cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Duality of Graded Graphs

A graph is said to be graded if its vertices are divided into levels numbered by integers, so that the endpoints of any edge lie on consecutive levels. Discrete modular lattices and rooted trees are among the typical examples. The following three types of problems are of interest to us: (1) path counting in graded graphs, and related combinatorial identitiess (2) bijective proofs of these identitiess (3) design and analysis of algorithms establishing corresponding bijections. This article is devoted to (1)s its sequel l7r is concerned with the problems (2)–(3). A simplified treatment of some of these results can be found in l8r. In this article, R.P. Stanley's l26, 27r linear-algebraic approach to (1) is extended to cover a wide range of graded graphs. The main idea is to consider pairs of graded graphs with a common set of vertices and common rank function. Such graphs are said to be dual if the associated linear operators satisfy a certain commutation relation (e.g., the “Heisenberg” one). The algebraic consequences of these relations are then interpreted as combinatorial identities. (This idea is also implicit in l27r.) l7r contains applications to various examples of graded graphs, including the Young, Fibonacci, Young-Fibonacci and Pascal lattices, the graph of shifted shapes, the r-nary trees, the Schensted graph, the lattice of finite binary trees, etc. Many enumerative identities (both known and unknown) are obtained. Abstract of l7r. These identities can also be derived in a purely combinatorial way by generalizing the Robinson-Schensted correspondence to the class of graphs under consideration (cf. l5r). The same tools can be applied to permutation enumeration, including involution counting and rook polynomials for Ferrers boards. The bijective correspondences mentioned above are naturally constructed by Schensted-type algorithms. A general approach to these constructions is given. As particular cases we rederive the classical algorithm of Robinson, Schensted, and Knuth l20, 12, 21r, the Sagan-Worley l17, 32r and Haiman l11r algorithms, the algorithm for the Young-Fibonacci graph l5, 15r, and others. Several new applications are given.
Vertebrae localization in pathological spine CT via dense classification from sparse annotations.

Accurate localization and identification of vertebrae in spinal imaging is crucial for the clinical tasks of diagnosis, surgical planning, and post-operative assessment. The main difficulties for automatic methods arise from the frequent presence of abnormal spine curvature, small field of view, and image artifacts caused by surgical implants. Many previous methods rely on parametric models of appearance and shape whose performance can substantially degrade for pathological cases.
Exploring caregiving-related experiences among Chinese American and European American family caregivers of persons with mental illness:

Family caregivers (FCs) of people with mental illness (PMI) experience caregiving-related distress. These challenges tend to be greater for Asian American families due to acculturative stress and structural barriers to services. However, little is known about caregiving-related experiences among FCs of PMI within a cultural context. By using an exploratory approach, we examined the experience of caregiver distress and the influence of cultural values on caregiving in European American and Chinese American FCs. In collaboration with community-based agencies, a combination of convenience and snowball sampling methods were used to recruit Chinese American and European American caregivers who co-reside with PMIs. Two focus groups with each ethnic group with 57 participants (30 Chinese and 27 European American) were conducted. Thematic analysis indicates that FCs experience intense emotions, health/mental health problems, and a negative impact on their personal/social lives. Whereas Chinese American FCs reported shame, lack of knowledge, and over-protectiveness of PMIs, European American FCs reported the need for advocacy on behalf of the PMI. Findings indicate a need for: 1) greater awareness of the caregiving experience on wellbeing of FCs; 2) an understanding of how cultural values may influence caregiver experience; and 3) developing culturally relevant prevention and intervention services that can support FCs from diverse cultural contexts.
Modeling and elucidation of housing price

It is widely acknowledged that the value of a house is the mixture of a large number of characteristics. House price prediction thus presents a unique set of challenges in practice. While a large body of works are dedicated to this task, their performance and applications have been limited by the shortage of long time span of transaction data, the absence of real-world settings and the insufficiency of housing features. To this end, a time-aware latent hierarchical model is developed to capture underlying spatiotemporal interactions behind the evolution of house prices. The hierarchical perspective obviates the need for historical transaction data of exactly same houses when temporal effects are considered. The proposed framework is examined on a large-scale dataset of the property transaction in Beijing. The whole experimental procedure strictly conforms to the real-world scenario. The empirical evaluation results demonstrate the outperformance of our approach over alternative competitive methods. We also group housing features into both external and internal clusters. The further experiment unveils that external component shapes house prices much more heavily than the internal one does. More interestingly, the inference of latent neighborhood value in our model is empirically shown to be able to lessen the dependence on the critical external cluster of features in house price prediction.
Transcriptome analysis of rumen epithelium and meta-transcriptome analysis of rumen epimural microbial community in young calves with feed induced acidosis

