cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Effects of mild hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass on blood viscoelasticity in coronary artery bypass grafting patients

The purpose of this study was to determine the changes in blood viscoelasticity during and after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and to identify correlations between blood viscoelasticity and patients' age, duration of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), and cross-clamp time. After Institutional Review Board approvals, patients (n = 10) who were subjected to mild hypothermic CPB were included in this study. Viscosity and elasticity were measured at strains of 0.2, 1, and 5 using a Vilastic-3 Viscoelasticity Analyzer. Arterial blood samples were collected pre-CPB, on normothermic CPB, hypothermic CPB, after rewarming, and after CPB. Viscosity and elasticity at strains of 0.2 and 1 were altered significantly during and after CPB compared to the pre-CPB (p < 0.01). In particular, elasticity of blood was diminished during normothermic bypass and could not be recovered after CPB (p < 0.01). Although there were strong correlations between blood viscoelasticity, duration of CPB, and cross-clamp time on normothermic CPB, only the patients' age showed a positive correlation between viscosity (r = 0.61, p = 0.05), and elasticity (r = 0.89, p < 0.001) after CPB. These results suggest that mild hypothermic CPB alters the blood viscoelasticity during and after CABG.
Hybrid epoxy‐based thermosets based on polyhedral oligosilsesquioxane: Cure behavior and toughening mechanisms

Polyhedral oligosilsesquioxane (POSS)-reinforced thermosets based on oc- taglycidyl epoxy polyhedral oligosilsesquioxane cured with 4,4-diaminodiphenyl sul- fone (DDS) were prepared and studied for their cure, thermomechanical, and micro- structural characteristics. Particular attention was paid to nanometer-scale deforma- tion processes responsible for toughening, as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in conjunction with the thermal properties. A cure analysis investi- gated with calorimetry and rheometry showed a significant dependence of the cure mechanism and kinetics on the DDS content, but all hybrid thermosets reacted com- pletely below 300 °C into rigid solids. A dynamic mechanical analysis of this hybrid resin system showed that increasing the DDS concentration used during cure increased the dynamic storage modulus in the glassy (temperature glass-transition tempera- ture) and rubbery (temperature glass-transition temperature) states, simply through an increase in the crosslink density. The phase structures revealed by TEM with selective POSS staining were drastically affected by the DDS concentration and man- ifested as altered nanomechanical deformation structures. It was qualitatively found that the main toughening mechanism in the studied POSS-reinforced thermosets was void formation at the nanometer scale, possibly templated by limited POSS aggrega- tion. As the crosslinking density increased with the DDS concentration, microshear yielding between voids prevailed, providing a balance of stiffness, strength, and tough- ness. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 41: 3299 -3313, 2003
Multiform ventricular complexes: A transitional arrhythmia form?

Abstract This study was undertaken to better characterize the role of multiform premature ventricular complexes in the classification of ventricular arrhythmias based on form and frequency. Twenty impatients with organic heart disease and multiform ventricular complexes underwent continuous electrocardiographic monitoring with full disclosure analysis of the number and morphology of single premature ventricular complexes, of repetitive forms of ≥2 premature ventricular complexes, and of the variability of coupling intervals (≥40 msec). Multiform premature ventricular complexes were of 3 ± 1.4 (mean ± S.D.) different QRS morphologies. Nineteen patients (95%) had repetitive forms of ≥2 premature ventricular complexes; 18 patients (90%) showed variable coupling (125 ± 29 msec). Repetitive forms or variable coupling were present in each (100%) of the 20 patients studied. These data suggest that multiform premature ventricular complexes may be a transitional arrhythmia, since repetitive forms almost always coexist. Variability in coupling, rather than just form and frequency, may be an electrocardiographic characteristic linking single and repetitive forms.
${\rm MS2DB}+$ : A Software for Determination of Disulfide Bonds Using Multi-Ion Analysis

MS2DB+ is an open-source platform-independent web application for determining, in polynomial time, the disulfide linkages in proteins using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) data. It utilizes an efficient approximation algorithm which allows the consideration of multiple ion-types ( a, ao, a*, b, bo, b*, c, x, y, yo, y*, and z ) in the analysis. Once putative disulfide bonds are identified, a graph optimization approach is used to obtain the most likely global disulfide connectivity pattern. Availability-http://haddock2.sfsu.edu/~ms2db/disulfidebond/.
Sublethal radiation injury uncovers a functional transition during erythroid maturation

