cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Risk Sensitivity and Hunter Perceptions of Chronic Wasting Disease Risk and Other Hunting, Wildlife, and Health Risks

ABSTRACTThis article examined relationships among hunter perceptions of personal health risks from chronic wasting disease (CWD), knowledge and information about CWD, and perceptions of other hunting, wildlife, and health risks. Data were obtained from surveys of 2,725 deer and elk hunters in Colorado. Cluster analysis grouped hunters into no (42%), slight (44%), and moderate (14%) risk groups based on perceptions of personal health risks from CWD (e.g., concern about health, become ill from CWD). There were minimal differences among groups in demographics, information sources, and knowledge about CWD. Hunters who perceived higher health risks from CWD (i.e., moderate risk), however, perceived greater risks associated with CWD to other humans, CWD to wildlife, hunting to personal health, other diseases to health, and the future of hunting. These findings illustrated the concept of risk sensitivity where hunters who perceived higher risks from CWD were predisposed to rate all other risks as large.
At the Intersection of Social Marketing and Public Policy: An Exploration of a Non-profit from the Client Perspective: A Structured Abstract

Social and economic disparities prompt the need for services provided by many non-profits as well as most corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Many firms donate resources to non-profit organizations as part of broader goals related to CSR. Non-profit organizations designed to serve individuals, and their communities must therefore use marketing efficiently to foster awareness of what they offer both to the firms looking to engage in CSR and to individuals in need of the non-profit’s services. This marketing message is often designed to communicate how the non-profit makes lives better. It is here where social marketing and public policy intersect, connecting the goals of a non-profit with those who seek to give (i.e., contributors) and its services to those who seek to receive (i.e., clients). Yet few studies exist which examine the services marketed by non-profits to potential contributors from the client’s perspective, that is, those who use these services. Thus, the purpose of this study is to understand how clients view the services they receive from a non-profit and to explore the implications of these views for developing effective social marketing and public policy.
Syntactic Complexity Effects in Sentence Production: A Reply to MacDonald, Montag, and Gennari (2016).

In our article, "Syntactic complexity effects in sentence production" (Scontras, Badecker, Shank, Lim, & Fedorenko, ), we reported two elicited production experiments and argued that there is a cost associated with planning and uttering syntactically complex, object-extracted structures that contain a non-local syntactic dependency. MacDonald et al. () have argued that the results of our investigation provide little new information on the topic. We disagree. Examining the production of subject versus object extractions in two constructions across two experimental paradigms-relative clauses in Experiment 1 and wh-questions in Experiment 2-we found a strikingly similar pattern: reliable differences in latency and word durations, as well as in rates of disfluencies, signaling a greater cost associated with planning and uttering the syntactically more complex object extractions. MacDonald et al. reject that interpretation, namely that the differences we observed in the production of subject versus object extractions demonstrate asymmetric production difficulties. Here we address the concerns they raise by clarifying confusion and presenting novel experimental evidence in support of our original claims.
MAKING RAIN, MAKING MAPS: COMPETING GEOGRAPHIES OF WATER AND POWER IN SOUTHWESTERN AFRICA*

This article explores the alchemy whereby ritual and political worlds invisible to Europeans were rendered visible on European maps. It begins with a puzzle: representations of southwestern Africa's rivers on those maps bear little resemblance to physical reality as the cartographers would have understood it. Using GIS technology to georeference a series of maps and highlight the placement of rivers on them illustrates the convergence of cartographers’ representations and regional political cosmologies linking power to control over water. Travelers’ accounts and colonial archives illuminate how knowledge was produced and why African ideas about geography were inadvertently embedded in those maps well into the twentieth century. This method opens a window into otherwise-obscured African intellectual history and demonstrates that even something as apparently and unambiguously ‘European’ as modern mapping was the result of on-the-ground negotiations well into the colonial period.
Accurate spectral testing of the signals with amplitude drift

Spectral testing has become one of the most widely used approach to characterize electronic systems. As the performance of the system becomes higher, the cost and the difficulty of accurately characterizing such systems has increased dramatically. To obtain accurate spectral results of signals from such high performance systems, one of the stringent test requirement is to maintain stable signal amplitude. If such requirement is not met, spectrum leakage will show up at the spectrum and the correct signal spectral performance cannot be obtained. In this paper, a low-cost method is proposed to estimate and remove amplitude drift in the signal under test, via segmentation and Least Square, and accurate spectral testing results of the signal can therefore be obtained. Extensive simulation results demonstrated the accuracy, as well as the robustness of the proposed method, which is capable of obtaining accurate spectral performance of the signal under various test conditions. Such low-cost method relaxes the stringent requirement such as constant amplitude on the signals under test, and can be implemented for high precision spectral testing using less precise instrumentations.
Tantric Epistemology and the Problem of Ineffability in the Seven Siddhi Texts

