cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Designing and evaluating mobile systems for collocated group use

With the proliferation of mobile devices it has become common to see groups of users working or playing together using multiple mobile devices. While much effort is exerted to ensure that interaction with a mobile device is useful for each individual user, less effort has gone into considering how to design and evaluate mobile interfaces and platforms for group use. Recent improvements in the interaction, computing, connectivity and general flexibility of mobile devices make them an ideal, yet underutilized, platform for group level interaction. Our goal with this workshop is to bring together researchers who have started to investigate the collocated group use of mobile devices and to shed light on the challenges of designing and evaluating mobile collocated group experiences.
Detection and determination of oligonucleotide triplex formation-mediated transcription-coupled DNA repair in HeLa nuclear extracts

Transcription-coupled repair (TCR) plays an important role in removing DNA damage from actively transcribed genes. It has been speculated that TCR is the most important mechanism for repairing DNA damage in non-dividing cells such as neurons. Therefore, abnormal TCR may contribute to the development of many age-related and neurodegenerative diseases. However, the molecular mechanism of TCR is not well understood. Oligonucleotide DNA triplex formation provides an ideal system to dissect the molecular mechanism of TCR since triplexes can be formed in a sequence-specific manner to inhibit transcription of target genes. We have recently studied the molecular mechanism of triplex-forming oligonucleotide (TFO)-mediated TCR in HeLa nuclear extracts. Using plasmid constructs we demonstrate that the level of TFO-mediated DNA repair activity is directly correlated with the level of transcription of the plasmid in HeLa nuclear extracts. TFO-mediated DNA repair activity was further linked with transcription since the presence of rNTPs in the reaction was essential for AG30-mediated DNA repair activity in HeLa nuclear extracts. The involvement of individual components, including TFIID, TFIIH, RNA polymerase II and xeroderma pigmentosum group A (XPA), in the triplex-mediated TCR process was demonstrated in HeLa nuclear extracts using immunodepletion assays. Importantly, our studies also demonstrated that XPC, a component involved in global genome DNA repair, is involved in the AG30-mediated DNA repair process. The results obtained in this study provide an important new understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in the TCR process in mammalian cells.
Magnetic properties of neutron irradiated and doped MgB/sub 2/ superconductors

Studies on the effect of neutron irradiation on MgB/sub 2/ superconductor showed a systematic lowering of T/sub c/ with increasing neutron fluence. The lower T/sub c/ made it difficult to observe the marginal enhancement of flux pinning properties in the neutron irradiated MgB/sub 2/ powders. Partial substitution of Mg in MgB/sub 2/ by Ti, V and Nb yielded pure samples up to 10 at.% doping level. These substitutions had no affect on T/sub c/, which remained constant at 39 K. The effect of doping Mg by Ti, V, and Nb on the flux pinning properties of MgB/sub 2/ was investigated by magnetization measurements. Comparison of the magnetization hysteresis loop widths of the undoped and doped samples showed that the V-doped powders had larger hysteresis loop widths compared to undoped samples indicating enhanced flux pinning in the V-doped samples compared to the undoped and Ti- and Nb-doped samples.
Cryosurgery and the CO2 laser

Over the past decade, the management of intraepithelial lesions of the visible portion of the female genital tract has substantially changed with the introduction of cryosurgery and the carbon dioxide laser. Although cryosurgery and the carbon dioxide laser are very effective in eradicating preinvasive disease, the selection of patients by colposcopy and appropriate biopsies is more important than the treatment techniques. Failure to properly evaluate women with genital tract neoplasia can result in disastrous consequences for the patient. The CO2 laser shows considerable promise in managing dysplasia and carcinoma in situ of the vagina and vulva. The laser combines the accuracy of the operating microscope and the precision and control of the photon beam. Posttreatment sequelae are minimal, and scarring is absent.
Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1 regulates integration of newly generated neurons in the adult brain

Adult neurogenesis occurs throughout life in discrete regions of the adult mammalian brain. Little is known about the mechanism governing the sequential developmental process that leads to integration of new neurons from adult neural stem cells into the existing circuitry. Here, we investigated roles of Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1), a schizophrenia susceptibility gene, in adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Unexpectedly, downregulation of DISC1 leads to accelerated neuronal integration, resulting in aberrant morphological development and mispositioning of new dentate granule cells in a cell-autonomous fashion. Functionally, newborn neurons with DISC1 knockdown exhibit enhanced excitability and accelerated dendritic development and synapse formation. Furthermore, DISC1 cooperates with its binding partner NDEL1 in regulating adult neurogenesis. Taken together, our study identifies DISC1 as a key regulator that orchestrates the tempo of functional neuronal integration in the adult brain and demonstrates essential roles of a susceptibility gene for major mental illness in neuronal development, including adult neurogenesis.
Women, the doctorate, and equity in engineering education

A common explanation for the under-representation of women in faculty appointments in science, mathematics and engineering (SME) fields is that women drop out of graduate school without completing their degrees and thus are under-represented among those qualified for such appointments. The study explores both the empirical validity and textual sources for this explanation. An analysis of enrollment and graduation records for three cohorts entering graduate school at North Carolina State University from 1985 to 1987 for ten departments casts doubt on the notion that there are gender differences in completion rates. Close scrutiny of the literature often cited in support of claims about women's attrition reveals that such claims are not based on contemporary research findings. The study concludes that graduate attrition may no longer be key to understanding the under representation of women among science, mathematics, and engineering faculty. A better explanation may come from understanding how a later stage of training, the postdoctoral position, presents a new structural barrier to women's career advancement in SME fields.
Chemoaffinity capture of pre-targeted prostate cancer cells with magnetic beads.

