cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Multiple-Scale Expansions for Partial Differential Equations

Multiple-scale and averaging methods have a broad range of applicability for systems of ordinary differential equations, as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. In contrast, asymptotic solution techniques for partial differential equations are more recent and may be implemented, in general, only with multiple-scale expansions. Some of the early use of multiple scales concerned problems where the unperturbed state has a simple, usually periodic, structure, and the leading effect of weak nonlinearities is to introduce a slow modulation of the parameters. A number of representative examples are discussed in Sec. 6.1. In Sec. 6.2, we study systems of conservation laws that are perturbed about a uniform state. The ideas are illustrated using examples from shallow water flow, gas dynamics, and other applications. The final section, 6.3, gives a brief introduction to multiple-scale homogenization.
Is There a Difference in Staging and Treatment of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Tumors Between Tertiary Care and Community‐Based Institutions?

Objective To characterize the differences in the staging and treatment of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma between a tertiary care center and community-based practices. Methods This study is a retrospective chart review of 943 adult patients with head and neck squamous cell cancer presenting to a tertiary care center between 2008 and 2014 as part of the University of Michigan Head and Neck Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence (UM HN-SPORE) database. Demographic information, diagnostic testing, staging information, and treatment recommendations were recorded. Results Of 943 patients reviewed, 159 had documentation of tumor stage that was assigned by the community-based practice. Of these, 53% had a tumor staging change made at the tertiary care center, with 43% of patients upstaged and 10% of patients downstaged. Fifty-one percent received different treatment than had previously been offered at the community-based practice, although only 31% of these patients had a change in tumor staging. Conclusion Over half of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma who are evaluated at a tertiary care center after the initial evaluation at a community-based practice have their tumors staged differently, with the majority upstaged. A significant number of these patients also received different treatment than was initially offered at the referring practice. Future studies are required to determine whether these differences have an effect on tumor recurrence and patient survival rates. Level of evidence 2c (Outcomes Research).
Type qualifiers as composable language extensions for code analysis and generation

Abstract The work presented here reformulates type qualifiers as composable language extensions that can be automatically and reliably composed by the end-user programmer. Type expressions can be annotated with type qualifiers to specify new subtyping relations that are expressive enough to detect many kinds of programming errors. Type qualifiers, as illustrated in our ableC extensible language framework for C, can also introduce rich forms of concrete syntax, can generate dynamic checks on data when static checks are infeasible or not appropriate, and can inject generated code that affects program behavior, for example to log or display program execution or for the run-time conversion of data. The ableC framework and extensions to it are implemented using context-free grammars and attribute grammars. This provides an expressive mechanism for type qualifier implementations to check for additional errors, e.g.dereferences to pointers not qualified by a “nonnull” qualifier, and generate custom and informative error messages. This approach distinguishes programmers that use language extensions from language engineers that develop extensions. The framework provides modular analyses that extension developers use to ensure that their extension will compose with other extensions that all pass these analyses. Thus, when a programmer selects a set of extensions to use they will automatically and reliably compose to form a working translator for the extended language.
Viscoelastic Lubricant Deformation and Disk-to-Head Transfer During Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording

One of the challenges in heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is the formation of write-induced head contamination at the near-field transducer. A possible mechanism that has been proposed for this contamination is the transfer of lubricant from the disk to the head due to temperature driven evaporation/condensation. Most previous studies on lubricant depletion due to laser heating have assumed the lubricant to be a viscous fluid and have modeled its behavior using the traditional lubrication theory. However, perfluoropolyether lubricants are viscoelastic fluids and are expected to exhibit a combination of viscous and elastic behavior at the time and length scales of HAMR conditions. In this paper, we use a modified Reynolds lubrication equation for the viscoelastic fluid that employs the linear Maxwell constitutive model. We use this modified lubrication equation to develop a model that predicts the disk-to-head lubricant transfer during HAMR writing. This model simultaneously determines the thermocapillary stress driven deformation and evaporation of the viscoelastic lubricant film on the disk, the diffusion of the vapor phase lubricant in the air bearing, and the evolution of the condensed lubricant film on the head. We investigate the effects of lubricant type (Zdol versus Ztetraol), head/disk temperature, initial lubricant thickness, and laser spot size on the lubricant transfer process. Simulation results show a significant difference between the rates of transfer for Zdol (timescale of nanoseconds) versus Ztetraol (timescale of microseconds). The amount of transfer increases with the disk temperature and the initial lubricant thickness.
EMG-based Human Machine Interface Control

