cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Isolation and propagation of the virus of transmissible

Of four strains of TGE virus tested, the Purdue strain could be propagated serially and produced a cytopathic effect (CPE) in primary monolayer cultures of adult and fetal pig kidney cells, pig thyroid cells, and pig salivary gland cells. In kidney and salivary gland cell cultures, a distinct CPE was observed only after several passages. In thyroid cell cultures, a marked CPE was evident in the first passage. High cell passage virus caused the rapid and complete destruction of and produced plaques regularly in pig thyroid cell cultures, while plaque production in pig kidney cell cultures was irregular. The CPE was accompanied by acid production. New infectious virus appeared in fetal pig kidney cells less than 5 hours after infection. TGE virus was found to be ether, acid, and heat labile. Serial passage in fetal pig kidney cells led to a considerable attenuation of TGE virus.
Simultaneous Detection of c-Fos Activation from Mesolimbic and Mesocortical Dopamine Reward Sites Following Naive Sugar and Fat Ingestion in Rats

This study uses cellular c-fos activation to assess effects of novel ingestion of fat and sugar on brain dopamine (DA) pathways in rats. Intakes of sugars and fats are mediated by their innate attractions as well as learned preferences. Brain dopamine, especially meso-limbic and meso-cortical projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA), has been implicated in both of these unlearned and learned responses. The concept of distributed brain networks, wherein several sites and transmitter/peptide systems interact, has been proposed to mediate palatable food intake, but there is limited evidence empirically demonstrating such actions. Thus, sugar intake elicits DA release and increases c-fos-like immunoreactivity (FLI) from individual VTA DA projection zones including the nucleus accumbens (NAC), amygdala (AMY) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) as well as the dorsal striatum. Further, central administration of selective DA receptor antagonists into these sites differentially reduce acquisition and expression of conditioned flavor preferences elicited by sugars or fats. One approach by which to determine whether these sites interacted as a distributed brain network in response to sugar or fat intake would be to simultaneous evaluate whether the VTA and its major mesotelencephalic DA projection zones (prelimbic and infralimbic mPFC, core and shell of the NAc, basolateral and central-cortico-medial AMY) as well as the dorsal striatum would display coordinated and simultaneous FLI activation after oral, unconditioned intake of corn oil (3.5%), glucose (8%), fructose (8%) and saccharin (0.2%) solutions. This approach is a successful first step in identifying the feasibility of using cellular c-fos activation simultaneously across relevant brain sites to study reward-related learning in ingestion of palatable food in rodents.
Myosin light chain kinase mediates intestinal barrier dysfunction via occludin endocytosis during anoxia/reoxygenation injury

Intestinal anoxia/reoxygenation (A/R) injury induces loss of barrier function followed by epithelial repair. Myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) has been shown to alter barrier function via regulation...
SEIZURES | Seizure Initiation and Termination

Epilepsy is characterized by recurrent episodes of synchronized neuronal activity – seizures. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to underlie the onset and termination of an individual seizure. Seizure onset has been linked to a loss in inhibition and an increase in excitability, either cellular or synaptic. Less is known about termination. Evidence from an in vitro model of epileptiform activity in the dentate gyrus suggests that acidification of the intracellular space alters cellular processes that result in termination of the seizure-like discharge. Whether this mechanism contributes to seizure termination in the brain is not yet known.
Food and Femininity

Although Cairns and Johnston did not intend to explore the relationship between women, femininity, and food when they began their research on the role of food in people’s lives, it was ultimately t...
Willingness to Expend Effort toward Reward and Extreme Ambitions in Bipolar I Disorder

More than a dozen recent studies have shown that bipolar disorder and key outcomes within bipolar disorder are related to heightened willingness to pursue extremely ambitious life goals, as measure...
Preoxygenation With Flush Rate Oxygen: Comparing the Nonrebreather Mask With the Bag-Valve Mask.