BACKROUND Prostate circulating tumor cells (PCTCs) in circulation are shed from either a primary tumor or metastases, which are directly responsible for most prostate cancer deaths. Quantifying exfoliated PCTCs may serve as an indicator for the clinical management of prostate cancer, isolating and removing of PCTCs could potentially reduce prostate cancer metastasis, and culturing and characterizing captured PCTCs could facilitate the development of personalized treatment options. Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is an established biomarker for prostate cancer being strongly expressed on prostate tumor cells associated with high-grade primary, androgen independent, and metastatic tumors. METHODS Suspensions of PSMA+ (LNCaP) cells were pre-targeted with the irreversible PSMA inhibitor biotin-PEG12-CTT-54 to serve as a bait to capture PSMA+ cells using streptavidin-coated magnetic beads. Decreasing numbers of LNCaP cells were spiked into blood to determine the cell captured efficiency, recovery and viability. RESULTS High selectivity, recovery, and viability were achieved for the capture of PSMA+ cells in both model experiments with mixtures of LNCaP cells and WBCs as well as blood samples spiked with LNCaP cells. As low as 10 cells were captured from 1 ml of blood with nearly 90% viability. More importantly, captured cells could be subsequently propagated in vitro. CONCLUSIONS This methodology for the detection, isolation, and culture of PCTCs from peripheral blood can serve as an effective tool for the detection of metastatic prostate cancer, treatment monitoring, and the development of personalized therapy based on the responsiveness of PCTCs to chemotherapeutic strategies. Prostate 72:1532–1541, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Super high frequency width extensional aluminum nitride (AlN) MEMS resonators

Width extensional (WE) super high frequency (SHF) aluminum nitride (AlN) resonators have been fabricated using optical lithography. Solidly anchored WE resonators were shown to be superior to beam anchored resonators of the same size and it was verified that simply scaling resonator area does not improve insertion loss (IL). Resonators with an IL of −6.3 dB into 50 ohms at 4.1 GHz and −7.2 dB at 6.8 GHz have been demonstrated. This type of performance at 6.8 GHz is unprecedented for contour mode resonators and represents a 12.6 dB improvement over recently reported SHF AlN resonators.
Performance evaluation of CDMA packet networks in Nakagami fading

This paper concerns the performance evaluation of band-limited code-division multiple-access (CDMA) packet networks over Nakagami fading channels. New equations for packet success probabilities (PSP) are developed that can be used to efficiently compute the PSP of both slotted and unslotted CDMA networks for various Nakagami fading conditions, including Rayleigh fading. The packets may be uncoded or block-coded for error correction. The computed PSP was used to evaluate the throughputs of slotted and unslotted networks, based on a Poisson packet traffic model. Simulation results show that the new PSP equations are accurate and computationally efficient.
Treatment of the windblown hand

The windblown hand deformity, also known as congenital ulnar drift of the fingers and congenital contractures of the digits is reported infrequently in the literature. Although the syndrome is well described, authors' use of different terms is confusing. In more than 20 years of practice, we have observed 11 patients with the windblown hand and have operated on 7 hands in 4 patients. The anomaly appears to be inherited as an autosomal dominant trait and may represent a variation of some type of arthrogryposis. Ulnar drift of the digits is often present at birth and becomes more pronounced as the child grows. The one factor common to all case reports is a flexion contracture of the metacarpophalangeal joints, with ulnar deviation of the fingers. Also, the thumb is webbed to the palm by a soft tissue bridge. Most cases of the windblown hand should be treated within the first 2 years of life. Because the windblown hand has many variations, each patient must be treated individually. We report a series on the windblown hand and propose a treatment plan for this rare anomaly.
Performance of a terminal adapter: CCITT V.110

Considers the performance of the terminal adaptor (TA) for ISDN described in CCITT Recommendation V.110, which provides conversion between the V.24 (RS-232) interface and the basic rate user interface at reference point S (or T). Specifically, the authors describe the operation of the TA, and consider the effects of channel errors on its performance. Both theoretical and computer simulation results on inter-TA communication are presented. It is concluded that when channel error probability is greater than 10/sup -3/, TA performance begins to degrade. Although the frame acquisition time increases fairly slowly, the time between successive losses of synchronization decreases rather quickly, and the TA begins to spend a nonnegligible amount of time attempting to reacquire synchronization. >
EVALUATION OF NEW TOMOGRAPHIC INVERSION METHOD APPLIED TO JET FLOWS

