cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
ADAMTS13 Antigen Levels and the Risk of Relapse during Long-Term Clinical Follow Up of Patients with Idiopathic Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura.

Abstract Background: Although nearly all patients with idiopathic TTP will achieve remission, a majority of patients will suffer a recurrence at some point in the future. Our group has had an ongoing interest in using laboratory biomarkers to predict the risk of recurrence of idiopathic TTP after patients achieve remission and complete their initial therapy. Method: Twenty patients (Table 1) with idiopathic TTP were analyzed beginning from the time of their initial presentation to our institution. 8 patients had a history of previous episodes of TTP. Patients were followed prospectively and monitored for relapse of TTP. Nine patients have maintained a continuous remission (Non-relapse) and 11 patients (Relapse) had a relapse of TTP. 139 serial samples from both groups, a median of 6.5/patient, were analyzed and compared in terms of ADAMTS13 activity, ADAMTS13 antibody concentration, and ADAMTS13 antigen. Median follow-up for the "Non-relapse" group was 39 months (range, 12 to 50). The median time to relapse was 11 months (range, 1.5 to 34) in the "Relapse" cohort. Data for the relapse group was censored at the time of relapse accounting for the shorter median follow-up of that cohort. The serial biomarkers from the "Relapse" group presented below reflect only samples obtained during continuous remission. Results: Serial measurements of laboratory biomarkers are presented for both the "Relapse" and "Non-relapse" patients in Figure 1 below. During the first year of follow-up, the "Non-Relapse" patients had significantly higher ADAMTS13 Ag levels (p = 0.0065) compared to the patients who relapsed. There was no significant difference in the ADAMTS13 activity and antibody concentration between the two groups during the first year of follow up. In the 11 patients who relapsed, the mean ADAMTS13 activity was 1.2% (range, 0.5 – 3.2%), the mean antibody concentration was 958 ug/ml (range, 147 – 4,988), and the mean ADAMTS13 antigen was 221 ug/ml (range, 73 – 468) at the time of disease recurrence. Conclusion: These data suggest that ADAMTS13 antigen determinations in the first year of follow-up may predict which patients will have a sustained remission of their disease. ADAMTS13 antigen measurement, compared to ADAMTS13 activity or antibody concentrations, may provide additional information to more accurately predict a patient's future clinical course after achieving remission. Demographic and Laboratory Data at Presentation Mean Laboratory Data at Presentation (range) N Age Sex Previous TTP ADAMTS13 % ADAMTS13 Ab(ug/ml) ADAMTS13 Ag. (ng/ml) Relapse 11 37 (19–56) 4M/7F 4/11 2.5% (0.6 – 7.9) 1,221 (190 – 3,397) 360 (99 – 1,195) Non-Relapse 9 47 (21–59) 2M/7F 4/9 4.2% ( 891 (59 – 4,040) 266 (84 – 668) Download : Download high-res image (108KB) Download : Download full-size image Figure
Temporal predictive mechanisms modulate motor reaction time during initiation and inhibition of speech and hand movement

Skilled movement is mediated by motor commands executed with extremely fine temporal precision. The question of how the brain incorporates temporal information to perform motor actions has remained unanswered. This study investigated the effect of stimulus temporal predictability on response timing of speech and hand movement. Subjects performed a randomized vowel vocalization or button press task in two counterbalanced blocks in response to temporally-predictable and unpredictable visual cues. Results indicated that speech and hand reaction time was decreased for predictable compared with unpredictable stimuli. This finding suggests that a temporal predictive code is established to capture temporal dynamics of sensory cues in order to produce faster movements in responses to predictable stimuli. In addition, results revealed a main effect of modality, indicating faster hand movement compared with speech. We suggest that this effect is accounted for by the inherent complexity of speech production compared with hand movement. Lastly, we found that movement inhibition was faster than initiation for both hand and speech, suggesting that movement initiation requires a longer processing time to coordinate activities across multiple regions in the brain. These findings provide new insights into the mechanisms of temporal information processing during initiation and inhibition of speech and hand movement.
Highly efficient wideband X-band MMIC class-F power amplifier with cascode FP GaN HEMT

Wideband high-power single-chip X-band class-F power amplifier with excellent output performances is reported. In order to achieve high-power class-F operation under minimised output capacitance impact at the frequency, high-voltage operation with minimised device size is pursued and its voltage swing becomes maximised by adopting high breakdown field-plate (FP) GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) devices with cascode configuration. For the fabrication, 0.14 µm FP AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology with 58 GHz fT and ∼100 V breakdown is used. Based on on-wafer test at 44 V Vdd, the fabricated class-F power amplifier delivers maximum 61.1% power added efficiency (PAE) with 9.2 W at 10.2 GHz. With the help of high-voltage operating cascode devices of minimised size, it also delivers excellent bandwidth of 1.6 GHz at the point of 50% PAE and high-power density of 4.42 W/mm is demonstrated.
Treatments for Breast Cancer That Affect Cognitive Function in Postmenopausal Women

About one of every eight women will develop breast cancer during her lifetime. Approximately a quarter of a million new cancer cases are expected in 2017. Of those breast cancers, 60% to 75% will h...
Lessons from Yeast on How to Avoid Stress Eating.

