cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Domain decomposition approaches for accelerating contour integration eigenvalue solvers for symmetric eigenvalue problems

Summary This paper discusses techniques for computing a few selected eigenvalue–eigenvector pairs of large and sparse symmetric matrices. A recently developed class of techniques to solve this type of problems is based on integrating the matrix resolvent operator along a complex contour that encloses the interval containing the eigenvalues of interest. This paper considers such contour integration techniques from a domain decomposition viewpoint and proposes two schemes. The first scheme can be seen as an extension of domain decomposition linear system solvers in the framework of contour integration methods for eigenvalue problems, such as FEAST. The second scheme focuses on integrating the resolvent operator primarily along the interface region defined by adjacent subdomains. A parallel implementation of the proposed schemes is described, and results on distributed computing environments are reported. These results show that domain decomposition approaches can lead to reduced run times and improved scalability.
Recommendations for the use of ECT in pregnancy: literature review and proposed clinical protocol

Psychiatric disorders are common in pregnancy, affecting 15–29% of pregnant women. Untreated depression has negative health consequences for mother and fetus. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective option for the treatment of severe depression, high suicide risk, catatonia, medication-resistant illness, psychotic agitation, severe physical decline, and other life-threatening conditions. To our knowledge, however, there is no literature that consolidates all the evidence on maternal and fetal risks associated with untreated depression, medications, and ECT then translating it into one cohesive protocol that could serve as a management guide and a source of reassurance to health-care providers involved in such practice. Hoping to facilitate ECT access to perinatal patients, the authors combined their multidisciplinary clinical experience (in perinatal psychiatry, neuropsychiatry and neuromodulation, and anesthesiology) at three different centers in the USA (Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, The University of Chicago, and Brown University) with a careful and critical literature review and propose guidelines for the administration of ECT in pregnancy. A comprehensive review of the relevant literature regarding both ECT and psychotropic medications in pregnancy was performed, including meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials published in general medicine, anesthesiology, psychiatry, and obstetrics journals and guidelines. The indication and appropriateness of ECT in pregnancy must be carefully weighed against the risks of untreated maternal illness and those of alternative treatment options. The safety of ECT in pregnancy has been documented over the last 50 years. The adverse effects in pregnancy are similar to the risks of ECT in any individual. The most common risk to the mother is premature contractions and preterm labor, which occur infrequently and are not clearly caused by ECT. The rates of miscarriages were not significantly different from that of the general population. There have been no associations of ECT with congenital anomalies, either morphologic or behavioral, and no neurocognitive disturbances in the child. ECT is a reasonably safe and effective treatment alternative for management of many psychiatric disorders in pregnant patients. The authors provide recommendations for treatment modifications in pregnancy-based physiologic changes that occur during that period and consolidate them into a protocol that can assist clinicians in improving access and safety of ECT for pregnant patients.
Project Family: A Partnership Integrating Research with the Practice of Promoting Family and Youth Competencies

Project Family involves a community-university partnership directed toward “action-oriented research” (e.g., Small, 1995). As such, it aims to achieve two goals: To generate knowledge that will advance the science of family-focused competency building and to enhance the well-being of participating families and children. The project’s ultimate purpose is to strengthen the competencies of general population families and children on a broad scale—to ensure that a larger number of children develop into healthy and adaptive adults in the project’s targeted general populations.
Financial Markets and Financial Institutions

This chapter discusses the economic functions of financial markets and financial institutions. These markets consist of a cluster of institutions that have as their principle function the transmission of funds from savers and lenders to business, consumer, and government borrowers. The cluster includes the stock and bond markets; financial intermediaries such as banks and thrift institutions, a number of highly specialized firms such as stock brokers and bond dealers, investment bankers, pension funds, investment companies, and insurance companies, and governmental agencies such as the Federal Reserve System, the U.S. Treasury, and federal lending agencies. The main job of financial markets is the transmission of loanable funds and financial capital from surplus income units to deficit spenders. Surplus income units are individuals and organizations whose current inflows of money income exceed their current money outlays. Deficit spenders are units whose current outlays exceed their current inflows of money. Thus, the existence of surplus and deficit spending units sets the stage for the development of financial markets. Although the main job of all these markets is to transmit funds between surplus and deficit units, their evolution has been characterized by a high degree of differentiation. Not all lenders want the same kinds of financial assets, and not all borrowers are willing to make the same kinds of commitments.
Sludged blood, human disease and chemotherapy.