From the early sixth century of the common era to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, two contemporary genres came to dominate Buddhist literature. On the one hand there were the schools of formal logic and epistemology whose textual tradition emerged out of the works of the Buddhist scholar Dignāga and his commentator Dharmakīrti. On the other, there were the esoteric textual traditions that would come to be known as the Buddhist tantras. These two are considered ﻿by many to have developed independently, with some scholars even going so far as to characterize the esoteric textual traditions as a protest movement intended to push back against the institutional scholasticism of post-Dignāga epistemological discourse. Relying upon a set of Sanskrit works by seven Indian tantric mahāsiddhas known ﻿in Tibetan sources as The Seven Siddhiḥ Texts or Grub pa sde bdun, this paper challenges the idea that the sophisticated esoteric ritual theory and praxis of the Buddhist yoga- and mahāyoga-tantras is necessarily incompatible with or antagonistic toward the Buddhist epistemological tradition by pointing to ﻿the basic soteriological issue that both factions held in common: the problem of how, when, and for whom ultimate reality, ineffible by definition, is able to be both perceived and communicated.
Complications and Their Management

Complications can be minimised through careful selection of treatment modalities specific to the patient and rigorous preoperative evaluation. Positioning injuries are common, and correct patient positioning requires close cooperation between surgical anaesthetic and nursing teams. Surgeons must be vigilant for renovascular complications both intraoperatively and postoperatively. Management of urine leaks should be based on three principles: [1] adequate drainage, [2] unobstructed distal flow of urine and [3] treatment or prevention of infection. Acute renal insufficiency is more common in patients with pre-existing renal impairment but remains an unfortunate complication of nephron-sparing surgery.
A scalable pulse protocol for structural health monitoring

This paper presents a scalable and energy-aware pulse-based networking architecture, which is an alternative to traditional packet-based networking in low-information and energy-constrained applications. Various networked sensing applications, notably in the Structural Health Monitoring domain, require the collection of information which is essentially binary in nature (occurrence or absence of a localized event). For such applications, an energy-efficient pulse-position-based MAC and routing approach, called Cellular Pulse Networking (CPN), has been demonstrated earlier as an energy-light alternative to traditional packet-based approaches. Such a protocol encodes the essential information, namely presence or absence of a monitored event and location of origin of the event, using a few pulses and their position with respect to a synchronized time frame structure. It has been shown in prior work that the energy usage in the pulse networking approach is significantly smaller than the corresponding packet-based approach when the information needs are small. However, the pulse networking approach, as has been discussed till date, does not scale well because the frame structure, which is central to the architecture, increases quadratically with increase in the number of cells in the network. It is to be noted that cells are essentially localized clusters of network nodes which are assumed to have the same location indicated by their unique cell ID, thus representing the lowest granularity of spatial localization. In the current work, we present Scalable Cellular Pulse Networking (SCPN), which aims to retain the energy benefits of CPN while improving the delivery delay performance for large cell counts. This is obtained by employing a new frame, which is shown to scale linearly with cell count. Using simulations, we show the advantages of the energy-aware SCPN approach in terms of its inherent energy-efficiency, improved networking performance and more graceful scaling as the cell count increases. We also demonstrate important tradeoffs as well as scenarios where more information can be packed in using the new scheme with energy benefits and delay at par with the baseline CPN approach.
Understanding the University and Faculty Investment in Implementing High-Impact Educational Practices

A variety of assessment options utilizing high-impact educational practices have emerged to assist faculty in higher education with college student learning outcomes. High-impact practices are defined as teaching and learning designs which have been demonstrated to increase student engagement and persistence. Practices such as first-year seminars, tech-rich learning communities, collaborative projects, undergrad research, global/diversity learning, service learning, practicums, and internships are educational tools making it possible to assess the practices’ contribution to students’ cumulative learning. However, utilization of these practices is unsystematic due in part to the required investment of time, training, and money. This paper describes high-impact practices that support course and program level learning outcomes in conjunction with the investments for implementation. Exploration into why these types of practices are effective and which students have access to them emphasizes the need for this investment to meet accreditation standards and the mandates of our government’s “completion agenda” geared towards preparing America’s future workforce.
Dementia caregiving characteristics, elder impairment, and caregiver strain and burden

This study assessed the influence of caregiver characteristics on perceived elder impairment, caregiver burden, and caregiver strain in a study of 292 dementia caregivers in Iowa. Hierarchical regression analyses evaluated caregiver characteristics as predictors of perceived elder impairment, caregiver strain, and caregiver burden. Caregiver characteristics played little role in predicting perceived elder impairment, caregiver strain, or caregiver burden. However, the perceived level of elder impairment in the care recipient was highly associated with feelings of caregiver burden and strain. Caregiver strain also significantly mediated the relationship between elder impairment and caregiver burden. Future research should look more closely at specific types of elder impairment and the relationship between elder impairment, strain, and burden.
Phase II of the AHCPR-Sponsored Heart Failure Guideline: Translating Practice Recommendations into Review Criteria