Objective Clastogenic injury of the erythroid lineage results in anemia, reticulocytopenia, and transient appearance of micronucleated reticulocytes. However, the micronucleated reticulocyte dose-response in murine models is only linear to 2 Gy total body irradiation and paradoxically decreases at higher exposures, suggesting complex radiation effects on erythroid intermediates. To better understand this phenomenon, we investigated the kinetics and apoptotic response of the erythron to sublethal radiation injury. Materials and Methods We analyzed the response to 1 and 4 Gy total body irradiation of erythroid progenitors and precursors using colony assays and imaging flow cytometry, respectively. We also investigated cell cycling and apoptotic gene expression of the steady-state erythron. Results After 1 Gy total body irradiation, erythroid progenitors and precursors were partially depleted. In contrast, essentially all bone marrow erythroid progenitors and precursors were lost within 2 days after 4 Gy irradiation. Imaging flow cytometry analysis revealed preferential loss of phenotypic erythroid colony-forming units and proerythroblasts immediately after sublethal irradiation. Furthermore, these populations underwent radiation-induced apoptosis, without changes in steady-state cellular proliferation, at much higher frequencies than later-stage erythroid precursors. Primary erythroid precursor maturation is associated with marked Bcl-xL upregulation and Bax and Bid downregulation. Conclusions Micronucleated reticulocyte loss after higher sublethal radiation exposures results from rapid depletion of erythroid progenitors and precursors. This injury reveals that erythroid colony-forming units and proerythroblasts constitute a particularly proapoptotic compartment within the erythron. We conclude that the functional transition of primary proerythroblasts to later-stage erythroid precursors is characterized by a shift from a proapoptotic to an antiapoptotic phenotype.
Modeling of thermo-physical processes in liquid ceramic precursor droplets injected into a plasma jet

Modeling of liquid ceramic precursor droplets axially injected into a plasma is presented. Droplets undergo heating and solvent vaporization leading to high solute concentration near droplet surface. At a critical solute super-saturation concentration, precipitation is postulated to occur forming a precipitate shell around liquid core. Internal pressurization and rupture of shell occur subsequently. Droplet size, shell porosity and thickness effects were studied. Timescales of internal pressurization and precipitate formation are of the order of microsecond and millisecond, respectively. Small droplets ( d6 5 lm) tend to form thick shells and are less likely to undergo shell fracture compared to larger droplets. O 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The long and the short of riboswitches

Regulatory mRNA elements or riboswitches specifically control the expression of a large number of genes in response to various cellular metabolites. The basis for selectivity of regulation is programmed in the evolutionarily conserved metabolite-sensing regions of riboswitches, which display a plethora of sequence and structural variants. Recent X-ray structures of two distinct SAM riboswitches and the sensing domains of the Mg 2+ , lysine, and FMN riboswitches have uncovered novel recognition principles and provided molecular details underlying the exquisite specificity of metabolite binding by RNA. These and earlier structures constitute the majority of widespread riboswitch classes and, together with riboswitch folding studies, improve our understanding of the mechanistic principles involved in riboswitch-mediated gene expression control.
Long chain alkenones in Greenland lake sediments : Low δ13C values and exceptional abundance

Abstract Long chain alkenones (LCAs) are a key class of biomarkers for certain members of the algal class Prymnesiophyceae (i.e., prymnesiophytes). They are ubiquitous in ocean sediments where they are extensively used for paleotemperature reconstruction, but are rare in lake sediments. Here, we report the discovery of LCAs (C37–C39) throughout a sediment core from one lake and in surface sediments of five lakes located in west Greenland. LCA concentrations in the surface sediments are one to two orders of magnitude greater than those reported for other lacustrine surface sediments around the world. The presence of C38 methyl ketones distinguishes Greenland LCA distributions from those found in other saline lakes in cold regimes. LCAs are present in five lakes with elevated salinity, but absent from five freshwater lakes in the study region. Using the published temperature calibration for lake sediments, alkenone unsaturation indices ( U 37 K and U 37 K ′ ) in the surface sediments of the Greenland lakes appear to record late spring/early summer temperature when algal blooms occur, supporting the use of lacustrine alkenones as a paleotemperature proxy. The LCAs have exceptionally low δ 13C values, ranging from −40‰ to −42‰, and are depleted by 3–10‰ relative to short chain fatty acids and sterols in the same samples. These δ 13C values are the lowest reported for alkenones in a natural setting and have important implications for tracing the alkenone producers in lakes.
Anonymous biometric access control

Access control systems using the latest biometric technologies can offer a higher level of security than conventional password-based systems. Their widespread deployments, however, can severely undermine individuals' rights of privacy. Biometric signals are immutable and can be exploited to associate individuals' identities to sensitive personal records across disparate databases. In this paper, we propose the Anonymous Biometric Access Control (ABAC) system to protect user anonymity. The ABAC system uses novel Homomorphic Encryption (HE) based protocols to verify membership of a user without knowing his/her true identity. To make HE-based protocols scalable to large biometric databases, we propose the [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.]-Anonymous Quantization (kAQ) framework that provides an effective and secure tradeoff of privacy and complexity. kAQ limits server's knowledge of the user to [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.] maximally dissimilar candidates in the database, where k controls the amount of complexity-privacy tradeoff. kAQ is realized by a constant-time table lookup to identity the [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.] candidates followed by a HE-based matching protocol applied only on these candidates. The maximal dissimilarity protects privacy by destroying any similarity patterns among the returned candidates. Experimental results on iris biometrics demonstrate the validity of our framework and illustrate a practical implementation of an anonymous biometric system.
Research prioritization through prediction of future impact on biomedical science: a position paper on inference-analytics

