cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Field Techniques and Acoustic Methods

This chapter describes the data collection and acoustic analysis, and the balance I have struck between sociolinguistic and phonetic types of methods. Whereas sociolinguists generally collect and analyze tokens taken from the spontaneous speech (or, sometimes, wordlists or reading passages) of many speakers, phoneticians typically collect more data from fewer speakers in a tightly controlled laboratory setting. Laboratory phoneticians often control for linguistic context and therefore do not use spontaneous speech. In this study, I followed the sociolinguistic practice of using spontaneous conversation collected in the field, but I obtained and analyzed as many tokens as possible across a range of phonetic contexts in an attempt to achieve a balanced corpus of tokens for the acoustic analysis. Section 5.1 provides an overview of sociolinguistic methods, including speaker selection, data collection, and data analysis. Section 5.2 describes the field methods used in this project, and Section 5.3 describes the methods for the acoustic analysis.
Progress in the title I design of the National Ignition Facility

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) Project officially began in December of 1995. In October of 1996, advanced conceptual design studies, complete environmental impact study, facilitization of the manufacturing capabilities of optics vendors began. The Title I preliminary engineering design had not yet began until the end of December, but it is expected to be on schedule. It is expected that the conventional facilities design will be completed first. The Independent Cost Estimate (ICF) process will begin after the facilities design is complete. Other elements of the design will be submitted in one- or two-week intervals. This phase method of completing Title I was also used at the end of Complete Design Report and proved to be efficient. 9 refs., 11 figs.
Increased Levels of Plasma Epstein Barr Virus DNA Identify a Poor-Risk Subset of Patients With Advanced Stage Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma

Abstract Introduction Outcomes in advanced stage (AS) cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCL) are poor but with great variability. Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) is associated with a subset of non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Frequency of plasma EBV-DNA (pEBVd) detection, concordance with EBV RNA (EBER) in tumor tissue, codetection of plasma cytomegalovirus DNA (pCMVd), and prognostic effect in AS CTCL are unknown. Patients and Methods Patients (n = 46; 2006-2013) with AS CTCL (≥IIB) were retrospectively studied. pEBVd and pCMVd were longitudinally measured using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. EBER in situ hybridization (ISH) was performed on tumor samples. Survival from time of diagnosis (ToD) and time of progression to AS was assessed. Results Plasma EBV-DNA and pCMVd were detected in 37% (17 of 46) and 17% (8 of 46) of AS CTCL patients, respectively. pCMVd detection was significantly more frequent in pEBVd-positive (pEBVd + ) than pEBVd − patients (35% vs. 7%; P = .038). Tumor tissue for EBER-ISH was available in 14 of 17 pEBVd + and 22 of 29 pEBVd − patients; 12 of 14 (85.7%) pEBVd + patients were EBER + versus 0 of 22 pEBVd − patients. Frequency of large cell transformation (LCT) tended to be greater in pEBVd + patients, but was not significant (10 of 14 pEBVd + vs. 10 of 23 pEBVd − ; P = .17). No notable differences in rates of increased levels of serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were observed (17 of 17 pEBVd + vs. 27 of 29 pEBVd − ). pEBVd detection was associated with significantly worse survival from ToD ( P = .021) and time of progression to AS ( P = .0098). Conclusion Detection of cell-free plasma EBV-DNA was highly concordant with the presence of EBERs in tumor tissue, predicted survival independent of LDH and LCT, and should be further studied as a biomarker in AS CTCL.
Development of cavity enhanced Raman and Thomson scattering diagnostics

Improved measurement capabilities of electron density (ne) and temperature (Te) in low density (∼1010–10n cm−3) plasmas would greatly benefit the study of processing plasmas, electric propulsion thrusters, atmospheric pressure plasmas for combustion and flow control, and other weakly ionized systems. Electron properties can be measured via physical probes or with a non-intrusive optical technique, such as laser Thomson scattering (LTS). LTS has seen widespread use for measurements in high-density plasmas but extension of the technique to the low-density regime has been extremely challenging owing to weak LTS signals and interferences from Rayleigh and elastic background scattering. We present the development of a cavity enhanced Thomson scattering (CETS) diagnostic that seeks to capitalizes on a high-power (10–100 kW) intra-cavity beam achieved by frequency locking a narrow line width laser source to a high finesse optical cavity. The technique should result in a much higher average power light source for LTS measurements and much lower peak power in comparison to pulsed laser sources, which may be advantageous for reducing plasma perturbations. The initial proof-of-concept CETS instrument has been built using a low-power (20 mW) fiber laser and a moderate cavity finesse of F ≈21,000. The Pound-Drever-Hall locking technique is used to maintain a frequency overlap between the laser and cavity. An intra-cavity power of 7 W is generate from an incident laser power of 5 mW, which corresponds to a power build-up factor of 1400. The instrument has been used to measure Rayleigh scattering and rotational Raman spectra in N2, O2, and CO2. Current work is moving to a higher power configuration based on a 5 W laser source and cavity with finesse of F>100,000. The status and challenges of the high power system are discussed.
Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon

