cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Dietary Intervention for Glucose Tolerance In Teens (DIG IT): Protocol of a randomized controlled trial using health coaching to prevent youth-onset type 2 diabetes

Abstract Background Youth-onset type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a disease that is newly emerging and behavioral strategies for its prevention are limited. Interventions that target the lifestyle behaviors of adolescents, to improve poor dietary quality and reduce excessive sedentariness, promise to reduce the risk of developing T2D. Health coaching is effective for promoting healthy behaviors in patients who have chronic disease, but few experimental studies are in adolescents. This randomized controlled trial, in adolescents with prediabetes, will determine the effectiveness of a health coaching intervention to facilitate adoption of healthy diet and activity behaviors that delay or prevent development of T2D. Methods/design The Dietary Intervention for Glucose Tolerance In Teens (DIG IT) trial will involve an evaluation of a health coaching intervention in adolescents with prediabetes. Eligible participants will be randomized to receive 6 months of health coaching or a single dietary consultation that is standard-of-care. The primary outcome will be 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test concentration. Secondary outcomes will include measures of glycemia and insulin action as well as dietary, physical activity and sedentary behaviors measured using an electronic food record, and by inclinometer. Data will be collected before and after the intervention (at 6 months) and at 12 months (to assess sustainability). Discussion This trial will determine whether a health coaching intervention, a personalized and low-cost approach to modify dietary and activity behaviors, is effective and sustainable for prevention of youth-onset T2D, relative to standard-of-care. Health coaching has the potential to be widely implemented in clinical or community settings.
Recurrent ovarian torsion in an adolescent after oophoropexy

Abstract Adnexal torsion is an uncommon but serious emergency in the pediatric population. Surgical management by detorsion of the affected structure has become the standard of care. However, management to prevent recurrence of torsion in the younger female population is still debated. This report describes a case of recurrent torsion and the considerations involved in its management. A healthy 14 year-old girl presented with a third occurrence of right ovarian torsion, previously treated with oophoropexy, and was found to have failure of oophoropexy with adhesions near the pelvic sidewall. Complications of oophoropexy are not well reported, but adhesions and damage to adjacent structures should be considered. Torsion recurrence after oophoropexy is an uncommon complication, and management options include immediate oophoropexy after detorsion, interval oophoropexy, or close post-operative monitoring.
Jet and heavy flavor production in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract We review recent progress in the theoretical description of hard probes in heavy-ion collisions within the framework of Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). Firstly, we consider the inclusive production of heavy flavor mesons and jets with a small radius parameter in proton-proton collisions. Secondly, we describe how in-medium effects can be incorporated consistently with the proton-proton baseline calculations. The in-medium interactions are described by Glauber gluon interactions. We present results for the nuclear modification factor RAA which is most commonly used to study the quenching of hadron or jet production yields in heavy-ion collisions and we compare to recent data from the LHC.
A framework for robust differential network modular structure discovery from RNA-seq data

Functional gene network analysis, such as gene co-expression network analysis, is useful for detecting disease-associated gene modules. Compared with many gene interaction networks in pathway databases, co-expression networks constructed directly from RNA-seq experiment are context-specific and thus more helpful for detecting differential gene modules under defined conditions. However, existing co-expression network inference approaches for RNA-seq data suffer from high noise and biases due to small sample sizes and many confounding factors. In this paper we proposed a framework for constructing robust, context-specific differential gene co-expression networks consisting of only high confidence edges. To detect disease-associated submodules, we devised a new metric to measure module significance scores. Based on this metric, we developed a gene ontology(GO)-driven module discovery algorithm for identifying disease-associated differential modular structures. Experiments on real RNA-seq data shows this framework works well in detecting biologically meaningful signals.
Patternlets — A teaching tool for introducing students to parallel design patterns

Abstract Thanks to the ubiquity of multicore processors, today’s CS students must be introduced to parallel computing or they will be ill prepared as modern software developers. Professional developers of parallel software think in terms of parallel design patterns , which are markedly different from traditional (sequential) design patterns. It follows that the more we can teach students to think in terms of parallel patterns, the more their thinking will resemble that of parallel software professionals. In this paper, we present patternlets —minimalist, scalable, syntactically correct programs, each designed to introduce students to a particular parallel design pattern. The collection currently includes 44 patternlets (16 MPI, 17 OpenMP, 9 Pthreads, and 2 heterogeneous), of which we present a representative sample. We also present data that indicate the use of patternlets to introduce parallelism in CS2 produced a modest improvement in student understanding of parallel concepts.
16 – Sampling Conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the true nature of sampling conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers. They conduct the sampling the regulator asks for, but in secret—and then do not share the results if the data are incriminating. An example is provided on the Corps of Engineers' report of Analytical Results of burial sites in the District of Columbia dated May 8, 2002. Much information was withheld from property owners about the presence of volatile constituents in the soil. The District was concerned about the timeline because the Corps repeatedly stressed that its expertise is in the ordnance and engineering aspects, and has deferred the health-related issues to the regulators. The District agreed with the Corps that most of the compounds were found in very low levels. However, the District notes that a few of these compounds are experimental chemical warfare agents or precursor compounds listed in the archival documents. This chapter also illustrates to what lengths the military will go to come up with a plausible story as to why there is no problem at a particular site. The tendency to deny the existence of contamination or burial sites is delineated with examples.
Algorithms and software for collaborative discovery from autonomous, semantically heterogeneous, distributed information sources

