cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Effect of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) on food security and dietary outcomes.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education (SNAP-Ed) is the nutrition promotion component of SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. SNAP-Ed assists low-income populations in the United States improve dietary intake and reduce food insecurity through nutrition education. This narrative review summarizes current investigations of SNAP-Ed's effectiveness at improving food security and dietary outcomes, and it can help inform future policy and implementation of the program. There was stronger evidence for SNAP-Ed as an effective means of improving food security (n = 4 reports) than for its effects on nutrition or dietary outcomes (n = 10 reports). Inconsistency in measurement tools and outcomes and a lack of strong study designs characterized the studies that sought to evaluate the effectiveness of SNAP-Ed at improving nutrition or dietary outcomes. Additional rigorous study designs in diverse population groups are needed to strengthen the evidence. In the face of reduced financial SNAP benefits, SNAP-Ed may play an important role in helping to eliminate food insecurity and improve dietary outcomes and, ultimately, the health of low-income Americans.
Repurposing Disulfiram as An Anti-Cancer Agent: Updated Review on Literature and Patents

Background Despite years of success of most anti-cancer drugs, one of the major clinical problems is inherent and acquired resistance to these drugs. Overcoming the drug resistance or developing new drugs would offer promising strategies in cancer treatment. Disulfiram, a drug currently used in the treatment of chronic alcoholism, has been found to have anti-cancer activity. Objective To summarize the anti-cancer effects of Disulfiram through a thorough patent review. Methods This article reviews molecular mechanisms and recent patents of Disulfiram in cancer therapy. Results Several anti-cancer mechanisms of Disulfiram have been proposed, including triggering oxidative stress by the generation of reactive oxygen species, inhibition of the superoxide dismutase activity, suppression of the ubiquitin-proteasome system, and activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway. In addition, Disulfiram can reverse the resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs by inhibiting the P-glycoprotein multidrug efflux pump and suppressing the activation of NF-kB, both of which play an important role in the development of drug resistance. Furthermore, Disulfiram has been found to reduce angiogenesis because of its metal chelating properties as well as its ability to inactivate Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase and matrix metalloproteinases. Disulfiram has also been shown to inhibit the proteasomes, DNA topoisomerases, DNA methyltransferase, glutathione S-transferase P1, and O6- methylguanine DNA methyltransferase, a DNA repair protein highly expressed in brain tumors. The patents described in this review demonstrate that Disulfiram is useful as an anti-cancer drug. Conclusion For years the FDA-approved, well-tolerated, inexpensive, orally-administered drug Disulfiram was used in the treatment of chronic alcoholism, but it has recently demonstrated anti-cancer effects in a range of solid and hematological malignancies. Its combination with copper at clinically relevant concentrations might overcome the resistance of many anti-cancer drugs in vitro, in vivo, and in patients.
The Effects of Working Memory, Perceptual Speed, and Inhibition in Aggregated Search

Prior work has studied how different characteristics of individual users (e.g., personality traits and cognitive abilities) can impact search behaviors and outcomes. We report on a laboratory study (N = 32) that investigated the effects of three different cognitive abilities (perceptual speed, working memory, and inhibition) in the context of aggregated search. Aggregated search systems combine results from multiple heterogeneous sources (or verticals) in a unified presentation. Participants in our study interacted with two different aggregated search interfaces (a within-subjects design) that differed based on the extent to which the layout distinguished between results originating from different verticals. The interleaved interface merged results from different verticals in a fairly unconstrained fashion. Conversely, the blocked interface displayed results from the same vertical as a group, displayed each group of vertical results in the same region on the SERP for every query, and used a border around each group of vertical results to help distinguish among results from different sources. We investigated three research questions (RQ1--RQ3). Specifically, we investigated the effects of the interface condition and each cognitive ability on three types of outcomes: (RQ1) participants’ levels of workload, (RQ2) participants’ levels of user engagement, and (RQ3) participants’ search behaviors. Our results found different main and interaction effects. Perceptual speed and inhibition did not significantly affect participants’ workload and user engagement but significantly affected their search behaviors. Specifically, with the interleaved interface, participants with lower perceptual speed had more difficulty finding relevant results on the SERP, and participants with lower inhibitory attention control searched at a slower pace. Working memory did not have a strong effect on participants’ behaviors but had several significant effects on the levels of workload and user engagement reported by participants. Specifically, participants with lower working memory reported higher levels of workload and lower levels of user engagement. We discuss implications of our results for designing aggregated search interfaces that are well suited for users with different cognitive abilities.
Morbidity of Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn in the First Year of Life.