Many common management practices used to raise dairy calves while on milk and during weaning can cause rumen acidosis. Ruminal pH has long been used to identify ruminal acidosis. However, few attempts were undertaken to understand the role of prolonged ruminal acidosis on rumen microbial community or host health in young calves long after weaning. Thus, the molecular changes associated with prolonged rumen acidosis in post weaning young calves are largely unknown. In this study, we induced ruminal acidosis by feeding a highly processed, starch-rich diet to calves starting from one week of age through 16 weeks. Rumen epithelial tissues were collected at necropsy at 17 weeks of age. Transcriptome analyses on the rumen epithelium and meta-transcriptome analysis of rumen epimural microbial communities were carried out. Calves with induced ruminal acidosis showed significantly less weight gain over the course of the experiment, in addition to substantially lower ruminal pH in comparison to the control group. For rumen epithelial transcriptome, a total of 672 genes (fold-change, FC ≥ 1.5; adjusted-p ≤ 0.05) showed significant differential expression in comparison to control. Biological pathways impacted by these differentially expressed genes included cell signaling and morphogenesis, indicating the impact of ruminal acidosis on rumen epithelium development. rRNA read-based microbial classification indicated significant increase in abundance of several genera in calves with induced acidosis. Our study provides insight into host rumen transcriptome changes associated with prolonged acidosis in post weaning calves. Shifts in microbial species abundance are promising for microbial species-based biomarker development and artificial manipulation. Such knowledge provides a foundation for future more precise diagnosis and preventative management of rumen acidosis in dairy calves.
Recent Developments of Biobased Plasticizers and Their Effect on Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Poly(vinyl chloride): A Review

Plasticized poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) has been extensively utilized globally, with various applications in construction, piping, wiring and cable, installation, flooring, nonfood packing, windows,...
Maternal diet during lactation and breast-feeding practices have synergistic association with child diet at 6 years.

Objective Children breast-fed during infancy consume more fruits and vegetables than formula-fed children. This pattern is likely due, in part, to infant learning from flavours of the mother's diet transmitted through breast milk, but more research is needed to understand associations between early flavour exposures and later dietary patterns. We examined whether breast-feeding and maternal fruit and vegetable consumption during nursing were synergistically associated with higher child fruit and vegetable consumption. Design Prospective cohort study of breast-feeding duration, maternal diet postpartum and child diet. Complete breast-feeding and maternal diet data were available for 1396 mother-child dyads; multiple imputation was used for missing data in other variables. In separate multivariable logistic regression models, we estimated the adjusted odds of high child fruit or vegetable consumption at 12 months or 6 years as a function of breast-feeding duration, maternal fruit or vegetable consumption during nursing, and their interaction. Setting The Infant Feeding Practices Study II and Year 6 Follow-Up. Participants Mother-child dyads followed from birth to 6 years during 2005-2012 in the USA. Results Longer breast-feeding duration was associated with high child fruit and vegetable consumption at 12 months. At 6 years, the interaction between breast-feeding duration and maternal vegetable consumption was associated with high child vegetable consumption. Conclusions Higher maternal vegetable consumption and longer breast-feeding duration were synergistically associated with high child vegetable consumption at 6 years, independent of sociodemographic characteristics and fruit and vegetable availability. Exposures to vegetable flavours through breast milk may promote later child vegetable consumption.
Comparing Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Retrieve Clinical Reports Documenting Implantable Devices Posing MRI Safety Risks.

Abstract Objective Assess sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of two approaches to identify patients with implantable devices that pose safety risks for MRI—an expert-derived approach and an ontology-derived natural language processing (NLP). Determine the proportion of clinical data that identify these implantable devices. Methods This Institutional Review Board–approved retrospective study was performed at a 793-bed academic hospital. The expert-derived approach used an open-source software with a list of curated terms to query for implantable devices posing high safety risk (“MRI-Red”) in patients undergoing MRI. The ontology-derived approach used an NLP system with terms mapped to Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms. Queries were performed in three clinical data types—25,000 radiology reports, 174,769 emergency department (ED) notes, and 41,085 other clinical reports (eg, cardiology, operating room, physician notes, radiology reports, pathology reports, patient letters). Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of both methods against manual review of a randomly sampled 465 reports were assessed and tested for significant differences between expert-derived and ontology-derived approaches using t test. Results Accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of expert-versus ontology-derived approaches were similar (0.83 versus 0.91, P = .080; 0.88 versus 0.96, P = .178; 0.82 versus 0.92, P = .110). The proportion of radiology reports, ED notes, and other clinical reports retrieved containing implantable devices with high safety risks for MRI ranged from 1.47% to 1.88%. Discussion Artificial intelligence approaches such as expert-driven NLP and ontology-driven NLP have similar accuracy in identifying patients with implantable devices that pose high safety risks for MRI.
High levels of pelagic plastic pollution within the surface waters of Lakes Erie and Ontario

