cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A User-Centric Typology of Information System Requirements

Keeping in view the increasing importance of users in shaping and acceptance of Information Systems IS products, there is a need for deeper understanding of IS user requirements. However, currently there is a gap in IS literature. Virtually no theory-based Typological Scheme TS exists for IS user requirements. And a typology is widely acknowledged as the first step towards understanding a phenomenon. Using concepts from inter-disciplinary review of research in the areas of requirements engineering, product quality, and customer satisfaction this study explores the possibility of developing a TS suitable to the IS context. The proposed TS scheme, iteratively constructed, through literature review and experimentation demonstrates promise. The requirement types identified in the suggested TS are found to have both theoretical and empirical support and have useful implications for future research as well as practice.
A Phenomenologic Study of Family Caregivers of Patients With Head and Neck Cancers.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To describe and understand the lived experience of family caregivers of patients with head and neck cancers (HNCs). RESEARCH APPROACH Phenomenology using van Manen's human science approach . SETTING Two hospital systems providing regional cancer care in upstate New York. . PARTICIPANTS Nine family caregivers of patients with HNCs who had completed treatment . METHODOLOGIC APPROACH Qualitative analysis of semi-structured, conversational interviews about the lived experience of family caregivers. FINDINGS Five major themes emerged related to the lived experiences of this sample of caregivers. CONCLUSIONS Family caregivers of patients with HNCs play a fundamental role in the post-treatment phase of care, including meeting specific physical and psychosocial needs. Further investigation should explore the relationship between information needs and the experience of vigilance and fear. INTERPRETATION Nurses must include caregivers in physical and psychosocial plans of care. Balancing and meeting information needs of caregivers to avoid undue emotional stress and recognizing their support needs are valuable components of care.
Alliance Capital Management

SUBJECT AREAS: Global asset management. Pension funds and mutual funds. Strategy in the asset management industry. CASE SETTING: United States, 1997. REQUESTS FOR COPIES: To receive a copy of this case please contact Ms. Ann Rusolo, Stern School of Business, New York University, 44 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012, Phone: (212) 998-0703, Fax: (212) 995-4220, E-Mail: MAIL TO: arusolo@stern.nyu.edu This case addresses the investment management industry, seeking to understand the industry's economics and how one of the industry's most prominent firms is run. The students are asked to answer the question, "what does it take to be successful in this business, and to keep it up?"
Application of Ultrasonic Surface Wave Techniques for Concrete Bridge Deck Condition Assessment

Abstract Ultrasonic surface wave (USW) is a well-established technique for the performance monitoring of concrete structures. In order to investigate the capability and reliability of this technique for concrete bridge deck condition assessment, a portable seismic property analyzer (PSPA) with USW capabilities was used to assess the condition of a reinforced concrete bridge deck exhibiting visible evidence of significant deterioration. After the investigation was completed, variable thicknesses of concrete were removed from upper surface of the concrete deck by milling and hydrodemolition, with greater thickness being removed where the concrete was more deteriorated. The thickness of removed concrete during the hydrodemolition process was mapped by Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). A comparison of the thickness of concrete removed and the USW data indicates that there is a qualitative correlation between the USW results at each test location and the thickness of concrete removed at those same test locations. Results suggest that the PSPA, and comparable USW techniques, could be potentially effective for estimating the thicknesses of concrete that would be removed during milling and hydrodemolition, although more work is needed to study the relationship between USW and removal thickness data in order to be used for quantity estimations.
Life Span of the Duck and Chicken Erythrocyte as Determined with C14

SummaryMeasurements of the life span of the erythrocyte with glycine-2-C14 give a value of 20 days for mean survival time for the chicken and 39 days for the duck. The uptake of the a-carbon of glycine into the cell proteins in the chicken was similar to that observed in the mammals. The shape of the decay curve was typical of that observed when a homogeneous group of red cells are labeled in the marrow, and gave little evidence of re-utilization of the labeled carbon. The utilization of glycine a-carbon by the duck cells was similar to that observed in the chicken except for the rapid uptake which gave some evidence of uptake by the cells in the peripheral circulation.
SLEEP APNEA RISK AND LETHAL VENTRICULAR ARRHYTHMIAS IN CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE PATIENTS WITH IMPLANTABLE CARDIOVERTER DEFIBRILLATORS