Study objective Nonrebreather masks and bag-valve masks are used for preoxygenation before emergency intubation. Flush rate oxygen delivered with a nonrebreather mask is noninferior to bag-valve mask oxygen at 15 L/min. We seek to compare the nonrebreather mask with flush rate oxygen to a bag-valve mask with flush rate oxygen (with and without inspiratory assistance) and determine whether the efficacy of bag-valve mask with flush rate oxygen is compromised by a simulated mask leak. Methods We conducted 2 prospective studies in healthy, adult volunteers. All devices in both studies used flush rate oxygen, achieved by rotating the flowmeter dial counterclockwise until it could not be rotated farther, which delivered oxygen at 40 to 60 L/min. Study 1 compared preoxygenation with nonrebreather mask to bag-valve mask (modified with a one-way exhalation port) with and without a simulated mask leak. Study 2 compared nonrebreather mask to bag-valve mask with inspiratory assistance. The primary outcome was FeO 2 . For each comparison, we prespecified a noninferiority margin of FeO 2 for the nonrebreather mask (compared with the bag-valve mask, bag-valve mask with mask leak, and bag-valve mask with assistance) of 10%. Results Thirty subjects were enrolled in study 1 and 27 subjects were enrolled in study 2. For study 1, mean FeO 2 values for nonrebreather mask, bag-valve mask, and bag-valve mask with leak were 81% (95% confidence interval [CI] 78% to 83%), 76% (95% CI 71% to 81%), and 30% (95% CI 26% to 35%), respectively. FeO 2 for the nonrebreather mask was noninferior to the bag-valve mask at flush rate (difference 5%; 95% CI –1% to 10%). FeO 2 was higher for the nonrebreather mask compared with the bag-valve mask with a simulated mask leak (difference 51%; 95% CI 46% to 55%). For study 2, mean FeO 2 values for nonrebreather mask and bag-valve mask with assistance were 83% (95% CI 80% to 86%) and 77% (95% CI 73% to 80%), respectively. FeO 2 for the nonrebreather mask was noninferior to the bag-valve mask with assistance at flush rate (difference 6%; 95% CI 3% to 10%). Conclusion With flush rate oxygen, the nonrebreather mask is noninferior to the bag-valve mask, with and without inspiratory assistance. Bag-valve mask performed poorly with a mask leak, even with flush rate oxygen. Flush rate oxygen with a nonrebreather mask is a reasonable default preoxygenation method in spontaneously breathing patients with no underlying respiratory pathology.
Treatment characteristics of various sediment components spiked with 2-chlorobiphenyl using reactive activated carbon.

Abstract Previously, the concept of reactive activated carbon (RAC), where the porous structure of activated carbon (AC) is impregnated with palladized zerovalent iron, has been proposed to be effective to adsorb and dechlorinate polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). To explain the low dechlorination of PCBs bound to actual aquatic sediments under remediation with RAC, this study investigated the role of various solid organic and inorganic sediment components in adsorbing and desorbing PCBs. Detailed fate and transport mechanism of 2-chlorinated biphenyl (2-ClBP) spiked to sediment components, including kaolin, montmorillonite (MMT), coal, graphite, AC, and their mixture, was revealed. Adsorption and holding capability of sediment components toward 2-ClBP strongly influenced amount of spiked 2-ClBP, amount of desorbed 2-ClBP, overall dechlorination of 2-ClBP to biphenyl (BP), and eventual partitioning of 2-ClBP and BP to water, sediment component, and RAC. Order of the amount of spiked 2-ClBP to sediment components after drying, following AC > mixture > coal > graphite > kaolin > MMT, was in agreements (in opposite direction) with order of the amount of desorbed 2-ClBP and order of overall 2-ClBP dechlorination. Substantial role of organic components in aquatic sediments for holding 2-ClBP and thus preventing it from dechlorination on RAC was proven.
Visual feedback during pedaling allows individuals poststroke to alter inappropriately prolonged paretic vastus medialis activity.

This study demonstrates that by using visual feedback during a constrained task with minimized kinematic control requirements, participants with poststroke hemiplegia can voluntarily change muscle ...
Effect of Heterogeneous Chemical Reactions on the Köhler Activation of Aqueous Organic Aerosols

We study some thermodynamic aspects of the activation of aqueous organic aerosols into cloud droplets considering the aerosols to consist of liquid solution of water and hydrophilic and hydrophobic organic compounds, taking into account the presence of reactive species in the air. The hydrophobic (surfactant) organic molecules on the surface of such an aerosol can be processed by chemical reactions with some atmospheric species; this affects the hygroscopicity of the aerosol and hence its ability to become a cloud droplet either via nucleation or via Kohler activation. The most probable pathway of such processing involves atmospheric hydroxyl radicals that abstract hydrogen atoms from hydrophobic organic molecules located on the aerosol surface (first step), the resulting radicals being quickly oxidized by ubiquitous atmospheric oxygen molecules to produce surface-bound peroxyl radicals (second step). These two reactions play a crucial role in the enhancement of the Kohler activation of the aerosol and it...
Long-term results of transurethral endoscopic excision using the holmium laser for urethral perforation of synthetic slings.