The fluidity of the blood can be reduced during the course of some human diseases and this change in the fluidity has been described under the generic name of “Sludged Blood” (e.g. Knisely and Bloch, 1942; Knisely et.al., 1947; Bloch, 1956). The potential consequences of such pathology for structures and functions have been demonstrated in experimental animals. It was found that sludged blood could produce thrombosis and infarction resulting in tissue degeneration or necrosis as well as producing symptoms (e.g. muscle pain)(e.g. Knisely et.al., 1945; Bloch, 1953; Gelin, 1956; Fajers and Gelin, 1959; Stalker, 1967; Bicher and Beemer, 1967). Such pathology could be prevented or ameliorated by de-sludging the blood (e.g. Knisely et.al., 1945; Gelin, 1956; Zederfelt, 1965; Bicher, 1972). The need for specific chemotherapy for de-sludging is essentially restricted to those diseases where no specific effective therapy against the etiological agent exists because when effective therapy is instituted it destroys the etiological agent and the blood is de-sludged.
Should older adults be screened for cognitive impairment

For the last decade or more, published practice guidelines have favored early detection and treatment of dementias of late life but have generally offered only education about dementia for primary care physicians as the means of achieving it. Screening has been encouraged only for patients who have symptoms suggesting cognitive impairment, but numerous studies have shown that physicians miss many diagnosable cases of dementia. Cognitive screening of older adults in general could detect noncomplaining but impaired individuals whose deficits have not yet become obvious, but expert opinion has been divided as to whether the cost of widespread screening would be tolerable to patients, families, health systems, and third-party payers. The validation of newer, more rapid dementia screening tools, easily applied by nonspecialists with minimal training and no special equipment, calls for review of the prevailing wisdom and challenges the view that only “symptomatic” patients should be screened. With the advent of useful treatment for dementia, screening could serve a purpose both useful to the patient and meaningful to the clinician. This paper examines the rationale for cognitive screening and methods for general application in medical care settings.
Examining United States military sexual misconduct policy processes

Sexual misconduct (sexual assault and sexual harassment) in the US military is a long-standing problem. The military has implemented many policies and programs to address sexual misconduct in its ranks. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the processes of military sexual misconduct policy and programs have evolved since the 1940s.,Punctuated equilibrium and multiple streams theories were the guiding frameworks for this process analysis of the policies and programs implemented to address military sexual misconduct based on existing literature, news media and press.,Three punctuations are found in military sexual misconduct policy that demonstrate large-scale departures from the periods of equilibrium as the result of either a significant sexual misconduct allegation or new survey findings revealing sexual misconduct prevalence rates. In between these major-issue defining events, incremental policy change has occurred resulting in a period of stasis or return to the status quo requiring correction. Despite returns to stasis, each policy punctuation has built on the prior punctuation, generating new military directives, policies and programs.,Using the lenses of punctuated equilibrium and multiple stream theories, this paper shows how the processes of US military sexual misconduct policies and programs have evolved. The US military and militaries globally can utilize these policy frameworks to help predict future patterns of military sexual misconduct and improve responses to these problems.
GSMA: an approach to identify robust global and test Gene Signatures using Meta-Analysis

Motivation Recent advances in biomedical research have made massive amount of transcriptomic data available in public repositories from different sources. Due to the heterogeneity present in the individual experiments, identifying reproducible biomarkers for a given disease from multiple independent studies has become a major challenge. The widely used meta-analysis approaches, such as Fisher's method, Stouffer's method, minP and maxP, have at least two major limitations: (i) they are sensitive to outliers, and (ii) they perform only one statistical test for each individual study, and hence do not fully utilize the potential sample size to gain statistical power. Results Here, we propose a gene-level meta-analysis framework that overcomes these limitations and identifies a gene signature that is reliable and reproducible across multiple independent studies of a given disease. The approach provides a comprehensive global signature that can be used to understand the underlying biological phenomena, and a smaller test signature that can be used to classify future samples of a given disease. We demonstrate the utility of the framework by constructing disease signatures for influenza and Alzheimer's disease using nine datasets including 1108 individuals. These signatures are then validated on 12 independent datasets including 912 individuals. The results indicate that the proposed approach performs better than the majority of the existing meta-analysis approaches in terms of both sensitivity as well as specificity. The proposed signatures could be further used in diagnosis, prognosis and identification of therapeutic targets. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Carbon Dioxide Angiography in the Treatment of Transplant Renal Artery Stenosis.