Abstract During 2012 to 2014 five expeditions collected surface water samples for plastic pollution analysis representing the first data within Lake Ontario and the first multi-year dataset for Lake Erie. Lake Ontario had the highest abundances of any Great Lake to date with an average of over 230,000 particles/km2. Though having a considerable smaller average of ~45,000 particles/km2, Lake Erie remains second only to Lake Ontario based on studies to date and averaged across all samples and years. The high levels of pelagic plastic pollution is likely owing to their position as the last two lakes in the Laurentian Great Lakes ecosystem, as well as the prominence of population centers along their shorelines. As with previous studies, most particles were found within the smallest size classification (0.355–0.999 mm; 73%), with fragments (63%) and pellets (26%) forming the dominant morphologies. The minor contribution of fibers/lines (4%) is consistent with previous Great Lakes studies, though not with studies within other environmental compartments (e.g., sediment, fish, atmospheric). This could be due to the negative buoyancy of polymeric fibrous materials, a hypothesis consistent with the dominance of the less dense polymers polyethylene (46%) and polypropylene (43%) (based on FTIR analysis). For the first time, the multiyear Lake Erie samples were compared to modeled plastic distributions and found to fit reasonably well. Using the sample data to calibrate the model we estimate that there are 475 million plastic particles, with a total mass of 6.45 metric tons, floating on the surface of Lake Erie alone.
Bandwidth extension of intensity-based sound power estimates.

The traditional method for intensity-based sound power estimates often used in engineering applications is limited in bandwidth by microphone phase mismatch at low frequencies and by microphone spacing at high frequencies. To overcome these limitations, the Phase and Amplitude Gradient Estimator (PAGE) method [Gee, Neilsen, Sommerfeldt, Akamine, and Okamoto, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141(4), EL357–EL362 (2017)] is applied to sound power for a reference sound source, a blender, and a vacuum cleaner. Sound power measurements taken according to ISO 3741:2010 (2010) are compared against traditional- and PAGE-processed intensity-based sound power estimates measured according to ANSI S12.12-1992 (R2017). While the traditional method underestimates the sound power at the spatial Nyquist frequency by 7–10 dB, the PAGE-based sound power is accurate up to the spatial Nyquist frequency, and above when phase unwrapping is successful.
A sparse Bayesian factor model for the construction of gene co-expression networks from single-cell RNA sequencing count data

Gene co-expression networks (GCNs) are powerful tools that enable biologists to examine associations between genes during different biological processes. With the advancement of new technologies, such as single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), there is a need for developing novel network methods appropriate for new types of data. We present a novel sparse Bayesian factor model to explore the network structure associated with genes in scRNA-seq data. Latent factors impact the gene expression values for each cell and provide flexibility to account for common features of scRNA-seq: high proportions of zero values, increased cell-to-cell variability, and overdispersion due to abnormally large expression counts. From our model, we construct a GCN by analyzing the positive and negative associations of the factors that are shared between each pair of genes. Simulation studies demonstrate that our methodology has high power in identifying gene-gene associations while maintaining a nominal false discovery rate. In real data analyses, our model identifies more known and predicted protein-protein interactions than other competing network models.
C-shaped metasurface for polarization-based surface wave steering

Over the last decade, much research has been directed towards making conventional optical devices such as lenses and waveguides using flat surfaces. Using planar optics provides compact on-chip platforms that are easily integrated. In addition, it allows for new degrees of freedom for controlling the flow of light as well as avoids the accumulation of amplitude and phase changes that occur to the wave in conventional optical systems when propagating over distances from one component to the other. In this paper, we present a metasurface design made of c-shaped metallic elements that supports confined surface wave propagation. The c-shaped design provides high self-collimation which is advantageous for use in surface waveguiding. Another advantage of using the c-shaped design is that by carefully choosing its dimensions, one can engineer its equifrequency contour to split the linearly polarized wave into two circularly polarized waves of different helicities propagating with different k-vectors along the surface. This makes the c-shaped metasurface efficient for use as a polarization-based beam splitter. Additionally, we show that by slowly rotating the c-shaped cells and varying its size along the surface, we were able to steer the circularly polarized surface wave with only one helicity along a specified curved path while completely blocking the other helicity. This work highlights the high degree of freedom achieved from using homogenous metasurface designs for manipulating the spin-orbit interaction of electromagnetic waves and providing a great control on their polarization and propagation properties on the surface.
Entrainment of the circadian rhythm in larval release of the crab Dyspanopeus sayi by temperature cycles