Development of high throughput data acquisition technologies, together with advances in computing, and communications have resulted in an explosive growth in the number, size, and diversity of potentially useful information sources. This has resulted in unprecedented opportunities in data-driven knowledge acquisition and decision-making in a number of emerging increasingly data-rich application domains such as bioinformatics, environmental informatics, enterprise informatics, and social informatics (among others). However, the massive size, semantic heterogeneity, autonomy, and distributed nature of the data repositories present significant hurdles in acquiring useful knowledge from the available data. This paper introduces some of the algorithmic and statistical problems that arise in such a setting, describes algorithms for learning classifiers from distributed data that offer rigorous performance guarantees (relative to their centralized or batch counterparts). It also describes how this approach can be extended to work with autonomous, and hence, inevitably semantically heterogeneous data sources, by making explicit, the ontologies (attributes and relationships between attributes) associated with the data sources and reconciling the semantic differences among the data sources from a user's point of view. This allows user or context-dependent exploration of semantically heterogeneous data sources. The resulting algorithms have been implemented in INDUS – an open source software package for collaborative discovery from autonomous, semantically heterogeneous, distributed data sources.
Self-Reported Diabetes and Hypertension among Arab Americans in the United States

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of diabetes and hypertension is increasing in the United States. Estimates for Blacks and Hispanics are higher compared to non-Hispanic Whites. When comparing estimates among racial and ethnic groups, Whites are used as the reference category. Whites are a very heterogeneous group, comprising persons having origins in Europe, North America, or the Middle East. The objective of this paper was to examine the association between nativity and self-reported diabetes and hypertension among a sample of non-Hispanic Whites including individuals born in the Middle East (referred to as Arab Americans; n=425) and born in the United States (n=79,228). DESIGN: We use data from the 2000-2003 National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS). The NHIS is an annual, face-to-face interview of the civilian, noninstitutionalized US population that uses a three-stage stratified cluster probability sampling design. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the association between nativity and self-reported diabetes and hypertension among non-Hispanic Whites. RESULTS: We found that the prevalence of diabetes was 4.8% for Arab Americans and 6.9% for non-Hispanic Whites (not significant). Similarly, the prevalence of hypertension was 13.4% for Arab Americans and 24.5% for non-Hispanic Whites (P<.0001). No association between country of birth, diabetes, or hypertension was seen. CONCLUSIONS: Nativity status was not significantly associated with self-reported diabetes and hypertension among non-Hispanic Whites. Future studies should examine ethnic heterogeneity among non-Hispanic Whites.
A METHOD FOR QUANTIFYING POLYETHYLENE WEAR OF REVERSE SHOULDER HUMERAL LINERS: VALIDATION AND INITIAL CLINICAL RESULTS

Introduction A common phenomenon occurring as a result of reverse total shoulder arthroplasties (RSA) is scapular notching. While bone loss of the scapula may be quantified using radiographic techniques,[1] the material loss on the humeral bearing has not been quantified. Depending on their functional biological activity, a high volume of polyethylene wear particles has been shown to be related to osteolysis, bone loss and ultimately, loosening of implants in other joints.[2] In order to understand the threshold for osteolysis in the shoulder, it is important to have a method that can accurately quantify the amount of material loss. The aim of this research was to (I) create and validate a method for quantifying material loss from a single humeral implant design which can then (II) be used to measure retrieved devices. Methods Measurement of the surface topography of the implant was completed using coordinate measurement machine (CMM). The resulting point cloud was then imported into MATLAB and run through a custom algorithm to determine the volumetric wear of the humeral liner. Two never implanted humeral liners with an artificially damaged material loss were used for validation purposes. Each component was scanned three times, analyzed using the custom MATLAB program, and compared to gravimetric analysis (Figure 1). Following validation, an IRB-approved database was queried to identify 10 retrieved components of the same design which were then analyzed using the validated method. Results All average measurements of the never implanted components were within +/- 5 mm 3 of the gravimetrically determined values, providing a reasonable estimate of the volumetric wear (Figure 1). Ten retrieved components of a single design were analyzed using the same method and material loss ranged from immeasurable (within the accuracy limits) to approximately 90 mm 3 (Figure 3). One short term duration implant (1.8 mos) exhibited approximately 78 mm 3 of wear, resulting in a polyethylene dosage of more than 500 mm 3 /yr. Discussion The posterior-inferior wear pattern on the rim of these reverse shoulders appears consistent with repetitive scapular impingement. The significant wear of short duration implants indicates that wear associated with scapular notching may progress very quickly, resulting in large dose rates of debris in the joint space. However, the impingement may result in a more abrasive wear mechanism as opposed to an adhesive wear mechanism as seen in other joint wear environments. This may result in different size and shaped polyethylene particles with different biological activity. The algorithms presented in this work can be used to establish a dose-response relationship for scapular notching in RSA.
Designing Ultra-Low Hydrate Adhesion Surfaces by Interfacial Spreading of Water-Immiscible Barrier Films

