cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Immunoglobulin A-associated lymphocytic vasculopathy: a clinicopathologic study of eight patients

Introduction: Cutaneous IgA-associated vasculitis can be a clue to Henoch–Schonlein purpura (HSP), which typically comprises renal and gastrointestinal tract disease and arthritis, whereby prominent and predominant IgA deposits within the cutaneous vasculature provoke a pustular leukocytoclastic vasculitis. Design: We describe eight patients with a novel expression of a cutaneous IgA vascular injury syndrome, namely a lymphoid vasculopathy which clinically and light microscopically resembled a pigmentary purpura (PP) in six, and correlate direct immunofluorescence (DIF) and clinical features to light microscopy. Results: Among associated diseases were prior viral infection, an HSP symptom complex, an undifferentiated connective tissue disease syndrome, lupus erythematosus profundus (LEP), Degos' disease and Berger's disease. Skin lesions comprised non-palpable petechial lesions involving lower extremities in all cases and also the upper extremities in two. A superficial perivascular lymphocytic infiltrate unaccompanied by vascular fibrin deposits was associated with prominent erythrocyte extravasation including into the epidermis. Mural and extravascular fibrin deposition was seen in one biopsy from a PP-like lesion and mural fibrinoid necrosis was seen in the cases of LEP and Degos' disease; in biopsies from these three cases, the presence of fibrin deposition warranted use of the appellation ‘lymphocytic vasculitis’. In all patients, DIF showed prominent and predominant IgA deposits. Conclusions: A non-necrotizing lymphocytic purpuric vascular reaction is one manifestation of vascular IgA deposition in the skin. A subpopulation of human lymphocytes bear surface Fc receptor and/or C3 receptors (‘complement receptor lymphocytes’) which can bind circulating immune complexes (ICs) or C3 generated via activation of the alternative complement cascade. Thus, circulating ICs are a potential pathogenic basis of this eruption, the histologic differential diagnosis of which is idiopathic PP and PP of drug or viral etiology.
Near-infrared non-collinear optical parametric amplification in bulk potassium-titanyl phosphate with ≫2500 cm −1 bandwidth

We report non-collinear optical parametric amplification in a bulk KTiOPO4 (KTP) crystal generating ultra-broadband near-IR pulses, that cover simultaneously the wavelength region ~1050-1450 nm with a bandwidth Gt2500 cm-1.
Never Surrender? How Women's Groups Abandoned Their Policy Niche in U.S. Foreign Policy Debates, 1916–2000

From World War I through the 1960s, U.S. women's organizations regularly trekked to Capitol Hill to influence congressional foreign policy debates. Yet by the 1990s, these groups had largely disengaged from international affairs. Why? Using an original data set of women's group appearances before Congress from 1916 to 2000, this study documents and explains this puzzling development by exploring the mutually reinforcing linkages among women's identity, claims to issue ownership, and interest group evolution. In the case at hand, the advent of citizen and economic groups competing with women's organizations for ownership of foreign policy questions, coupled with the declining legitimacy of gender “difference” arguments and the resurgence of “sameness” arguments, led women's groups to focus on the dimensions of foreign policy affecting women's rights and status, in particular, and to abandon less explicitly gendered foreign policy issues almost entirely. As multipurpose women's associations declined in vitality, and feminist groups fueled by newly available philanthropic dollars staked claim to women's rights-and-status questions, organized womanhood surrendered much of the foreign-policy issue space over which women had long claimed political authority, and women's groups' presence on Capitol Hill waned.
Educating Chinese, Japanese, and Korean International Students: Recommendations to American Professors.

This paper discusses the unique barriers and learning difficulties encountered by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean international students when they study at institutions of higher education in the US. These learning difficulties arise because of inability of some American professors to use discourse markers, summarize at the end of lectures, write key concepts on the blackboard, etc. (Cox & Yamaguchi, 2010; Huang, 2004; Huang & Brown, 2009; Lee & Carrasquillo, 2006). The author argues that by using emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998), the creating mind (Gardner, 2007), and the respectful mind (Gardner, 2007), American professors institutions of higher education in the US can enhance the learning experiences of their international students.
A resource analysis based on porphyry copper deposits and the cumulative copper metal curve using Monte Carlo simulation