Cellular survival during periods of acute environmental stress is essential for single-celled organisms. Reporting in Nature Cell Biology, Saad et al. (2017) identify reversible aggregation of the metabolic enzyme pyruvate kinase under environmental stress and propose a method to protect and store proteins for immediate use post-stress.
Review of Roman Crete: New Perspectives

Roman Crete: New Perspectives. Edited by Jane E. Francis and Anna Kouremenos. Oxbow Books, Oxford and Philadelphia. 2016. ISBN 1785700987, 9781785700989 ($65.00), 246pp, 35 color plates.The “New Pe...
Role Transition of Professionals Moving to Rural Locales

This chapter examines the transition of urban professional people to life and work in rural locales. It focuses on the role strain they experience in the course of relocating to rural areas and during the subsequent process of learning the new social expectations of these environments. Special attention is given to four variables said to affect the ease of assuming new roles: (1) role conflict (intra- and inter-role conflict); (2) role compartmentalization; (3) amount of activity normatively prescribed; and (4) anticipatory socialization (Burr, 1972). The paper concludes with a description of intervention points, activities, and exercises that urban professionals can use to effect easier rural role transitions. Although the examples cited in this explication are drawn mainly from the experiences of health care professionals and their allied colleagues, the issues they illustrate have general applicability to other professional groups as well.
Roth’s Orthogonal Function Method in Discrepancy Theory and Some New Connections

In this survey we give a comprehensive, but gentle introduction to the circle of questions surrounding the classical problems of discrepancy theory, unified by the same approach originated in the work of Klaus Roth (Mathematika 1:73–79, 1954) and based on multiparameter Haar (or other orthogonal) function expansions. Traditionally, the most important estimates of the discrepancy function were obtained using variations of this method. However, despite a large amount of work in this direction, the most important questions in the subject remain wide open, even at the level of conjectures. The area, as well as the method, has enjoyed an outburst of activity due to the recent breakthrough improvement of the higher-dimensional discrepancy bounds and the revealed important connections between this subject and harmonic analysis, probability (small deviation of the Brownian motion), and approximation theory (metric entropy of spaces with mixed smoothness). Without assuming any prior knowledge of the subject, we present the history and different manifestations of the method, its applications to related problems in various fields, and a detailed and intuitive outline of the latest higher-dimensional discrepancy estimate.
The Impacts of Labeling on Trade in Goods That may be Vertically Differentiated According to Quality

Following Nelson (1970) and Darby and Karni (1973), analysis of asymmetric information and product quality has focused on the distinction between search, experience, and credence goods. In the case of search goods, information to aid consumers in their purchasing decisions is often plentiful; thus, market failure is not a significant problem, and government regulatory activity is relatively minor (Caswell and Mojduszka 1996). Most analysis has focused on experience goods (Stiglitz 1989), with significant contributions being made by Klein and Leffler (1981), Shapiro (1983), Allen (1984), and Riordan (1986). Results in this literature rely on quality being signaled to consumers via reputation effects. For example, Klein and Leffler show that if firms incur sunk costs by investing in firm-specific assets that are observable by consumers, high-quality goods will be supplied in equilibrium.
A fractal approach for detecting spatial hierarchy and structure on mussel beds

Within beds of blue mussel (Mytilus edulis L.), individuals are aggregated into small patches, which in turn are incorporated into bigger patches, revealing a complex hierarchy of spatial structure. The present study was done to find the different scales of variation in the distribution of mussel biomass, and to describe the spatial heterogeneity on these scales. The three approaches compared for this purpose were fractal analysis, spatial autocorrelation and hierarchical (or nested) analysis of variances (ANOVA). The complexity (i.e. patchiness) of mussel aggregations was described with fractal dimension, calculated with the semivariogram method. Three intertidal mussel beds were studied on the west coast of Sweden. The distribution of wet biomass was studied along transects up to 128 m. The average biomasses of blue mussels on the three mussel beds were 1825±210, 179±21 and 576±66 g per0.1 m2, respectively, and the fractal dimensions of the mussel distribution were 1.726±0.010, 1.842±0.014 and 1.939±0.029 on transects 1–3, respectively. Distributions of mussels revealed multiscaling behaviour. The fractal dimension significantly changed twice on different scales on the first bed (thus showing three scaling regions), the second and third beds revealed two and three scaling regions, respectively. High fractal dimension was followed by significant spatial autocorrelation on smaller scales. The fractal analysis detects the multiple scaling regions of spatial variance even when the spatial structure may not be distinguished significantly by conventional statistical inference. The study shows that the fractal analysis, the spatial autocorrelation analysis and the hierarchical ANOVA give complementary information about the spatial variability in mussel populations.
Model order reduction of nonlinear parabolic PDE systems with moving boundaries using sparse proper orthogonal decomposition methodology