Background Transplant renal artery stenosis (TRAS) is a serious complication associated with graft loss. Selective carbon dioxide angiography allows for effective diagnosis and therapy with the use of minimal to no contrast agent. This study sought to evaluate the efficacy of the adjunctive use of carbon dioxide angiography in the treatment of TRAS. Methods Patients undergoing endovascular therapy (percutaneous transluminal angioplasty with or without stent) for TRAS between the years 2012 and 2017 at a single tertiary care academic medical center were studied. Outcomes of interest included technical success, postoperative glomerular filtration rate, and renal ultrasound hemodynamic parameters. Results Of the 37 patients who underwent angiography for TRAS during the study period, 34 underwent a therapeutic intervention. Of those, 24 patients (70.6%) underwent adjunctive carbon dioxide angiography versus 10 patients (29.4%) who underwent standard contrast angiography. Baseline characteristics between the carbon dioxide angiography and traditional angiography groups were similar. Patients undergoing carbon dioxide angiography received significantly less contrast agent than patients undergoing traditional angiography [9.5 mL (IQR 2-19.5) versus 19.5 mL (IQR 15-30), P = 0.03)] and maintained equivalent technical success rates (92.2% vs. 91.7%, P = 0.9). Conclusions The adjunctive use of carbon dioxide angiography allows for significantly less contrast administration compared with standard angiography while achieving an equivalent rate of technical success. Selective carbon dioxide angiography should be considered a first-line modality for patients with TRAS in need of endovascular therapy.
Kinetic modeling of butyric acid effects on butanol fermentation by Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum

A kinetic model of acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation taking into account butyric acid effects was developed and implemented in COPASI. The model was validated by comparing the simulation results with experimental data in batch cultures of Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum under various concentrations of initial glucose (97.1 to 152.6 mM) and butyric acid (90.7 to 153.2 mM). The modeling results suggested that increasing the conversion rates from butyryl-CoA (BCoA) to butanol, from butyrate to BCoA, or from pyruvate to lactate would increase butanol synthesis. Similarly, reducing glucose uptake rate or the reaction rates from pyruvate to acetyl CoA (ACoA), from acetoacetyl CoA (AACoA) to BCoA, or from BCoA to butyrate would improve butanol production. Overall, the kinetic model developed can accurately predict the dynamic behavior of metabolites in ABE fermentation with butyric acid addition, which may subsequently be used to identify genetic manipulation strategies for higher bio-butanol production.
Fast Methods of Coverage Evaluation for Tradespace Analysis of Constellations

Simulation of distributed space missions (DSMs) for the purpose of phase-A mission design studies and general tradespace analysis is computationally challenging owing to the necessity of evaluating thousands of architecture options. Machine learning and evolutionary optimization methods have enabled intelligent search of the architectural tradespace of DSMs, including spacecraft and instrument design specifications. A critical computational bottleneck in evaluating architectures is the ability to rapidly simulate orbits of many DSMs with varying parameters for global earth observation and compare their coverage-related performance. When design variables include heterogeneous payload types and characteristics, orbital characteristics, areas of interest, and user constraints, the parameter space may be in thousands. In this article, we describe the difficulty of coverage calculations for narrow field of view (FOV) and conical FOV sensors, and propose a novel algorithm, called quick search and correction (QSC), to overcome it. We also propose new temporal evaluation metrics to characterize the coverage performance of DSMs, as well as a uniform random sampling technique for fast evaluation of overall performance of DSMs. Performance of the proposed methods and metrics are verified on an example Landsat-derived DSM, showing ∼100x improvement in computational speed due to the QSC algorithm and ∼10–250x due to the sampling technique.
Integrating Health Innovation Policy

The United States healthcare system is highly fragmented. This fragmentation creates opportunities for multiple actors to make healthcare decisions that would be made better by a single actor, such as when patients receive care from many uncoordinated providers, or when patients move on and off of different insurance plans over time. Too often, fragmentation functions to drive up costs, lower health care quality, and negatively impact patient care. In response, scholars and policymakers have proposed legal reforms either to mitigate the harms of fragmentation or to eliminate the fragmentation entirely. Yet scholars have not recognized the impact of healthcare fragmentation on incentives for innovation into new healthcare technologies, specifically pharmaceuticals. This Article takes up that question. Essentially, there is a direct relationship between healthcare fragmentation and patients’ ability to access new technologies, as many forms of fragmentation harm patient care precisely by discouraging patients from accessing innovative new therapies. When patients are systematically discouraged from accessing those types of technologies, pharmaceutical companies’ incentives to invest in their development are reduced. As a result, healthcare fragmentation poses novel harms for innovation incentives, beyond the harms to patient care already identified in the literature. Viewing healthcare fragmentation through this innovation lens reveals not only new costs of our existing fragmented system, but also new forms of fragmentation which are relevant to the innovation framework. This Article articulates three forms of fragmentation and explains why each form has harmful impacts on innovation incentives. Scholars’ existing proposals to mitigate the problem of fragmentation are unlikely to fully address these innovation incentives problems, however. Using an innovation framework enables this Article to identify new potential reforms to address these innovation-related fragmentation biases, including seemingly unrelated proposals like Medicare for All.
Error-latency Trade-off for Asynchronous Stochastic Computing with ΣΔ Streams for the IoT