The use of EMG signals has been gaining prevalence in prosthetic control and gesture-control applications. This study aims to develop an EMG-based human machine interface system. A Myo Armband with eight electrode pairs is worn by a user to acquire and wirelessly transmit EMG data to a central controller. A pattern recognition algorithm is implemented on a central controller to recognize three different hand gesture commands. As a demonstration, a camera system equipped with servo motors is built. The recognized commands can remotely pan each camera and select one of multiple video feeds to display. The study demonstrates that the EMG-based pattern recognition could be a viable human machine interface option for a broad range of applications in industrial, medical, and consumer markets.
How Does Narcolepsy Impact Health-Related Quality of Life? A Mixed-Methods Study

Study Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify patient-centered issues affecting Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in people with narcolepsy (PWN) and to evaluate patient-reported...
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy for the In Situ Measurement of Vapor–Liquid Equilibria

Vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) data (T, p, x, y) are vital for the development of mixture thermodynamic models. Herein, we demonstrate the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy as an...
Conceptualizing Teacher Agency for Inclusive Education: A Systematic and International Review:

Teachers can and should play a powerful active role in promoting societal inclusion and equity for all learners. There is an emerging interest among teacher education scholars in teacher agency and...
Analogy and metareasoning: Cognitive strategies for robot learning

Abstract Robots share a conundrum central to all intelligence. Like humans, robots not only must address novel situations but also must start from what they already know: how, then, can any robot deal with novelty? In this chapter, we examine two cognitive strategies for addressing novelty: analogy and metareasoning. Analogy addresses new problems in a manner similar to a familiar problem; the familiar problem is part of the context of addressing the new problem. We show how a cognitive robot may use analogy to learn from a small number of initial demonstrations. However, analogical reasoning and reasoning more generally do not necessarily guarantee success in an open, dynamic world. This brings metareasoning into play. We show how a cognitive robot may use metareasoning to recover and learn from failure; here, failure forms part of the context for metareasoning. In the other direction, we discuss how these experiments in robot learning inform the development of cognitive theories of analogy and metareasoning.
Histologic patterns of lung injury in patients using e-cigarettes

In recent years, e-cigarette use has become more popular. Until recently, it was considered safer than smoking. We report two cases of acute pulmonary illness associated with vaping, focusing on their histologic patterns.
Prevalence and correlates of concussion in children: Data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study

Abstract Introduction Concussions are one of the most common causes for emergency room use in the United States (US) among youth and adolescents; however, prevalence data on concussion in this population are inconsistent. A growing body of literature has explored associations of a range of variables with pediatric concussion, but they have not been explored simultaneously in a well-powered sample in the US. The present study aimed to present lifetime concussion prevalence, evaluate demographic, psychological, and cognitive correlates of concussion, and assess for differences across these variables based on age of first concussion in a large sample of US children. Methods We analyzed the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) sample, which monitors biopsychosocial development in 11,875 children at 21 sites across the US between ages 9 and 10. Along with presenting rates of concussion, we also evaluated the association of demographics, sleep disturbance, cognitive functioning, and externalizing and internalizing symptoms with concussion history using backwards binary logistic regression. We further conducted univariate comparisons of all variables between those who experienced their first concussion before and after age 5. Significance was based on α = .02, with Benjamini-Hochberg FDR adjustments for multiple comparisons. Results We found approximately 4% of the sample had experienced a concussion, and significant correlates of experiencing a concussion were male sex, increased family income, and higher somatic symptoms after FDR correction. Symptoms of ADHD were also noted as nominally significant. No differences based on age of first concussion were found. Discussion Our analyses provided updated prevalence estimates of pediatric concussion in the US that aligns with many hospital records-based studies. Our findings largely mirrored those in the literature with the exception of somatic symptoms. Limitations of findings and implications of individual findings are discussed.
Amino acid digestibility in corn distillers' dried grains with solubles in pigs at different dietary levels of casein and test ingredient.

Digestibility of amino acids (AA) in feed ingredients for pigs has been generally determined by feeding experimental diets containing test feedstuffs as a sole source of N, which may lead to the deficiency or imbalance of AA and hinder an accurate determination of digestibility values. Therefore, the addition of casein in experimental diets may ameliorate the potential negative effects of deficiency or imbalance of AA. In addition, the concentration of test feedstuffs in experimental diets may affect the digestibility of AA in test feedstuffs. Two experiments were conducted with corn distillers' dried grains with solubles (DDGS) as the test feedstuff to determine the effects of increasing concentrations of casein in experimental diets on standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of AA in DDGS (experiment 1) and to investigate the effects of two concentrations of DDGS in experimental diets with or without the addition of casein on SID of AA in DDGS (experiment 2). In experiment 1, 20 barrows (initial BW = 45.3 ± 1.80 kg) surgically fitted with T-cannulas at the distal ileum were allocated to a quadruplicate 5 × 2 incomplete Latin square design with five diets and two periods. Four isonitrogenous diets containing increasing concentrations of casein from 0 to 165 g/kg with decreasing concentrations of DDGS from 466.8 to 0 g/kg and a N-free diet were prepared. The SID of AA, except for arginine, cysteine, and glycine, in DDGS linearly decreased (P < 0.05) with increasing concentrations of casein in experimental diets. Quadratic response (P = 0.023) was observed in the SID of lysine in DDGS when the concentration of casein in experimental diets increased. In experiment 2, the same 20 barrows (initial BW = 52.8 ± 2.99 kg) and experimental design as experiment 1 were used with different diets, which were prepared as a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement with the concentration of DDGS at 466.8 or 155.6 g/kg and that of casein at 0 or 110 g/kg. Regardless of the addition of casein, pigs fed experimental diets containing 466.8 g/kg DDGS had greater (P < 0.01) SID of indispensable AA, except for tryptophan, in DDGS than those fed diets containing 155.6 g/kg DDGS. In conclusion, the addition of casein in experimental diets did not affect the SID of AA in DDGS, whereas the SID of AA in DDGS decreased as the concentration of DDGS in diets decreased.
Superior capsule reconstruction using a single 6-mm-thick acellular dermal allograft for massive rotator cuff tears: a biomechanical cadaveric comparison to fascia lata allograft.