Background: Advances in biotechnology have created “big-data” situations in molecular and cellular biology. Several sophisticated algorithms have been developed that process big data to generate hundreds of biomedical hypotheses (or predictions). The bottleneck to translating this large number of biological hypotheses is that each of them needs to be studied by experimentation for interpreting its functional significance. Even when the predictions are estimated to be very accurate, from a biologist’s perspective, the choice of which of these predictions is to be studied further is made based on factors like availability of reagents and resources and the possibility of formulating some reasonable hypothesis about its biological relevance. When viewed from a global perspective, say from that of a federal funding agency, ideally the choice of which prediction should be studied would be made based on which of them can make the most translational impact. Results: We propose that algorithms be developed to identify which of the computationally generated hypotheses have potential for high translational impact; this way, funding agencies and scientific community can invest resources and drive the research based on a global view of biomedical impact without being deterred by local view of feasibility. In short, data-analytic algorithms analyze big-data and generate hypotheses; in contrast, the proposed inference-analytic algorithms analyze these hypotheses and rank them by predicted biological impact. We demonstrate this through the development of an algorithm to predict biomedical impact of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) which is estimated by the number of future publications that cite the paper which originally reported the PPI. Conclusions: This position paper describes a new computational problem that is relevant in the era of big-data and discusses the challenges that exist in studying this problem, highlighting the need for the scientific community to engage in this line of research. The proposed class of algorithms, namely inference-analytic algorithms, is necessary to ensure that resources are invested in translating those computational outcomes that promise maximum biological impact. Application of this concept to predict biomedical impact of PPIs illustrates not only the concept, but also the challenges in designing these algorithms.
Effects of Religiosity Dimensions on Physical Health across Non-elderly Black and White American Panels

This investigation—based on a three-wave national panel of Black and White Americans aged 64 or younger at wave one—gauges variation across races in the indirect, moderating, and direct effects of public and subjective religiosity on a latent physical health outcome comprising chronic illnesses, subjective health, and functional limitations. The multi-population LISREL model specifically addresses the mechanisms through which religiosity is typically presumed to indirectly foster health: enhancement of social support and self-appraisals, and suppression of stress-exposure and unhealthy habits. The extent to which religiosity buffers or exacerbates the impact of specific stressors is also examined. The impact of religiosity on health appears to hinge on race and religiosity dimension: Public religiosity indirectly enhances Blacks’ health slightly, and apparently buffers any negative impact of financial strain on their health. Public religiosity does not influence Whites’ health; and subjective religiosity does not influence health in either race. The models control for multiple socio-demographic factors.
Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago

Centering on “Eastwood,” a low-income, African American community on the West Side of Chicago in which I have conducted ethnographic research since 2007, I examine the coping mechanisms developed by residents after Mrs. Lana suffers what her doctors view as a psychotic break. I build upon Judith Butler’s conception of grief to reconceptualize madness as a sometimes productive force that allows scholars to see how certain populations are systematically dehumanized. After divulging a brief history of Mrs. Lana’s community, wherein I discuss how it came to inhabit the socioeconomic markers of poverty it is known for today, I explore in further detail the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Lana’s mental illness. Ultimately, I argue that the story of her “madness” is productive because it gives us valuable insight into the ways in which blacks, especially those living in low-income communities that face a dearth of institutional resources, invert popular expectations of mourning, thereby developing a concept of “becoming aggrieved” that does not merely lament death, but also affirms life.
Activation of Caspase-1 Signaling Complexes by the P2X7 Receptor Requires Intracellular K + Efflux and Protein Synthesis Induced by Priming with Toll-Like Receptor Ligands