Asynchronous stochastic computing (ASC) using continuous-time-asynchronous $\Sigma\Delta$ modulators $(\mathrm{S}\mathrm{C}-\mathrm{A}\Sigma\Delta \mathrm{M})$ has the potential to enable ultra-low-power, on-node machine learning algorithms for the next generation of sensors for the Internet of Things $(\mathrm{I}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{T})$. Similar to synchronous stochastic computing $(\mathrm{S}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{C}^{\mathrm{I}})$1, in $\mathrm{S}\mathrm{C}-\mathrm{A}\Sigma\Delta \mathrm{M}$ complex processing units can be implemented with simple gates because numbers are represented with streams. For example a multiplier is implemented with a XNOR gate, yielding savings in power and area of 90% compared with the typical binary approach. Previous work demonstrated that $\mathrm{S}\mathrm{C}-\mathrm{A}\Sigma\Delta \mathrm{M}$ leverages SSC advantages and addresses its drawbacks, achieving significant savings in energy, power and latency. In this work, we study a theoretical model to determine the fundamental limits of accuracy and computing time for SC- $\mathrm{A}\Sigma\Delta \mathrm{M}$. Since the $\Sigma\Delta$ streams are periodic the final computing error is non-zero and depends on the period of the input streams. We validate our theoretical model with Spice-level simulations and evaluate the power and energy consumption using a standard FinFetlX2 technology for two cases: 1) multiplication and 2) gamma correction, an image processing algorithm. Our work determines circuit design guidelines for $\mathrm{S}\mathrm{C}-\mathrm{A}\Sigma\Delta \mathrm{M}$ and shows that multiplication with $\mathrm{S}\mathrm{C}-\mathrm{A}\Sigma\Delta \mathrm{M}$ requires at least 6X less time than SSC. The latency reduction and novel architecture positively impacts the overall energy consumption in the $\mathrm{I}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{T}$ node, enabling savings in energy of 79% compared with the binary approach.1SC is by definition a synchronous approach, thus we use SSC to differentiate it from asynchronous stochastic computing2In modern technologies the node number does not refer to any one feature in the process, and foundries use slightly different conventions; we use lx to denote the 14/16nm FinFET nodes offered by the foundry.
Compositional Generalization with Tree Stack Memory Units

We study compositional generalization, viz., the problem of zero-shot generalization to novel compositions of concepts in a domain. Standard neural networks fail to a large extent on compositional learning. We propose Tree Stack Memory Units (Tree-SMU) to enable strong compositional generalization. Tree-SMU is a recursive neural network with Stack Memory Units (\SMU s), a novel memory augmented neural network whose memory has a differentiable stack structure. Each SMU in the tree architecture learns to read from its stack and to write to it by combining the stacks and states of its children through gating. The stack helps capture long-range dependencies in the problem domain, thereby enabling compositional generalization. Additionally, the stack also preserves the ordering of each node's descendants, thereby retaining locality on the tree. We demonstrate strong empirical results on two mathematical reasoning benchmarks. We use four compositionality tests to assess the generalization performance of Tree-SMU and show that it enables accurate compositional generalization compared to strong baselines such as Transformers and Tree-LSTMs.
Juror appraisals of forensic evidence: Effects of blind proficiency and cross-examination

Forensic testimony plays a crucial role in many criminal cases, with requests to crime laboratories steadily increasing. As part of efforts to improve the reliability of forensic evidence, scientific and policy groups increasingly recommend routine and blind proficiency tests of practitioners. What is not known is how doing so affects how lay jurors assess testimony by forensic practitioners in court. In Study 1, we recruited 1398 lay participants, recruited online using Qualtrics to create a sample representative of the U.S. population with respect to age, gender, income, race/ethnicity, and geographic region. Each read a mock criminal trial transcript in which a forensic examiner presented the central evidence. The low-proficiency forensic examiner elicited a lower conviction rate and less favorable impressions than the control, an examiner for which no proficiency information was disclosed. However, the high-proficiency examiner did not correspondingly elicit a higher conviction rate or more favorable impressions than the control. In Study 2, 1420 participants, similarly recruited using Qualtrics, received the same testimony, but for some conditions the examiner was cross-examined by a defense attorney. We find cross-examination significantly reduced guilty votes and examiner ratings for low-proficiency examiners. These results suggest that disclosing results of blind proficiency testing can inform jury decision-making, and further, that defense lawyering can make proficiency information particularly salient at a criminal trial.
The Minimum Upload Cost of Symmetric Private Information Retrieval