Luxury and Rubble is the tale of two cities in Ho Chi Minh City. It is the story of two planned, mixed-use residential and commercial developments that are changing the face of Vietnam’s largest city. Since the early 1990s, such developments have been steadily reorganizing urban landscapes across the country. For many Vietnamese, they are a symbol of the country’s emergence into global modernity and of post-socialist economic reforms. However, they are also sites of great contestation, sparking land disputes and controversies over how to compensate evicted residents. In this penetrating ethnography, Erik Harms vividly portrays the human costs of urban reorganization as he explores the complex and sometimes contradictory experiences of individuals grappling with the forces of privatization in a socialist country. “With captivating ethnography and trenchant analysis, Erik Harms delves deeply into two communities created and destroyed by redevelopment in contemporary Ho Chi Minh City. He poignantly shows how master plans defining personhood in terms of property rights empower some to live in luxury, while leaving others in the rubble of dispossession.” ANN MARIE LESHKOWICH, author of Essential Trade: Vietnamese Women in a Changing Marketplace “Beautifully written. . . . A remarkable achievement in urban studies and a must-read for anyone interested in changing spatial form, sociality, rights consciousness, and class dynamics in neoliberal times.” LI ZHANG, author of In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis “Once in a while, a book comes along and makes us rethink how cities and capitalism work. Luxury and Rubble is one of those, giving us new conceptual insights into urbanism and doing so through an intensely lived and beautifully narrated ethnography.” ANANYA ROY, editor of Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global ERIK HARMS is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University and the author of Saigon’s Edge: On the Margins of Ho Chi Minh City .
Insights about large-scale online peer assessment from an analysis of an astronomy MOOC

Abstract In this work we investigate the peer grading assignments which were an integral part of the astronomy Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) (Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space) provided through Coursera from March to May 2015. Our general goal is to assess the role of peer graded assignments in such courses and how they contribute to students’ learning and motivation. In order to achieve this broad goal we look at the peer grading process from multiple perspectives. We present an analysis of demographics for peer grading participants and show how they are different from the general course population. We also look at different aspects of peer grading assignments such as lengths of essays, time spent grading, number of gradings performed, final grades and percentage of relevant videos watched. We compare these distributions for different assignments and also their correlations on a level of individual learners. We show that participation in the first peer graded assignment is the best predictor of completion for the course as a whole. Moreover, learners who did well on the first peer graded assignment show better engagement and do better in the course overall. Finally, we report on validity and reliability of peer graders as compared to instructor graders and trained undergraduate graders.
Integration of objects and space in perception and memory

Distinct processing of objects and space has been an organizing principle for studying higher-level vision and medial temporal lobe memory. Here, however, we discuss how object and spatial information are in fact closely integrated in vision and memory. The ventral, object-processing visual pathway carries precise spatial information, transformed from retinotopic coordinates into relative dimensions. At the final stages of the ventral pathway, including the dorsal anterior temporal lobe (TEd), object-sensitive neurons are intermixed with neurons that process large-scale environmental space. TEd projects primarily to perirhinal cortex (PRC), which in turn projects to lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC). PRC and LEC also combine object and spatial information. For example, PRC and LEC neurons exhibit place fields that are evoked by landmark objects or the remembered locations of objects. Thus, spatial information, on both local and global scales, is deeply integrated into the ventral (temporal) object-processing pathway in vision and memory.
Transformations of Ovid in Late Antiquity

Ovid could be considered the original poet of late antiquity. In his exile poetry, he depicts a world in which Rome has become a distant memory, a community accessible only through his imagination. This, Ovid claimed, was a transformation as remarkable as any he had recounted in his Metamorphoses. Ian Fielding's book shows how late antique Latin poets referred to Ovid's experiences of isolation and estrangement as they reflected on the profound social and cultural transformations taking place in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries AD. There are detailed new readings of texts by major figures such as Ausonius, Paulinus of Nola, Boethius and Venantius Fortunatus. For these authors, Fielding emphasizes, Ovid was not simply a stylistic model, but an important intellectual presence. Ovid's fortunes in late antiquity reveal that poetry, far from declining into irrelevance, remained a powerful mode of expression in this fascinating period.
Birth Control, Drug Abuse, or Domestic Violence? What Health Risk Topics Are Women Willing to Discuss with a Virtual Agent?

