to constitutive Ca++ flow into mitochondria through the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU) at endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondria contact sites. We hypothesized that mitochondrial Ca++ influx through MCU contributes to cancer cell development, proliferation, and metastasis in PDAC by promoting metabolic activity within mitochondria. We now show that mRNA expression of MCU is elevated in a subset of pancreatic cancer patients, and high MCU protein expression correlates with poor survival outcomes. In addition, MCU gene expression is associated with the expression of a number of genes which associate with metastasis and/or poor survival outcomes, including ADAM proteins, KRAS, and RAC1. To further examine the role of MCU in PDAC, we used the Pdx1cre; KrasLSL-G12D/+; p53fl/+, Rosa26LSL-YFP/LSL-YFP; Mcufl/fl (KPCY) murine model of PDAC. We generated KPCY-McuKO (knockout) animals and cell lines from their YFP-positive tissues for further analysis. Cell lines developed from KPCY-McuKO pancreatic tissues fail to take up Ca++ into mitochondria in a manner that is rescued by stable re-expression of MCU. This Ca++ uptake is associated with an increase in pyruvate dehydrogenase activation. In these cells, MCU expression is also associated with an increase in cell motility, self-renewal capacity, and cell proliferation. Re-expression of MCU in these cells is associated with a morphological change to a more fibroblastic morphology indicative of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), including decreased surface expression of e-cadherin. These findings suggest that MCU may contribute to growth and metastasis. Indeed, in an immunocompetent, syngeneic orthotopic model of murine PDAC using one of these cell lines, tumor growth and metastasis were greatly ablated. Such results suggest that MCU-mediated influx of mitochondrial Ca++ contributes to PDAC development and metastasis and may present a therapeutic target for cancer treatment. Citation Format: Jillian S. Weissenrieder, Jason R. Pitarresi, Emily Fernandez-Garcia, Ben Z. Stanger, Anil K. Rustgi, J. Kevin Foskett. The mitochondrial calcium uniporter contributes to PDAC development and invasion [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer; 2020 Sep 29-30. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(22 Suppl):Abstract nr PO-026.
Improving the quality of blood pressure measurements in an outpatient diabetes clinic

Hypertension is an important modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes. Despite established guidelines, the percentage of patients meeting the target blood pressure (BP) of Two interventions were performed: (1) Changes were made to the timing of BP measurement during patient intake and (2) An electronic medical record (EMR) alert reminded staff to repeat BP if the initial reading was above target. Baseline data were collected on 4764 patients, with 72.5% meeting their BP target. After implementation of changes to the timing of BP measurement during patient intake, 73.3% of patients met the target (no significant change). However, after implementation of the EMR alert, there was a statistically significant improvement in patients meeting the target BP at 76.8% (p It is important to ensure that in clinic BP measurements are taken correctly and adhere to best practices. Use of a single in-clinic BP measurement may result in overtreatment of hypertension. While timing of BP measurement during patient intake was not important, repeating high BP measurements did improve the number of patients in an outpatient diabetes clinic meeting their BP target.
Undoing the “non’s” within English hegemony: Teaching intercultural communication as a transnational teacher

Talking about the concept of double consciousness in my intercultural communication class, I read: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self ...
Electrification of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Ground Transportation: Status Report

The medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sectors are responsible for an outsized portion of greenhouse gas emissions and harmful particulate emissions. Decarbonizing this sector is challenging and extremely necessary. This paper provides an overview of the current and future state of electrifying this sector. Recent research has shown that zero-emission vehicles used for medium- and heavy-duty applications are available and cost-saving over their lifetimes. This is especially true for buses and delivery trucks. Electrification of the medium- and heavy-duty sector is critical and is possible in the next 2 decades with complementary policies at the federal level in the USA.
Some Ultra-Processed Foods Are Needed for Nutrient Adequate Diets: Linear Programming Analyses of the Seattle Obesity Study