BACKGROUND Success of superior capsule reconstruction (SCR) using both fascia lata (FL) and human acellular dermal (ACD) allografts have been reported. One possible explanation for a discrepancy in outcomes may be attributed to graft thickness. SCR with commercially available 3-mm-thick ACD allograft is not biomechanically equivalent to FL. Our hypothesis was that SCR with a single 6-mm-thick ACD allograft will restore the subacromial space distance (SubDist) and peak subacromial contact pressures (PSCPs) to intact shoulder and will be comparable to SCR with an 8-mm FL allograft. METHODS Eight cadaveric shoulders were tested in 4 conditions: intact, irreparable supraspinatus tear (SST), SCR FL allograft (8-mm-thick), and SCR single ACD allograft (6-mm-thick). SubDist and PSCP were measured at 0°, 30°, and 60° of glenohumeral abduction in the scapular plane. Parameters were compared using a repeated measures analysis of variance with Tukey post hoc test, and graft dimensions were compared using a Student t test. RESULTS SST had decreased SubDist (P < .05) and increased PSCP (P < .05) compared with the intact state. At all angles, the SCR ACD allograft demonstrated increased SubDist compared with the tear condition (P < .001), with no difference between grafts. Furthermore, there was decreased PSCP after both ACD and FL SCR compared with the intact condition, with no difference between grafts at 0° (P = .006, P = .028) and 60° abduction (P = .026, P = .013). Both ACD and FL grafts elongated during testing. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest SCR with a single 6-mm-thick ACD allograft is noninferior to FL regarding SubDist and PSCP while completely restoring the superior stability of the glenohumeral joint compared with the intact state.
Fraction detectives: bilingual students investigate the hidden identities of equivalent fractions

This paper conceptualizes children’s mathematical thinking from a materialist perspective on language and mathematics. This perspective considers human and non-human bodies as ontologically equivalent; that is, as both being agentive, vibrant, and animated, thus resisting static representations. This conceptualization is an alternative to the interactionist and language-based models that have dominated research in language and mathematics. This conceptual approach informs the paper’s non-hierarchical analysis of a bilingual classroom studying the concept of equivalent fractions. The non-hierarchical nature of this analysis permits a dynamic shift of focus from learners to materials to mathematical concepts. This non-traditional analysis informs the paper’s final discussion regarding the nature of children’s mathematical thinking. The discussion highlights how working outside language-based interactionist models provides an alternative view of children and artefacts as equal partners working within and as part of the vibrant boundaries between matter and meaning.
A Young Man with Persistent Dyspnea: A Case of Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension

A 22-year-old man presented with 6 weeks of increasing dyspnea on exertion and 20 pounds of weight loss over the preceding 6 months. His past medical history notable was for autism, hereditary spherocytosis (HS) and a mild pectus deformity. Given his sensitivity to loud noises, an evaluation in the emergency department (ED) was initially avoided in favor of a series of outpatient visits. Interval development of tachycardia and desaturation prompted referral to the ED. His exam was notable for euvolemia, and aside from tachycardia otherwise normal cardiopulmonary findings. …
Optimal PSNR estimated spectrum adaptive postfilter for DCT coded images

Our previous work aimed at reducing the blocking distortion of DCT coded images is further improved by introducing the optimal PSNR estimated spectrum adaptive postfilter (ESAP) algorithm. ESAP searches for a one dimensional log-sigmoid weighting function which, when applied to the separable, interpolated local block estimated spectrum of the coded image, minimizes the mean square error (MMSE) with respect to the original image using a 2-D steepest descent search. Convergence is obtained in a few iterations for integer parameters. A unique maximum PSNR is guaranteed given the asymptotic exponential overshoot behavior of the surface generated by ESAP. We obtained PSNR improvement of 1.5 dB over nonpostfiltered JPEG images as well as subjective improvement. ESAP is based on a DFT analysis of the DCT basis functions and uses spatially adaptive separable FIR postfilters.
Improving adverse drug event detection in critically ill patients through screening intensive care unit transfer summaries

