cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Different Voices or Perfect Storm: Why Are There So Few Women in Philosophy?

in this regard? My aim in this paper is not to answer this question but to contrast two different frameworks for addressing it. I call one model “Different Voices” and the other “The Perfect Storm”; I’ll argue that we ought to adopt the second model and that we ought to abandon the first. Why are there so few women in philosophy?Women who are in the field have been speculating about this for quite a while, but interest in the question has suddenly surged, engaging men now as well as women. 5 Most recently, a paper addressing this issue byWesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich has sparked intense controversy. 6 Buckwalter and Stich claim to have found evidence of gender differences in people’s responses to common philosophical thought-experiments, and they speculate that these differences may help account for the dearth of women in the field. Their idea is that if women have different intuitions about standard thought-experiments than men do, and if men dominate philosophy, then women studying philosophy may come to the conclusion—or be told explicitly— that they just don’t “get” philosophy—that philosophy is not the subject for them. More precisely, Buckwalter and Stitch’s suggestion is that women may be victims of a “selection effect” within philosophy. If agreement with the philosophical consensus is taken to be a sine qua non of philosophical ability, individuals with non-orthodox intuitions will be filtered out. If that consensus is forged within a community that is almost all-male, then it will be men’s intuitions that will constitute the philosophical mainstream. If women, then, have systematically different intuitions from men’s, then their intuitions will be less likely than men’s to agree with mainstream opinion, and thus more likely to be filtered out. Women, in short, will be disproportionately selected against. Now this suggestion—that there’s something about philosophy and something about women that makes the one alien to the other—is not new. To choose one notable example: Kant notoriously held that women were generally incapable of abstract thought, that women’s faculties of understanding were merely “beautiful,” not “sublime” like men’s. For this reason, the idea of a woman philosopher bs_bs_banner
Multiuser communications in the presence of correlated fading

We address the effect of spatially correlated fading on the performance of a multiuser communication system. A minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) detector which takes into account the degree of channel correlation is presented. The symbol error rate (SER) as a function of the angular spread of the signal and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is derived and validated by simulation. This work extends previous results which considered completely uncorrelated and fully correlated fading conditions, to fading with arbitrary correlation.
Characteristics of Helicobacter pylori variants selected for urease deficiency.

The urease of Helicobacter pylori is suspected to play a role in the pathogenesis of gastritis. Although all clinical isolates of H. pylori are urease positive (U+), we have selected and characterized several spontaneously arising urease-negative (U-) variants from wild-type strain 60190. Urease-negative variants were identified by growth in medium containing 60 mM urea and arose at a frequency of 10(-5) to 10(-6). The urease activity of the wild-type strain inhibited growth of this strain in the presence of 60 mM urea. U- variants retained the U- phenotype for more than 100 passages on medium with or without urea. The urease activities of the original U+ and derived U- cells were 9.55 to 16.7 and 0.01 to 0.17 U/mg of protein, respectively. Colonial growth and other biochemical characteristics were identical for the strains. U- variants showed three classes of whole-cell sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis profiles: (i) identical to U+; (ii) change in the migration of the 61-kDa urease subunit; and (iii) lack of 61- and 30-kDa subunits. These differences were confirmed by immunoblotting and by protein separation using fast protein liquid chromatography. The U+ strain but not U- variants tolerated exposure to pH 4.0 for 60 min in the presence of urea. Supernatants of the U+ strain and U- variants contained vacuolating cytotoxin activity for HeLa cells in similar titers. By enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, human serum samples recognized water extract from the U+ strain significantly better than extract from a U- variant lacking urease subunits. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that U- H. pylori variants may arise spontaneously, that urease activity enhances survival at acid pH, and that urease and cytotoxin activities are disparate phenotypes. Images
The Gifted Child: A Challenge to Social Work

cerned with underprivileged, dependent, or neglected children—those whose parents are unable to cope with their problems. It now becomes necessary for social work to examine its responsibility to a group of children who by the very label attached to them—"gifted"—have been regarded as privileged, fortunate, and resourceful enough to cope with life's demands—and therefore less likely to require special nur ture, planning, and resources to meet their educational and emotional needs. Gifted children have, of course, been known for many years to social workers working in child guidance clinics. At these clinics the special intellectual potentiality of the gifted child is noted and examined in the total framework of emotional disturb ance. School social workers, however, have a unique opportunity to reach this same child—for school is the place where he can be found in numbers, where he can be identified early, where his special learning problems can be readily assessed. Mindful of the great areas of opportunity and need in work with children of high intellectual ability, the Special Education Department of the Champaign, Illinois, Community Schools, in September 1959 em barked upon a five-year research project with a group of gifted elementary school
The Economic Role of Political Institutions