The results of a study investigating which health issues women are willing to discuss with a virtual agent are presented, focusing on 108 risks related to maternal and child health. We find that women’s perceived importance of a health issue, along with general self-efficacy and comfort discussing the topic are significant predictors of whether they will address it.
Heparin contamination in coagulation testing and a protocol to avoid it and the risk of inappropriate FFP transfusion

Artifactual heparin contamination of blood samples drawn for coagulation testing is an ongoing problem. A retrospective analysis of activated partial thromboplastin times (APTTs) greater than 45 seconds from patients on neither heparin nor Coumadin (Dupont, Wilmington, DE) therapy shows complete correction of the APTT to normal in 39% of such samples after treatment with heparinase. Recheck of samples with significantly prolonged APTTs after treatment with heparinase is proposed as the best method to avoid inappropriate transfusion of fresh frozen plasma.
Pharmaceutical-based entrainment of circadian phase via nonlinear model predictive control.

Abstract The widespread adoption of closed-loop control in systems biology has resulted from improvements in sensors, computing, actuation, and the discovery of alternative sites of targeted drug delivery. Most control algorithms for circadian phase resetting exploit light inputs. However, recently identified small-molecule pharmaceuticals offer advantages in terms of invasiveness and potency of actuation. Herein, we develop a systematic method to control the phase of biological oscillations motivated by the recently identified small molecule circadian pharmaceutical KL001. The model-based control architecture exploits an infinitesimal parametric phase response curve (ipPRC) that is used to predict the effect of control inputs on future phase trajectories of the oscillator. The continuous time optimal control policy is first derived for phase resetting, based on the ipPRC and Pontryagin’s maximum principle. Owing to practical challenges in implementing a continuous time optimal control policy, we investigate the effect of implementing the continuous time policy in a sampled time format. Specifically, we provide bounds on the errors incurred by the physiologically tractable sampled time control law. We use these results to select directions of resetting (i.e. phase advance or delay), sampling intervals, and prediction horizons for a nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) algorithm for phase resetting. The potential of this ipPRC-informed pharmaceutical nonlinear MPC is then demonstrated in silico using real-world scenarios of jet lag or rotating shift work.
Elasticity of individual protocadherin 15 molecules implicates tip links as the gating springs for hearing.

Hair cells, the sensory receptors of the inner ear, respond to mechanical forces originating from sounds and accelerations. An essential feature of each hair cell is an array of filamentous tip links, consisting of the proteins protocadherin 15 (PCDH15) and cadherin 23 (CDH23), whose tension is thought to directly gate the cell’s transduction channels. These links are considered far too stiff to represent the gating springs that convert hair bundle displacement into forces capable of opening the channels, and no mechanism has been suggested through which tip-link stiffness could be varied to accommodate hair cells of distinct frequency sensitivity in different receptor organs and animals. Consequently, the gating spring’s identity and mechanism of operation remain central questions in sensory neuroscience. Using a high-precision optical trap, we show that an individual monomer of PCDH15 acts as an entropic spring that is much softer than its enthalpic stiffness alone would suggest. This low stiffness implies that the protein is a significant part of the gating spring that controls a hair cell’s transduction channels. The tip link’s entropic nature then allows for stiffness control through modulation of its tension. We find that a PCDH15 molecule is unstable under tension and exhibits a rich variety of reversible unfolding events that are augmented when the Ca 2+ concentration is reduced to physiological levels. Therefore, tip link tension and Ca 2+ concentration are likely parameters through which nature tunes a gating spring’s mechanical properties.
Mean-force scattering potential for calculating optical properties of dense plasmas

Abstract We assess the relative importance of ionic structure on the opacity of dense plasmas by using the potential of mean force as a scattering potential within the Kubo-Greenwood formalism. We compare results from the potential of mean force, which includes realistic ionic structure, to results using an average atom potential, which includes only a crude treatment of ionic structure. Comparisons with less approximate but more expensive DFT-MD simulations for aluminum plasma reveal that the mean force generally improves agreement for DC conductivity. We also see improvement when applying the mean force to free-free transitions, whereas for bound-bound and bound-free transitions the mean force leads to poorer agreement on transition energies. Further, we assess the impact of accounting for correlations within the plasma at the temperature and density conditions relevant to iron opacity measurements at Sandia’s Z machine facility [Bailey et al., Nature 517:56-59, 2015] and find that these correlations do not account for the discrepancy between the measurements and leading opacity calculations.
Some new numeric results concerning the Witsenhausen Counterexample