The tonnage-grade analysis presented in this paper is applied to North American porphyry copper deposits. The porphyry copper deposits in five regions are then compared using the tonnage-grade relationship. The analysis is comparable to that of Lasky (1950).The analytical technique that is presented can also be used to construct a metals budget for different types of deposits by region. Either geologically or politically defined regions may be used depending on the reasons for the analysis.A Monte Carlo simulation model that uses the tonnage-grade relationship for the porphyry copper deposits is used to construct metal distribution scenarios. A cumulative metal tonnage curve is constructed to display the simulation results. In addition, a cumulative-percent tonnage metal curve and a cumulative-percent tonnage ore curve are plotted on the same graph to show the relationship of ore to metal in the deposits.Although Lasky found that an inverse relationship exists for ore tonnage and grade within porphyry deposits, this does not appear to be true for metal tonnage and grade for the class as a whole. Deposits average 200 to 300 million tons of ore, and results of the analysis suggest that more metal is contained in the higher grade deposits. About 70 percent of the copper metal occurs in 50 percent of the deposits used for this analysis. These deposits are all above 0.7 percent copper; the remaining deposits in the sample are lower grade primary-sulfide-type deposits.Most deposits found since 1950 contain less than 2 million tons of copper metal. The majority of these deposits are lower grade, primary-sulfide-type deposits. Consequently, as the higher grade previously known deposits are exhausted, it will be necessary to utilize an increasingly large number of lower grade deposits.
Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis: a rare cause of Dysphagia, airway obstruction, and dysphonia.

Background We retrospectively query the clinical records of patients with cervical osteophytes to distinguish the clinical features of those presenting with symptomatic dysphagia and airway obstruction. Study design Retrospective review of all patients presenting over a 20-year period (1985 to 2005) with the diagnosis of cervical osteophytes and dysphagia with or without airway compromise. Two hundred thirty-four patients were identified at Marshfield Clinic between 1985 and 2005; 9 (3.8%) met criteria for inclusion. Results Eight of nine patients presented with dysphagia. Three of nine patients presented with acute airway obstruction requiring intubation and tracheotomy. Osteophytes occurred at multiple levels, with C4, C5, and C6 being most commonly involved. Surgical decompression resulted in complete resolution of symptoms in four of five patients. Conclusions Although commonly found and usually asymptomatic in the older population, anterior cervical osteophytes can be a source of considerable morbidity and potential life-threatening airway obstruction. Recognizing this clinical entity is imperative in establishing a diagnosis and initiating appropriate treatment. Surgical decompression appears to be beneficial in relieving symptoms.
O Antigen Protects Bordetella parapertussis from Complement

Bordetella pertussis, a causative agent of whooping cough, expresses BrkA, which confers serum resistance, but the closely related human pathogen that also causes whooping cough, Bordetella parapertussis, does not. Interestingly, B. parapertussis, but not B. pertussis, produces an O antigen, a factor shown in other models to confer serum resistance. Using a murine model of infection, we determined that O antigen contributes to the ability of B. parapertussis to colonize the respiratory tract during the first week of infection, but not thereafter. Interestingly, an O antigen-deficient strain of B. parapertussis was not defective in colonizing mice lacking the complement cascade. O antigen prevented both complement component C3 deposition on the surface and complement-mediated killing of B. parapertussis. In addition, O antigen was required for B. parapertussis to systemically spread in complement-sufficient mice, but not complement-deficient mice. These data indicate that O antigen enables B. parapertussis to efficiently colonize the lower respiratory tract by protecting against complement-mediated control and clearance.
A critical analysis of existing models for plastic flow in Ni3Al: Comparisons with transient deformation experiments

A review of the intermediate temperature creep properties of Ni{sub 3}Al indicates that octahedral glide, the mechanism associated with the anomalous temperature dependence of yielding in this alloy, is exhausted during primary creep. Comparisons of this primary creep transient with the various models proposed to explain the anomalous yielding behavior suggest that additional transient experiments are needed to fully characterize octahedral glide in this alloy. Cottrell--Stokes type temperature change experiments, stress relaxation experiments, and deformation exhaustion/temperature drop tests have been conducted in an attempt to better characterize octahedral glide in Ni{sub 3}Al. The results of these transient experiments indicate that octahedral glide is only partially a thermally reversible process and that the formation of dislocation substructure, KW locks, plays an important role in determining the flow strength of this alloy. These experiments also suggest that flow in Ni{sub 3}Al should not be viewed as a viscous drag process, but can best be described as a pure-metal-like'' process involving the rapid motion of a small number of highly mobile dislocations. The stochastic nature of dislocation motion and the importance of substructure formation are emphasized and a description of octahedral glide that is consistent with the transient deformation experiments is proposed.
Challenges in translating plasma proteomics from bench to bedside: update from the NHLBI Clinical Proteomics Programs.