Clathrate hydrates are icelike solid substances that can form inside oil and gas pipelines and are responsible for flow blockages, sometimes leading to catastrophic failures. Minimizing hydrate formation and adhesion on pipeline surfaces can effectively address this problem. In this paper, we achieve the lowering of the adhesion of cyclopentane hydrates by promoting a cyclopentane barrier film between the hydrate and solid surface. The presence of this interfacial liquid film depends on the relative spreading of cyclopentane on the solid surface in the presence of water. We study the role of surface chemistry and surface texture on the spreading characteristics of such interfacial films and their impact on hydrate adhesion. The use of the spreading coefficients as design parameters could take us a step closer to the development of effective passive antihydrate surfaces.
Oral health beliefs and behaviors of nurse and nurse practitioner students using the HU-DBI inventory: An opportunity for oral health vicarious learning

Background: Oral health access to care issues are resulting in curricular changes to train nursing students as oral health educators and providers. However, little data are available concerning their personal oral health beliefs/behaviors. The study purpose was to gather information from nurse and nurse practitioner students regarding their oral health beliefs and behaviors. Methods: Using the Hiroshima University Dental Behavioural Inventory (HU-DBI), survey data were gathered from nurse and nurse practitioner students as well as dental hygiene students as controls concerning their oral health beliefs and behaviors. Results: Mean HU-DBI scores were higher among nurse practitioner than nursing students, indicating more positive beliefs/behaviors, but both were lower than dental hygiene students. Both nurse and nurse practitioner students reported significantly fewer dental visits and some poorer hygiene practices than controls. Additionally, nursing students were more likely to believe that their teeth were worsening despite brushing. Conclusions: Assessment of personal oral health beliefs/behaviors should occur early in nursing education with mentoring so that optimal modeling can positively impact patients’ oral health. Oral health education opportunities within and among disciplines are discussed.
Analytic continuation from a family of lines

Given a function f in the exterior of a convex curve in the real plane, we prove that if the restrictions of f to the tangent lines to the curve extend as entire functions, then the function f is an entire function of two variables.
Model-free determination of optical constants: application to undoped and Ga-doped ZnO

For single slabs of uniform material, such as bulk semiconductors, we derive closed-form expressions for absorption and reflection coefficients, ∝ and R, respectively, in terms of measured reflectance and transmittance, Rm and Tm. The formula for α can replace the several commonly used approximations for ∝ as a function of Tm, and in particular does not require ∝d >> 1, where d is the thickness. Thus, it can be applied to weak impurity absorptions, such as Fe absorption in Fe-doped GaN. Finally, the real (η) and imaginary (κ) parts of the index of refraction (n = η + iκ) can be obtained from ∝ and R and agree well with η and κ results obtained from other experiments. For multi-layer structures, “effective” values of ∝, R, η, and κ are obtained, but they can often be assigned to a particular layer. This new technique has been successfully applied to many bulk and layered structures.
Performance analysis of textile AMC antenna on body model

The focus of this paper is to present a low profile, and highly efficient monopole antenna integrated with artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) using textile materials with a compact footprint for off-body communication in the ISM 5.8 GHz band. In addition, effect of structural deformation in terms of antenna bending on the performance of monopole antenna with and without AMC reflector is examined into two perpendicular planes. Finally, this paper explores human body loading effect on the proposed antennas conformed to a human arm model of averaged tissue properties.
Quality-Aware Traffic Offloading in Wireless Networks