The Witsenhausen counterexample has been studied for decades as an elemental example of a challenging decentralized stochastic control problem. Its nonclassical information pattern induces an implicit need for controllers to ‘communicate’ (i.e., reduce uncertainty for another) via appropriate control actions. Nonlinear control strategies are required to do this well, but finding them is nontrivial since the problem is not convex. This paper uses contemporary neural-network toolkits to revisit this problem numerically and explore what makes it challenging. We find that without appropriately biasing the architecture to favor the kinds of solutions (”slopey quantizers”) that are believed to be nearly optimal, ample local minima make it hard to chance upon good solutions. Furthermore, inspired by earlier work that suggested that vector-versions of the counterexample should be easier to understand, we see numerically that indeed by going to even 2D, we can get better performance than the best known in 1D.
Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Surgical conditions span a broad spectrum of health states that result in morbidity and resource utilization. For patients and physicians, identifying the risks and benefits of interventions can be difficult. Selecting the “best treatment” for a particular clinical situation from the vast array of available options can be confusing. Health care providers, policy makers, and educators are focusing on “evidence-based health care,” the integration of the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. Because they represent the gold standard for testing new interventions, randomized or controlled clinical trials (RCT/CCTs) are the centerpiece of research evidence. Systematic reviews and quantitative meta-analyses have been suggested as an even higher level of evidence, because they provide scientifically rigorous synthesis of all the known evidence from RCT/CCTs or other best evidence.
Patients with gunshot wounds to the torso differ in risk of mortality depending on treating hospital.

Previous studies have had conflicting results when comparing risk of mortality in patients with gunshot wounds (GSWs) treated at Level-I and II trauma centers. However, the populations studied were restricted geographically. We hypothesized that patients presenting after a GSW to the torso at Level-I centers would have a shorter time to surgical intervention (exploratory laparotomy or thoracotomy) and a lower risk of mortality, compared to Level-IIs in a national database. The Trauma Quality Improvement Program (2010–2016) was queried for patients presenting to Level-I or II trauma center after a GSW to the torso. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed. From 17,965 patients with GSWs, 13,812 (76.8%) were treated at Level-Is and 4153 (23.2%) at Level-IIs. There was no difference in the injury severity score (ISS) (p = 0.55). The Level-I cohort had a higher rate of laparotomy (38.9% vs. 36.5%, p < 0.001) with a shorter median time to laparotomy (49 vs. 55 min, p < 0.001) but no difference in rate (p = 0.14) and time to thoracotomy (p = 0.62). After adjusting for covariates, only patients undergoing thoracotomy (OR = 0.66, CI = 0.47–0.95, p = 0.02) or those undergoing non-operative management (NOM) (OR = 0.85, CI = 0.74–0.98, p = 0.03) at a Level-I center had lower risk for death, compared to Level-II. Patients with torso GSWs managed with thoracotomy or NOM at a Level-I center have a lower risk of mortality, compared to a Level-II. Future prospective studies examining variations in practice, resources available and surgeon experience to account for these differences are warranted.
How Users Interpret Bugs in Trigger-Action Programming

Trigger-action programming (TAP) is a programming model enabling users to connect services and devices by writing if-then rules. As such systems are deployed in increasingly complex scenarios, users must be able to identify programming bugs and reason about how to fix them. We first systematize the temporal paradigms through which TAP systems could express rules. We then identify ten classes of TAP programming bugs related to control flow, timing, and inaccurate user expectations. We report on a 153-participant online study where participants were assigned to a temporal paradigm and shown a series of pre-written TAP rules. Half of the rules exhibited bugs from our ten bug classes. For most of the bug classes, we found that the presence of a bug made it harder for participants to correctly predict the behavior of the rule. Our findings suggest directions for better supporting end-user programmers.
Paternal Death, Parental Divorce, and Timing of First Substance Use in an Ethnically Diverse Sample

AbstractWe examined timing of first alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use as a function of paternal death or parental divorce during childhood. Data were drawn from a large ethnically diverse sampl...
Duration of Antibiotics Prescribed at Hospital Discharge.

Introduction A patient's transition from hospitalization to discharge may represent an additional opportunity for antibiotic stewardship. Methods We reviewed antimicrobial drugs prescribed at discharge to patients at our medical center over a nine-month period, and calculated the total duration of inpatient and outpatient antibiotic therapy. Results The median duration of inpatient antibiotics was three days (interquartile range [IQR] four days), of outpatient antibiotics was seven days (IQR six days), and of total antibiotics 10 days (IQR six days). Conclusions Our results align with the only previously published study of oral antibiotics prescribed at hospital discharge, both in the duration of inpatient and outpatient therapy and in the fact that about 60 percent of the treatment duration occurred after discharge. However, the median total antibiotic duration of 10 days is longer than that recommended by national and institutional guidelines for some of the most common infections in hospitalized patients.
Commentary: Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic and Health Disparities in Pediatric Psychology.

The COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus) pandemic has had a significant economic, social, emotional, and public health impact in the United States. A disturbing trend is that Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC) are disproportionately contracting coronavirus, as well as dying from COVID-19. Objective/Methods The pandemic has the potential to entrench and magnify existing health disparities and families marginalized across multiple demographic intersections such as race/ethnicity, class, immigration status, are especially vulnerable. These inequities have been further underscored by the recent murders of Black Americans by police and a resulting spotlight on racial injustice in the United States. Results Efforts to lessen the spread of the virus, have resulted in changes in pediatric primary and subspecialty service delivery which may affect access for BIPOC communities. BIPOC trainees including those with debt or caregiving responsibilities may be faced with new barriers resulting in delays in completion of their training. Further, clinical, community-based, and translational research has been disrupted by heightened safety precautions and social distancing which may affect BIPOC representation in research downstream. Conclusion In our roles as clinicians, supervisors, trainees, and researchers in primary and subspecialty care as well as in academia, pediatric psychologists have an ethical responsibility to address the disproportionate burden of this pandemic on vulnerable communities and to allocate our time and resources to ensuring health equity now and in the aftermath of COVID-19.
The science of pharmacokinetics: an overview and applications

Abstract Pharmacokinetics is an ever-evolving science that involves many complex concepts transformed into mathematical expressions. Derived from a multitude of disciplines and applied to a variety of fields from the development of a pharmaceutical drugs product to clinically optimize drug dosing treat or cure a disease, this specialized science requires a thorough understanding of drug physicochemical properties and human physiological dynamics to predict and measure biological and clinical therapeutic responses. Pharmaceutical products in development must undergo intense biochemical, analytical, and human physiological experimentation to ultimately achieve successful clinical outcomes. As drug products become more diverse, pharmacokinetic science will need to evolve to adapt to these complexities. The result will be a more thorough understanding of pharmaceutical agents that will need to continue in all future drug-discovery processes resulting in greater clinical cure and improved patient outcomes. A synopsis of history of and involvement of pharmacokinetics in drug-development concepts, pharmaceutical industry perspectives, and clinical application is presented in this chapter, including discussion of future applications.
Sedges and Rushes of Minnesota: The Complete Guide to Species Identification

Welby R. Smith, Photography by Richard Haug. 2018. Sedges and Rushes of Minnesota: The Complete Guide to Species Identification. (ISBN-13: 978-1-5179-0275-9, pbk). University of Minnesota Press, 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401-2520, U.S.A. (Orders: www.upress.umn.edu) $39.95 US, 696 pp. 1100 color plates, 6" × 9".
Risk‐of‐falling related outcomes improved in community‐dwelling older adults after a 6-week sideways walking intervention: a feasibility and pilot study

Aging increases fall risk and alters gait mechanics and control. Our previous work has identified sideways walking as a potential training regimen to decrease fall risk by improving frontal plane control in older adults’ gait. The purposes of this pilot study were to test the feasibility of sideways walking as an exercise intervention and to explore its preliminary effects on risk-of-falling related outcomes. We conducted a 6-week single-arm intervention pilot study. Participants were community-dwelling older adults ≥ 65 years old with walking ability. Key exclusion criteria were neuromusculoskeletal and cardiovascular disorders that affect gait. Because initial recruitment rate through University of Nebraska at Omaha and Omaha community was slower than expected (3 participants∙week− 1), we expanded the recruitment pool through the Mind & Brain Health Labs registry of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Individualized sideways walking intervention carried out under close supervision in a 200 m indoor walking track (3 days∙week− 1). Recruitment and retention capability, safety, and fidelity of intervention delivery were recorded. We also collected (open-label) walking speed, gait variability, self-reported and performance-based functional measures to assess participants’ risk-of-falling at baseline and post-intervention: immediate, and 6 weeks after the completion of the intervention. Over a 7-month period, 42 individuals expressed interest, 21 assessed for eligibility (21/42), and 15 consented to participate (15/21). Most of the potential participants were reluctant to commit to a 6-week intervention. Desired recruitment rate was achieved after revising the recruitment strategy. One participant dropped out (1/15). Remaining participants demonstrated excellent adherence to the protocol. Participants improved on most outcomes and the effects remained at follow-up. No serious adverse events were recorded during the intervention. Our 6-week sideways walking training was feasible to deliver and demonstrated strong potential as an exercise intervention to improve risk-of-falling outcomes in community-dwelling older adults. In a future trial, alternative clinical tools should be considered to minimize the presence of ceiling/floor effects. A future large trial is needed to confirm sideways walking as a fall prevention intervention. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04505527 . Retrospectively registered 10 August 2020.
Familial Experiences of Exemplars in Marketing Communication

