cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Abstract P150: Modest Achievement of Guideline-Derived Treatment Goals in Diabetic Patients with Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Despite High Use of Guideline-Based Therapies

Background: Recent emphasis has been placed on enhancing quality of cardiovascular care using practice guidelines and health information technology to provide feedback to individual physicians. How effective this has been in achieving treatment goals versus percent of appropriate patients receiving guideline-based therapy is unclear. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to determine how successfully guideline-derived treatment goals were met for outpatients with diabetes (DM) and ASCVD in an academic general cardiology practice with an electronic medical record (EMR). Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on all outpatients managed in an academic general cardiology clinic who had diagnoses of both ASCVD and DM and had ≥ 2 outpatient visits between January 2008 and September 2009 (n =926), during which time EMR quarterly “report cards” were provided. Values for LDL, HDL, BP and BMI were abstracted for the first and last visits during the study period. Analysis was conducted on the percent of patients achieving treatment goals at each visit and differences in values between first and last visit. Results: A high percentage of patients were receiving guideline-based drug therapy at their last visit: Statin - 91.0%; Anti-hypertensive, ACE or ARB - 83.4%; Anti-platelet - 92.0%; β-blocker - 75.7%. However, mean LDL at the last visit was 80.4±33.7, and although 81% (649/797) had an LDL-C <= 100 mg/dl, only 41% (326/797) achieved an LDL-C <= 70mg/dl. Similarly, only 61% (563/921) achieved a systolic BP <= 130 mmHg, and mean reduction of BMI between the first and last visit was 1.3% (32.5±11.5 vs. 32.1±9.4, p=NS). The same number of patients gained 10% or more weight during the study period, as lost 10% or more weight, 5.3% (47/886). Conclusion: A very high percentage of patients were receiving guideline-based drugs, but with respect to achieving ATP III target LDL-C and systolic BP goals, there was less success. The greatest difficulty was in achieving weight loss. These results are similar to those achieved by randomized patients in the BARI-2D trial. In both studies, successful weight loss and achievement of LDL-C guidelines by ATP III were suboptimal although the use of appropriate therapy was high. Additional strategies are needed to achieve these targets.
Abstract LB-094: Regorafenib and sildenafil interact to kill tumor cells

The present studies were to determine whether the multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib or its derivative regorafenib interacted with phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors such as sildenafil (Viagra) to kill tumor cells. PDE5 and PDGFR (alpha and beta) were over-expressed in liver tumors compared to normal liver tissue. In multiple cell types in vitro sorafenib/regorafenib and PDE5 inhibitors interacted in a greater than additive fashion to cause tumor cell death. Knock down of PDE5 or of PDGFR (alpha and beta) recapitulated the effects of the individual drugs. The drug combination increased ROS/RNS levels that were causal in cell killing. RNS stimulated the activation of the death receptor CD95 as well as the formation of autophagosomes and autolysosomes. Inhibition of CD95 / FADD / caspase 8 signaling suppressed drug combination toxicity. Knock down of ULK-1, Beclin1 or ATG5 suppressed drug combination lethality. The drug combination inactivated ERK, AKT, p70 S6K and mTOR and activated JNK. The drug combination also reduced mTOR protein expression. Activation of ERK or AKT was modestly protective whereas re-expression of an activated mTOR protein or inhibition of JNK signaling almost abolished drug combination toxicity. Sildenafil and sorafenib / regorafenib interacted in vivo to suppress xenograft tumor growth using liver and colon cancer cells. PDE5 inhibitors and sorafenib / regorafenib are FDA approved agents, and our data is now being translated into the clinic for further determination as to whether this drug combination is a useful anti-tumor therapy for solid tumor patients. Citation Format: Mehrad Tavallai, Laurence Booth, Jane L. Roberts, Andrew Poklepovic, Paul Dent. Regorafenib and sildenafil interact to kill tumor cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-094. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-LB-094
Bridging the Motivation Gap in Total Quality

Total quality management requires a shift in motivational emphasis from extrinsic rewards and punishments tot he intrinsic motivation of workers. Intrinsic motivation is based on positively valued (rewarding) experiences that individuals get directly fr..
Arresting the Development of Addiction: The Role of β-Arrestin 2 in Drug Abuse

The protein β-arrestin (βarr) 2 directly interacts with receptors and signaling pathways that mediate the behavioral effects of drugs of abuse, making it a prime candidate for therapeutic interventions. βarr2 drives desensitization and internalization of G protein-coupled receptors, including dopamine, opioid, and cannabinoid receptors, and it can also trigger G protein-independent intracellular signaling. βarr2 mediates several drug-induced behaviors, but the relationship is complex and dependent on the type of behavior (e.g., psychomotor versus reward), the class of drug (e.g., psychostimulant versus opioid), and the circuit being interrogated (e.g., brain region, cell type, and specific receptor ligand). Here we discuss the current state of research concerning the contribution of βarr2 to the psychomotor and rewarding effects of addictive drugs. Next we identify key knowledge gaps and suggest new tools and approaches needed to further elucidate the neuroanatomical substrates and neurobiological mechanisms to explain how βarr2 modulates behavioral responses to drugs of abuse, as well as its potential as a therapeutic target.
Independent contributions of fMRI familiarity and novelty effects to recognition memory and their stability across the adult lifespan.

