cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Yeast Alcohol Tolerance and Recombinant DNA for Improved Alcohol Production Process

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews yeast's alcohol tolerance and recombinant DNA technique for improved alcohol production process. Yeast and alcohol fermentation are two terms that have been closely associated throughout the history of mankind. In the modern society of the twentieth century, the production of ethanol by yeast has two major applications: one is for the production of various alcoholic beverages and the other is to produce alcohol for industrial applications. Relatively, little effort has been directed toward increasing the efficiency of alcohol production either in terms of the yields or the time involved in making higher concentrations of alcohol. With the emergent global oil crisis, alcohol produced by fermentation can replace or supplement gasoline for transportation to reduce the world's dependence on petroleum for energy. Thus, substantial improvements are desired in terms of the alcohol concentration, the duration required for the production of a high concentration of alcohol, as well as the limited types of carbohydrates that yeast can normally ferment. New technologies being developed allow to genetically alter and redesign microbial cells to affect faster yeast fermentation and, consequently, alcohol production.
Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning for Law and Policy Texts

Almost all law is expressed in natural language; therefore, natural language processing (NLP) is a key component of understanding and predicting law at scale. NLP converts unstructured text into a formal representation that computers can understand and analyze. The intersection of NLP and law is poised for innovation because there are (i.) a growing number of repositories of digitized machine-readable legal text data, (ii.) advances in NLP methods driven by algorithmic and hardware improvements, and (iii.) the potential to improve the effectiveness of legal services due to inefficiencies in its current practice. NLP is a large field and like many research areas related to computer science, it is rapidly evolving. Within NLP, this paper focuses primarily on statistical machine learning techniques because they demonstrate significant promise for advancing text informatics systems and will likely be relevant in the foreseeable future. First, we provide a brief overview of the different types of legal texts and the different types of machine learning methods to process those texts. We introduce the core idea of representing words and documents as numbers. Then we describe NLP tools for leveraging legal text data to accomplish tasks. Along the way, we define important NLP terms in italics and offer examples to illustrate the utility of these tools. We describe methods for automatically summarizing content (sentiment analyses, text summaries, topic models, extracting attributes and relations, document relevance scoring), predicting outcomes, and answering questions.
Lack of effect of dopamine receptor blockade on expression of ethanol-induced conditioned place preference in mice.

Abstract Rationale. Self-administration studies have suggested that dopamine (DA) is important for the reinforcing effects of ethanol. However, ethanol place conditioning studies have less consistently demonstrated a role for DA in conditioned place preference. Objectives. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether blockade of D1, D2 or D3 DA receptors would impact the expression of the conditioned place preference induced by ethanol in DBA/2J mice. Methods. Mice underwent an unbiased place conditioning procedure with 2 g/kg ethanol. Prior to the preference test, mice were injected i.p. with SCH23390 (0, 0.015 or 0.03 mg/kg), raclopride (0, 0.3 or 0.6 mg/kg) or U99194A (0, 10 or 20 mg/kg). Results. Ethanol produced a significant conditioned place preference that was not affected by any of the dopamine antagonists tested. Each of the antagonists decreased locomotor activity, though U99194A was minimally effective. Conclusions. These findings suggest that the conditioned reinforcing effects of ethanol in DBA/2J mice as assessed by place conditioning are mediated by non-dopaminergic mechanisms.
FESIA: A Fast and SIMD-Efficient Set Intersection Approach on Modern CPUs

Set intersection is an important operation and widely used in both database and graph analytics applications. However, existing state-of-the-art set intersection methods only consider the size of input sets and fail to optimize for the case in which the intersection size is small. In real-world scenarios, the size of most intersections is usually orders of magnitude smaller than the size of the input sets, e.g., keyword search in databases and common neighbor search in graph analytics. In this paper, we present FESIA, a new set intersection approach on modern CPUs. The time complexity of our approach is $O\left( {n/\sqrt w + r} \right)$, in which w is the SIMD width, and n and r are the size of input sets and intersection size, respectively. The key idea behind FESIA is that it first uses bitmaps to filter out unmatched elements from the input sets, and then selects suitable specialized kernels (i.e., small function blocks) at runtime to compute the final intersection on each pair of bitmap segments. In addition, all data structures in FESIA are designed to take advantage of SIMD instructions provided by vector ISAs with various SIMD widths, including SSE, AVX, and the latest AVX512. Our experiments on both real-world and synthetic datasets show that our intersection method achieves more than an order of magnitude better performance than conventional scalar implementations, and up to 4x better performance than state-of-the-art SIMD implementations.
Abbreviated geriatric assessment (GA) in new oncology patients and its association with early death.

12035Background: The ASCO 2018 Geriatric Oncology Guidelines support the broad application of GA to risk-stratify patients age ≥65 undergoing cancer-directed therapy. Despite this, GA has not been ...
Perceived risk of electronic cigarettes compared with combustible cigarettes: direct versus indirect questioning.