Article-at-a-Glance Background In 1992, under the sponsorship of the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, RAND assembled an expert panel to develop the Heart Failure Clinical Practice Guideline. Phase II of the effort was intended to identify which of the guideline's recommendations the panel felt were suitable for use in retrospective utilization review and quality assessment programs and to develop review criteria, performance measures, and standards of quality for use in monitoring compliance with those recommendations. Selection of recommendations Selecting guideline recommendations for translation into review criteria and ultimately into standards of care was a multistep process comprising (1) identification of 34 recommendations from the guideline, (2) rating them on the basis of importance to quality of care and feasibility of monitoring, (3) review by a subcommittee and the full guideline panel, (4) translation into review criteria, and (5) further review and input by panelists and peer and pilot reviewers. Finally, standards of care (the minimum proportion of cases expected to be in accordance with guideline recommendations) were determined to be 90%–95% for six of the final criteria and 75%–80% for the other two. Conclusion Despite some reservations, physicians and other health care professionals agreed to be held accountable for following a core set of guideline recommendations for the treatment of heart failure. Substantial progress was made in identifying recommendations that panelists and reviewers were willing to endorse in utilization review activities, including adoption of improved documentation standards. The review criteria's major impact may be the knowledge that the criteria are in place and that care is being monitored based on those standards.
Stability of human chorionic gonadotropin and its alpha subunit in human blood

The stability of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and its alpha-subunit in whole blood, plasma, and serum under a variety of sample handling conditions commonly encountered in clinics, hospital wards, physician's offices, and clinical service laboratories was investigated with the use of radioreceptor assay, radioimmunoassays, as well as hormone integrity determinations. The results clearly demonstrate that hCG and its alpha-subunit are stable in unfrozen whole blood, plasma, and serum for at least 6 days and in frozen plasma and serum samples for at least 6 months. Repeated freezing and thawing of the samples during this period had no effect. Separation of plasma or serum from erythrocytes is not needed for at least 12 hours. Hemolysis in samples resulted in a 20% to 30% decrease in hCG and its alpha-subunit levels, which may be attributable to sample dilution.
Interactions of Atlantic salmon in the Pacific northwest: V. Human health and safety

The paper discusses potential issues for human health and safety from net-pen salmon farming in the Pacific northwest region. A brief introduction to global and national responsibilities for food safety is followed with a review of the chemicals and chemical contaminants in materials used in farm production operations. Possible sources include metallic paints, feed ingredients, and chemotherapeutants. Concerns for the transmission of diseases follow, and the common pathogenic diseases are reviewed. After a section on the processing and quality of farm products, specifically the proximate composition of farm fish and differences between farm and wild salmon species, the concerns for worker safety on the farm are considered. The paper ends with some conclusions on the varying degrees of risk carried by these issues.
How Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Work

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of a range of psychological disorders (Butler, in press). However, although considerable evidence for the efficacy of CBT exists, there are few studies elucidating how CBT works.
Plasma metabolomics and incidence of atrial fibrillation: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study

Background: Previously, we identified associations of two circulating secondary bile acids (glycocholenate and glycolithocolate sulfate) with atrial fibrillation (AF) risk among African Americans. We aimed to replicate these findings in an independent sample including both whites and African Americans, and performed a new metabolomic analysis in the combined sample. Methods: We studied 3,922 participants from the ARIC cohort followed between 1987 and 2013. Of these, 1,919 had been included in the prior analysis and 2,003 were new samples. Metabolomic profiling was done in baseline serum samples using gas and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry. AF was ascertained from electrocardiograms, hospitalizations, and death certificates. We used multivariable Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) of AF by one standard deviation difference of metabolite levels. Results: Over a mean follow-up of 20 years, 608 participants developed AF. Glycocholenate sulfate was associated with AF in the replication and combined samples (HR 1.10, 95%CI 1.00, 1.21 and HR 1.13, 95%CI 1.04, 1.22, respectively). Glycolithocolate sulfate was not related to AF risk in the replication sample (HR 1.02, 95%CI 0.92, 1.13). An analysis of 245 metabolites in the combined cohort identified three additional metabolites associated with AF after multiple-comparison correction: pseudouridine (HR 1.18, 95%CI 1.10, 1.28), uridine (HR 0.86, 95%CI 0.79, 0.93) and acisoga (HR 1.17, 95%CI 1.09, 1.26). Conclusion: We replicated a prospective association between a previously identified secondary bile acid, glycocholenate sulfate, and AF incidence, and identified new metabolites involved in nucleoside and polyamine metabolism as markers of AF risk.
The shifting burden of neurosurgical disease: Vietnam and the middle-income nations