OBJECTIVE This study reports on the long-term results of transurethral endoscopic excision using the Holmium laser (TEEH) for large urethral perforation (UP; defined as involving one-quarter or more of the urethral circumference) from synthetic slings. METHODS Charts of women treated with TEEH for large UP were reviewed. TEEH was performed using a 365-μm laser fiber passed inside an open-ended ureteral catheter positioned in a holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) sheath to stabilize the laser fiber. Data extracted included patient demographics, clinical presentations, surgical details, postoperative functional outcomes and complications, and any secondary repairs. RESULTS From 2011 to 2016, 12 women underwent TEEH. The mean interval between sling placement and first TEEH was 47 months (range 10-161 months). The types of slings included transvaginal tape (n = 2), transobturator tape (n = 4), mini-invasive (n = 4), and Solyx (1), or were not specified (n = 1). The mean number of TEEH procedures was 1.6 (range 1-3), and the mean length of initial treatment was 40 min (range 15-79 min), with subsequent treatments <30 min. Mean follow-up time was 43 months (range 14-70). Resolution of UP by TEEH alone was achieved in 6 patients, with 2 requiring multiple TEEH. Six patients underwent secondary vaginal mesh sling excision alone or with an associated repair including 2 small distal urethrovaginal fistulas. CONCLUSION TEEH is a minimally invasive procedure that can avoid a more complex initial urethral reconstruction and should be considered for treating large UP. Secondary repairs for residual small UP or associated lower urinary tract symptomatology may be necessary and patients should be counseled accordingly.
Literacy and Disaster Preparedness for Seniors

Since the US Department of Homeland Security identified disaster preparedness a “national imperative,” numerous government, nonprofit, and relief organizations have endeavored to educate and prepare the American public for disasters. However, older adults, defined as 65 years and older, are the least prepared subgroup of the population and historically have the highest rate of disaster-related deaths relative to the general population (Burton and Breen, Lancet. 2005;360(Suppl):47; Duggan et al., Int J Older People Nurs. 2010;5(1):71–76; HelpAge International, Older people in disasters and humanitarian crises: guidelines for best practice. London: Author; 2005; The Council for Excellence in Government, Are we ready? Introducing the public readiness index: a survey-based tool to measure the preparedness of individuals, families, and communities. http://www.citizencorps.gov/downloads/pdf/ready/pri_report.pdf, 2006; Wells, Protecting and assisting older people in emergencies [Network Paper No. 53]. London: Humanitarian Practice Network, Overseas Development Institute; 2005). Despite a growing number of well thought-out government and nonprofit disaster preparedness programs, literature suggests current preparedness programs are ineffective for older adults. Problems with current preparedness guidelines include content that is not tailored nor effectively disseminated to this specific at-risk audience. The lack of alignment between the literacy demands of existing materials and the literacy skills of many older adults limits their ability to understand and effectively use potentially lifesaving preparedness information. This chapter reviews the literature on literacy and older adults, proposes a new model for “disaster literacy,” and describes opportunities for incorporating best practices into planning and preparedness activities. The authors define disaster literacy as an individual’s ability to read, understand, and use information to make informed decisions and follow instructions in the context of mitigating, preparing, responding, and recovering from a disaster. Recommendations are also made for developing and evaluating disaster preparedness materials for older adults. Authors suggest evaluation and data findings should be used to dictate media type (e.g., paper-based, film, audio recordings, websites), message, and point of contact of disaster preparedness materials. Authors conclude that research and evaluation that pilot tests the message (i.e., content), media type, and context is critical to meet and improve the disaster literacy needs of older adults.
“‘Courtship-by-Correspondence’: Seduction through Mentoring”

Seduction through mentoring has a long history within Western rhetoric. Plato9s Socrates, for instance, can be seen as attempting simultaneously to educate and seduce Phaedrus. In considering this topic, this essay analyzes the mid-nineteenth century correspondence of Louise Clappe and Alexander Hill Everett. Clappe was a young New England woman who later authored The Shirley Letters from the California Mines, 1851-1852 . Everett was a prominent diplomat, orator, and writer. The study examines the explicit lessons conveyed, the ways the correspondence enhanced Clappe9s civic understanding as well as her social and literary skills. In addition, it explores the implicit lessons Clappe learned through navigating constraints associated with seduction, including the ability to challenge gendered expectations and the capacity to negotiate power and even benefit from it.
Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Sleep-Related Breathing Problems in Toddlers.

Abstract Background Adequate sleep during childhood is an important component of overall health and wellbeing for children. Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure has been linked to a greater risk of sleep-disordered breathing. Objective Our objective was to investigate relationships between SHS exposure and sleep-related breathing problems in healthy toddlers aged 2 to 5 years. We hypothesized that there is an independent relationship between objectively measured SHS exposure and presence of sleep-related breathing problems by parental report. Methods A convenience sample of 149 healthy children ages 2 to 5 years was recruited from an academic pediatric primary care center for this cross-sectional study; 138 had complete data that were analyzed. Current SHS exposure was determined by hair nicotine level. Presence of sleep-related breathing problems was assessed by 1 survey item. Inflammation was determined by serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level. Analysis in Stata 15 included a series of multivariate logistic regression models, controlling for individual-level demographics and body mass index z scores according to mediation analysis procedures for dichotomous outcomes. Results Approximately 24% of parents reported their child snored, gasped, or had difficulty breathing at night sometimes, most of the time, or almost always. Regression models with mediation analysis indicate that SHS exposure significantly increased the odds of reporting the child had sleep-related breathing problems, and 18% of this relationship is explained by log serum CRP levels. Conclusions Although the cross-sectional nature of this study limits causality, evidence suggests a relationship exists between SHS exposure, as measured by log hair nicotine and sleep-related breathing problems at night.
Advice from Senior Cohousers