In cellular networks, due to many practical deployment issues, some areas have good wireless coverage while other areas may not. This results in significant throughput (service quality) difference between wireless carriers at some locations. We first analyze the factors that affect the service quality and then validate the existence of service quality difference between different carriers via extensive measurements. To deal with this problem, a mobile device (node) with low service quality can offload its data traffic to nearby nodes with better service quality through Device-to-Device interfaces, such as WiFi direct, to save energy and reduce delay. To achieve this goal, we propose a Quality-Aware Traffic Offloading (QATO) framework to offload network tasks to neighboring nodes with better service quality. QATO can identify neighbors with better service quality and motivate nodes to help each other using incentive schemes. To validate our design, we have implemented QATO on Android platform and have developed a web browser and a photo uploader on top of it. Experimental results show that QATO can significantly reduce energy and delay for both data downloading and uploading. Through trace-driven simulations, we also show that all users can benefit from data offloading in the long run.
Algorithms for Stable Matching and Clustering in a Grid

We study a discrete version of a geometric stable marriage problem originally proposed in a continuous setting by Hoffman, Holroyd, and Peres, in which points in the plane are stably matched to cluster centers, as prioritized by their distances, so that each cluster center is apportioned a set of points of equal area. We show that, for a discretization of the problem to an \(n\times n\) grid of pixels with k centers, the problem can be solved in time \(O(n^2 \log ^5 n)\), and we experiment with two slower but more practical algorithms and a hybrid method that switches from one of these algorithms to the other to gain greater efficiency than either algorithm alone. We also show how to combine geometric stable matchings with a k-means clustering algorithm, so as to provide a geometric political-districting algorithm that views distance in economic terms, and we experiment with weighted versions of stable k-means in order to improve the connectivity of the resulting clusters.
Dynamic Contracting under Positive Commitment

We consider a firm that sells products that arrive over time to a buyer. We study this problem under a notion we call positive commitment, where the seller is allowed to make binding positive promises to the buyer about items arriving in the future, but is not allowed to commit not to make further offers to the buyer in the future. We model this problem as a dynamic game where the seller chooses a mechanism at each period subject to a sequential rationality constraint, and characterize the perfect Bayesian equilibrium of this dynamic game. We prove the equilibrium is efficient and that the seller’s revenue is a function of the buyer’s ex ante utility under a no commitment model. In particular, all goods are sold in advance to the buyer at what we call the positive commitment price.
The Impact of Conflict and Conflict Management Style on Deadbeats and Deserters in Virtual Teams

Individuals face additional challenges when interacting in virtual teams. The lack of media richness and the asynchronous nature of technologically transmitted messages make communication more diff...
Unsupervised Clustering Under Temporal Feature Volatility in Network Stack Fingerprinting

Maintaining and updating signature databases are tedious tasks that normally require a large amount of user effort. The problem becomes harder when features can be distorted by observation noise, which we call volatility . To address this issue, we propose algorithms and models to automatically generate signatures in the presence of noise, with a focus on single-probe stack fingerprinting , which is a research area that aims to discover the operating system of remote hosts using their response to a TCP SYN packet. Armed with this framework, we construct a database with 420 network stacks, label the signatures, develop a robust classifier for this database, and fingerprint 66M visible webservers on the Internet. We compare the obtained results against Nmap and discover interesting limitations of its classification process that prevent correct operation when its auxiliary probes (e.g., TCP rainbow, TCP ACK, and UDP to a closed port) are blocked by firewalls.
FIVE-YEAR RSA EVALUATION OF VITAMIN E DIFFUSED HIGHLY CROSS-LINKED POLYETHYLENE WEAR AND STABILITY OF FEMORAL STEMS

Introduction In vitro studies showed that the anti-oxidative properties of vitamin E stabilize free radicals while retaining the mechanical strength of UHMWPE. The purpose was to evaluate vitamin E diffused polyethylene (VEPE) wear and stability of femoral components using RSA. Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) were evaluated to determine the clinical outcome at 5 years. Methods 48 patients (52 hips), with osteoarthritis, participated in a 5 year RSA study. Each patient received a VEPE liner, a porous titanium coated shell, and an uncemented stem with a 32mm head. Tantalum beads were inserted into the VEPE and the femur to measure head wear and stem stability using RSA. RSA and PROM follow-up was obtained postoperatively, 6 months, 1, 2, 3, and 5 years after surgery. The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test determined if changes in penetration or migration were significant (p≤0.05). Results 47 hips were followed at 3 years, and 35 at 5 years. The median± standard error (SE) superior head penetration into the polyethylene was 0.05±0.01mm at 3 years and 0.06±0.01 mm at 5 years. There was no difference after 2 years. The median± SE distal stem migration was 0.06±0.21mm at 3 years, and 0.06±0.29mm at 5 years with no significant differences over time. All PROMs improved significantly from the preoperative to all other intervals (p<0.001 for all). Discussion The VEPE liners show low head penetration at 5 years. The early head penetration, probably due to creep, is lower relative to that reported for non-VEPE measured by RSA. While most stems were stable, the high standard error results from one stem that migrated substantially by 6 months (9.4mm), which has since stabilized. This study documents the longest-term evaluation of in vivo wear performance of vitamin E stabilized UHMWPE. The low wear and the stability of the femoral stem shows promise for long-term survivorship.
High-rank matrix completion