The emerging scientific field of proteomics encompasses the identification, characterization, and quantification of the protein content or proteome of whole cells, tissues, or body fluids. The potential for proteomic technologies to identify and quantify novel proteins in the plasma that can function as biomarkers of the presence or severity of clinical disease states holds great promise for clinical use. However, there are many challenges in translating plasma proteomics from bench to bedside, and relatively few plasma biomarkers have successfully transitioned from proteomic discovery to routine clinical use. Key barriers to this translation include the need for “orthogonal” biomarkers (i.e., uncorrelated with existing markers), the complexity of the proteome in biological samples, the presence of high abundance proteins such as albumin in biological samples that hinder detection of low abundance proteins, false positive associations that occur with analysis of high dimensional datasets, and the limited understanding of the effects of growth, development, and age on the normal plasma proteome. Strategies to overcome these challenges are discussed.
A Convenient Multivariate Gram-Charlier Type A Series

It is often necessary to approximate the probability density function of a random variable from given statistical moments. The Gram-Charlier Type A series is one well known method for such representations. In this note, the Gram-Charlier Type A series is generalized to the multidimensional case.
Die Folgen lokaler Demographisierungen

Das Demographisierungskonzept (vgl. Sackmann 2010, 2008, Sackmann/Bartl 2008, Aleman 2008, Steinfuhrer 2008, Barlosius 2007, Beetz 2007 und DGS 2006)1 unterscheidet analytische zwischen verschiedenen Modi der Problematisierung des Demographischen Wandels, welche zu unterschiedlichen Demographismen, das sind Vorstellungen uber Notwendigkeit und Moglichkeit der Bearbeitung von Bevolkerungsveranderungen, fuhren.2 Grundsatzlich werden zwei theoretische Muster unterschieden, das naturalisierende, populationistische3 (Abbildung 4) und das Interventionsmodell (Abbildung 5).
Cos, Cnidos, and CAOG

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, I took part in the dedication of a statue at 1300 York Avenue in Manhattan. The bronze bust was a memorial to a faculty member in the Department of Anatomy at Cornell University Medical College. That individual had devoted his life to research, working not only long days but also long nights and weekends. In this, he was ably and devotedly supported by his wife, Mary, but he received no support from external funding sources for the first 27 years of his work. The only support for his research came from the meager funds of the Cornell Anatomy Department. A clinical test, which he announced in 1928, was greeted with profound professional skepticism. It was almost 20 years before the significance of his work was recognized. This man to whose memory we gathered to pay homage was Dr. George Papanicolaou, devoted physician and far-sighted research worker. There was also another side to Pap, as he was known to generations of his colleagues and students. For 48 years, he was a devoted and inspiring teacher at Cornell. Even after his formal retirement, he continued to teach a course in exfoliative cytology. SO, when a memorial to him was planned, the decision was not just to seek the issuance of a special United States postage stamp, although that was done; nor just to commission a statue, although that was also done; but to plant, in the courtyard garden of the Medical College, a tree grown from a seed from the grove of Hippocrates, in his native Greece. It was that lineage, that continuity, which George Papanicolaou represented with such devotion and distinction. And it is this living link with Hippocrates which forms the theme of my address, for Hippocrates was the most celebrated member of the School of Cos, a loose fraternity of physicians who played a critical role in the history of medicine. It was members of this
The Out-of-Sample Performance of Stochastic Methods in Forecasting Age-Specific Mortality Rates

This paper evaluates the out-of-sample performance of two stochastic models used to forecast age specific mortality rates: (1) the model proposed by Lee and Carter (1992); and (2) a set of univariate autoregressions linked together by a common residual covariance matrix (Denton, Feavor, and Spencer 2005). To this aim, death rates from 16 industrialized nations are used to compare observed ex-post mortality rates to the forecasts generated by the models. Several functions of the individual age-specific mortality rates are also entertained, including life expectancy at birth (e0), as well as alternative measures of the age-dependency ratio. The latter are constructed based on how the individual mortality rates enter a population projection, and thus, are meant to gauge the potential impact of mortality alone on public retirement programs. In general, both models are found to produce point forecasts for the individual mortality rates, life expectancy, and the dependency ratios that are fairly close to one another. Typically, the median projections of mortality moderately overpredict the actual death rates, particularly for the oldestage groups (ages 65-95 or older). Conversely, the large majority of the point forecasts of life expectancy at birth and the dependency ratios underestimate their observed values. The models also generate interval forecasts of e0 that are "too wide" as their empirical probability content often exceeds their nominal coverage. However, the Lee-Carter model tends to seriously underpredict the forecast uncertainty associated with both the death rates of the oldest ages and the age-dependency ratios, while the autoregressive approach overpredicts this uncertainty in most cases.
Artificial Intelligence and Risk Communication

The challenges of effective health risk communication are well known. This paper provides pointers to the health communication literature that discuss these problems. Tailoring printed information, visual displays, and interactive multimedia have been proposed in the health communication literature as promising approaches. On-line risk communication applications are increasing on the internet. However, potential effectiveness of applications using conventional computer technology is limited. We propose that use of artificial intelligence, building upon research in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, might be able to overcome these limitations.
The Effect of Trioxane in HF-Catalyzed Sol-Gel Reactions of Tetraethoxysilane

