cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Accidental Protozoologist—My Journey Through the World of Ciliates1,2

The Past-President's Address has been the opportunity for the speaker to reminisce about the road traveled to get to this time in life. In this paper, I continue in that tradition. During my journey to the present day, I visited different laboratories, studying the genetics of mating and mating types in Paramecium, Tetrahymena, Blepharisma and Euplotes. I have met and worked with many distinguished scientists, including other Past-Presidents of the Society. I also became an active participant in the Society of Protozoologists. I hope the recounting of my trip will be both entertaining and enlightening.
An Investigation of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Sonochemistry for Destruction of Hazardous Waste

The primary objective of this research project is to acquire a deeper fundamental knowledge of acoustic cavitation and cavitation chemistry, and in doing so, to ascertain how ultrasonic irradiation can be more effectively applied to environmental problems. The primary objective will be accomplished by examining numerous aspects of sonochemical systems and acoustic cavitation. During the course of the project, the research group will investigate sonochemical kinetics and reactive intermediates, the behavior of heterogeneous (solid/liquid) systems, and the significance of physical variables during sonolysis. An additional component of the project includes utilizing various techniques to image cavitation bubble cloud development.
Strategies to hide communication for a classical molecular dynamics proxy application

Co-designing applications and computer architectures has become of major importance due to the growing complexity of both applications and architectures and the need to better match application characteristics to the available hardware. Thus, "mini-applications", which serve as proxies of large-scale ones by highlighting their most intensive parts and major workflow components, appeared to the co-design, tuning, and adaptation purposes. This paper presents a work on optimizing the communication subsystem of a classical MD proxy (CoMD) application executed on multi-core computing clusters. The research focuses on hiding communication with certain buffer handling operations. In particular, two strategies are presented: one that uses two parallel threads for communication and buffer handling and another that introduces more parallelism by allowing all the available threads to unload the buffers while using two thread to communicate, thereby improving load balancing. The first proposed strategy yields performance gains up to 61% in the communication routines, corresponding to 6% gains in the overall time, while the second strategy achieves, respectively, about 73% and 6.3% improvement.
CHRIST, THE LORD OF PSYCHOLOGY

The lordship of Christ over all of a Christian’s life is an assumption basic to Christianity. The acknowledgement of his lordship in psychology is especially problematic today because of the pervasive naturalism and neo-positivism of modern psychology. Nevertheless, an understanding of the kingdom concept in Scripture suggests that Christians are inevitably called to work towards the expression of Christ’s lordship in psychology. This occurs as the Christian pursues psychological knowledge and practice before God, aware that all true truth about human nature is an expression of God’s mind, that sin and finitude limit one’s ability to grasp the truth, that the Scriptures are needed to properly interpret human nature, and that kingdom activity involves a faithful response to Christ’s lordship in one’s work with others and one’s knowing of human nature. Consequently, everything the Christian does is to be done in Jesus’ name to the glory of God (Col. 3:17; 1 Cor. 10:31). Submitting to the authority of Christ in all of one’s life was a distinguishing mark of an early Christian and seems fundamental to Christianity.
Wendell R. Smith

preceded by another decade of part-time and full-time employment in retailing. During high-school and college days Wendell Smith learned retailing at the grassroots level by selling in the family shoe store in Shenandoah, Iowa. Upon graduation from the State University of Iowa in 1932, the 21-year-old Smith worked in the family business for another two years, except for a brief interlude as a "trainee" with the Florsheim Shoe Company in Chicago. A graduate assistantship at his alma mater facilitated Smith's return to the academic world in 1934. Later he was appointed an Instructor in the College of Commerce and WENDELL worked toward his Ph.D. degree, which was conferred in 1941. With time out for employment with the Office of Price Administration during World War II, Dr. Smith progressed through the
Insect sex pheromones : Effect of temperature on evaporation rates of acetates from rubber septa.

The half-lives (t1/2) for evaporative loss ofn-alkyl andn-alkenyl acetates from rubber septa were determined at temperatures varying from 15 to 35 °C. The changes int1/2 with temperature gave high correlations with the equation, Int1/2 = ΔH/RT+yo where ΔΔH is the heat of vaporization,R is the gas constant,T is the absolute temperature, andyo is a constant. Half-lives changed dramatically with temperature and the degree of change with temperature increased with increasing molecular weight. For mixtures, component ratios changed with temperature, but the degree was modest. At 20 °C there was a 7.5-fold ratio oft1/2 between members of the homologousn-alkyl orn-alkenyl acetates differing by two carbon atoms. The large change int1/2 with temperature and with number of carbon atoms is a consequence of the thermodynamic relationships and the temperature range of pheromone usage. Therefore, a similar degree of change inf1/2 with temperature and number of carbon atoms will apply to other formulations of the same type (those in which the rate of evaporation is first order). The values oft1/2 at 20 °C mainly agreed very well with those reported previously at room temperature. However, our previously reported values for pentadecyl and hexadecyl acetate were revised. Half-lives were shown to depend on the vapor pressure of a compound in the formulation substrate, but not on the vapor pressure of the pure compound.
A new species of the genus {\sl Diplatys} (Dermaptera: Diplatyidae) from Yunnan