Tomographic reconstruction using a KarhunenLoeve basis(termed TRKB) is being performed on three non-reacting, methane-argon jets surrounded by a co-flow of air. The Karhunen-Loeve(K-L) procedure uses a training set, several scalar distributions obtained prior to employing TRKB, to produce basis functions. These basis functions are ideally suited for a finite series solution of the distribution to be reconstructed because for a specified number of terms in the series solution they give the most accurate reconstruction than any other set of basis functions. The jets are located at different heights from each other and are arbitrarily placed in the measurement plane. This represents an increase in flow complexity from previous research at Cornell University. The objective is to attempt tomographic reconstructions on methane concentration distributions with significant gradients. The training set necessary for the TRKB method is created with probe sampling measurements. The resultant K-L basis functions are efficient in reconstructin g distributions in the training set, i.e. as few as 42 line-of-sight laser absorption measurements and six K-L basis functions are required for adequate reconstruction. Problems that were encountered are nonlinear optical instrumentation and low measurement resolution. The reconstructed distributions show the robustness of the TRKB method and its usefulness in diagnostic or monitoring applications.
Mutations in translation initiation factors lead to increased rates of deadenylation and decapping of mRNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The turnover of most mRNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae begins with deadenylation followed by decapping and 5′→3′ exonucleolytic digestion. An important question involves the mechanisms that allow particular mRNAs to exhibit different rates of both deadenylation and decapping. Since the cap structure plays a critical role in the assembly of translation initiation factors, we hypothesized that the status of the cytoplasmic cap binding complex would affect the rate of decapping. To test this hypothesis, we examined mRNA decay rates in yeast strains that were defective in several translation initiation factors that are part of the cap binding complex. These experiments yielded three significant observations. First, any mutation known to inhibit translation initiation also increased the rate of decapping. Second, decapping still occurred only after deadenylation, suggesting that the ability of the poly(A) tail to inhibit decapping does not require efficient translation of the transcript. Third, mutants with defects in translation initiation factors also showed an increase in the rate of deadenylation, suggesting that the rate of deadenylation may be controlled primarily by the translation status of the transcript. These results argue that the nature of the translation initiation complex is a critical factor in determining the mRNA half-life. This view also implies that some cis-acting sequences that modulate mRNA decay rate do so by affecting the translation status of the transcript.
Enoxaparin and bleeding complications: a review in patients with and without renal insufficiency

Study Objective. To compare the frequency of bleeding complications from enoxaparin in patients with normal renal function versus patients with renal insufficiency. Design. Retrospective chart review. Setting. University-based tertiary care center. Patients. One hundred six patients who received two or more doses of enoxaparin. Measurements and Main Results. Total bleeding complications occurred in 22% of patients with normal renal function and 51% with renal insufficiency (p<0.01). Major bleeds were also significantly different, 2% and 30%, respectively (p<0.001). No patients with normal renal function were given fresh-frozen plasma or packed red blood cells, whereas in those with renal insufficiency, 13% and 32%, respectively, received these products (p<0.01). Conclusion. Enoxaparin may have resulted in increased bleeding complications and use of blood products in patients with renal insufficiency. Prospective studies need to be conducted to define the drug's role and dosage adjustments in these patients. (Pharmacotherapy 2000; 20(7):771–775)
DENSIDAD DE OCELOTES (Leopardus pardalis) EN LOS LLANOS COLOMBIANOS

RESUMEN: La ecologia de poblaciones de ocelotes (Leopardus pardalis) que viven en sabanas de inundaciones estacionales es desconocida, y en particular la de las poblaciones de los llanos colombianos. Se realizo un muestreo de foto-trampeo de ocelotes dirigido a estudiar su densidad en una reserva privada de los llanos colombianos. Se identificaron entre 5 y 6 individuos diferentes (dependiendo del flanco registrado en las fotos) a partir de 25 fotografias tomadas durante un muestreo de 1282 trampas-noche. La densidad de ocelotes estimada fue de 5.47 (MMDM) y 11.08 (½ MMDM) individuos cada 100 km 2 . Esta constituye una de las densidades mas bajas jamas reportadas para la especie y la primera a partir del metodo de captura-recaptura para el habitat llanero. La baja densidad podria estar relacionada con el tipo de habitat de bosques de galeria y sabanas abiertas con escasa continuidad en la cobertura vegetal, ademas de la persecucion directa, caceria de sus presas y la conversion de habitat a plantaciones de arroz, palma de aceite y ganaderia extensiva. En el escenario mas optimista, los ocelotes (n=500) requieren de un area conservada de 4570 km 2 para su supervivencia a largo plazo.
Birds are Dinosaurs: Simple Answer to a Complex Problem