This paper considers the problem of completing a matrix with many missing entries under the assumption that the columns of the matrix belong to a union of multiple low-rank subspaces. This generalizesthe standardlow-rankmatrix completion problem to situations in which the matrix rank can be quite high or even full rank. Since the columns belong to a union of subspaces, this problem may also be viewed as a missing-data version of the subspace clustering problem. Let X be an n×N matrix whose (complete) columns lie in a union of at most k subspaces, each of rank ≤ r 1 a constant depending on the usual incoherence conditions, the geometrical arrangement of subspaces, and the distribution of columns over the subspaces. The result is illustrated with numerical experiments and an application to Internet distance matrix completion and topology identification.
Provably good moving least squares

We analyze a moving least squares (MLS) interpolation scheme for reconstructing a surface from point cloud data. The input is a sufficiently dense set of sample points that lie near a closed surface F with approximate surface normals. The output is a reconstructed surface passing near the sample points. For each sample point s in the input, we define a linear point function that represents the local shape of the surface near s. These point functions are combined by a weighted average, yielding a three-dimensional function I. The reconstructed surface is implicitly defined as the zero set of I.We prove that the function I is a good approximation to the signed distance function of the sampled surface F and that the reconstructed surface is geometrically close to and isotopic to F. Our sampling requirements are derived from the local feature size function used in Delaunay-based surface reconstruction algorithms. Our analysis can handle noisy data provided the amount of noise in the input dataset is small compared to the feature size of F.
Supervised Deep Sparse Coding Networks

In this paper, we present the deep sparse coding network (DSCN) - a novel deep learning framework that encodes intermediate representations with nonnegative sparse coding. DSCN is constructed from a cascade of bottleneck modules, each of which consists of two sparse coding layers with relatively wide and slim dictionaries that are specialized to produce high dimensional discriminative features and low dimensional clustered representations, respectively. During training, all dictionaries at all depth levels along with all regularization parameters are optimized jointly with an end-to-end supervised learning algorithm based on multilevel optimization. The effectiveness of the proposed DSCN with seven bottleneck modules 11Consisting 14 sparse coding layers. is verified on several popular benchmark datasets Remarkably, with few parameters to learn, our SCN achieves 5.81 % and 19.93% classification error rate on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100, respectively.
A Stochastic Dynamic Model for Vehicle Headway Control in Automated Vehicle Control System of IVHS

Abstract This paper describes a new control behavior model of a following vehicle, based on dynamic system identification theory. The model’s parameters are estimated and updated at each sampling interval by an adaptive processor. Conceptually, speed of the preceding vehicle is used as system input, and speed of the following vehicle as system response. The speed relationship between the preceding and following vehicles is considered a dynamic system. If the system function can be identified at each sampling interval, then speed characteristics or response of the following vehicle can be forecast. This concept can be used to control vehicle headway, such as used in an automated vehicle control subsystem of an intelligent vehicle highway system.
Studies on the Role of Oral Contraceptive Use in the Etiology of Benign and Malignant Liver Tumors

PIP: Studies involving the role of OCs (oral contraceptives) in the etiology of benign and malignant liver tumors are reviewed. Although the number of reported cases is comparatively small (1 study cited an incidence rate of 1 case in 10,000 users after 5-10 years of contraceptive use), the available evidence strongly suggests that there is a relationship between the use of OCs and benign liver tumors. The acutal risk seems to be related to duration of usage, age of the woman, and type of contraceptive steroid used. 1 study showed the risk to be greater for those users who took pills with high doses of estrogens and progestogens. Analysis of liver tumors histologically showed the tumors among nonusers to be distributed among all the histologic types; there was a preponderance of hepatic cell adenomas (HCA) and focal modular hyperplasia (FNH) among users. Further evidence for an etiologic role for OCs in liver tumor formation can be derived from several cases of tumor regression or dormancy following OC discontinuance. Further etiologic studies should focus on other factors, e.g., female hormone balance, number of pregnancies, and liver disease. It is possible that FNH develops in women susceptible to hormonal stimulation. The malignant potential of benign tumors should also be studied.
Collective Action and Constraints on Repression at the Endgame