Developing reduced-order models for nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) systems with time-varying spatial domains remains a key challenge as the dominant spatial patterns of the system change with time. Within this context, there have been several studies where the time-varying spatial domain is transformed to the time-invariant spatial domain by using an analytical expression that describes how the spatial domain changes with time. However, this information is not available in many real-world applications and therefore, the approach is not generally applicable. To overcome this challenge, we introduce sparse proper orthogonal decomposition (SPOD)-Galerkin methodology that exploits the key features of ridge and lasso regularization techniques for the model order reduction of such systems. This methodology is successfully applied to a hydraulic fracturing process, and a series of simulation results indicates that it is more accurate in approximating the original nonlinear system than the standard POD-Galerkin methodology.
Concomitant vs. Comparative Advantages: Sufficient vs. Necessary Conditions.

Affirmative cases of the comparative advantages type sometimes employ advocacy based upon concomitant advantages. This article analyzes the nature of such advantages as being coincidental but not e...
Immunocytochemical Studies on the Site of Synthesis and Pathways of Amyloid Protein AA

CBA/J mice received a single subcutaneous injection of casein to provoke an acute phase response, then were sacrificed at predetermined times up to 48 h. The livers were fixed in situ with 4.0% paraformaldehyde-0.1% gluaraldehyde, and processed for immunocytochemistry against anti-mouse AA using peroxidase-antiperoxidase, avidin-biotin-peroxidase, and protein A-gold methods. The composite results of the light and electron microscopic observations revealed three major findings. 1) Primary localization of the reaction was in the hepatocyte cytoplasm and peaked at 6–8 h after the casein injection. Only certain selective hepatocyes, which were scattered over the lobule, showed this type of reaction, suggesting heterogeneity of the hepatocyte population in participation in AA synthesis. 2) In the cytoplasm, the reaction was localized on and/or in the rough endoplasmic reticulum, and the single membrane bound vesicles, vacuoles and lamellae including the Golgi complex, confirming that protein AA follows the common intracellular routes of synthesis and secretion established for other proteins. 3) The reaction was also observed on the free surface of the hepatocyte membrane including the microvilli. This reaction appeared as early as but lasted at least several hours longer than its cytoplasmic counterpart, suggesting that some retention exists before the release of AA-reactive substance from the cellular surface.
A Differential Association Theory of Socialization to Commercialist Career Paths in Science

Drawing on sixty-one in-depth interviews conducted with commercial and noncommercial scientists at four universities in the United States, this paper examines why academic scientists embrace commer...
Human-Cougar interactions in the wildland-urban interface of Colorado's front range

As human populations continue to expand across the world, the need to understand and manage wildlife populations within the wildland-urban interface is becoming commonplace. This is especially true for large carnivores as these species are not always tolerated by the public and can pose a risk to human safety. Unfortunately, information on wildlife species within the wildland-urban interface is sparse, and knowledge from wildland ecosystems does not always translate well to human-dominated systems. Across western North America, cougars (Puma concolor) are routinely utilizing wildland-urban habitats while human use of these areas for homes and recreation is increasing. From 2007 to 2015, we studied cougar resource selection, human-cougar interaction, and cougar conflict management within the wildland-urban landscape of the northern Front Range in Colorado, USA. Resource selection of cougars within this landscape was typical of cougars in more remote settings but cougar interactions with humans tended to occur in locations cougars typically selected against, especially those in proximity to human structures. Within higher housing density areas, 83% of cougar use occurred at night, suggesting cougars generally avoided human activity by partitioning time. Only 24% of monitored cougars were reported for some type of conflict behavior but 39% of cougars sampled during feeding site investigations of GPS collar data were found to consume domestic prey items. Aversive conditioning was difficult to implement and generally ineffective for altering cougar behaviors but was thought to potentially have long-term benefits of reinforcing fear of humans in cougars within human-dominated areas experiencing little cougar hunting pressure. Cougars are able to exploit wildland-urban landscapes effectively, and conflict is relatively uncommon compared with the proportion of cougar use. Individual characteristics and behaviors of cougars within these areas are highly varied; therefore, conflict management is unique to each situation and should target individual behaviors. The ability of individual cougars to learn to exploit these environments with minimal human-cougar interactions suggests that maintaining older age structures, especially females, and providing a matrix of habitats, including large connected open-space areas, would be beneficial to cougars and effectively reduce the potential for conflict.
Achieving Linear Convergence in Distributed Asynchronous Multiagent Optimization