Richard Prum's (2002) rancorous, unreviewed essay on the theropod origin of birds is a one-sided view of a difficult problem, full of anatomical misconceptions that are highly misleading, and advocates that (p. 13), "it is time to abandon debate on the theropod origin of birds." His article is essentially a restatement and defense of a current dogma of paleontology-that birds are living dinosaurs, directly descended from, or having shared common ancestry with, one of the most highly derived and specialized groups of Cretaceous theropods, the dromaeosaurs (and Cretaceous troodontids), that are presumed to have had ghost lineages going back into the Jurassic Period. Advocates on both sides of the debate agree that birds are related to dinosaurs, but opponents of the birds-are-dinosaurs movement, including myself, advocate a common shared ancestry of birds and dinosaurs from basal archosaurs, with less specialized anatomical baggage, at a much earlier time. The "birds are living dinosaurs" hypothesis dates back almost three decades to when John Ostrom (see Ostrom 1976), combining studies of his earlier discovery of the late, early Cretaceous dromaeosaur Deinonychus with his speculations on hot-blooded (endothermic) dinosaurs, presented his new dinosarurian origin of birds theory. At its inception, all theropods were highly energized, endothermic reptiles (endothermic homeotherms), and the smaller theropods had acquired feathers for insulation. Archaeopteryx was an earthbound feathered theropod that could not fly (Bakker 1975) but later learned to fly from the ground up (Ostrom 1979). At that time, the dinosaurian origin of birds had, of course, nothing to do with cladistic theory, but was based on the overall similarity of Deinonychus to Archaeopteryx. By 1978, Archaeopteryx was said to support "two theories: warm-bloodedness in dinosaurs and dinosaurian ancestry of birds" (Ostrom 1978:168). I wrote the first rebuttal to hot-blooded dinosaurs (Feduccia 1973), and a mountain of evidence has been marshaled against endothermy in dinosaurs during the last three decades (Morell 1996). Nevertheless, Ostrom (1976) reconstructed the Archaeopteryx skeleton to closely resemble that of the known theropods; it was a terrestrial predator, and
Improving Representational Competence with Concrete Models

Representational competence is a primary contributor to student learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines and an optimal target for instruction at all educational levels. We describe the design and implementation of a learning activity that uses concrete models to improve students’ representational competence and achievement in an undergraduate chemistry course. In the study, we embedded modeling workshops into the normal course of instruction and measured their effectiveness for improving representational competence. The results indicate that, independent of instructor, the learning activity significantly improved students’ ability to identify spatial information in disciplinary diagrams and translate among molecular representations compared to students who did not complete the activity. We also compared the effectiveness of the modeling workshops to improve achievement on summative course assessments. Despite demonstrated improvement in representational competence, students who received the intervention did not perform significantly better than a control group on course assessments. Finally, we surveyed students who completed the workshops to investigate their beliefs about the utility of concrete models for learning chemistry. Students reported that concrete models are useful for a limited range of tasks. We argue that concrete models offer specific advantages to the student that may help improve representational competence, although such improvement may not generalize.
Bayesian nonparametric multiple testing

Multiple testing, or multiplicity problems often require testing several means with the assumption of rejecting infrequently, as motivated by the need to analyze DNA microarray data. The goal is to keep the combined rate of false discoveries and non-discoveries as small as possible. A discrete approximation to a Polya tree prior that enjoys fast, conjugate updating, centered at the usual Gaussian distribution is proposed. This new technique and the advantages of this approach are demonstrated using extensive simulation and data analysis accompanied by a Java web application. The numerical studies demonstrate that this new procedure shows promising false discovery rate and estimation of key values in the mixture model with very reasonable computational speed.
Organization at the margins: Subaltern resistance of Singur

Based on fieldwork and subaltern studies as a theoretical framework, this article engages organizational discourses of farmers in Singur, India. Opposing their land grab by the state for a corporate project, the farmers join the global struggle against land acquisition by subaltern communities, a prominent feature of the neoliberal economy. My conversations with the farmers reveal that discourses of violence and non-violence informed their organization of struggle. Further, their organization of resistance emerges as a self-organization, demonstrates the interplay of agency and structure, and follows an ethico-political ideology to challenge the imperial power produced by state-corporate nexus. In particular, cultural value frames of ahimsa (non-violence) and dharma (moral) guide their organizational principles centered on ethical considerations, justice and human dignity. This research brings forth the counter-hegemonic potential of the Singur resistance and suggests its possibilities to contribute to th...
Harnessing Faith for Improved Quality of Life: Government and Faith-Based Nonprofit Organizations in Partnership

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a public social services department’s intentional recruitment of the faith-based community in meeting the department’s mission. Using the framework of network governance theory, we describe and analyze how the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services realized that reaching the largest number of clients and providing services that people would be willing to accept must involve the faith-based community. The department and the process it took are described and analyzed through the lens of network governance. Practice, policy, and theory implications are discussed.
Decline of Empire: The Internal Explanation