Objective To assess postdischarge mortality and morbidity in infants diagnosed with different etiologies and severities of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN), and to identify risk factors for these adverse clinical outcomes. Study design This was a population-based study using an administrative dataset linking birth and death certificates, hospital discharge and readmissions records from 2005 to 2012 in California. Cases were infants ≥34 weeks' gestational age with International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition, codes consistent with PPHN. The primary outcome was defined as postdischarge mortality or hospital readmission during the first year of life. Crude and adjusted risk ratio (aRR) with 95% CIs were calculated to quantify the risk for the primary outcome and to identify risk factors. Results Infants with PPHN (n = 7847) had an aRR of 3.5 (95% CI, 3.3-3.7) for the primary outcome compared with infants without PPHN (n = 3 974 536), and infants with only mild PPHN (n = 2477) had an aRR of 2.2 (95% CI, 2.0-2.5). Infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia as etiology for PPHN had an aRR of 8.6 (95% CI, 7.0-10.6) and infants with meconium aspiration syndrome had an aRR of 4.0 (95% CI, 3.6-4.4) compared with infants without PPHN. Hispanic ethnicity, small for gestational age, severe PPHN, and etiology of PPHN were risk factors for the primary outcome. Conclusions The postdischarge morbidity burden of infants with PPHN is large. These findings extend to infants with mild PPHN and etiologies with pulmonary vascular changes that are thought to be short term and recoverable. These data could inform counseling of parents.
Significant DBSCAN towards Statistically Robust Clustering

Given a collection of geo-distributed points, we aim to detect statistically significant clusters of varying shapes and densities. Spatial clustering has been widely used many important societal applications, including public health and safety, transportation, environment, etc. The problem is challenging because many application domains have low-tolerance to false positives (e.g., falsely claiming a crime cluster in a community can have serious negative impacts on the residents) and clusters often have irregular shapes. In related work, the spatial scan statistic is a popular technique that can detect significant clusters but it requires clusters to have certain predefined shapes (e.g., circles, rings). In contrast, density-based methods (e.g., DBSCAN) can find clusters of arbitrary shape efficiently but do not consider statistical significance, making them susceptible to spurious patterns. To address these limitations, we first propose a modeling of statistical significance in DBSCAN based clustering. Then, we propose a baseline Monte Carlo method to estimate the significance of clusters and a Dual-Convergence algorithm to accelerate the computation. Experiment results show that significant DBSCAN is very effective in removing chance patterns and the Dual-Convergence algorithm can greatly reduce execution time.
Masked Radicals: Iron Complexes of Trityl, Benzophenone, and Phenylacetylene

We report the first Fe–CPh3 complex and show that the long Fe–C bond can be disrupted by neutral π-acceptor ligands (benzophenone and phenylacetylene) to release the triphenylmethyl radical. The products are formally iron(I) complexes, but X-ray absorption spectroscopy coupled with density functional and multireference ab initio calculations indicates that the best description of all the complexes is iron(II). In the formally iron(I) complexes, this does not imply that the π-acceptor ligand has radical character, because the iron(II) description arises from doubly occupied frontier molecular orbitals that are shared equitably by the iron and the π-acceptor ligand, and the unpaired electrons lie on the metal. Despite the lack of substantial radical character on the ligands, alkyne and ketone fragments can couple to form a high-spin iron(III) complex with a cyclized metalladihydrofuran core.
Insights into the Evolutionary History of the Hawaiian Bidens (Asteraceae) Adaptive Radiation Revealed Through Phylogenomics

Hawaiian plant radiations often result in lineages with exceptionally high species richness and extreme morphological and ecological differentiation. However, they typically display low levels of genetic variation, hindering the use of classic DNA markers to resolve their evolutionary histories. Here we utilize a phylogenomic approach to generate the first generally well-resolved phylogenetic hypothesis for the evolution of the Hawaiian Bidens (Asteraceae) adaptive radiation, including refined initial colonization and divergence time estimates. We sequenced the chloroplast genome (plastome) and nuclear ribosomal complex for 18 of the 19 endemic species of Hawaiian Bidens and 4 outgroup species. Phylogenomic analyses based on the concatenated dataset (plastome and nuclear) resulted in identical Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood trees with high statistical support at most nodes. Estimates from dating analyses were similar across datasets, with the crown group emerging ~1.76-1.82 Mya. Biogeographic analyses based on the nuclear and concatenated datasets indicated that colonization within the Hawaiian Islands generally followed the progression rule with 67-80% of colonization events from older to younger islands, while only 53% of events followed the progression rule in the plastome analysis. We find strong evidence for nuclear-plastome conflict indicating a potentially important role for hybridization in the evolution of the group. However, incomplete lineage sorting cannot be ruled out due to the small number of independent loci analyzed. This study contributes new insights into species relationships and the biogeographic history of the explosive Hawaiian Bidens adaptive radiation.
On the Boundaries: Professional Photojournalists Navigating Identity in an Age of Technological Democratization