Typical diets include an assortment of unprocessed, processed, and ultra-processed foods, along with culinary ingredients. Linear programming (LP) can be used to generate nutritionally adequate food patterns that meet pre-defined nutrient guidelines. The present LP models were set to satisfy 22 nutrient standards, while minimizing deviation from the mean observed diet of the Seattle Obesity Study (SOS III) sample. Component foods from the Fred Hutch food frequency questionnaire comprised the market basket. LP models generated optimized 2000 kcal food patterns by selecting from all foods, unprocessed foods only, ultra-processed foods only, or some other combination. Optimized patterns created using all foods contained less fat, sugar, and salt, and more vegetables compared to the SOS III mean. Ultra-processed foods were the main sources of added sugar, saturated fat and sodium. Ultra-processed foods also contributed most vitamin E, thiamin, niacin, folate, and calcium, and were the main sources of plant protein. LP models failed to create optimal diets using unprocessed foods only and ultra-processed foods only: no mathematical solution was obtained. Relaxing the vitamin D criterion led to optimized diets based on unprocessed or ultra-processed foods only. However, food patterns created using unprocessed foods were significantly more expensive compared to those created using foods in the ultra-processed category. This work demonstrates that foods from all NOVA categories can contribute to a nutritionally adequate diet.
Post-Cranial Traumatic Injury Patterns in Two Medieval Polish Populations: The Effects of Lifestyle Differences.

Traumatic injuries can be used as general indicators of activity patterns in past populations. This study tests the hypothesis that contemporaneous (10th–12th century) rural and urban populations in medieval Poland will have a significantly different prevalence of non-violent fractures. Traumatic injuries to the post-cranial skeleton were recorded for 180 adults from rural Giecz and for 96 adults from urban Poznan-Środka. They were statistically analyzed by body region and individual skeletal element. Results reveal that Giecz had a significantly higher rate of trunk fractures than Poznan-Środka (Fisher’s exact, p<0.05). In particular, rib and vertebral fractures were more common in Giecz males and females than in their Poznan-Środka counterparts. Traumatic injuries in the extremities were comparable between the two samples, suggesting similar risks of trauma to these regions. These results indicate that in early medieval Poland, activities associated with a rural lifestyle resulted in more injuries. These stress or accidental fractures, which are related to a high-risk setting, were not consistent with an urban lifestyle. Overall, agricultural populations like Giecz were engaged in a laborious lifestyle, reflected in a variety of injuries related to repetitive, high-risk activities. Although urban populations like Poznan engaged in craft specialization participated in repetitive activities, their lifestyle resulted in lesser fracture-risk.
Data Augmentation for Hierarchical Capture-recapture Models

Capture-recapture studies are widely used to obtain information about abundance (population size or density) of animal populations. A common design is that in which multiple distinct populations are sampled, and the research objective is modeling variation in population size $N_{s}; s=1,2,...,S$ among the populations such as estimating a treatment effect or some other source of variation related to landscape structure. The problem is naturally resolved using hierarchical models. We provide a Bayesian formulation of such models using data augmentation which preserves the individual encounter histories in the model and, as such, is amenable to modeling individual effects. We formulate the model by conditioning on the total population size among all populations. In this case, the abundance model can be formulated as a multinomial model that allocates individuals among sites. MCMC is easily carried out by the introduction of a categorical individual effect, $g_{i}$, which partitions the total population size. The prior distribution for the latent variable $g$ is derived from the model assumed for the population sizes $N_{s}$.
Molecular characterization of the Zymomonas mobilis enolase (eno) gene

Abstract The Zymomonas mobilis gene encoding enolase was cloned by genetic complementation of an Escherichia coli eno mutant. An enzyme assay and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis confirmed the overexpression of enolase in E. coli clones carrying the Z. mobilis eno gene. The eno gene is present in a single copy of the Z. mobilis genome. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the eno region revealed an open reading frame of 1,293 bp that encodes a protein of 428 amino acids with a predicted molecular weight of 45,813. Comparison of the sequence of Z. mobilis enolase with primary amino acid sequences for other enolases indicates that the enzyme is highly conserved. Unlike all of the previously studied glycolytic genes from Z. mobilis that possess canonical ribosome binding sites, the eno gene is preceded by a modest Shine-Dalgarno sequence. The transcription initiation site was mapped by primer extension and found to be located within a 115-bp sequence that is 55.7% identical to a highly conserved consensus sequence found within the regulatory regions of highly expressed Z. mobilis genes. Northern RNA blot analysis revealed that eno is encoded on a 1.45-kb transcript. The half-life of the eno mRNA was determined to be 17.7 +/- 1.7 min, indicating that it is unusually stable. The abundance of the eno message is proposed to account for enolase being the most prevalent protein in Z. mobilis.
A transport model for flow processes characterized by time-varying time delays