The impact of age on the neural correlates of familiarity-driven recognition memory has received relatively little attention. Here, the relationships between age, the neural correlates of familiarity, and memory performance were investigated using an associative recognition test in young, middle-aged and older participants. Test items comprised studied, rearranged (items studied on different trials) and new word pairs. fMRI ‘familiarity effects’ were operationalized as greater activity for studied test pairs incorrectly identified as ‘rearranged’ than for correctly rejected new pairs. The reverse contrast was employed to identify ‘novelty’ effects. Estimates of familiarity strength were slightly but significantly lower for the older relative to the younger group. With the exception of one region in dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, fMRI familiarity effects (which were identified in medial and lateral parietal cortex, dorsal medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex, and bilateral caudate among other regions) did not differ significantly with age. Age-invariant ‘novelty effects’ were identified in the anterior hippocampus and the perirhinal cortex. When entered into the same regression model, familiarity and novelty effects independently predicted familiarity strength across participants, suggesting that the two classes of memory effect reflect functionally distinct mnemonic processes. It is concluded that the neural correlates of familiarity-based memory judgments, and their relationship with familiarity strength, are largely stable across much of the healthy adult lifespan.
The missing, the short, and the long: Levodopa responses and dopamine actions.

We attempt to correlate the clinical pharmacology of dopamine replacement therapy (DRT) in Parkinson Disease with known features of striatal dopamine actions. Despite its obvious impact, DRT does not normalize motor function, likely due to disrupted phasic dopaminergic signaling. The DRT Short Duration Response is likely a permissive-paracrine effect, possibly resulting from dopaminergic support of corticostriate synaptic plasticity. The DRT Long Duration Response may result from mimicry of tonic dopamine signaling regulation of movement vigor. Our understanding of dopamine actions does not explain important aspects of DRT clinical pharmacology. Reducing these knowledge gaps provides opportunities to improve understanding of dopamine actions and symptomatic treatment of Parkinson disease. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Unplanned Obsolescence: Hardware and Software After Collapse

In a setting of economic and infrastructural collapse, the inability to manufacture and maintain computing resources will be an enormous limitation on the continued use of technology. The concept of "rot" exists for both hardware and software, referring to a slow loss of functionality over time. Given a desire to maintain technological capability, we raise a variety of questions about technology use in such a scenario. How long will current hardware last through repair, robust construction, and good maintenance practices? What would software development and maintenance entail without today's Internet infrastructure? What can be done to keep our software stable and usable for as long as possible in the face of viruses, storage degradation, and other threats? We present rough estimates of the expected longevity of desktop and laptop hardware for various levels of maintenance, and argue that software and hardware degradation together jointly limit how long devices will remain usable for computing tasks, especially those involving any exposure to external files or networks. We propose both physical and social strategies to guard against both modes of degradation.
Free Damage Propagation with Memory

We introduce a simple model for free damage propagation based on non-local potentials. The model is developed using a state based peridynamic formulation. The resulting evolution is shown to be well posed. At each instant of the evolution we identify the damage set. On this set the local strain has exceeded critical values either for tensile or hydrostatic strain and damage has occurred. For this model the damage set is nondecreasing with time and associated with damage variables defined at each point in the body. We show that energy balance holds for this evolution. For differentiable displacements away from the damage set we show that the nonlocal model converges to the linear elastic model.
Level of preoperative CRP as an independent predictor of survival in patients after nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma: Long-term outcomes.

687Background: Preoperative C- Reactive Protein (CRP) has predictive value for metastasis development and mortality in renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, the predictive potential of preoperative ...
Increasing Access to Palliative Care Services in the Intensive Care Unit.

