cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Morphology-based language modeling for conversational Arabic speech recognition

Language modeling for large-vocabulary conversational Arabic speech recognition is faced with the problem of the complex morphology of Arabic, which increases the perplexity and out-of-vocabulary rate. This problem is compounded by the enormous dialectal variability and differences between spoken and written language. In this paper, we investigate improvements in Arabic language modeling by developing various morphology-based language models. We present four different approaches to morphology-based language modeling, including a novel technique called factored language models. Experimental results are presented for both rescoring and first-pass recognition experiments.
Race and Reapportionment, 1962: The Case of Georgia Senate Redistricting

Courts, both state and federal, often play a substantial role in the adoption and implementation of changes in public policy. Properly understood, the impact of court decisions must be examined in the context of actions and reactions by other branches of government, political parties, and interest groups. Among the most transformative court decisions over the last half century are those involving legislative reapportionment and minority voting rights. Beginning in the 1960s, the federal courts restructured the nation's political institutions through decisions striking down malapportioned legislatures and local governing bodies through what used to be termed the “reapportionment revolution,” perhaps the only revolution ignored altogether by historians. Shortly thereafter the courts extended their attack on quantitative vote dilution (which the “one-person, one-vote” standard is designed to address) to include protection against electoral rules that dilute the voting strength of racial minorities.
KUAR: A Flexible Software-Defined Radio Development Platform

In this paper, we present the details of a portable, powerful, and flexible software-defined radio development platform called the Kansas University Agile Radio (KUAR). The primary purpose of the KUAR is to enable advanced research in the areas of wireless radio networks, dynamic spectrum access, and cognitive radios. The KUAR hardware implementation and software architecture are discussed in detail. Radio configurations and applications are presented. Future research made possible by this flexible platform is also discussed.
Continuity of Care Between Obstetrical and Pediatric Preventive Care: Indicators of Nonattendance at the First Well-Child Appointment

This study evaluates appointment behavior for first well-child visits for first-born children and identifies factors that target infants at increased likelihood for missing their first pediatric appointment. Timely appointments were not scheduled for 10.3% of newborns; 20.1% of those scheduling did not keep the first appointment. Younger, less educated mothers who did not remember when they had learned about well-baby care, and mothers of infants in the newborn intensive care unit were unlikely to schedule the appointment; young mothers learning about well care from friends or relatives and who chose a pediatrician without a previous prenatal visit were more likely to miss the child's first appointment. Prenatal pediatric visits as well as prenatal classes and written materials may improve compliance with the first well-child appointment.
Dynamic Testing of A/D Converters Using the Coherence Function

The problem of characterizing an A/D converter is important to manufacturers and end users. The measured characteristics provide the means to compare devices and make design choices. This paper presents a procedure for testing a pair of A/D converters that sample the same analog signal. Since both A/D converters are measuring the same signal, the portion of the measured signals that is incoherent provides an estimate of the total noise of the two devices, from which the A/D converter effective number of bits and signal-to-noise ratio can be calculated. The removal of the coherent signal requires the calculation of the coherence function, which is computed from auto- and cross-spectral densities estimated by the Welch periodogram method. Examples of the procedure are provided for various input signals, input levels, sampling rates, and (simulated) interchannel delays. The measurement examples show that for white-noise inputs, the technique is independent of input-signal level, spectral data window, and sampling rate, provided the inputs are simultaneously sampled. With sine-wave inputs, the technique can be compared to the signal-to-noise and distortion ratio test, and it is shown that coherent removal eliminates the need for an ultrapure sine-wave source. The use of data windows is shown to be detrimental, since sidelobe energy is suppressed causing loss of coherence. The technique simplifies the setup and programming requirements for A/D converter testing because it can be applied using any input signal and is based on widely accepted processing techniques. End users and manufacturers alike should have little difficulty obtaining the programming tools needed to perform the analysis
ECONOMIC RENT AND ESTIMATION OF SOVIET GNP GROWTH

The extraction of fuels and metals and production of agricultural goods in the USSR involve increasing marginal cost, which generates economic rent. In computing Soviet GNP accounts, though, the CIA excludes economic rent in measuring value added. The effect is to value output at average, as opposed to marginal, cost. The exclusion of rent understates the shares of fuels, metals, and agriculture in Soviet GNP, which adversely affects the CIA's calculations of Soviet growth. In this paper, the author estimates the economic rent generated by Soviet extraction of fuels and metals and agricultural production. He then uses the estimates to recompute the shares of these sectors in Soviet GNP, and GNP growth. The results suggest that inclusion of economic rent in value added (or alternatively, marginal cost valuation of output) more than doubles the share in GNP of mining (fuels and metals extraction), and increases agriculture's share during the 1980s from 20 percent to about 25 percent. The reestimates of Soviet GNP growth also differ from those of the CIA by 10–30 percent.
What drives the increasing utilisation of hemicraniectomy in acute ischaemic stroke