Although implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) insertion for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death from lethal ventricular arrhythmias (LVA) is expensive, up to 60% of heart failure patients with ICDs implanted according to current guidelines do not have LVA or device delivered therapy.
On the representability of integer polymatroids: Applications in linear code construction

It has been shown that there is a duality between the linear network coding solution and the entropic vectors induced by collection of subspaces in a vector space over a finite field (dubbed linearly constructed entropic vectors). The region of all linearly constructed vectors, coincides with the set of all representable polymatroids. For any integer polymatroid, there is an associated matroid, which uniquely identifies the polymatroid. We conjecture that the representability of the underlying matroid is a sufficient condition for integer polymatroids to be linearly representable. We prove that the conjecture holds for representation over real numbers. Furthermore, we show that any real-valued submodular function (such as Shannon entropy) can be approximated (arbitrarily close) by an integer polymatroid.
Growth of Nd∶CNGG crystals and investigation of its properties

Growth of Nd∶CNGG crystal is reported and its structure,transmission spectrum and laser oscillation properties are described.Employing a 1W laser diode as a pump source,when the pump power is 670mW,the output power of 123.1mW at 1.062μm is obtained with slope efficiency of 22.3%.Nd∶CNGG crystal is expected to be a prospective LD-pumping solid-state laser material.
Dissipation-induced squeezing in mesoscopic branching circuits

A partitioned system of electrons is mathematically equivalent to an assembly of two- level atoms described by spin operators. The spin-operator uncertainty relation can therefore be interpreted as a number-phase- uncertainty relation for the partition of a single electron. This electron-number uncertainty manifests as a current-difference noise in the output leads of the mesoscopic branching circuit. Similarly, the phase uncertainty is revealed by the properly normalized current-difference fluctuations of the output leads for an interferometric geometry.
Reforming Information Law in Copyright's Image

The First Amendment has always provided a completely different standard with regard to liability for actions that constitute speech as compared to actions that constitute copyright infringement. They're really just apples and oranges. And I think it would disserve both areas of law -- I know there's been some discussion, some people have attempted to link these two areas of law recently, and I think it does a disservice to both areas of law, even though the same technologies may be involved. And I think it really does a disservice both to the law of the First Amendment and the law of copyright to attempt really to try to analogize from one to the other.
Applications of Ultrasonic Spectroscopy to Materials Evaluation

The determination of flaw size and shape is becoming increasingly important in nondestructive evaluation of materials. No longer is it sufficient merely to locate flaws, but a more definitive description of flaws is required for input into sophisticated design analysis which will give a better assessment of the probability of failure and hence reduce the number of costly components.
Hereditary Supraventricular Tachycardias

The generally sporadic occurrence of Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome or supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) due to an accessory atrioventricular pathway does not suggest an obvious genetic basis, but several lines of evidence suggest that genetic mutations play a role in the development of this abnormality. Multiple families with supraventricular re-entrant tachycardias, either primary SVT or in association with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, have been reported. The common occurrence of re-entrant SVT in certain forms of congenital heart disease implicates genetic mutations that disrupt normal cardiac structural and electrical system development. Finally, various rare mutations in the mitochondrial genome have been associated with WPW syndrome. This chapter reviews the evidence for the genetic and developmental basis for SVT via atrioventricular re-entry.
The Current Status of Cancer Chemotherapy

It is obviously preferable to prevent rather than cure any disease, and cancer is no exception; but, despite current efforts that will undoubtedly be rewarding in the long run, it seems unlikely that preventative measures will reduce the incidence of human cancer significantly in the foreseeable future, particularly since the median age of the human population continues to increase. At the same time, chemotherapy is today providing increasing cure rates in 10–15 forms of human cancer [1–3]; and recent developments, particularly in surgical adjuvant therapy in the management of breast cancer and osteogenic sarcoma, indicate that new diseases will be added to the list. An examination of the events leading to the current successes in chemotherapy shows that they have resulted from the development of a greater variety of agents, of superior agents, and from the improved use of both old and new agents, attributable to our better understanding of effects of drugs on cells, both normal and cancerous. Although continued improvements int he use of available agents (such as early treatment of presently refractory tumors that today are treated only terminally in desperation when failure is thus assured) can be expected, it is clear that there are limits to this approach. For the immediate future, the use of combination chemotherapy and combined modalities — surgical adjuvant therapy, radiation and chemotherapy — seems sure to provide better responses and response rates. but again there are limits to reasonable expectations.
Evaluating Recidivism and Job Quality Outcomes for Participants in the Hoosier Initiative for Reentry Employment (HIRE) Program