Background The Institute of Medicine's report, Dying in America, highlights the critical need for the widespread implementation of palliative care to improve end-of-life care. Approximately 20% of all deaths in America occur during or shortly after an intensive care unit (ICU) admission; therefore, it is important for critical care units to have systems in place to facilitate patient access to palliative care services. Objectives The aim of this quality improvement (QI) project was to develop and implement a palliative care screening tool using evidence-based triggers to help increase the proportion of palliative care consultations in the ICU setting. Methods A QI project was designed and implemented in a 14-bed medical-surgical ICU in the southeastern United States using the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. A palliative care screening tool was developed by an interdisciplinary team of key stakeholders in the ICU using evidence-based triggers, and staff were educated on the intervention. The proportion of ICU patients who received a palliative care consultation was compared preintervention and postintervention to determine whether the QI project contributed to an increased proportion of palliative care consultations. Results The proportion of palliative care consultations among patients admitted to the ICU by the pulmonary critical care team increased from 1 of 10 preintervention to 3 of 10 postintervention, resulting in a promising increase in patients receiving palliative care services consistent with evidence-based recommendations. Conclusion The use of an evidence-based screening tool to trigger palliative care consultation in the ICU setting can aid in increasing the proportion of critical care patients who receive a palliative care referral. The increase in the proportion of palliative care referrals by the pulmonary critical care service warrants expansion of the intervention to include additional medical subspecialists who frequently admit patients in this ICU setting. Further assessment of the intervention is warranted to determine whether the screening tool can aid in increasing palliative care consultations for more patients admitted to the hospital's ICU.
Vascularized Lymph Node Transfer for Lymphedema

Advances in our understanding of the lymphatic system and the pathogenesis of lymphedema have resulted in the development of effective surgical treatments. Vascularized lymph node transfer (VLNT) involves the microvascular transplantation of functional lymph nodes into an extremity to restore physiological lymphatic function. It is most commonly performed by transferring combined deep inferior epigastric artery perforator and superficial inguinal lymph node flaps for postmastectomy breast reconstruction. For patients who do not require or are unable to undergo free abdominal breast reconstruction or have lymphedema affecting the lower extremity, several other VLNT options are available. These include flaps harvested from within the axillary, inguinal, or cervical lymph node basins, and lymph node flaps from within the abdominal cavity. This article reviews the lymph node flap options and techniques available for VLNT for lymphedema.
Progesterone administration does not acutely alter LH pulse secretion in the mid-follicular phase in women.

It remains unclear how rapidly progesterone suppresses luteinizing hormone (LH) pulse frequency in women. Previous studies suggested that progesterone markedly increases LH pulse amplitude but does not slow LH pulse frequency within 10 h in estradiol-pretreated women studied during the late follicular phase. However, this experimental paradigm may be a model of preovulatory physiology, and progesterone may have different effects at other times of the cycle. We studied regularly cycling, nonobese women without hyperandrogenism to assess the acute effect of progesterone during the midfollicular phase and in the absence of estradiol pretreatment. The study involved two admissions in separate cycles (cycle days 5-9). For each admission, either oral micronized progesterone (100 mg) or placebo was administered at 0900 h in a randomized, double-blind fashion. Frequent blood sampling was performed between 0900 and 1900 h to define 10-h LH pulsatility. Treatment crossover (placebo exchanged for progesterone and vice versa) occurred in a subsequent cycle. After an interim futility analysis, the study was halted after 7 women completed study. Mean progesterone concentrations after placebo and progesterone administration were 0.5 ± 0.1 (mean ± SD) and 6.7 ± 1.6 ng/mL, respectively. Compared to placebo, progesterone was not associated with a significant difference in 10-h LH pulse frequency (0.79 ± 0.35 vs. 0.77 ± 0.28 pulses/h, P = 1.0) or amplitude (3.6 ± 2.8 vs. 4.3 ± 2.8 IU/L, P = 0.30). This study suggests that LH pulse frequency is not rapidly influenced by progesterone administration during the midfollicular phase.
Validity Evidence for Measures of Procedural/Distributive Justice and Pay/Benefit Satisfaction

A brief review reveals confusion regarding relationships among constructs of pay and benefits satisfaction and distributive and procedural justice. Nonetheless, the literature yields measures for each of these variables that show promise for future theoretical development. A validation study for four of these scales involved 154 working adults across a variety of organizations and industries. Data were analyzed via interitem and interscale correlations and confirmatory factor analysis. Analytical products provide evidence of scale reliability, homogeneity, and convergent and discriminant validity. Correlations were also calculated between the satisfaction and justice variables, income, and other attitudinal constructs, including organizational commitment, job satisfaction, propensity to resign, and work effort. The resulting pattern of relationships not only provides evidence of construct validity, but also suggests that the reward satisfaction and fairness variables, although related, contribute uniquely to several aspects of organizational life.
Bottleneck Analysis to Reduce Primary Care to Specialty Care Referral Delay