Porous silica glasses have been prepared using an HF-catalyzed tetraethoxysilane(TEOS)-ethanol-water formulation. The optical and physical properties of these glasses, which find use as host matrices for optical organic dyes, can be further improved with the addition of 1,3,5-trioxane to the sol-gel chemical system. In order to understand the effect of trioxane, the time-dependent concentrations of the species involved in TEOS hydrolysis and condensation have been followed by Raman, FT-IR, and NMR spectroscopie methods in both HF-catalyzed TEOS-ethanol-water systems with and without trioxane.
The 2002 dosimetry system (DS02) and available fluences for organ dose calculations

The A bomb dosimetry system (DS) calculates each survivor's organ doses. It does this by calculating the angular fluences incident on each survivor. These are used with humanoid phantom shielding calculations to estimate organ doses in 15 organs, 3-sized phantoms, 2 sexes and 2 postures at any orientation or distance to the bomb. The DS has been re-used and updated several times. Currently, efforts are being considered to include shielding for additional organs by adding additional phantoms. The DS has gone through a series of upgrades referred to as: DS84, DS86, DS86R, DS93, DS02. DS86 and DS02 were approved and installed at Radiation Effects Research Foundation. The system uses free-field energy-angular fluence from a discrete ordinate calculation coupled with Monte Carlo adjoint-shielding histories. This paper briefly discusses the adjoint Monte Carlo; combinatorial shield geometry for the phantom, house, factory, and terrain; modifications to use fictitious scattering in voxel phantoms; the adjoint source energy, angle and location distribution; 'leakage histories' and their optimisation for dose or fluence; doubly differential (energy-angle) coupling for single-, double-, or triple-shielding coupling; output of various components of dose and energy-angular fluences; survivor-specific inputs; organ dose uncertainty; and testing, benchmarking and extended applications. Also, approaches to add additional organ-shielding calculations to DS02 are discussed.
Note on the social-desirability response set in singer's daydreaming questionnaire.

Means of the social desirability ratings of items in Singer's Daydreaming Questionnaire correlated .41 with the mean response to those items. It was suggested that this moderate rather than high correlation may be due to the attenuated distribution of responses to items of the questionnaire and/or to the lack of agreement regarding the social acceptability of daydreams.
Luenberger, David G., 1997, Investment Science

(1999). Luenberger, David G., 1997, Investment Science. North American Actuarial Journal: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 150-150.
Abstract 13: Nkx2-5-notch Signaling Axis Regulates The Proliferation Of The Atrial Myocytes And Conduction System

Rationale: Tight control of cardiomyocyte proliferation is essential for the formation of four-chambered heart. Although human mutation of NKX2-5 is linked to septal defects and atrioventricular conduction abnormalities, early lethality and hemodynamic alteration in the mutant models have caused controversy as to whether Nkx2-5 regulates cardiomyocyte proliferation. Objective: In this study, we circumvented these limitations by atrial-restricted deletion of Nkx2-5. Method and Results: Atrial-specific Nkx2-5 mutants died shortly after birth with hyperplastic working myocytes and conduction system including two nodes and internodal tracts. Multicolor reporter analysis revealed that Nkx2-5-null cardiomyocytes displayed clonal proliferative activity throughout the atria, indicating the suppressive role of Nkx2-5 in the cardiomyocyte proliferation after chamber ballooning stages. Transcriptome analysis revealed that aberrant activation of Notch signaling underlies hyperproliferation of mutant cardiomyocytes, a...
Endothelial Notch signaling is essential to prevent hepatic vascular malformations in mice

Liver vasculature is crucial for adequate hepatic functions. Global deletion of Notch signaling in mice results in liver vascular pathologies. However, whether Notch in endothelium is essential for hepatic vascular structure and function remains unknown. To uncover the function of endothelial Notch in the liver, we deleted Rbpj, a transcription factor mediating all canonical Notch signaling, or Notch1, specifically from the endothelium of postnatal mice. We investigated the hepatic vascular defects in these mutants. The liver was severely affected within two weeks following endothelial deletion of Rbpj from birth. Two-week old mutant mice had enlarged vessels on the liver surface, abnormal vascular architecture, and dilated sinusoids. Vascular casting and fluorosphere passage experiments indicated the presence of porto-systemic shunts. These mutant mice presented severely necrotic liver parenchyma and significantly larger hypoxic areas, likely resulting from vascular shunts. We also found elevated levels of VEGF receptor 3 together with reduced levels of ephrin-B2, suggesting a possible contribution of these factors to the generation of hepatic vascular abnormalities. Deletion of Rbpj from the adult endothelium also led to dilated sinusoids, vascular shunts, and necrosis albeit milder than that in mice with deletion from birth. Similar to deletion of Rbpj, loss of endothelial Notch1 from birth led to similar hepatic vascular malformations within two weeks. Conclusions: Endothelial Notch signaling is essential for the development and maintenance of proper hepatic vascular architecture and function. Our findings may help understand the molecular pathogenesis of hepatic vascular malformation and the safety of therapeutics inhibiting Notch. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Sirtuins and Stress Response in Skin Cancer, Aging, and Barrier Function