ABSTRACTThe Hoosier Initiative for Reentry Employment (HIRE) program provides employment assistance to Indiana residents with felony offenses. We examine whether HIRE participants (n = 328), who obtained jobs after release from prison in 2014, had lower recidivism rates than the comparison group of all offenders released from Indiana prisons in 2014 (n = 17,901). Our results show that HIRE participants, despite having more serious criminal histories, have lower hazards of reincarceration (both new offenses and technical violations) than the comparison group. Contrary to hypotheses, HIRE offenders who had better paying and more prestigious jobs did not have significantly lower hazards of reincarceration. Finally, several factors predict quality of job placement (wage, prestige of field) including: age, veteran status, gender, race/ethnicity, and previous sex offense.
A Bay/Estuary Model to Simulate Hydrodynamics and Water Quality Transport: Part 2 - Water Quality

This paper presents the development of a numerical water quality model using a general paradigm of reaction-based approaches. In a reaction-based approach, all conceptualized biogoechemical processes are transformed into a reaction network. Through the decomposition of species governing equations via Gauss-Jordan column reduction of the reaction network, (1) redundant fast reactions and irrelevant kinetic reactions are removed from the system, which alleviates the problem of unnecessary and erroneous formulation and parameterization of these reactions, and (2) fast reactions and slow reactions are decoupled, which enables robust numerical integrations. The system of M species transport equations is transformed to M reaction-extent transport equations, which is then approximated with three subsets: NE algebraic equations, NKI kinetic-variables transport equations, and NC component transport equations. As a result, the model alleviates the needs of using simple partitions for fast reactions. With the diagonalization strategy, it makes the inclusion of arbitrary number of fast and kinetic reactions relatively easy, and, more importantly, it enables the formulation and parameterization of kinetic reactions one by one. To demonstrate the flexibility and generality, the eutrophication model in WASP5, QUAL2E, and CE-QUAL-ICM are recast in the mode of reaction networks. This illustrates that the model embeds the most widely used water quality models as specific examples. Based on these three examples, the deficiencies of current practices in water quality modeling are discussed and the actions that must be taken to improve these practices are addressed.
A Synthesis of Spatial Models for Multivariate Count Responses

This chapter provides a synthesis of spatial data mining models for analyzing multivariate count responses. Geo-referenced multivariate count responses are common in regional science (e.g., registered vehicle counts by body type and firm/job counts by industry type), but are computationally difficult to model—especially when sample size is large. This chapter synthesizes relevant research and offers lessons learned and best practices for future research.
CONSUMER ATTITUDES TOWARD FOOD PRODUCTION SYSTEMS AND ATTRIBUTES IN THE SOUTH-EASTERN STATES OF THE U.S.

Extension activities towards rural and urban consumers are a tradition of the US Cooperative Extension Service. This study seeks to understand consumer food purchasing behaviors in order to suggest policy interventions to improve healthy eating habits. Data from a random sample of 252 consumers in three southern states show that consumers prefer organic over conventional and sustainable production systems. A follow-up study of consumer preferences for five attributes of fresh and vegetables, using a random sample of 412 consumers, shows that they prefer food attributes in the following order: freshness, taste, hygiene, nutritional value and affordable price. The study concludes that consumers should be educated to evaluate foods using all the information available on food attributes. The growing demand for organic products will also call for more extension activities for organic producers.
Differential Resistance to Entomosporium Leafspot Disease and Hydrogen Cyanide Potential in Photinia

Abstract Photinia serrulata Lindl., P. glabra (Thunb. ex J.A. Murr.) Maxim., and two of their progeny, P. x fraseri Dress. ‘Birmingham’ and ‘Kentucky’ were screened for susceptibility to Entomosporium leafspot and for hydrogen cyanide potential using detached leaf assays. Photinia serrulata was least susceptible to the fungus, while P. x fraseri ‘Birmingham’ and P. glabra were most susceptible. Young leaves were much more susceptible than mature leaves in all taxa except P. glabra, which was found to be acyanogenic. Although distinct differences in hydrogen cyanide potential occurred among the clones, a direct correlation to disease susceptibility was not indicated.
CoSmart: Coordinating Smartphone with Desktop Computer for Joint Energy Savings