This article studies multiagent (convex and nonconvex ) optimization over static digraphs. We propose a general distributed asynchronous algorithmic framework whereby 1) agents can update their local variables as well as communicate with their neighbors at any time, without any form of coordination; and 2) they can perform their local computations using (possibly) delayed, out-of-sync information from the other agents. Delays need not be known to the agent or obey any specific profile, and can also be time-varying (but bounded). The algorithm builds on a tracking mechanism that is robust against asynchrony (in the above sense), whose goal is to estimate locally the average of agents’ gradients. When applied to strongly convex functions, we prove that it converges at an R-linear (geometric) rate as long as the step-size is sufficiently small. A sublinear convergence rate is proved, when nonconvex problems and/or diminishing, uncoordinated step-sizes are considered. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first distributed algorithm with provable geometric convergence rate in such a general asynchronous setting. Preliminary numerical results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm and validate our theoretical findings.
Cultural Considerations in the United States

Gender identity is a term that eludes research precision and represents a wide range of experiences and definitions. Similarly, gender-diverse youth are increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and hold an abundance of intersectional identities. As research attempts to clarify these groups’ unique vulnerabilities and resilience, some trends are clear. For both clinician and patient, approach of topics such as race may be fraught for a variety of reasons and require clinical vigilance and humility. With their potential for support and rejection, exploration of family, spirituality, and other emotionally salient areas of identity may be useful in appraising risk-mitigating influences of youths’ mental and physical health. Cultivation of a clinical style and space that keeps privacy and safety at its core, emphasizes gender-affirming communication, and acknowledges rejection sensitivity may serve as a fruitful frame for exploring these visible and invisible identities within gender in service of this diverse population.
Entanglement in weakly coupled lattice gauge theories

We present a direct lattice gauge theory computation that, without using dualities, demonstrates that the entanglement entropy of Yang-Mills theories with arbitrary gauge group G contains a generic logarithmic term at sufficiently weak coupling e. In two spatial dimensions, for a region of linear size r, this term equals $$ \frac{1}{2} $$ dim(G) log(e 2 r) and it dominates the universal part of the entanglement entropy. Such logarithmic terms arise from the entanglement of the softest mode in the entangling region with the environment. For Maxwell theory in two spatial dimensions, our results agree with those obtained by dualizing to a compact scalar with spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Group velocity of light in uniaxial crystals.

Based on the wave vector surface, we have derived the analytical expressions for the group velocity of light traveling in an optically biaxial crystal in an arbitrary direction. Our formulas are in terms of either the wave vector direction or the ray direction. An axis dispersion vector is introduced to specify the rotation of the dielectric frame in monoclinic and triclinic crystals, which is found to be responsible for the asymmetry of the group velocity surfaces of these two crystal systems when compared to their phase and ray velocity surfaces. Our formulas confirm that the group velocity of light in a nondissipative medium equals the ratio between the Poynting vector and the total energy density of the electromagnetic field. The group index of light is found to be decomposable into three parts: the ray index, the group index due to principal refractive index dispersion, and that due to axis dispersion. Numerical calculations are performed for the group velocity of light in ${\rm Sn}_2{\rm P}_2{\rm S}_6$ crystal at 550 nm wavelength. Our results show that the dispersion of the principal refractive indices has a considerable contribution to the group index.
Investigating the applicability of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement to a Southern sample of African American adults

Established bereavement and grief theory is often created by non-Hispanic White researchers and normed in non-Hispanic White populations. However, this can fail to capture the diversity of the grie...
Whole Community Metatranscriptomes and Lipidomes Reveal Diverse Responses Among Antarctic Phytoplankton to Changing Ice Conditions