The purpose of our visiting senior cohousing communities and interviewing residents was to learn about their authentic lived experiences. After listening to residents’ stories concerning what they loved and struggled with in their communities, we wanted to hear what recommendations they would offer to others who were considering a move to senior cohousing. Residents eagerly provided heart-felt advice, born of their desire to help guide other older adults who are looking for community and, also, to help ensure that potential new residents are those who can contribute to the life and well-being of a community. The advice given falls into three board categories—do adequate research, engage in honest self-reflection, and be courageous.
The Infrastructure for African Unity

This chapter attempts to reconcile the past of Pan-Africanism with its future. Today’s idea of Pan-Africanism has been institutionalized through Africa’s continental organizations, notably, the African Union (AU), formerly the Organization of African Unity (OAU), as well as through Africa’s regional organizations including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the East African Community (EAC). The rise of these organizations constitutes a continuum, vis-a-vis the long tradition of continental unification and Pan-Africanism.
Dynamic Code Selection Method for Content Transfer in Deep-Space Network

To maximize file transfer from deep-space vehicles, a space-to-earth content-transfer protocol that combines turbo codes, RaptorQ codes, real-time channel prediction, and dynamic code-rate selection is proposed. The protocol features a signal-to-noise ratio prediction model that facilitates the periodic adjustment of turbo encoder to achieve adaptive-rate transmission, and fountain codes to eliminate retransmission of specific packets. Simulation results indicate that an increase of about 132% in file transfer rate is achievable compared to fixed-rate transmission scheme.
Lower Post Myocardial Infarction Mortality Among Women Treated at Veterans Affairs Hospitals Compared to Men.

ABSTRACT Background There is conflicting evidence about whether mortality after myocardial infarction is higher among women than among men. This study aimed to compare sex differences in post myocardial infarction mortality in the Veterans Affairs system, a setting where the predominant subjects are men. Materials and Methods The Veterans Affairs Corporate Data Warehouse inpatient and laboratory chemistry databases were used to identify patients diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction from inpatient records from January 1st, 2005 to April 25th, 2015. Mortality data was obtained through the Veterans Affairs death registry. Results A total of 130,241 patients were identified; 127,711 men (98%) and 2,530 women (2%). Men typically had more comorbidities including congestive heart failure (54% vs. 46%, P value Conclusions In a health care system where the predominant subjects are men, women had better short- and long-term survival than men after an acute myocardial infarction. Further investigation is warranted to determine the reasons behind the improved outcomes in women post myocardial infarction in the veteran population.
Health, Safety, and Well-Being Reading Recognition Abilities of Young Parents with Functional Disabilities: Construction and Preliminary Validation of a Prescriptive Assessment Instrument

Young low-income parents with functional disabilities have difficulty ensuring the safety and health of their children, in part because they have limited information and skills regarding these critical aspects of childcare. They are unaware of ways to anticipate and remediate dangerous situations and to prevent child injury and have difficulty recognizing and responding to the symptoms associated with child illnesses. Often they are unfamiliar with and are unable to read the complex information that is provided on the labels or in the brochures for medications, for high-risk household products, for home health diagnostics or home treatment, and for the correct use of infant development or other products. Similarly, healthcare providers may assume reading ability when they present printed materials, while the parent may be reticent to ask questions or to admit being unable to read. In the absence of suitable supports, both the young parent and her child are then at heightened risk for injury and for poor health status. In order to effectively inform young parents, there is a critical need to determine how well they are able to read representative healthcare and safety-related words. The rationale for and construction and validation of a prescriptive parenting reading recognition scale are described. This instrument is designed to be used by health and other educators in the assessment of parental reading recognition abilities and in the development of prescriptive education. Measures of internal consistency and of internal reliability for standardization purposes were high. Results of a study which used this instrument are presented and demonstrate that parents referred for healthcare, safety, and wellness education did, in fact, have significant difficulties in reading. Several demographic variables were related to reading ability including self-identification with a disability. The results have implications for policy and program development.
7 – Nonexact Algorithms