In the wake of fewer and fewer professionals populating photojournalism, this study utilizes in-depth interviews with 21 professional photojournalists to better understand how they construct their ...
Association between depression and healthcare expenditures among elderly cancer patients

Both depression and cancer are economically burdensome. However, how depression affects the healthcare expenditures of elderly cancer patients from payers’ and patients’ perspectives is largely unknown. This study investigated whether depression resulted in higher healthcare expenditures among these patients from both payers’ and patients’ perspectives and identified health service use categories associated with increased expenditures. From the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS)-Medicare database, we identified breast, lung and prostate cancer patients aged 65 years and over who were newly diagnosed between 2007 and 2012. Presence of depression was based on self-reports from the surveys. We used generalized linear models (GLM) and two-part models to examine the impact of depression on healthcare expenditures during the first two years of cancer diagnosis controlling for a vast array of covariates. We stratified the analyses of total healthcare expenditures by healthcare services and payers. Out of the 710 elderly breast, lung and prostate cancer patients in our study cohort, 128 (17.7%) reported depression. Individuals with depression had $11,454 higher total healthcare expenditures, $8213 higher medical provider expenditures and $405 higher other services expenditures compared to their counterparts without depression. Also, they were significantly more likely to have inpatient services. For payers, they incurred $8280 and $1270 higher expenditures from Medicare’s and patients’ perspectives, respectively. Elderly cancer patients with depression have significantly higher healthcare expenditures from both payers’ and patients’ perspectives and over different expenditure types. More research is needed in depression screening, diagnosis and treatment for this population.
A Cross-Cultural Comparison of an Extended Planned Risk Information Seeking Model on Mental Health Among College Students: Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Approximately 42.5 million adults have been affected by mental illness in the United States in 2013, and 173 million people have been affected by a diagnosable psychiatric disorder in China. An increasing number of people tend to seek health information on the Web, and it is important to understand the factors associated with individuals’ mental health information seeking. Identifying factors associated with mental health information seeking may influence the disease progression of potential patients. The planned risk information seeking model (PRISM) was developed in 2010 by integrating multiple information seeking models including the theory of planned behavior. Few studies have replicated PRISM outside the United States and no previous study has examined mental health as a personal risk in different cultures. Objective: This study aimed to test the planned risk information seeking model (PRISM) in China and the United States with a chronic disease, mental illness, and two additional factors, ie, media use and cultural identity, among college students. Methods: Data were collected in both countries using the same online survey through a survey management program (Qualtrics). In China, college instructors distributed the survey link among university students, and it was also posted on a leading social media site called Sina Weibo. In the United States, the data were collected in a college-wide survey pool in a large Northwestern university. Results: The final sample size was 235 for the Chinese sample and 241 for the US sample. Media use was significantly associated with mental health information–seeking intentions in the Chinese sample (P<.001), and cultural identity was significantly associated with intentions in both samples (China: P=.02; United States: P<.001). The extended PRISM had a better model fit than the original PRISM. Conclusions: Cultural identity and media use should be considered when evaluating the process of mental health information seeking or when designing interventions to address mental health information seeking.
Compressive sensing with un-trained neural networks: Gradient descent finds a smooth approximation

Un-trained convolutional neural networks have emerged as highly successful tools for image recovery and restoration. They are capable of solving standard inverse problems such as denoising and compressive sensing with excellent results by simply fitting a neural network model to measurements from a single image or signal without the need for any additional training data. For some applications, this critically requires additional regularization in the form of early stopping the optimization. For signal recovery from a few measurements, however, un-trained convolutional networks have an intriguing self-regularizing property: Even though the network can perfectly fit any image, the network recovers a natural image from few measurements when trained with gradient descent until convergence. In this paper, we provide numerical evidence for this property and study it theoretically. We show that---without any further regularization---an un-trained convolutional neural network can approximately reconstruct signals and images that are sufficiently structured, from a near minimal number of random measurements.
Comparing Effect of Active vs. Passive Robotic Interaction on Joint Attention of Children with ASD

Recent research shows that robotic therapies are effective for improving core autism impairments. This paper focuses on analyzing the effect of active versus passive robotic interaction on joint attention of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In both types of interaction, robot records data related to joint attention (JA) of children, however, the action taken is different for both the interactions. In active interaction, robot’s interaction is coupled with JA whereas in passive interaction there is no coupling of JA. The experiment was conducted on 12 ASD children including 10 males and 2 females. Each child was introduced to 16 interactions per trial. Each trial comprised of 8 pairs of active and passive interactions each. The frequency of trials was once per week. Results show that children focus more in active robotic interactions with an average accuracy of 68% whereas for the passive interactions the average accuracy is 61%. The results show the significance of active interaction in robotic interventions for ASD children.
Effect of vocal versus piano doubling on children’s singing accuracy:

Children’s singing development is an important part of the music classroom, where instruction is often assisted by the teacher’s voice or the piano. However, it is unknown whether children sing mor...
Perspective on Afterglows: Numerically Computed Views, Lightcurves and the Analysis of Homogeneous and Structured Jets with Lateral Expansion

Herein I present numerical calculations of lightcurves of homogeneous and structured afterglows with various lateral expansion rates as seen from any vantage point. Such calculations allow for direct simulation of observable quantities for complex afterglows with arbitrary energy distributions and lateral expansion paradigms. A simple, causal model is suggested for lateral expansion of the jet as it evolves; namely, that the lateral expansion kinetic energy derives from the forward kinetic energy. As such the homogeneous jet model shows that lateral expansion is important at all times in the afterglow evolution and that analytical scaling laws do a poor job at describing the afterglow decay before and after the break. In particular, I find that lateral expansion does not cause a break in the lightcurve as had been predicted. A primary purpose of this paper is to study structured afterglows, which do a good job of reproducing global relationships and correlations in the data and thus suggest the possibility of a universal afterglow model. Simulations of structured jets show a general trend in which jet breaks become more pronounced with increasing viewing angle with respect to the jet axis. In fact, under certain conditions a bump can occur in the lightcurve at the jet break time. I derive scaling relations for this bump and suggest that it may be a source of some bumps in observed lightcurves such as that of GRB 000301C. A couple of lateral expansion models are tested over a range of efficiencies and viewing angles and it is found that lateral expansion can, in some cases, substantially sharpen the jet break. I show flux surface contour maps and simulated images of the afterglows which give insight into how they evolve and determine their lightcurves.
Risk for infantile spasms after acute symptomatic neonatal seizures.

Objective Infantile spasms (IS) is a severe epilepsy in early childhood. Early treatment of IS provides the best chance of seizure remission and favorable developmental outcome. We aimed to develop a prediction rule to accurately predict which neonates with acute symptomatic seizures will develop IS. Methods We used data from the Neonatal Seizure Registry, a prospective, multicenter cohort of infants with acute symptomatic neonatal seizures born from July 2015 to March 2018. Neonates with acute symptomatic seizures who received clinical electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and were younger than 2 years of age at the time of enrollment were included. We evaluated the association of neonatal EEG, MRI, and clinical factors with subsequent IS using bivariate analysis and best subsets logistic regression. We selected a final model through a consensus process that balanced statistical significance with clinical relevance. Results IS developed in 12 of 204 infants (6%). Multiple potential predictors were associated with IS, including Apgar scores, EEG features, seizure characteristics, MRI abnormalities, and clinical status at hospital discharge. The final model included three risk factors: (a) severely abnormal EEG or ≥3 days with seizures recorded on EEG, (b) deep gray or brainstem injury on MRI, and (c) abnormal tone on discharge exam. The stratified risk of IS was the following: no factors 0% (0/82, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0%-4%), one or two factors 4% (4/108, 95% CI 1%-9%), and all three factors 57% (8/14, 95% CI 29%-83%). Significance IS risk after acute symptomatic neonatal seizures can be stratified using commonly available clinical data. No child without risk factors, vs >50% of those with all three factors, developed IS. This risk prediction rule may be valuable for clinical counseling as well as for selecting participants for clinical trials to prevent post-neonatal epilepsy. This tailored approach may lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment and improve outcomes for a devastating early life epilepsy.
Anyone’s Game: Sports-Betting Regulations after Murphy v. NCAA

Until very recently, sports betting was regulated — and banned in most states — by a federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). Last year, however, the Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. NCAA that PASPA was unconstitutional because it dictated what state law could and couldn’t be in this area. With PASPA struck down, states have the opportunity to make their own laws on sports betting for the first time in a quarter of a century. Many have now legalized the practice, while others are in the process of doing so. Congress likewise is deciding if and how to regulate sports betting directly — rather than by “commandeering” the states as PASPA did — considering input from sports leagues, gaming associations, and others. The leagues are urging federal regulation that would guarantee them a percentage of sports-betting purveyors’ profits. Gaming associations, on the other hand, argue that states are best equipped to regulate the practice themselves. Our Constitution enshrined the principle that, with some exceptions, states are best-equipped to make their own laws instead of being forced into one-size-fits-all schemes. The Court in Murphy restored that regulatory framework, leaving sports betting to the states just like other forms of gambling. Sports betting is thus a new frontier, providing an opportunity to show how federalism can function. Congress would do well to remember our founding principles when considering new legislation and to avoid policies requiring sports-betting purveyors to pay excessive fees to the leagues, which would be an unnecessary burden on states and their citizens.
Genomic Data in Toxic Tort Litigation