Sirtuins (SIRT1-7) are mammalian counterparts of the yeast silent information regulator 2 (Sir2) and are a family of NAD-dependent protein deacetylases and ADP ribosyltransferases. Sirtuins regulate numerous pathways in metabolism, aging and cancer. They are critical modulators in the cellular response to metabolic, oxidative, or genotoxic stress. Recent advances have demonstrated the pivotal role of sirtuin proteins in aging and a wide range of diseases including cancer in many organs. Skin is the essential barrier protecting organisms against environmental insults and minimizing water loss from the body. New evidence in mouse models and in vitro systems has illustrated that sirtuins have important roles in skin physiology, in the barrier function, aging, and diseases such as skin cancer. This review summarizes recent advances in understanding how sirtuins regulate the skin stress response in skin cancer, aging, and barrier integrity at the molecular, cellular, and organismal levels, and in how modulating sirtuins may help prevent or treat skin cancer, skin barrier defects, and other skin diseases.
Seeing double: 5-month-olds' mental rotation of dynamic, 3D block stimuli presented on dual monitors.

Abstract Mental rotation (MR) involves the ability to predict how an object will look once it has been rotated into a new orientation in space. To date, studies of MR in infants have tested this ability using abstract stimuli presented using a single display. Evidence from existing studies suggests that using multiple displays may affect an infant’s performance in some kinds of MR tasks. This study used Moore & Johnson’s (2008) simplified Shepard-Metzler objects in a dual-monitor MR task presented to five-month-old infants. Evidence for MR in infancy was found. These findings have implications for MR testing in infancy and the influence of display properties on infant MR performance.
Interpolation Approximations for the Performance of Two Single Servers in Series

Dependence among servers is the root cause of the analytic intractability of general queueing networks. A tandem queue is the smallest unit possessing the dependence. Understand its behavior is the key to understand the behavior of general queueing networks. Based on observed properties, such as intrinsic gap and intrinsic ratio, a new approximation approach for tandem queues is proposed. Across a broad range of examined cases, this new approach outperforms prior methods based on stochastic independence or diffusion approximations.
A novel and efficient compact propulsion mechanism with high response speed for robotic applications

In this paper, we present a novel high efficiency and compact propulsion generating mechanism that can be used for robotic applications. The proposed mechanism intermeshes two variable pitch propellers. The propellers speeds are synced but their pitch is controlled individually. Two test units were built one with fixed pitch propellers and one with variable pitch propellers. Both test units were attached to a force measurement platform in order to determine the effectiveness of this mechanism. Several efficiency tests were done with the fixed pitch test unit and several thrust and torque tests were done with the variable pitch propeller test unit. After comparing and discussing the phenomena and test results, we conclude that this novel intermeshing mechanism is a high efficiency and compact design with high response speeds for robotics applications when propulsion is required.
Abstract 5421: Differential expression of lysosomal acid lipase (LAL) between benign and malignant tissues among human organs

Background: Lysosomal acid lipase (LAL), a lysosomal enzyme is able to degrade cholesteryl esters to free fatty acids and cholesterol. The information on the association of LAL with malignancies is limited. This study is to determine the difference in expression level of LAL between benign and malignant tissues among human organs. Method: Immunohistochemistry (IHC) for human LAL was performed on A tissue microarray (TMA) containing 360 benign and malignant tissues from 36 human organs. The expression level of LAL was represented by an IHC score calculated by multiplying area score (0-3) with intensity score (0-3), ranged from 0 to 9. Student’s t-test was used to compare the mean IHC score between benign and malignant tissues in same organs. Results: Eighteen out of 36 human organs have IHC stains on both benign and malignant tissues. As shown in Table 1, LAL expression level was higher in malignancy than in benign tissues in 9 organs. The difference in LAL expression level was significantly (or nearly lower in malignant tissues of adrenal gland, stomach, liver, testis and kidney. Conclusion: The expression level of LAL varies among human organs. As compared with elevation of LAL expression level, decreased expression level of LAL in malignancies could be of more significance. Citation Format: Mohamed EI Gassim, Jinghe Mao, Tangen Ma, Xinchun Zhou. Differential expression of lysosomal acid lipase (LAL) between benign and malignant tissues among human organs [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5421. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-5421
Assessing the Performance Impact of High-Speed Interconnects on MapReduce