How can human rights abuses be prevented or reduced? Using a simple game-theoretic model, we demonstrate that repression can become a coordination game when the potential for abuses is greatest: when dissent against a regime has grown sufficiently powerful. In such scenarios, repression depends on how the leader’s agents coordinate on implementing a repression order. If and to the extent agents believe other agents will not comply with an order to repress, leaders can expect agents to disobey orders and will be less likely to order repression. This logic of expectations constitutes a third mechanism for constraining repression, in addition to sanctioning (i.e., the logic of consequences) and normative mechanisms (i.e., the logic of appropriateness). We formally explore how the logic of expectations can constrain the implementation of repression and also show that the logic of expectations has the greatest potential to constrain repression in middle regimes or “anocracies.” In turn, this has broader implic...
Extracorporeal Shock-Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL). II. In Vivo Canine Results of Blast Path Treatment of Human Gallstones

To evaluate the role of ESWL in vivo for the treatment of human gallstones positioned on the blast path, a canine model was developed to determine the efficacy of stone fragmentation and the subsequent histopathological injury that occurs as a result of this therapeutic technique. Twenty-four 16- to 20-kg mongrel dogs were divided into five groups: I: ESWL without stone, autopsy at 48 hr (N = 6); II: ESWL with stone (mean diameter 16.8 mm, range = 14-19 mm), autopsy at 48 hr (N = 10); III: ESWL without stone, autopsy at 41-46 days (N = 6); IV: ESWL without stone, autopsy immediately after ESWL (N = 1); V: No ESWL or stone, autopsy 2 hr after anesthesia induction (N = 1). A human gallstone (96% cholesterol) was inserted by cholecystotomy (N = 10) in Group II only. All groups (N = 24) had operative placement of a 6.5 Fr accordion catheter into the gallbladder for radiographic visualization. For each blast path treatment, 2000 discharges were delivered at 18-24 kV. Histopathologically, the Group V gallbladder served as a control. Groups I, II, and IV revealed mild subacute injury; dog gallbladders in Group III showed regression of these changes. Total surface area (TSA) of Group II stones increased from a pre-ESWL mean of 6.60 +/- 0.0.84 cm2 to 53.84 +/- 26.8 cm2 post-ESWL (P less than 0.001). Cumulative post-ESWL fragment sizes for particles in less than or equal to 2-, less than or equal to 3-, less than or equal to 5-, less than 10- and greater than or equal to 10-mm categories represented 32.9, 41.6, 49.4, 74.3, and 100% of pretreatment stone weight, respectively. These data indicate that human gallstones can be fractured to a variable degree when treated on the ESWL blast path and that TSA increased significantly. Gallbladder histopathologic changes appear to be reversible by 41-46 days post-ESWL.
Chlamydia Trachomatis in Suburban Adolescents

Martin Fisher, MD, Paul D. Swenson, PhD, Donald Risucci, PhD, and Mark H. Kaplan, MD From the Division of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, the Clinical Virology Laboratory and the Division of Infectious Disease and immunology, Department of Medicine, and the Research Section, Division of Neuropsychology, North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, New York, and the Departments of Pediatrics, Microbiology, and Medicine, Cornell University Medical College, New York
Transitional Cell Carcinoma of the Anterior Urethra

We report a case of transitional cell carcinoma of the anterior male urethra. Unlike squamous cell carcinoma of the anterior urethra, which usually requires partial penectomy, transitional cell carcinoma of this location can be managed with conservative local resection and preservation of the penis. Possible explanations for the origin of this lesion are discussed.
Enzyme Histochemistry of Normal and Neoplastic Transitional Epithelium

The authors utilized the technic of plastic embedding with enzyme histochemistry for the evaluation of enzymatic expression by epithelium of the lower urinary tract in humans. Alpha-naphthyl acetate esterase and acid phosphatase generally were expressed by normal and neoplastic urothelium. Expression of 5'-nucleotidase and ATPase was more restricted. Alkaline phosphatase, prominent in the transitional cells of lower mammalian species, generally was not present in human urothelium. Enzyme histochemistry has not been applied generally to the study of disease of the lower urinary tract, but this study suggests it may be of value in understanding the biology of this tissue and be of potential use in histopathologic diagnosis of diseases of this region.
The Acute Vasculitis of Wegener’s Granulomatosis in Renal Biopsies

The kidney biopsy specimens from five patients with Wegener’s Granulomatosis were reviewed in an attempt to characterize the early histological lesion when vasculitis was present. The vascular lesions were found mainly in interlobular-sized arteries. The acute vascular lesions were sparse and focal, mainly localized to the intimal area, and with fibrinoid material and platelets constituting the early infiltrate. The electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy of the involved areas further emphasized the presence of platelets in the early lesion, and accentuated endothelial alterations occurring along with the intimal infiltrate. Morphologic evidence of immune complex presence was not found.
Interferons: Basic Research, Clinical Studies, and Their Support