Genomic data have the potential to transform the doctrine and practice of toxic tort litigation. This article discusses potential applications of two types of data in toxic tort litigation: (i) genetic variations in susceptibility to toxic exposures; and (ii) genetic biomarkers of exposure and early toxicological effects. Several different applications of these types of genetic data are likely for proving or disproving exposure, causation, and damages, some of which have already been attempted by toxic tort litigants. Most potential applications of genomic data will fit into existing tort doctrinal templates, but will raise new evidentiary, policy and ethical issues.
Global crime trends during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a natural experiment capable of answering a vital question: have stay-at-home orders impacted global crime trends? A new study by Nivette and colleagues demonstrates that crime largely decreased around the globe during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders—a finding which likely carries international implications for crime policy.
Changing Trends in Age and Sex Distributions of Lyme Disease—United States, 1992-2016:

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States and is characterized by a bimodal age distribution and male predominance. We examined trends in reported cases during a 25-year period to describe changes in the populations most affected by Lyme disease in the United States. We examined demographic characteristics of people with confirmed cases of Lyme disease reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during 1992-2016 through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. We grouped cases into 5-year periods (1992-1996, 1997-2001, 2002-2006, 2007-2011, 2012-2016). We calculated the average annual incidence by age and sex and used incidence rate ratios (IRRs) to describe changes in Lyme disease incidence by age and sex over time. We converted patient age at time of illness into patient birth year to ascertain disease patterns according to birth cohorts. The incidence of Lyme disease in the United States doubled from 1992-1996 to 2012-2016 (IRR = 1.74; 95% CI, 1.70-1.78) and increased disproportionately among males; IRRs were 39%-89% higher among males than among females for most age groups. During the study period, children aged 5-9 years were most frequently and consistently affected. In contrast, the average age of adults with Lyme disease increased over time; of all adults, people born during 1950-1964 were the most affected by Lyme disease. Our findings suggest that age-related behaviors and susceptibilities may drive infections among children, and the shifting peak among adults likely reflects a probability proportional to the relative size of the baby boom population. These findings can inform targeted and efficient public health education and intervention efforts.
An Empirical Evaluation of End-to-End Polyphonic Optical Music Recognition.

Previous work has shown that neural architectures are able to perform optical music recognition (OMR) on monophonic and homophonic music with high accuracy. However, piano and orchestral scores frequently exhibit polyphonic passages, which add a second dimension to the task. Monophonic and homophonic music can be described as homorhythmic, or having a single musical rhythm. Polyphonic music, on the other hand, can be seen as having multiple rhythmic sequences, or voices, concurrently. We first introduce a workflow for creating large-scale polyphonic datasets suitable for end-to-end recognition from sheet music publicly available on the MuseScore forum. We then propose two novel formulations for end-to-end polyphonic OMR -- one treating the problem as a type of multi-task binary classification, and the other treating it as multi-sequence detection. Building upon the encoder-decoder architecture and an image encoder proposed in past work on end-to-end OMR, we propose two novel decoder models -- FlagDecoder and RNNDecoder -- that correspond to the two formulations. Finally, we compare the empirical performance of these end-to-end approaches to polyphonic OMR and observe a new state-of-the-art performance with our multi-sequence detection decoder, RNNDecoder.
Applications of Artificial Intelligence to Office Laryngoscopy: A Scoping Review.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS This scoping review aims to provide a broad overview of the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to office laryngoscopy to identify gaps in knowledge and guide future research. STUDY DESIGN Scoping Review. METHODS Searches for studies on AI and office laryngoscopy were conducted in five databases. Title and abstract and then full-text screening were performed. Primary research studies published in English of any date were included. Studies were summarized by: AI applications, targeted conditions, imaging modalities, author affiliations, and dataset characteristics. RESULTS Studies focused on vocal fold vibration analysis (43%), lesion recognition (24%), and vocal fold movement determination (19%). The most frequently automated tasks were recognition of vocal fold nodules (19%), polyp (14%), paralysis (11%), paresis (8%), and cyst (7%). Imaging modalities included high-speed laryngeal videos (45%), stroboscopy (29%), and narrow band imaging endoscopy (7%). The body of literature was primarily authored by science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) specialists (76%) with only 30 studies (31%) involving co-authorship by STEM specialists and otolaryngologists. Datasets were mostly from single institution (84%) and most commonly originated from Germany (23%), USA (16%), Spain (9%), Italy (8%), and China (8%). Demographic information was only reported in 39 studies (40%), with age and sex being the most commonly reported, whereas race/ethnicity and gender were not reported in any studies. CONCLUSION More interdisciplinary collaboration between STEM and otolaryngology research teams improved demographic reporting especially of race and ethnicity to ensure broad representation, and larger and more geographically diverse datasets will be crucial to future research on AI in office laryngoscopy. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE N/A Laryngoscope, 2021.
Who Should Decide When Palliative Surgery Is Justifiable