A model for flow processes transported over media characterized by time-varying time delays is presented. The model expresses the flow arrival rate as a function of the flow departure rate and the transport time delay. In addition to the cases studied in the literature, the case of time delay gradients having absolute values larger than 1 is considered. Such time delay variations could be reflecting certain dynamics in the transport medium too complex to model. The utility of the model is demonstrated through simulations and its validity is verified by comparing the cumulative arrival flow predicted by the model with end-to-end delay measurements from a single packet flow.
Intervention with Adolescents

Adolescents face significant risks in today's society and it is estimated that one in five adolescents suffers from a current developmental, emotional, or behavioral problem. This chapter reviews current problems facing adolescents and examines prevention and intervention programs designed to improve adolescent mental health and well-being. Developmental considerations when conducting assessments with adolescents is presented as well as prevalence rates for selected behavior problems and disorders. Promising models of prevention and intervention are identified and described, including programs that focus on substance abuse prevention, pregnancy, STD, and HIV prevention, adolescent depression, and conduct disorder. Treatment strategies reviewed include multisystemic therapy, functional family therapy, and problem-solving and social skills training. Lastly, additional issues involved in ongoing treatment and case management, service delivery, and commonly used treatment manuals are discussed. Keywords: adolescent treatment; adolescent therapy; evidence-based treatment with adolescents; mental health and adolescents; service delivery with adolescents
Type I Hypersensitivity

Most of the disorders that have a type I hypersensitivity reaction as the predominant pathophysiologic mechanism are inflammatory diseases of the ocular surface. The choroid has a population of mast cells; however, their role in uveitis and retinal edema is not well defined.1
Social Justice in Maternal/Infant Care

Eileen R. Fowles, PhD, RNC-OB, is an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. According to a Commonwealth Fund report, the United States spends 2 to 3 times more on health care than comparable industrialized nations. Still, the health of Americans lags behind many such nations (Davis et al., 2007). For nurses caring for childbearing women and infants, it is of particular concern that on the cornerstone indices of infant and maternal mortality, the United States ranks 29th and 41st in the world, respectively (MacDorman & Matthews, 2008; Senate Resolution 616 [110th], 2008). Underlying these mortality indices are health disparities and inequalities that undercut the health of American women and infants, especially those with lower income or minority status. Although health disparities data aid in identifying groups with poorer health in American society, social justice impels us as nurses to act to address these disparities.
Safety-critical and constrained geometric control synthesis using control Lyapunov and control Barrier functions for systems evolving on manifolds

Geometric controllers for mechanical system have been well-developed in past research work. Although geometric controllers possess the advantages of being coordinate-free and compact, these controllers don't take into account constraints such as safety-critical collision constraints or input saturations. In this paper, we utilize the concepts of control Lyapunov function(CLF) and control Barrier function(CBF) to incorporate various constraints in a state-dependent quadratic programming(QP). Through relaxation, a proper trade-off has been made between the constraints imposed by CLF and CBF. Then qualitative analysis of this design method is derived in detail, and we provide convincing simulation results on a point mass, a spherical pendulum, and a 3D pendulum.
Dynamic Modeling and Hydrodynamic Performance of Biomimetic Underwater Robot Locomotion

We developed a dynamic model of a Nitinol artificial muscle activated biomimetic robot. The robot was reverse engineered from the American lobster and built in the Biomimetic Underwater Robot Program at Northeastern University. It is intended for autonomous remote-sensing operations in shallow waters. An experimentally based Nitinol artificial muscle model was integrated into the robot dynamic model. The hydrodynamic characteristics of the robot were determined experimentally. The muscle control signals were generated by utilizing a readily available biomimetic control architecture. The effects of the timing parameters were investigated. Simulations indicate that the developed robot is able to locomote with high stability. It can walk against constant currents and surge.
Characterization of gastric mucosal membranes. Composition of gastric cell membranes and polypeptide fractionation using ionic and nonionic detergents.