Thriving markets require not only an appropriately designed economic system, but a secure political foundation that limits the ability of the state to confiscate wealth. This requires a form of limited government, that is, political institutions that credibly commit the state to honor economic and political rights. This paper studies how limited government arose in the developed west, focusing on the critical role of federalism for protecting markets in both England and the United States. Federalism proved fundamental to the impressive economic rise of England in the 18th century and the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The paper also shows that federalism underpins the spectacular economic growth in China over the past fifteen years.
Vulpes fulva (American red fox)

The karyotypes displayed are from kidney and fibroblast cultures of a study of two male and three female wild foxes (Grafton County, New Hampshire and Orange County, Vermont, USA) and one female red fox from a fox farm. Kidney cultures and bone marrow preparations gave similar results. The X was identified by radioautography. The majority of specimens and cells had some microchromosomes. Most often there were two but as many as seven were encountered. They are heterochromatic and can often be seen to be breaking off the end of any of the larger elements. They appear to possess no centromere and are held together presumably by telomeres. They appear in direct preparations as well as tissue cultures and no demonstrable difference is detected by visual comparison of karyotypes possessing several and those having no microchromosomes. The variable diploid number described for this species is the result of variation in the number of microchromosomes. In our animals no phenotypic differences were correlated to this variable. The autosomes are arranged in two groups, first the metacentrics and second the submetacentrics.
Antibody against serum-hepatitis antigen. Prevalence and potential use as immune serum globulin in prevention of serum-hepatitis infections.

Abstract The passive hemagglutination method was used to evaluate serum-hepatitis (SH, Australia/ HAA) antibody content of conventional, "convalescent" and hyperimmune gamma-globulin preparations. SH antibody was detected at low titer in most batches of conventional gamma globulin (less than 1:2 to 1:64), in contrast to a titer of 1:512,000 in gamma globulin prepared from hemophilic plasma containing known precipitating antibody ("SH immune globulin"). Injection of "SH immune globulin" resulted in the appearance of SH antibody that remained detectable for at least two months in the blood of half of the recipients. A study of the distribution of antibody titers in volunteer and paid blood donors showed that SH antibody was 10 times more frequent among paid donors. Antibody levels in these populations were generally quite low in comparison to those present in patients with hemophilia. Cautious clinical investigation is required before "SH immune globulin" can be accepted for use in prevention, modification ...
From Jones to Jones: Fifteen Years of Incoherence in the Constitutional Law of Sentencing Factfinding

With tens of thousands of persons sentenced every year in the United States, the contemporary American criminal justice system places undeniable importance upon the constitutional constraints governing the scope of the permissible and impermissible exercises of factfinding authority by sentencing judges in the course of determining the specific punishment to be imposed upon an individual convicted of a criminal offense. Yet for the past fifteen years the United States Supreme Court has failed to provide doctrinal stability and consistency to this crucial area of constitutional law. Even the most recent decisions, such as Alleyne v. United States (2013) regarding mandatory minimum sentencing provisions, have generated only more unpredictability in the doctrine and more disagreements among the justices’ viewpoints. The path to an enduring doctrinal solution is not readily evident, and the Court’s unwillingness to reach consensus leaves the constitutional law of sentencing factfinding trapped in an ongoing cycle of unpredictability and doctrinal incoherence.
Accuracy of frozen section diagnosis in pelvic lymph node staging biopsies for adenocarcinoma of the prostate.

AbstractIntraoperative frozen section diagnoses were compared to permanent section results in 42 patients with localized prostatic cancer undergoing staging pelvic lymph node biopsies. A Gleason data analysis was compared to conventional histologic classification. The 7 per cent falsely negative rate found in our series compares favorably to the 11 per cent average rate reported previously.
Expression of p27kip1 in prostatic adenocarcinoma.

p27kip1 (p27) protein is an inhibitor of cyclin and cyclin-dependent kinase complexes and prevents progression of cells from G1 to the S phase of the cell cycle. p27 might have tumor suppressor activity, and decreased p27 expression is associated with aggressive tumor behavior in several human malignancies. The object of this study was to evaluate p27 expression in prostatic adenocarcinoma treated by radical prostatectomy and to assess its association with numerous morphologic and clinical features. One hundred thirty-eight prostatic adenocarcinomas were evaluated for p27 expression by quantifying nuclear immunohistochemical staining. p27 expression was tested for association with patient age, family history of prostate cancer, preoperative serum prostate-specific antigen level, Gleason score, extraprostatic extension, seminal vesicle involvement, lymph node metastases, tumor-node-metastasis stage, DNA ploidy by flow cytometric analysis, and subclinical biochemical failure. p27 expression was analyzed as a continuous variable, and we also classified the tumors as low expressors ( 50% of cells p27 positive) for comparison. Patients with adenocarcinomas that exhibited low p27 expression had higher mean Gleason scores than did high expressors (7 vs. 6.2, respectively; P = .002). Low p27 expression correlated with positive surgical margins (P = .05), seminal vesicle involvement (P = .007), lymph node metastasis (P = .03), and aneuploid cancers (P = .003), but it did not correlate with subclinical biochemical failure. p27 expression correlated with a number of prognostic morphologic features in prostatic adenocarcinoma, and the evaluation of p27 expression might provide additional prognostic information.
The Boundary of Survival