Although the American decline has frequently been depicted as the result of economic disinvestment, military overextension, and the like, this article suggests that America's decline results from increasingly fragmented political institutions. Citing organization theory research documenting structural tendencies toward decentralization, and the writings of Toynbee, Spengler, and others who have identified decline with institutional fragmentation, the author argues that the U.S. government has recently undergone dysfunctional structure decentralization. Additionally, it suggests that America's institutional fragmentation restricts the government's ability to comprehend the issues it faces, because contractually induced analytic cognitions now overwhelming aggregationally induced synthetic cognitions.
Excimer Laser Deposition of HighlY Oriented PLZT Thin Films

Laser ablation provides a suitable technique of ferroelectric thin film deposition. We have used this technique to produce films of Pb1-xLax(Zr1-y Tiy)1-x/4O3 (PLZT), a class of ceramic materials which has a wide range of composition dependent electro-optical properties. PLZT films of (7/0/100) and (28/0/100) composition have been deposited onto both crystalline Si and amorphous fused silica substrates. Laser ablation provides high deposition rates and good crystal structure of thin ferroelectric films on silicon. The methods required to achieve proper stoichiometry in the films are also discussed.
Deregulation of specific E2F complexes by the v-mos oncogene

The product of the c-mos proto-oncogene is a protein kinase that is normally expressed in germ cells and functions during oocyte maturation. It has been shown, however, that inappropriate expression of either the viral or cellular mos gene can induce neoplastic progression in somatic cells. Furthermore, v-mos-transformed NIH3T3 cells will undergo arrest of proliferation in early G1 upon serum withdrawal but are unable to appropriately down-regulate cell cycle regulatory proteins, such as cyclin and cdc2 proteins, that normally are down-regulated in quiescent, untransformed NIH3T3 cells. Since the levels of these proteins are partially transcriptionally controlled, we investigated whether there were alterations in the expression of E2F and AP-1 transcription factor complexes. Indeed, the putative G0/G1-specific p130-E2F complex that is normally observed during low serum-induced cell cycle arrest in NIH3T3 cells is not present in serum starved v-mos-transformed cells. Instead, G1-phase arrested v-mos-transformed cells stably express two E2F protein complexes that are normally observed only during S-phase in untransformed cells. The elevation of these complexes in arrested v-mos-transformed cells may be the cause of the transcriptional activation of the E2F-regulated genes cdc2, DHFR, cyclin A, and E2F1 seen in serum starved v-mos-transformed cells. In addition, there are high levels of AP-1 DNA binding activity in serum starved v-mos-transformed cells compared to very low amounts in non-transformed cells. This altered regulation of transcription factor complexes and cell cycle control proteins upon serum withdrawal may provide a mechanism for the uncontrolled cell growth associated with neoplastic transformation induced by certain proto-oncogenes.
Thermogravimetry–mass spectrometry investigations of montmorillonite interlayer water perturbations caused by aromatic acid adsorbates

Mass loss and m/z 18 mass spectrometric ion signal temperature profiles are used to characterize interactions between benzoic acid, salicylic acid, and acetylsalicylic acid adsorbates and potassium, sodium, and calcium montmorillonites. Temperature-dependent water desorption trends show that all three adsorbates cause significant disruptions to clay interlayer water molecule environments. Results suggest that the source of this disruption is the formation of adsorbate–water molecule–cation bridging through the adsorbate acid functionality. Salicylic and acetylsalicylic acids perturb interlayer water molecule environments more than benzoic acid. This is most likely due to the additional hydrogen bond-forming capabilities afforded by the hydroxyl (salicylic acid) and ester (acetylsalicylic acid) groups attached to the aromatic rings of these adsorbates.
Our driverless dilemma

Suppose that a driverless car is headed toward five pedestrians. It can stay on course and kill them or swerve into a concrete wall, killing its passenger. On page 1573 of this issue, Bonnefon et al. ( 1 ) explore this social dilemma in a series of clever survey experiments. They show that people generally approve of cars programmed to minimize the total amount of harm, even at the expense of their passengers, but are not enthusiastic about riding in such “utilitarian” cars—that is, autonomous vehicles that are, in certain emergency situations, programmed to sacrifice their passengers for the greater good. Such dilemmas may arise infrequently, but once millions of autonomous vehicles are on the road, the improbable becomes probable, perhaps even inevitable. And even if such cases never arise, autonomous vehicles must be programmed to handle them. How should they be programmed? And who should decide?
1.12 – Micromechanics of Linear Elastic Continuous Fiber Composites

Strength-of-materials approaches, which lead to rule-of-mixture models, and elasticity approaches, as well as finite-element analyses of idealized microstructures, are discussed as a means of estimating the various extensional and shear moduli, the major Poisson’s ratio, and coefficients of thermal expansion of fiber-reinforced composite materials. Numerical results for a medium modulus graphite-epoxy material are presented. Results from the various approaches are compared. It is shown that for the extensional modulus and thermal expansion coefficient in the fiber direction, E 1 and α 1 , respectively, as well as for the major Poisson’s ratio, (ν) 12 , the rule-of-mixtures results are quite accurate when compared to the more exacting finite-element results. For extension modulus E 2 , shear modulus G 12 , and coefficient of thermal expansion α 2 , properties normal to the fiber direction, the rule-of-mixtures results do not compare well with the finite-element results. However, so-called alternative and modified rule-of-mixture models for those properties are presented which lead to better agreement with finite-element results. Elasticity approaches, in the form of concentric cylinder models, lead to very good comparisons for E 1 and G 12 , and also provide a means for estimating the three-dimensional elastic properties necessary to characterize transversely isotropic composite materials.
Irreversible Blockade of Factor VIII Antibodies.