Marketing communication executives are continuously confronted with dilemmas requiring moral deliberation. To better understand morality, media ethicists have applied moral psychology theory to und...
Racial discrimination and other adverse childhood experiences as risk factors for internalizing mental health concerns among Black youth.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been consistently linked to a reduction in healthy psychological adjustment among youth. Emergent evidence suggests that there are culturally specific ACEs, such as racial discrimination, that are particularly harmful to the mental health of Black youth. However, the psychological impact of racial discrimination on the mental health of Black youth relative to other ACEs remains underexplored. The present study aimed to address this gap by examining the extent to which racial discrimination was associated with other ACEs and elucidating the unique associations between children's experiences of racial discrimination and internalizing problems (i.e., depression, anxiety), after controlling for other ACEs. Data consisted of a subsample of Black children from the National Survey of Children's Health (N = 8,672; Mage = 9.8 years; 51.1% male). Bivariate analyses illustrated that racial discrimination was positively associated with the co-occurrence of all other ACEs measured within the current study. Multivariable analyses using generalized linear mixed models revealed that racial discrimination was significantly associated with youth diagnoses of depression, adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.35, 95% CI [1.23, 1.49], and anxiety, aOR = 1.39, 95% CI [1.31, 1.47], after controlling for other ACEs and sociodemographic covariates. The findings demonstrate that racial discrimination is comparably associated with youth internalizing problems relative to ACEs conventionally examined within the childhood trauma literature. The importance of these results, including how this knowledge can be leveraged to inform clinical practice and policy to promote the positive mental health of Black youth, are also discussed.
Starting Points for Agency Research

The chapter in this book on “Neurobiological Perspectives of Agency” was based on the premise that agency research should start with identification of what is generally accepted as more or less axioms. I identified and explained ten such axioms. Next, I identified more contentious issues that are central to areas of research most in need of further research.
Biogenic amines in the hypothalamus: effect of L-DOPA on human growth hormone levels in patients with Huntington's chorea.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the effect of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) on human growth hormone levels in patients with huntington's chorea. Huntington's chorea, transmitted as an autosomal dominant trait, is a progressively deteriorating disease of the central nervous system. The primary pathology is loss of small neurons and associated gliosis in the corpus striatum. There is also neuronal loss in the cerebral cortex as well as paraventricular, supraoptic and lateral tuberal hypothalamic nuclei and dorsomedial nucleus of the hypothalamus. 10 patients with documented Huntington's chorea had human growth hormone (HGH) levels measured during a 5-hour oral glucose tolerance test. Nine of them had HGH levels measured during a repeat glucose tolerance test (GTT) that had been modified by a 3-day course of L-DOPA administration. Human growth hormone is known to be released from the anterior pituitary secondary to the release of growth hormone-releasing factor (GRF) from the tuberoinfundibular system of the hypothalamus.
Statistics and the cosmic microwave background

We discuss the statistics of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, and the statistical analysis of CMB experiments. Using Bayesian techniques, we proceed from the time-ordered data through maps of the sky, to power spectra, and to cosmological parameters. We discuss computational problems encountered along the way, and review recent results.
The Crisis of Consciousness in Modern African Literature: a Survey

(1974). The Crisis of Consciousness in Modern African Literature: A Survey. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des etudes africaines: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 385-410.
The diverse evolutionary paths of simulated high-z massive, compact galaxies to z = 0

Massive quiescent galaxies have much smaller physical sizes at high redshift than today. The strong evolution of galaxy size may be caused by progenitor bias, major and minor mergers, adiabatic expansion, and/or renewed star formation, but it is difficult to test these theories observationally. Herein, we select a sample of 35 massive, compact galaxies (M_* = 1–3 × 10^(11) M_⊙, M_*/R^(1.5) > 10^(10.5) M_⊙/kpc^(1.5)) at z = 2 in the cosmological hydrodynamical simulation Illustris and trace them forwards to z = 0 to uncover their evolution and identify their descendants. By z = 0, the original factor of 3 difference in stellar mass spreads to a factor of 20. The dark matter halo masses similarly spread from a factor of 5 to 40. The galaxies’ evolutionary paths are diverse: about half acquire an ex situ envelope and are the core of a more massive descendant, a third survive undisturbed and gain very little mass, 15 per cent are consumed in a merger with a more massive galaxy, and a small remainder are thoroughly mixed by major mergers. The galaxies grow in size as well as mass, and only ∼10 per cent remain compact by z = 0. The majority of the size growth is driven by the acquisition of ex situ mass. The most massive galaxies at z = 0 are the most likely to have compact progenitors, but this trend possesses significant dispersion which precludes a direct linkage to compact galaxies at z = 2. The compact galaxies’ merger rates are influenced by their z = 2 environments, so that isolated or satellite compact galaxies (which are protected from mergers) are the most likely to survive to the present day.
Left Against Rights: A Review of Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire

﻿Costas Douzinas has written a book that has something to infuriate just about everyone - human rights activists, neo-cons, liberals, cosmopolitans, anti-globalizationists, international lawyers, proponents of NATO's intervention in Kosovo, supporters of the American intervention in Iraq, and everyone else in between. I mean that as high praise. In 2000, the author published a book declaring the end of human rights which, not surprisingly, stirred up considerable controversy among the ranks of human rights advocates. One went so far as to call it repugnant. Douzinas neither adopts a pragmatic limitation on rights nor makes the type of simplistic attacks on rights associated with the American Critical Legal Studies movement of the 1980's. To the contrary, Douzinas passionately desires rights. He believes, however, that human-rights talk, as it has developed, is itself part of the problem. Being both intellectually vacuous and philosophically incoherent, it serves as a tool for rationalizing the exercise of power. Consequently, Douzinas is trying to save rights from human rights. This is an impassioned but rigorous philosophical exploration of what rights might mean in a post-modern, post-9/11 world.
School Stress, Academic Performance, and Coping in College Freshmen

The 2010 annual freshmen survey from the University of California Los Angeles stated that nearly half of all freshmen report having low to average levels of emotional health. This is the largest percentage of students in the low range of emotional health since the survey began over 25 years ago. Lower levels of mental and emotional health have been found to correlate with higher levels of stress. If students have high levels of stress and ineffective coping skills, this may negatively affect their academic performance. The purpose of my research was to understand how school stress, coping, and academic performance interact with each other. To accomplish this, college freshmen ( n = 38) from a mid-sized university in the Rocky Mountain region were asked to complete three surveys: the Student Life-Stress Inventory (Gadzella, 1994), the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (Endler & Parker, 1999), and a demographic survey. Correlation analysis suggested that stress and coping were positively and significantly correlated ( r [36] = .448, p = .004). Beyond this, emotion coping was also positively and significantly correlated with stress ( r [36] = .698, p = < .001). Regression analysis showed that emotion coping accounted for nearly half of the variance in stress ( R 2 = .488, p < .001). These results suggest that reacting in an emotional way may be freshmen students’ first and most used reaction to stress. It may be that freshmen students only know how to cope with stress in an emotional way. Incoming freshmen may benefit from additional sources of support and tools to deal with stress, such as positive ways to manage stress, and increased knowledge of resources on campus, such as counseling centers.
An Empirical Study of Design Degradation: How Software Projects Get Worse over Time

Context: Software decay is a key concern for large, long-lived software projects. Systems degrade over time as design and implementation compromises and exceptions pile up. Goal: Quantify design decay and understand how software projects deal with this issue. Method: We conducted an empirical study on the presence and evolution of code smells, used as an indicator of design degradation in 220 open source projects. Results: The best approach to maintain the quality of a project is to spend time reducing both software defects (bugs) and design issues (refactoring). We found that design issues are frequently ignored in favor of fixing defects. We also found that design issues have a higher chance of being fixed in the early stages of a project, and that efforts to correct these stall as projects mature and the code base grows, leading to a build-up of problems. Conclusions: From studying a large set of open source projects, our research suggests that while core contributors tend to fix design issues more often than non-core contributors, there is no difference once the relative quantity of commits is accounted for. We also show that design issues tend to build up over time.
The computer manager and his job

In a recent study1 a large group of managers of medium to large computer installations were surveyed. One of the questions asked was what they felt were the major problems facing them now and in the future. Over 40% responded that personnel problems (Table I) were the most formidable. In addition, a considerable number of the managers responding to another question in the survey indicated that they did not prefer working solely with technical problems (Table II), rather preferred problems that involved people. But yet it has been observed that computer managers do, in fact, spend a good deal of their time working with technical problems. The purpose of this study was therefore to determine if the data in Table I is a true representation of the problems facing the computer manager. In this study, as in the earlier one, the computer manager or computer executive is defined as the highest-ranking person in the organization whose duties are concerned solely with computational matters.
Olfactory Conditioning in the Third Instar Larvae of Drosophila melanogaster Using Heat Shock Reinforcement

Adult Drosophila melanogaster has long been a popular model for learning and memory studies. Now the larval stage of the fruit fly is also being used in an increasing number of classical conditioning studies. In this study, we employed heat shock as a novel negative reinforcement for larvae and obtained high learning scores following just one training trial. We demonstrated heat-shock conditioning in both reciprocal and non-reciprocal paradigms and observed that the time window of association for the odor and heat shock reinforcement is on the order of a few minutes. This is slightly wider than the time window for electroshock conditioning reported in previous studies, possibly due to lingering effects of the high temperature. To test the utility of this simplified assay for the identification of new mutations that disrupt learning, we examined flies carrying mutations in the dnc gene. While the sensitivity to heat shock, as tested by writhing, was similar for wild type and dnc homozygotes, dnc mutations strongly diminished learning. We confirmed that the learning defect in dnc flies was indeed due to mutation in the dnc gene using non-complementation analysis. Given that heat shock has not been employed as a reinforcement for larvae in the past, we explored learning as a function of heat shock intensity and found that optimal learning occurred around 41°C, with higher and lower temperatures both resulting in lower learning scores. In summary, we have developed a very simple, robust paradigm of learning in fruit fly larvae using heat shock reinforcement.
Inter-university conference on hydrology