By JOANNE MICHELLE KAHLENBERG Recent advances in understanding of the biology underlying hereditary inflammatory diseases have focused attention on the importance of regulating levels of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-1β to prevent systematic inflammation. Diseases such as Muckle-Wells Syndrome and Familial Mediterranean Fever are characterized by inflammatory arthritis, episodic fevers and rashes, and amyloid deposition as well as elevated serum levels of IL-1β. These inflammatory symptoms can be eliminated by antagonists to the IL-1β receptor, stressing the role of elevated IL-1β levels in inducing these inflammatory phenotypes. Additionally, the identification of genetic mutations underlying these inflammatory diseases has aided in the identification of a complex of molecules, termed the inflammasome, which recruits and activates caspase-1, the enzyme responsible for the cleavage of IL-1β to its active form. The mechanisms regulating formation of the inflammasome remain ill defined but critical for the treatment and prevention of these and other inflammatory diseases. In this thesis, the mechanisms of caspase-1 activation between human monocyte (THP-1) and murine macrophage (Bac1) model systems are explored and defined. In particular, the assembly of caspase-1 activating complexes by a well-characterized activator of caspase-1, the P2X7 Receptor (P2X7R), is addressed. We show that intracellular K efflux following P2X7R activation is important for the induction of stable caspase-1 activating complexes, such as the inflammasome. This induction most likely requires the activity of Ca-independent phospholipase A2. Additionally, we demonstrate that Toll-Like Receptor (TLR) activation of NFκB-mediated transcription is essential for the P2X7R to activate caspase1, suggesting that essential components of the inflammasome are not present in Bac1 macrophages at basal levels. Thus, we demonstrate that in order to rapidly assemble the inflammasome, cells must be treated with TLR agonists before activation of the P2X7R or treatment with other K release stimuli. These findings are among the first to show that activation of the P2X7R results in inflammasome assembly and caspase-1 activation, and they suggest that there is an important link between the P2X7R and innate immune signaling mechanisms.
An Economic Look at the Sustainability of FBS Athletic Departments

In this descriptive historical review, I examine indicators of economic health for FBS athletic departments over time—attendance, media revenues, postseason revenues, operating revenues and expenses of athletic departments, and competitive balance. In addition, I review these and business management responses by athletic directors during the first year of the current recession. While there is some limited evidence that the recession of 2001 impacted BCS bowl payouts and revenues of the largest athletic departments, these rebounded quickly. Essentially, FBS athletic departments have been mostly impervious to business cycles. Implications are discussed.
Evaluation of Maximal and Submaximal Static Muscle Exertions

A model of the regulation of muscle strength exertion is proposed. Based on the model, methods are discussed to assess whether a subject exerts maximal or submaximal efforts. Results with 40 subjects indicate that a simple technique may be developed to judge if a subject is following instructions to exert a maximal contraction in a routine test of voluntary muscle strength.
Defective processing and expression of thiazide-sensitive Na-Cl cotransporter as a cause of Gitelman’s syndrome

Gitelman’s syndrome is an autosomal recessive disorder of salt wasting and hypokalemia caused by mutations in the thiazide-sensitive Na-Cl cotransporter. To investigate the pathogenesis of Gitelman...
Quantification of volumetric cerebral blood flow using hybrid laser speckle contract and optical coherence tomography(Conference Presentation)

Studying neurovascular blood flow function in cerebrovascular activities requires accurate visualization and characterization of blood flow volume as well as the dynamics of blood cells in microcirculation. In this study, we present a novel integration of laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) for rapid volumetric imaging of blood flow in cortical capillaries. LSCI uses the illumination of wide-field near infrared light (NIR) and monitors back scattered light to characterize the relative dynamics of blood flow in microcirculation. Absolute measurement of blood cells and blood volume requires high-resolution volumetric structural information. SD-OCT system uses coherence gating to measure scattered light from a small volume within high structural resolution. The structural imaging system rapidly assesses large number of capillaries for spatio-temporal tracking of red blood cells (RBC). A very fast-ultra resolution SD-OCT system was developed for imaging high-resolution volumetric samples. The system employed an ultra wideband light source (1310 ± 200 nm in wavelength) corresponding to an axial resolution of 3 micrometers in tissue. The spectrometer of the SD-OCT was customized for a maximum scanning rate of 147,000 line/s. We demonstrated a fast volumetric OCT angiography algorithm to visualize large numbers of vessels in a 2-mm deep sample volume. A LSCI system that has been developed previously in our group was integrated to the imaging system for the characterization of dynamic blood cells. The conjunction data from LSCI and SD-OCT systems imply the feasibility of accurate quantification of absolute cortical blood flow.
Food Addiction: Applying Substance Use Disorder Criteria and Characteristics to Identify Instances of Addictive-Like Eating

Drugs of abuse exert powerful effects on the brain's reward system, a system that has evolved to reinforce adaptive behaviors such as feeding. In some instances, intake of such substances can lead to addiction. Given that drugs of abuse are operating on the same neural pathways that evolved to enforce feeding, it has been suggested that a state of addictive-like eating is also possible. It is hypothesized that “food addiction” can develop when highly palatable foods, such as those high in fat and sugar, hyperstimulate the reward pathways. There is clinical and preclinical evidence that certain instances of compulsive overeating have striking behavioral and neurobiological similarities with substance abuse disorder. It is possible that compulsive eating could, in turn, lead to obesity, which is a leading cause of preventable death globally. This chapter explores the validity of a food addiction diagnosis using diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder and reviews behavioral and neurochemical evidence from the animal and clinical literature supporting the construct of food addiction.
Fully-differential mechanically-coupled PZT-on-silicon filters