Reducing delays between primary care and specialty care visits is critical to improving continuity of ambulatory care delivery. To comply with referral protocols, personnel involved in patients’ care pathways process and record pertinent information to ensure appropriate care is rendered, and missing necessary information might cause “dropping of the baton” during the patient transition. The objective of this paper is to analyze the information flow along patients’ primary care to specialty care referral pathway, and identify system bottlenecks to enhance the workflow design and workforce configuration. A semi-Markov process is introduced to describe information transition and the operations of involved personnel are modeled as capacity-constrained service queues at every stage of referral pathway. Analytical formulas are derived to evaluate the overall referral delay, and a continuous improvement method is developed to identify the most critical factor that impedes the referral process. The proposed systems approach is applied to the clinics of a large academic medical center, and the analysis stresses the importance of building a health information system that supports breaking silos and adapting providers’ workflows to the information system to facilitate smart and connected care delivery. Note to Practitioners —The ambulatory care delivery system is plagued by delays that dissatisfy patients, physicians, and other medical staff, and adversely affect patient outcomes. While many extant industrial engineering/operations research (IE/OR) articles focus on reducing physician appointment delays or waiting times during visits to a medical office, this paper seeks to address the lag between primary care visits and specialty care visits, i.e., the waiting for access to specialty care once the primary care physician has decided to refer the patient. This paper establishes a novel analytical framework to model primary care to specialty care referral processes with an emphasis on the information transition along patient pathway. The rigorous analytical model unveils the insights that might not be easily identified using qualitative approaches, and enjoys higher computational efficiency compared to simulation methods. What emerges from the study is the need to integrate health information technology into medical personnel’s workflow and redesign the process to allow effective communication, which will lead to improved care, efficiency, and satisfaction.
Implementing Recommendations of Accessibility Technology Guidelines — The Quantitative Effects and Benefits it Offers to Non-disabled Students

In the world of information technology today, education is closely coupled with multimedia resources. A growing number of students are shifting from traditional lectures to video, audio, or virtual platforms. These revolutionary instruction methods include Code.org and Khan Academy which provides wide-scale deployments and evaluations of new curricula at grade levels. This is no exception in higher education setting including the California State University (CSU). To ensure equally effective access outcomes to all student despite of disability, CSU has in place policies such as the Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) to emphasize campus responsibilities to address accessibility strategy for online education. Our research involves the implementation accessibility standards on an Online/Hybrid graduate-level Computer Science course at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (CPP). We hypothesized that with the implementation of these accessibility technology guidelines online learning environments, students will benefit regardless of disability; hence, the CSU ATI is ideal compliance measure that can be widely adopted. Our results show an increase in both learning effectiveness and student preference.
Applying resilience theory models to contextualize economic-dependent partnerships as a risk factor for HIV among young men who have sex with men.

Economic-dependent partnerships (EDP) are an understudied HIV risk correlate among young men who have sex with men (YMSM) in the U.S. We explored whether YMSM's psychological resilience buffered ag...
Email Advice Part 1

Lawyers use email heavily, and this piece contains advice for using it wisely. In professional email messages, avoid emoticons, manage the subject line, and put the point or question up front.
Applying Narrative Technique and Student-Generated Media to Promote Critical Thinking and Student Agency for Online Learners

As universities strive to improve the delivery of meaningful, engaging online educational content, they explore learning environments that can be blended with digitalized instruction tools focused on developing critical thinking skills and student agency. The authors explore how instructional designers could integrate student-generated media narrative techniques with a variety of instructional technology tools to increase critical thinking and student agency in content. The authors also discuss how blending student-generated media narrative technique with connectivism can lead to a highly engaging instructional design. As the authors discuss the narrative technique, they present critical thinking skills, alternative technology tools, and a strategy for student agency.
Low-Voltage Tracking RC Frequency Compensation in Two-Stage Operational Amplifiers *

A process-, voltage-, and temperature-(PVT) insensitive low-voltage tracking RC compensation scheme is described which cancels the pole due to the load capacitance using a Miller zero generated by the frequency compensation network. A low-voltage constant current source with no back-gate effect (a "k’ generator") is used to generate the bias currents for the OTA. The architecture, implemented in a TSMC 180nm CMOS process, achieves a 2X power reduction compared to a widely-used active-RC compensation scheme. Small-signal settling times are compared across process corners for both approaches. The low- voltage approach is shown to be more robust than the latter which suffers from slower settling due to the formation of doublets.
Performance of generalized multilayered perceptons trained using the Levenberg-Marquardt method

The generalized multilayer perceptron (gMLP) generalizes the multilayered perceptron (MLP) architecture to a fully connected feedforward architecture where connections are not restricted to adjacent layers. In this paper the performance of MLP and gMLP networks trained using the Levenberg-Marquardt method are compared. A number of different function approximation tasks were examined. The effect of varying the number of hidden layer neurons was also evaluated.
Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of adult mouse pituitary reveals sexual dimorphism and physiologic demand-induced cellular plasticity