Life leaves us in suspense, not about the eventuality of death but about its timing and causes. Like many other organisms, the human species faces a boundary on survival, a maximum or potential life span quantifiable on a graph. It is difficult to imagine a situation in which all of the space up to this boundary might be filled, in which, that is, everyone would survive to the limit of the human potential. The difficulty arises from our familiarity with the history of death. This history shows that some people will die in every stage of life, and that illnesses and injuries likely to cause death will accumulate, especially in old age. Eliminating each of the causes reported on death certificates would not extend the human life span indefinitely, but, at least in theory, such an achievement would allow all members of the species to live to the boundary.
Automated Traffic Surveillance System with Aerial Camera Arrays Imagery: Macroscopic Data Collection with Vehicle Tracking

AbstractThe paper presents a novel computer vision-based traffic surveillance system capable of processing aerial imagery to track vehicles and their movements. The system uses a preprocessed 1-Hz ...
FGFR1 amplification in squamous cell lung cancers.

7063 Background: Squamous cell carcinoma of the lung (SqCCL) is the second most common type of lung cancer. There are currently no established targeted therapies that take advantage of SqCCL-specif...
Identification of a plasma metabolomic signature of thrombotic myocardial infarction that is distinct from non-thrombotic myocardial infarction and stable coronary artery disease.

Aims Current non-invasive diagnostics for acute myocardial infarction (MI) identify myocardial necrosis rather than the primary cause and therapeutic target—plaque disruption and resultant thrombosis. The aim of this study was to identify changes specific to plaque disruption and pathological thrombosis that are distinct from acute myocardial necrosis. Methods and results We quantified 1,032 plasma metabolites by mass spectrometry in 11 thrombotic MI, 12 non-thrombotic MI, and 15 stable coronary artery disease (CAD) subjects at two acute phase (time of catheterization [T0], six hours [T6]) and one quiescent (>3 months follow-up) time points. A statistical classifier was constructed utilizing baseline (T0) abundances of a parsimonious set of 17 qualifying metabolites. Qualifying metabolites were those that demonstrated a significant change between the quiescent phase and the acute phase and that were distinct from any change seen in non-thrombotic MI or stable CAD subjects. Classifier performance as estimated by 10-fold cross-validation was suggestive of high sensitivity and specificity for differentiating thrombotic from non-thrombotic MI and stable CAD subjects at presentation. Nineteen metabolites demonstrated an intra-subject change from time of acute thrombotic MI presentation to the quiescent state that was distinct from any change measured in both the non-thrombotic MI and stable CAD subjects undergoing cardiac catheterization over the same time course (false discovery rate <5%). Conclusions We have identified a candidate metabolic signature that differentiates acute thrombotic MI from quiescent state after MI, from acute non-thrombotic MI, and from stable CAD. Further validation of these metabolites is warranted given their potential as diagnostic biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets for the prevention or treatment of acute MI.
Abstract 661: Bilirubin Prevents Atherosclerotic Plaque Formation in LDLR-/- Mice by Inhibiting Monocyte Migration Through the Disruption of Endothelial Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule 1 (VCAM-1) and Intercellular Adhesion Molecule 1 (ICAM-1) Signaling

Background: Epidemiologic studies support an inverse association between serum bilirubin levels and the risk of cardiovascular disease. Monocyte infiltration into the vascular endothelium, a critical early step in atherosclerotic plaque formation, is mediated primarily by the adhesion molecules VCAM-1 and ICAM-1. We postulate that bilirubin, a potent antioxidant, inhibits plaque formation by preventing monocyte transendothelial migration through the scavenging of VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 reactive oxygen species (ROS) signaling intermediaries. Methods: The effect of physiological concentrations (≤ 1.2 mg/dL) of bilirubin on the migration of THP-1 monocytes across HUVEC monolayers activated with TNFα to express VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 was assessed by Boyden chamber assay. The influence of bilirubin on monocyte adhesion, cytokine production, and VCAM-1- and ICAM-1-mediated ROS production was quantified by fluorescence assay, RT-PCR, and time-lapse confocal microscopy, respectively. To evaluate the effect on plaque formation in vivo , LDLR -/- mice were fed a Western diet and administered i.p. bilirubin (30 mg/kg), vehicle, or sham for 8 weeks. Aortic roots were stained with Oil Red O (lipids), Sirius Red (collagen), α-smooth muscle actin (SMCs), chlorotyrosine and nitrotyrosine (oxidation), CD68 (macrophages), and for VCAM-1 and ICAM-1. Results: THP-1 migration across activated HUVEC monolayers is dose-dependently inhibited by bilirubin. Bilirubin did not alter monocyte binding or cytokine production by activated HUVEC, but effectively abolished cellular ROS production induced by crosslinking anti-VCAM-1 and anti-ICAM-1 antibodies. Bilirubin treatment markedly inhibited plaque formation in the aortic root of LDLR -/- mice, and was associated with significant reductions in plaque lipid and collagen deposition, SMC infiltration, oxidation, and macrophage infiltration, without altering VCAM-1 or ICAM-1 protein expression. Conclusion: Bilirubin prevents atherosclerotic plaque formation in LDLR -/- mice by disrupting endothelial VCAM-1- and ICAM-1-mediated monocyte migration through the scavenging of ROS signaling intermediaries. These findings suggest a potential mechanism for the purported cardioprotective effects of bilirubin.
Putative tumor suppressor hCLCA2 has a single C-terminal transmembrane segment and cannot be a channel