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a unified view of non-exact procedures in discrete optimization. A non-exact procedure is one whose application yields a feasible solution that cannot be guaranteed to be optimal. Complementing the notion of an absolute performance result is that of an asymptotic performance guarantee. The structure of a true average or expected case analysis of a non-exact algorithm is simple to state. The components are: (i) the algorithm; (ii) a measure reflecting the performance of the algorithm, such as solving a problem within a specified performance; and (iii) a sample space of input instances for the algorithm. A greedy procedure is one in which the decision-maker selects, at each stage of the process, an alternative that is best among the feasible alternatives, without regard to the impact the choice can have on subsequent decisions. Independence systems can be viewed as relaxations of matroids.
Progresses of the risk factors in neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis

Neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis is a common gastrointestinal disease in neonate.Recently,with the establishment of the NICU and the all-round development of perinatal medicine and pediatrics,survival rate of premature especially very low birth weight neonates have obviously increased and the incidence of the disease is rising year by year.It is generally considered that multiple risk factors such as premature birth,low birth weight,infections,asphyxia,irrational use of drugs and so on,acting on the immature intestine,but the pathogenesis is still unknown.Therefore,it is significant to clearify the pathogenesis of the risk factors of NEC for studying the pathogenesis of the disease and providing prevention and control strategy. Key words: Necrotizing enterocolitis; Newborn; Risk factor
Neural Neighborhood Encoding for Classification

Inspired by the fruit-fly olfactory circuit, the Fly Bloom Filter [Dasgupta et al., 2018] is able to efficiently summarize the data with a single pass and has been used for novelty detection. We propose a new classifier (for binary and multi-class classification) that effectively encodes the different local neighborhoods for each class with a per-class Fly Bloom Filter. The inference on test data requires an efficient {\tt FlyHash} [Dasgupta, et al., 2017] operation followed by a high-dimensional, but {\em sparse}, dot product with the per-class Bloom Filters. The learning is trivially parallelizable. On the theoretical side, we establish conditions under which the prediction of our proposed classifier on any test example agrees with the prediction of the nearest neighbor classifier with high probability. We extensively evaluate our proposed scheme with over $50$ data sets of varied data dimensionality to demonstrate that the predictive performance of our proposed neuroscience inspired classifier is competitive the the nearest-neighbor classifiers and other single-pass classifiers.
Facilitating Transfer of Learning in Professional Development Programs: A Cognitive-Behavioral Tool:

Cognitive-behavioral theories offer a long-standing theoretical approach in clinical psychology that has wide-ranging implications for management education. We designed a cognitive-behavioral–based...
Learning Federated Representations and Recommendations with Limited Negatives

Deep retrieval models are widely used for learning entity representations and recommendations. Federated learning provides a privacy-preserving way to train these models without requiring centralization of user data. However, federated deep retrieval models usually perform much worse than their centralized counterparts due to non-IID (independent and identically distributed) training data on clients, an intrinsic property of federated learning that limits negatives available for training. We demonstrate that this issue is distinct from the commonly studied client drift problem. This work proposes batch-insensitive losses as a way to alleviate the non-IID negatives issue for federated movie recommendation. We explore a variety of techniques and identify that batch-insensitive losses can effectively improve the performance of federated deep retrieval models, increasing the relative recall of the federated model by up to 93.15% and reducing the relative gap in recall between it and a centralized model from 27.22% - 43.14% to 0.53% - 2.42%. We open-source our code framework to accelerate further research and applications of federated deep retrieval models.
Evaluation of milkweed (Asclepias spp.) restoration in the Rolling Plains ecoregion of West Texas for the enhancement of monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) habitat

Abstract The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is among the best-known insects in the world, renowned for its conspicuousness, spectacular migration, and interesting biology. Unfortunately, monarch populations have declined dramatically due, in large part, to the widespread losses of the milkweed plants which they depend upon for reproduction. This has led to concerted efforts to restore milkweed, particularly in the Midwestern US where most monarch breeding occurs. However, recently there has been a call to expand milkweed restoration across more of the monarch’s migratory distribution, with Southern states, like Texas, being emphasized. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of milkweed restoration in the Rolling Plains ecoregion of West Texas, an area with numerous reports of monarchs but relatively limited conservation initiatives. We founded milkweed colonies that included four species of milkweed in three counties across West Texas, and the establishment and growth of milkweed in these was monitored for up to four years. Generalized additive mixed-effect models were then used to assess milkweed establishment and growth as a factor of plant age, species, and location. Temporal patterns in establishment and growth were also examined. Milkweed were successfully established across all colonies and as many as 45% of some species persisted four years after being planted. Additionally, we found age (p
The Reported Self-Care Practices of Music Educators:

The purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to examine personal and professional self-care practices reported by K–12 music teachers while also exploring the relationships between self-c...
Gender differences in the developmental trajectories of multiple substance use and the effect of nicotine and marijuana use on heavy drinking in a high-risk sample.