For the symmetric private information retrieval problem with K messages and N servers, we show that the minimum (symmetric) upload cost is ${\log _2}\left( {\left\lceil {{K^{\frac{1}{{N - 1}}}}} \right\rceil } \right)$ bits per server, i.e., the user must upload a q-ary symbol to each server where q is at least $\left\lceil {{K^{\frac{1}{{N - 1}}}}} \right\rceil $.
The problem of evil in the Neo-Confucian context: Wang Yangming’s view on evil

Wang Yangming believes that human nature is entirely good. A question naturally arises: where is evil from? It has been argued that Wang’s idealism gives rise to the problem of evil. I first argue ...
Performance Evaluation Of Wide Aperture Radar For Automotive Applications

The angular resolution of the state-of-the-art automotive radars is about 1°, due to the relatively short aperture of about 10cm. In this paper we present novel results of a 1m aperture automotive prototype radar that achieves 0.1° resolution. Since the 1m aperture is about the maximal horizontal aperture of a vehicle, then 0.1° angular resolution is the maximal practical resolution with 78GHz technology. Hence the demonstrated performance can be considered as the upper performance limit of the 78GHz frequency. We analyze the wide aperture radar performance advantage with respect to state-of-the-art short aperture radar and high resolution LIDAR sensor, in various challenging automotive scenarios. The wide aperture radar attains a relatively large number of detection points from the object surface, which are much more accurate than the conventional short aperture radar, and therefore enables to accurately estimate the object position, size and boundaries, which is essential for autonomous driving. It attains comparable performance to LIDAR at short to medium range, and outperforms LIDAR at long range. The pioneer performance evaluation presented in this paper shows the high potential performance of wide aperture automotive radars and motivates their application in next generation autonomous driving systems.
Green Light Improves Photosystem Stoichiometry in Cucumber Seedlings (Cucumis sativus) Compared to Monochromatic Red Light.

It has been shown that monochromatic red and blue light influence photosynthesis and morphology in cucumber. It is less clear how green light impacts photosynthetic performance or morphology, either alone or in concert with other wavelengths. In this study, cucumber (Cucumis sativus) was grown under monochromatic blue, green, and red light, dichromatic blue–green, red–blue, and red–green light, as well as light containing red, green, and blue wavelengths, with or without supplemental far-red light. Photosynthetic data collected under treatment spectra at light-limiting conditions showed that both red and green light enhance photosynthesis. However, photosynthetic data collected with a 90% red, 10% blue, 1000 µmol photons m−2 s−1, saturating light show significantly lower photosynthesis in the green, red, and red–green treatments, indicating a blue light enhancement due to photosystem stoichiometric differences. The red–green and green light treatments show improved photosynthetic capacity relative to red light, indicating partial remediation by green light. Despite a lower quantum efficiency and the lowest ambient photosynthesis levels, the monochromatic blue treatment produced among the tallest, most massive plants with the greatest leaf area and thickest stems.
That Pernicious Pop-Up, the Prima Facie Case

This article first explains the role the prima facie case has played in discrimination cases, from its creation in McDonnell Douglas through the Supreme Court's decisions in Aikens and Reeves, up to the application of Reeves by lower courts in the past several years. Next, this article focuses on Reeve's identification of "strength of the prima facie case" as a factor to be considered on summary judgment, and discusses why it would be unwise and unworkable to interpret the words "prima facie case" in that factor as having the same meaning as the "prima facie case" proved in the first stage of the McDonnell Douglas framework. Finally, this article explains how and why courts should prevent the prima facie case from "popping up" again in the third stage of the McDonnell Douglas analysis, where it would distort and disrupt the court from conducting a fair and reasoned evaluation of whether a plaintiff's discrimination claim should go to a jury.This article contends that it is a mistake to allow the prima facie case to play a significant role in the third stage of the McDonnell Douglas analysis. Additionally, this article explains how the Aikens decision offered crucial insight into the proper role of the prima facie case in adjudging discrimination claims, and correctly concluded that the prime facie case should not be considered after the employer has presented a reason for its challenged action. Finally, this article argues that the Reeves decision, by making "strength of the prima facie case" a factor to be eonsidered at the final stage of the McDonnell Douglas analysis, threatens to give the traditional prima facie case far greater weight than is sensible or just.
Survival analysis by inflammatory biomarkers in severely injured patients undergoing damage control resuscitation.