3374 Several members of the CLCA family have been reported to have tumor suppressive properties. Human CLCA2 is downregulated in breast cancer and restored expression inhibits tumor cell growth and promotes apoptosis. Functionally, CLCA proteins were first described as a family of plasma membrane Cl- channels that could be activated by calcium. Genetic and electrophysiological studies have supported this view. Structurally, the human CLCA2 protein is expressed as a 943 amino acid precursor that is later cleaved at ∼amino acid 680 to yield 100 kD N-terminal and 40 kD C-terminal glycoprotein products. Earlier investigations of transmembrane geometry suggested five membrane passes. However, our analysis with the more recently derived SMART algorithm predicts that a carboxy terminal 34 amino acid hydrophobic segment comprises the only transmembrane pass. To resolve this question, we raised an antibody against hCLCA2 and investigated the protein’s synthesis, localization, maturation, and topology. We show by a variety of methods that the N-terminal 100 kD product is released from the cell surface following cleavage while the 40 kD C-terminal product remains tightly associated with the plasma membrane. Cell-surface biotinylation and endoglycosidase H analysis revealed a 125 kD precursor confined to the ER and a maturely glycosylated 135 kD precursor at the cell surface by 48 hours post-transfection. By 72 hours, 100 kD N-terminal and 40 kD C-terminal cleavage products were detected at the cell surface but not in the ER. An antibody against the 100 kD product co-immunoprecipitated the 40 kD product, indicating a tight association after cleavage. Surprisingly however, the 100 kD product was shed into the medium or removed by acid washes while the precursor and 40 kD product were retained by the membrane. Ectodomain shedding was also detected for two remotely related CLCA proteins and is likely to be a general property of the family. Together, these data indicate that hCLCA2 is mostly extracellular with only a single transmembrane segment followed by a short cytoplasmic tail and is itself unlikely to form a channel. Thus, the precise function of this tumor suppressor remains open.
Knockouts anxious for new therapy

Among its many functions, adenosine is a neurotransmitter which acts at the adenosine receptor. By creating knockout mice for one subgroup of adenosine receptors (A2a), the normal functions of the receptor can be studied. The knockout mice show reduced sensitivity to pain, increased anxiety and similar responses to those shown by wild-type mice to high levels of caffeine. This has led to the conclusion that caffeine normally exerts its responses by blocking the action of the A2areceptor.
On practical multihop wireless communication: Insights, limitations, and solutions

Due to the exponential advancements in mobile and IoT device capabilities, we are currently witnessing a resurrection in the domains of ubiquitous and pervasive systems. These systems and devices heavily rely on efficient wireless communication as an enabler of single and multi-hop wireless data transfers. Awareness of the practical performance capabilities and limitations of existing wireless technologies in various heterogeneous settings is fundamental for the deployment of effective ubiquitous applications. We conduct and analyze an in-depth and detailed single-hop and various multi-hop networking measurements study utilizing a representative set of emerging mobile and IoT devices equipped with a variety of wireless interfaces. Additionally, given the popularity of Android-based D2D systems developed, we propose two solutions that would overcome the inherent two-hop D2D WiFi-Direct limitation, and provide many-hop WiFi-Direct-based communication. Our results provide deep insights on the performance of multi-hop D2D communication within various environments, along with the limitations and trade-offs in the communication technologies, topologies, and solutions adopted.
Characterization of differentially private logistic regression

The purpose of this paper is to present an approach that can help data owners select suitable values for the privacy parameter of a differentially private logistic regression (DPLR), whose main intention is to achieve a balance between privacy strength and classification accuracy. The proposed approach implements a supervised learning technique and a feature extraction technique to address this challenging problem and generate solutions. The supervised learning technique selects subspaces from a training data set and generates DPLR classifiers for a range of values of the privacy parameter. The feature extraction technique transforms an original subspace to a differentially private subspace by querying the original subspace multiple times using the DPLR model and the privacy parameter values that were selected by the supervised learning module. The proposed approach then employs a signal processing technique called signal-interference-ratio as a measure to quantify the privacy level of the differentially private subspaces; hence, allows data owner learn the privacy level that the DPLR models can provide for a given subspace and a given classification accuracy.
The Cards Aren't Alright: Detecting Counterfeit Gift Cards Using Encoding Jitter