Abstract Background Heavy drinking is highly comorbid with nicotine and marijuana use among young adults. Yet, our knowledge about the longitudinal effects of nicotine and marijuana use (including onset timing and quantity/frequency) on heavy drinking and whether the effects vary by gender is very limited. This study aims to characterize gender-specific developmental trajectories of multiple substance use and to examine gender differences in the effects of nicotine and marijuana use on heavy drinking. Methods We conducted secondary analysis on 8 waves of data from 850 high-risk youth who were recruited as ninth graders with low GPA in an economically disadvantaged school district in the Midwest and were followed up annually to young adulthood. Onset ages and quantity/frequency of multiple substance use were assessed by a self-report questionnaire at each wave. The time-varying effect model and linear mixed model were adopted for statistical analysis. Results Males' levels of heavy drinking, nicotine use, and marijuana use tended to grow persistently from adolescence to emerging adulthood. Females, on the other hand, only gradually increased their nicotine use across time while maintaining low levels of heavy drinking and marijuana use. Controlling for the early onset status of alcohol use, early onset statuses of nicotine use and marijuana use both added additional risk for heavy drinking; late onset marijuana users were also at higher risk for heavy drinking than nonusers of marijuana. Controlling for substance use onset statuses, higher quantity/frequency of nicotine and marijuana use both contributed to more involvement in heavy drinking. We also found that the effect of nicotine use quantity on heavy drinking was greater among males. Conclusions Our study demonstrates the longitudinal effects of onset timing and quantity/frequency of nicotine and marijuana use on heavy drinking. Our analysis of gender differences also identifies female youth's nicotine use and male youth's co-use of nicotine and alcohol as two important areas for future prevention and intervention work.
Energy Concepts, Forms, Laws

In a developed country, such as the United States, energy is a vital component in almost every phase of life. Consider the fuel consumed in modern transportation systems; in lighting and heating and air conditioning, at home and in the work place; the many appliances in the home which provide for the comforts of modern living; the operation of machinery and other equipment in the work place; and numerous other purposes. In the United States, more than 99 percent of work defined as mechanical work, which term includes essentially all physical labor, is performed by machines, all of which require energy for operation. Almost everything one does during the waking hours has energy involved in it somewhere.
Multiphase flow simulation in fractional flow approach with general boundary condition considering phase configuration change in the system

The multiphase flow simulator, MPS, is developed based on the fractional flow approach originated in the petroleum engineering literature considering the fully three phase flow with general boundary condition. The fractional flow approach employs water saturation, total liquid saturation, and total pressure as primary variables. Most existing fractional flow-based models are limited to two-phase flow and specific boundary conditions. Although there appears a number of three-phase flow models, they were mostly developed using pressures based approaches. As a result, these models require cumbersome variable-switch techniques to deal with phase appearance and disappearance. use use of fractional flow-based approaches in MPS makes it unnecessary to use variable switches to handle the change of phase configurations, because the water saturation, total liquid saturation, and total pressure exist throughout the solution domain regardless of whether certain phases are present or not. Also most existing fractional flow-based models consider only specific boundary conditions, which are usually Dirichlet type pressure for water phase, and flux type boundary for NAPL phase or particular combinations for individual phase. The present model considers general boundary conditions of most possible and plausible cases that consist of eight cases. These are the combinations of the phase pressure or phase flux of each of the three individual phases. Thus, the model's capabilities of handling general boundary conditions extend the simulators' usefulness in the field system.
Abstract #LB-266: Identification of SOX4 as a biomarker for prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

AACR Annual Meeting-- Apr 18-22, 2009; Denver, CO SOX (SRY-related HMG-box) 4 protein is a member of the SOX transcriptional factor family and plays a key role in diverse developmental processes. Recent studies show that SOX4 is highly expressed in several tumors, but its clinicopathological significance in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is unclear. In this study, we examined whether SOX4 is involved in conferring cellular susceptibility to hepatocarcinogenesis. We evaluated SOX4 expression patterns in primary human HCC and corresponding non-tumorous liver samples using immunoblotting and immunohistochemical analyses, and compared with clinical pathological parameters and survival rate. In 37 (63.8%) of 58 HCCs, the expression of SOX4 increased compared with the corresponding non-cancerous liver tissues. Next, we comparatively evaluated the altered expression pattern of SOX4 in the tumor cell according to tumor differentiation. Intranuclear localization of SOX4 expression was more predominantly observed in the well-differentiated HCC compared with poorly differentiated HCC. There was no relationship between the SOX4 expression pattern and any clinicopathological characteristic. However, SOX4 overexpression was significantly correlated with good clinical outcome. We determined a significant association between anti-SOX4 positivity and disease-free survival ( P <0.05) and overall survival ( P <0.05) during a 96-months follow-up period after surgical resection. Our data indicated that SOX4 may be a novel favorable prognostic indicator and candidate adjuvant therapeutic target for HCC. Citation Information: In: Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res; 2009 Apr 18-22; Denver, CO. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2009. Abstract nr LB-266.
Do Race of Student and Race of Teacher Influence Ratings of Emotional and Behavioral Problem Characteristics of Students with Emotional Disturbance