Abstract High titer antibodies (Abs) to Factor VIII (FVIII) can render FVIII replacement therapy ineffective in severe hemophilia A patients. An antigen capable of specific and covalent binding is predicted to reverse the effects of pathogenic Abs potently compared to conventional noncovalently binding antigens, as dissociation of the former type of antigen from the immune complexes is precluded. Recently, we described the apparently universal presence of enzyme-like nucleophiles in the antigen binding sites of Abs (Planque et al, J Biol Chem, 2003). Here, we report a covalently reactive antigen analog (CRA) of FVIII that inactivates anti-FVIII Abs specifically. Recombinant FVIII was derivitized at Lys side chains with phosphonate diester groups, positioning these electrophiles within the antigenic epitopes expressed by FVIII. Comparable binding of FVIII-CRA and underivitized FVIII by a monoclonal Ab and polyclonal Abs from 5 hemophilia patients was evident, suggesting maintenance of the FVIII epitope structure necessary for noncovalent Ab recognition. FVIII-CRA formed immune complexes with polyclonal anti-FVIII Abs from hemophilia patients that were not dissociated by sodium dodecyl sulfate (2%), a detergent that disrupts noncovalent interactions. Removal of free FVIII-CRA from the reaction mixtures by affinity chromatography on Protein G did not restore the FVIII-binding activity of the Abs, confirming irreversible occupancy of the Ab binding sites. No binding of the Abs by an irrelevant peptidyl CRAs was observed, suggesting the role of noncovalent antigen binding in imparting specificity to the covalent reaction. Ab inhibition of the functional role of FVIII in coagulation was studied by the chromogenic assay. Treatment of the Abs with the FVIII-CRA followed by removal of free FVIII-CRA relieved the inhibitory effect of the Abs on FVIII mediated activation of FIXa/FX. An irrelevant peptidyl CRA did not relieve the Ab inhibitory effect. Compared to FVIII, the FVIII-CRA activated FIXa/FX poorly, suggesting that the integrity of the FIXa binding site had been disrupted. These observations encourage the development of electrophilic CRA analogs of FVIII for treatment of patients with inhibitory Abs to FVIII.
John Calvin on the Lord’s Supper: Food, Rest, and Healing for Shivering Souls

This article explores how the Lord’s Supper may contribute to the healing of traumatized persons. Drawing on the 1541 French edition of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and on contemporary literature on trauma, I suggest that individuals who have experienced traumatic events may find in the Lord’s Supper a trustworthy and nourishing relational home, a therapeutic space for truth-telling, and a life-sustaining absolutism.
Do gamma-ray explosions produce ultra-high energy protons?

The advent of 20th century technology has spurred the exploration of the high-energy frontier in both astronomy and physics. Satellite-borne detectors watch the sky for MeV-GeV (106109 eV) photons, while detector arrays have been built with effective areas as great as 100 km2 to detect cosmic particles. Both endeavours have been strikingly successful: satellites have discovered gamma-ray bursts of extraordinary luminosity, and "air-shower" arrays have in the last few years collected a handful of particles with energies over 1021 eV. The origins of these phenomena are under debate, but it now seems that both may have the same origin.
Hillary’s Stumble, Transparency, and Health/Taxes

On Sunday September 11, 2016, media attention shifted as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump suspended campaigning to mark the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in a ceremony at Ground Zero, making a rare joint appearance to denote unity in the face of terrorism.
Underuse of Effective Cardiac Medications Among Women, Middle-Aged Adults, and Racial/Ethnic Minorities With Coronary Artery Disease (from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005 to 2014).