Gift cards are an increasingly popular payment platform. Much like credit cards, gift cards rely on a magnetic stripe to encode account information. Unlike credit cards, however, the EMV standard is entirely infeasible for gift cards due to compatibility and cost. As such, much of the fraud that has plagued credit cards has started to move towards gift cards, resulting in billions of dollars of loss annually. In this paper, we present a system for detecting counterfeit magnetic stripe gift cards that does not require the original card to be measured at the time of manufacture. Our system relies on a phenomenon known as jitter, which is present on all ISO/IEC-standard magnetic stripe cards. Variances in bit length are induced by the card encoding hardware and are difficult and expensive to reduce. We verify this hypothesis with a high-resolution magneto-optical microscope, then build our detector using inexpensive, commodity card readers. We then partnered with Walmart to evaluate their gift cards and distinguished legitimate gift cards from our clones with up to 99.3% accuracy. Our results show that measurement and detection of jitter increases the difficulty for adversaries to produce undetectable counterfeits, thereby creating significant opportunity to reduce gift card fraud.
Biochemistry of Epstein—Barr Virus

The objective of this introduction is to develop concisely the context in which biochemical studies of Epstein—Barr virus (EBV) have been undertaken. Elements of history and biology are relevant to an understanding of the somewhat unusual course of biochemical research with EBV.
Sites and Regulation of Biosynthesis of SAA

Serum amyloid A (SAA) is a 12.5 Kdalton protein usually isolated in association with the HDL3 subclass of serum lipoproteins (1). SAA is one of the plasma proteins which increase during inflammation or tissue injury (the positive acute phase reactants). Among these positive acute phase proteins SAA and C-reactive protein (GRP) are quantitatively the most impressive (100–1000 fold) (2). Hence the regulation of SAA synthesis has been a subject of general interest as well as a subject of importance to students of the biochemical basis of amyloidosis. The increase in SAA is detectable within four hours and usually peaks approximately 18 hours following initiation of tissue injury (3). SAA and the β-pleated sheet fibril protein amyloid A (AA) share considerable amino acid homology except that the 28 carboxy-terminal amino acids present in SAA are not represented in AA (4). Hence it is likely that SAA is the precursor of AA. The existing data suggest that cleavage by serine proteases, perhaps at the surface of monocytes and macrophages, may be responsible for the conversion of SAA to AA (5). Delineation of the exact mechanism of this potential precursor-product relationship awaits determination of the amino acid sequence of the peptides resulting from cleavage of purified SAA by specific neutral proteases plus studies of amyloid generation in tissue culture.
Passive Energy Dissipation Development in U.S.

Passive energy dissipation systems were developed in the United Stated either specifically for civil engineering applications or they evolved from devices and materials used in industrial, automotive, military and aerospace applications. Yielding steel and frictional devices were specifically developed for structural applications, whereas viscoelastic dampers and fluid viscous devices were developed for other applications and adapted for structural applications.
FDG-PET Scanning in Lymphoma and Lymphoma of the Thyroid

Medicare and most insurance companies have approved reimbursement for F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) for imaging patients who have lymphoma. The instruments and methods are described in Chapter 34. In brief, the patients fast for 6 h and are intravenously administered 10–15 mCi (370–550 MBq) of FDG. After resting in a quiet and warm environment, the patient is imaged from the base of the skull to the midthighs. The use of combined PET/computed tomography (CT) improves the diagnostic accuracy, reduces the number of false-positive results, and also increases the throughput of patients (1).
Role of corticosterone in altered neurobehavioral responses to acute stress in a model of compromised hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function

Abstract An organism’s capacity to cope with stressful experiences is dependent on its ability to appropriately engage central and peripheral systems, such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, to adapt to changing environmental demands. The HPA axis is a primary neuroendocrine mediator of neural and behavioral responses to stress, and dysfunction of this system is linked to increased risk for developing mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the mechanisms by which dysregulated HPA function results in abnormal behavioral responses to stress are poorly understood. Here, we tested how corticosterone (CORT)-induced HPA axis disruption affects behavioral responses to stress in male C57BL/6 N mice, and probed correlates of these behaviors in the brain. We show that chronic HPA disruption blunts acute stress-induced grooming and rearing behaviors in the open field test, effects which were accompanied by decreased FOS immunoreactivity in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVH) and paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT). Blockade of CORT secretion with metyrapone injection prior to acute stress did not recapitulate the effects of chronic HPA disruption on open field behavior, and acute CORT replacement did not rescue normal behavioral stress responses following chronic HPA disruption. This suggests that under acute conditions, CORT is not necessary for these responses normally, nor sufficient to rescue the deficits of chronic HPA dysregulation. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that chronic HPA dysregulation causes adaptation in stress-related brain circuits and demonstrate that these changes can influence an organism’s behavioral response to stress exposure.
Associations among Braak stage, Parkinsonian gait, cognition, and functional status in autopsy-confirmed dementia with Lewy bodies.