This paper reports on the design of a 2-pole differential MEMS filter using mechanically-coupled overtone width-extensional resonators. The resonators and filters are fabricated in the 10 mum thick device layer of a SOI wafer and transduced by a 0.5 mum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) thin film deposited on the top surface of the wafer. A 206.3 MHz overtone width-extensional filter is demonstrated with 653 kHz bandwidth, -25 dB insertion loss (IL) and -62 dB stop-band rejection in air. Uncompensated temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) of -16 ppm/degC and third-order input intercept point (IIP3) of +52.5 dBm are demonstrated by the filter. The piezoelectric response of the filter is controlled by varying the electric field across the PZT transducer. A 20 dB improvement in IL and 0.22% center frequency tuning resulted by applying 20 V DC tuning voltage.
In Reply: Big Data Research in Neurosurgery: A Critical Look at this Popular New Study Design.

The use of "big data" in neurosurgical research has become increasingly popular. However, using this type of data comes with limitations. This study aimed to shed light on this new approach to clinical research. We compiled a list of commonly used databases that were not specifically created to study neurosurgical procedures, conditions, or diseases. Three North American journals were manually searched for articles published since 2000 utilizing these and other non-neurosurgery-specific databases. A number of data points per article were collected, tallied, and analyzed.A total of 324 articles were identified since 2000 with an exponential increase since 2011 (257/324, 79%). The Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group published the greatest total number (n = 200). The National Inpatient Sample was the most commonly used database (n = 136). The average study size was 114 841 subjects (range, 30-4 146 777). The most prevalent topics were vascular (n = 77) and neuro-oncology (n = 66). When categorizing study objective (recognizing that many papers reported more than 1 type of study objective), "Outcomes" was the most common (n = 154). The top 10 institutions by primary or senior author accounted for 45%-50% of all publications. Harvard Medical School was the top institution, using this research technique with 59 representations (31 by primary author and 28 by senior).The increasing use of data from non-neurosurgery-specific databases presents a unique challenge to the interpretation and application of the study conclusions. The limitations of these studies must be more strongly considered in designing and interpreting these studies.
The Pathophysiological Sequence of Glucocorticoid-Induced Osteonecrosis of the Femoral Head in Male Mice

In search of the sequence of pathogenic events leading to glucocorticoid-induced osteonecrosis, we determined the molecular, biomechanical, cellular, and vascular changes in the femur of C57BL/6 mice receiving prednisolone for 14, 28, or 42 days. The femoral head, but not the distal femur, of mice treated for 14 days showed a decrease in the expression of the hypoxia-inducible factor (Hif)-1α and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), the number of osteoblasts, and bone formation rate and strength and showed an increase in osteoclasts. These changes were accompanied by conversion of the normal dendritic vasculature to pools of edema as detected by magnetic resonance imaging, providing robust diagnostic evidence of early osteonecrosis. At that time point, there were no detectable changes in bone density, cortical or cancellous bone architecture, midshaft or distal cancellous bone, or osteocyte apoptosis. In mice treated for 28 days, femoral head cancellous density, cortical width, and trabecular thickness decreased, and by 42 days the femoral heads had full-depth cortical penetrations and cancellous tissue osteonecrosis. These results indicate that the femoral head is a particularly sensitive anatomical site to the adverse effects of glucocorticoid excess on bone and that decreases of Hif-1α and VEGF expression, bone vascularity, and strength precede the loss of bone mass and microarchitectural deterioration, thus rendering the femoral head vulnerable to collapse.
Characterization Based Reverse Design of Ionic Liquids

Ionic liquids (ILs) that have tailored structures with an array of unique functional properties can have important applications in areas such as CO2 capture and sequestration, sulfur removal from fuels, energy storage, biomass pretreatment, and chemical separations. Within a computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) framework, a characterization based method is combined with chemometric and property clustering techniques in a reverse problem formulation for the design of ionic liquid (IL) structures with specific physical properties. Infrared spectra generated from density functional theory simulation were used for capturing information on molecular architecture and calibration of latent variable property models to synthesize ILs.
Reducing Backlight Power Consumption for Streaming Video Applications on Mobile Handheld Devices.

Mobile handheld devices have stringent constraints on power consumption because they run on batteries that have a limited lifetime. Conserving power to prolong battery life is of primary importance for these devices. Several factors such as backlight intensity, the hard disk, the CPU, the network interface and the nature of the application contribute significantly towards power consumption for a mobile device. While significant research effort has been made to optimize power consumption at the application, network and processor levels, comparatively little work has been done to reduce or adapt to the power consumed by the backlight. In this paper, we propose an adaptive middleware based approach to optimize backlight power consumption for mobile handheld devices when playing streaming MPEG-1 video, without significantly compromising on video quality. Our performance results indicate that up to 60% of the power consumed by the backlight can be saved by using the proposed approach.
Scalability Analysis: Reconfiguration of Overlay Networks Using Nature-Inspired Algorithms