The paper reports a new species of the genus Diplatys Servilie. Type specimens are deposited in the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, China Diplatys liukuensis, sp. nov. (Figs. 1~3) The new species resembles D. linberatus Burr, but can be distinguished form the latter by the following Characfeis: 1) eyes relative small, shorter than the length of the head behind eyes; 2) pronotum about as long as broad; 3) external paramere short; 4) virgar bifurcating, each filament ending in a trumpt-like structure. Holotype: ♂, Liuku County, Yunnan Province, 20-Ⅴ-1984, coll. ZHOU Wen-bao; Paratypes: 1♀, 4♂♂, same data as holotype.
Effect of Berberine on Proliferation of Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle Cells in Rats

Objective:To investigate the effect of berberine on proliferation of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells(PASMCs)in rats.Methods:PASMCs cultured by tissue-sticking method were randomly divided into control,model,berberine(105～107?mol/L),nifedipine,and vehicle groups.The cells proliferation abilitiy was determined by mono-nuclear cell direct cytotoxicity assay.The cell cycle was analyzed by flow cytometry.Results:Berberine significantly inhi-bited the proliferation of PASMCs,and up-regulated significantly the constituent ratio of PASMCs G0/G1 cell cycle,and down-regulated proliferation index.Conclusion:Berberine antagonizes the proliferation of PASMCs induced by angiotensin Ⅱ.
Information Encounters in the Beauty Salon

The beauty salon is a small world in which information is given and shared on a daily basis. Studying information encounters that occur in the beauty salon can further our understanding of information seeking, giving, sharing and use within the context of everyday life.
The Influence of Loading Rate and Stress Concentration Factors on Notch Properties of Three Sheet Alloys at Room Temperature, -78°, and -196°C

The use of metals at cryogenic temperatures has become especially important in the missile and space vehicle era. As a result, many investigators are studying the effects of stress concentrations, section size, strain rate, and other parameters at subzero temperatures.
Tools and techniques for building High Performance Linux clusters

In the last few years, the High Performance Computing (HPC) community has been embracing Linux based clusters for its computing needs. PC clusters provide low cost scalable computing infrastructure by making use of commodity components.
Dramatic secretion of recombinant protein expressed in tobacco cells with a designer glycopeptide tag is highly impacted by medium composition

Cell growth medium composition has profound impacts on the O -glycosylation of a “designer” arabinogalactan protein-based module; full glycosylation is essential in directing efficient extracellular secretion of the tagged recombinant protein. Expression of recombinant proteins in plant cells as fusion with a de novo designed hydroxyproline (Hyp)-O-glycosylated peptide (HypGP) tag, termed HypGP engineering technology, resulted in dramatically increased secreted protein yields. This is due to the function of the HypGP tag as a molecular carrier in promoting efficient transport of conjoined proteins into culture media. To optimize the cell culture to achieve the best secreted protein yields, the medium effects on the cell growth and protein secretion were investigated using as a model system the tobacco BY-2 cell expressing enhanced green fluorescence protein (EGFP) fused with a (SP)32 tag (32 tandem repeats of “Ser-Pro” motif). The (SP)32 tag was found to undergo two-stage Hyp-O-glycosylation in plant cells with the dramatic secretion of the conjoined EGFP correlating with the triggering of the second-stage glycosylation. The BY-2 cell culture in SH medium generated a high secreted protein yield (125 mg/L) with a low cell biomass accumulation (~7.5 gDW/L). In contrast, very low secreted protein yields (~1.5 mg/L) with a high cell biomass accumulation (13.5 gDW/L) were obtained in MS medium. The macronutrients, specifically, the nitrogen supply greatly impacted the glycosylation of the (SP)32 tag and subsequent protein secretion. Modified MS medium with reduced nitrogen levels boosted the secreted EGFP yields to 168 mg/L. This study demonstrates the profound impacts of medium composition on the secreted yields of a HypGP-tagged protein, and provides a basis for medium design to achieve the highest productivity of the HypGP engineering technology.
Nut Intake among Overweight and Obese African-American Women in the Rural South.