Background Survival after malignant middle cerebral artery infarcts is dismal. In 2007, a pooled analysis of randomised trials in Europe demonstrated a substantial survival benefit from decompressive hemicraniectomy, with a number needed to treat of 2 for survival. Our objective was to review factors driving the nationwide utilisation of this potentially lifesaving procedure in the USA. Methods Data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for 2001–2009 were reviewed. Hospitalisations with a discharge diagnosis of an acute ischaemic stroke were included. Hemicraniectomy utilisation was determined within this subset. Nationwide estimates of utilisation were calculated for each year. Trends across the years were estimated for various subgroups. Results From 2001 to 2009, there were an estimated 4 909 519 acute ischaemic stroke discharges. The estimated frequency of hemicraniectomy increased from 118 (0.02% of stroke discharges in 2001) to 804 (0.15% of stroke discharges in 2009) (trend p Conclusion Utilisation of hemicraniectomy in the USA has increased significantly, in line with compelling results from European clinical trials. Early transfer of patients with malignant infarctions to urban teaching centres could potentially extend the survival benefit to a larger population.
Water Vapor, Surface Temperature, and the Greenhouse Effect—A Statistical Analysis of Tropical-Mean Data

Water vapor feedback is one of the important factors that determine the response of the atmosphere to surface warming. To take into account the compensating drying effects in downdraft regions, averaging over the whole Tropics is necessary. However, this operation drastically reduces the number of degrees of freedom and raises questions concerning the statistical significance of any correlative results obtained using observational data. A more involved statistical analysis is performed here, using multiple datasets, including the global water vapor datasets of Special Sensor for Microwave/Imaging (column water), upper-tropospheric relative humidity, the Television Infrared Observational Satellite Operational Vertical Sounder retrieved upper-tropospheric specific humidity, and the surface temperature data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction‐National Center for Atmospheric Research Reanalysis dataset. The tropical-mean correlations between relative humidity and surface temperature cannot be established, but those between specific humidity and the surface temperature are found to be positive and shown to be statistically significant. This conclusion holds even when the averaging is done on the natural logarithm of the upper-tropospheric water vapor content. The effect on the tropical-mean outgoing longwave radiation is also discussed.
Mutational analysis of chilling tolerance in plants

A mutational approach was taken to identify genes required for low-temperature growth of the chilling-tolerant plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The screen identified mutants that were specifically compromised in their ability to grow at 5°C but were indistinguishable from wild type when grown at 22°C. The populations screened were mutated either by ethyl methanesulphonate or by T-DNA insertion. In both cases symptoms at 5°C included chlorosis, reduced growth, necrosis and death. This diversity of phenotypes demonstrates roles for chilling-tolerance responses in such diverse processes as organdie biogenesis, cell metabolism and cell and organ development. Co-segregation analysis on the first five mutants isolated from the T-DNA lines indicated that in three of them, pfc1, pfc2 and sop1, the chilling phenotype is the result of T-DNA insertion in a gene required for chilling tolerance rather than the creation of a temperature-conditional mutation in an essential housekeeping gene. This identification of T-DNA tagged alleles will facilitate cloning of the PFC1, PFC2 and SOP1 loci and allow for the biochemical and molecular genetic characterization of these chilling-tolerance genes and the proteins that they encode.
Young Infants' Behavioral Reactivity to Mild Perturbation: Developmental Continuity, Stability, and Organization

This study investigated the developmental continuity, stability, and organization of infants' behavioral response to mild stress from 1 to 3 months of age. Changes in infant stress reactivity were expected to coincide with a suspected neurobiological shift around the 2nd month. A total of 53 infants and their mothers participated in this study. At 1 and 3 months, infants' stress reactivity to mild perturbation was assessed by withdrawing a pacifier during nonnutritive sucking. Infant baseline heart rate activity and maternal reports of infant temperament were also obtained. Focusing on facial and vocal negativity, behavioral measures of infant reactivity to pacifier withdrawal were coded from videos. Results showed that developmental continuity and individual instability characterized changes in infant stress reactivity over the 2nd-month transition. Developmental reorganization was also evidenced by changes in the direction and magnitude of infant stress reactivity in relation to baseline heart period an...
Approaches to the study of neural coding of sound source location and sound envelope in real environments