Given the proven effectiveness of several cardiac medications for patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), we examined the national use of 4 classes of effective medications, overall and by age, sex, and race/ethnicity in 2005 to 2014. We used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, including a self-reported diagnosis of CAD and independently verified medication use. Weighting procedures extrapolated our data to the adult US population with CAD. Analyses included 1,789 US adults aged ≥45 years with a history of CAD. The average age of this population was 68 years; 40% were women and 79% were non-Hispanic whites. In 2005 to 2014, 53.2% (standard error [SE] = 1.5) reported use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blockers, 58.5% (SE = 1.5) β blockers, and 67.2% (SE = 1.4) statins. Two of these medications were used by 64.1% (SE = 1.5) of the study population and all 3 by 29.1% (SE = 1.3). In 2011 to 2014, 68.5% (SE = 2.4) of American adults with a history of CAD reported use of aspirin. The use of statins increased from 63.1% in 2005/2006 to 76.8% in 2013/2014. Adults aged 45 to 64 years old, women, and racial/ethnic minorities had lower use of effective cardiac medications compared with older adults, men, and non-Hispanic whites. In conclusion, the use of statins, but not other medications, has increased over the past 10 years among American adults with previously diagnosed CAD. Continued targeted efforts are needed to increase the receipt of effective cardiac medications among all US adults with CAD, especially those aged 45 to 64 years, women, and racial/ethnic minorities.
What is next after anamorelin

Purpose of review In spite of its relevance, treatments for the cancer anorexia and cachexia syndrome (CACS) are not available. One of the agents that recently reached phase III clinical trials is anamorelin. Its development, along with that of other agents for this indication, will be reviewed here, with a focus on the gaps in the current knowledge and future directions. Recent findings In spite of several targets showing promising results in early development, their difficulties obtaining regulatory approval underscore the need to reconsider the current strategies in drug development and the challenges in the field of CACS. Summary Further research is needed in order to meet the challenges of developing treatments for CACS. Preclinical studies should expand our understanding about key regulators of appetite, muscle, and energy metabolism in this setting using models that can be translated reliably to humans. Clinical research efforts should focus on validating the entry criteria, endpoints, outcomes, and the potential synergistic effects and interaction between different targets, nutrition, and exercise interventions. Clinical meaningfulness and significance should be taken into account in the design of clinical trials. It is essential that all key stakeholders are included in the design of future strategies.
Quark Pseudodistributions at Short distances

Abstract We perform a one-loop study of the small- z 3 2 behavior of the Ioffe-time distribution (ITD) M ( ν , z 3 2 ) , the basic function that may be converted into parton pseudo- and quasi-distributions. We calculate the corrections on the operator level, so that our results may be also used for pseudo-distribution amplitudes and generalized parton pseudodistributions. We separate two sources of the z 3 2 -dependence at small z 3 2 . One is related to the ultraviolet (UV) singularities generated by the gauge link. Our calculation shows that, for a finite UV cut-off, the UV-singular terms vanish when z 3 2 = 0 . The UV divergences are absent in the reduced ITD given by the ratio M ( ν , z 3 2 ) / M ( 0 , z 3 2 ) . Still, it has a non-trivial short-distance behavior due to ln ⁡ z 3 2 Λ 2 terms generating perturbative evolution of parton densities. We give an explicit expression, up to constant terms, for the reduced ITD at one loop. It may be used in extraction of PDFs from lattice QCD simulations. We also use our results to get new insights concerning the structure of parton quasi-distributions at one-loop level.
I Want My C-SPAN

A few years ago, Brian Lamb, the founder and public face of C-SPAN, was asked during an interview about Newton Minow's famous indictment of American television. If anyone in the communications industry today has the credentials to brush aside the question, it is Lamb, who reinvented public affairs programming over the last two decades. C-SPAN now reaches approximately eighty million U.S. households--one in twenty Americans watches it regularly. (1) The producers of The Bachelor would envy its demographics. C-SPAN is "reality TV" that even Minow would have loved. But despite his successes, Lamb did not scoff at the question. "I think [Minow] was right about an enormous amount of television," Lamb replied in the 1999 interview. "[B]ut I think you could say that about an enormous amount of things American. One person's wasteland is another person's great pleasure." (2) The journalist who kicks off the political day with Washington Journal and has provided a forum for hundreds of authors on Booknotes, expanded on his answer: One of the hardest things for us to understand is that everybody is not going to listen to opera, they're not all going to listen to symphony orchestras, they're not all going to read The New York Times. I don't care if it was immediately available to everybody, it just wouldn't appeal to everybody. And it's really hard in the end what people choose, especially if you have a kind of lofty view of what's good and bad. (3) Lamb has grown a business devoted to public affairs programming at a time when the government, thanks to some key court decisions and eventual Federal Communications Commission deregulation, has been pushed out of the business of telling broadcasters how much and what kind of news coverage is required of them. Since launching C-SPAN in the 1970s, he has pointed the cameras at our national political life and made it both informative and profitable at the same time. C-SPAN now runs three cable channels, a radio station, and an Internet site. The ghost of Minow is not haunting Lamb, that is for sure. I recently served as a moderator for a conference at the National Press Club relating to media coverage of the global war on terrorism. The room could only accommodate 100 people but C-SPAN's cameras gave us a national audience. As one major wire service editor wrote me afterwards, "I heard good things about the conference from friends around the country. Never underestimate the reach of C-SPAN." (4) C-SPAN may not make "cloture" a household word, but its growth refutes Minow's worst fears about market failure in the area of public interest programming. …
Cellular dynamical mean-field theory for the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model