OBJECTIVE Nut consumption decreases risk for obesity and chronic diseases, which are prevalent among African-American women in the rural southeastern United States. The quantity and quality of nut intake in this population is unclear. We examined the amount, source, and quality of nut consumption among overweight and obese African-American women in rural Alabama and Mississippi. METHODS Two 24-hour dietary recalls were administered to 426 women. Mann-Whitney tests, t-tests, and linear regression models identified differences in added sugar and sodium intake between nut consumers and non-consumers, differences in mean nut, added sugar, and sodium intake between stand-alone and incorporated nut sources, and a relationship between nut intake and added sugar and sodium intake. RESULTS Forty-two percent of participants consumed nuts, and 16% met federal recommendations for nut intake. Nut consumption was mainly from incorporated sources (65%), which were higher in added sugar (p < .001) and sodium (p < .001), and lower in nut quantity (p < .001) than stand-alone sources. Nut consumers consumed more daily added sugar (p = .004) and sodium (p = .04) than non-consumers. CONCLUSION Suboptimal quantity and quality of nut intake may impede the health benefits of nut consumption among African-American women in the rural South.
Wind Loads in Dome-Cylinder and Dome-Cone Shapes

Test data are presented for wind load distribution on hemispheres and four domes of varying span that are to rise ratio-supported by cylinders of several heights. Two tests for domes on a truncated cone are also presented. The results are given in the form of pressure coefficient contour maps of the surface.
M. Riesz Theorem on Conjugate Harmonic Functions for Octonion-Valued Monogenic Functions

The classical theorem of M. Riesz about the conjugate harmonic functions is extended onto octonion-valued monogenic functions.
Application and Evaluation of Entomopathogens in Vegetable Row Crops: Potato

More than 280 million metric tons of potatoes are produced throughout the world annually. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, the United States produces nearly 22 million metric tons of potatoes a year, making it the fourth largest potato producer in the world. In some regions, potato is grown as a dryland crop; in others, it is overhead-irrigated with a traveling gun-type irrigation or a central pivot irrigation system. Furrow irrigation is seldom used.
The architectural organization of nuclear metabolism

Nucleic acid metabolism is structurally organized in the nucleus. DNA replication and transcription have been localized to particular nuclear domains. Additional domains have been identified by their morphology or by their composition; for example, by their high concentration of factors involved in RNA splicing. The domain organization of the nucleus is maintained by the nuclear matrix, a nonchromatin nuclear scaffolding that holds most nuclear RNA and organizes chromatin into loops. The nuclear matrix is built on a network of highly branched core filaments that have an average diameter of 10 nm. Many of the intermediates and the regulatory and catalytic factors of nucleic acid metabolism are retained in nuclear matrix preparations, suggesting that nucleic acid synthesis and processing are structure-bound processes in cells. Tissue-specific and malignancy-induced variations in nuclear structure and metabolism may result from altered matrix architecture and composition.
A Lifecycle Cost Analysis of Residential Buildings Including Natural Hazard Risk

AbstractDespite isolated efforts in the cost assessment of design strategies for energy-efficient and resilient buildings, there is still a need for an integrated assessment that incorporates major...
Clinical Effects and Applications of Ketamine

Ketamine was originally developed as a potent but safe intravenous anesthetic drug which has subsequently been used for premedication, sedation, induction, and maintenance of general anesthesia (Sinner and Graf, Handb Exp Pharmacol 182:313–333, 2008). It is currently widely administered to children for dissociative sedation for painful procedures performed outside the operating room (Green et al., Ann Emerg Med 54:158–168, 2009; Green et al., Ann Emerg Med 54(2):171–80.e1–4, 2009). Due to its unique and diverse properties, a large number of additional indications for ketamine have developed since it was derived from phencyclidine in 1963. This chapter will review the history, pharmacology, clinical effects, and applications of ketamine. The evidence for and against traditional and expanding indications for ketamine administration will be examined.
Comparing the effects of electronic cigarette vapor and cigarette smoke in a novel in vivo exposure system

Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) are being widely used, and growing in popularity. It is estimated that more than 9 million adults use them regularly. The potential adverse health effects of electronic cigarette vapor (E-vapor) exposure are poorly defined. While several animal models of E-vapor exposure have been developed, few models expose rodents to clinically relevant quantities of nicotine and make direct comparisons to cigarette smoke within the same exposure system. Here, we present a method for constructing and operating an E-vapor chamber and cigarette smoke chamber. The chambers are constructed by outfitting anesthesia chambers with a computer controlled pumping system that delivers consistent amounts of E-vapor or cigarette smoke to rodents. Nicotine exposure is measured indirectly by quantifying pre and post-exposure serum cotinine levels. This exposure system can be modified to accommodate various types of E-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes, and can be used to compare the effects of E-vapor and cigarette smoke in vivo.
Structural Basis for Interaction of the Tandem Zinc Finger Domains of Human Muscleblind with Cognate RNA from Human Cardiac Troponin T.