The anterior pituitary gland drives highly conserved physiologic processes in mammalian species. These hormonally controlled processes are central to somatic growth, pubertal transformation, fertility, lactation, and metabolism. Current cellular models of mammalian anteiror pituitary, largely built on candidate gene based immuno-histochemical and mRNA analyses, suggest that each of the seven hormones synthesized by the pituitary is produced by a specific and exclusive cell lineage. However, emerging evidence suggests more complex relationship between hormone specificity and cell plasticity. Here we have applied massively parallel single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), in conjunction with complementary imaging-based single-cell analyses of mRNAs and proteins, to systematically map both cell-type diversity and functional state heterogeneity in adult male and female mouse pituitaries at single-cell resolution and in the context of major physiologic demands. These quantitative single-cell analyses reveal sex-specific cell-type composition under normal pituitary homeostasis, identify an array of cells associated with complex complements of hormone-enrichment, and undercover non-hormone producing interstitial and supporting cell-types. Interestingly, we also identified a Pou1f1-expressing cell population that is characterized by a unique multi-hormone gene expression profile. In response to two well-defined physiologic stresses, dynamic shifts in cellular diversity and transcriptome profiles were observed for major hormone producing and the putative multi-hormone cells. These studies reveal unanticipated cellular complexity and plasticity in adult pituitary, and provide a rich resource for further validating and expanding our molecular understanding of pituitary gene expression programs and hormone production.
Breast Reduction Guidance

A successful breast reduction requires ample postoperative blood supply to the nipple and remaining tissue. With numerous breast pedicles to choose from, each patient must be evaluated individually to determine the best operative plan. Sometimes these surgical decisions are not clear and vascular compromise in the perioperative period can often be difficult to assess. To that end, indocyanine green (ICG) can be utilized in planning, execution, and postoperative assessments to help guide clinical decision-making and ensure the safety, efficacy, and outcomes of this surgery.
Single species RNA purification with DNA nanoswitches

We report a novel method to purify individual RNA species using programmable DNA nanoswitches to facilitate RNA capture, release, and isolation. We validate sequence-based purification of microRNA, rRNA, and an mRNA fragment from total RNA, demonstrate multiplexing with two different RNA species, and show an application with downstream LC/MS analysis to identify RNA modifications. The simplicity, low cost, and low sample requirements of our method make it suitable for easy adoption.Competing Interest StatementLZ, ARC, and KH have intellectual property related to DNA nanoswitches. All other authors declare no competing interests.View Full Text
Separable Control Lyapunov Functions With Application to Prostheses

This letter extends bipedal trajectory tracking methods to prostheses to enable construction of a class of model-dependent prosthesis controllers using locally available sensor information. The rapidly exponentially stabilizing control Lyapunov functions (RES-CLFs) developed for bipedal robots guarantee stability of the hybrid zero dynamics in the presence of impacts that occur in walking. These methods cannot be directly applied to prostheses because of the unknown human dynamics. We overcome this challenge with two RES-CLFs, one for the prosthesis subsystem and another for the remaining human system. Further, we outline a method to construct these RES-CLFs for this type of separable system by first constructing separable CLFs for partially feedback linearizable systems. This letter develops a class of separable subsystem controllers that rely only on local information but provide formal guarantees of stability for the full hybrid system with zero dynamics.
Patients with Erythema Migrans: Characterizing the Impact of Initiation of Antibiotic Therapy Prior to Study Enrollment.

Erythema migrans is the most common clinical manifestation of Lyme disease, with concomitant subjective symptoms occurring in ∼65% of cases in the United States. We evaluated the impact of having been started on antibiotic treatment before study enrollment on 12 particular symptoms for 38 subjects with erythema migrans versus 52 untreated subjects. There were no significant differences in the frequency of having at least one symptom or in the symptom severity score on study entry. However, the frequency of having at least one symptom was significantly greater for those who had received <7 days of antibiotic treatment than for those who had been treated for ≥7 days (23/24 [95.8%] versus 8/14 [57.1%], P = 0.006). In addition, the percentage of subjects who were males was significantly lower among the group on treatment than among the untreated study subjects (13/38 [34.2%] versus 34/52 [65.4%], P = 0.005). In conclusion, based on these findings, combining untreated and treated groups of patients with erythema migrans for research study analyses may have limitations and, depending on the study objectives, might not be preferred. Additional studies are warranted to better understand the day-to-day impact of antibiotic treatment on the presence, type, and severity of symptoms in patients with early Lyme disease.
Maximum Antigen Diversification in a Lyme Bacterial Population and Evolutionary Strategies to Overcome Pathogen Diversity