Objective Compromised functional abilities in older adults with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) represent a significant burden to families and frequently lead to institutionalization. Contributing factors to this compromise are poorly understood. Methods Using data collected at a first study visit, multiple regression modeling was used to examine the associations between Braak staged Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology, Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) status, Parkinsonian gait, cognition, and functional status from a cohort of 102 cases with an autopsy-confirmed diagnosis of dementia stemming from combined Lewy body and AD pathology. Results On average, 60% of functional activities were compromised per case. Worse functional status was associated with older age at first study visit, compromised cognitive status, and Parkinsonian gait after controlling for gender, mental status, and other covariates. Worse cognitive status predicted worse functional status in both the low and high Braak groups. Conclusions Older persons with DLB presenting with moderately compromised cognition and Parkinsonian gait should be expected to have impaired functional abilities. Providing these patients with supportive environments may help them to remain independent for longer periods of time.
Autosplenectomy in a Patient with Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria (PNH)

Autosplenectomy (AS) is a known complication of diseases such as sickle cell anemia, celiac disease, and inflammatory bowel disease. We report the first known case of AS due to paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH). A 24-year-old Caucasian male had evidence of hemolytic anemia at the age of 14 and was diagnosed with PNH at the age of 16. He had recurrent episodes of sepsis due to dialysis line infections from poor hygiene, and blood cultures had been positive for multiple organisms including Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. The patient's peripheral blood smears since the age of 14 years demonstrated Howell-Jolly bodies in conjunction with thrombocytopenia and hemolytic anemia, but abdominal ultrasonography reported a normal appearing spleen. The patient presented with septicemia two years after starting eculizumab, and his peripheral blood smear showed extensive Howell-Jolly bodies, Pappenheimer bodies, acanthocytes, and target cells. Splenic ultrasonography demonstrated an atrophic spleen with multifocal scarring, and absent splenic uptake of liver-spleen scintigraphy, consistent with AS. Clinicians should remain vigilant of the potential sequelae of PNH and consider the possibility of the development of AS.
Tissue-specific epigenetics of atherosclerosis-related ANGPT and ANGPTL genes.

Aim To understand tissue-specific regulation of angiopoietin/angiopoietin-like (ANGPT/ANGPTL) genes (especially the five genes embedded in introns of host genes) and their association with atherosclerosis. Methods Transcription and epigenomic databases from various normal tissues were examined in the vicinity of ANGPT1, ANGPT2, ANGPTL1, ANGPTL2, ANGPTL3, ANGPTL4 and ANGPTL8. Results We identified tissue-specific enhancer chromatin regions that are likely to regulate transcription of ANGPT/ANGPTL genes and were intragenic, intergenic or host gene-linked. In addition, we found atherosclerosis-linked differentially methylated regions associated with ANGPT2 and with sequences encoding miR-145, a microRNA that targets ANGPT2 mRNA in cancers. Conclusion Our findings implicate enhancers as major contributors to tissue-specific expression of ANGPT/ANGPTL genes, which play critical roles in angiogenesis, atherosclerosis, cancer, and inflammatory and metabolic diseases.
Extraction of dyes contained in glow sticks using liquid CO2

Separation of glow stick dyes adhered to a cotton swab using liquid CO2 provides an engaging demonstration of several chemical concepts including polarity, kinetics, chemiluminescence, and the impo...
The impacts of potency, warning messages, and price on preferences for cannabis flower products

Abstract Background Recreational cannabis has been legalized in 11 states and Washington DC in the US. However, little is known about individual preferences for legal cannabis products. This study estimated the impacts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), warning messages, and price on preferences for cannabis flowers. Methods A cross-sectional online survey with discrete choice experiments was implemented in October 2017. A sample of 2400 adults aged 21 years or older were recruited from 6 US states with recreational cannabis legalization, consisting of 1200 past-year nonusers and 1200 past-year users. Each respondent was randomly assigned to 12 discrete choice scenarios, each asking them to choose from an opt-out option and 3 cannabis flower products with varying levels in THC, CBD, warning messages, and price. The impacts of product attributes on individual choices were analyzed with nested logit regressions. Results Both cannabis nonusers and users preferred higher CBD and lower price. Users also preferred higher THC. The results on warning messages were mixed: graphic warning on drugged driving and text warning message had positive impacts on nonusers’ and users’ preferences for cannabis flowers, respectively, whereas FDA disapproval disclaimer had negative impacts on nonusers’ preferences. Heterogeneities in preferences were revealed among nonusers by former use status and among users by reason of use. Particularly, medical cannabis users were not as responsive to THC as recreational cannabis users or dual users were. Regarding relative importance of the attributes, all respondents but medical cannabis users perceived price as the most important attribute (relative importance 51–64%), whereas medical cannabis users perceived CBD as the most important attribute (relative importance 47%). Conclusion The findings indicated that product characteristics may have influences on US adults’ choices of legal cannabis flower products and may deserve consideration for cannabis regulatory framework.
Promotions and Race: An Analysis of Wage Returns and Job Satisfaction