The major functions of the auditory system are recognition (what is the sound) and localization (where is the sound). Although each of these has received considerable attention, rarely are they studied in combination. Furthermore, the stimuli used in the bulk of studies did not represent sound location in real environments and ignored the effects of reverberation. Another ignored dimension is the distance of a sound source. Finally, there is a scarcity of studies conducted in unanesthetized animals. We illustrate a set of efficient methods that overcome these shortcomings. We use the virtual auditory space method (VAS) to efficiently present sounds at different azimuths, different distances and in different environments. Additionally, this method allows for efficient switching between binaural and monaural stimulation and alteration of acoustic cues singly or in combination to elucidate neural mechanisms underlying localization and recognition. Such procedures cannot be performed with real sound field stimulation. Our research is designed to address the following questions: Are IC neurons specialized to process what and where auditory information? How does reverberation and distance of the sound source affect this processing? How do IC neurons represent sound source distance? Are neural mechanisms underlying envelope processing binaural or monaural ?
The effect of compensation program and structure on sbu competitive strategy: A study of technology‐intensive firms

In this paper we examine the impact various compensation programs have upon business-level strategy for technology-intensive firms. Similarly, we examine the effect of centralization of R&D and non-R&D decision-making, formality of procedures, and SBU size on competitive strategy. Analysis of data from 79 SBUs suggest that there is a resource trade-off between marketing-oriented strategies and R&D-oriented strategies, and that managers who operate under certain types of compensation programs will tend to favor R&D/innovation strategies and capital investment over other alternatives. Structure and competitive position also appear to play a significant role in determining technology and investment strategy.
The role of social cognition in downsizing decisions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to learn how managers make downsizing decisions.Design/methodology/approach – Participants read a created organizational scenario and 25 hypothetical employee profiles and then chose five employees to lay off.Findings – Older and minority applicants were chosen most often. No significance was found for performance. Rater group membership in race, gender, and age were significant predictors of layoff decisions.Research limitations/implications – Because the participants were in a controlled environment they may have disregarded other information often available to decision makers. The majority of the sample was students who may be unrepresentative of managers who make layoff decisions. The inclusion of managers who have made downsizing decisions was designed to help address this limitation.Practical implications – An employer's use of personal characteristics in making downsizing decisions may ultimately affect the aftermath of downsizing.Originality/value – This is o...
Finite element modeling and validation of the fastening systems and concrete sleepers used in North America

Significant increases in rail loads, as well as growing interest in providing higher-speed passenger rail services, is placing new and increasing existing demands on fastening systems and concrete sleepers. Consequently, there is a strong need to better understand the response of fastening systems and concrete sleepers to these significantly increased demands. This paper presents an experimentally validated three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model of a fastening system and concrete sleeper that can be used to study and improve the design and performance of these systems. In this 3D FE model, the following mechanisms that are critical to the performance of fastening systems and concrete sleepers are included: frictional interaction between components of the fastening system; interaction between shoulders and concrete; and the plastic behavior of each component in the system. The FE model is validated using laboratory experimental tests, in which a lateral load is applied to a single concrete sleeper with two sets of fastening systems. The validated FE model is used to analyze the sleeper/fastening system under different loading scenarios involving various vertical and lateral load combinations. Both component stress and system deflection of the model are analyzed to investigate the system performance at the component and system levels. The results of the study show that FE modeling can be used to investigate the complex behavior of fastening systems and concrete sleepers.
Perfluoroalkane Acids: Apelberg et Al. Respond

We thank Scialli for his interest in our study (Apelberg et al. 2007). As he notes, we recognize that several factors could be responsible for the relationships observed between cord serum concentrations of perfluorooctane sulfonate/perfluorooctanoate (PFOS/PFOA) and birth weight, head circumference, and ponderal index in our study. Although diet may be a source of exposure (including consumption of polyfluoroalkyl compounds used in fast-food packaging), we are not aware of any evidence that such diets are associated with smaller size at birth. In fact, they may be related to obesity, which is associated with larger birth size (Surkan et al. 2004). Despite existing knowledge gaps on exposure pathways and the role of dietary intake, we do know that in our study, adjusting for body mass index of the mother had little impact on the associations observed.
Power reduction via macroblock prioritization for power aware H.264 video applications

As the importance of multimedia applications in hand-held devices increases, the computational strain and corresponding demand for energy in such devices continues to grow. Portable multimedia devices with inherently limited energy supplies face tight energy constraints and require optimization for energy conservation. Power-aware applications give their users flexibility to prioritize and trade between performance and battery-life.This paper introduces a power-aware technique for user selectable power reduction in exchange for controlled reductions in video quality for H.264 video streams. The technique uses an encoder-decoder pair. The encoder characterizes video streams and provides information to the decoder via Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) by generating prioritized slice groups. The decoder selectively ignores low priority slice groups based on user selected preference effectively reducing the decoder workload. With a reduced computational requirement, processor voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) significantly improve decoder power performance within timing constraints. Our PXA270 system implementation resulted in power savings of as much as 53% with an average PSNR per frame of 24dB compared to the unmodified video.
Atomic physicochemical parameters for three dimensional structure directed quantitative structure‐activity relationships III: Modeling hydrophobic interactions