The human muscleblind-like proteins (MBNL) regulate tissue-specific splicing by targeting cardiac troponin T and other pre-mRNAs; aberrant targeting of CUG and CCUG repeat expansions frequently accompanies the neuromuscular disease myotonic dystrophy. We show, using biolayer interferometry (Octet) and NMR spectroscopy, that the zinc finger domains of MBNL isoform 1 (MBNL1) are necessary and sufficient for binding CGCU sequences within the pre-mRNA of human cardiac troponin T. Protein constructs containing zinc fingers 1 and 2 (zf12) and zinc fingers 3 and 4 (zf34) of MBNL1 each fold into a compact globular tandem zinc finger structure that participates in RNA binding. NMR spectra show that the stoichiometry of the interaction between zf12 or zf34 and the CGCU sequence is 1:1, and that the RNA is single-stranded in the complex. The individual zinc fingers within zf12 or zf34 are nonequivalent: the primary RNA binding surface is formed in each pair by the second zinc finger (zf2 or zf4), which interacts wit...
Underreporting of research biopsies from clinical trials in oncology

Purpose: Research biopsies are frequently incorporated within clinical trials in oncology and are often a mandatory requirement for trial enrollment. However, limited information is available regarding the extent and completeness of research biopsy reporting.Experimental Design: We identified a cohort of therapeutic clinical trials where research biopsies were performed between January 2005 and October 2010 from an IR database at our institution. Clinical trial protocols were compared with the highest level of corresponding publication as a manuscript or registry report.Results: A total of 866 research biopsies were performed across 46 clinical trials, with a median of 8 patients biopsied/trial and 19 biopsies collected/trial. After a median follow-up time of 4.3 years from trial completion, 36 of 46 trials (78%) reported trial results: published manuscripts (n = 35), or registry report (n = 1). A total of 635 conducted biopsies were reported in 18 of the 46 trials (39%). Six (33%) of these 18 trials underreported the number of biopsies performed. Of 33 trials with mandatory research biopsies, 13 (39%) trials reported on these biopsies. Biopsy complications occurred in 8 trials [n = 39 patients, 6 grade 3/4 adverse events (AE)] but only 1 trial reported these. Factors associated with biopsy reporting included a larger number of biopsies (P ≤ 0.001) and serial biopsies (P 12 biopsies performed reported on these biopsies compared with only 20% (6/30) that performed ≤12 biopsies.Conclusions: Despite ethical obligations to report research biopsies, the majority (61%) of trials do not report results from research biopsies. Complications are rarely reported in these studies. Improved reporting of results and AEs from research biopsies is needed. Clin Cancer Res; 23(21); 6450-7. ©2017 AACR.
Ontology and Transcendental Phenomenology Between Husserl and Heidegger

In 1983 Timothy Stapleton advanced the interesting claim that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology was largely motivated by an ontological problematic and not, as is more commonly thought, an epistemological one.1 Critical examination of this claim provides a convenient framework for what I would like to do in this essay, viz., start to clarify the new sense of “ontology” demanded by phenomenological philosophy so far as it is genuine “first philosophy,” in which (as Husserl always claimed) “the total sense of philosophy, accepted as ‘obvious’ throughout all its historical forms, [is] basically and essentially transformed.”’ My question is whether or not there can be an ontological transcendental philosophy, and it concerns the systematic relations between Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. I believe that too much has traditionally been made of their differences. Though there are obvious places where the two positions are incompatible, I would argue that Heidegger is better seen as developing and advancing Husserl’s transcendental philosophy, than as rejecting it altogether.
Interactive Computer Graphics And Robots: Design, Anavsis And Programming

AbstractThe interface between interactive computer graphics and robotics is examined in terms of design, analysis, and programming. Dynamic and kinematic simulations are used to design and evaluate...
Active pulse shaping circuit for bandwidth enhancement of high-brightness LEDs using GaN devices

HB-LED sources which generates high speed optical pulses are desired in applications such as Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) for Time-of-Flight (ToF) measurements and Visible Light Communications (VLC). Inherent optical bandwidth of HB-LEDs plays a major role in generating high speed optical pulse outputs. Pulse shaping the current flowing through HB-LEDs, is a technique used for their bandwidth enhancement. In this paper, a new active pulse shaping circuit that enhances the bandwidth of HB-LEDs by 3x is presented. In addition, this pulse shaping circuit employed with constant current output LED drivers provides illumination control of HB-LEDs. Further, realization of the proposed pulse shaping circuit with GaN-based HEMTs resulted in performance improvement.
Current and Future Use of Insertable Cardiac Monitors

Insertable cardiac monitors (ICMs) are small, subcutaneously implanted devices offering continuous ambulatory electrocardiogram monitoring with a lifespan up to 3 years. ICMs have been studied and proven useful in selected cases of unexplained syncope and palpitations, as well as in atrial fibrillation (AF) management. The use of ICMs has greatly improved our ability to detect subclinical AF after cryptogenic stroke, and application of this technology is growing. Despite this, current stroke and cardiology society guidelines are lacking in recommendations for monitoring of subclinical AF following cryptogenic stroke, including the optimal timing from stroke event, duration, and method of electrocardiogram monitoring. This focused review outlines the current society guidelines, summarizes the latest evidence, and describes current and future use of ICMs with an emphasis on detection of subclinical AF in patients with cryptogenic stroke.
Radio Frequency Tomography for Nondestructive Testing of Pillars