Author(s): Bowman, Jeff S; Van Mooy, Benjamin AS; Lowenstein, Daniel P; Fredricks, Helen F; Hansel, Colleen M; Gast, Rebecca; Collins, James R; Couto, Nicole; Ducklow, Hugh W | Abstract: The transition from winter to spring represents a major shift in the basal energy source for the Antarctic marine ecosystem from lipids and other sources of stored energy to sunlight. Because sea ice imposes a strong control on the transmission of sunlight into the water column during the polar spring, we hypothesized that the timing of the sea ice retreat influences the timing of the transition from stored energy to photosynthesis. To test the influence of sea ice on water column microbial energy utilization we took advantage of unique sea ice conditions in Arthur Harbor, an embayment near Palmer Station on the western Antarctic Peninsula, during the 2015 spring–summer seasonal transition. Over a 5-week period we sampled water from below land-fast sea ice, in the marginal ice zone at nearby Palmer Station B, and conducted an ice removal experiment with incubations of water collected below the land-fast ice. Whole-community metatranscriptomes were paired with lipidomics to better understand how lipid production and utilization was influenced by light conditions. We identified several different phytoplankton taxa that responded similarly to light by the number of genes up-regulated, and in the transcriptional complexity of this response. We applied a principal components analysis to these data to reduce their dimensionality, revealing that each of these taxa exhibited a strikingly different pattern of gene up-regulation. By correlating the changes in lipid concentration to the first principal component of log fold-change for each taxa we could make predictions about which taxa were associated with different changes in the community lipidome. We found that genes coding for the catabolism of triacylglycerol storage lipids were expressed early on in phytoplankton associated with a Fragilariopsis kerguelensis reference transcriptome. Phytoplankton associated with a Corethron pennatum reference transcriptome occupied an adjacent niche, responding favorably to higher light conditions than F. kerguelensis. Other diatom and dinoflagellate taxa had distinct transcriptional profiles and correlations to lipids, suggesting diverse ecological strategies during the polar winter–spring transition.
Infectious Complications in Renal Transplant Recipients

Post–kidney transplant infection is the most common life-threatening complication of long-term immunosuppressive therapy. Optimal immunosuppression, in which a balance is maintained between prevention of rejection and avoidance of infection, is the most challenging aspect of posttransplantation care. The study of infectious complications in immunologically compromised recipients is changing rapidly, particularly in the fields of prophylactic and preemptive strategies, molecular diagnostic methods, and antimicrobial agents. In addition, emerging pathogens such as BK polyomavirus and West Nile flavivirus infections and the introduction of newer immunosuppressive agents that constantly change the risk profiles for opportunistic infections has added layers of complexity to this burgeoning field. Although remarkable progress has been made in these disciplines, comprehensive understanding of the clinical manifestations of infections remains limited, and the standardization of prophylaxis, diagnosis, and treatment of most infections is yet inadequately defined. The long-term goal for optimal care of transplant recipients, with respect to infection, is the prevention and/or early recognition and treatment of infections while avoiding drug-related toxicities.
Characterizing the Loss Landscape in Non-Negative Matrix Factorization.

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is a highly celebrated algorithm for matrix decomposition that guarantees non-negative factors. The underlying optimization problem is computationally intractable, yet in practice, gradient-descent-based methods often find good solutions. In this paper, we revisit the NMF optimization problem and analyze its loss landscape in non-worst-case settings. It has recently been observed that gradients in deep networks tend to point towards the final minimizer throughout the optimization procedure. We show that a similar property holds (with high probability) for NMF, provably in a non-worst case model with a planted solution, and empirically across an extensive suite of real-world NMF problems. Our analysis predicts that this property becomes more likely with growing number of parameters, and experiments suggest that a similar trend might also hold for deep neural networks---turning increasing dataset sizes and model sizes into a blessing from an optimization perspective.
Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy: Mechanisms and Therapeutic Avenues

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a serious and often persistent adverse consequence of certain chemotherapeutic agents. It is a major dose-limiting factor of many first-line chemotherapies, affecting 20-50% of patients at standard doses and nearly all patients at high doses. As cancer survivorship continues to increase with improvements in early diagnosis and treatment, more patients will experience CIPN despite completing cancer treatment, which interferes with recovery, leading to chronic pain and worsening quality of life. The National Cancer Institute has identified CIPN as a priority in translational research. To date, there are no FDA-approved drugs for preventing or treating CIPN, with emerging debate on mechanisms and promising new targets. This review highlights current literature and suggests novel approaches to CIPN based on proposed mechanisms of action that aim either to confer neuroprotection against chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity or reverse the downstream effects of painful neuropathy.
Disordered eating across COVID-19 in LGBTQ+ young adults

Abstract Emerging evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is negatively affecting mental health, especially for sexual and gender minority populations. Relatively little is known about the impact of the pandemic on disordered eating behaviors (DEB) for these populations. The aim of this study is to understand changes in DEB across COVID-19 within an LGBTQ+ sample, with a particular focus on differences across sexual and gender identities, and the impact of social support on these outcomes. In a sample of 830 LGBTQ+ adults with a past year history of DEB, most, but not all, participants reported that the frequency of and urge to engage in each DEB increased a little bit or a lot during COVID-19. Contrary to research showing more severe psychopathology and DEB among gender minorities (GM) compared to sexual minorities (SM), changes in DEB severity since COVID-19 were not significantly different between SM and GM participants. There were a few small and significant relationships between changes in average DEB severity and characteristics of interpersonal relationships, average quality of home relationships, and living with someone not affirming of one's identity. Results highlight that COVID-19 may have exacerbated DEB for SGM young adults, that these changes were not different across sexual versus gender minorities, and that these changes are weakly but significantly related to minority stressors.
Constituents of Polygala species