Abstract Lipid, carbohydrate, amino acid, and polypeptide composition of 2 fractions of cell membranes obtained by sucrose-Ficoll zonal density gradient fractionation of gastric mucosal homogenates has been studied. The membranes with density = 1.04 contain 0.7 μmole lipid P and 0.54 μmole cholesterol/mg protein, while the membranes of density 1.10 contain only 0.25 μmole lipid P and 0.28 μmole cholesterol/mg protein. Phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine are the most abundant phospholipids. Free fatty acids were present. Carbohydrates were most abundant in the proteins of the Peak II membranes (density = 1.10). One polypeptide band was dominant on sodium dodecyl sulfate, Triton X-100, and Brij 36T gels, and the adenosine triphosphatase activity in Brij 36T gels was found to have a relative mobility of 0.14 and 0.19 in the two fractions.
The Influence of Chain Length and Base Composition on the Specific Association of Oligoribonucleotides with Denatured Deoxyribonucleic Acid

Abstract RNA made in vitro on a DNA (from T2, T3, T4, or T7 phage) template was subjected to a limited digestion with ribonuclease T1 and fractionated according to chain length. The oligonucleotides of various chain lengths were annealed at various temperatures to denatured DNAs immobilized on membrane filters. In the absence of Mg++, a chain length of 10 or more ribonucleotides is required to form a ribonuclease-resistant complex with denatured DNA. In the presence of Mg++, oligonucleotides as small as octanucleotides can form a detectable complex with denatured DNA. The shortest oligonucleotides capable of forming a complex with denatured DNA do so with a high degree of specificity for species; oligonucleotides produced from T-even phage DNAs will form a complex only with T-even DNAs, not with T-odd DNAs, and vice versa. The expression of heterology between the T-even and T-odd phage DNAs seems to occur on passing from a chain length of 9 to 10. As expected, the temperatures for optimum complex formation and the melting temperatures of the oligoribonucleotide-denatured DNA complexes increase with the chain length of the oligonucleotides. When chain length is constant, these temperatures are considerably higher for the oligonucleotides produced from T-odd phage DNAs than for those produced from T-even ones, suggesting that the former oligonucleotides, having higher guanine + cytosine contents, form complexes that are considerably more stable than those formed by the latter.
From necessity to fate: A fallacy

Though clearly fallacious, the inference from determinism to fatalism (the ``Lazy Argument'') has appealed to such minds as Aristotle and his disciple, Alexander of Aphrodisias. It is argued here (1) that determinism does entail a rather similar position, dubbed ``futilism''; and (2) that distinctively Aristotelian determinism entails fatalism for any event to which it applies. The concept of ``fate'' is examined along the way.
Art and Agency An Anthropological Theory

Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Alfred Gell. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1998. 296 pp. 106 ill.
Identifying Dangerous Trucking Firms

The paper develops a statistical procedure for predicting the safety performance of motor carriers based on characteristics of firms and results of two government safety enforcement programs. One program is an audit of management safety practices, and the other is a program to inspect drivers and vehicles at the roadside for compliance with safety regulations. The technique can be used to provide safety regulators with an empirical approach to identify the most dangerous firms and provide a priority list of firms against which educational and enforcement actions should be initiated. The government needs to use such an approach rather than directly observing accident rates because the most dangerous firms are generally small and, despite relatively high accident rates, accidents remain rare events. The technique uses negative-binomial regression procedures on a dataset of 20,000 firms. The definition of poor performance in roadside inspection is based on both the rate of inspections per fleet mile and the average number of violations found during an inspection. This choice was made because selection for inspection has both a random and nonrandom component. The results of the study suggest that both of the government's safety programs help identify the most dangerous firms. The 2.5% of firms that do poorly in both programs have an average accident rate twice that of the mean for all other firms.
Attitudes toward Masturbation

105 male and 123 female college students were shown photographs of college women varying in attractiveness. Subjects were asked to identify the photograph they considered most attractive, the one they felt was of the woman most likely to be a virgin, and the one they felt was of the woman most likely to masturbate. All subjects selected as most attractive one of the photographs rated as high in attractiveness in prior research. When asked to select the picture of the individual most likely to be a virgin, subjects significantly more frequently selected a less attractive individual. This finding was also true when subjects selected the picture of the individual they believed most likely to masturbate. By the “beauty as good” model, these findings suggest that masturbation and virginity are viewed as negative sexual concepts by college students.
N-218 MLN64, a protein with StAR-like steroidogenic activity, is folded and cleaved similarly to StAR.

The steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) facilitates the movement of cholesterol from the outer to inner mitochondrial membrane in adrenal and gonadal cells, fostering steroid biosynthesis...
The less BOLD, the wiser: support for the latent resource hypothesis after traumatic brain injury.

Previous studies of the BOLD response in the injured brain have revealed neural recruitment relative to controls during working memory tasks in several brain regions, most consistently the right prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortices. We previously proposed that the recruitment observed in this literature represents auxiliary support resources, and that recruitment of PFC is not abnormal or injury specific and should reduce as novelty and challenge decrease. The current study directly tests this hypothesis in the context of practice of a working memory task. It was hypothesized that individuals with brain injury would demonstrate recruitment of previously indicated regions, behavioral improvement following task practice, and a reduction in the BOLD signal in recruited regions after practice. Individuals with traumatic brain injury and healthy controls performed the n-back during fMRI acquisition, practiced each task out of the scanner, and returned to the scanner for additional fMRI n-back acquisition. Statistical parametric maps demonstrated a number of regions of recruitment in the 1-back in individuals with brain injury and a number of corresponding regions of reduced activation in individuals with brain injury following practice in both the 1-back and 2-back. Regions of interest demonstrated reduced activation following practice, including the anterior cingulate and right prefrontal cortices. Individuals with brain injury demonstrated modest behavioral improvements following practice. These findings suggest that neural recruitment in brain injury does not represent reorganization but a natural extension of latent mechanisms that engage transiently and are contingent upon cerebral challenge. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Heterogeneity in Mitochondrial Morphology and Membrane Potential Is Independent of the Nuclear Division Cycle in Multinucleate Fungal Cells

In the multinucleate filamentous fungus Ashbya gossypii, nuclei divide asynchronously in a common cytoplasm. We hypothesize that the division cycle machinery has a limited zone of influence in the cytoplasm to promote nuclear autonomy. Mitochondria in cultured mammalian cells undergo cell cycle-specific changes in morphology and membrane potential and therefore can serve as a reporter of the cell cycle state of the cytoplasm. To evaluate if the cell cycle state of nuclei in A. gossypii can influence the adjacent cytoplasm, we tested whether local mitochondrial morphology and membrane potential in A. gossypii are associated with the division state of a nearby nucleus. We found that mitochondria exhibit substantial heterogeneity in both morphology and membrane potential within a single multinucleated cell. Notably, differences in mitochondrial morphology or potential are not associated with a specific nuclear division state. Heterokaryon mutants with a mixture of nuclei with deletions of and wild type for the mitochondrial fusion/fission genes DNM1 and FZO1 exhibit altered mitochondrial morphology and severe growth and sporulation defects. This dominant effect suggests that the gene products may be required locally near their expression site rather than diffusing widely in the cell. Our results demonstrate that mitochondrial dynamics are essential in these large syncytial cells, yet morphology and membrane potential are independent of nuclear cycle state.
Quality-of-life issues in osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is responsible for more than 1.5 million fractures per year in the United States including vertebral and nonvertebral fractures of the hip and wrist. Most of the impact of osteoporosis on quality of life relates to fracture. While the morbidity and mortality of hip fractures have long been recognized, only recently have we also recognized the significant burden of vertebral fractures. With the development of generic and disease targeted quality-of-life instruments we have now confirmed observational studies showing that clinical vertebral fractures have significant effects on quality of life. The economic burden of vertebral fractures, if we include direct and indirect costs, may be similar to hip fractures. The relative risk for mortality after clinical vertebral fracture is at least equivalent to that of hip fracture. The burden of vertebral fractures relates not only to pain but also to kyphosis. Because vertebral fractures are often under diagnosed and under treated, these findings are a call to action because the first vertebral fracture leads to significantly increased risk for subsequent vertebral and osteoporotic fracture with further loss of quality of life.
Novela señoresca: La señora Cornelia o señorial monumento agrietado

A small crack in the text—an abbreviation—sheds light on how “segneuresque” can be the parallactic complement to “picaresque,” short-circuiting the irreductible differences between the rogue and the Spanish noble. The lexeme “senor-” has a telling distribution in the entire collection of Cervantes's Exemplary Novels, and it parallels—contrary to the official perception of Cervantes as a representative of all things firm and traditional in Spain—Cervantes's general distancing from aristocracy, as strong as his distancing from the picaresque world.
Rare earths in Hawaiian basalts.