Pillars represent some of the commonest supporting elements of modern and historical buildings. Nondestructive testing methods can be applied to gain information about the status of these structural elements. Among them, ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a popular diagnostic tool for the assessment of concrete structures. Despite several theoretical and experimental studies on concrete structural evaluation by GPR have been reported, little work has been done so far with respect to pillars. Owing to their circular geometry, pillars are complex multiscattering environments, which render the interpretation of the radar images very challenging. This article deals with the application of radio frequency tomography as a nondestructive technique for imaging the inner structure of pillars. The main goal of the study is the assessment of the imaging performance that can be obtained in comparison to conventional GPR exploiting a multimonostatic configuration. Accordingly, potentialities and performance of multimonostatic and multiview/multistatic measurement configurations are herein investigated in the inverse scattering framework. For each measurement configuration, the regularized reconstruction of a point-like target and the spectral content are evaluated. The data inversion is carried out by means of the truncated singular value decomposition scheme. Tomographic reconstructions based on full-wave synthetic data are shown to support the comparative analysis.
Demographic Influences and Health Disparities in Adults with Diabetes

Disparities in diabetes burden and outcomes can largely depend on factors related to peoples’ demographic influences, social and ecological conditions, and system-level factors—many of which are preventable in nature. In Unequal Treatment, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) emphasizes unacceptable causes of health disparities that stem from the health-care system, arguing that health-care contributions to health disparities should be systematically eliminated. The US Department of Health and Human Services has called for an even broader view of what determines health, highlighting the “determinants of health not only at the individual level but also in broader society that lay bare the unacceptable.” In this chapter, we will review important demographic factors that contribute to health disparities among patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, including age, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. For each demographic factor, we will review differences in the incidence and prevalence of diabetes, disease-related outcomes, health-care access, and health-care quality received. We will then expand our perspective from individual-level demographic factors to examine intersectionality of key demographic factors, spatial contexts, and the socioecological role of place. Finally, we will review system-level factors in health care and the community and current efforts to address the multilevel determinants of diabetes disparities.
Factors Associated With Completion: Pathways Through Developmental Mathematics:

This study examines two 5-year longitudinal data sets of community college students (n = 595 and n = 593) to explore factors associated with successful outcomes in developmental mathematics. Logist...
Efficient Characterization of Topological Photonics Using the Broadband Green’s Function

A novel method is developed in this paper to characterize the band diagram and modal fields of gyromagnetic photonic crystals that support topolgoical one-way edge states. We exploy an integral equation based method that utilizes the broadband Green’s function as the kernel. The broadband Green’s function is a hybrid representation of the periodic lattice Green’s function that includes an imaginary wavenumber component represented in exponentially decaying spatial series and a reminder in fast converging Floquet plane wave expansions. Special boundary conditions govern the fields across the interface of the gyromagnetic scatterers, leading to surface integral equations (SIEs) that involve three components including the pilot field, its normal derivative and its tangential derivative. To reduce the independent number of unknowns, roof-top basis functions and the Garlerkin’s method are used to discretize the SIEs into matrix equations. The broadband Green’s function allows converting the discretized SIEs into a linear eigenvalue problem of a small size. The eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the linear eigenvalue problem are directly related to the band solutions and modal fields of the photonic crystal. The proposed approach is an effective method to characterize wave interactions with periodic scatterers using integral equations. The solutions of the presented approach are compared against Comsol simulations for various cases to show its accuracy and efficiency.
Distribution of uterine blood flow in the pregnant sheep

Abstract Uterine flows in 14 pregnant sheep were determined before, during, and after the infusion of radioactive microspheres into the maternal arch of the aorta. The distribution of microspheres in the endometrium, myometrium, and cotyledons was then measured and the regional blood flows to these structures calculated and related to gestational age and fetal weight. As fetal weight increases, the flow to the cotyledons increases markedly, while the flows to the uterine muscle and endometrium show no significant changes.
Chapter 105 – Fossil Record

Publisher Summary This chapter presents insects as a fossil record. The small size and external cuticle of insects are largely responsible for the many modes of fossilization, which are much more varied than for vertebrates and plants. Insect fossils are most commonly encountered as impressions or compressions in sediments generally as disarticulated cuticle and particularly as wings because these are especially resistant to decay. Because wing venation has many systematically significant features, isolated wings often can be identified at least to family level. Remains in sediments are highly compressed, but can still reveal microscopic structures such as flagellomeres, tarsomeres, microtrichia, wing scales, and even color patterns. The earliest remains of terrestrial animals are arthropods from the Silurian, including primitive scorpions, millipedes, and Trigonotarbida. Two major hypotheses on the origins of the hexapods are that they are most closely related to either the myriapods or the Crustacea. Crustacea may actually have the oldest fossil record of all animals because some Precambrian fossils have recently been reinterpreted as crustaceans. If hexapods are closely related to crustaceans, it is most likely to be a group within Crustacea, and the earliest evidence of this stem group will probably be found in the Silurian.
Liberalization and the Behavior of Output during the Transition from Plan to Market