Introduction Tobacco companies claim that a large proportion of the population perceives potential modified risk tobacco products as equally or more harmful than cigarettes, and argue misperceptions need to be corrected using modified risk claims. However, the studies they cite predominantly use one specific measurement of comparative risk. We analysed a representative sample of US adult smokers and non-smokers to examine whether the proportion who report e-cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes differs depending on how the comparative risk questions were presented. Methods We analysed data from the 2017 Tobacco Products and Risk Perceptions Survey. Comparative risk of cigarettes and e-cigarettes was measured in two ways: direct (single question) and indirect (by measuring perceived risk of both in separate questions and then subtracting the scores from each other). Results When asked to compare harms of e-cigarettes and cigarettes directly (single question), 33.9% of participants identified e-cigarettes as less harmful than cigarettes, 36.4% reported equal harm, 4.3% said e-cigarettes were more harmful and 25.3% said ‘I don’t know’. When asked indirectly (separate questions), 42.1% identified e-cigarettes as less harmful than cigarettes, 23.8% said they were of equal harm, 7.1% perceived e-cigarettes to be more harmful and 27.1% did not know. Conclusion Our study offers evidence to suggest the need to use both direct and indirect risk questions when assessing the public’s perceptions of harms associated with novel tobacco products.
Goal Orientation in Political Science Research Instruction

In recent years, scholar-educators have examined a variety of new approaches for teaching research in political science. Many of these inquiries begin with the observation that research activities ...
Probing Channelrhodopsin Electrical Activity in Algal Cell Populations

Photoelectric recording from populations of phototactic flagellate algae provides a means to study channelrhodopsin functions in vivo. Technical simplicity, versatility, high sensitivity, and reproducibility are the advantages of this assay over recording from individual algal cells by the suction pipette technique. Here we describe the principles and procedures of this assay.
Current challenges and potential directions towards precision microscale additive manufacturing – Part II: Laser-based curing, heating, and trapping processes

Abstract This article is the second in a four-part series of articles providing an overview of the challenges and opportunities in microscale additive manufacturing (AM) processes with applications in fabrication of high precision micro/nano-products. Laser-based microscale additive manufacturing processes are discussed this article. Compared to the other AM processes, laser-based processes provide several unique advantages, especially in terms of a wide variety of processable materials and high volumetric throughputs. The processes discussed in this paper can fabricate complex microscale features with minimum resolutions ranging from hundreds of nanometers to hundreds of microns. However, there are several fundamental limits and trade-offs which hinder the scalability of these processes. The paper discusses the limits to the materials, resolution, geometry, and volumetric throughput and proposes approaches to mitigate these limits and improve the scalability of laser-based microscale AM processes.
Endometriosis Scarring-A Potential Etiology for Spontaneous Hemoperitoneum in Pregnancy.

Abstract Background Endometriosis is a common condition characterized by the accumulation of dense adhesions and scar tissue around the pelvic organs, which can lead to complications. Disruption of endometriotic scar tissue is rare but can lead to spontaneous intraperitoneal hemorrhage in pregnancy. Case We present the case of a patient admitted for signs of labour at 40 weeks gestation. At emergency cesarean delivery for cord prolapse, the patient was found to have a massive intraperitoneal bleed. Mechanical disruption of endometriotic scar tissue during positioning for an epidural may have been the precipitating event, as the symptoms of spontaneous hemorrhage, including hypotension and pain, appeared immediately afterward. Conclusion Without the cord prolapse, cesarean delivery would have been delayed and the spontaneous hemorrhage might have been missed. This case report alerts obstetricians to have a high index of suspicion for spontaneous hemorrhage in pregnant patients with a history of advanced-stage endometriosis, as this event can be life-threatening to mother and baby.
Open Source 3D-Printable Planetary Roller Screw for Food Processing Applications

Historically, open source agriculture (OSA) was based on grassroots technology generally manufactured by hand tools or with manual machining. The rise of distributed digital manufacturing provides an opportunity for much more rapid lateral scaling of open source appropriate technologies for agriculture. However, the most mature distributed manufacturing area is plastic, which has limited use for many OSA applications. To overcome this limitation with design, this study reports on of a completely 3D-printable planetary roller screw linear actuator. The device is designed as a parametric script-based computer aided design (CAD) package to allow for the easy adaption for a number of applications such as food processing at different scales. The planetary roller screw is fabricated in dishwasher-safe polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) on an open source machine and tested using an open source testing platform to determine if it could maintain a constant load without slipping and the maximum force. Then, this output is compared to a direct screw press using the same materials. The results found that the maximum force is more than doubled for the roller screw actuator using the same materials, making them adequate for some food processing techniques. Future work is outlined to improve the performance and ease of assembly.
Labor prior to cesarean delivery associated with higher post-discharge opioid consumption.