OBJECTIVE The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) is an international collaboration and the largest comprehensive investigation of global health disease burden ever conducted. It has been particularly insightful for understanding disease demographics in middle-income nations undergoing rapid development, such as Vietnam, where 6 of the top 10 causes of death are relevant to the neurosurgeon. The burden of stroke-the number one cause of death in Vietnam-is particularly impressive. Likewise, road injuries, with a disproportionate rate of traumatic brain injury, continue to increase in Vietnam following economic development. Low-back and neck pain is the number one cause of disability. Simultaneously, more patients have access to care, and healthcare spending is increased. METHODS It is imperative that neurosurgical capital and infrastructure keep pace with Vietnam's growth. The authors searched the existing literature for assessments of neurosurgical infrastructure or initiatives to address neurosurgical disease burden. Using GBD data, the authors also abstracted data for death by cause and prevalence of years of life lost due to disability (YLD) for common neurosurgical pathologies for Vietnam and comparison nations. RESULTS Interventions aimed at primary prevention of risk factors for neurosurgical disease and focused on the transference of self-sustainable technical skills were found to be analogous to those that have been successful in other regions. Efforts toward stroke prevention have been focused on causal risk factors. Multiple investigators have found that interventions aimed at increasing helmet use were successful in preventing traumatic brain injury. Government-led reforms and equipment donation programs have improved technical capacity. Nevertheless, Vietnam lags behind other nations in neurosurgeons per capita; cause-attributable death and YLD attributable to neurosurgical disease are considerably higher in Vietnam and middle-income nations compared to both lower-income nations and upper-income nations. CONCLUSIONS More than two-thirds of deaths attributable to neurosurgical pathologies in Vietnam and other middle-income nations were due to stroke, and one-fifth of both cause-attributable death and YLD was associated with neurosurgical pathologies. Vietnam and other middle-income nations continue to assume a global burden of disease profile that ever more closely resembles that of developed nations, with particular cerebrovascular, neurotrauma, and spinal disease burdens, leading to exponentially increased demand for neurosurgeons that threatens to outpace the training of neurosurgeons.
PET Based Imaging of Ischemic Heart Disease

PET-based cardiac nuclear imaging plays a large role in the management of ischemic heart disease. Compared with conventional single-photon emission CT myocardial perfusion imaging, PET provides superior accuracy in diagnosis of coronary artery disease and, with the incorporation of myocardial blood flow and coronary flow reserve, adds value in assessing prognosis for established coronary and microvascular disease. This review describes these and other uses of PET in ischemic heart disease, including assessing myocardial viability in ischemic cardiomyopathy. Developments in novel PET flow tracers and molecular imaging tools to assess atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability, vascular calcification, and vascular remodeling also are described.
How do the Swiss produce their New National Map Series

Abstract. Switzerland, not unlike Japan, has a difficult and challenging topography to map. The Swiss have been officially mapping their country now for nearly 175 years, which started when the “Bureau topographique federal” first published the initial set of official National maps in 1845. The various Swiss National Map series have been revised a number of times throughout its history and the latest revision and update was carried out in 2014 when the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, published the first four sheets in the new generation of maps at 1:25’000. Swisstopo have, with their new revised map series not only reviewed, challenged and changed their map production procedures but completely redesigned them. The new production procedures for the national map series 1:10’000, 1:25’000, 1:50’000 and 1:100’000 are now all based on the 1:10’000 Topographic Landscape Model (TLM) where GIS methodology and software have replaced the old cartographic software. Each of these four scales brings its own unique series of challenges such as generalisation, map design and labelling, and each goes through the same three main production procedures: automatic generalisation, cartographic improvement and manual cartographic finishing. The automatic model and cartographic generalisation are performed by a large series of procedures, taking the base TLM data and preparing it for the required scale. The cartographic improvement involves running preconfigured, so-called “Carto Processes” which perform cartographic improvements such as improving the road endings, creating annotations and various masks, rotating symbols and suppressing certain feature details. The manual cartographic finishing (not required for the fully automatic 1:10’000 national map) is carried out by a highly skilled cartographic workforce, which take over where the automatic procedures fail to produce the required cartographic finish which the local market still demands from its National Mapping Agency.
Extension of the Einstein molecule method for solid free energy calculation to non-periodic and semi-periodic systems