Overlay networks are virtual networks of nodes and logical links built on top of the existing network infrastructure, with the purpose of contributing new functionality. There are many different solutions proposed to tackle a range of specific needs such as content distribution and caching, file sharing, improved routing, multicast and streaming, ordered message delivery, and enhanced security and privacy. In this chapter, the focus lies on the optimization of overlay networks in terms of cost, performance, and reliability. In particular, the main objective is the optimization of data mirroring. Three different optimization approaches are introduced. The first approach is based on a “related work” implementation using Genetic algorithms, the second makes use of artificial immune systems, and the third approach uses the Particle swarm optimization approach. The three algorithms are implemented and experiments are conducted to measure the overall performance, the behavior and feasibility of network and link failures, as well as a scalability analysis is performed.
Managing site remediation: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund program

Abstract: This chapter discusses US Environmental Protection Agency cleanup levels at radioactively contaminated Superfund remedial sites. The theme emphasized in this chapter is that within the Superfund remediation framework, radioactive contamination is dealt with in an identical way to chemical contamination, except to account for technical differences.
The impact of patient-related nonmodifiable factors on perioperative outcomes following radical cystectomy with enhanced recovery protocol:

Background:Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocols decrease the length of hospital stay (LOS) and complications following radical cystectomy (RC). However, the impact of non-modifiable pat...
Challenges and Opportunities in Quantifying and Evaluating Building Sustainability

Green building demand in the US has grown over the last decade. Yet the development and implementation of holistic sustainability evaluation metrics that quantify the impacts of more sustainable pr...
The RNA degradosome promotes tRNA quality control through clearance of hypomodified tRNA

The factors and mechanisms that govern tRNA stability in bacteria are not well understood. Here, we investigated the influence of posttranscriptional modification of bacterial tRNAs (tRNA modification) on tRNA stability. We focused on ThiI-generated 4-thiouridine (s4U), a modification found in bacterial and archaeal tRNAs. Comprehensive quantification of Vibrio cholerae tRNAs revealed that the abundance of some tRNAs is decreased in a ΔthiI strain in a stationary phase-specific manner. Multiple mechanisms, including rapid degradation of a subset of hypomodified tRNAs, account for the reduced abundance of tRNAs in the absence of thiI. Through transposon insertion sequencing, we identified additional tRNA modifications that promote tRNA stability and bacterial viability. Genetic analysis of suppressor mutants as well as biochemical analyses revealed that rapid degradation of hypomodified tRNA is mediated by the RNA degradosome. Elongation factor Tu seems to compete with the RNA degradosome, protecting aminoacyl tRNAs from decay. Together, our observations describe a previously unrecognized bacterial tRNA quality control system in which hypomodification sensitizes tRNAs to decay mediated by the RNA degradosome.
Decision-Making Experiences Of Consumers Choosing Individual-Market Health Insurance Plans.

The health insurance Marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act include features designed to simplify the process of choosing a health plan in the individual, or nongroup, insurance market...
Hydrogen-Bonding and Hydrophobic Groups Contribute Equally to the Binding of Hyperactive Antifreeze and Ice-Nucleating Proteins to Ice.

Hyperactive insect antifreeze proteins and bacterial ice-nucleating proteins are arguably the most potent ice-binding molecules in nature. These highly effective proteins bind ice through amphiphilic ice-binding sites based on arrays of threonine residues. It remains poorly understood how hydrophilic and hydrophobic groups of the binding site contribute to the ice affinity of proteins. Here, we use molecular simulations to demonstrate that the hydrogen-bonding and hydrophobic groups at the ice-binding site of the antifreeze protein TmAFP of Tenebrio molitor and extended ice-nucleating protein surfaces contribute distinctively yet almost equally in magnitude to their binding free energy to ice. The methyl groups rigidize the ice-binding site, slow the water dynamics at the ice-binding surface, and stabilize the clathrate-like water in the anchored clathrate motif that binds these proteins to ice. We find that hydrophobic dehydration of the methyl group does not contribute to the binding free energy of the ...
Funding Strategies in a Rising Interest Rate and a Flattening Yield Curve Environment

The author suggests that an optimal corporate funding strategy may be a “barbell” that combines short‐term borrowings (to exploit still low short‐term rates) with some long‐term borrowing to lock in historically low interest rates against the possibility of rising inflation and interest rates. Abuaf shows that a “barbell” funding strategy is on the “efficient frontier” of corporate liability structure, i.e., the curve tracing the lowest cost and lowest standard deviation points. Such strategies consist of a barbell with occasional medium‐term borrowings, but with some “rollover” or funding risk attached. Once the efficient frontier has been delineated, the chief financial officer can use breakeven analysis to choose the optimal maturity mix. The choice between fixed and floating interest rates will depend upon management's tolerance for earnings fluctuations resulting from moves in shortterm rates. While most of the existing literature predicts that a lot of short‐term debt leads to early default, Abuaf sees that an upward sloping yield curve can easily make shortterm debt cheaper than longterm although it comes at the cost of higher volatility. It follows that in a flatter yield curve environment, longer maturities may be more attractive. If a company's revenues are highly correlated with short‐term rates, it should keep maturities relatively short, however. If, as Abuaf thinks most likely, that interest rates increase 100 basis points across the curve, CFOs should lengthen maturities now.
Design of a PM-Assisted Synchronous Reluctance Motor Utilizing Additive Manufacturing of Magnetic Materials