Abstract Background Although early balanced blood product resuscitation has improved mortality after traumatic injury, many patients still suffer from inflammatory complications. The goal of this study was to identify inflammatory mediators associated with death and multiorgan system failure following severe injury after patients undergo blood product resuscitation. Methods A retrospective secondary analysis of inflammatory markers from the Pragmatic Randomized Optimal Platelet and Plasma Ratios study was performed. Twenty-seven serum biomarkers were measured at 8 time points in the first 72 hours of care and were compared between survivors and nonsurvivors. Biomarkers with significant differences were further analyzed by adjudicated cause of 30-day mortality. Results Biomarkers from 680 patients were analyzed. Seven key inflammatory markers (IL-1ra, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, eotaxin, IP-10, and MCP-1) were further analyzed. These cytokines were also noted to have the highest hazard ratios of death. Stepwise selection was used for multivariate analysis of survival by time point. MCP-1 at 2 hours, eotaxin and IP-10 at 12 hours, eotaxin at 24 hours, and IP-10 at 72 hours were associated with all-cause mortality. Conclusion Early systemic inflammatory markers are associated with increased risk of mortality after traumatic injury. Future studies should use these biomarkers to prospectively calculate risks of morbidity and causes of mortality for all trauma patients.
Clinical Management of Urinary Tract Infection

The clinical management of urinary tract infection has changed considerably over the last two decades due to the recognition of several important factors: 1 All urinary tract infections are not the same; in particular, deep tissue infection of the kidney and/or prostate requires a very different form of clinical management than does superficial mucosal infection of the bladder. 2 Consistent with these differences, it is now clear that conventional 7–14 day treatment courses are not ideal for most forms of urinary tract infections; deep tissue infection requires more intensive therapy and superficial mucosal infection needs less intensive therapy. 3 In particular, single dose antimicrobial therapy has been a major advance in the management of the most common form of urinary tract infection — acute uncomplicated urinary tract infection of the adult female; such therapy is safe, effective, inexpensive, and the response provides useful clinical information. 4 The recognition of the etiology of the acute urethral syndrome in most patients (true bacteriuria or Chlamydia trachomatis infection) had led to an effective therapeutic approach to this problem. 5 A logical approach to the problem of recurrent urinary tract infection has emerged that is both cost-effective and clinically effective. 6 Finally, a clearer picture of those populations that would benefit most from anatomical study of the urinary tract has been developed. With these advances, this most common of bacterial infections affecting man throughout his lifespan has become much easier to control.
Teaching specification and verification of event-driven programs using cleanroom software engineering

Software verification, the process of ensuring that a software artifact meets its specification, is both difficult to perform and difficult to teach. The two principal techniques for software verification are correctness proving and testing. While a correctness proof can demonstrate conclusively that a software artifact meets its specification for all inputs, correctness proving is a difficult, tedious, and error-prone activity [1]. Hence, most software engineers rely in practice upon testing as the primary means of ensuring that a software artifact meets its specification.
Influence of codified knowledge on software design task performance: a comparison of pairs with individuals

The need to improve the success rates of software development projects has prompted the software engineering community to come-up with various initiatives. These initiatives include: new software development processes such as Extreme Programming (XP), leveraging the development process by reusing existing knowledge of software artifacts. XP utilizes pairs in the performance of various software development tasks. Moreover, development of software applications is a knowledge intensive process that utilizes both tacit and explicit knowledge. This experimental study utilized software development professionals as subjects and manipulated the iv mode of participation (individual or pairs) and availability of codified knowledge (design patterns). Results of the study indicate that the performance of collaborating pairs were better than the 2nd best individual in nominal pairs. Collaborating pairs also took more time than the average time taken by nominal pairs to complete the task and they were more satisfied than the individuals. This study also found that the codified knowledge in the form of design patterns helped in arriving at a better solution. One interesting finding of this study is the effect of design self-efficacy/collective-efficacy on task performance.
Metabolic Functions of Myo-inositol III. UTILIZATION OF PURINE BASES AND NUCLEOSIDES FOR NUCLEIC ACID BIOSYNTHESIS IN INOSITOL-DEFICIENT KB CELLS

Abstract The ability of inositol-deficient KB cells to use purine bases and nucleosides for the biosynthesis of nucleotides and nucleic acids was studied with the aid of 8-14C-adenine and 8-14C-guanosine. The rate of incorporation of 8-14C-adenine into the ribonucleic acid of deficient cells was at least 50% of the normal value even though the specific activities of the RNA bases were the same as those of normal cells. When 8-14C-guanosine was the radioactive precursor, the rate of labeling of the acid-soluble guanine and adenine nucleotides of deficient cells was one-half of that of normal cells. Similarly, the rate of incorporation of 8-14C-guanosine into RNA guanine and adenine of the deficient cells was 25% and 37%, respectively, of the normal rate. As a consequence of this, the specific activities of the RNA bases of the deficient cells were lower than those of normal cells. In the presence of nucleotide precursors, cells grown without inositol showed a decreased rate of cell division while maintaining approximately a normal rate of nucleic acid biosynthesis. This results in cells containing increased levels of nucleic acids. The levels of guanase and nucleoside phosphorylase activities of deficient cells were the same as those of normal cells, but the level of guanosine 5'-phosphate pyrophosphorylase activity was reduced to 40% of the normal value. The loss of intracellular purine compounds into the culture fluid was very small, and it was the same in both types of cells. It is concluded that inositol-deficient cells are unable to incorporate adenine and guanosine into the nucleic acids at a normal rate, and that inositol deficiency affects more the metabolism of guanosine by causing a decrease of the level of GMP pyrophosphorylase activity.
Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution

In 2015 the Supreme Court made history by ruling that the constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to get married. The third edition of perhaps the most influential book on the subject explains the Court's reasoning and what the consequences of the decision have been. The book also explains why the Supreme Court declined to rule that a ban on same-sex marriage was irrational or hateful or that the ban was an indirect form of gender discrimination. Instead, the Court ruled that there is a fundamental constitutional right to marry that covers same-sex couples. The book discusses the dissent's claims that the decision will lead to constitutional protection for polygamy. It also covers the controversy over whether there should be special laws that allow religious business owners not to serve same-sex couples who are married. This book is free of jargon and is accessible to anyone interested in same-sex equality, the Supreme Court or constitutional law generally.
Subsurface fires and explosions

The most feared of hazards in underground mines or other subsurface facilities are those of fires and explosions. Like airplane crashes, these do not occur often but, when they do, have the potential of causing disastrous loss of life and property as well as a temporary or permanent sterilization of mineral reserves. Furthermore, ‘near misses’ occur all too frequently. The incidence of mine fires appears not to be declining despite greatly improved methods of mine environmental design and hazard control. This is a consequence of two matters; first the growing variety of materials that are imported into modern mine workings, varying from resins and plastics to liquid fuels and hydraulic fluids. A second factor is the continuous increase in the employment of mechanized procedures, many of the machines involving flammable liquids and materials that can produce toxic fumes when overheated. The enormous loss of life due to mine fires and explosions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries preoccupied the minds of mining engineers and scientists of the time (Chapter 1). Through the 1980s, mine fires re-emerged as a topic of pressing research need.
Design, transport performance study and engineering of a 11 Tb/s US mesh metro network

A new top-down simulation methodology for successfully enabling transparent optical networks in the metro environment is presented. A 11 Tb/s ILEC network was engineered based on projected traffic demands for a typical medium size US metropolitan area. The approach combines traffic modeling, network dimensioning, and transport layer performance modeling. The latter is further composed of three main simulation steps: efficient wavelength-domain simulations for network crosstalk analysis, time-domain simulation for determining Q-penalties for pulse propagation effects and finally a Q-budgeting approach that combines the above results for flexible network design and engineering. As a result metro players like ILECs or CLECs can effectively and quickly engineer transparent networks in the metro environment using simulation methodologies like the above. Details on the actual traffic and transport layer models used as well as experimental validation results for the models will be presented in more detail at the conference.
Improving low‐income parents' fruit and vegetable intake and their potential to impact children's nutrition

– The purpose of this research is to test a comprehensive nutrition program developed specifically to target low‐income parents of young school‐aged children and determine whether the programme‐resulted in changes in parents' knowledge, attitude, self‐confidence, and behaviours related to both their and their child's nutrition in relation to fruit and vegetable intake., – This study used a quasi‐experimental pre‐test/post‐test design in which parent centers were selected to participate as either intervention or control sites. The primary method of data collection was self‐administered questionnaires., – The results show significant positive changes in parent knowledge, food behaviors, and home environment. No changes were observed in parents' attitudes; however, parent attitudes were high at baseline., – This work reinforces the importance of developing well designed interventions that specifically target the intended audience and intended outcomes., – This is one of the few studies that have examined the potential and value of nutrition‐focused intervention targeting low‐income and predominantly Hispanic populations with the potential goal of impacting children.
New Fuchsin-Hematoxylin-Eosin; A Stain for Acid-Fast Bacilli and Surrounding Tissue

This is a staining technique for histopathologic evaluation of tissue reaction in the environs of acid-fast tubercle bacilli (avian and bovine) in sections. Fresh tissue is fixed in 10% neutral formalin and processed in the usual manner for embedding in paraffin. Sections are cut approximately 6 μ. thick, dewaxed, hydrated, and stained with Harris' hematoxylin. They are rinsed in tap water, differentiated in add alcohol, washed in tap water, given a distilled water rinse and stained at 20-30° C in a 1% solution of new fuchsin in 5% phenol. Each slide is then handled individually by placing it directly into a saturated aqueous solution of Li2CO3 and agitated gently for a few seconds. This is followed by differentiation with 5% glacial acetic acid in absolute or 95% ethyl alcohol until the color stops running. Two rinses in absolute or 95% ethyl alcohol follow. The sections are then counterstained in the color add of eosin Y prepared according to the method of Schleicher (Stain Techn., 28, 119-23, 1953) and...
Transnational Advertising and International Relations: US Press Discourses on the Benetton "We on Death Row" Campaign