Free energy calculations on solid phases are important for understanding the phase behavior of various systems. For periodic crystalline solids, the Einstein molecule method can be used to determine the free energy difference between the solid of interest and an ideal crystal for which the free energy can be found analytically. In this work, we show how this method is extensible to systems which are nonperiodic or periodic in some dimensions but not in others. This allows for the calculation of exact absolute free energies of finite-sized crystals having specific shapes and surface geometries. We demonstrate this using the fcc Lennard-Jones solid and also illustrate how surface contributions to free energies can easily be extracted from simulations of this solid in semi-infinite slab geometries. We have developed a software package which interfaces with the LAMMPS molecular dynamics code to perform these calculations.
Analysis of risk factor domains in psychosis patient health records

Readmission after discharge from a hospital is disruptive and costly, regardless of the reason. However, it can be particularly problematic for psychiatric patients, so predicting which patients may be readmitted is critically important but also very difficult. Clinical narratives in psychiatric electronic health records (EHRs) span a wide range of topics and vocabulary; therefore, a psychiatric readmission prediction model must begin with a robust and interpretable topic extraction component. We designed and evaluated multiple multilayer perceptron and radial basis function neural networks to predict the sentences in a patient’s EHR that are associated with one or more of seven readmission risk factor domains that we identified. In contrast to our baseline cosine similarity model that is based on the methodologies of prior works, our deep learning approaches achieved considerably better F1 scores (0.83 vs 0.66) while also being more scalable and computationally efficient with large volumes of data. Additionally, we found that integrating clinically relevant multiword expressions during preprocessing improves the accuracy of our models and allows for identifying a wider scope of training data in a semi-supervised setting. We created a data pipeline for using document vector similarity metrics to perform topic extraction on psychiatric EHR data in service of our long-term goal of creating a readmission risk classifier. We show results for our topic extraction model and identify additional features we will be incorporating in the future.
Relevance-Based Data Masking: A Model-Agnostic Transfer Learning Approach for Facial Expression Recognition

Deep learning approaches are now a popular choice in the field of automatic emotion recognition (AER) across various modalities. Due to the high costs of manually labeling human emotions however, the amount of available training data is relatively scarce in comparison to other tasks. To facilitate the learning process and reduce the necessary amount of training-data, modern approaches therefore often rely on leveraging knowledge from models that have already been trained on related tasks where data is available abundantly. In this work we introduce a novel approach to transfer learning, which addresses two shortcomings of traditional methods: The (partial) inheritance of the original models structure and the restriction to other neural network models as an input source. To this end we identify the parts in the input that have been relevant for the decision of the model we want to transfer knowledge from, and directly encode those relevant regions in the data on which we train our new model. To validate our approach we performed experiments on well-established datasets for the task of automatic facial expression recognition. The results of those experiments are suggesting that our approach helps to accelerate the learning process.
Tobacco-Related Health Disparities in Gender-Diverse Populations: A Call to Action

Transgender and nonbinary (TGNB) persons have profound and broad-ranging health disparities, smoking included. Existing evidence suggests that TGNB persons smoke more, suffer disproportionately fro...
Integration of Securities Offerings — The ABA's 'Indiscreet' Proposal

The integration doctrine in securities law examines issuers who raise funds through a series of offerings claiming each is exempt from the registration requirement. It determines whether those purportedly separate offerings should really be seen as one issuance to determine whether compliance has been made with the exemption. The article argues that this approach of integrating offerings should apply when offerings are close in time and part of the same general plan of financing.
Section 230 and the Twitter Presidency

In response to Twitter’s decision to label one of the President’s tweets misleading, the Trump White House issued an executive order to limit the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act via agency rulemaking. In the Order, Trump calls for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “interpret” Section 230 in a manner that curtails websites’ ability to remove and restrict user speech. This Essay analyzes the Order and concludes that the President’s effort to limit Section 230 will fail. First, the FCC does not have rulemaking authority to issue the proposed rules. Second, the proposed rules cannot be issued because they are inconsistent with the statute. Finally, this Essay will discuss the policy implications of the proposed rules and argue that they would lead to less speech and engagement on the Internet, not more of it.
Introduction: Integration of APP into Urologic Oncology Practice

Improvements in the management of all stages and types of cancer have occurred at a rapid pace. Perhaps, where this is most apparent is in the area of advanced disease states. The traditional approach in the development of cancer therapeutics was to identify an active compound that worked in one type of cancer and then perform Phase 2 trials in a variety of other malignancies to determine its effect. Today’s therapeutic development programs rely upon the identification of precise alterations in the structure and/or function of the malignant cell and specifically targets those abnormalities. This concept is broadly known as precision medicine where the delivery of the intervention is targeted to the right patient at the right time.
BPCnet.org: a resource portal to support your broadening participation in computing work

Broadening participation in computing (BPC) efforts are important and seek to address the underrepresentation of people who identify as women, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities. The BPCnet Resource Portal (BPCnet.org) serves as a clearinghouse for the community to learn about and engage with ongoing projects and opportunities focusing on BPC.
How do primary care doctors compare to dentists in the referral of oral cancer