AbstractMarine and estuarine crabs brood attached eggs, which hatch synchronously releasing larvae at precise times relative to environmental cycles. The subtidal crab Dyspanopeus sayi has a circadian rhythm, in which larvae are released within the 4-h interval after the time of ambient sunset. Previous studies demonstrated that the rhythm can be entrained by the light:dark cycle. Since subtidal crabs are also exposed to temperature fluctuations, an unstudied question was whether the circadian rhythm could be entrained by the diel temperature cycle. To answer this question, ovigerous D. sayi were entrained in darkness to 2.5, 5, and 10 °C temperature cycles that were reverse in phase from the ambient temperature cycle. After entrainment, larval release times were monitored in constant conditions of temperature and darkness with a time-lapse video system. The effectiveness of a temperature cycle to shift the timing of larval release increased as the magnitude of the temperature cycle increased and as crabs...
Satellites, mobile-monitoring, and fixed-site measurements to understand local variations in air pollution, globally: the view from Google

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Hyperlocal air pollution maps are helpful for cities around the globe to take action on climate and health in the ground in their cities. METHODS: By combining big data -- from ...
Patterns of covert speech behavior and phonetic coding.

In previous research a discriminative relationship has been established between patterns of covert speech behavior and the phonemic system when processing continuous linguistic material. The goal of the present research was to be more analytic and pinpoint covert neuromuscular speech patterns when one processes specific instances of phonemes. Electromyographic (EMG) recording indicated that the lips are significantly active when visually processing the letter “P” (an instance of bilabial material), but not when processing the letter “T” or a nonlinguistic control (C) stimulus. Similarly, the tongue is significantly active when processing the letter “T” (an instance of lingual-alveolar material), but not when processing the letters “P” or “C.” It is concluded that the speech musculature covertly responds systematically as a function of class of phoneme being processed. These results accord with our model that semantic processing (“understanding”) occurs when the speech (and other) musculature interacts with linguistic regions of the brain. In the interactions phonetic coding is generated and transmitted through neuromuscular circuits that have cybernetic characteristics.
A randomized controlled trial of a peer co-led dissonance-based eating disorder prevention program for gay men

Abstract Objective Gay males have increased risk for eating disorders compared to heterosexual males, establishing a need to develop and empirically evaluate programs to reduce risk for this population. The present study investigated the acceptability and efficacy of a cognitive dissonance-based (DB) intervention (The PRIDE Body Project © ) in reducing eating disorder risk factors among gay males in a university-based setting. Method Eighty-seven gay males were randomized to either a 2-session DB intervention ( n = 47) or a waitlist control condition ( n = 40). Participants completed eating disorder risk factor assessments pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at 4-week follow-up, and those receiving the intervention completed post-treatment acceptability measures. Results Acceptability ratings were highly favorable. Regarding efficacy, the DB condition was associated with significantly greater decreases in body dissatisfaction, drive for muscularity, self-objectification, partner-objectification, body-ideal internalization, dietary restraint, and bulimic symptoms compared to waitlist control from pre- to post-intervention. Improvements in the DB group were maintained at 4-week follow-up, with the exception of body-ideal internalization. Body-ideal internalization mediated treatment effects on bulimic symptoms. Conclusion Results support the acceptability and efficacy of The PRIDE Body Project © and provide support for theoretical models of eating pathology in gay men.
Alternative Monetary Rules for a Small Open Economy: The Case of Canada

I compare the performance of alternative monetary rules for Canada using an open economy model under incomplete markets. Different rules generate different paths for the markup and the terms of trade. A comparison of welfare levels suggests that flexible inflation targeting, the Bank of Canada's current policy, dominates strict targeting rules≥among which a fixed exchange rate with the U.S. and the Taylor rule. In contrast to other studies, strict targeting rules generate a more stable real economy by stabilizing markup dynamics. Flexible inflation targeting dominates because it yields a positive covariance between consumption and the labor effort, which provides agents with a source of risk diversification.
Recoverin is highly uveitogenic in Lewis rats.

Purpose. Recoverin, a calcium-binding protein that selectively localizes to the retina and pineal gland, has been identified as the target for the putative pathogenic autoimmune process of cancer-associated retinopathy (CAR). The present study was aimed at testing the capacity of recoverin to induce experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis and pinealitis in Lewis rats. Methods. Lewis rats were immunized against recombinant myristoylated recoverin by a single footpad injection of the protein, at various doses, emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant. Development of uveoretinitis was monitored by clinical and histologic examinations, whereas pinealitis was detected by histologic examination. Results. Immunization with recoverin induced severe panuveitic changes that closely resemble those induced by S-antigen (arrestin). The effect was dose-dependent, with 10 /xg/rat the lowest immunopathogenic dose. Rats immunized with recoverin also developed pineal inflammation. Conclusion. Recoverin is highly immunopathogenic in Lewis rats. Although the ocular changes induced in rats differ from those seen in CAR, the data recorded here are in line with the concept that recoverin can initiate pathogenic autoimmune processes in the eye. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 1994;35:3342-3345. Accumulating data suggest that certain pathologic conditions that localize to specific tissues are mediated by autoimmune processes targeted at antigens specific to these tissues. This notion is supported by the observation that immunization of experimental animals with such antigens often induces inflammation in the corresponding tissues. The retina contains an unusually large number of specific proteins, mainly those participating in the vision process. 1 Immunization of animals with several of these proteins produces an inflammatory ocular disease, termed experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis (EAU), that is considered a
Anorectal and Enteric Infections in Homosexual Men