This paper presents a novel design for Permanent Magnet (PM) assisted Synchronous Reluctance (SynR) motors, where the rotor consists of alternate layers of PM and Soft Magnetic Composite (SMC) deposited on the rotor shaft using additive manufacturing. The proposed design eliminates the need for the bridges and/or center-posts. These features are essential for the rotor mechanical integrity in laminated SynR motors, but provide a path for performance-limiting leakage flux. Consequently, their elimination in the proposed design led to a superior torque, power and power factor compared to conventional SynR and PM-assisted SynR motors.
A Comparison of Adult Butterfly Communities on Remnant and Planted Prairies in Northeast Iowa

Adult butterfly abundance and diversity was compared in four remnant and four planted tallgrass prairies in Northeast Iowa. Butterfly surveys were conducted at approximately three week intervals over the summer of 2015. Researchers used a modified “Pollard Walk” technique following a meandering transect, and butterfly sightings recorded using the Unified Butterfly Recorder (UBR) Android app. If a butterfly was observed nectaring on a flower, the species of flower was recorded. Floral resource availability, plant species richness and percent cover were measured in each prairie. Although planted prairies contained significantly greater floral resources than remnant prairies, there was no significant difference in floral plant species richness between remnants and plantings. Remnant and planted prairies did not differ in butterfly abundance, but remnant prairies had significantly greater butterfly species richness than planted prairies. These results provide valuable information on the current status of butterflies in each prairie type in northeast Iowa, and can be used in directing future land management and conservation work.
An update on the utility and safety of cholinesterase inhibitors for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of major neurocognitive disorders with a prevalence in the US of about 5.7 million in 2018. With the disease burden projected to increase dramatically in the coming years, it is imperative to review the current available treatment regimens for their safety and utility. The cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs) have continued to play a pivotal role in managing the symptoms and possibly slowing the rate of progression of AD since 1993. Owing to their being a mainstay in the treatment of AD, the safety and efficacy of prescribing these drugs needs to be reviewed often, especially with the approval of new formulations and doses.Areas covered: The three ChEIs currently approved by the FDA are donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine. This article will review the safety and tolerability of these ChEIs and analyze the potential disease modifying properties of these drugs. The authors have reviewed all recent literature including review articles, meta-analyzes, clinical trials and more.Expert opinion: These ChEIs differ subtly in their mechanisms of action, in their tolerability and safety and FDA-approved indications. All are considered first-line, symptomatic treatments of the various phases of AD and may even have potentially disease-modifying effects.
Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cell-Targeted Therapies for Solid Tumors and Hematological Malignancies

Mesenchymal stem/stroma cells (MSCs) exhibit an innate tropism and capacity to migrate to sites of inflammation including wounding damage and the tumor microenvironment, where they have been shown to contribute to the development of tumor-associated stroma. Recent data suggest the tumor microenvironment plays a critical role in tumor progression in that both local tissue- and bone marrow-derived mesenchyme interact with tumor cells, which then provokes signaling responses that is thought to support tumor growth. Numerous reports demonstrate that sites of tissue damage secrete elevated levels of inflammatory mediators much like those found in the tumor microenvironment, which then stimulates recruitment and engraftment of MSC. This chapter will describe the emerging role of MSCs in tumor stroma development, describe their ability to home to and engraft in the tumor microenvironment, as well as how we can best employ stromal cells by using them as gene delivery vehicles directing them to sites of tumor formation to control tumor growth.
Intravascular Lithotripsy Facilitated Percutaneous Endovascular Intervention of the Aortic Arch: A Single-Center Experience.

Abstract Background Intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) (Shockwave Medical, Inc., Fremont, California, USA) is a novel technology used to modify heavily calcified atherosclerotic plaque in vessels to help facilitate percutaneous coronary intervention and has been shown to be effective in treating critical lesions within the lower limbs. In addition, studies are currently underway evaluating IVL's feasibility in de novo calcified stenotic coronary arteries before stenting. The use and associated complications of IVL in other vascular territories are underreported. We report our institution's initial experience using IVL for the treatment of complex, heavily calcified lesions within the aortic arch vessels. Methods and results We treated five patients with IVL of the aortic arch vessels, including the carotid (2), subclavian (2), and innominate arteries. Four of the five patients underwent successful IVL treatment and intervention without complications. One patient (carotid intervention) developed acute right eye blindness post-procedure, thought to be due to an embolic plaque, which was successfully treated with tissue plasminogen activator and intravenous heparin. Conclusion IVL offers promising technology to facilitate the treatment of complex lesions in the vessels of the aortic arch. We do not promote the use of IVL but promote prospective clinical trials to assess the safety and efficacy of this technology in this vascular territory.
Synthesis of CdSeCdSe x Te 1-x /CdTe for graded solar cells