Data sources The authors searched electronic databases of Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL and Google Scholar until May 2019. They also searched within the reference lists of studies, citation indexes and related articles from these electronic databases. Ongoing studies were searched in Research Registry, and Electronic Theses Online Service was used for searching theses. Study selection The authors conducted a systematic review with meta-analyses of studies that looked at the oral cancer referral by general practitioners (GPs; also referred to as primary care doctors or physicians) and dentists. Specifically, their objectives were to find out the percentage or proportion of oral cancers referred by GPs and dentists, oral cancer stage, and the delay in referral. Twenty-two studies from ten countries fulfilled the inclusion criteria. These were predominantly case series, with some studies being questionnaires, patient interviews and a combination of these. Data extraction and synthesis The data from the studies were independently extracted by three authors, and when they had disagreement, they discussed it as a group to reach a consensus. They used MINORS index to assess the quality of included studies. They did due diligence to contact the authors of included studies to collect missing data. When missing data was not attainable, they assessed the available data. They used appropriate software for data analysis and generated forest plots and heterogeneity tests. They also conducted sub-group analyses of data from within the UK, which has the same medical care system. Results A total of 4,953 oral cancers were included in this systematic review of 22 studies originating from ten countries. For the first objective on percentage or proportion of oral cancers referred by GPs and dentists, the GPs referred 13-86% compared to dentists who referred between 15-80%. Meta-analysis of 22 studies showed that GPs referred more oral cancers than dentists (RR: 1.36; 95 CI: 0.99-1.86). In other words, for every ten patients referred by a dentist, GPs referred 14 patients. Doing the same analysis for the eight studies in the UK, the result was similar with GPs referring more than dentists (RR: 1.36; 95% CI 1.05-1.96). For the second objective on oral cancer stage on presentation, meta-analysis was feasible only on four studies, which showed that dentists tend to refer early-stage (stage 1 and 2) oral cancers more than GPs (RR: 1.37; 95% CI 1.17-1.60). In other words, for every ten early-stage oral cancer patients referred by GPs, dentists referred 14. For the third objective on the delay in referral, the authors were unable to conduct meta-analyses due to the inconsistency of measurement of delay in referral. The studies revealed no statistically significant difference between GPs and dentists. Conclusions Both GPs and dentists refer the majority of oral cancer patients. While GPs tend to refer more oral cancers than dentists, the dentists referred more early-stage oral cancers.
Some Properties of Residual Distribution Schemes for the Euler Equations

A residual distribution technique is presented for the Euler equations, one which splits the updates into purely elliptic and hyperbolic contributions. The scheme combines fluctuation splitting methods ideal for scalar advection and a least squares minimisation appropriate for the elliptic subsystem. The minimisation is constrained to maximally decouple effects of the entropy, enthalpy and acoustic parts from each other. Results show that for subcritical flows where potential solutions should be obtained, the enthalpy is constant to machine zero, and the entropy is constant to an extremely high degree of accuracy. Still under investigation, fluctuation calculations with dissipative effects are presented. They are capable of breaking rarefaction shocks for fluctuation splitting schemes in grid-aligned cases.
Application of Advanced Structural Technologies and Materials to Large Launch Vehicles

Advanced materials and wall construction techniques effects on structural weight of future large launch vehicles, noting design criteria and computerized analysis
The Goals of Environmental Legislation

In the past thirty years, Congress has enacted and revised numerous statutes involving environmental protection. Federal public policy toward environmental pollution has evolved during this time to respond to changing societal needs and new information about the impacts of federal regulation. This Essay will discuss the two broad categories into which regulatory goals of agencies fall: acceptable risk goals and pollution reduction goals. Each of these broad categories, in turn, contains subcategories. Environmental legislation often contains a mix of these goals, and only by examining the complex interaction among them, can the statutory language that specifies the implementation details correctly be understood. Current suggestions for reform would implement a single, simplistic cost-benefit analysis. The present, complex regulatory system allows regulations to meet varying goals, and Congress should be wary of attempts to impose perfection through unidimensional approaches to setting environmental policy.
Vibrational Properties of Zr(Hf)B 2 –SiC UHTC Composites by Micro-Raman Spectroscopy

Development and characterization of novel materials that are lightweight, possess high mechanical properties, can withstand high temperatures, and provide superior thermal properties are crucial to meet the future demands of Air Force, Army, Navy, Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and other military and space agencies. Materials for such applications (hypersonic air-breathing vehicles, including Single-To-Orbit vehicles and Two-Stage-To-Orbit aerospace planes, fully reusable space transport vehicles, hypersonic cruise missiles) experience severe aero-thermal loads with nose-cone and nozzle temperatures in excess of 2,000°F and 4,000°F, respectively. High G acceleration is also a problem. Even the most advanced materials, such as Ti, Inconel X, carbon-carbon, and silicon carbide based composites cannot withstand the excessive heat generated, especially during re-entry, and they cannot meet the guidelines for future high performance aircrafts, kinetic energy interceptors and reusable space planes. Thus, the demand for low-cost, light weight high temperature materials for thermal protection systems (TPS) is expected to be on the significant rise in the near future.
The etiology and neuropathology of alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome. Some evidence for the role of the basal forebrain.