Using a nationally representative sample of workers in the United States, we find evidence to suggest the wage returns to promotions for black males are about 48 per cent of the wage returns that white males earn. As black males earn, on average, significantly less than white males, the gap in the wage returns to promotions creates a larger impact on the absolute returns. Despite the racial gap in the monetary reward to a promotion, we do not find evidence to suggest that black males are less satisfied with their job following a job promotion compared with white males.
ETF use among actively managed mutual fund portfolios

Abstract It is well known that actively managed mutual funds use exchange-traded funds (ETFs), although current research has yet to establish the benefits of these positions. Focusing on ETF type, we investigate whether or not ETFs impact portfolio management. Funds using benchmark ETFs see reductions in cash holdings, particularly during periods of large flows, and lower tracking error. In contrast, non-benchmark ETF positions improve the performance of large mutual funds investing in micro-cap stocks while also reducing portfolio risk. While studies caution against the extensive use of ETFs, we conclude that ETFs can provide tangible benefits for funds when considering the type of ETF used.
Enhancing the Detection of Criminal Organizations in Mexico using ML and NLP

This paper relies on Machine Learning (ML) and supervised Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate a geo-referenced database on the violent presence of Mexican Criminal Organizations (MCOs) between 2000-2018. This application responds to the need for high-quality data on criminal groups to inform academic and policy analysis in a context of intense violence such as Mexico. Powered by ML and NLP tools, this computational social science application processes a vast collection of news stories written in Spanish to track MCOs’ violent presence. The unprecedented granularity of the data allows disaggregating daily-municipal information for 10 main MCOs comprising more than 200 specific criminal cells.
CRISPR: A Technical Breakthrough for Tomato Research

CRISPR is a contemporary biological technology that has attracted the interest of both the science community and the general public. This 4-page article discusses why tomato researchers are interested in CRISPR, what tomato traits have been targeted by CRISPR, and potential applications of CRISPR for tomato genetics and breeding. Written by Tong Geon Lee and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Horticultural Sciences, February 2018. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs1314
The Pathophysiology of Racial Disparities

The Pathophysiology of Racial Disparities We were supposed to be talking about these Black teenagers’ aspirations to become doctors, not their fears about becoming patients. I wanted to tell them n...
Avoiding Ring Avulsion Injuries With Silicone Rings: A Biomechanical Study

Purpose Finger avulsion injuries account for 5% of upper extremity injuries requiring evaluation in an emergency room. They are devastating injuries that require microvascular reconstruction or amputation. As public awareness rises, there is a growing market for silicone rings, with limited data on their ability to prevent ring avulsion injuries. Methods Five cadaver forearms were attached to a custom fixture, allowing for ring avulsion simulations. Specifically designed silicone or metal rings of varying sizes (#4–#11) were assigned to one of five fingers on each forearm, based on fit. The contralateral corresponding finger was tested using a ring of the same size in the other material. A preload of 2 N was applied to each ring, and ultimate failure force was determined by applying an upward force at a loading rate of 500 mm/sec until failure. Additionally, a fifth cadaver forearm was used to determine the ultimate failure force of silicone rings in a clenched fist position. Results The average ultimate failure force for silicone rings of all sizes was 53.0 N, compared to 495.2 N for metal rings of all sizes. The average ultimate failure force of silicone rings in the clenched fist position was increased across rings of all sizes, with an average of 99.9 N. There were no degloving injuries in the silicone ring avulsion group. Conclusions Biomechanically, silicone rings have a significantly lower failure force than metal rings and may help prevent ring avulsion injuries. Clinical relevance The use of silicone rings should be encouraged in professions where ring avulsion injuries are more likely, such as heavy labor.
Novel Bluetooth Sniffer Test-Bed for Analyzing Real World Networks

Bluetooth has solidified its status as one of the most prominent and versatile wireless communication technologies alongside Wi-Fi. In spite of its widespread usage, contemporary Bluetooth testing technology still has many unaddressed shortcomings and issues. Hardware limitations, computational complexity, and the lack of standardization are some of these longstanding problems. Furthermore, very few systems possess a proven and reliable capability to test both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This paper presents the development of an adaptive Bluetooth test-bed framework that can not only overcome limitations with existing systems but can accommodate other technologies and protocols as well. The work presented in this paper includes: a packet processing and logging utility, a promiscuous packet capture subsystem built around a production test engine, and a complementary subsystem that handles encryption and other security mechanisms.
Autoimmunity and Celiac Disease