Homosexual men are at increased risk for traditional sexually transmitted anorectal infections (gonorrhea, syphilis, venereal warts, herpes and chlamydial infection) and enteric infections characterized by a low infecting inoculum (hepatitis A and B, amebiasis, giardiasis, shigellosis and campylobacteriosis). Infections account for most of the gastrointestinal symptoms in homosexual men seen at sexually transmitted disease clinics, but asymptomatic and polymicrobial infections are also common. Distinguishing three syndromes-proctitis, proctocolitis and enteritis-is clinically useful because these syndromes correlate with specific microorganisms and modes of transmission. A careful anoscopic examination, rectal Gram's stain, cultures for gonorrhea and chlamydia, VDRL and darkfield examination of suspicious lesions should be routinely done when sexually active homosexual men present with unexplained gastrointestinal symptoms. Based on the history, physical examination and initial laboratory studies, patients can usually be classified as having proctitis, proctocolitis or enteritis. This distinction facilitates selection of both confirmatory diagnostic tests and antimicrobial therapy. The effectiveness of empiric treatment regimens for asymptomatic sexual contacts or for symptomatic patients in whom microbiological tests are pending has not been studied.
Global optimization of nonconvex generalized disjunctive programming

Abstract This paper is concerned with the global optimization of Bilinear and Concave Generalized Disjunctive Programs. The efficiency of methods to solve these problems relies heavily on their capability for predicting strong lower bounds that in turn depend on the strength of their relaxations. The major objective of this work is to propose a procedure to find such relaxations. We first present a framework for obtaining a hierarchy of linear relaxations for nonconvex Generalized Disjunctive Programs (GDP), that combines the linear relaxations proposed in literature for nonconvex MINLPs with the results in the work of Sawaya & Grossmann [1], to obtain relaxations for the case of Linear GDPs. We further exploit the theory behind Disjunctive Programming to guide the generation of better relaxations more efficiently. We show through a set of examples how these new relaxations can strengthen substantially the lower bounds for the global optimum leading to an improvement in the performance when used within a spatial branch and bound framework.
Artificial neural networks facilitate bispectral analysis of electroencephalographic data

The brain is the target organ of anaesthesia yet the electroencephalogram (EEG) is not routinely monitored during anaesthetic procedures. This is partly due to the difficulty of interpreting complex changes in the EEG waveform with respect to anaesthetic conditions. Most attempts at developing EEG derived variables and display techniques have been based on spectral analysis. Bispectral analysis is a signal processing technique capable of detecting phase-coupling within a signal (which is lost using conventional power spectral analysis). Artificial neural networks (ANN) which excel at pattern classification were used in this study to interpret results of bispectral analysis. Six human subjects were studied at three anaesthetic levels (light, nominal, and deep anaesthesia). ANNs are shown to provide an efficient approach for extracting and using the additional signal information provided by bispectral analysis.
Drift-diffusion and computational electronics - still going strong after 40 years!

The field of computational electronics began in a serious way when the so-called semiconductor equations were numerically solved in one, two, and three dimensions. The result was a new tool in the device engineer's toolkit, and the impact was profound. Much of the subsequent history of the field has consisted of working to improve the description of carrier transport as provided by the drift-diffusion equation. Much has been accomplished, but drift-diffusion based simulations continue to be the mainstay. One reason has to do with the computational burden of more advanced techniques, but another is that drift-diffusion equations have proven to be surprisingly effective even in situations where there were expected to fail. This talk is a brief history of computational electronics with an emphasis on the unreasonable effectiveness of drift-diffusion equations. The talk concludes with thoughts on where things stand and on how computational electronics can best position itself to contribute to a new era of electronics.
Sun position calculator (SPC) for Landsat imagery with geodetic latitudes