Background Severe acute post-cesarean delivery (CD) pain has been associated with an increased risk for persistent pain and postpartum depression. Identification of women at increased risk for pain can be used to optimize post-cesarean analgesia. The impact of labor prior to CD (intrapartum CD) on acute post-operative pain and opioid use is unclear. We hypothesized that intrapartum CD, which has been associated with both increased inflammation and affective distress related to an unexpected surgical procedure, would result in higher postoperative pain scores and increased opioid intake. Methods This is a secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study examining opioid use up to 2 weeks following CD. Women undergoing CD at six academic medical centers in the United States 9/2014-3/2016 were contacted by phone two weeks following discharge. Participants completed a structured interview that included questions about postoperative pain scores and opioid utilization. They were asked to retrospectively estimate their maximal pain score on an 11-point numeric rating scale at multiple time points, including day of surgery, during hospitalization, immediately after discharge, 1st week, and 2nd week following discharge. Pain scores over time were assessed utilizing a generalized linear mixed-effects model with the patient identifier being a random effect, adjusting for an a priori defined set of confounders. A multivariate negative binomial model was utilized to assess the association between intrapartum CD and opioid utilization after discharge, also adjusting for the same confounders. In the context of non-random prescription distribution, this model was constructed with an offset for the number of tablets dispensed. Results A total of 720 women were enrolled, 392 with and 328 without labor prior to CD. Patients with intrapartum CD were younger, less likely to undergo repeat CD or additional surgical procedures, and more likely to experience a complication of CD. Women with intrapartum CD consumed more opioid tablets following discharge than women without labor (median 20, IQR 10–30 versus 17, IQR 6–30; p = 0.005). This association persisted after adjustment for confounders (incidence rate ratio 1.16, 95% CI 1.05–1.29; p = 0.004). Pain scores on the day of surgery were higher in women with intrapartum CD (difference 0.91, 95% CI 0.52–1.30; adj. p = <0.001) even after adjustment for confounders. Pain scores at other time points were not meaningfully different between the two groups. Conclusion Intrapartum CD is associated with worse pain on the day of surgery but not other time points. Opioid requirements following discharge were modestly increased following intrapartum CD.
Mitigating water blockage using surfactant into completion fluid – An experimental study

Abstract The necessity of reducing the need for high horsepower to frack formation led to the use of friction reducers intensively; however, the consequences of pumping friction reducers could lead to poor fracturing fluid flow-back. The unrecovered fluid creates a water blockage at the matrix-fracture interface in the reservoir, which could impact the oil recovery factor eventually. Therefore, adding surfactants is believed to mitigate the water blockage and increase the flow back by reducing the oil–water interfacial tension (IFT) and altering the matrix-fracture interface wettability. Although many studies have shown the benefit of adding surfactants, there is a quite lack of experimental studies about the impact of surfactants and friction reducers on water blockage. Thus, this study emphasizes studying the effects of surfactants and friction reducers on the water blockage problems and oil recovery factor. Core samples from Wolfcamp were utilized to conduct the study as core samples were cut to small chips and aged in dead crude oil for two months under reservoir temperature 68 °C. Then, the chip's wettability was measured and immersed in a solution mixture of water and surfactants (nonionic surfactant, anionic surfactant, and zwitterionic surfactant). The wettability was measured again to identify the best surfactants candidate. Moreover, the IFT was measured between crude oil and the fracture solution mixtures. To study the water blockage problems, two types of friction reducers (FR), an anionic friction reducer and a cationic friction reducer, were added to the surfactants mixture to investigate the impact of FR on the water blockage. The results of the study showed adding surfactants will improve the oil recovery factor significantly and mitigate the water blockage problems. The results also reveal that using a cationic friction reducer in fracture fluid can help in reducing water blockage damage as a higher oil recovery factor was observed compared to when an anionic friction reducer was utilized. Non-ionic surfactants showed a good capability in reducing the IFT between oil and water, unlike anionic and zwitterionic surfactants. Including non-ionic surfactants in fracture fluid systems can mitigate water blockage damage and increase the ultimate oil recovery factor.
Proactieve populatiegerichte zorg

Met proactieve populatiegerichte zorg kan de huisarts de praktijkpopulatie in beeld brengen aan de hand van determinanten van ziekte en gezondheid. De praktijkorganisatie en de samenwerking in de wijk kunnen hierop worden afgestemd. Hiermee kan de huisarts invloed uitoefenen op de interactie tussen de determinanten die meespelen bij het ontstaan van ziekte. Rekening houden met sekse en gender is belangrijk, omdat determinanten van gezondheid verschillen tussen mannen en vrouwen. De zorg is proactief, in plaats van dat het de huisarts ‘overkomt’ en kennis van de eigen populatie is essentieel. Na identificatie van een probleem in een patientenpopulatie start de huisarts met risicostratificatie binnen die populatie. Op basis van het risico worden interventies gekozen. Vervolgens wordt in de gaten gehouden of zorg die past bij het risico daadwerkelijk wordt ontvangen en tot slot zijn follow-up en evaluatie essentieel. Op deze manier kan zorg geleverd worden die beter aansluit bij de patienten.
Informatics Education for Health Administrators