Due to the increasing popularity of smartphones, many people are now equipped with both a smartphone and at least one desktop (or laptop) computer. Although the two computing devices are used for similar purposes (e.g., email, web browsing), they are often both kept on for the user's convenience, despite only one device is actively used at a time. Therefore, if one of the two computing devices can be put into an energy-saving mode when the other one is in use, a significant amount of energy can be saved for both the phone and the desktop.In this paper, we propose CoSmart, a light-weight solution that coordinates the smartphone with the desktop computer for joint energy savings. CoSmart dynamically degrades the smartphone to a feature phone with only basic GSM functions when the user is detected to be with the desktop, in order to save both computation and idle energy. The desktop is then put into sleep for energy savings when the user leaves it, while the phone can be turned back to a smartphone, such that the user can continue the operation with seamless task migration. There are several research challenges in the design of CoSmart, which include 1) predicting whether the user would stay long enough with the desktop to offset the migration overheads, and 2) determining the best time point for task migration that can result in the most energy savings. To this end, we propose a novel algorithm for dynamic idle time length prediction, and model joint energy savings as an optimization problem for the most energy savings. A prototype of CoSmart is implemented in Android and evaluated using different real user traces and popular apps. Results show CoSmart can achieve, on average, 61.3% energy savings for the smartphone and 46.7% energy savings for the desktop, which outperforms other baselines by as much as 17.2% to 19.0%.
Unconventional wisdom: Estimating the economic impact of the Democratic and Republican national political conventions

We use daily hotel occupancy, price, and revenue data to analyze the economic impact of the 2008 and 2012 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. We find that political conventions generate approximately 29,000 room nights of lodging, though this figure is offset by lower hotel occupancy during the week before and, to a lesser extent, after conventions. Conventions increase hotel revenue by approximately $20 million on average, a figure which suggests that host cities claims of economic impacts of $150 million or more may be implausible.
Experimental solubility measurements of lanthanides in liquid alkalis

Abstract In metallic nuclear fuel, lanthanide fission products play a crucial role in the fuel burnup-limiting phenomena of fuel cladding-chemical interaction (FCCI). The lanthanides have been hypothesized to transport by a 'liquid-like' mechanism out of the metallic fuel to the fuel peripheral to cause FCCI. By liquid fission product cesium and liquid bond sodium, the lanthanides are transported to the peripheral of the fuel through the porosity of the fuel. This work investigates the interaction between the lanthanides and the alkali metals by experimentally measuring the solubility of lanthanides within liquid sodium, and neodymium in liquid cesium and mixtures of cesium and sodium. The temperature dependence of the solubility is experimentally determined within an inert environment. In addition, the dependence of the solubility on the alkali metal concentration in liquid mixtures of cesium and sodium was examined. In quantifying the solubility, the fundamental understanding of this transport mechanism can be better determined.
Protection of human umbilical vein endothelial cells by glycine and structurally similar amino acids against calcium and hydrogen peroxide- induced lethal cell injury

Cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells treated with either the calcium ionophore, ionomycin, or ionomycin plus cyanide-m-chlorophenylhydrazone had immediate severe depletion of adenosine triphosphate, (ATP) and increases of cytosolic free calcium (Caf) and then sustained lethal cell injury as manifested by release of lactate dehydrogenase and failure to exclude vital dyes within 15 minutes. Inclusion of glycine in the experimental medium prevented the enzyme leakage for at least 60 minutes without altering the ATP depletion or increases of Caf. The physiologic glycine concentration of 0.25 mmol/l gave 50% protection, and protection was complete at 1 mmol/l. Several other small neutral amino acids, L- and D-alanine, beta-alanine, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate, alpha-aminoisobutyrate, and L-serine, had effects similar to glycine, but other amino acids and metabolic substrates did not. The endothelial cells were relatively resistant to damage from hydrogen peroxide, but sensitivity could be increased by preloading with Fe2+. In both non-loaded and Fe(2+)-loaded cells, hydrogen-peroxide-induced lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release developing over 180 minutes was prevented by glycine in a fashion analogous to that seen with ionomycin damage. Mn2+ also partially protected against hydrogen peroxide injury but was not required for glycine's effects. These data demonstrate that striking modulatory effects of glycine and structurally similar amino acids that have previously been characterized in most detail using kidney tubule cells are strongly expressed in human umbilical vein endothelial cells and are involved in their response to Ca2+ and oxidant-mediated damage. These amino acid effects must be considered in the design of in vitro studies of endothelial cell injury and may contribute to endothelial cell pathophysiology in vivo.
The Axon as a Heuristic Model for Studying Membrane Protein-Synthesizing Machinery*