On August 7–9, 1962, an Inter-University Conference on Hydrology was held at Lake Arrowhead, California. Participants included representatives from nineteen universities; in addition, observers from eight federal agencies and the American Geophysical Union were in attendance. The Conference was sponsored by the Water Resources Center of the University of California; arrangements were made by a steering committee consisting of representatives from three California universities. The meeting was organized in response to a need for expanded educational and research programs in hydrology at universities to provide the manpower and new knowledge required for present and future water resources developments. Several recent reports, including those by the U. S. Senate Select Committee on Water Resources, have emphasized deficiencies in the science of hydrology. The point was clearly made in Scientific Hydrology, published in June 1962, by the Ad Hoc Panel on Hydrology of the Federal Council for Science and Technology, as follows: The water development and management problems of the last few years have created a need for scientific hydrology that exceeds the capacity of the relatively few individuals who have come into the field from bordering disciplines. The time has come to encourage colleges and universities to make a conscious effort to develop scientists trained to work on hydrologic problems from a broad base in the fundamental sciences.
High-speed particle image velocimetry near surfaces.

Multi-dimensional and transient flows play a key role in many areas of science, engineering, and health sciences but are often not well understood. The complex nature of these flows may be studied using particle image velocimetry (PIV), a laser-based imaging technique for optically accessible flows. Though many forms of PIV exist that extend the technique beyond the original planar two-component velocity measurement capabilities, the basic PIV system consists of a light source (laser), a camera, tracer particles, and analysis algorithms. The imaging and recording parameters, the light source, and the algorithms are adjusted to optimize the recording for the flow of interest and obtain valid velocity data. Common PIV investigations measure two-component velocities in a plane at a few frames per second. However, recent developments in instrumentation have facilitated high-frame rate (> 1 kHz) measurements capable of resolving transient flows with high temporal resolution. Therefore, high-frame rate measurements have enabled investigations on the evolution of the structure and dynamics of highly transient flows. These investigations play a critical role in understanding the fundamental physics of complex flows. A detailed description for performing high-resolution, high-speed planar PIV to study a transient flow near the surface of a flat plate is presented here. Details for adjusting the parameter constraints such as image and recording properties, the laser sheet properties, and processing algorithms to adapt PIV for any flow of interest are included.
Duplex-directed thrombin injection as a method to treat femoral artery pseudoaneurysms.

The common femoral artery has long been the preferred site for percutaneous access to the arterial system because of its low complication rate. However, the exponential growth of arteriography has set the stage for an expanding rate of iatrogenic arterial injury, and these injuries now exceed all vascular injuries from gunshot and knife wounds. Historically, arterial thrombosis was the most common complication of percutaneous arterial access. Recently, however, the use of larger catheters and the more liberal use of anticoagulants have created a rising incidence of expanding hematoma and pseudoaneurysm. Many injuries are from errors in technique resulting in vessels that are difficult to compress (suprainguinal puncture), certain patient characteristics (advanced age, obesity, aberrant anatomy), or therapeutic adjuncts (anticoagulants). The highest rate of pseudoaneurysm formation occurs after coronary stenting (5% to 8%) and atherectomy (2.2%), and it occurs infrequently after diagnostic angiography (0.2% to 0.5%). If a pseudoaneurysm is suspected, color flow Doppler ultrasound should be performed, and if confirmed, ultrasound-directed compression can effectively be applied to a certain percentage of patients. Since the introduction of this technique by Fellmeth in 1991, ultrasound-guided compression of pseudoaneurysms has become the initial treatment of choice. Drawbacks of the technique are that it can be time consuming to use, both in terms of personnel and equipment and frequently requires intravenous sedation and analgesia. The technique is usually accompanied by a 24-hour period of bedrest and bandage compression. Even with these measures, the recurrence rate is still 20%. Finally, continued anticoagulation greatly reduces the rate of success. Consequently, surgical repair has been required for 20% to 30% of all femoral pseudoaneurysms. Surgical complication after repair of femoral pseudoaneurysm in large series approximates 20%, including a 2% to 3% mortality (Table 1). The average hospital stay was . 3 days in this group. An alternative method of treatment was suggested by Liau and associates in July 1997: direct, ultrasound-directed thrombin injection into the pseudoaneurysm. Their series of five patients demonstrated 100% efficacy, no recurrences at 1 to 28 months, and no procedure-related complications. Moreover, the procedure required only minutes to perform and was well tolerated by all patients, none of whom required sedation or analgesia. These excellent results were corroborated by Baker and Kang, who recently reported similar results in 22 pseudoaneurysms (including patients on anticoagulants) without complication or recurrence.