African American students are disproportionately likely to be identified with the emotional disturbance (ED) education disability. To investigate how teachers’ perceptions of students might vary by...
Distribution of transverse and longitudinal momentum in π−p interactions at 7.0 GeV/c

We have measuredpt andpi spectra of the pions and protons produced in six- and two-prong interactions in a bubble-chamber experiment. The BNL 80 in, liquid-hydrogen bubble chamber was exposed to a 7.0 GeV/c negative-pion beam. The data are analysed in terms of the Hagedorn model and the two-temperature model of Wayland and Bowen. The temperature of the interaction volume obtained from fitting thept spectra of the pions is below 140 MeV, and for the protons it is close to 180 MeV. Thept spectra of the pions yields a good fit to an expression given in the two-temperature model. We have divided our six-prong data into peripheral and nonperipheral events and the temperature values of the two samples show considerable difference for the protonpt distributions. We have gathered data from the other experiments at different energies. We find that the temperature increases with the rise in incident-particle energy, and it decreases as the multiplicity of the pions produced increases at a fixed incident energy.
Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) for ARMA spectral estimation

The canonical correlation analysis (CCA) of rational system identification is investigated for autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) spectral estimation at low SNR. The method is used to compute the parameters of the state-space Markovian model and its spectrum using CCA. It is shown that this approach yields significantly better results and improved resolution for low SNR. An interesting feature of the CCA is that the system parameters are sign symmetric, which reduces the computation cost by half. The performance of this method for spectral estimation of multiple sinusoids in noise is compared with singular value decomposition and the canonical vector method. >
The Importance of Feeling Awkward: A Dialogical Narrative Phenomenology of Socially Awkward Situations

This study employed a dialogical narrative phenomenology to gather and analyze 16 narratives of socially awkward situations. These analyses revealed a characteristic pattern for socially awkward situations. The moment of awkwardness was characterized by a sense of moral or social transgression that magnified and intensified social experience and focused perceptions on social behaviors. Those social behaviors expressed awkwardness through anxious, hesitant, disjointed, or avoidant actions. Participants felt an imperative to transform the awkward situation and did so either by avoiding it or by directly addressing it and attempting to resolve it. Avoidant responses were associated with a magnification and extension of the effects of social awkwardness while direct responses were associated with a re-established sense of social harmony. The author interprets these findings to suggest that feeling and expressing social awkwardness can be meaningful and productive elements of social relationships. Feelings of ...
The Vital Importance of the Arts in Personal Development

Miguel Angel Estrella gives a moving personal testimony of his experience as an international concert pianist and socially engaged musician. He explains why he created Musica Esperanza (Music Hope)...
On measurements and their quality: Paper 2: Random measurement error and the power of statistical tests

This is the second in a short series of papers on measurement theory and practice with particular relevance to intervention research in nursing, midwifery, and healthcare. This paper begins with an illustration of how random measurement error decreases the power of statistical tests and a review of the roles of sample size and effect size in hypothesis testing. A simple formula is presented and discussed for calculating sample size during the planning stages of intervention studies. Finally, an approach for incorporating reliability estimates into a priori power analyses is introduced and illustrated with a practical example. The approach permits researchers to compare alternative study designs, in terms of their statistical power. An SPSS program is provided to facilitate this approach and to assist researchers in making optimal decisions when choosing among alternative study designs.
Modification of pausing behavior

Summary The purposes of this study were to develop a reliable measure of emotionality by use of the speech pause as a basic unit, and to investigate the effects of reinforcement on the frequency and duration of pausing during emotional and nonemotional verbalizations. A pause index was used to select topics that produced reliably different amounts of pausing under conditions in which there was an initially large pool of topics and the S was requested to discuss each topic for a prolonged period of time. The topic having the highest amount of pausing was defined as the emotional topic for that S and the topic with the lowest amount of pausing as the nonemotional topic. The results indicated that when reinforcement was made contingent on talking there was a significant reduction in the amount of pausing for both the emotional and nonemotional topics.
The use of clozapine among individuals with intellectual disability: A review

Clozapine has been approved in the United States since 1990 for refractory or treatment resistant schizophrenia in the general population. However, as with many other antipsychotic medications, it is being prescribed for reasons other than those indicated. Among individuals with intellectual disabilities, clozapine is increasingly being prescribed to treat behavioral problems, although the empirical evidence for such a practice is lacking. This review was undertaken as an attempt to summarize the available studies regarding the use of clozapine for behavioral purposes among individuals with intellectual disabilities. Findings of our review suggest that the effectiveness of clozapine in targeting challenging behaviors among individuals with intellectual disabilities is relatively inconclusive at present. We discuss reasons why these limitations exist and offer some solutions to help alleviate these limitations.
Risk Stratification in Patients With Unstable Angina ‘Déjà Vu All Over Again’?