Purpose This study aimed to determine the frequency and type of adverse drug events (ADEs) identified in intensive care unit (ICU) transfer summaries and in the hospital discharge summaries to demonstrate the effectiveness of ICU transfer summary surveillance in the identification of ADEs. Methods A retrospective electronic medical record review was conducted for medical ICU patients admitted between January 2009 and April 2009 to a large, academic medical center. The Harvard Practice Scale and the modified Leonard Assessment Scale were used to evaluate the presence of an ADE from the ICU transfer and hospital discharge summaries. Results Two hundred and fifty-four patients were identified for inclusion with a median medical ICU length of stay of 4.5 days and hospital length of stay of 13 days. The ICU transfer summary review revealed 173 ADEs among 124 unique patients with a rate of 33.9 ADEs per 1000 hospital patient days. Sixty-nine ADEs among 63 unique patients were identified through the hospital discharge summary with a rate of 13.5 ADEs per 1000 hospital patient days. Only 23.1% of ADEs discussed in the ICU transfer summary were also discussed in the hospital discharge summary. Conclusions The use of ICU transfer summaries is an effective tool to increase ADE detection. The use of an ICU transfer summary should be considered as an adjunct method to an existing ADE surveillance system for heightened pharmacovigilance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Self-knowledge, Externalism, and Skepticism,I

In recent years, some philosophers have claimed that we can know a priori that certain external world skeptical hypotheses are false on the basis of a priori knowledge that we are in certain kinds of mental states, and a priori knowledge that those mental states are individuated by contingent environmental factors. Appealing to a distinction between weak and strong a priority, I argue that weakly a priori arguments of this sort would beg the question of whether the skeptical hypothesis under assessment is true, and that the prospect of a sound strongly a priori argument of this sort seems dim.
Market-Based Prediction Models as an Aid to Litigation Strategy and Settlement Negotiations

245 I.Introduction 245 II.Assessing the Needs of Litigants Today 246 A. Costs of Litigation and the Growing Need to Settle 246 B. Pieces of the Puzzle: Current Litigation Services 247 III.Why and How Are Information Markets Used? 248 A. What is an “Information Market”? 248 B. Information Markets as Part of a Preference Market Model 249 C. Four Phases of Market Research 250 D. Design/Definition of Virtual Securities 251 E. Experimental Design 252 F. Market Design 253 G. Incentives 253 IV.Why Information Markets Predict Outcomes Accurately 254 A. Information Markets Distinguished From Other Group Judgments 254 B. Why Information Markets Predict Better than Group Deliberation 254 C. Why Information Markets Predict Better than Statistical Means ...... 257 D. Accuracy of Public Information Markets 258 1. Politics 259 2. Entertainment 260 E. Accuracy of Private Information Markets 261 V.Why and How Litigation Markets Benefit Litigants 262 A. How to Use Litigation Market Research 262 B. Strengthening Communication through Market Predictions 263 C. Parameters for Applicable Types of Litigations to Predict 263 VI.Sample Market 264 A. Statement of the Facts 264 1. Boyce and His Employment at Wit – the First On-Line Investment Bank 264 2. Wit Announces its IPO and Refuses to Permit Boyce to Exercise of his Warrants 265 3. The Success of the Wit IPO—Boyce Files Suit 265 4. Wit’s Motions in Limine and the Trial Court’s Jury Instructions on Damages 265 2008 PREDICTING LITIGATION AND SETTLEMENT 245 5. Evidence at Trial 266 6. The Trial Outcome and Ensuing Appeal by Boyce 266 7. Evidentiary Rulings 267 8. The “Knowledgeable Investor” Jury Instruction 268 B. Sample Litigation Market 269 C. Potential Challenges to Predictive Accuracy for Information Markets 271 VII.Conclusion 272
Are Court Orders Responsible for the "Return to the Central City"? The Consequences of School Finance Litigation