Landsat imagery comes with sun position information such as azimuth and sun elevation, but they are available only at the center of a scene. To aid in the use of Landsat imagery for various solar radiation applications such as topographic correction, solar power, urban heat island, agriculture, climate and vegetation, it is necessary to calculate the sun position information at every pixel. This research developed a PC application that creates sun position data layers in ArcGIS at every pixel in a Landsat scene. The SPC program is composed of two major routines - converting universal transverse Mercator (UTM) projection coordinates to geographic longitudes and latitudes, and calculating sun position information based on the Meeus' routine. For the latter, an innovative method was also implemented to account for the Earth's flattening on an ellipsoid. The Meeus routine implemented in this research showed about 0.2' of mean absolute difference from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Solar Position Algorithm (SPA) routine when solar zenith and azimuth angles were tested with every 30min data at four city locations (Fairbanks, Atlanta, Sydney and Rio Grande) on June 30, 2014. The Meeus routine was about ten times faster than the SPA routine. Professionals who need the Sun's position information for Landsat imagery will benefit from the SPC application. A PC application creates sun position layers for Landsat imagery.The Earth's flattening can be accounted using a local incidence angle equation.The Meeus' routine is about ten times faster than an existing SPA routine.The Meeus' routine shows 0.2' difference from the SPA routine.
The status of pathogen-reduced plasma.

Abstract Efforts to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted infectious diseases began more than 4 decades ago with testing donated blood for syphilis. During the subsequent 4 decades, the number of recognized blood-borne transmissible agents and new laboratory tests has proliferated to a logistical breaking point. Further, the number of “emerging agents” which might enter the donor population is increasing continuously. In the search for an alternative to the laboratory testing strategy, pathogen-reduction technologies have emerged as the most promising. The model for this paradigm is pasteurization of a bottle of cow’s milk. No matter what infective agent may be present in freshly collected cow’s milk, pasteurization, i.e., a generic purification process can eliminate all potential infectivity, while preserving its essential biological properties – and an affordable cost. Several manufacturers have undertaken the challenge of developing a pathogen-reduction technology for blood components. Some novel technologies have proven successful for pooled plasma derivatives such as immune globulins, coagulation factor concentrate concentrates and albumin. The greatest challenge is finding a technology that is suitable for red blood cell and platelet components, whereas significant progress has been made already for pathogen-reduced plasma products. The present review addresses the status of implementation of pathogen-reduced plasma products in the global market. Some blood centers and hospital blood banks in Europe and the Middle East have begun to distribute pathogen-reduced plasma, but no pathogen-reduced plasma product is presently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. While many observers in the United States focus on the regulatory process as the impediment to widespread implementation, the real challenge will be paying the surcharge for the pathogen-reduction process – an as yet unspecified figure – but likely to add a very substantial amount to the annual healthcare budget.
Literature Review: The Growing Need to Understand Muslim Students

In the 21st century, educators teach students from more culturally diverse backgrounds than ever. According to the 2005–2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau (2007), 74...
Rapid detection of cytomegalovirus infections by a tissue culture-centrifugation-monoclonal antibody-biotin/avidin immunofluorescence technique.

Abstract A technique using centrifugation, early antigen detection by biotin/avidin fluorescence assay (CEADBAFA) for detection of CMV was compared to a similar method without biotin/avidin (CEADIFA) and to tissue culture alone (TC). The technique using CEADBAFA was the most sensitive of the three assays. The number of CMV-specific fluorescent nuclei was 2–15 fold higher after centrifugation of cell culture monolayers than without centrifugation and the maximum number of positive nuclei was observed after 18 h post-inoculation. E-13 was found to be the best of three commercial monoclonal antibodies for identifying CMV positive nuclei. A total of 260 urine, respiratory and genital specimens were tested by both CEADBAFA and TC. Of 46 clinical specimens positive for CMV, 70% were positive by both assays, 7% were positive by TC only and 24% were positive by CEADBAFA only. Two of three specimens positive by TC only could not be evaluated by CEADBAFA because the specimens were toxic to the monolayers on the cover slips. Nearly all of the CEADBAFA positive but TC negative specimens were from patients with a history of CMV infection demonstrated either by TC or serology in other specimens. The CEADBAFA technique should be used for the routine diagnosis of CMV infection.
The detection of positive blood cultures by the AccuMed ESP-384 system: the clinical significance of three-day testing

A total of 805 positive blood cultures obtained over a 4-month period during 1997 by the AccuMed ESP-384 system were evaluated and compared with 471 positive blood cultures obtained during 1989. Of the 805 microorganisms isolated in 5-day culture and testing by the ESP-384, 671 (83.4%) were detected within the first 2 days and 758 (94.2%) within 3 days. There were 47 (5.7%) microorganisms detected in culture Days 4 and 5 from 42 patients and review of the medical records from these patients demonstrated that no significant changes in clinical management were instituted as a result of detection and identification of these isolates. These 47 organisms were considered to be zero to equivocal clinical relevance. These data suggest that a 3-day routine blood culture incubation protocol with the ESP-384 system may be sufficient when considering detection rate, clinical relevance, and cost-effectiveness. The microbial spectrum and relative frequencies in this study were found to be similar to those of positive blood cultures obtained during 1989.
Aporia:: A Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Problematique in International Relations Theory

In this article I examine some significant problems found in current discussions of the `agent-structure' problem in international relations, suggesting that they result in serious gaps and silences. However, I also argue that important openings can be found that point to a more critical, if unsettling, way of conceptualizing agents and structures and the relations between them. Specifically, I interrogate the issues of practices, discourse, and contexts of meanings that are implicit in existing approaches and argue that taking seriously the indeterminancy and undecidability of practice has important implications for the agent-structure problem both in terms of ontological assumptions as well as concrete empirical research.
Experimental performance of a low-thrust, divergent-flow, contact-ionization electrostatic thruster.