Abstract Natural populations of microbes and their hosts are engaged in an arms race in which microbes diversify to escape host immunity while hosts evolve novel immunity. This co-evolutionary process, known as the “Red Queen” hypothesis, poses a fundamental challenge to the development of broadly effective vaccines and diagnostics against a diversifying pathogen. Based on surveys of natural allele frequencies and experimental immunization of mice, we show minimal antigenic cross-reactivity among natural variants of the outer surface protein C (OspC), a dominant antigen of a Lyme Disease-causing bacterium (Borrelia burgdorferi). To overcome the challenge of OspC antigenic diversity to clinical development of preventive measures, we implemented a number of evolution-based strategies to broaden OspC immunological cross-reactivity. In particular, the centroid algorithm – a genetic algorithm to minimize sequence differences with natural variants – generated synthetic OspC analogs with the greatest promise as diagnostic and vaccine candidates against diverse Lyme pathogen strains coexisting in the Northeast United States. Mechanistically, we propose a model of runaway maximum antigen di-versification (MAD) mediated by amino-acid variations distributed across hypervariable regions on the OspC molecule. Under the MAD model, evolutionary centroids display high cross-reactivity by occupying the central void in the antigenic space excavated by diversifying natural variants. In contrast to the vaccine design based on concatenated epitopes, the centroid algorithm generates analogs of native antigens and is automated. The MAD model and evolution-inspired antigen designs have broad implications for combating diversifying pathogens driven by pathogen-host coevolution. Importance Microbial pathogens rely on molecular diversity of cell surface antigens to escape host immunity. Vaccines based on one antigen variant often fail to protect the host against pathogens carrying other variants. Here we show evolution-based designs of synthetic antigens that are broadly reactive to all natural variants. The evolutionary analogs of a major surface antigen of a Lyme disease bacterium (Borrelia burgdorferi) showed promise as vaccine candidates against diverse pathogen strains coexisting in the endemic areas of Lyme disease in Northeast United States. Our evolution-based computational design is automated, generates molecular analogs of natural antigens, and opens a novel path to combating fast-evolving microbial pathogens.
Mitigating Pedagogical Marginalization: Critically Assessing the Use of Mediated Communication with Special Populations of Students

Critically minded instructors realize that power can manifest itself in manifold ways. One way in which power can manifest itself is through the ways in which instructors use mediated communication. Because of the proliferation of technology in contemporary classrooms, mediated communication now holds an almost ubiquitous presence in schools. Instructors can utilize mediated communication in ways that facilitate marginalization. Special populations of students are often the recipients of this pedagogical marginalization because of the intersectionality that they experience when attempting to utilize technology. Because of the potential for instructors to use mediated communication in ways that are marginalizing, I will argue that instructors should examine the ways in which they use mediated communication in the classroom to ensure that their assignments do not (unintentionally) subjugate students.
Governing Through Civil Society

This chapter focuses on how Foucault’s governmentality can be applied to the analysis of civil society. Governmentality provides us with a bottom-up and a genealogical approach to the analysis of civil society. It differs from rational-choice, new institutional, and system theories of governance. Government is a form of power that differs from sovereign and disciplinary forms of power. Contemporary civil society discourse is a governmental technology because international agencies, states, international organizations, and other non-state actors draw on civil society to govern states, whether developed or emerging states and of their populations. Civil society as a governmental technology draws on scientific theories such as social capital and new institutionalism.
Non-existence of annular separators in geometric graphs.

Benjamini and Papasoglou (2011) showed that planar graphs with uniform polynomial volume growth admit $1$-dimensional annular separators: The vertices at graph distance $R$ from any vertex can be separated from those at distance $2R$ by removing at most $O(R)$ vertices. They asked whether geometric $d$-dimensional graphs with uniform polynomial volume growth similarly admit $(d-1)$-dimensional annular separators when $d > 2$. We show that this fails in a strong sense: For any $d \geq 3$ and every $s \geq 1$, there is a collection of interior-disjoint spheres in $\mathbb{R}^d$ whose tangency graph $G$ has uniform polynomial growth, but such that all annular separators in $G$ have cardinality at least $R^s$.
How Engaged are American Citizens, and What is Civic Engagement Anyway?

We introduce a new framing that accounts for trends and disparities in civic engagement. We orient along two axes: the modal, describing the extent to which civic engagement is structured, and its content, describing the extent to which civic engagement has partisan objectives. Accordingly, this structure creates four domains of civic engagement: associational-partisan (e.g., voting), social-partisan (e.g., boycotting), associational-civic (e.g., participating in Parent-Teacher Organizations), and social-civic (e.g., talking with neighbors). Using data from the Current Population Survey and item response theory methods, we generate civic engagement scores in each of these domains for as many as 35,618 U.S. respondents. Similar to prior studies, income and educational attainment are associated with large disparities in civic engagement across all domains. However, in contrast to prior studies, young Americans are not outpacing older Americans in social-partisan engagement; rather, older Americans are more engaged in every sector of engagement we measure.
High-Risk Finance