This paper deals with liberalization and the evolution of output during the transition from plan to market. It explains why strong liberalization leads to a comparatively steep fall in output early in the transition, but a relatively strong recovery later on. Because it takes time to restructure the capital stock inherited from the old system, liberalization initially leads to transitional unemployment of capital and the contraction of the old enterprise sector. By making room quickly for the new, more efficient enterprises, however, liberalization also sets the stage for recovery and a much higher level of income in the medium term.
Haptic Knowledge Transfer Between Heterogeneous Robots using Kernel Manifold Alignment

Humans learn about object properties using multiple modes of perception. Recent advances show that robots can use non-visual sensory modalities (i.e., haptic and tactile sensory data) coupled with exploratory behaviors (i.e., grasping, lifting, pushing, dropping, etc.) for learning objects’ properties such as shape, weight, material and affordances. However, non-visual sensory representations cannot be easily transferred from one robot to another, as different robots have different bodies and sensors. Therefore, each robot needs to learn its task-specific sensory models from scratch. To address this challenge, we propose a framework for knowledge transfer using kernel manifold alignment (KEMA) that enables source robots to transfer haptic knowledge about objects to a target robot. The idea behind our approach is to learn a common latent space from multiple robots’ feature spaces produced by respective sensory data while interacting with objects. To test the method, we used a dataset in which 3 simulated robots interacted with 25 objects and showed that our framework speeds up haptic object recognition and allows novel object recognition.
From "knowing" to "not knowing": Critical global citizenship education for engineering partnerships

This article was part of a larger study that explored community participants’ perspectives in [Municipality, Country] about the long-term global service learning (GSL) partnership with [Name of university] University’s College of Engineering (Author, year). This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I also explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the different stakeholder groups’ perspectives about learning and knowledge. Although global citizenship surfaced in interviews with both community and university participants, the community participant perspectives push farther than the university administrators/ faculty and call for critical global citizenship education (Andreotti, 2006).
Hyperparameter Analysis for Derivative Compressive Sampling.

Derivative compressive sampling (DCS) is a signal reconstruction method from measurements of the spatial gradient with sub-Nyquist sampling rate. Applications of DCS include optical image reconstruction, photometric stereo, and shape-from-shading. In this work, we study the sensitivity of DCS with respect to algorithmic hyperparameters using a brute-force search algorithm. We perform experiments on a dataset of surface images and deduce guidelines for the user to setup values for the hyperparameters for improved signal recovery performance.
Government Regulation of the Food Supply and Labeling

Consumers want the assurance that they have a sure, safe, and sanitary food supply. They want deceptive claims and fraudulence to be nonissues for them to face in everyday life. Therefore, for centuries, governments throughout the world have regulated the food supply. Federal, state, and local government, their regulation, enforcement, as well as the educational materials they offer, assist in providing a safe food supply. The intent of this chapter is to view government regulation of the food supply and labeling. However, a safe and sound food supply is still dependent, not alone on a government agency or program yet also upon the individual!
Hymnary.org: The Use of a New Database in Hymnology

Hymnary.org is a large hymnological database that provides information about thousands of hymnals and millions of hymn instances. It has media files and nearly 2,000 scanned hymnals. The authors conducted a user survey between August 1, 2011 and January 31, 2012 to determine a typical user profile and user expectations of Hymnary.org. Respondents were asked to provide information about themselves, their interest in hymnody, how they found Hymnary.org, how they used it, and whether the database met their information needs. The survey revealed that frequent users are most commonly involved with worship planning, followed by users with an academic interest in hymnological information. The primary entry point to Hymnary.org was a search for a specific hymnal, and users were interested in both text and tune information. Users show a need to understand the limitations of copyright, and to be made aware of the commercial hymn arrangements available via Hymnary.org.
GLUCOSE PROMOTES WHOLE-BODY PROTEIN SYNTHESIS FROM INFUSED AMINOACIDS IN FASTING MAN: Isotopic Demonstration

15N-glycine constant infusion, with plateau urea enrichment as the endpoint, demonstrated a clear increase in whole-body protein synthesis when glucose was added to aminoacid infusion in fasting men. Whole-body protein-breakdown rates remained unchanged. There was an unexpected fall in whole-body nitrogen turnover when the subjects were changed from an oral intake to either of the intravenous programmes: this finding, not previously reported, may be due to the decrease in gastrointestinal enzyme synthesis and intestinal-lining cell-turnover when oral intake is replaced by total parenteral nutrition.
NONPROFIT AND RESIDENT COLLABORATIVES: AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL FOR COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN PLANNING?