Abstract Tenuifolin (V), a prosapogenin isolated from the roots of P. tenuifolia and P. senega , has been shown to be 2β,27-dihydroxy-23-carboxyoleanolic acid 3β-O-glucoside, on the basis of physical data of tenuifolin and several of its degradation products, by direct correlation with presenegenin ( 1 ) and by the isolation of glucose from the acid hydrolysate of tenuifolin dimethyl ester.
Adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems predict their affect-specific HPA and HPG axes reactivity

We examined psychopathology-neuroendocrine associations in relation to the transition into adolescence within a developmental framework that acknowledged the interdependence of the HPA and HPG hormone systems in the regulation of responses to everyday affective contexts. Saliva samples were collected during anxiety and anger inductions from 51 young adolescents (M 13.47, SD = .60 years) to evaluate cortisol, DHEA, and testosterone responses. Internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed at pre-adolescence (M = 9.27, SD = .58 years) while youths were in elementary school and concurrently with hormones in early adolescence. Externalizing problems from elementary school predicted adolescents’ reduced DHEA reactivity during anxiety induction. Follow up analyses simultaneously examining the contributions of elementary school and adolescent problems showed a trend suggesting that youths with higher levels of internalizing problems during elementary school eventuated in a profile of heightened DHEA reactivity as adolescents undergoing anxiety induction. For both the anxiety and the anger inductions, it was normative for DHEA and testosterone to be positively coupled. Adolescents with high externalizing problems but low internalizing problems marshaled dual axes co-activation during anger induction in the form of positive cortisol-testosterone coupling. This is some of the first evidence suggesting affective context determines whether dual axes coupling is reflective of normative or problematic functioning in adolescence. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 57: 769–785, 2015.
The INO1 promoter of Saccharomyces cerevisiae includes an upstream repressor sequence (URS1) common to a diverse set of yeast genes.

The INO1 promoter of Saccharomyces cerevisiae includes a copy of an upstream repression sequence (URS1; 59AGCCGCCGA 39) observed in the promoters of several unrelated yeast genes. Expression of INO1-lacZ and CYC1-lacI9Z, activated by the INO1 UASINO, is significantly decreased by the INO1 URS1. Images
The Hubble Space Telescope Education and Outreach Program

The Office of Public Outreach (OPO) at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) was created to share the amazing discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope with the American public. We are privileged to be the focal point for an exciting NASA/ESA space science mission to which thousands of engineers, programmers, technicians, administrators and scientists have devoted their professional gifts. Since before the launch of the telescope STScI and NASA have been pro-active in developing a multitude of products and programs and initiatives that have capitalized on the intense interest in Hubble to inform, educate and inspire millions around the globe. In this article I shall briefly describe the history and organization of our program, and then go on to describe how we intend to develop the HST outreach efforts over the next five years.
Requirements for wear-resistant coatings☆

Abstract The efficacy of tribological coatings is well proven and the economic benefits in the application of coating technology are great. The necessary requirements of the coating depend on the mechanical and chemical compatibility of the substrate with wear coating, the magnitude and the orientation of the applied loading and wear resistance of the coating itself. Depending on the application, the wear resistance may be determined by the flow strength, the resistance to crack nucleation and/or growth, the hardness or the chemical stability of the coating. Considerations for selecting coatings for maximum wear resistance are discussed.
Molecular cloning and three-dimensional structure prediction of a novel alpha-tubulin in Caenorhabditis elegans.

This paper reports on the isolation of a cDNA clone (tba-6) encoded by a novel alpha-tubulin gene in the nematode C. elegans. The tba-6 gene is located on chromosome I, that encode a protein of 460 amino acids, as well as the expression of the gene during the development. Here we discuss the structure of the coding region and the regulatory sequences in the promoter region. The comparison of the amino acid sequence of TBA6 with other alpha-tubulin isotypes of C. elegans, suggests that these proteins are highly conserved in most of the N-terminal and intermediate sequence, but they have highly divergent C-terminal sequences. TBA6 has also high homology with other alpha-tubulin families (e.g. human, mouse, Drosophila melangaster). The in situ experiment results suggest that the tba-6 alpha-tubulin gene is required during the entire embryonic development, therefore it is required during the early cell division stages. Further, we determined the 3D structure of C. elegans TBA6 alpha-tubulin by altering (computationally) the crystal structure of the alpha-tubulin (TBA_pig) from porcine alpha- beta tubulin dimer. We discuss structural conservation and changes in the pattern of interactions between secondary structure elements of TBA_pig and TBA6, respectively.
Non-linear forced oscillation of a beam coupled to an actuator via Hertzian contact