It is perhaps no overstatement to say that little is known about the synthesizing machinery concerned with excitable-membrane protein synthesis. With the exception of the mitochondrion, there is a natural inclination to regard all protein synthesis in a cell, including that engaged with membrane renewal (i.e., membrane protein turnover) as being within the exclusive domain of the cytoplasmic, ribosomal machinery. However, one must not lose sight of the fact that the ribosomal system, as we presently conceive of it, synthesizes proteins for “export” (presumably at random) to other regions of the cell interior in order to satisfy local metabolic needs. Such a system, which I will refer to as “the centralized machinery,” would seem poorly adapted to fulfill the requirements for neuronal-membrane protein turnover. This may be true for plasma membranes of other specialized cell types as well. The thesis is based upon the fact that the neuronal plasma membrane is functionally differentiated on a regional basis. That is, its functional properties differ in contiguous regions, notwithstanding physical continuity of the membrane structure.
Studies on the Enzymology of Excision Repair in Extracts of Mammalian Cells

Damaged bases in DNA can be removed by at least two distinct mechanisms referred to as nucleotide excision repair and base excision repair. Our studies on the molecular mechanisms of excision repair in mammalian cells have used UV damage to bases as a model system. We have shown that crude extracts of human cells selectively remove thymine dimers from purified UV-irradiated DNA by a nucleotide excision mechanism which presumably involves the action of dimer specific endonuclease and exonuclease activities. Extracts of XP cells from complementation groups A, C, D and the XP variant are not qualitatively defective in this process. However, extracts of XP group A cells appear to be defective in the excision of thymine dimers from their own DNA present in the extracts, presumably as chromatin.
Context-driven Salt Seeking Test (Rats)

Changes in reward seeking behavior often occur through incremental learning based on the difference between what is expected and what actually happens. Behavioral flexibility of this sort requires experience with rewards as better or worse than expected. However, there are some instances in which behavior can change through non-incremental learning, which requires no further experience with an outcome. Such an example of non-incremental learning is the salt appetite phenomenon. In this case, animals such as rats will immediately seek out a highly-concentrated salt solution that was previously undesired when they are put in a novel state of sodium deprivation. Importantly, this adaptive salt-seeking behavior occurs despite the fact that the rats never tasted salt in the depleted state, and therefore never tasted it as a highly desirable reward. The following protocol is a method to investigate the neural circuitry mediating adaptive salt seeking using a conditioned place preference (CPP) procedure. The procedure is designed to provide an opportunity to discover possible dissociations between the neural circuitry mediating salt seeking and salt consumption to replenish the bodily deficit after sodium depletion. Additionally, this procedure is amenable to incorporating a number of neurobiological techniques for studying the brain basis of this behavior.
Detection by death: A rapid way to detect viable slow-growing microorganisms achieved using microchannel Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (m-EIS)

Based on the insight that only living organisms can be killed (and that killing can proceed much faster than cell-growth), we present an approach for the detection of viable microorganisms that is ...
Characterization of the hemodynamic response function across the majority of human cerebral cortex.