Attempts to encourage and institutionalize citizen participation in planning are fraught with tensions between democratic participation and professional expertise; the reconciliation of local or group interests with larger, citywide interests; process versus outcome; and so on. Who participates, why, on whose terms, how, and with what consequences for themselves, their neighborhoods, the decision process, and outcomes, have been the subject of numerous studies. In this context, a distinction has emerged between mere citizen involvement in planning initiated by public agencies to grassroots and bottom-up planning that originates from within neighborhoods and citizen groups and whose decisions are adopted by public agencies. Through a case study based in Madison, Wisconsin, this paper identifies an institutional alternative that addresses some of the tensions related to community participation in planning and the problems associated with collaboration: a resident-nonprofit collaborative within a larger urban context facilitative of neighborhood planning. The paper provides a brief overview of the process, identifies lessons from this process for community participation and grassroots planning, and places this experience in the larger debates on participation. It discusses the value of resident-nonprofit collaboratives within the comparative framework of alternative forms of community participation. A concluding section discusses the implications of these findings for planning practice.
Autonomous design of functional structures

We present an algorithm that enables a humanoid robot to reason about its environment and use the available objects to build bridges, stairs and lever-fulcrum systems. Facing a challenge that is otherwise intractable, such as climbing a height or moving a heavy object, the proposed planner reasons about the physical limitations of the robot to design functional structures. Inducing constraints on the space of possible designs within a classical planning framework, the algorithm outputs feasible structures that can be used towards accomplishing goals. We present results in dynamic simulation with Golem Hubo, walking on a bridge to cross a hazardous area, and in real-world with Golem Krang, overturning 100 kg loads and pushing 240 kg obstacles.
Book Review: Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music

Editors: Neil Lerner and Joseph N. Straus. Foreword by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. Reviewer: Kevin Schwandt, School of Music, University of Minnesota Publisher: Routledge, 2006 Paper, ISBN: 0-415-97907-2, 312 pages.
The New Stratigraphy and its promise for paleobiology

If your undergraduate experience in stratigraphy was anything like mine, it was overwhelmingly dull. It was all about nomenclature and classification and endless lists of formation names. There were apparently no questions to be asked and the goal of stratigraphy was to devise boxes into which to place all types of geologic data. Notwithstanding the important work of correlation, the perception was that it was the sedimentologists who did the real science, science that focused on the processes of sediment accumulation and their controlling factors. Since then, stratigraphy has undergone a conceptual revolution, and it is necessary to examine how the field has changed and what those advances mean for paleobiology.
17O and 14N spectroscopy of 17O‐labeled nucleic acid bases

Oxygen-17 and nitrogen-14 nuclear magnetic resonance techniques have been utilized in studying liquid-state hydrogen bonding interactions between nucleic acid bases and between the bases and solvent. The bases uracil and thymine have been labeled with 17O at positions 2 and 4, cytosine at position 2 and thymine riboside at position 4. The 17O chemical shift was found to be a sensitive structural probe and to provide information concerning the resonance forms that contribute to the total wave function. The chemical shift of the oxygen of thymine and uracil at position 2 was detected at a higher field than that of oxygen at position 4, presumably owing to an increased contribution of single bonded-oxygen valence bond structures at position 2. The 17O and 14N chemical shifts of cytosine were found to be strongly pH dependent, and the results have been interpreted in terms of predominant cytosine resonance structures contributing to the aqueous cation and anion. The 17O line width of cytosine in aqueous solution indicates the presence of hydrogen bonded dimers between neutral and cationic forms.
Dynamic congestion control and error recovery over a heterogeneous Internet

In the heterogeneous Internet of the future, end-to-end transport protocols for error recovery and congestion control must be able to handle large bandwidth delay products, random loss (i.e., loss due to phenomena which occur on a time scale faster than the feedback delay), and possibly asymmetry between the bottleneck link capacities on the data and acknowledgement (ACK) paths. Our objective in this paper is to provide a flavor of transport protocol design and analysis in this scenario by illustrating two key points: (a) Although rigorous analysis for transport protocols over heterogeneous networks is difficult, approximate analysis can be used to obtain rules of thumb that are invaluable for designing network level controls for supporting transport protocols. This is illustrated by showing how our recently developed analytical understanding of TCP/IP, the popular Internet transport protocol, leads to network control mechanisms for hiding the time variations and losses of a wireless link from TCP, or for dealing with the effect of asymmetry. (b) While it is not clear that the feedback structure required to apply traditional control schemes is available at the transport layer, application of systems level thinking in protocol design can lead to significant performance gains over TCP/IP. We illustrate this using our recent work on a transport protocol based on a novel ACK format that conveys information sufficient for error recovery and congestion control even with an ACK path of poor quality.
Tryptophan Induction of the Serotonin and Kynurenine Pathways in the Early Amphibian Embryo

THE amino-acid tryptophan can be metabolized along two different pathways (Fig. 1), each of which is characteristic for a particular type of tissue. As the substrate of L-tryptophan oxygenase, it is a source of pyridine nucleotide. This metabolic pathway occurs only in the liver1. Alternatively, tryptophan can be hydroxylated in the 5-position and further metabolized to yield serotonin and melatonin. Serotonin is synthesized mainly by cells derived from the embryonic neuroectoderm2; melatonin production, which in mammals is restricted to the pineal gland, also occurs in the eye and brain of amphibia3,4.
The role of an NMI in providing support to the electrical power industry in the era of smart grid