Abstract Forced harmonic oscillation of a system involving a piezoelectric actuator coupled via Hertzian contact to an elastic beam is modeled. Hertzian non-linearities are replaced by an asymptotic series, and the resulting system of equations are solved by using complex Fourier series and harmonic balance techniques. The complex coefficients of the complex Fourier series are evaluated recursively, and the resulting complex solution is used to obtain approximate real solutions. Results show that natural frequencies vary monotonically with the mean level of Hertzian normal approach. Also, resonance of harmonically components may occur at forcing frequencies equal to the natural frequency of the system divided by an integer. This harmonic resonance can result in severe waveform distortion.
Federal incentives for energy development

Abstract This paper identifies and quantifies the incentives utilized by the Federal government to encourage the development of U.S. energy resources over the past half century. The incentives granted to the six major conventional sources of energy—nuclear energy, hydropower, coal, oil, natural gas, electricity—are categorized according to eight general types: creation (prohibition) of organizations, taxation, fees, disbursements, requirements, traditional government services, non-traditional government services, and market activity. It is found that through the fiscal year 1977 the Federal government has expended $211 billion for incentives to encourage energy resource development. These incentives were distributed in the following manner: commercial nuclear power, $18 billion; hydropower, $15 billion; coal, $10 billion; oil, $101 billion; natural gas, $16 billion; electricity transmission/distribution, $70 billion. The implications of these findings are discussed briefly.
Effect of ranitidine on the pharmacokinetics of triazolam and α-hydroxytriazolam in both young (19-60 years) and older (61-78 years) people

Objective This study evaluated the effect of oral ranitidine (75 mg and 150 mg) on the pharmacokinetics of triazolam (0.25 mg) and its major metabolite, α-hydroxytriazolam, in both young and older people. Metabolite data were used to distinguish the mechanism of this interaction. Method This was a randomized, open-label, 3-way crossover study. Eighteen young (19–60 years) and 12 older (61–78 years) men and women were randomly assigned to receive evening doses of triazolam 0.25 mg (1) alone, (2) on the third day of dosing ranitidine 75 mg twice daily for 4 days, and (3) on the third day of dosing ranitidine 150 mg twice daily for 4 days. Results In the young group, mean triazolam area under the concentration-time curve from time zero to infinity [AUC(0-∞)] was 10% and 28% higher after treatment with 75 mg and 150 mg ranitidine, respectively. In the older group, mean triazolam AUC(0-∞) was 31% and 28% higher after treatment with 75 mg and 150 mg ranitidine, respectively. There was no change in the α-hydroxytriazolam/triazolam AUC(0-∞) ratio in either age group, indicating that neither formation nor elimination of α-hydroxytriazolam was affected by ranitidine. There were no changes in the half-life of triazolam or α-hydroxytriazolam. Conclusion Ranitidine increases oral absorption of triazolam in both young and older people. This effect is likely caused by elevation of gastrointestinal pH, allowing for greater absorption of acid-labile triazolam. The difference in this effect between age groups at the lower 75-mg dose of ranitidine suggests that older people may be more sensitive to the antisecretory effect of ranitidine. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2001) 70, 126–131; doi: 10.1067/mcp.2001.117120
Allergic contact dermatitis from topical corticosteroid preparations

Abstract Background: Allergic reactions to corticosteroids have been frequently reported from Europe since 1986. Screening with markers of steroid allergy such as tixocortol privalate and testing with steroids in ethanol have accounted for most of the reports. Since adding tixocortol to the standard tray in 1992, we also have noted an increase in topical steroid allergy. Objective: The purpose of this article is to report our experience with steroid allergies, including vehicles, before 1992, when we made the diagnosis by testing with the patient's commercial steroid products, the active steroid (usually in petrolatum), and the standard and vehicle and preservative trays. Methods: An 11-year retrospective review of our patch test results for topical corticosteroid contact dermatitis was performed. Patients with allergy to the active steroid, a coactive ingredient, and a vehicle were included with the exception of those patients allergic to the original Mycolog preparation (E.R. Squibb, Princeton, NJ). Results: From February 1981 to November 1991, 19 patients were found to have contact dermatitis to commercial topical steroid preparations. Eight patients had allergic reactions to the active steroid itself 0(amcinonide in 3 patients, hydrocortisone in 2, hydrocortisone-17-valerate in 1, and multiple topical steroids in 2). Three patients had allergic reactions to the active steroid, hydrocortisone in 3 cases, and a vehicle or coactive ingredient (neomycin). Seven patients had allergic reactions to the vehicle ingredients alone: either propylene glycol, lanolin alcohols, parabens, or benzyl alcohol. In 1 patient, the allergen in the hydrocortisone cream was undetermined. Eighteen patients had eczema, and 1 patient had morphea. Duration of the reactions ranged from 2 weeks to 12 years. The reactivity rate for corticosteroid allergy for the 11 years of this study was approximately 0.3%, in contrast to a 2.7% rate for the past 2 years, when tixocortol privalate was added to our standard tray. Conclusion: We conclude that it is still appropriate to test suspected corticosteroid allergic patients with their own topical steroid, the standard screening tray, and the vehicle and preservative tray in addition to screening with markers such as tixocortol pivalate. Allergic patients should be tested further to identify topical steroids that they may tolerate.
Modeling the microstructural evolution of metallic polycrystalline materials under localization conditions