A brief (<4 s) period of neural activation evokes a stereotypical sequence of vascular and metabolic events to create the hemodynamic response function (HRF) measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Linear analysis of fMRI data requires that the HRF be treated as an impulse response, so the character and temporal stability of the HRF are critical issues. Here, a simple audiovisual stimulus combined with a fast-paced task was used to evoke a strong HRF across a majority, ∼77%, of cortex during a single scanning session. High spatiotemporal resolution (2-mm voxels, 1.25-s acquisition time) was used to focus HRF measurements specifically on the gray matter for whole brain. The majority of activated cortex responds with positive HRFs, while ∼27% responds with negative (inverted) HRFs. Spatial patterns of the HRF response amplitudes were found to be similar across subjects. Timing of the initial positive lobe of the HRF was relatively stable across the cortical surface with a mean of 6.1 ± 0.6 s across subjects, yet small but significant timing variations were also evident in specific regions of cortex. The results provide guidance for linear analysis of fMRI data. More importantly, this method provides a means to quantify neurovascular function across most of the brain, with potential clinical utility for the diagnosis of brain pathologies such as traumatic brain injury.
Inpatient surgical treatment of paediatric proximal humerus fractures between 2000 and 2012

Abstract Purpose To estimate the rate of surgical treatment of paediatric proximal humerus fractures over time utilizing a large, publicly available national database. Methods The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Kids’ Inpatient Database was evaluated between the years 2000 and 2012. Proximal humerus fractures were identified using International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9 CM) diagnosis codes. ICD-9 CM procedure codes were used to identify patients who received surgical treatment. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression were used to determine variables associated with greater proportions of surgical treatment. All statistical analyses were performed utilizing SAS statistical software v.9.4. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results A total of 7520 proximal humerus fracture admissions were identified; 3247 (43.2%) were treated surgically. The percentage of patients receiving surgery increased from 39.3% in 2000 to 46.4% in 2012 (p < 0....
The Abundance of CO2 in the Earth's Atmosphere Through Geologic Time

Abstract The residence time of carbon in the system consisting of the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere is geologically short. The CO2 pressure in the atmosphere is determined by the response of the system to changes in the input rate of carbon and by the efficiency with which the system can transfer carbon to the crust. This efficiency is controlled, at least in part, by a magnesium silicate-magnesium carbonate buffer system, that has probably prevented excursions of the atmospheric CO2 pressure by more than a factor of four since Silurian times.
Learning Tutorial Rules Using Classification Based On Associations

Rules have been showed to be appropriate representations to model tutoring and can be easily applied to intelligent tutoring systems. We applied a machine learning technique, Classification based on Associations, to automatically learn tutorial rules from annotated tutoring dialogues of a human expert tutor. The rules we learn concern the tutor's attitude, the domain concepts to focus on, and the tutor moves. These rules have very good accuracy. They will be incorporated in the feedback generator of an Intelligent Tutoring System.
Reorganizing the Fourth Year: The Fourth Year After the Boards Change—How Should It Be Constructed?—Part II

On July I of this year, the class of new residents in Radiology will be the first group of trainees subject to the revision of the series of examinations leading to initial certification in your specialty. As you may know, the changes involve modification of the timing, content and context of these tests.
Modeling Application Resilience in Large-scale Parallel Execution

Understanding how the application is resilient to hardware and software errors is critical to high-performance computing. To evaluate application resilience, the application level fault injection is the most common method. However, the application level fault injection can be very expensive when running the application in parallel in large scales due to the high requirement for hardware resource during fault injection. In this paper, we introduce a new methodology to evaluate the resilience of the application running in large scales. Instead of injecting errors into the application in large-scale execution, we inject errors into the application in small-scale execution and serial execution to model and predict the fault injection result for the application running in large scales. Our models are based on a series of empirical observations. Those observations characterize error occurrences and propagation across MPI processes in small-scale execution (including serial execution) and large-scale one. Our models achieve high prediction accuracy. Evaluating with four NAS parallel benchmarks and two proxy scientific applications, we demonstrate that using the fault injection result to predict for 64 MPI processes, the average prediction error is 8%. While using the fault injection result to make the same prediction for eight MPI processes, the average prediction error decreases to 7%.
A qualitative study of persons who inject drugs but who have never helped others with first injections: how their views on helping contrast with the views of persons who have helped with first injections, and implications for interventions.