No one person has the right or ability to make decisions about to whom or according to which criteria palliative surgery should be offered. Instead, patient and surgeon together must consider symptom severity, goals of care, and the value palliative surgery could add to the patient's health experience or quality of life.
HIF-1α pathway: role, regulation and intervention for cancer therapy

Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) has been recognized as an important cancer drug target. Many recent studies have provided convincing evidences of strong correlation between elevated levels of HIF-1 and tumor metastasis, angiogenesis, poor patient prognosis as well as tumor resistance therapy. It was found that hypoxia (low O2 levels) is a common character in many types of solid tumors. As an adaptive response to hypoxic stress, hypoxic tumor cells activate several survival pathways to carry out their essential biological processes in different ways compared with normal cells. Recent advances in cancer biology at the cellular and molecular levels highlighted the HIF-1α pathway as a crucial survival pathway for which novel strategies of cancer therapy could be developed. However, targeting the HIF-1α pathway has been a challenging but promising progresses have been made in the past twenty years. This review summarizes the role and regulation of the HIF-1α in cancer, and recent therapeutic approaches targeting this important pathway.
Food Safety Assessment of Current and Future Plant Biotechnology Products

Publisher Summary Agricultural biotechnologists have used the techniques of molecular biology to breed varieties of plants into which specific genes have been inserted to bring about desired traits, such as tolerance to herbicides and protection from insects. The products of molecular biology also present food safety risks. But numerous international scientific organizations have concluded that the risks are no different from those associated with new varieties of plants produced through conventional breeding. This chapter provides an analysis that compares each product with its conventional counterpart and identifies the similarities and differences. Potential safety implications associated with the differences are focused on during the evaluation. The chapter traces the development of agricultural biotechnology, discusses a regulatory paradigm for biotechnology-derived foods, describes safety evaluation and the substantial equivalence paradigm, and details the evaluation of genetically modified foods for safety. The chapter discusses animal testing of whole foods and animal performance trials, describes safety evaluation of products with altered composition, and considers future trends in food safety assessments. The role of new technology is also taken into account.
Unveiling the adoption and cascading process of OSN-based gifting applications

This paper demystifies the adoption and cascading process of OSN-based applications that grow via user invitations. We analyze a detailed large-scale dataset of a popular Facebook gifting application, iHeart, that contains more than 2 billion entries of user activities generated by 190 million users during a span of 64 weeks. We investigate: (1) how users invite their friends to an OSN-based application, (2) what factors drive the cascading process of application adoptions, and (3) what are the good predictors of the ultimate cascade sizes. We find that sending or receiving a large number of invitations does not necessarily help to recruit new users to iHeart. We also identify a set of distinctive features that are good predictors of the growth of the application adoptions in terms of final population size. Finally, based on the insights learned from our analyses, we propose a prediction model to infer whether a cascade of application adoption will continue to grow in the future based on observing the initial adoption process. Results show our proposed model can achieve high precision (over 80%) in iHeart as well as in another OSN-based gifting application, Hugged.
Tyrosine hydroxylase activation. Comparison of in vitro phosphorylation and in vivo administration of haloperidol.

Abstract Rat striatal tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) was assayed 2 hr following treatment with 1 mg/kg haloperidol. TH activity in striata from haloperidol-treated rats (haloperidol TH) was increased significantly relative to control when assayed at pH 7.0, but not at pH 6.0, in the presence of 175 μM tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4). TH was also phosphorylated in vitro, catalyzed by sufficient quantities of the catalytic subunit of bovine heart protein kinase to cause greater than 90% activation after 10 min. TH was activated by phosphorylation at both pH 6.0 and pH 7.0, but the activation was greater pH 7.0 Haloperidol TH, activated relative to control TH at pH 7.0, was activated by phosphorylation, but there was no difference between haloperidol TH and control TH activity at either pH 6.0 or 7.0 following phosphorylation. Comparison of Lineweaver-Burk plots of nonphosphorylated and phosphorylated TH indicated that activation by phosphorylation was due to a 5-fold change in Km for BH4 and a 2-fold change in Vmax at pH 7.0. Haloperidol TH kinetics were intermediate between those of nonphosphorylated and phosphorylated TH at pH 7.0. Analysis by Lineweaver-Burk, Hanes-Woolf, and Eadie-Scatchard plots suggested that the haloperidol TH kinetic data were the result of a mixture of two forms of the enzyme, with different affinities for cofactor. Theoretical calculations of TH activity of mixtures of nonphosphorylated and phosphorylated TH suggested that the haloperidol data could be explained by postulating a mixture of 25–35% phosphorylated TH molecules with 35–75% nonphosphorylaed TH molecules. An hypothesis of the role of TH phosphorylation during conditions of increased neuronal firing rate, such as may occur with haloperidol treatment, is presented.
Why Do Firms Have Information Systems