Considerable progress has occurred in our understanding of the pathophysiology and therapy of unstable angina pectoris.1 2 3 Knowledge concerning the importance of plaque rupture and thrombosis formation has led to the use of intravenous heparin, aspirin, and exploration of new antiplatelet strategies in conjunction with antianginal therapy. Despite this increased understanding in the use of antithrombotic and antianginal therapy, the fear of subsequent infarction and death remains great. These fears have led to a strategy in clinically determined high-risk and many intermediate-risk patients of coronary angiography and revascularization after stabilization before or soon after hospital discharge.1 Delay in performing coronary angiography for several weeks to months because of inadequate resources has been associated with a relatively high risk of ischemic events and death.4 While a strategy of coronary angiography and revascularization (often without prior stress testing) may reduce the risk of ischemic events and death, it is nevertheless associated with an increased risk of acute complications and restenosis as well as increased cost. New strategies such as the use of stents and/or the platelet 7E3 glycoprotein 2B3A antibody hold great promise for further benefit, with a reduction in ischemic events and restenosis, but may add to cost. While the strategy of coronary angiography, revascularization, and exploration of new but expensive antithrombotic strategies is in my opinion appropriate in patients at high or intermediate risk of recurrent ischemic events, it may not be necessary in all. One of the most important challenges in the management of patients with unstable angina is risk stratification, most importantly to identify patients at low risk of subsequent ischemic events who could be treated by conventional medical therapy without the need for new and expensive antiplatelet agents and/or revascularization. Several studies have suggested that determination of biochemical markers such as myoglobin, CK-MB …
Macromolecular structures without crystals

Electron microscopy has many attractive capabilities as a tool for experimentally visualizing the structures of biological cells and macromolecules. Particles can be imaged while freely suspended in biochemically “native” buffers, and electrons can be focused to resolutions exceeding anything that a biochemist's heart might desire. To be sure, biological electron microscopy also is subject to certain physical limitations, perhaps the most problematic of which arise from the fact that short-wavelength electrons also are a form of ionizing radiation. However, among the goals for which technology rather than physical principles currently appears to be the limitation, many regard the most desirable to be the production of 3D density maps that show the positions and rotamer conformations of every amino acid by using specimens in which the proteins are in the form of well dispersed, single particles. The structures of such proteins would not only be free of crystal-packing constraints, they would also be free of the influences of the associated crystallization buffers, which often have unphysiological pH, ionic strength, ionic composition, or water activity. With the publication of the structure of the icosahedral “inner capsid particle” of a human rotavirus in this issue of PNAS, Zhang et al. (1) have come remarkably close to that goal. The technological frontier now moves to accomplishing the same results with macromolecular complexes that are significantly smaller than viruses and with structures for which a high degree of symmetry cannot be exploited to ease the task.
Human leukocyte antigen-G expression in differentiated human airway epithelial cells: lack of modulation by Th2-associated cytokines

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-G is a nonclassical class I antigen with immunomodulatory roles including up-regulation of suppressor T regulatory lymphocytes. HLA-G was recently identified as an asthma susceptibility gene, and expression of a soluble isoform, HLA-G5, has been demonstrated in human airway epithelium. Increased presence of HLA-G5 has been demonstrated in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid recovered from patients with mild asthma; this suggests a role for this isoform in modulating airway inflammation though the mechanisms by which this occurs is unclear. Airway inflammation associated with Th2 cytokines such as IL-4 and IL-13 is a principal feature of asthma, but whether these cytokines elicit expression of HLA-G is not known. We examined gene and protein expression of both soluble (G5) and membrane-bound (G1) HLA-G isoforms in primary differentiated human airway epithelial cells collected from normal lungs and grown in air-liquid interface culture. Cells were treated with up to 10 ng/ml of either IL-4, IL-5, or IL-13, or 100 ng/ml of the immunomodulatory cytokine IL-10, or 10,000 U/ml of the Th1-associated cytokine interferon-beta, for 24 hr, after which RNA was isolated for evaluation by quantitative PCR and protein was collected for Western blot analysis. HLA-G5 but not G1 was present in dAEC as demonstrated by quantitative PCR, western blot and confocal microscopy. Neither G5 nor G1 expression was increased by the Th2-associated cytokines IL-4, IL-5 or IL-13 over 24 hr, nor after treatment with IL-10, but was increased 4.5 ± 1.4 fold after treatment with 10,000 U/ml interferon-beta. These data demonstrate the constitutive expression of a T lymphocyte regulatory molecule in differentiated human airway epithelial cells that is not modulated by Th2-associated cytokines.