Recent neuropsychological and neuropathological investigations with long-term alcoholics suggest that the etiology and neuropathology of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome are more complex than previously believed. Although problem-solving and visuoperceptual deficits seem to develop slowly during decades of alcoholism, the amnesic symptoms associated with Korsakoff’s syndrome may appear acutely when severe malnutrition and alcoholism are combined. Furthermore, the report that alcoholic Korsakoff patients, like patients with Alzheimer’s disease, have endured a substantial neuronal loss in structures comprising the basal forebrain suggests a role for this brain region in the alcoholic patients’ amnesic syndrome. Some initial demonstrations of similarities in the memory disorders of alcoholic Korsakoff and Alzheimer patients indicate that Korsakoff’s syndrome may be accurately characterized as a “basal forebrain” as well as a “diencephalic” amnesia.
Characterization of atherosclerotic plaque: a contrast-detail study using multidetector and cone-beam computed tomography.

A Hindmarsh-Rose model perceptibility phantom containing inserts with various in vitro atherosclerotic plaque compositions was constructed and imaged on a clinical 64 slice multidetector (MDCT) system using 80 and 120 kVp settings and two other cone-beam (CBCT) systems at 80 kVp. Perceptibility of the simulated lipid-fibrotic plaque solutions in the images was evaluated by six observers. The effective doses of the protocols employed were estimated using phantom CTDI-vol measurements placed at identical settings. The CBCT system allowed reduction in effective dose in comparison with the conventional MDCT system for imaging of the carotid plaque phantoms without degrading image quality. The CBCT dose was less than MDCT, with a mean dose of 1.14 ± 0.01 mSv and 1.11 ± 0.02 mSv for MDCT using two measuring techniques vs. 0.35 ± 0.01 mSv for CBCT. The image quality analysis showed no significant differences in the contrast-detail (C-D) curves of the best performing CBCT vs. clinical MDCT (p > 0.05) using a Mann-Whitney U test. Results indicate that low-tube–potential CBCT may produce comparable C-D resolution for phantom-based representations of soft plaque types with respect to MDCT systems. This study suggests that the utility of low kVp CT techniques for evaluating carotid vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque merits further study.
Regional Analysis of Tourism Resources:: A Case Study of Korea

This study analyzes tourism resources for six cities in nine provinces in Korea using a regional analytical method. Two basic tourism supply structures-tourism supporting services and area size/cultural assets-were identified and further used to find possible different tourism development stages of the fifteen regions in Korea. Findings revealed that the degree of tourism development and growth may vary as a function of tourism supply resources, and tourism supporting services can influence the success of tourism. The study concludes with appropriate marketing and planning implications as suggested by study findings.
Copper dimethylmalonate coordination polymers with 4,4′-bipyridine coligands: Kinetic and thermodynamic products with different dimensionalities

Abstract Slow diffusion of an ethanolic solution of 4,4′-bipyridine (bpy) into an aqueous solution of copper dimethylmalonate (dmmal) afforded two different coordination polymer complexes as time elapsed. These were structurally characterized via single-crystal X-ray diffraction. A small amount of light blue crystals of {[Cu2(dmmal)2(bpy)1.5(H2O)]·2H2O}n (1) were initially deposited at the solution interface. Compound 1 displays a 3,4-connected 2D layer with an unprecedented (426)(42638) topology comprising alternating rows of hexagonal and rectangular circuits. These crystals dissolved as the reaction continued, with dark blue crystals of {[Cu3(dmmal)3(bpy)3(H2O)4]·H2O}n (2) forming at the bottom of the reaction vessel. Compound 2 manifests a 4-connected self-penetrated 658 cds topology. Thermal properties of 2 are also reported.
A single amino acid switch within the “hinge” region of the tryptophan synthase beta subunit of Escherichia coli that leads to diminished association with alpha subunit and arrested conversion of ESII to product