In an earlier article' the need was demonstrated for atomic physicochemical properties for three dimensional structure directed quantitative structure-activity relationships, and it was shown how atomic parameters can be developed for successfully evaluating the molecular octanol-water partition coefficient, which is a measure of hydrophobicity. In this work we report more refined atomic values of octanol-water partition coefficients derived from nearly twice the number of compounds. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and halogens are divided into 110 atom types of which 94 atomic values are evaluated from 830 molecules by least squares. These values gave a standard deviation of 0.470 and a correlation coefficient of 0.931. These parameters predicted the octanol-water partition coefficient of 125 compounds with a standard deviation of 0.520 and a correlation coefficient of 0.870. There is only a correlation coefficient of 0.432 between the atomic octanol-water partition coefficients and the atomic contributions to molar refractivity over the 93 atom types used for both the properties. This suggests that both parameters can be used simultaneously to model intermolecular interactions. We evaluated the CND0/2 gross atomic charge distribution over several molecules to check the validity of our classification. We found that the charge density on the heteroatoms in conjugated systems is strongly affected by the presence of similar atoms in the conjugation which suggests it should be incorporated as a separate parameter in evaluating the partition coefficient.
The Precision, Accuracy, and Inherent Errors of Automatic Continuous Flow Methods

An automatic continuous-flow system was evaluated under routine daily use for six constituents, sodium, potassium, chloride, carbon dioxide, urea, and glucose. Two parameters have been quantified, interaction between samples and instrumental drift. Results also were influenced by the available amount of sample. Application of correction technics is shown to improve the accuracy of the automatic-analysis system.
Memory servers for multicomputers

A virtual memory management technique for multicomputers called memory servers is investigated. The memory server model extends the memory hierarchy of multicomputers by introducing a remote memory server layer. Memory servers are multicomputer nodes whose memory is used for fast backing storage and logically lie between the local physical memory and disks. The authors present the model, describe how the model supports sequential programs, message-passing programs, and shared virtual memory systems, discuss several design issues, and show preliminary results of a prototype implementation on an Intel iPSC/860. >
At home in inner-city immigrant community gardens

This paper extends the definition of the domestic sphere to include urban community gardens, which I argue serve as critical “home-like” places that marginalized Latina/o immigrants use to sustain themselves and to re-create homeland in urban Los Angeles. Based on over 1 year of ethnographic and interview research at the gardens, I argue that the immigrant community gardeners are creating new homes, attachments and means of livelihood that link their past with the present, restoring them during this historical moment of the US immigration crisis in deportations and detentions. A range of social reproductive and restorative activities normally associated with the private domestic sphere unfold at these community gardens, allowing us to see these sites as shared open-air domiciles, hybrid-domestic places, set among plant nature. I suggest that focusing on the everyday practices, the materiality and meanings of place may productively shift our theoretical gaze from understanding migration experiences only through the lens of assimilation or transnationalism, and toward one that acknowledges active assertions organized around the right to home-making.
A field theoretic proof of Hermite’s theorem for function fields

Let \({\mathbb{F}}\) be a finite field. The function field analog of Hermite’s theorem says that there are at most finitely many finite separable extensions of \({\mathbb{F}(T)}\) inside a fixed separable closure of \({\mathbb{F}(T)}\) whose discriminant divisors have bounded degree. In this paper we give a field theoretic proof of this result, inspired by a lemma of Faltings for comparing semisimple \({\ell }\)-adic Galois representations.
Abstract 959: ERα1 represses breast cancer EMT by inhibiting EGFR-mediated downregulation of E-cadherin

Proceedings: AACR 103rd Annual Meeting 2012‐‐ Mar 31‐Apr 4, 2012; Chicago, IL Although epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is associated with specific breast cancer phenotypes, such as the basal-like and claudin-low tumors, there is a lack of validated markers, which can distinguish tumors with poor clinical outcome and high metastatic potential. Estrogen receptor beta (ERα) has been shown to regulate invasion in prostate cancer. However, it is still unclear if ERα by influencing invasion can predict metastasis in breast cancer. Here we show that wild-type ERα (ERα1) inhibits EMT and invasion in basal-like breast cancer cells when they grow either in vitro or in vivo in zebrafish. This correlates with an ERα1-mediated upregulation of miR-200a, miR-200b and miR-429 and the subsequent repression ZEB1 and SIP1, which results in increased expression of E-cadherin. Downregulation of the basal marker EGFR was found to be involved in the ERα1-mediated mesenchymal to epithelial transition since induction of EGFR expression or treatment with EGF abolished the ability of ERα1 to sustain the epithelial phenotype. This inverse correlation of ERα1 with EGFR and its positive association with epithelial markers was additionally observed in breast cancer specimens. These results strengthen the association of ERα1 with the regulation of EMT and propose the receptor as potential crucial marker in predicting survival and metastasis in breast cancer. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 959. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-959
GE-08IMPACT OF H3.3K27M MUTATION ON CANCER EPIGENOME

Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is an aggressive primary brain tumor found exclusively in children and the median survival for DIPG patients is about one year from diagnosis. Recent studies have uncovered that a somatic mutation in the H3F3A gene, which has been observed in 80% of DIPG cases, is likely a main driver of tumorigenesis. H3F3A encodes histone H3 variant H3.3 that plays an important role in regulating gene expression during development. The predominant mutation at H3F3A leads to amino acid change at lysine (K) 27 residue of H3.3 to methionine (M). In human cells, there are two genes that encode H3.3 and 14 genes that encode histones H3.1 and H3.2. H3.3 differs from H3.1 and H3.2 by four or five amino acids. Lysine 27 is conserved among all these histone H3 proteins. Therefore, it is unknown how H3.3K27M mutation, which occurs at one allele of H3F3A gene, promotes tumorigenesis. We and others have shown that a global loss of H3K27 methylation occurs in DIPG cells with a K27M mutation. H3K27 methylation is catalyzed by the PRC2 lysine methyltransferase and plays an important role in gene silencing during stem cell differentiation and maintenance. We also observed that in addition to the global loss of H3K27me3 which is associated with gene activation, H3K27me3 is still present at the gene promoters of about 800 genes. These genes are enriched in cancer pathways. At this meeting, I will present our recent findings indicating why some gene loci are enriched with H3K27me3 in H3.3K27M mutant tumor lines.
Effect of in vivo administration of various oral hypoglycemic agents on hepatic protein synthesis.

SummaryThe effects of the in vivo injection of two oral hypoglycemic agents (tolbutamide and phenethylbiguanide) upon the in vitro incorporation of leucine-14C into hepatic protein were measured. The acute injection of a large amount of either agent impaired the ability of the animals liver to synthesize protein. This impairment was seen to occur at the level of the cell sap and was not associated with the microsomes. The daily injection of smaller amounts of these compounds resulted in no significant effect on protein metabolism. The data appear to indicate that these agents may, under certain circumstances, have a deleterious effect on the protein balance of the organism.
Fall Armyworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Parasitoids: Differential Spring Distribution and Incidence on Corn and Sorghum in the Southern United States and Northeastern Mexico

Nineteen species of parasitoids were recovered from fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), in spring surveys conducted in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, south Texas, and Mexico during 1981–1983. The highest rates of parasitism were in overwintering areas of Mexico–Texas and south Florida, averaging 23.4 and 32.5%, respectively. Chelonus insularis Cresson was the most common species and represented 61.7, 59.6, and 56.1% of the parasitoids recovered from small, medium, and large larvae, respectively. In south Texas and Mexico, C. insularis was recovered from 55.6% of the parasitized small larvae while Archytas marmoratus (Townsend) was the most common species collected from medium (66.7%) and large (47.4%) larvae. A northward progression of C. insularis from overwintering areas during the spring, similar to but lagging behind the progression of fall armyworm populations, was indicated. Hence, C. insularis probably did not overwinter in Georgia or if it did, densities in the spring remained too low for detection by conventional sampling methods. In more northerly areas of the fall armyworm's distribution, C. insularis was of secondary or minor importance; A. marmoratus, Campoletis sonorensis Cameron, Cotesia marginiventris (Cresson), Rogas laphygmae Viereck, and Ophion flavidus Brulle were the most commonly occurring species, particularly in north Florida and in the other states, where rates of parasitization ranged from 9.4% in Alabama to 21.7% in Mississippi–Louisiana. Evidence of differential distribution of some species was indicated by their native scarcity or abundance in defined geographical areas within the temporal limits of the study. For example, Temelucha difficilis Dasch was an important species in south Florida but it was rarely observed in more northerly areas. Conversely, C. sonorensis was absent in collections from south Florida but was an important species elsewhere.
Water-Mediated Hydrophobic Interactions

Hydrophobic interactions are driven by the combined influence of the direct attraction between oily solutes and an additional water-mediated interaction whose magnitude (and sign) depends sensitively on both solute size and attraction. The resulting delicate balance can lead to a slightly repulsive water-mediated interaction that drives oily molecules apart rather than pushing them together and thus opposes their direct (van der Waals) attraction for each other. As a consequence, competing solute size-dependent crossovers weaken hydrophobic interactions sufficiently that they are only expected to significantly exceed random thermal energy fluctuations for processes that bury more than ∼1 nm2 of water-exposed area.
Early experiences of accredited clinical informatics fellowships