With the changes in healthcare delivery promoting more effective use of health information technology, it is essential that healthcare administrators have a basic grounding in the best practices for developing and using these technologies in healthcare settings. Educational programs that train health administration students need to incorporate competencies in this area into their curricula. This chapter discusses the informatics competencies needed by healthcare executives and managers and describes how the educational program accrediting agencies are incorporating them into their requirements. To address these competencies, the Association of University Programs in Health Administration commissioned a task force to oversee the development of curriculum modules that can be used by health administration programs in both online and face-to-face settings. In this chapter the curriculum is described and the plans for its dissemination are discussed.
Successful Use of Soft Abrasives (Walnut Shells) for Cleaning Outdoor Bronze Sculpture by Air Jets

Sand and other abrasives have been used for cleaning a variety of materials. Outdoor bronze sculpture has been cleaned with glass bead peening since the early 1970's and it has been cleaned using walnut shell blasting snce the late 1970's
A hierarchical bayesian analysis of parasite prevalence and sociocultural outcomes: The role of structural racism and sanitation infrastructure

Methods: We adopt a Bayesian framework to estimate parasite prevalence rates in 51 districts in eight Latin American countries using the disease status of 170,220 individuals tested for infection with the intestinal roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides (H€ et al., [2011]: PLoS Negl Trop Dis 5:e1404). We then use district-level estimates of parasite prevalence and individual-level social data from 5,558 individuals in the same 51 districts (Latinobar� 2008) to assess claims of causal associations between parasite prevalence and sociocultural characteristics. Results: We find, contrary to Thornhill and Fincher, that parasite prevalence is positively associated with preferences for democracy, negatively associated with preferences for collectivism, and not associated with violent crime rates or gender inequality. A positive association between parasite prevalence and religiosity, as in Fincher and Thornhill (2012: Behav Brain Sci 35:61‐79), and a negative association between parasite prevalence and achieved education, as predicted by Eppig et al. (2010: Proc R S B: Biol Sci 277:3801‐3808), become negative and unreliable when reasonable controls are included in the model. We find support for all predictions derived from our hypothesis linking structural racism to both parasite prevalence and cultural outcomes. Conclusions: We conclude that best practices in biocultural modeling require examining more than one hypothesis, retaining individual-level data and its associated variance whenever possible, and adopting multilevel techniques
Microvascular Responses to Ischemic Stroke following Splenectomy

Splenectomy is known to protect the brain against the tissue injury that results from ischemia and reperfusion (I/R). The mechanisms that underlie this neuroprotective effect of splenectomy remain ...
TRPC Channel Interactions with Calmodulin and IP3 Receptors

Consistent with the conformational coupling mechanism, which suggests that store-operated channels are activated via physical interactions with intracellular calcium release channels, previous studies have demonstrated a functional coupling and a physical interaction between the transient receptor potential canonical type 3 (TRPC3) and inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (IP3R). The IP3R-TRPC binding domains were determined using in vitro binding assays. This work aimed to study the effect of IP3R-TRPC interaction on TRPC function. Pull-down experiments were used to study the binding of TRPC to IP3R and to calmodulin. Patch clamp recordings in whole-cell and inside-out configurations were used to examine the effect of a TRPC-binding IP3R fragment, Ca2+ and calmodulin on TRPC activity. We found that IP3R and calmodulin compete for a common binding site at the TRPC C-terminus. TRPC channels are activated either by a peptide representing the TRPC-binding domain of IP3R or by inactivation of calmodulin from the excised membrane patches. TRPC3 activity is inhibited by Ca2+ and calmodulin. Therefore, we have identified a critical IP3R-TRPC interaction that is involved in the activation of TRPC-formed channels. We propose that IP3Rs activate TRPC channels by displacing inhibitory calmodulin from a common calmodulin-IP3R binding site located at the C-terminus of TRPC.
Drugs in the Primary and Secondary Prevention of Coronary Artery Disease