Hadoop is a successful open-source implementation of MapReduce programming model. It has been widely adopted by many leading industry companies for big data analytics. However, its intermediate data shuffling is a time-consuming operation that impacts the total execution time of MapReduce programs. Recently, a growing number of organizations are interested in addressing this issue by leveraging the high-performance interconnects, such as InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which have been popular in High-Performance Computing HPC Community. There is a lack of comprehensive examination of the performance impact of these interconnects on MapReduce programs. In this work, we systematically evaluate the performance impact of two popular high-speed interconnects, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand, using the original Apache Hadoop and our extended Hadoop Acceleration framework. Our analysis shows that, under the Apache Hadoop, although using fast networks can efficiently accelerate the jobs with small intermediate data sizes, it is unable to maintain such advantages for jobs with large intermediate data. In contrast, Hadoop Acceleration provides better performance for jobs of a wide range of data sizes. In addition, both implementations exhibit good scalability under different networks. Hadoop Acceleration significantly reduces CPU utilization and I/O wait time of MapReduce programs.
CMOS integrated ZnO thin film bulk acoustic resonator with Si3N4 susceptor layer for improved IR sensitivity

Microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) offer a new way of measuring temperature and infrared (IR) radiation, through measurements of total optical energy, overcoming the obstacles associated with narrow bandgap semiconductor detectors[1]. Specifically, Thin Film Bulk Acoustic Resonators (FBAR) offers a versatile MEMS technology based on resonant devices fabricated using piezoelectric materials [2]. With the addition of an absorbing susceptor and the use of zinc oxide (ZnO) as the piezoelectric it is possible to obtain a higher sensitivity device than previously demonstrated systems, taking advantage of ZnO's higher temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) [3,4,5]. This work studies the improved sensing ability of an FBAR structure and ease of testing and superior parasitic performance provided in a package using an engineered high TCF FBAR in a monolithically integrated CMOS process.
On the capacity region of the K-user discrete memoryless broadcast channel with two degraded messages

The K-user discrete memoryless (DM) broadcast channel (BC) with two degraded messages, with one common message to be decoded by all receivers and a private message by a subset of receivers, is studied. The receivers that must decode both messages are referred to as private receivers and the remaining ones that need only decode the common message as common receivers. We obtain two main results. The first one establishes the capacity region of two classes of DM BCs characterized by the associated sets of pair-wise relationships between and among the common and private receivers, each described by the well-known more capable and less noisy conditions. For both these classes, the capacity region is achieved by superposition coding and joint decoding so that the main contribution herein lies in the proofs of the converses. When specialized to the two previously well-studied cases of a single private receiver and a single common receiver, the two aforementioned classes are respectively as large as or larger than those for which capacity was previously obtained. The second main result is a new inner bound in closed form that involves rate splitting, superposition coding, and indirect decoding and we state its capacity optimality for a new class of four-receiver DM BCs.
The Logic of Medical Diagnosis: Generating and Selecting Hypotheses

Clinical diagnostic medicine is an experimental science based on observation, hypothesis making, and testing. It is an use dynamic process that involves observation and summary, diagnostic conjectures, testing, review, observation and summary, new or revised conjectures, i.e. it is an iterative process. It can then be said that diagnostic hypotheses are also ‘observation-laden’. My aim is to enlarge on the strategies of medical diagnosis as these are meshed in training and clinical experience—that is, to describe the patterns of reasoning used by experienced clinicians under different diagnostic circumstances and how these patterns of inquiry allow further insight into the evaluation and treatment of patients. I do not aim to present a theory and illustrate it with examples; I wish rather am to let a realistic example, similar to actual clinical scenarios, direct the exposition. To this end, I introduce an account of medical diagnosis—briefly comparing and contrasting it to other accounts—in order to focus on discussing the process of diagnosis through a detailed clinical case.
Object-Based Analog Forecasts for Surface Wind Speed

AbstractAnalogs are used as a forecast postprocessing technique, in which a statistical forecast is derived from past prognostic states. This study proposes a method to identify analogs through spatial objects, which are then used to create forecast ensembles. The object-analog technique preserves the field’s spatial relationships, reduces spatial dimensionality, and consequently facilitates the use of artificial intelligence algorithms to improve analog selection. Forecast objects are created with a three-step object selection, combining standard image processing algorithms. The resulting objects are used to find similar forecasts in a training set with a similarity measure based on object area intersection and magnitude. Storm-induced power outages in the Northeast United States motivated the method’s validation for 10-m AGL wind speed forecasts. The training set comprises reforecasts and reanalyses of events that caused damages to the utility infrastructure. The corresponding reanalyses of the best ref...
Defining cure in multiple myeloma: a comparative study of outcomes of young individuals with myeloma and curable hematologic malignancies.