This article analyzes Benetton’s 2000 ‘We on Death Row’ advertising campaign as a site of cultural production where ideological differences on capital punishment between the United States and Europe are played out. We examine the massmediated public discourse framing the campaign in the US prestige press. More specifically, we conduct a textual analysis of news stories and editorials about the campaign in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Our analysis uncovered three themes, denigration, commodification and othering, that the press uses to discredit the campaign. The discussion focuses on how national hegemonic media frames ‘domesticate’ foreign social ideals.
Is there a reality in Industrial Augmented Reality

In the spirit of the seminal article by Brooks [12] that surveys the field of Virtual Reality to evaluate its level of applicability, we study the readiness of Industrial Augmented Reality (IAR). We have been hearing about IAR since Mizell and Caudell [14] first gave a name to AR, but how many applications broke out of the lab to be used by non-developers? In reviewing the literature, we note the amazing progress made in display technology, rendering and tracking. Given these improvements, one might expect AR-based industrial products to flourish. Unfortunately, this is still not the case. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of industrial AR applications. We organize the different applications of IAR over the life-cycle of products, in order to draw some parallels between the different proposed concepts and offer a clear taxonomy for future applications. We also propose and apply a rubric to evaluate existing IAR systems in order to highlight reasons for success and offer guidelines in the hope that it will help IAR become “really real”.
Association of Major Histocompatibility Complex Determinants with the Development of Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Genital Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 Infections

The clinical spectrum of herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections, ranging from asymptomatic to frequently distressing outbreaks, suggests that there may be immunologic determinants of disease severity that are associated with human leukocyte antigen (HLA) expression. A controlled, prospective study identified several major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II antigens whose frequencies are associated with HSV-2 infection or with frequent symptomatic genital recurrences. Previous studies were hampered by the inability to serologically identify patients with asymptomatic HSV-2 infection. Clinical evaluation and Western blot assay were used to identify 3 subject cohorts: 1 with no prior HSV infections, 1 with HSV-2 antibodies but no recognized symptoms, and 1 with HSV-2 antibodies and frequent genital recurrences. Statistical comparisons of HLA frequencies among these cohorts showed associations of HLA-B27 and -Cw2 with symptomatic disease. Also, HLA-Cw4 was significantly associated with HSV-2 infection. These associations indicate that immunologic factors linked to the MHC influence the risk of HSV-2 infection and disease expression.
Utilizing MOOCs for blended learning in higher education

To overcome MOOC shortcomings such as low completion rate, low level of interactions, and building on our previous team-based MOOC model, in this work-in-progress paper we propose a new model to create MOOC learning modules as learning objects based on a single learning objective to enable use of MOOC learning modules in blended settings. This model utilizes project-based learning and has benefits for both instructors and students. The proposed model suggests creating re-usable MOOC learning modules that can be used in different courses. A graduate engineering course is under development using the proposed model. The benefits and shortcomings of this model from students and instructors' perspective will be investigated. It is expected that this model increases interactions among students.
You improve them, my boy!": Insanity and Self-Discovery in Gardner's Grendel

(2007). You improve them, my boy!': Insanity and Self-Discovery in Gardner's Grendel. The Explicator: Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 47-50.
Wellington and the Reconstruction of the Allied Armies during the Hundred Days

essay is not about the battle of Waterloo; if it relates to battles at all, it is about those battles never fought because of Waterloo. Upon the return of Napoleon from Elba, the allied powers did include a campaign in Flanders in their plans, but most of the generals visualized on the whole a recapitulation of the previous dispositions: that is to say an Austrian campaign in Italy; a drive, largely Prussian, from the Middle Rhine; a British attack from Belgium ; and the main army, by far the largest, crossing the Upper Rhine near Basle. This was once more the strategy of encirclement; slow and steady strangulation, not that of seeking the one decisive battle. The major difference from 1814 involved Wellington. Then he had been in the south, advancing from Spain to Bordeaux and Toulouse. In 18 15 the southern front was quiet, and he commanded the troops in Belgium but only after an extended odyssey that found him deeply involved, and for a time exclusively involved, in assembling the forces rather than leading them. For the sake of completing a circle, we can say that the odyssey began in August 1 8 14 with an inspection tour of Belgian defences while the duke was en route to assume his ambassadorial duties in Paris. After