Abstract In general, the shear localization process involves initiation and growth. Initiation is expected to be a stochastic process in material space where anisotropy in the elastic–plastic behavior of single crystals and inter-crystalline interactions serve to form natural perturbations to the material's local stability. A hat-shaped sample geometry was used to study shear localization growth. It is an axi-symmetric sample with an upper “hat” portion and a lower “brim” portion with the shear zone located between the hat and brim. The shear zone length was 870–890 μm with deformation imposed through a Split-Hopkinson Pressure Bar system at maximum top-to-bottom velocity in the range of 8–25 m/s. The deformation behavior of tantalum tophat samples is modeled through direct polycrystal simulations. An embedded Voronoi-tessellated two-dimensional microstructure is used to represent the material within the shear zone of the sample. A thermo-mechanically coupled elasto-viscoplastic single crystal model is presented and used to represent the response of the grains within the aggregate shear zone. In the shoulder regions away from the shear zone where strain levels remain on the order of 0.05, the material is represented by an isotropic J 2 flow theory based upon the elasto-viscoplastic Mechanical Threshold Stress (MTS) model for flow strength. The top surface stress versus displacement results were compared to those of the experiments and over-all the simulated stress magnitude is over-predicted. It is believed that the reason for this is that the simulations are two-dimensional. A region within the numerical shear zone was isolated for statistical examination. The vonMises stress state within this isolated shear zone region suggests an approximate normal distribution with a factor of two difference between the minimum and maximum points in the distribution. The equivalent plastic strain distribution within this same region has values ranging between 0.4 and 1.5 and is not symmetric. Other material state distributions are also given. The crystallographic texture within this isolated shear zone is also compared to the experimental texture and found to match reasonably well considering the simulations are two-dimensional.
Managed care and academic psychiatry.

Managed care, with its emphasis on cost effectiveness, case review, and treatment guidelines, has become a major influence on the delivery of mental health care and on the field of psychiatry. Given the importance of academic psychiatry in producing future psychiatrists and shaping their attitudes toward managed care, two separate surveys of chairs of 125 medical school departments of psychiatry were conducted. The surveys, completed in 1989–90 and 1991–92, indicate a trend toward ascepting the usefulness and importance of managed care
Soil Carbon Management and Climate Change

Among global issues of the twenty-first century are: population growth, increase in energy demand, enrichment of atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the attendant climate change, increase in food production needed to meet the demands of growing and increasingly affluent population, and aggravated risks of soil and environmental degradation. Thus, enhancing the magnitude and mean residence time (MRT) of soil carbon (C) pool is integral to any strategy of addressing these and other related global issues. The promise of soil C sequestration is based on the magnitude of net biome productivity (NBP) of ~3 Pg C/year, and the hypothesis that some of the NBP can be retained in the soil to offset emissions and also enhance the resilience of soil and agroecosystems to climate change. Complementary to soil organic C (SOC) is soil inorganic C (SIC) pool, together estimated at ~4,000 Pg to 3-m depth, and play a major role in the global C cycle (GCC). The soil C sink capacity has been enhanced by depletion of the antecedent SOC pool in degraded soils. Despite the large potential of 0.5–1 Mg C/ha/year, there are numerous uncertainties: (1) increased emissions of GHGs with increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 because of accelerated decomposition and erosional processes, (2) change in the rate of C uptake in soils of the tropics by climate change, (3) impact of chemical weathering of silicate rocks in altering terrestrial sinks, (4) unknown fate of C transported by erosional processes, (5) a possible positive feedback from the melting of permafrost, (6) decrease in capacity of terrestrial sinks because of soil degradation, and (7) the effects of wild/managed fires on soot, charcoal and NBP.
Semantics and Pragmatics of Locative Expressions

The paper examines locative expressions and shows that an adequate account of their meaning must be based on two essential understandings: First, the simple spatial relation, often given as the meaning of the spatial prepositions, is only an “ideal” from which there are deviations in context; second, a level of “geometric conceptualization” mediates between “the world as it is” and language. Pragmatic “near principles” are formulated to explain some deviations from the ideal and several other apparent irregularities of prepositional use. A set of “use types” of the ideal meaning is proposed to account for conventional aspects of locative meaning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this description of locative expressions for artificial intelligence and linguistics.