Central cities’ populations have rebounded over the last few decades, but scholars are unsure why. I propose and offer econometric evidence for a novel hypothesis — legal changes have driven central cities’ resurgence. In particular, state fiscal aid for schools in poor cities, mandated by state courts, has made poor cities more desirable places to live by improving their schools and reducing their taxes. I test my hypothesis by taking advantage of the natural experiment resulting from the dramatic increase in transfers to some states’ poor cities in response to court-ordered school finance equalization, using Census data on over 20,000 cities and towns. The key threats to accurate measurement are that poor places may have grown differently than rich places in the absence of school finance redistribution, and places in high-redistribution states may have grown differently than places in low-redistribution states. To address these concerns, I use a continuous version of the “difference-in-difference-in-differences” econometric technique. The results show that redistribution had a large effect on urban population growth between 1980 and 2010, explaining about one-third of the “return to the central city.” I then conduct a case study on the local finances of Connecticut, and find that the state transfers for education led to tax reductions, as well as the intended increases in education spending. Finally, the paper suggests two reasons that state aid to poor places may be not only equitable but also efficient. First, financing schools locally discourages people from living in poor cities by requiring that their residents pay for the costs of providing services to the cities’ poor. The results show that the location choices of many people are affected by this local financing, suggesting that its efficiency costs may be large. Second, the paper shows that school finance redistribution promotes the positive externalities associated with central city living. These arguments could be used in future legislative debates or litigation to support more school finance redistribution.
The Path of IP Studies: Growth, Diversification, and Hope

This foreword for a symposium issue of the Texas Law Review discusses the evolution of intellectual property law scholarship, with particular attention to developments in empirically oriented IP scholarship. Over the past few decades, IP scholarship, outlets for its publication, and the IP academic community have grown remarkably, increasing not only in volume but also in diversity and interdisciplinary reach. IP empirical studies have featured substantially in this story of growth and diversification. The range and breadth of resulting scholarship can be disorienting but also provides hope for a new policy-oriented synthesis grounded in a multitude of discrete and methodologically diverse studies.
Insulator surface flashover with UV and plasma background and external magnetic field

Surface flashover often sets the limit on the maximum voltage of a system in vacuum. UV irradiation and/or plasma will further decrease the flashover potential. This experiment investigates the UV and plasma induced dielectric surface flashover, emphasizes the early phase of breakdown, and uses external magnetic fields to increase the surface flashover potential. In our experimental apparatus, a dc voltage up to 60 kV or a voltage pulse (up to 100 kV with 200 ns duration) is applied to the test gap. The geometry of all interconnecting lines and of the discharge chamber is coaxial and the impedances are closely matched. The current, voltage, and soft X-rays are recorded. The plasma is generated by an electron cyclotron resonance plasma source and the UV radiation originates from a UV enhanced dc Xenon arc lamp. External magnetic fields influence the current in the pre-flashover phase. With a magnetic flux density of only 30 mT, the flashover potential of a UV induced breakdown increases by up to a factor of 4. With a plasma background, the duration of an applied voltage pulse can be increased by a factor of 2 without causing flashover.
Microsolvation of anions by molecules forming CH··X− hydrogen bonds

Abstract Various anions were surrounded by n molecules of CF3H, which was used as a prototype CH donor solvent, and the structures and energies studied by M06-2X calculations with a 6-31+G∗∗ basis set. Anions considered included the halides F−, Cl−, Br− and I−, as well as those with multiple proton acceptor sites: CN−, NO3−, HCOO−, CH3COO−, HSO4−, H2PO4−, and anions with higher charges SO42−, HPO42− and PO43−. Well structured cages were formed and the average H-bond energy decreases steadily as the number of surrounding solvent molecules rises, even when n exceeds 6 and the CF3H molecules begin to interact with one another rather than with the central anion. Total binding energies are very nearly proportional to the magnitude of the negative charge on the anion. The free energy of complexation becomes more negative for larger n initially, but then reaches a minimum and begins to rise for larger values of n.
Changes in snow accumulation and ablation following the Las Conchas Forest Fire, New Mexico, USA

Seasonally, snow-covered forests are a critical source of water in the Western United States and are subject to major disturbances, including fire, harvest, disease and insect-caused mortality, that have relatively unknown effects on water availability. In this study, we investigated changes in winter season snow accumulation and ablation in a forest following the Las Conchas fire in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. We investigated two competing sets of processes that should determine the peak annual snowpack prior to snowmelt: (1) reduced interception by forest canopy results in greater new snow accumulation and (2) increased winter season ablation of the snowpack results in reduced peak snowpack volumes. These processes were evaluated with approximately 800 spatially distributed manual observations of new snow, 1500 manual observations of peak snowpack, and light detection and ranging-derived snow depth, vegetation and terrain datasets collected prior to the fire. A single snowfall event yielded significantly larger snow depths in the post-burn area versus the unburned area (p< 0.001), with 25% to 45% interception in the unburned area and near zero in the post-burn area. Conversely, the peak snowpack depths were significantly larger in the unburned area compared with the post-burn area (mean of 55 and 47 cm, respectively), despite nearly identical peak snowpacks prior to the fire (72 and 72 cm, respectively). The lack of strong vegetation controls led to less variability at peak snowpack in the post-burn area and a shift towards topographically controlled variability, caused by differences in elevation and aspect, occurring at larger spatial scales. The unburned area had roughly 10% more water available for melt than the post-burn area, with winter season ablation reducing snowpacks by nearly 50% prior to melt in the post-burn area. The relative importance of shortwave radiation to the snowpack energy balance and sublimation suggests that the 10% reductions in peak snow water storage found in these north-facing areas could be a conservative estimate for winter season ablation following fire. Further work is necessary to assess the role that topography plays in altering water partitioning following forest disturbance and the potential implications for ecological health and downstream water resources. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Supporting information may be found in the online version of this article.
Gender-Specific Profiles of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Past Year Mental and Substance Use Disorders, and Their Associations among a National Sample of Adults in the United States