Abstract The trpB8 mutation of Escherichia coli causes a major conformational change within the beta subunit of tryptophan synthase. The basis of this effect is a replacement of glycine 281 by arginine within a structurally important "hinge" region. The mutant subunit, beta(B8), is catalytically active only under certain conditions, both in vivo and in vitro. Physiologically, the availability of wild type alpha subunit is the most important determinant of catalytic proficiency (Zhao, G.-P., and Somerville, R. L. (1992) J. Biol. Chem. 267, 526-541; Zhao, G.-P., and Somerville, R. L. (1993) J. Biol. Chem. 268, 14912-14920). Through enzyme activity titration experiments it was shown that the alpha subunit of tryptophan synthase dramatically stimulates catalysis by the beta 2(B8) mutant enzyme. However, by size exclusion high performance liquid chromatography, the stability of the alpha.beta 2(B8) complex was markedly reduced in comparison with wild type. The alpha-mediated stimulation of catalysis by the beta 2(B8) mutant enzyme was enhanced by polyethylene glycol, a volume excluder. By absorption spectroscopy, it was shown that catalysis by the beta(B8) mutant protein is blocked in at least one step after the formation of a particular Schiff base intermediate (ESII). Either the alpha subunit or ammonium ion was able to overcome this block. The microenvironment of the ESII catalytic intermediate was examined by fluorescence spectroscopy. The data are consistent with a less hydrophobic environment for ESII in the beta 2(B8) mutant protein than in the wild type protein. These lines of evidence not only support a conformational switch model of open versus closed states within the beta subunit during the catalytic cycle but also suggest a functional role for the hinge region in the process of conformational switching.
Inhibition of adipose conversion in 3T3-L2 cells by retinoic acid.

The role of retiinoic acid in modulating the differentiation of 3T3-L2 fibroblasts into adipocytes has been examined. Results indicate that the retinoid is capable of effectively inhibiting the degree of adipose conversion which is brought about by treatment of preadipocytes with 1-methyl-3-isobutylxanthine plus dexamethasone. Morphological and enzymatic (fatty acid synthetase activity) expression of the adipose phenotype are both inhibited more than 90% by 10−6 M retinoic acid. The inhibition is concentration dependent with retinoic acid levels as low as 10−11 M capable of reducing adipose conversion by 20%. Retinoic acid must be administered simultaneously with the triggering agents to be effective. Exposure of nongrowing preadipocytes to retinoic acid does not alter the ability of the cells to differentiate in response to a subsequent treatment with methylisobutylxanthine plus dexamethasone. Further, the inhibition is reversible. Cultures in which methylisobutylxanthine plus dexamethasone triggered differentiation has been blocked by addition of retinoic acid (10−6M) will readily undergo adipose conversion in response to a second treatment with methylisobutylxanthinthine plus dexamethasone in the absence of the retioid. Similar inhibition of differentiation was found when cultures were treated with drugs in medium supplemented with either newborn calf serum or fetal calf serum. However, the extent to which methylisobutylxanthine plus dexamethasone are able to promote differentiation in these cells is considerably greater in medium containing fetal calf serum.
Periodic potential functions for pseudorotation and internal rotation

Abstract A computer program which uses matrix diagonalization techniques has been developed for determining the energy levels and wave-functions for periodic potential functions of the form V = 1 2 ∑Vn(1-cosnφ), where terms with n ranging from 1 to 6 can be used. The mass related internal rotation constant B is also allowed to vary as a function of the phase φ. The energy level patterns of eight different types of potential functions, which are typical for internal rotation and pseudorotation, have been determined. Several applications of such calculations for the interpretation of vibrational data are discussed.
Self-monitoring and reciprocal inhibition in the modification of multiple tics of Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome☆

Abstract An 18-year-old male with multiple tics, including a bark-like vocalization and jerking neck movements, as components of the syndrome of Gilles de la Tourette , was treated using an empirically based practice procedure in an investigation that employed a modified multiple-baseline design. In the assessment, instigating and inhibiting stimulus conditions were identified by collecting observational data on the tics in many life situations in and outside of the rehabilitation unit where the therapy was undertaken. Self-monitoring was found to be tic-inhibiting and when it was introduced in the modification for the vocal tic, the rate dropped immediately and dramatically on the first day. Self-monitoring and reciprocal inhibition procedures were subsequently associated with gradual reduction to nearly zero of a newly emerged minor vocal sound and of the neck tic. Evidence also suggested that the haloperidol the patient had taken previous to treatment and took throughout all but 1 week of the treatment period may have helped to reduce the tics.
Strategies of nitrogen cycling of Phragmites australis at two sites differing in nutrient availability

Below-ground biomass and nitrogen content were determined at two genetically homogeneous Phragmites stands differing in morphology, in productivity, and in nutrient supply. Comparable ratios between above-ground standing crop and rhizome biomass were found at both sites, whereas the root biomass/above standing crop ratio was significantly higher at the nutrient poor site. Investigations on the dynamics of nitrogen content revealed distinct differences in nitrogen translocation to the rhizomes between the investigated clones indicating two ecophysiological strategies in storage behaviour. These two strategies could be attached to the “assimilation type” and to the “translocation type”, respectively. A modified definition of both types is presented.