Low thrust divergent flow cesium-on-tungsten contact ionization electrostatic thrustor for satellite attitude control and stationkeeping missions
Rapid passage of avian reovirus in one‐day‐old chicks: Clinical and virological findings

Two avian reoviruses, strain Reo-25 and isolate W3-492 were inoculated orally in 1-day-old chicks. Three to seven days post inoculation (dpi), the liver, spleen, pancreas, caecal tonsil and duodenum were collected, weighed and titrated in cell culture for their viral content. The different tissue homogenates collected were passaged several times in 1-day-old chicks. Reo-25 virus was passaged only at 3-day intervals and W3-492 virus was passaged at 3- and 7- or 14-day intervals. For both Reo-25 and W3-492 viruses, pathological effects and virus yields in tissues decreased with continued passages. In direct comparisons of reovirus W3-492 prior to chicken passage (PO) and after four passages at 7-day intervals (P4) using standardised amounts of virus for inoculation of chickens, no major differences in pathological effects were observed. P4 virus could be recovered from duodenal tissue at 28 dpi and from liver tissue at 14 dpi. In contrast, PO virus could be recovered from duodenal tissue at 14 dpi and from liver tissue at 10 dpi.
Vasopressin-dependent neural circuits underlying pair bond formation in the monogamous prairie vole

Arginine vasopressin and its V1a receptor subtype (V1aR) are critical for pair bond formation between adult prairie voles. However, it is unclear which brain circuits are involved in this vasopressin-mediated facilitation of pair bond formation. Here, we examined mating-induced Fos expression in several brain regions involved in sociosexual and reward circuitry in male prairie voles. Consistent with studies in other species, Fos expression was induced in several regions known to be involved in sociosexual behavior, namely, the medial amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and medial preoptic area. Fos induction also occurred in limbic and reward regions, including the ventral pallidum, nucleus accumbens, and mediodorsal thalamus (MDthal). Next, we infused a selective V1aR antagonist into three candidate brain regions that seemed most likely involved in vasopressin-mediated pair bond formation: the ventral pallidum, medial amygdala, and MDthal. Blockade of V1aR in the ventral pallidum, but not in the medial amygdala or MDthal, prevented partner preference formation. Lastly, we demonstrated that the mating-induced Fos activation in the ventral pallidum was vasopressin-dependent, since over-expression of V1aR using viral vector gene transfer resulted in a proportionate increase in mating-induced Fos in the same region. This is the first study to show that vasopressin neurotransmission occurs in the ventral pallidum during mating, and that V1aR activation in this region is necessary for pair bond formation in male prairie voles. The results from this study have profound implications for the neural circuitry underlying social attachment and generate novel hypotheses regarding the neural control of social behavior.
Lobbying For Tariff Policies

This paper fully specifies the political and economic markets in which trade policies are formulated and lobbying efforts are determined. In the political market, the winner of a two-candidate race chooses policies, and both candidates have incomplete information about the nonpolicy biases of voters. Voting is probabilistic and lobbying consists of informing candidates of the lobby members' nonpolicy voting biases. Economic markets are described by a Heckscher-Ohlin model. the determinants of lobbying expenditures are developed from these microfoundations instead of being introduced in an ad hoc manner.
Pattern Recognition by Using an Associative Memory

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple template-matching pattern recognition technique by using any general-purpose associative memory. The input patterns for recognition may have wide variations, provided that the distinct features of individual pattern classes can be extracted. Each pattern class is allowed to have deviations in size, style, orientation, etc. within certain limits. This pattern recognition technique is extremely efficient in handwritten character recognition, which is used for illustration in this paper. Because each input pattern is processed with all the pattern classes simultaneously, the speed of this pattern recognition technique is very high. It is found that most input patterns are recognized within first comparison process and no input patterns require more than two comparison processes for their recognition.
Application of the renormalization group to deterministic global minimization of molecular conformation energy functions

We outline a new global minimization method in which the Gibbs distribution of the objective function is deterministically annealed by tracing the evolution of a multiple-Gaussian-packet approximation. Solutions are reached by iterative approximations with decreasing coarse-graining of both objective-function and spatial scales. Results from application of a partial implementation to the atomic-microcluster conformation problem are presented.
Intramammary lymph nodes: Cytologic findings and implications for fine‐needle aspiration cytology diagnosis of breast nodules