Purpose This study examined profiles of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and mental and substance use disorders (MSUDs), and associations between distinct profiles of ACEs and MSUDs.
Chemotactic migration of neutrophils under agarose

Abstract A simple test for neutrophil chemotaxis is described. Wells were cut in soft agarose gel and filled with human peripheral blood leukocytes, chemotactin and control substances. Neutrophils consistently migrated under agarose towards the well with chemotactin, but not towards wells with control substances. Chemotaxis was quantitated as the mean distance travelled by 10 cells farthest from the well of origin, at specified time-intervals after filling the wells. Approximately 1 3 distance was covered in 2 hours, 3 4 in 4 hours and 90 per cent in 6 hours. The migrating cells examined after fixation and staining were found to be predominantly neutrophils with occasional eosinophils and monocytes.
Computer science faculties: the current status of minorities and women

The results of a survey conducted in the fall of 1975 to determine the status of women and minority faculty members in academic computer science are presented. Faculty members were compared with respect to professional background, salaries, teaching load, publication records, and research grants. Analysis of the data indicated that the over-all verdict is one of general equality among women, minorities, and men.
A Multiwire Proportional Chamber Trigger System for a Rapid-Cycling Bubble Chamber

A cylindrical multiwire proportional chamber operating within the vacuum tank of a rapid-cycling bubble chamber is described. The system is used in conjunction with the SLAC Ko-spectrometer to allow the selection of event topologies of several types of KoL p reactions having small cross sections (~ 0.1 to 1 mb) in comparison with the total cross section (~ 25 mb). Construction of the chamber, its electronics, data acquisition, and operational characteristics are presented.
Spectrophotometric measurement of alpha-keto acid semicarbazones.

Abstract The influence of hydrogen-ion concentration on the rate of formation of several α-keto acid semicarbazones has been investigated. General acid catalysis of the reaction was observed with monocarboxylic keto acids but not with the dicarboxylic acids, α-ketoglutarate and oxalacetate. Conditions have been defined for the simple rapid analysis of keto acid solutions, for the measurement of blood keto acid levels, and for the continuous spectrophotometric measurement of glyoxylate formation by isocitric lyase at pH 6. The advantages and limitations of the method are discussed.
Industrial phase-shifting thermal controller for low power loads

Abstract This paper addresses the problem of controlling temperature of loads with very small heat capacity using industrial of-the-shelf components. While regular temperature controllers are offered as a complete encapsulated solution by many vendors, very few of them are suitable for the application here addressed due to the switching speed of the outputs, usually connected to a mechanical relay. An alternative solution is successfully presented using components originally used for building automation.
NITROGEN FIXATION BY LEGUMES AND BLUE-GREEN ALGAL-LICHEN CRUSTS IN A COLORADO DESERT ENVIRONMENT'

Potential sources of fixed nitrogen in a Colorado desert environment were examined by the acetylene reduction method at the Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, near Palm Desert, California. In field and greenhouse studies all members of the genera Astragalus, Dalea, Lotus, Lupinus, Melilotus, and Prosopis examined formed active nodules (acetylene reduction) with indigenous soil bacteria. No evidence of nodulation was found forAcacia greggii, Cercidiumfloridum, orHoffmannseggia microphylla. Lotus tomentellus was estimated to fix 0.1 kg N ha-1 by the time of flowering under field conditions. Several members of the genus Dalea showed substantial rates of acetylene reduction in the greenhouse: D. emoryi, 16.1 + 3.5, D. mollissima, 11.4 + 3.7, D. schottii 2.9 + 1.7, D. spinosa 2.5 + 0.4 ,moles ethylene plant-' hr -1. In greenhouse assays where water was supplied continuously, blue-green algal-lichen crusts reduced acetylene at an average rate of 11.0 + 5.7 nmoles ethylene cm-2 hr-1 with a maximum of 57.1. But when in situ assays were done following irrigation of a field plot with 2.3 cm of water, much lower activities were observed with a maximum activity of only 6.4 nmoles cm-2 hr-1.
Interstellar Depletions Updated: Where All the Atoms Went