The foundation for the prevention of coronary artery disease (CAD) is favorable modification of the risk factors of atherosclerosis. This is accomplished by lifestyle changes and, where necessary, pharmacological therapy. The latter comprises judicious use of evidence-based application of cardioprotective drugs. Multiple classes of these agents have been studied in controlled clinical trials which have provided convincing data for pharmacological primary and secondary prevention by reducing risk factors or modulating cardiac pathophysiology. The statin class of drugs is strongly advocated by the most recent prevention guidelines for the reduction of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. However, in patients with elevated triglycerides and/or metabolic syndrome, evidence is unclear regarding the effects pharmacological therapy on prognosis. Beta-adrenergic blockers, inhibitors of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors [ACEI], angiotensin receptor blockers [ARBs], aldosterone inhibitors) improve survival and reduce recurrent MI in selected subgroups of myocardial infarction (MI) survivors. These classes of drugs also improve prognosis in selected patients with systolic cardiac dysfunction. The reduction of cardiovascular events has also been achieved in patients with hypertension by multiple drug classes, but beta-blockers are not recommended in the most recent hypertension guidelines because of absence of clear-cut evidence of benefit. Cessation of tobacco use is unequivocally advocated, but results of nondrug and drug methods are suboptimal. Influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations are recommended in patients with cardiac disease.
On-line monitoring and diagnosis of powersystem operating conditions using artificial neural networks

An adaptive pattern recognition methodology for online monitoring and diagnosis of power system operating conditions has been developed. It is implemented on highly parallel distributed architectures of the functional-link-net (FLN) type. The flat structure of the FLN allows the tasks of unsupervised learning, supervised learning, and associative recall to be carried out without intervention in network and data structures. The proposed methodology is capable of processing large bodies of information gathered by the data acquisition system in real time. It enhances the performance of the energy management system and effectively reduces the operator's response time. The real-time monitoring and diagnosis facility can quickly detect and identify abnormal operating conditions. The main features of the system are described. >
Milk composition and lactation strategy of a eusocial mammal, the naked mole-rat

The reproductive female, or queen, in a eusocial colony must allocate sufficient nutrients to reproduction to maintain a high rate of reproductive output. In mammals, the energetic costs of lactation greatly exceed those of pregnancy, and thus, lactation should be exceptionally costly for a eusocial queen, such as the naked mole-rat Heterocephalus glaber. We predicted that naked mole-rat milk would be energy- and nutrient-dense. Naked mole-rat milk averaged 17.2% dry matter, 4.5% fat, 4.8% protein, 5.7% sugar and 1.1% ash; and per gram contained 3.0 mg calcium, 1.1 mg phosphorus, 0.44 mg magnesium and 0.54 mg potassium. Other than elevated protein and low sugar in colostrum, the composition of milk did not change over the course of lactation. Naked mole-rats not only had the lowest energy content of milk (3.9 kJ g −1 ) reported for any rodent but also appeared to be an outlier from a trend for milk dry matter, fat and energy concentrations to be inversely related to body mass in rodents. The dilute nature of naked mole-rat milk indicates that an unusually large amount of milk (equivalent to about half of body mass) must be produced daily to sustain the energy needs of an average litter (12 young). Sustaining high water throughput during lactation may be necessary to meet expected water needs of the offspring but may limit the queen to foods that are high in moisture. The concentrations of macrominerals in milk were within the range described for other rodents, except that the Ca : P ratio of milk (2.8:1) was unusually high. Given a lifespan that can exceed 30 years, large average litter size and several litters per year, the lifetime lactation output of a mole-rat queen must be phenomenal and warrants further study.
A GLOBAL SEA-LEVEL CURVE FOR THE LATE QUATERNARY: THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM?

Abstract In view of the vulnerability of heavily populated, low-lying coastal areas to sea-level rise and marine incursion, an improved late Quaternary global sea-level curve is sorely needed as a gauge for measuring changing sea-level positions. Contrary to the prevailing view, it is proposed that such a global sea-level curve can be derived from observations compiled in widely diverse continental margin and coastal settings. Needed are a larger number of more precisely dated elevation points, with minimal relation to land motion and climatic variation, which can serve as a basis for a curve defining global sea level, particularly for the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Such a curve will not be made from any one type section or locality but, rather, from observation of contemporaneous events compiled in widely diverse settings. Rather than simply defending a contentious view, this essay solicits new and more precise data and a reconsideration of viable approaches.
Staged Hybrid Repair for Extent II Thoracoabdominal Aortic Aneurysms and Dissections

Thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms (TAAAs) often require intervention to prevent catastrophic aortic rupture. Open TAAA repair techniques have been well described with excellent long-term results. Outcomes, however, vary according to the extent of aortic pathology. In particular, Crawford extent II TAAAs are associated with higher rates of paraplegia, renal failure, pulmonary complications, and death. In a contemporary series, despite the use of adjuncts, such as, cerebrospinal drainage, cardiopulmonary bypass, and mesenteric perfusion, mortality and paraplegia after extent II TAAA repair range from 10%42% and 7%-32%, respectively. Thoracic endovascular aneurysm repair (TEVAR) has reduced the operative risk of repair compared with open surgical approach for isolated thoracic aortic aneurysms. At present, TEVAR alone cannot be utilized for extent II TAAA owing to involvement of the abdominal visceral vessels. Hybrid approaches to extensive TAAA have the potential to reduce operative risk. In this articles, we describe a 2-stage hybrid repair technique for extent II TAAAs or dissections. In the first stage, TEVAR is performed to address the proximal descending thoracic aorta—effectively converting an extent II TAAA to an extent III or IV TAAA. In the second stage, an open thoracoabdominal aneurysm repair is performed to address the distal thoracic and abdominal aorta. The staged approach distributes spinal cord ischemia from repair over time, potentially allowing vascular remodeling and collateral formation. This potentially may decrease paralysis rates. The hybrid approach also obviates the need for a high proximal thoracic aortic anastomosis. This reduces the extent of the incision, eliminates dissection around the arch and recurrent laryngeal nerve, and allows a simpler thoracic aortic anastomosis. This may potentially reduce operative time and recurrent laryngeal nerve injury and prevent respiratory failure.
The effect of conjugated equine estrogens on ovariectomy-induced osteopenia in the rat.

The effect of estrogen replacement on ovariectomy-induced bone loss was evaluated in mature Sprague-Dawley rats. Undecalcified tibia of ovariectomized rats were processed for quantitative histologic assessment of cancellous bone in longitudinal sections from the primary and secondary spongiosa of the proximal metaphysis. Bone content in tissue specimens was quantified as the parameter B. Ar, two-dimensional bone mineral area. Estrogen, supplied as orally administered conjugated equine estrogens, prevented bone loss through 6 weeks of treatment. The effect of conjugated equine estrogens was dose-dependent, with significant protection against bone loss observed at doses of 10 μg/kg/day and higher.
Questions of Mastery in Alice Walker's: The Temple of My Familiar

Abstract Alice Walker was once on a panel of writers conducted by Tom LeClair, who asked the panel why no women wrote novels like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Walker's answer was, “Why would they want to?” Nevertheless, The Temple of My Familiar has much of the ambition of Pynchon's prodigious text and questions similar aspects of contemporary Western culture. Walker herself, on the jacket cover, calls the novel “a romance of the last 500,000 years,” and if that reads a bit like a publisher's sound byte, it also has some truth to it. By the novel's end, the long-separated incarnations of spirits as old as the human race find each other in two of the central characters. If the novel, at 417 mass-market paperback pages, does not have the sheer bulk of Gravity's Rainbow, it still has much of the scope that writers like Pynchon strive for; and in its constant revision of our traditional understanding of history, Temple seems to place itself against Gravity's Rainbow as an optimistic spiritual alternative.
Isocyanide-Promoted Ylidene Transfer to Phosphorus: Rearrangement in the First-Generation Grubbs Complex

Carbon monoxide or an aryl isocyanide promotes a benzylidene carbene transfer from ruthenium to tricyclohexylphosphine in the first-generation Grubbs carbene complex. The resulting ruthenium(II) complexes have been isolated and structurally characterized by X-ray crystal structure analysis; a probable mechanism for the ligand-promoted transformation is also discussed.
Hidden renormalization group for the near-separatrix Hamiltonian dynamics

Abstract Some properties of near-separatrix motion general for a wide class of Hamiltonian systems with 1 1 2 and 2 degrees of freedom are examined. Separatrix map is reviewed, and its invariance with respect to a renormalization of the perturbation parameter is demonstrated. The corresponding invariance of the shifted separatrix map leads to the similarity of the phase-space topology near the saddle point for systems with considerably different perturbation strengths. Motion of the harmonically perturbed pendulum exemplifies the above properties. Similar invariance property is formulated for the two degrees of freedom system describing motion of two particles in a fourth-order polynomial potential. It is shown, that the renormalization procedure can be modified to incorporate the case of large coupling. Numerical integration illustrates the similarity of the phase space structure before and after the renormalization. Possible applications of the results are discussed. Condition for the existence of the invariance under consideration is formulated, it is shown that the standard map is not renormalized in the described above sense.
Evaluation for collaborative systems

The Evaluation Working Group (EWG) in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Intelligent Collaboration and Visualization (IC&V) program has developed a methodology for evaluating collaborative systems. This methodology consists of a framework for classification of CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) systems, metrics and measures related to the various components in the framework, and a scenario-based evaluation approach. This paper describes the components of this methodology. Two case studies of evaluations based on this methodology are also described.
Mechanisms for the conversion of hyperspectral images to chemical images