The existing electrical power generation, transmission, and distribution grid systems in most countries use technologies and strategies that are more than 50 years old, long before the proliferation of digital communications and control technologies that we rely on today. This limits the systems capabilities to detect and address emerging problems before they affect services. In a broader sense, this will also prohibit the systems to respond to local and system wide inputs for other system problems, for example, performing extensive measurements, rapid communications, centralized advanced diagnostics and feedback control, etc. are not feasible. However, all these capabilities are necessary for quickly returning the system to a stable state after interruptions, disturbances or even outages. The current grid system is straining under outdated technology and increasing demand for high-quality power. The stresses of increased power needs exert on the grid are shown through unreliable service and blackouts, which pose significant economic and safety threats to the society.
Cognitive processing for nonlinear radar

An increasingly cluttered electromagnetic environment (EME) is a growing problem for radar systems. This problem is becoming critical as the available frequency spectrum shrinks due to growing wireless communication device usage and changing regulations. A possible solution to these problems is cognitive radar, where the cognitive radar learns from the environment and intelligently modifies the transmit waveform. In this paper, a cognitive nonlinear radar processing framework is introduced where the main components of this framework consist of spectrum sensing processing, target detection and classification, and decision making. The emphasis of this paper is to introduce a spectrum sensing processing technique that identifies a transmit-receive frequency pair for nonlinear radar. It will be shown that the proposed technique successfully identifies a transmit-receive frequency pair for nonlinear radar from data collected from the EME.
Factors involved in treatment failures following oral penicillin therapy of streptococcal pharyngitis.

Among 331 children with group A streptococcal pharyngitis who were treated with a 10 day oral regimen of either sodium nafcillin or penicillin V potassium, there were 39 treatment failures. There was no correlation between the incidence of relapse and patient's age, sex, interval between onset of illness and onset of therapy, history of respiratory tract allergy, compliance in completing therapy, concomitant presence of penicillinase-producing staphylococci, or incidence of homologous streptococci in household contacts. There was, however, a significantly higher incidence of relapse in patients harboring M-typable strains, as compared with patients harboring nontypable strains; this was particularly evident for patients with types 3 and 12 streptococci. Among the relapse group, there was no difference in the bacteriologic outcome of those patients who received a second course of treatment as compared with the patients who were not re-treated.
The accuracy of binocular vergence for peripheral stimuli

Abstract Two experiments were conducted to investigate the roles of dark vergence and retinal eccentricity as factors influencing binocular vergence responses. A nonius alignment technique was used to measure vergence responses in total darkness (dark vergence) and for dim binocular stimuli presented at retinal eccentricities ranging from 2° to 8° over distances ranging from 28.5 to 342cm. The results indicate that vergence was progressively less accurate with stimuli at increasing retinal eccentricities and that errors of fixation were biased toward the individual's dark vergence position. The hypothesis that dark vergence represents the functional resting state of the vergence system which influences oculomotor fusional responses under a variety of conditions is discussed.
Zur Struktur einiger Kondensationsprodukte von Formaldehyd mit 1.2-Diaminen

Fur die Kondensationsprodukte as Formaldehyd mit Athylendiamin, o-Phenylendiamin und 3.4-Diamino-toluol wird mit Hilfe der Protonenresonanzspektren eine 1.4.6.9-Tetraaza-tricyclo[4.4.1.14.9]dodecan-Struktur nachgewiesen.
Defect luminescence in irradiated MgO

Abstract It has only recently been established that in irridiated and additively colored MgO crystals both the F+ center (an oxygen-ion vacancy with one trapped electron) and the neutral F center (an oxygen-ion vacancy with two trapped electrons) absorb light near 5.0 eV. In these crystals excitation with 5.0 eV light or X-rays produces an emission band at 3.13 eV, which can be correlated with ESR measurements of the F+ center. In neutron irradiated crystals, additional emission bands are observed which are attributed to defect cluster centers. In these crystals we find a luminescence band at 1.55 eV which is due to the effect which produces the 2.16 eV absorption band.
Effects of quantum stress tensor fluctuations with compact extra dimensions

The effects of compact extra dimensions upon quantum stress tensor fluctuations are discussed. It is argued that as the compactification volume decreases, these fluctuations increase in magnitude. In principle, this would have the potential to create observable effects, such as luminosity fluctuations or angular blurring of distant sources, and lead to constraints upon Kaluza-Klein theories. However, the dependence of the four-dimensional Newton's constant upon the compactification volume causes the gravitational effects of the stress tensor fluctuations to be finite in the limit of small volume. Consequently, no observational constraints upon Kaluza-Klein theories are obtained.