Measures of the depletion of interstellar elements from the gas phase are usually derived by assuming that the general composition of the interstellar medium is identical to that of the Sun. A compilation of stellar composition data, including B stars as well as field F and G stars, however, calls this assumption into question. In this Letter we consider the impact on derived depletions if the reference abundances are derived from stars in the solar neighborhood rather than from the Sun, and we discuss the implications for current models of the interstellar dust. Using recent, accurate gas-phase column densities for ζ Ophiuchi, we show that the systematically lower depletions resulting from our revised cosmic abundances are in conflict with most dust models because insufficient quantities of raw materials are available to explain the observed extinction. A Kramers-Kronig analysis for the ζ Oph line of sight shows that the revised depletions are consistent with the required opacity of interstellar dust only if the density of the grain material is near 1 g cm-3, suggesting that the grain structure must be open (i.e., the grains must by fluffy, porous, or fractal in structure).
Networked Empowerment on Facebook Groups for Parents of Children with Special Needs

Theories of empowerment explain how people gain personal and political control to take action to improve their lives. However, empowerment theories were developed prior to the Internet and fail to account for the speed and scale that people can find one another online. One domain where empowerment is critical is caring for children with special needs, in which parents are required to navigate a complex maze of services and processes to access care for their child. We conducted 43 interviews with parents of children with special needs to investigate whether using social media sites helps them to perform this caregiving work. Critically, parents are able to do this through almost real-time access to other parents on Facebook. This work introduces the concept of networked empowerment, that describes how parents find other parents, access resources, and explore new ways for promoting health advocacy among caregivers at a local and national level. We conclude with design implications for facilitating faster and better access to information and support for caregivers.
Forgetting in the recall-based elicitation of personal and social networks

Abstract Forgetting in the recall-based elicitation of personal and social networks poses a potentially significant problem for the collection of complete network data and unbiased measurement of network characteristics and properties. A comprehensive review of the literature shows that forgetting is a pervasive, non-trivial phenomenon in the recall-based elicitation of personal and social networks pertaining to a broad variety of social relations. There appear to be no good predictors of individuals' proportional level of forgetting, although the number of persons an individual recalls is moderately positively correlated with the number of persons he or she forgets. People seem to be more likely to forget weak ties than strong ties, but the evidence is mixed on this point. In any event, people still forget a significant proportion of their close contacts. Non-specific prompting for additional relevant persons, multiple elicitation questions, and re-interviewing enhance recall slightly to moderately and are the only methods currently available to counteract forgetting, albeit only partially.
Calculated thermochemistry of aminonitroacetylene: a new high-energy material?

As part of an increased interest in amino- and nitro-substituted high-energy-density materials (as exemplified by FOX-7, 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethylene), here we present calculated properties of aminonitroacetylene, NH2−C≡C−NO2. Our results indicate that while the specific enthalpy of combustion is less than that of acetylene, its specific enthalpy of decomposition is greater than that of TNT, and its predicted density is large enough to predict substantial high-energy-density properties for this substance.
Dimensions Underlying an Outdoor Leadership Curriculum

The dimensions underlying an outdoor education curriculum were investigated. The Wilderness Education Association (WEA) curriculum contains 1 overarching point (judgment) and 18 other items. Twenty four instructors rated the extent of similarity between pairs of curriculum points, resulting in 171 ratings for each instructor. These paired ratings were subjected to multidimensional scaling, a statistical technique aimed at uncovering underlying dimensions of subjective judgments of similarity. The resulting analysis yielded five dimensions with stress (goodness of fit) = .147 and RSQ (correlation squared) = .58. Graphical presentations of these dimensions are shown. The results indicate dimensions of time, travel, risk, reactivity, and a deliberation/intuition dimension. The authors suggested that a reorganization and simplification of the curriculum was in order. Implications of this reorganization were presented.
Anthropological Field Research: Margaret Mead, Muse of the Clinical Experience