While government-funded research is an important component in an innovative economy, particularly at the more basic levels, most innovation in advanced economies is funded by the private sector. Within the private sector, a large portion of research is conducted by established companies, while a smaller but arguably more innovative amount of research is conducted by small, knowledge-intensive companies. This Chapter focuses on the challenges of financing a subgroup of these companies, knowledge-intensive startups, which have historically been a significant source of new innovations and job growth. It begins with a discussion on how startup firms are financed in developed economies and then examines specific issues with promoting high-risk financing in emerging markets.
Real-time programmable VR for power delivery efficiency enhancement

The typical VR for server CPU or memory is multi-phase with constant switching frequency and drive voltage. This only provides the best VR efficiency in certain load ranges. In this paper, we will introduce a new VR technology. This technology attempts to enhance the VR power efficiency and reduce the power loss through programming the digital VR with different VR factors (phase counts, switching frequencies and drive voltages) when the CPU and memory load varies. The efficiency improvement and power savings of the new technology were tested on one server board. Using this methodology, over 7.2W of CPU VR power loss was saved when the board operates under certain load conditions.
Multi-view Object Categorization and Pose Estimation

Object and scene categorization has been a central topic of computer vision research in recent years. The problem is a highly challenging one. A single object may show tremendous variability in appearance and structure under various photometric and geometric conditions. In addition, members of the same class may differ from each other due to various degrees of intra-class variability. Recently, researchers have proposed new models towards the goal of: i) finding a suitable representation that can efficiently capture the intrinsic three-dimensional and multi-view nature of object categories; ii) taking advantage of this representation to help the recognition and categorization task. In this Chapter we will review recent approaches aimed at tackling this challenging problem and focus on the work by Savarese & Fei-Fei [54, 55]. In [54, 55] multi-view object models are obtained by linking together diagnostic parts of the objects from different viewing point. Instead of recovering a full 3D geometry, parts are connected through their mutual homographic transformation. The resulting model is a compact summarization of both the appearance and geometry information of the object class. We show that such a model can be learnt via minimal supervision compared to competitive techniques. The model can be used to detect objects under arbitrary and/or unseen poses by means of a two-step algorithm. This algorithm, inspired by works in single object view synthesis (e.g., Seitz & Dyer [57]), has the ability to synthesize object appearance and shape properties at recognition time, and in turn estimate the object pose that best matches the observations.We conclude this Chapter by presenting experiments on detection, recognition and pose estimation results with respect to two datasets in [54,55] as well as to PASCAL Visual Object Classes (VOC) dataset [15]. Experiments indicate that representation and algorithms presented in [54,55] can be successfully employed in a number of generic object recognition tasks.
SIFTER search: a web server for accurate phylogeny-based protein function prediction

We are awash in proteins discovered through high-throughput sequencing projects. As only a minuscule fraction of these have been experimentally characterized, computational methods are widely used for automated annotation. Here, we introduce a user-friendly web interface for accurate protein function prediction using the SIFTER algorithm. SIFTER is a state-of-the-art sequence-based gene molecular function prediction algorithm that uses a statistical model of function evolution to incorporate annotations throughout the phylogenetic tree. Due to the resources needed by the SIFTER algorithm, running SIFTER locally is not trivial for most users, especially for large-scale problems. The SIFTER web server thus provides access to precomputed predictions on 16 863 537 proteins from 232 403 species. Users can explore SIFTER predictions with queries for proteins, species, functions, and homologs of sequences not in the precomputed prediction set. The SIFTER web server is accessible at http://sifter.berkeley.edu/ and the source code can be downloaded.
Optimal policies for playing buffered media streams

This paper addresses a practical problem in our everyday use of streaming media on the Internet: as a user observes the buffering of a media stream with an uncertain transfer rate, when should that user initiate playback of the stream? The tension is that initiating playback prematurely will increase the likelihood of buffer starvation, while a delay in initiating playback is undesirable because it necessitates waiting. Three policies are studied: the optimal policy (exploiting full knowledge of the transfer process), the optimal static policy (the expected value of the optimal policy), and an online policy assuming only knowledge of the transfer rate observed thus far. Lower and upper bounds are derived on the optimal policy as well as the associated minimum cost; these bounds are expressed in terms of a (random) hitting time of the transfer process. Simulation results for a Markov modulated transfer rate process identify static and online policies as near-optimal depending on the time scale of the transfer rate process and the duration of the stream.
Homogeneity Characterization of Nbs Spectrometric Standards II: Cartridge Brass and Low-Alloy Steel