We explore the use of exact diagonalization methods for solving the self-consistent equations of the cellular dynamical mean field theory for the one-dimensional regular and extended Hubbard models. We investigate the nature of the Mott transition and convergence of the method as a function of cluster size as well as the optimal allocation of computational resources between bath and ``cluster-impurity'' sites, with a view to develop a renormalization group method in higher dimensions. We assess the performance of the method by comparing results for the Green's functions in both the spin density wave and charge density wave phases with accurate density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations.
THE ASYMPTOTIC DISTRIBUTION THEORY OF ONE SAMPLE SIGNED RANK STATISTIC

Publisher Summary This chapter provides a new proof of the asymptotic normality of S+N by making use of the van Zuijlen representation of the general empirical process. It also discusses the problem of determining the rate of convergence of the cdf of S+N to the limiting normal cdf. In the regression set-up, this problem has been studied by Jureckova and Puri, Bergstrom and Puri and Huskova among others. However, in all these papers the score generating function is assumed to be bounded. For the case of unbounded score generating function, the problem of obtaining the rate of convergence of the cdf of S to the limiting one has recently been studied by Muller-Funk and Witting for the case of i.i.d. r.v.'s.
Correction for Giuntini et al., "Identification and Characterization of Human Monoclonal Antibodies for Immunoprophylaxis against Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli Infection"

Volume 86, no. 8, e00355-18, 2018, [https://doi.org/10.1128/IAI.00355-18][1]. Page 4: Figure 2B should appear as shown below. ![Figure][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1128/IAI.00355-18 [2]: pending:yes
Kidney Xenotransplantation: Steps toward Clinical Application.

Xenotransplantation holds the promise of turning a scarce resource, viable solid organ allografts, into a commodity that can be procured en masse for all individuals who would benefit. Although living donor donation has alleviated some of the problem, the scale of ESKD dwarfs any efforts to reduce
Tumor necrosis factor is the major monocyte product that increases complement receptor expression on mature human neutrophils

Abstract lnterleukin-1 (IL-1) and other monocyte products have several important effects on the systemic response to infection in addition to their roles in lymphocyte stimulation. The present studies were carried out to determine whether products of stimulated monocytes activated circulating neutrophils (PMN) to increase expression of receptors for C3b (CR1) and C3bi (CR3), which are necessary for optimal margination, migration, and phagocytosis. Super-natants of human mononuclear cells that had been stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or purified protein derivative (PPD) contained both tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and IL-1 and increased CR1 and CR3 expression on isolated PMNs. Supernatants of unstimulated cultures, media alone, or LPS or PPD alone had little or no effect. Supernatant effects were detectable at 1:3,000 final dilution and appeared to have a characteristic slow time course. These supernatants also caused dose- and time-dependent secretion of PMN granular constituents, but maximal receptor expression was accompanied by secretion of less than 10% of the cells’ content of lysozyme and less than 16% of the B12 binding protein. Immunoad-sorption studies showed that the supernatant's activity could be removed by anti-TNF but not by anti-IL-1. Recombinant IL-1 had no effect on receptor expression, but recombinant TNF increased CR1 and CR3 expression with kinetics similar to the supernatants. These results thus indicate that TNF is the major monocyte product that increases CR1 and CR3 expression on mature blood neutrophils. This would result in increased margination and phagocytic activity and may be an important systemic effect that would help the host eradicate infection.
Annals On Call - Care of Patients With Acute Kidney Injury

In this episode of Annals On Call, Dr. Centor discusses the care of patients with acute kidney injury with Dr. Ashita Tolwani of University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Worsening Renal Function in a Patient with Acute Heart Failure and Volume Overload

Acute heart failure exacerbations center around volume overload and treatment of this disease process often requires aggressive diuresis in order to achieve symptomatic relief. The management of heart failure through the use of intravenous diuretics is at times limited due to renal function. An elevated Cr level, which has previously been associated with poor outcomes, is a common end-point in most AHF trials. However, recent data has called into question the validity of Cr as a marker of prognosis. The objective of this chapter is to review the mechanisms by which loop diuretics function, the efficacy of Cr as a marker of renal injury, potential novel markers, as well as alternative therapies to optimize decongestion in the setting of AHF.
An 80-117V Pseudo-Adiabatic Drive Circuit for Microrobotic Actuators with Optical Power Delivery and Peak Power Reduction Factor over 14×

This work presents an efficient high-voltage drive circuit for mm-scale electrostatic and piezoelectric microrobotic transducers. A reconfigurable series-parallel switched-capacitor (SC) DC-DC converter interfaces between either on-chip photovoltaic cells or a single off-chip battery, and a high-voltage MEMs actuator. The SC converter boosts a nominal -5-7.4V input by -16× to 80-117V. By charging the output sequentially and recovering charge in discharge cycles, the converter reduces power consumption by over 14×, compared to a conventional hard-switching driver. Measured results show effective operation with loads up to 20nF and operating frequency over 50kHz.