Since the launch of the clinical informatics subspecialty for physicians in 2013, over 1100 physicians have used the practice and education pathways to become board-certified in clinical informatics. Starting in 2018, only physicians who have completed a 2-year clinical informatics fellowship program accredited by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education will be eligible to take the board exam. The purpose of this viewpoint piece is to describe the collective experience of the first four programs accredited by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education and to share lessons learned in developing new fellowship programs in this novel medical subspecialty.
Bunny hops: using multiplicities of zeroes in calculus for graphing

Students learn a lot of material in each mathematics course they take. However, they are not always able to make meaningful connections between content in successive mathematics courses. This paper reports on a technique to address a common topic in calculus I courses (intervals of increase/decrease and concave up/down) while also making use of students’ pre-existing knowledge about the behaviour of functions around zeroes based on multiplicities.
Clinical forum: a review of intratympanic therapy.

Objective: This article provides an overview of the rational basis for the appropriate clinical use of intratympanic aminoglycosides and steroids. Data Sources: The data sources were relevant English language clinical and basic science publications. Study Selection: The most recent publication available for each author or group of original, human, clinical reports about the technique were included. Data Extraction: The techniques and results for control of vertigo and hearing loss were compared. Conclusions: At least 11 articles have been published that indicate that intratympanic gentamicin treatments control vertigo well and provide acceptable rates of hearing loss. Intratympanic gentamicin should be the initial treatment of choice for unilateral disabling Meniere's disease that has failed medical therapy. The use of intratympanic steroids should remain investigational until more favorable data are available.
Company Aid Men

This chapter evaluates the singular relationship between the company aid man and his line unit. In contrast to the BAS soldiers, aid men labored under fire and alone. The combat units accepted the aid man as a vital component of the team, yet the aid man existed at some remove, living in a paradoxical world where conflict raged both within and without, which he dealt with in psychological solitude. Tfie searing realities of tending combat wounded under fire translated for the aid man into a pronounced disconnect, both physically and emotionally from those around him. Remote from the BAS medics, yet bearing no weapon like his infantry fellows, the aid man labored alone, the most isolated of all combat soldiers.
PFC: An Efficient Soft Graph Clustering Method for PPI Networks Based on Purifying and Filtering the Coupling Matrix

One of the most pressing problems of the post genomic era is identifying protein functions. Clustering Protein-Protein-Interaction networks is a systems biological approach to this problem. Traditional Graph Clustering Methods are crisp, and allow only membership of each node in at most one cluster. However, most real world networks contain overlapping clusters. Recently the need for scalable, accurate and efficient overlapping graph clustering methods has been recognized and various soft (overlapping) graph clustering methods have been proposed. In this paper, an efficient, novel, and fast overlapping clustering method is proposed based on purifying and filtering the coupling matrix (PFC). PFC is tested on PPI networks. The experimental results show that PFC method outperforms many existing methods by a few orders of magnitude in terms of average statistical (hypergeometrical) confidence regarding biological enrichment of the identified clusters.
Prayer, Patronage, and Personal Agency in Nicaraguan Accounts of Receiving International Aid

This article examines how religious beliefs and practices influence the reception of international relief and development aid in impoverished communities. Specifically, I explain how Nicaraguan recipients’ prayers both enhance and constrain their ability to assert themselves as “empowered” actors during aid interactions. Data come from observations and interviews over a two-year period with 81 Nicaraguans in communities that receive aid from Christian development organizations. Compared to secular constructions of aid interactions, prayers provide space for Nicaraguans to position themselves as influential actors effecting change for themselves or their families. Through prayers, recipients portray themselves as influencing the actions of more powerful parties, including God and potential donors. They also pray for donors’ well-being, thereby offering spiritual reciprocity for material gifts. However, the same prayers that empower individuals at the interpersonal level constrain their ability to envision transformation of social structures. These findings shape understandings of prayer as aligning actions, of the moral and social dimensions of receiving care from strangers, and of the complex and contradictory ways religious practices influence discourses of empowerment and development.
Tuberculosis (NICE clinical guideline 33).

The UK has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis (TB) in Western Europe.1 If current trends continue, with over 7500 cases per year,2 England will overtake the whole of the USA in the annual number of TB notifications within the next 2 years.3 TB disease in UK children is relatively rare with <5% cases affecting patients under the age of 15 years.2 Outside large conurbations, most paediatricians will see very few children with TB. However, the risk of progression from latent TB to TB disease and of TB meningitis or miliary TB is much higher in children, especially those under the age of 2 years.4 It is, therefore, important that paediatricians recognise children at risk of TB disease and the symptoms and signs with which they present. This article summarises the recently updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline ‘Tuberculosis’ (NG33)5 ,6 published in 2016 (box 1). Several areas of this guideline are controversial and we will highlight these. Box 1 ### Resources National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline—NG33 Tuberculosis https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG33 Collaborative TB Strategy, Public Health England https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/collaborative-tuberculosis-strategy-for-england Information for the public (NICE) https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng33/ifp/chapter/Tuberculosis Key recommendations in the updated guideline: Box 2 ### Glossary of terms Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTB complex)—A genetically related group of mycobacteria that can cause TB disease in …
Renal Artery Angioplasty and Stenting