Most modern instrumental methods of analysis depend on the use of known standards of composition for calibration. Newer analytical techniques, such as the solids mass spectrometer, laser probe and, especially, the electron-probe micro-analyzer have reduced the amount of a sample which can be analyzed quantitatively to a range of about 0.1 to as small as 0.00005 μg. As a corollary to these micro-analytical advances, homogeneity requirements have become severe to meet analytical standards. This paper describes a continuation of the National Bureau of Standards’ effort to characterize more fully existing standards as to suitability for the new microanalytical techniques.1 An NBS cartridge brass sample in both the wrought (NBS-1102) and chill cast forms (NBS-C1102), as well as a low-alloy steel sample (NBS-463), have been investigated by means of electron-probe microanalysis and optical metallography. Some 17 elements are contained in the brass, while 25 elements are found in the steel. Results for 10 elements in the steel and 6 elements in the brass are presented. In the steel, iron, nickel, copper, and silicon are essentially distributed homogeneously at micron levels, while manganese, tantalum, niobium, zirconium, sulfur, and chromium are not. In the brass, copper and zinc are distributed homogeneously at micron levels while lead, sulfur, aluminum, and silicon are not. Electron-probe microanalyzer results indicate that both NBS-1102 and NBS-C1102 brass are suitable for use as a calibration standard for electron-probe microanalysis as well as other microanalytical techniques, such as the solids mass spectrometer. The results for brass have been corroborated by a number of laboratories using the electron-probe analyzer.
Navigation in real-world complex networks through embedding in latent spaces

Small-world experiments in which packages reach addressees unknown to the original sender through a forwarding chain confirm that acquaintance networks have short paths, a property that was later also discovered in many other networks. They further show that people can find these paths by passing the package on to the acquaintance most socially proximate to the target. This has led researchers to conjecture that perhaps also in many other networks some proximity-based algorithm can be used to find short paths, provided that nodes are given appropriate coordinates. Although potential applications are numerous, ranging from decentralized search to recommendation-based trust to disease control, this conjecture has remained largely unverified. In this paper we apply algorithmic methods to embed nodes in some latent space and employ greedy routing to deliver packages. Using these methods we empirically investigate the navigability of five real-world complex networks from diverse contexts and of varying topology. In each network, we deliver a majority of packages in fewer than six hops.
Kalman Filtering: Theory and Practice

1. General Information. 2. Linear Dynamic Systems. 3. Random Processes and Stochastic Systems. 4. Linear Optimal Filters and Predictors. 5. Nonlinear Applications. 6. Implementation Methods. 7. Practical Considerations. Appendix A: Software. Appendix B: A Matrix Refresher.
Conformational analysis—LXXIX

Abstract Our previously described force field method has been extended to allow the calculation of structures and energies of molecules containing aldehyde or ketone groups. The method has been applied to a large number of simple cyclic and acyclic compounds, and has been shown to give good structures and energies insofar as these can be checked against available experimental data. Strain energies of ketones have been calculated, and comparison of these values to strain energies in the hydrocarbon series is discussed.
An On-Line Satisfiability Algorithm for Conjunctive Normal Form Expressions with Two Literals

This paper describes two algorithms for determining the satisfiability of Boolean conjunctive normal form expressions limited to two literals per clause (2-SAT) extending the classic effort of Aspvall, Plass, and Tarjan. The first algorithm differs from the original in that satisfiability is determined upon the presentation of each clause rather than the entire clause set. This online algorithm experimentally exhibits average run-time linear to the number of variables. This performance is achieved by performing a single depth first search of one of the incoming literals. Additional search is avoided by excluding clauses containing pure variables or variables whose truth value has been explicitly provided or can be inferred. An off-line algorithm is also described that incorporates these strategies.
COHERENTISM AND JUSTIFIED INCONSISTENT BELIEFS: A SOLUTION

The most pressing difficulty coherentism faces is, I believe, the problem of justified inconsistent beliefs. In a nutshell, there are cases in which our beliefs appear to be both fully rational and justified, and yet the contents of the beliefs are inconsistent, often knowingly so. This fact contradicts the seemingly obvious idea that a minimal requirement for coherence is logical consistency. Here, I present a solution to one version of this problem.
Concentration of Herpesviruses

A method has been developed for the concentration of herpesviruses by negative pressure ultrafiltration through dialysis tubing. The procedure results in high titer concentrates of unaggregated, morphologically intact viral particles with a virtually quantitative recovery of infectivity.
Towards a Common API for Structured Peer-to-Peer Overlays

In this paper, we describe an ongoing effort to define common APIs for structured peer-to-peer overlays and the key abstractions that can be built on them. In doing so, we hope to facilitate independent innovation in overlay protocols, services, and applications, to allow direct experimental comparisons, and to encourage application development by third parties. We provide a snapshot of our efforts and discuss open problems in an effort to solicit feedback from the research community.