In this essay, it is suggested that a multi-level interaction perspective offers insight in answering the fundamental question, “Why do firms have IS?” The role of humancomputer interaction (HCI) in firms is recast in this context and seen to be basic to the modern firm’s interactions more broadly, with implications for firm capabilities and organizational learning.
International Relations Theory and China's Rise: Assessing China's Potential for Territorial Expansion

Whether China’s rise as a great power will be peaceful or violent is a question that animates scholars and policymakers alike. Power transition theory and offensive realism reach pessimistic conclusions about China’s potential for armed conflict because of the benefits of aggression. Nevertheless, applications of these theories to China’s rise fail to examine the size and scope of these benefits and to compare them systematically to the costs of conflict that other scholars have identified. To fill this gap, this article applies different international relations theories to identify potential benefits in one defined issue area, territorial conflict, and then weighs these benefits against the likely costs. The potential benefits of territorial expansion are limited, a finding that weakens confidence in the predictions of power transition theory and offensive realism but increases confidence in more optimistic arguments about China’s rise based on economic interdependence. Whether China’s rise will be peaceful or violent is a question that animates scholars and statesmen alike. Within the study of international relations, however, competing theoretical perspectives offer different answers to this important question. Scholars who examine the consequences of China’s rise through the lens of either power transition theory or offensive realism predict a future of conflict. According to variants of power transition theory, conflict is most likely when a rising power, dissatisfied with the status quo, approaches parity with the dominant state in a region or the system and is willing to use force to reshape the system’s rules and institutions (Organski 1958; Organski and Kugler 1980; Gilpin 1981; Modelski 1987; Kugler and Lemke 1996; Thompson 2000; Lemke 2002). When power transition theory has been applied to contemporary China, many scholars predict that China will become more belligerent as it accumulates material capabilities (Tammen, Kugler, Lemke, Stam, Abdollahian, Alsharabati, Efird, and Organski 2000; Efird, Kugler, and Genna 2003; Rapkin and Thompson 2003, 2006; Kugler 2006; Tammen and Kugler 2006; Goldstein 2007). 1 Likewise, the theory of offensive realism asserts that states will pursue expansion as they grow stronger, when statesmen perceive a relative increase in power (Labs 1997; Zakaria 1998; Mearsheimer 2001; Elman 2004). As power is held to be the ultimate source of security in an anarchic world, states pursue expansion to achieve
Natural Gas as a Fuel Option for Heavy Vehicles

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Heavy Vehicle Technologies (OHVT) is promoting the use of natural gas as a fuel option in the transportation energy sector through its natural gas vehicle program [1]. The goal of this program is to eliminate the technical and cost barriers associated with displacing imported petroleum. This is achieved by supporting research and development in technologies that reduce manufacturing costs, reduce emissions, and improve vehicle performance and consumer acceptance for natural gas fueled vehicles. In collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory, projects are currently being pursued in (1) liquefied natural gas production from unconventional sources, (2) onboard natural gas storage (adsorbent, compressed, and liquefied), (3) natural gas delivery systems for both onboard the vehicle and the refueling station, and (4) regional and enduse strategies. This paper will provide an overview of these projects highlighting their achievements and current status. In addition, it will discuss how the individual technologies developed are being integrated into an overall program strategic plan.
Power of brane-induced gravity

We study the role of the brane-induced graviton kinetic term in theories with large extra dimensions. In five dimensions, we construct a model with a TeV-scale fundamental Planck mass and a flat extra dimension the size of which can be astronomically large. Four-dimensional (4D) gravity on the brane is mediated by a massless zero mode, whereas the couplings of the heavy Kaluza-Klein modes to ordinary matter are suppressed. The model can manifest itself through the predicted deviations from Einstein theory in long-distance precision measurements of the planetary orbits. The bulk states can be a rather exotic form of dark matter, which at subsolar distances interact via strong 5D gravitational force. We show that the induced term changes dramatically the phenomenology of submillimeter extra dimensions. For instance, high-energy constraints from star cooling or cosmology can be substantially relaxed.
Content knowledge and problem-solving skill in reviewing medical charts.