The recognition of intramammary lymphoid proliferations is important because smears of these proliferations would be judged as insufficient by several of the published criteria for specimen adequacy. Alternatively, some might be confused with medullary carcinoma of the breast or adenocarcinomas with a “single-cell” pattern. We found 19 intramammary lymphoid proliferations in a series of 887 fine-needle aspirates of palpable breast nodules. Six were lymphomas and 13 were benign intramammary lymph nodes. Smear cellularity ranged from scant to high, but in all cases, lymphocytes dominated the cell population. The cytology of intramammary lymph nodes and lymphoma did not differ from those occurring at other sites. Diagn. Cytopathol. 1997;17:223–229. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Changes in the classification of sudden unexpected infant deaths: United States, 1992-2001.

Background. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) makes up the largest component of sudden unexpected infant death in the United States. Since the first recommendations for supine placement of infants to prevent SIDS in 1992, SIDS postneonatal mortality rates declined 55% between 1992 and 2001. Objective. The objective of this analysis was to examine changes in postneonatal mortality rates from 1992 to 2001 to determine if the decline in SIDS was due in part to a shift in certification of deaths from SIDS to other causes of sudden unexpected infant death. In addition, the analysis reviews the change in mortality rates attributed to the broad category of sudden unexpected infant death in the United States since 1950. Methods. US mortality data were used. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) chapters “Symptoms, Signs, and Ill-Defined Conditions” and “External Causes of Injury” were considered to contain all causes of sudden unexpected infant death. The following specific ICD (ninth and tenth revisions) underlying-cause-of-death categories were examined: “SIDS,” “other unknown and unspecified causes,” “suffocation in bed,” “suffocation-other,” “aspiration,” “homicide,” and “injury by undetermined intent.” The average annual percentage change in rates was determined by Poisson regression. An analysis was performed that adjusted mortality rates for changes in classification between ICD revisions. Results. The all-cause postneonatal mortality rate declined 27% and the postneonatal SIDS rate declined 55% between 1992 and 2001. However, for the period from 1999 to 2001 there was no significant change in the overall postneonatal mortality rate, whereas the postneonatal SIDS rate declined by 17.4%. Concurrent increases in postneonatal mortality rates for unknown and unspecified causes and suffocation account for 90% of the decrease in the SIDS rate between 1999 and 2001. Conclusions. The failure of the overall postneonatal mortality rate to decline in the face of a declining SIDS rate in 1999–2001 raises the question of whether the falling SIDS rate is a result of changes in certifier practices such that deaths that in previous years might have been certified as SIDS are now certified to other non-SIDS causes. The observation that the increase in the rates of non-SIDS causes of sudden unexpected infant death could account for >90% of the drop in the SIDS rates suggests that a change in classification may be occurring.
Discrete-Time Dichotomous Well-Posed Linear Systems and Generalized Schur–Nevanlinna–Pick Interpolation

We introduce a class of matrix-valued functions W called "L 2 - regular". In case W is J-inner, this class coincides with the class of "strongly regular J-inner" matrix functions in the sense of Arov-Dym. We show that the class of L 2 -regular matrix functions is exactly the class of transfer functions for a discrete-time dichotomous (possibly infinite-dimensional) input-state- output linear system having some additional stability properties. When ap- plied to J-inner matrix functions, we obtain a state-space realization formula for the resolvent matrix associated with a generalized Schur-Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation problem.
Why Communication Is Crucial: Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Safer Sexual Communication and Condom Use

The purpose of this study was to quantitatively synthesize the growing literature on the relationship between safer sexual communication (SSC) among sexual partners and condom use, and to systematically examine a number of conceptual and methodological moderators of this relationship. Data from 53 articles published in 27 journals met criteria for the study. Fifty-five independent effect sizes coded from samples totaling N=18,529 were meta-analyzed. Results indicate that the mean sample-size weighted effect size of the SSC-condom use relation was r=.22, and a number of conceptual variables were found to moderate this relationship. Specifically, communication about condom use (r=.25) and sexual history (r=.23) had significantly (p .05). Further, methodological moderators tended to be unrelated to effect size. Implications for the future study of safer sexual communication as well as the importance of emphasizing communication skills in HIV preventive interventions are discussed.
Tariffs, the balance of payments, and the demand for money

Abstract This paper shows that in a small country the impact of a tariff on the balance of payments depends crutially on the role of relative prices in the demand function for money. An import (export) duty has a perverse impact on the balance of payments if importables (exportables) and money are net complements, but both import and export duties cannot have a perverse impact. A relation between the impact of export and import duties is also derived and is used to reestablish a well-known theorem of Meade on the equivalence of replacing import with export duties and currency depreciation.