Even though the role of gluten had been identified in the late 40’s, it was not until the mid-80’s that the long-sought after pathogenesis of celiac disease (CD) was finally unveiled. After years of theories (enzymatic deficiencies, lectin-type effect of gluten…) it became finally clear that celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder. A unique type of autoimmune disease, as a matter of fact: indeed, the only one where both, the environmental trigger and the autoantigen have been well identified: gluten, a complex of protein found in wheat, barley, and rye being the environmental trigger, and tissue Transglutaminase (tTG) the auto antigen. Autoimmune diseases tend to share to various extent their genetic bases, so it is no surprise that CD goes hand in hand with other autoimmune disorders, the best known being Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) and autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD - Hashimoto thyroiditis and Grave’s disease). But the association with autoimmune disorders goes beyond that with endocrine organs, affecting the heart, the joints, the liver, the connective tissue, the skin. We’ll review such associations and their meaning in terms not only of the possible role played by gluten intake before diagnosis to elicit them, but also in practical terms of diagnosis and follow-up.
Exploring power reduction options for a single-chip multiprocessor through system-level modeling

Moore's law predicts that fabrication processes will soon yield over a billion transistors on a single die. Over the past twenty years, the gap between the amount of available real estate on a chip and designer productivity has widened and continues to grow, so that designers are less able to make effective use of the increasing number of transistors on a chip. The primary problem in system-on-a-chip (SoC) design is no longer the limit on the number of resources. Rather, the development of new methodologies and system-level design tools is the challenge that lies ahead, as these have become essential to keeping costs low in the planning and construction of these systems. Designers have realized that the consideration of the overwhelming details at register-transfer level (RTL) early in development restricts design space exploration, inhibits trade-off evaluation, and results in increased time-to-market. In order to effectively utilize the available resources, the entry point of design flows in recent methodologies is at higher levels of abstraction, with consideration to significantly fewer details of the final hardware implementation. In recent years, we have also seen the introduction of single-chip multiprocessors. As new tools and methodologies emerge for abstract system design, proposed solutions to the arising problems in the performance of single-chip multiprocessors can be implemented and evaluated more efficiently. For example, the amount of on-chip memory for such parallel systems continues to steadily rise, but so does the amount of power used by the memory system. In this work, we apply novel design methodology and tools to a single-chip multicore architecture, considering alternatives for power reduction of the storage components through system-level modeling.
Functional Uncertainty and Functional Precedence in Continental West Germanic

An account of the various word order phenomena in Continental West Germanic is one of the standard challenges that a linguistic theory has to face. In this paper we will concentrate on word order in infinitival complements. In this subarea the order of the different verbal elements has received the most attention. We focus, however, on the order of the non-verbal elements. To simplify matters we will mainly look at the order of the nominal dependents of verbs. We start by reviewing the Lexical-Functional Grammar analysis of so-called crossing dependencies in Dutch as given in Bresnan et al. (1982) and amended in Johnson (1986). In Section 2, we show that another formal statement of the generalizations using functional precedence and functional uncertainty is technically possible and empirically preferable. In section 3, we summarize some facts of Zurich German discussed in Lotscher (1978) and in Haegeman and van Riemsdijk (1986) and show that these facts can only be handled assuming a version of functional precedence.
Supernova mechanisms: Before and after SN1987a

The impact of SN1987a on theoretical studies of the specific mechanism generating Type II supernovae is examined. The explosion energy extracted from analysis of the light curve for SN1987a is on the edge of distinguishing between a prompt explosion from a hydrodynamic shock and a delayed, neutrino-induced, explosion. The detection of neutrinos from 1987a is also reanalysed.
On the minimal state space realization for all-pole and all-zero lattice discrete 2-D filters

In this paper state space realizations for all-pole and all-zero two dimensional lattice discrete filters are presented. The proposed realizations are based on the corresponding circuit implementations. For the realization the 2-D state space model of the Roesser type was used. The dimension of the state vector is minimal. Two low-order examples are presented to illustrate the proposed results.
Task Planning of Cyber-Human Systems

Internet of Things (IoT) allows for cyber-physical applications to be created and composed to provide intelligent support or automation of end-user tasks. For many of such tasks, human participation is crucial to the success and the quality of the tasks. The cyber systems should proactively request help from the humans to accomplish the tasks when needed. However, the outcome of such system-human synergy may be affected by factors external to the systems. Failure to consider those factors when involving human participants in the tasks may result in suboptimal performance and negative experience on the humans. In this paper, we propose an approach for automated generation of control strategies of cyber-human systems. We investigate how explicit modeling of human participant can be used in automated planning to generate cooperative strategy of human and system to achieve a given task, by means of which best and appropriately utilize the human. Specifically, our approach consists of: (1) a formal framework for modeling cooperation between cyber system and human, and (2) a formalization of system-human cooperative task planning as strategy synthesis of stochastic multiplayer game. We illustrate our approach through an example of indoor air quality control in smart homes.