Advances in therapy in recent years have led investigators to challenge the dogma that multiple myeloma (MM) is incurable. We assessed overall (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) of young patients ( ≤ 50 years) with MM and compared outcomes with follicular lymphoma (FL), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). All patients ≤ 50 years with newly diagnosed MM (n = 212), FL (n = 168), DLBCL (n = 195), and HL (n = 233) between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2015 were included. Observed vs. expected survival was summarized by standardized mortality ratios (SMR). Compared to the background US population, excess mortality risk was seen at diagnosis in all four cancers, SMR 19.5 (15.2–24.5) in MM, 4.2 (2.3–7.2) in FL, 13.0 (9.2–18.4) in DLBCL, and 5.2 (2.6–9.3) in HL. We reasoned that cure would most likely occur in the first 3 years after diagnosis and be reflected by an overall survival probability similar to the background population. From the 36-month landmark, excess mortality risk was seen in MM (SMR 20.7 [14.7–28.3]) and FL (SMR 3.8 [1.5–7.8]), but not with DLBCL (SMR 3.1 [0.8–8.0]) or HL (SMR 0.9 [0.0–5.1]). MM patients have 20-fold excess mortality risk compared to the background population at diagnosis and at 3 years after diagnosis, suggesting that MM remains an incurable cancer.
Methodological Considerations and Research Methods to Advance Social Justice

This chapter situates the research methods applied in the empirical investigation within research approaches and methods that embrace normative social justice commitments that advance equity. The South African context at the time of the research design, and the research methods used in the empirical study, are communicated. Methods debates and ethical challenges faced when engaging socially disadvantaged groups in qualitative research methods in studies such as this one are reviewed. The chapter closes with attention to the contribution of qualitative research to advance knowledge of health inequities in marginalised groups in ways that may be transformative for both research participants and researchers.
SRARP and HSPB7 are epigenetically regulated gene pairs that function as tumor suppressors and predict clinical outcome in malignancies.

Deletions of chromosome 1p36 are common in cancers; however, despite extensive studies, there has been limited success for discovering candidate tumor suppressors in this region. SRARP has recently been identified as a novel corepressor of the androgen receptor (AR) and is located on chromosome 1p36. Here, bioinformatics analysis of large tumor datasets was performed to study SRARP and its gene pair, HSPB7. In addition, using cancer cell lines, mechanisms of SRARP and HSPB7 regulation and their molecular functions were investigated. This study demonstrated that SRARP and HSPB7 are a gene pair located 5.2 kb apart on 1p36.13 and are inactivated by deletions and epigenetic silencing in malignancies. Importantly, SRARP and HSPB7 have tumor suppressor functions in clonogenicity and cell viability associated with the downregulation of Akt and ERK. SRARP expression is inversely correlated with genes that promote cell proliferation and signal transduction, which supports its functions as a tumor suppressor. In addition, AR exerts dual regulatory effects on SRARP, and although an increased AR activity suppresses SRARP transcription, a minimum level of AR activity is required to maintain baseline SRARP expression in AR+ cancer cells. Furthermore, as observed with SRARP, HSPB7 interacts with the 14-3-3 protein, presenting a shared molecular feature between SRARP and HSPB7. Of note, genome- and epigenome-wide associations of SRARP and HSPB7 with survival strongly support their tumor suppressor functions. In particular, DNA hypermethylation, lower expression, somatic mutations, and lower copy numbers of SRARP are associated with worse cancer outcome. Moreover, DNA hypermethylation and lower expression of SRARP in normal adjacent tissues predict poor survival, suggesting that SRARP inactivation is an early event in carcinogenesis. In summary, SRARP and HSPB7 are tumor suppressors that are commonly inactivated in malignancies. SRARP inactivation is an early event in carcinogenesis that is strongly associated with worse survival, presenting potential translational applications.
Foreigners on America's Death Rows

Capital cases involving foreigners as defendants are a serious source of contention between the United States and foreign governments. By treaty, foreigner defendants must be informed upon arrest that they may contact a consul of their home country for assistance, yet police and judges in the United States are lax in complying. Foreigners on America's Death Row investigates the arbitrary way United States police departments, courts, and the Department of State implement well-established rights of foreigners arrested in the US. Foreign governments have taken the United States into international courts, which have ruled that the US must enforce the treaty. The United States has ignored these rulings. As a result, foreigners continue to be executed after a legal process that their home governments justifiably find to be flawed. When one country ignores the treaty rights of another as well as the decisions of international courts, the established order of international relations is threatened.
Privacy measures for free text documents: bridging the gap between theory and practice

Privacy compliance for free text documents is a challenge facing many organizations. Named entity recognition techniques and machine learning methods can be used to detect private information, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and personal health information (PHI) in free text documents. However, these methods cannot measure the level of privacy embodied in the documents. In this paper, we propose a framework to measure the privacy content in free text documents. The measure consists of two factors: the probability that the text can be used to uniquely identify a person and the degree of sensitivity of the private entities associated with the person. We then instantiate the framework in the scenario of detection and protection of PHI in medical records, which is a challenge for many hospitals, clinics, and other medical institutions. We did experiments on a real dataset to show the effectiveness of the proposed measure.
Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) Oviposition and Adult Emergence in Six Wine Grape Varieties Grown in Virginia.

Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) is a pest of small fruits and grapes in the United States and in its home range of Japan. Physiological and morphological laboratory testing was performed on six commonly grown wine grape varieties in Virginia. Skin thickness, penetration force, and oBrix were analyzed to determine ovipositional preferences. Experiments were performed for three consecutive years from grapes collected at one Virginia vineyard. More eggs were laid in intact Viognier grapes than any other variety. Oviposition into intact grapes was not affected by skin thickness or oBrix; however, oviposition increased when penetration force decreased. An ovipositional choice test determined no varietal preferences. Survivorship from egg to adulthood using uninjured and injured grapes was also assessed to determine varietal suitability as D. suzukii hosts, with more flies emerging from injured grapes than uninjured. However, D. suzukii adults did emerge from intact grapes and at higher percentages than previously recorded in other wine grape studies. All varieties had eggs oviposited into them when injured. Determining the time at which each grape variety became susceptible to oviposition was determined using a D. suzukii bioassay spanning 12 wk using grapes from the green pea stage until ripe. Susceptibility to D. suzukii oviposition was based upon ripening period and penetration force. Early ripening varieties may be more susceptible to D. suzukii oviposition in the field with later maturing, harder fleshed-varieties which may escape D. suzukii oviposition.
Evolutionary Trees and Numerical Taxonomy in Studies of Tillandsia (Bromeliaceae)

Bromeliaceae, a tropical american plant family has received two major monographic treatments in the past half century and several smaller, partial treatments in recent years. The goals of this study were to ascertain the interresemblances and probable evolutionary pathways among the nine subgenera of Tillandia and Vriesea; to conduct the same types of analyses using the 36 species of the subgenus Phytarrhiza centered in upland South America; to interrelate the pleistocene climatic changes and the evolution of the mesic and xeric species in order to help unravel the mystery of the origin of the mesic and xeric forms of bromeliads.
NEST: Efficient Transport of Data Summaries over Named Data Networks

In many emerging data retrieval applications, in response to queries, consumers are interested in getting a summarized version of content quickly rather than retrieving all available data. Recently, Named Data Networks (NDN) have been considered for efficient transfer of summarized information, but the research is still in its infancy. In this paper, we propose NEST, a novel transport protocol for delivering extractive summaries of a dataset distributed across multiple producers over NDN. The goal is to exploit diversity in network conditions between a consumer and different producers towards delivering the consumer-specified summary while minimizing latency. NEST first creates a unified hierarchical representation of the available distributed content using state-of-the-art distributed clustering. Then, using this representation of the dataset, the protocol creates interest messages based on which consumers can opportunistically retrieve representative data objects from the best producers while adapting to dynamic network conditions by capitalizing on the flexibility offered by the NDN infrastructure. We implement NEST on the Mini-NDN network emulator and evaluate its performance using datasets collected from Twitter. Our experimental results show that NEST takes advantage of producer diversity achieving large latency reduction gains of up to 50% compared to baseline protocols.
Anesthetic Management for Endovascular Repair of the Thoracic Aorta

Thoracic endovascular aneurysm repair (TEVAR) is fast becoming the primary treatment of thoracic aortic aneurysms, thoracic aortic dissections, acute aortic injuries, and other conditions affecting the thoracic aorta. Patients scheduled for TEVAR tend to have a host of comorbid conditions, including coronary artery disease, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Intraoperative management should optimize end-organ perfusion, facilitate neuromonitoring, and adjust hemodynamic management. Complications include spinal cord injury, peripheral vascular injury, contrast-induced nephropathy, postimplantation syndrome, and endoleaks. Patients who undergo TEVAR require care in a postoperative environment where these complications can be rapidly detected and aggressively treated.
Prospective Investigation of the Interaction Between Social Problems and Neuropsychological Characteristics on the Development of Suicide Ideation.

OBJECTIVE Negative social interactions are known to contribute to the development of suicide ideation. However, it is unclear how this risk factor interacts with other predisposing risk factors. The purpose of this study was to determine how social and neuropsychological factors interact as a prospective predictor of the emergence of suicide ideation in adolescents. METHOD Data were collected from adolescents (M age = 13.12, SD = 1.48) over 3 years as part of a larger study. Participants completed the MINI-Kid and Youth Self-Report, which were used to assess for suicidality. Negative social interactions were operationalized as the Social Problems scale of the YSR. Additionally, adolescents completed a neuropsychological battery at each wave of data collection. RESULTS Logistic moderation analyses demonstrated a significant interaction between task switching and endorsement of negative social interactions in the prediction of suicide ideation one year later, Wald χ2 (1) = 4.94, OR = 0.90, p < .05. Distractibility was a significant predictor, Wald χ2 (1) = 5.52, OR = 3.45, p < .05, but it did not demonstrate an interaction effect. Perseveration failed to reach statistical significance independently and in the interaction. CONCLUSIONS The results indicate that certain neuropsychological characteristics can aid in predicting which adolescents will develop suicide ideation in the presence of negative social interactions, which may have significant clinical implications.