Focal plane array detection systems for measuring optical spectra of spatial images in the visible, near-IR and mid-IR regions have led to a dramatic increase in the amount of spectroscopic information available on a sample. Instead of a single spectrum from an object, we can simultaneously obtain spectra from multiple locations on its surface. Hyperspectral images contain information on the chemical components present in the object under investigation. Generally, the spectrum at each pixel is that of a mixture of a few components. The problem of dealing with so much information can be made more manageable and meaningful by converting the hyperspectral images to chemical images so that the image data can be expressed in terms of the individual chemical components. During the last decade, several algorithms have been proposed for extracting pure component spectra from spectra of mixtures. We have evaluated and combined the features of three different methods to develop an algorithm for rapidly processing hyperspectral images. The hyperspectra were initially processed with Principal Component Analysis to find the appropriate number of independent components and abstract spectral representations (loadings). Key Set Factor Analysis (KSFA) and SIMPLISMA (SIMPle-to-use Interactive Self-modeling Mixture Analysis) methods were combined to find pure wavelengths for the components from the loadings. These pure wavelengths were used to produce initial guesses for the relative concentrations of the components, and these concentrations were used to predict the pure component spectra. The spectra were further refined by using the method of Alternating Least Squares. The methodology is demonstrated on infrared spectra of a simple, three-component chemical mixture and on a hyperspectral infrared image of cartilage tissue.
Simplified stochastic modeling and simulation of unidirectional fiber reinforced composites

Abstract Stochastic prediction of the failure strength of composite materials has been the subject of research for the last four decades. These studies have generally focused on expensive materials with high quality control for use in aerospace applications. For these applications it has been economically feasible to obtain reliable statistical data. To extend this research to the analysis of composites with widespread use in civil engineering, the complicated models developed in the past need to be simplified. This paper proposes a simplified stochastic two-dimensional model to predict the strength distribution of single-ply unidirectional composites. The model is studied via Monte Carlo simulation and accounts for the following parameters: specimen size, fiber strength distribution, fiber–matrix properties and load transfer at broken fibers. The classical load sharing rules to model the load redistribution at broken fibers are modified to consider different material properties. A parametric study investigating the parameters that affect the strength and the failure pattern of the composite is presented. The numerical results are consistent with experimental data analyzed. The study is used to quantify the effect of various material and geometric characteristics on resultant performance and failure properties.
Cerebral speech dominance in language-disordered and normal children.

Summary Twenty subjects, ages five and six, were selected and administered a number of language and speech tests and two dichotic listening tasks. Ten of the subjects had received intensive language and speech therapy for more than two years, and the other ten were normal in such skills. More words and digits were reported from the left ears of those having the language and speech disorders while greater number of stimuli of both types were reported from the right ears of the normal subjects. Furthermore, the defective subjects demonstrated a clear left ear preference for digits presented dichotically, and the normal subjects were found to show a 100% right ear preference. Ear preference for words was not significantly different for the two groups, in spite of the fact that the magnitude of the difference in numbers of words recognized was significantly greater in the right ears of the normal subjects. The total number of digits recalled, regardless of ear, was greater for the normal subjects; this was not the case for words. Traditional measurements of laterality failed to relate to presumed cerebral dominance for speech based upon dichotic tasks.
Lower Middle Ordovician Chitinozoa from the Southern Appalachians, United States

Abstract To assess the occurrence and significance of chitinozoans in the lower Middle Ordovician of the Southern Appalachians, 212 samples from eleven sections were selected for study. About 50% of the samples yielded chitinozoans but only half the productive samples contained reasonably abundant and taxonomically varied assemblages. Virtually all of these samples originate from the Lenoir Limestone in the Blount Confacies Belt, but the Chickamauga Limestone of Alabama has also produced some interesting chitinozoans. A total of nineteen species have been identified, one new (Fungochitina chickamaugensis n. sp.). As a whole, the chitinozoan assemblages show close similarity to those of Baltoscandia, about 85% of our species being known from that area. They are less similar to assemblages from Britain, southwestern Europe, and other parts of North America. Although many species are long-ranging, some with limited vertical range are useful biostratigraphically and suggest correlations in general agreement with those indicated by conodonts and other fossils. Appalachian chitinozoan taxa exhibit complex variations in frequency and geographic distribution but ecologic factors controlling those patterns are unclear. Few chitinozoans were found in basinal rocks and intertidal and supratidal strata are also virtually barren. The richest collections are from rocks representing relatively shallow depositional environments, partly of lagoonal character. The present study shows that chitinozoans are widespread but not abundant in the strata studied and that they have considerable potential as index fossils in the Southern Appalachians.
Preserved memory in retrograde amnesia: Sparing of a recently acquired skill

Recent work with amnesic patients has revealed a preserved capacity for acquiring and retaining new skills despite otherwise profound anterograde impairment. In addition to their anterograde impairment, amnesic patients also have retrograde memory loss for some information acquired prior to the amnesic event. The present experiment addresses for the first time the question of whether preservation of memory for skills is also a feature memory impairment. To determine the susceptibility of a recently learned skill to retrograde amnesia, we taught patients to read mirror-reversed words before and during the early part of a prescribed course of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and then tested retention of the skill after the course of treatment had been completed. Patients prescribed bilateral or right unilateral ECT and depressed patients not receiving ECT acquired the mirror-reading skill at the same rate and then retained it at the same level. For the patients prescribed ECT, intact learning and retention of the skill occurred despite retrograde amnesia for the previous testing sessions and for the words that they had read previously.
Alterations of plasma membrane fatty acid composition modify the kinetics of Na+ current in cultured rat diencephalic neurons.