Here, we have developed CdSexTe1-x/CdTe bilayer deposition for graded solar cell technolgoly technolgoly. Smoothly graded Se profiles with > 16% efficiency with Jsc=28 mA/cm2 and 20-ns bulk lifetime has been observed observed. The CdSeTe reveals longer carrier lifetimes than CdTe within the same device.
Spin–orbit torque rectifier for weak RF energy harvesting

We propose a rectifier concept, simultaneously utilizing the Hall effect and the spin–orbit-torque, that is well matched to the low impedance of antennas. This rectifier is promising for general radio detection and, particularly, for harvesting ambient weak radio signals, where conventional rectification fails to operate. The Hall effect and spin–orbit-torque are both proportional to current density, which improves inversely with the device cross-sectional area, providing a large signal at the nanoscale. A single device made using existing materials can provide 200 μV DC from 500 nW of radio frequency (RF) power. A series array of such devices can efficiently enhance the DC voltage to 300 mV while matching the receiver antenna impedance. Such magnetic devices can convert weak RF power into DC power with substantial efficiency at low voltage and low impedance where conventional semiconductor rectifiers fail.
Unsupervised Speech Segmentation and Variable Rate Representation Learning using Segmental Contrastive Predictive Coding.

Typically, unsupervised segmentation of speech into the phone and word-like units are treated as separate tasks and are often done via different methods which do not fully leverage the inter-dependence of the two tasks. Here, we unify them and propose a technique that can jointly perform both, showing that these two tasks indeed benefit from each other. Recent attempts employ self-supervised learning, such as contrastive predictive coding (CPC), where the next frame is predicted given past context. However, CPC only looks at the audio signal's frame-level structure. We overcome this limitation with a segmental contrastive predictive coding (SCPC) framework to model the signal structure at a higher level, e.g., phone level. A convolutional neural network learns frame-level representation from the raw waveform via noise-contrastive estimation (NCE). A differentiable boundary detector finds variable-length segments, which are then used to optimize a segment encoder via NCE to learn segment representations. The differentiable boundary detector allows us to train frame-level and segment-level encoders jointly. Experiments show that our single model outperforms existing phone and word segmentation methods on TIMIT and Buckeye datasets. We discover that phone class impacts the boundary detection performance, and the boundaries between successive vowels or semivowels are the most difficult to identify. Finally, we use SCPC to extract speech features at the segment level rather than at uniformly spaced frame level (e.g., 10 ms) and produce variable rate representations that change according to the contents of the utterance. We can lower the feature extraction rate from the typical 100 Hz to as low as 14.5 Hz on average while still outperforming the MFCC features on the linear phone classification task.
Exploitation: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?

Here we are, once again, thinking about The Making of the English Working Class. It brings to mind the Beatles’ lyric, “Let’s all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your Mother was born.” Certainly, for my generation of left-leaning historians these musings could get pretty nostalgic. But what, beyond a trip down social history’s memory lane, compels us to return to Thompson’s classic? Of course, there are many reasons to think seriously about a book that influenced a generation of readers. But when does such a work slip across a line that separates the present from the past? If one now reads Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, Regis Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution?, R. D. Laing’s The Divided Self, or perhaps Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, most probably it is to learn about the by-gone Sixties. The Making, as it became known, can and should be read as a product of its day, as a political intervention, and above all as a book that inspired the wave of “history from below.” But Thompson’s book is also more. Elsewhere I have suggested what might be gained by revisiting an earlier concept of “culture” associated with Thompson and Raymond Williams as historians moved “beyond” the cultural or linguistic turn.1 As for language, one is still struck by Thompson’s imaginative understanding. In writing about religious “imagery,” he commented: “when we speak of ‘imagery’ we mean much more than the figures of speech in which ulterior motives are ‘clothed’. The imagery is itself evidence of powerful subjective motivations, fully as ‘real’ as the objective, fully as effective ... in their historical agency. It is a sign of how men felt and hoped, loved and hated, and of how they preserved certain values in the very texture of their language.”2 In a lecture marking the thirtieth anniversary of the book’s publication, Carolyn Steedman quoted this same passage to illustrate the sort of attention historians needed to pay “to the materiality of the written word” in order to think about “other knowledges, other consciousnesses, in the making of the English working class.”3 On re-reading the book one comes across such passages that have not fully registered before; The Making retains a capacity to surprise the reader with a fresh invitation to reflection. If asked to choose one might argue that the book’s key chapter and driving concept is that of exploitation, seen as inseparable from class. Chapter six,