Interferon research has recently made great progress. Interferons are now seen to be a family of agents, each with its own chemical and immunologic characteristics. Clinically, research using the techniques of recombinant DNA has made interferons available in quantities sufficient to perform full clinical trials in patients with various viral diseases and cancers. Interferon research promises to be an exciting and fruitful field in years ahead; however, efforts to study interferon may be hamstrung by a shortage of funds for basic research.
Cyclosporine: A New and Promising Immunosuppressive Agent

Cyclosporine is an exciting new agent that has been heralded as a major advance in chemical immunosuppression for organ transplantation. The drug is a potent, reversible suppressant of both humoral and cellular immunity and does not cause myelosuppression. Its mechanism of action appears to be selective for lymphocytes and may interrupt the necessary cellular signals required for proliferation of alloreactive T-cells. In early clinical trials cyclosporine has been shown to ameliorate renal allograft survival. A major concern about its widespread clinical use has been the observed nephrotoxicity and possible development of lymphomas in treated patients. Adverse side effects may be minimized by pharmacologic monitoring of drug levels. Future questions include the ideal dosage schedule, necessity for additional immunosuppressive agents, distinction between nephrotoxicity and rejection, and the precise mode of absorption, accumulation, and metabolism of the drug. Cyclosporine may be considered the prototype of a new generation of immunosuppressive agents that open up new perspectives in the field of immunoregulation. The ability to synthesize the compound may permit future biochemical manipulations to increase the immunobiologic specificity and decrease the toxicity of the drug.
Bladder Substitution in Children

In spite of all the difficulties, cystoplasty, particularly with the ileocecal segment, has proved rewarding. Undiversion is easily accomplished in this way. Most patients are outwardly well and happy. Reflux usually does no harm in the near term, especially if infection can be prevented, and bladder pressures are not elevated. However, we believe that we are close to being able to prevent reflux in a reliable manner. If this is the case, the ileocecal segment or hemi-Kock pouch may clearly become the optimal choice for bladder substitution in patients with reflux or ureteral obstruction, as well as those with short ureters or very small bladders, or as a standard method of undiversion. We have also employed the intussuscepted ileum as the antireflux mechanism in patients undergoing bladder substitution using a patch of small bowel as in the hemi-Kock. This technique allows one to leave the cecum and ileocecal valve in situ, reducing the risk of chronic postoperative diarrhea. In addition, small bowel is proving to be more compliant on the average than large bowel segments when used in bladder reconstruction. Whether the ileocecal segment or the hemi-Kock cystoplasty has a permanent place in undiversion and in the treatment of chronic or pharmacoresistant noncompliant bladder, neuropathic or otherwise, the techniques learned are making total replacement of the bladder with bowel segments a more attractive and feasible undertaking. The pool of patients susceptible to such maneuvers is a large one.
Treatment Outcome of Recurrent Cervical Cancer

A total of 85 patients with recurrent cervical cancer were reviewed: 17 patients with recurrences were treated by radical surgery, 18 by radiotherapy, 29 by chemotherapy, and 21 cases received no further treatment. Survival was presented according to the site of recurrence and the mode of therapy. All patients were followed for a minimum of 24 months after recurrence. Of the total group, 14% are living without evidence of disease, 29% died of metastatic disease with no involvement in the pelvis, and 45% died of pelvic cancer. Overall, 22% were living more than 2 years, and only 2% lived over 5 years after recurrence. The NED (no evidence of disease) rate for radical surgery group was 47 and 44% for the radiotherapy group. There were no significant differences in median survival between the chemotherapy group and the notreatment group (6.8 versus 4.8 months). New chemotherapy agents and adjuvant systemic therapy are discussed.
Getting the Rich and Powerful to Give

What motivates the rich and powerful to exhibit generosity? We explore this important question in a large field experiment. We solicit donations from 32,174 alumni of an Ivy League university, incl...
Lightweight Multilingual Software Analysis.

Developer preferences, language capabilities and the persistence of older languages contribute to the trend that large software codebases are often multilingual, that is, written in more than one computer language. While developers can leverage monolingual software development tools to build software components, companies are faced with the problem of managing the resultant large, multilingual codebases to address issues with security, efficiency, and quality metrics. The key challenge is to address the opaque nature of the language interoperability interface: one language calling procedures in a second (which may call a third, or even back to the first), resulting in a potentially tangled, inefficient and insecure codebase. An architecture is proposed for lightweight static analysis of large multilingual codebases: the MLSA architecture. Its modular and table-oriented structure addresses the open-ended nature of multiple languages and language interoperability APIs. We focus here as an application on the construction of call-graphs that capture both inter-language and intra-language calls. The algorithms for extracting multilingual call-graphs from codebases are presented, and several examples of multilingual software engineering analysis are discussed. The state of the implementation and testing of MLSA is presented, and the implications for future work are discussed.
An orphan cbb3-type cytochrome oxidase subunit supports Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm growth and virulence