Patients with uncontrolled hypertension will often present with headaches, palpitations, chest pain, and blurry vision. Young women with hypertension who are not on oral contraceptives often have fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD).
Abstract 11770: Egg Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Introduction: Current dietary guidelines no longer recommend against egg consumption despite the high cholesterol content. However, considerable controversy remains on the relationship between high...
Fire Resilience of Aquatic Crustacean Resting Stages in Playa Wetlands, Oklahoma, USA

Prescribed burns and wildfires maintain prairie vegetation by limiting tree growth and promoting prairie grasses and forb production. Previous studies have shown that fire causes mixed effects on the prairie fauna, promoting some organisms while negatively affecting other organisms. Playa wetlands are interspersed within some semi-arid prairie landscapes, and are thereby subject to fire. These temporary wetlands can remain dry for years and less mobile aquatic taxa survive dry periods as drought resilient resting stages. We experimentally examined the effect of fire on the subsequent hatching of crustacean resting stages found in playa wetlands. Soil collected from four western Oklahoma playa wetlands was mixed and left unburned or exposed to burning (at three fuel levels: 0.5 time, 1 time, and 3 times the natural vegetation biomass) to simulate different fire intensities. We rehydrated soil taken from two depths (0 cm to 1 cm and 1 cm to 2 cm) for two weeks and examined hatched invertebrates and algal biomass. We did not find any significant difference in invertebrate richness and abundance or algal biomass from treated (burned) and untreated (unburned) soil in either of the soil layers. The resting stages of invertebrates are tolerant to a wide range of environmental factors and, consequently, are apparently tolerant (as a population) to increased soil temperatures resulting from low intensity burning.
David Oliver: Why shouldn’t nurses be graduates?

The Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has set out her and her readers’ suggestions for saving the NHS.12 Alongside a range of reactionary ideas, she trotted out a recurring and predictable trope, beloved of some commentators in sections of the press: “Too many nurses with degrees who say, ‘I don’t do sick.’”2 This bizarre animus against graduate nurses has given rise to a stereotype that such nurses are “too posh to wash.”34 This is often accompanied by wistful yearnings for a golden age of authoritarian matrons who could spot dust bionically. …
Understanding Religion-Based Healing Traditions

This chapter provides an overview of various religious, spiritual, and life views of healing and healing practices related to both physical and mental health. Where relevant, approaches are explored on the scriptural basis. The chapter augments the discussion of ritual in Chap. 4 and provides a foundation for later chapters that address reliance on spirituality and religion in the context of preventing and coping with illness and disease .
Electronic Visits for Minor Acute Illnesses: Analysis of Patient Demographics, Prescription Rates, and Follow-Up Care Within an Asynchronous Text-Based Online Visit.

Abstract Introduction: Patients can obtain medical advice and treatment from a healthcare provider asynchronously through an electronic visit (eVisit) within a secure online portal. Methods: We conducted a retrospective record review of Mayo Clinic Rochester primary care empaneled patients who had an eVisit for a minor acute illness and were reviewed for 30-day outcomes of follow-up. Results: Of the 1,009 eVisits analyzed, a total of 340 (34%) had follow-up within 30 days, with a follow-up rate of 154 (20%) when those who were advised to follow-up were excluded. Factors significantly associated with any type of follow-up care included specific advice for follow-up given by the eVisit provider and lack of a prescription given at the eVisit. The majority of eVisits were requested by females (88%), although gender was not associated with likelihood of having follow-up care. Fourteen patients received follow-up care in the emergency department, one patient was hospitalized, and zero deaths occurred within 30 ...
Role of anthracycline and comprehensive geriatric assessment for elderly patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Survival outcome for elderly patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma remains suboptimal in the rituximab era. In this systematic review, we summarize available evidence relevant to the inclusion of anthracycline in upfront chemoimmunotherapy for these elderly patients and highlight the need of prospective clinical trials. With limited prospective data, we find that pretreatment comprehensive geriatric assessment accurately predicts survival and treatment-related toxicities, suggesting its potential role in guiding overall treatment decision-making.
Regioselective Termination Reagents for Ring-Opening Alkyne Metathesis Polymerization