THE PRIMARY PRODUCT OF FIELDWORK is the ethnography, a comapping of experience and mind and a simultaneous mapping of mind on mind. Fieldwork is the context within which and for which anthropological methods are devised, yet fieldwork is an orientation in time and space that is not one's own, a culture-contact situation in which the cultures we investigate may gain or lose in translation. What informs these modelic activities is just beginning to be seriously considered in anthropology. Margaret Mead welcomed this development. She herself had written, on occasion, about the nature and goals of anthropological fieldwork, ' and it is my purpose here neither to repeat or summarize her consciously expressed views that are available nor to improve on her style of expressing them, nor to say that she meant other than she expressed. Consideration here will rather be confined to what I observed as a colleague in the intimacy of fieldwork situations and discussions on the technic, and what I perceive to have been her assumptions, consciously expressed or no, of the goals and nature of anthropological fieldwork. In her occasional commentaries on method, she was not concerned with making explicit the "theological bases" of her scientific activities in the field. Because of this, some have asserted that there were no fundamental assumptions. That conclusion might easily have been reached if one came entr'acte into the intersects of her current thinking about a problem and insisted, after a brief interchange, on locating her intellectual coordinates. This would not be possible. She would never, for example, have written or spoken "The Tale of the Polyploid Horse" to illustrate a fallacy of strict "scientific" thinking of technologists as Bateson did (1979:55), but she would, in conference, refer to "Gregory's horse" and have already applied its principle. (If you didn't know about "Gregory's horse," this was a signal for you to read up on it before the next conference.) What informs the modelic activities in anthropological field research is the experiential history of the investigator and the trajectory of his intellectual history of ideation with its emphases, nurtured or not within the historic arc of determinism of his culture (Romanucci-Ross 1979). Ruth Bunzel, one of Margaret's early contemporaries, said that in the early 1920s the then-"new ethnography" ran counter to the then-current studies of institutions; it rather emphasized how individuals coped with universal problems, as, for example: What was it like to be an adolescent in another society? What can we learn from life histories and dreams? How do artists think about what they are doing? In addition, in that era there was a shared urgency to work on these problems before colonialism
Generation of Steiner tree connections in a barrier-free environment

We have recently developed an algorithm for the generation of Steiner trees in a barrier-free environment. The algorithm and related mathematical material appear elsewhere (1); the purpose of this note is to informally describe the concepts underlying our approach, and to demonstrate the computational feasibility of the method. Our problem model consists of a two-dimensional rectilinear grid containing nodes which must be connected by orthogonal line segments. The objective is to connect the set of nodes with a collection of lines having minimum total length. As will be demonstrated, our technique may be manually applied to problems of 25-50 points; much larger problems could be solved by utilizing computer processing. While the algorithm has not yet been proven to produce minimum length trees, we maintain that typical results are at least very nearly minimal. We hope to stimulate critical reactions to the following material by presenting it informally in this Newsletter.
Childhood epiglottitis in recent years

Abstract Fifty-five cases of acute epiglottitis were diagnosed and treated at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia between 1985 and 1991. To evaluate the changing patterns of the disease over recent years, we compared the current results with those obtained from an earlier study reported at our institution in 1979. The overall annual incidence was higher in recent years than in the earlier study, with a sharp decline in new cases over the last two years. Thirty-six percent of the Hemophilus influenzae type B (HIB) infections were ampicillin-resistant in recent years, while no resistance had been found in the past. Twenty-seven percent of the cases were vaccine failures, all before 1990. Endotracheal intubation was the sole method for upper airway maintenance, while in the past 31% of the children underwent a tracheotomy. No mortality or long-term complications were found in either study.
Differences in matching persistence behavior during block design performance between older normal and brain-damaged persons: a process analysis.

Summary A matching persistence index (MPI) has been devised which measures persistence in matching cells during block design performances. Using MPI as a basis for comparison, it was demonstrated that: a) normals and brain-injured differ in style of problem solving during block design performances; b) differences in style persist even after the brain-injured receive special training to pass block designs, i.e., when they are equated with normals in overall competence on the task. Some differences between patients with right and left hemispheric damage are pointed out and clinical and theoretical implications from the findings are discussed.
Regadenoson: a new myocardial stress agent.

Vasodilator stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) accounts for up to 50% of all stress MPI studies performed in the U.S. In 2008, the Food and Drug Administration approved regadenoson for stress testing in conjunction with MPI. Regadenoson, unlike adenosine, is a selective A 2A agonist that is given as an intravenous bolus at a fixed dose, with less undesirable side effects including atrioventricular block and bronchospasm. Unlike adenosine, regadenoson could be used in patients with mild-to-moderate reactive airway disease. This review will summarize the pre-clinical and clinical data on regadenoson, as they specifically relate to its use as a vasodilator stress agent, currently the only approved selective A 2A agonist.
Cadastral Politics: The Making of Community‐Based Resource Management in Zimbabwe and Mozambique

Projects promoting community-based management of natural resources frequently encourage local smallholders to share flora, fauna, or land forms with state agencies and/or private companies. Ideals of common property and moral economy have inspired this agenda and helped spread it globally. In Southern Africa, however, the general model of shared landscapes has collided with a bitter history of white colonization and land grabbing. This article recounts the rise and fall of one CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) project in eastern Zimbabwe. There, cadastral politics — struggles over the bounding and control of land — overwhelmed negotiations for joint management and eco-tourism. Across the border, in Mozambique, community-based resource management has engaged with cadastral politics in a more fruitful fashion. In the midst of latter-day Afrikaner colonization, this project mapped smallholders’ claims to land. Thus, the Zimbabwean project ignored territorial conflict and ultimately succumbed to it. The Mozambican project jumped into the fray, with some success. On past or current settler frontiers, community-based management may learn from this lesson: dispense with an ideology of sharing and join the rough-and-tumble of cadastral politics.