Summary Skills in reviewing medical charts have been demonstrated components of clinical competence related to knowledge base, level of clinical experience, and basic observational skills. A study of the generalizability of performance on chart review exercises, which controlled for knowledge in the content area, was undertaken to determine their potential in evaluating students' problem-solving ability. Results of the study indicate that the case specificity which has characterized simulated problem-solving tasks is largely case, rather than content, specificity: correlations between scores on single charts demonstrated no consistent relationships for measures of proficiency, efficiency, and diagnostic accuracy. However, averaging the scores on two charts and then computing correlations resulted in significant positive measures for both proficiency and efficiency. The effects of length and difficulty level on the generalizability of tests of problem-solving ability are areas suggested for future research.
Intrinsic Control of Precise Dendritic Targeting by an Ensemble of Transcription Factors

Summary Proper information processing in neural circuits requires establishment of specific connections between pre- and postsynaptic neurons. Targeting specificity of neurons is instructed by cell-surface receptors on the growth cones of axons and dendrites, which confer responses to external guidance cues [1, 2]. Expression of cell-surface receptors is in turn regulated by neuron-intrinsic transcriptional programs. In the Drosophila olfactory system, each projection neuron (PN) achieves precise dendritic targeting to one of 50 glomeruli in the antennal lobe [3]. PN dendritic targeting is specified by lineage and birth order [4], and their initial targeting occurs prior to contact with axons of their presynaptic partners, olfactory receptor neurons [5]. We search for transcription factors (TFs) that control PN-intrinsic mechanisms of dendritic targeting. We previously identified two POU-domain TFs, acj6 and drifter , as essential players [6]. After testing 13 additional candidates, we identified four TFs (LIM-homeodomain TFs islet and lim1 , the homeodomain TF cut , and the zinc-finger TF squeeze ) and the LIM cofactor Chip that are required for PN dendritic targeting. These results begin to provide insights into the global strategy of how an ensemble of TFs regulates wiring specificity of a large number of neurons constituting a neural circuit.
Dynamics of the n-dimensional Suslov problem

Abstract In this paper we study the dynamics of a constrained generalized rigid body (the Suslov problem) on its full phase space. We use reconstruction theory to analyze the qualitative dynamics of the system and discuss differences with the free rigid body motion. Use is made of the so-called quasi-periodic Floquet theory.
Real-time dynamic traffic assignment and path-based signal coordination: Application to network traffic management

As an example of integrating signal control with network traffic assignment, the notion of path-based signal coordination in transportation networks is introduced and illustrated. The use of a real-time dynamic traffic assignment system allows prediction of the traffic flow patterns and identification of the dominant paths in the network. The signalized intersections along these paths, which may consist of combinations of straight sections and turning movements, are coordinated to increase the capacity of the freeway and the surface street system to efficiently absorb diverted traffic from the freeway. A set of experiments is designed to compare the network performance under the path-based coordination scheme with no coordination and arterial-based coordination. The experiments are conducted for both pretimed and vehicle-actuated signal control. An actual network, which represents the south-central part of the Fort Worth area, is used in these experiments. The network consists of a freeway (I-35W) surroun...
The tracker systems for the muon ionization cooling experiment

Abstract The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) will be the first experiment to demonstrate muon ionization cooling in the momentum range of 140–240 MeV/c. The experiment is a single-particle experiment where the input and output beam emittances are constructed from an ensemble of selected single-muon candidates. The fiber trackers are placed in a solenoidal field of 4 T (one before and one after the cooling channel) to measure the muon 4-momentum and provide the basic information for determining the emittances. This paper gives a brief overview of MICE and then describes the details of the fiber tracker assemblies, the unique construction technique used (which for the first time used 350 μ m diameter scintillating fiber), the readout electronics and performance with respect to light yield, hit resolution and tracking efficiency as measured in a recent cosmic-ray test of the two final tracker systems.
Conformational flexibility of a ubiquitin conjugation enzyme (E2).

Ubiquitination plays important roles in a variety of biological processes, such as DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, and p53-dependent processes. Despite intensive studies in ubiquitination, the mechanism of substrate recognition is still not well understood. Each E2 has its own substrate specificity, yet substrate proteins recognized by each E2 are highly diverse. To better understand how E2 proteins confer both substrate specificity and diversity, we have studied conformational flexibility of an E2, UBC9, using nuclear magnetic resonance 15N relaxation and hydrogen−deuterium exchange measurements. Two regions in human UBC9 show higher mobility over a wide range of time scales. Combined with previous biochemical studies, both regions are likely to be important for protein−protein recognition in the ubiquitin pathway. The region near the N-terminus may be important for interactions with the E1-UBL1 conjugate. The region near the C-terminus, which undergoes conformational exchange may be important for sub...