Alkyne cross-metathesis of molybdenum carbyne complex [TolC≡Mo(OCCH3(CF3)2)3]·DME with 2 equiv of functional ynamines or ynamides yields the primary cross-metathesis product with high regioselectivity (>98%) along with a molybdenum metallacyclobutadiene complex. NMR and X-ray crystal structure analysis reveals that ynamides derived from 1-(phenylethynyl)pyrrolidin-2-one selectively cleave the propagating molybdenum species in the ring-opening alkyne metathesis polymerization (ROAMP) of ring-strained 3,8-dihexyloxy-5,6-dihydro-11,12-didehydrodibenzo[a,e][8]annulene and irreversibly deactivate the diamagnetic molybdenum metallacyclobutadiene complex through a multidentate chelate binding mode. The chain termination of living ROAMP with substituted ethynylpyrrolidin-2-ones selectively transfers a functional end-group to the polymer chain, giving access to telechelic polymers. This regioselective carbyne transfer strategy gives access to amphiphilic block copolymers through synthetic cascades of ROAMP followe...
The Ethics of Fee Practices: An Analysis of Presuppostitions and Accountability:

Psychotherapists, both inside and outside of the Christian community, have neglected discussion on the ethics of fee practices. Few ethical or practical guidelines exist to regulate therapists. In ...
Miscellaneous Aspects of Iron Metabolism

The preceding chapters have amply demonstrated the crucial role that iron plays in the process of life. These chapters have dealt with a number of topics which have received much attention from biomedical researchers and are especially important in human health and disease. A number of subjects dealing with nonheme iron have not been mentioned in this volume, and this chapter is designed to survey such areas, where a considerable body of knowledge is available.
Risks Management in Agile New Product Development Project Environments: A Review of Literature

This article reviews the risks associated with the implementation of Agile Project Management practices in projects that involved new products development in manufacturing companies and identified according to existing research the best strategies to approach those risks. Further, this article analyzes the events that can affect the implementation of APM practices in projects that involve the development of new products within manufacturing companies and provides some strategies to mitigate, avoid, and minimize the likelihood if they become risks and its impact in the customer requirements. Principal risks in manufacturing companies were highlighted, and its probability and impact were evaluated regarding scope, quality, schedule, and cost. Risk responses and strategies were noted align with the purpose of the agile practices, which is to deliver innovative products quickly and with high-quality standards.
Release analysis of a stratiform copper sulfide ore using column flotation

A column-flotation system was designed to conduct release analyses on a very finely disseminated, stratiform copper ore from the Denali Copper Prospect in Alaska. Chalcopyrite is finely disseminated in a carbonate matrix, and pyrite is disseminated in both the chalcopyrite and the gangue. Grinding to −20 µm is required for adequate liberation. A 25-mm × 2.4-m glass flotation column was designed. The ore and its flotation tailings were repeatedly floated to obtain a rougher concentrate. The rougher concentrate was then repeatedly floated to produce release fractions. These fractions were analyzed for copper, iron, calcium and magnesium, and release curves were plotted. The procedure was replicated at each of two grinds, i.e., 99% and 88% passing 37 µm (400 mesh). The procedure should find application for flotation characterization and process selection. Bond grindability testing was also conducted.
The Dark Web

The dark web consists of those websites that cannot be accessed except through special anonymizing software, most commonly the Tor package. Web services hidden this way have proved extremely difficult for authorities to track down. While there are many legitimate hidden sites, the dark web has also attracted a wide range of criminal enterprises, often enabled by the availability of anonymous cryptocurrency payments. While Tor has some theoretical weaknesses, most law-enforcement actions against hidden sites (the Silk Road, Playpen, etc.) have succeeded only because of operational mistakes by the sites’ administrators.
Seasonal and Long-Term Dynamics in Stream Water Sodium Chloride Concentrations and the Effectiveness of Road Salt Best Management Practices

We use a 32-year dataset from a rural, southeastern New York stream to describe the effect of long-term road salt use on concentrations of sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl−). Mean annual stream Na+ and Cl− concentrations initially increased, reached a plateau, and then increased again. Trends in summer and winter stream concentrations were similar but summer concentrations were higher than winter, indicating that salt entered the stream via groundwater discharge. Seasonal and inter-annual variability in stream Na+ and Cl− concentrations and export were high in the latter years of the study and can be explained by increased variability in stream discharge. Stream water Na+ and Cl− concentrations were positively correlated with conductivity, and conductivity was negatively correlated with discharge during all seasons (p < 0.001). We used road salt application data from a local agency to examine effects of best management practices. Despite reductions in salt application, there was no commensurate decrease in stream water Na+ and Cl− concentrations. We estimate that the legacy of long-term salt accumulation in groundwater and soils may delay a decline in stream water Na+ and Cl− concentrations by 20–30 years. Continued research to develop road salt reduction practices is important to mitigate impacts on freshwater ecosystems and drinking water supplies.