Rare-earth elements have been determined by neutron activation analysis in 20 basalts from the Hawaiian Islands. The abundance patterns of these elements form groups coinciding closely with groupings based on other evidence, and a fractional crystallization mechanism for change in rare earth abundance is implied.
Explaining intra–day and overnight price behavior: Reply to comment

I n their comment, Amihud and Mendelson show that certain effects observed in the American market, which I attribute to specialist stabilizing behavior, occur also in countries with no specialists, namely, Japan and Italy. This is an interesting and important finding, and I am in no position to quarrel with it. The behavior of non-existent specialists obviously cannot explain the Japanese and Italian low overnight variances, which indicates that something else causes these variances. This other cause may extend to the United States as well, explaining part, or all, of the low overnight variances here. Amihud and Mendelson go too far, however, when they assert “Miller’s theory implies that, absent the specialist’s active intervention, we should not observe lower overnight variances relative to the intraday variances.” Actually, I hold merely that specialist intervention is a sufficient (and rather parsimonious) explanation for the lower overnight variance. It is not a necessary cause, and hence my theory says nothing about what might be observed in markets without specialists, although the question is certainly an interesting one, well worth being addressed by expert researchers such as Amihud and Mendelson. Over a twenty-four-hour period there are 87 z 3
Development of parallel electric fields at the plasma sheet boundary layer

[1] Many measurements of auroral particles, in particular recent measurements from the FAST satellite, indicate that the auroral electron distribution is often broad in energy and field-aligned in pitch angle. Such electrons are seen in conjunction with strong kinetic Alfven waves with small perpendicular wavelength, and so the aurora produced by these electrons has been termed the “Alfvenic aurora.” The Alfvenic aurora is predominant at the polar cap boundary of the aurora as well as in the auroral arc that brightens during substorm onset. The process of forming parallel electric fields in Alfven waves has been investigated by means of three-dimensional two-fluid simulations. Waves with small perpendicular wavelengths can be produced by phase mixing when perpendicular gradients are present in the plasma. At lower altitudes, Alfven waves can interact with the ionospheric Alfven resonator and phase mix to scales of a few kilometers. At higher altitudes, the electron thermal speed becomes comparable or larger than the Alfven speed, and parallel electric fields due to the Landau resonance can develop. This has been modeled in the fluid code by an approximation to the plasma dispersion function used in kinetic theory. Phase mixing is most effective when there are strong gradients, such as at the plasma sheet boundary layer. Simulations indicate that these processes can produce parallel electric fields on scales of a few kilometers (in the cold plasma case) to a few tens of kilometers (in the warm plasma case), comparable to the scale sizes of auroral arcs.
Analytical supercritical fluid chromatography using fully automated column and modifier selection valves for the rapid development of chiral separations

Automated analytical supercritical fluid chromatography is used to separate enantiomers of pharmaceutical compounds in the drug discovery laboratory. Modification of a commercial instrument to incorporate a six-way column selection valve, multiple chiral columns based on derivatized cellulose or amylose, and a four-way modifier selection valve provides a powerful combination for the rapid development of chiral separations. A wide set of columns and conditions can be tested sequentially, including unattended operation overnight. This paper shows that similar racemic compounds, even those from the same molecular class, are separated using different column and modifier combinations. Therefore, the use of program-controlled column and modifier selectors has great advantages. Using the fully automated system, the optimal chiral separation of several compounds can be obtained unattended within 24 h.
Sphere 2 : Jerry's rig, an OpenGL application for non-linear panorama viewing and interaction

Given a set of images, or time-lapsed imagery, that is captured in an unconstrained domain, there are numerous methods to map that data into a domain that is readily displayable on basic rectilinear digital displays. However, while these mappings can be mathematically sound, they are methods that modify the spatio-temporal “scale” of the scene, and thus can become quite semantically confusing when viewed in this manner. In working with data to be mathematically and scientifically analyzed, we have found that we also require a level of semantic consistency, such as in providing accessible imagery for expert annotation or in generating “virtual field trips”. This is why we have applied the same mathematical rigor to instead develop an interactive, OpenGL-based viewing application for spatio-temporally non-linear imagery. This application is extensible and entirely custom, such that we can not only interact with single sets of related imagery, but also view the relationships across sets of imagery in a semantically viable, and mathematically sound, domain.