Abstract Properties of inward Na ++ currents (I Na ) were examined in dissociated diencephalic neurons whose plasma membrane fatty acid composition had been altered. These neurons were grown in a defined medium supplemented with essential fatty acids (EFA) of either the w3 class (linolenic acid, 18:3w3) or the w6 class (linoleic acid, 18:2w6), which resulted in a two-fold increase in the plasma membrane phospholipid polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) concentration. The properties of the inward I Na of these neurons were compared with those of control neurons grown in the absence of any supplemented fatty acids. The I Na of neuronssupplemented with a non-essential fatty acid (NFA) of w9 class (oleic acid, 18:1w9) was also examined. Several properties have been modified to different degrees. The ratio of the amplitudes between the fast and the slow decay components as well as the time constant of the fast decay component changed consistently and reversibly with the membrane phospholipid PUFA composition. The current-voltage relationships, channel selectivity, rates of inactivation and recovery from inactivation did not change. Other parameters, such as time-to-peak and steady-state inactivation curves, have changed in EFA- and NFA-supplemented cultures and did not reverse completely. These findings demonstrate that the kinetics of I Na can be modified by fatty acid supplementation. These effects can be correlated, in part, with alterations in plasma membrane phospholipid fatty acid composition.
The effects of embedding material, loading rate and magnitude, and penetration depth in nanoindentation of trabecular bone.

Understanding the pathophysiology of metabolic bone disease requires the characterization of both the quantity as well as the quality (i.e., microarchitecture and material properties) of the bone tissue. Nanoindentation provides a powerful yet simple method to measure the nano/micro mechanical properties of bone, but no uniform testing methodology exists. This study examines the effects of embedding materials, rate and depth of indentation, and storage time on the measured modulus. Nineteen trabecular bone samples were evaluated for the study. Although there was an 8-fold increase in the stiffness of the soft to hard epoxy, bone tissue modulus was not affected by the stiffness of the embedding materials, but hardness was affected by both the embedding material modulus, for example from 0.70 ± 0.20 GPa (MElow) to 0.45 ± 0.21 GPa (MEMed) (p < 0.01), and viscosity (p < 0.01). No significant differences were found with regard to the tested rates and depths of indentation for either elastic modulus or hardness. The tissue modulus tested at the 6-month time point was significantly greater in comparison with that tested at 0 or 3 months (p < 0.01). The hardness, however, did not significantly change over the span of 6 months. The results show that while nanoindentation is powerful, it is particularly sensitive to certain testing variables. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res, 2006
A Case for Learner-Centered Teaching and Learning

This chapter discusses how to create learner-centered approaches to teacher development by analyzing educators' teaching and learning orientations as well as their career stages.
Solution structure of the human telomeric repeat d[AG3(T2AG3)3] G-tetraplex

Abstract Background: Repeats of G n sequences are detected as single strand overhangs at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes together with associated binding proteins. Such telomere sequences have been implicated in the replication and maintenance of chromosomal termini. They may also mediate chromosomal organization and association during meiosis and mitosis. Results: We have determined the three-dimensional solution structure of the human telomere sequence, d[AG 3 (T 2 AG 3 ) 3 ] in Na + -containing solution using a combined NMR, distance geometry and molecular dynamics approach (including relaxation matrix refinement). The sequence, which contains four AG 3 repeats, folds intramolecularly into a G-tetraplex stabilized by three stacked G-tetrads which are connected by two lateral loops and a central diagonal loop. Of the four grooves that are formed, one is wide, two are of medium width and one is narrow. The alignment of adjacent G-G-G segments in parallel generates the two grooves of medium width whilst the antiparallel arrangement results in one wide and one narrow groove. Three of the four adenines stack on top of adjacent G-tetrads while the majority of the thymines sample multiple conformations. Conclusions: The availability of the d[AG 3 (T 2 AG 3 ) 3 ] solution structure containing four AG 3 human telomeric repeats should permit the rational design of ligands that recognize and bind with specificity and affinity to the individual grooves of the G-tetraplex, as well as to either end containing the diagonal and lateral loops. Such ligands could modulate the equilibrium between folded G-tetraplex structures and their unfolded extended counterparts.