Bacteria often form communities called biofilms to make them stronger and more ‘invincible’. However, when these communities become too crowded, oxygen levels can drop, which makes it harder for them to survive. Some types of bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, have found different ways to cope with lower levels of oxygen. For example, they produce enzymes that use oxygen more efficiently or are better at scavenging low concentrations of oxygen. When organisms – including bacteria – produce energy, they break down nutrients into small molecules to extract electrons. These electrons are then transported along their membrane until they reach their final destination – an oxygen molecule. Studies of P. aeruginosa grown in the laboratory have shown that it uses several types of enzymes called terminal oxidases to complete this last electron transfer. The bacterium can also make chemicals that help to shuttle electrons to remote oxygen sources. For example, they can produce compounds called phenazines that can transport electrons and also compensate for low oxygen levels. However, the conditions in biofilms can be very different to those in a laboratory environment, and until now it was not known what role the different oxidases play in biofilm communities, or how phenazines can compensate for low oxygen levels. To investigate this further, Jo et al. studied P. aeruginosa in an artificial biofilm environment and in a nematode worm host. The results showed that a specific part of the terminal oxidases – a protein called CcoN4 – was necessary for P. aeruginosa to grow optimally in both instances. Mutant bacteria that lacked CcoN4 struggled to survive. Moreover, bacteria containing CcoN4 were able to deliver the electrons to phenazines. This suggests that CcoN4 is also needed for phenazines to work properly. This study shows that blocking terminal oxidases that contain CcoN4 can weaken P. aeruginosa and consequently its ability to cause infections. Furthermore, these types of terminal oxidases are only found in bacteria, which makes them attractive targets for potential drugs that would have minimal side effects on the host’s metabolism. P. aeruginosa infections are a leading cause of death for people suffering from cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that affects the lungs and the digestive system. A better understanding of what makes P. aeruginosa so infectious will help to find new treatments for these patients.
Effects of entanglement in an ideal optical amplifier

Abstract In an ideal linear amplifier, the output signal is linearly related to the input signal with an additive noise that is independent of the input. The decoherence of a quantum-mechanical state as a result of optical amplification is usually assumed to be due to the addition of quantum noise. Here we show that entanglement between the input signal and the amplifying medium can produce an exponentially-large amount of decoherence in an ideal optical amplifier even when the gain is arbitrarily close to unity and the added noise is negligible. These effects occur for macroscopic superposition states, where even a small amount of gain can leave a significant amount of which-path information in the environment. Our results show that the usual input/output relation of a linear amplifier does not provide a complete description of the output state when post-selection is used.
A communication efficient distributed learning framework for smart environments

Abstract Due to the pervasive diffusion of personal mobile and IoT devices, many “smart environments” (e.g., smart cities and smart factories) will be, among others, generators of huge amounts of data. To provide value-add services in these environments, data will have to be analysed to extract knowledge. Currently, this is typically achieved through centralised cloud-based data analytics services. However, according to many studies, this approach may present significant issues from the standpoint of data ownership, and even wireless network capacity. One possibility to cope with these shortcomings is to move data analytics closer to where data is generated. In this paper we tackle this issue by proposing and analysing a distributed learning framework, whereby data analytics are performed at the edge of the network, i.e., on locations very close to where data is generated. Specifically, in our framework, partial data analytics are performed directly on the nodes that generate the data, or on nodes close by (e.g., some of the data generators can take this role on behalf of subsets of other nodes nearby). Then, nodes exchange partial models and refine them accordingly. Our framework is general enough to host different analytics services. In the specific case analysed in the paper we focus on a learning task, considering two distributed learning algorithms. Using an activity recognition and a pattern recognition task, both on reference datasets, we compare the two learning algorithms between each other and with a central cloud solution (i.e., one that has access to the complete datasets). Our results show that using distributed machine learning techniques, it is possible to drastically reduce the network overhead, while obtaining performance comparable to the cloud solution in terms of learning accuracy. The analysis also shows when each distributed learning approach is preferable, based on the specific distribution of the data on the nodes.
Structural and Pragmatic Language in Children with ASD: Longitudinal Impact on Anxiety and Externalizing Behaviors

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at heightened risk for developing comorbid psychological disorders, including anxiety disorders, which may be further exacerbated by the presence of externalizing behaviors. Here, we examined how structural language and pragmatic language predicted anxiety and externalizing behaviors. Participants were 159 young children (4-7 years old) with ASD and their mothers. Utilizing structural equation modeling we examined associations among structural language, pragmatic language, anxiety symptoms, and externalizing behaviors. Pragmatic language, was inversely related to child anxiety and co-occurring externalizing behaviors. Structural language skills positively predicted child anxiety. These findings suggest that children with ASD may be at heightened risk for anxiety and externalizing disorders due to their pragmatic language deficits.