Transitioning from non-injection to injection drug use dramatically escalates health risks. Evidence suggests that people who inject drugs (PWID) help in a majority of others’ first injections, yet these helpers represent only a minority of experienced PWID. Recent research has provided insight into this helping process, as reported by helpers. PWID who have never helped, although the majority of PWID, have not previously been the focus of study. To address this gap, we give primary voice to non-helpers’ perspectives on the helping process, while also comparing their views with persons in our sample who have helped with first injections. Finally, we consider how non-helpers’ perspectives can inform harm reduction interventions to reduce, or make safer, initiation into injecting drug use. We conducted audio-recorded, qualitative interviews with 23 current opioid injectors on Staten Island, NY, where the opioid epidemic is pronounced. Seventeen had never helped with first injections and 6 had. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and three coders used a consensus-developed codebook to code all interviews. Framework analysis was used to identify overarching themes. We identified three key themes in non-helpers’ discourse around not helping: altruistic motivations to prevent immediate and delayed harms to individuals injecting for the first time; inhibition due to negative assessments of their own injecting skills; and absolutist ethical convictions against helping. Non-helpers differed from helpers on each theme. Because most PWID have never helped with first injections, their perspectives on helping warrant consideration and can inform harm reduction interventions to reduce, or make safer, transitions to injection drug use. Their perspectives can be used to broaden the factors PWID consider around questions of promoting injection and helping with others’ first injections, including considerations of the moral issues involved in choosing to help or not to help.
The I Ching (Book of Changes): A Critical Translation of the Ancient Text

In the opening to his translation of the Shujing 書經, the Chinese Book of Documents canon, the great linguist and philologist Bernard Karlgren remarked that owing to its “lapidary style” and “exceed...
Age-related changes in processing speed modulate context use during idiomatic ambiguity resolution

ABSTRACTThe goal of the current study was to investigate whether age-related changes in processing speed, as indexed by verbal fluency, modulate context use in the resolution of ambiguous idioms (e...
Tailoring MgZnO/CdSeTe Interfaces for Photovoltaics

Mg x Zn1- x O (MZO) shows great promise to replace CdS as a buffer layer in CdTe-based solar cells. It is more transparent, and the MZO bandgap and electron density can be tuned, thus providing flexibility in controlling the conduction band offsets and recombination rates between transparent conductive oxide/MZO and MZO/CdSeTe interfaces. Integrating this material into solar cell devices has been frustrated by the common observation of abnormal current–voltage curves. Simulations indicate that this anomalous behavior can be attributed to front interface barrier effects. Experiments demonstrate that this common MZO interface problem can be resolved experimentally by surface preparation, preheat steps, and removing oxygen during absorber deposition and CdCl2 treatment. Oxygen during the cell fabrication process is likely to alter MZO properties and MZO/CdSeTe band alignment. After addressing these interface issues and modest optimization, devices with high short-circuit density of 29 mA/cm2 and efficiency above 16% are demonstrated.
The Volume of the Unit n-Ball

Two simple proofs are given for the fact that the volume of the unit ball in n-dimensional Euclidean space approaches 0 as n approaches ∞. (Some authors use the term “unit sphere” for what is here ...
Sheath Around a Spherical Probe in a Photoelectron Environment

A model and an experiment are applied to finding the current–voltage characteristics of a spherical probe in vacuum when the sphere emits photoelectrons and there are ambient photoelectrons. An orbit-motion-limited kinetic model is used for each of the two electron populations. Poisson’s equation is solved to find the potential profile with and without a potential barrier (virtual cathode) from the electron space charge. The model current–voltage characteristics are compared with data from an experiment. The measured derivative of the probe characteristic does not show the expected effect of the virtual cathode suggesting that the potential minimum is absent in the experiment, perhaps as a consequence of the presence of ions.
Interspecific Chemical Competition Between Tribolium castaneum and Tribolium confusum (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) Reduces Fecundity and Hastens Development Time

The flour beetles Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) and Tribolium confusum (du Val) are model organisms for studying the effects of intra- and interspecific competition. Both species are known to compete directly through egg cannibalism and indirectly through the density-dependent release of allelopathic chemicals.To better characterize these indirect interactions, recent work has focused on quantifying the per-capita effects of intraspecific chemical competition. However, the effects of interspecific chemical competition in this system have not previously been estimated. We used experimental microcosms to examine how interspecific chemical secretions affected the reproductive activity and development time of laboratory populations of T. castaneum and T. confusum. We created replicated habitats containing flour medium that had been occupied and chemically ‘conditioned’ by one of the two beetle species across a range of densities, then examined how beetles of the other species responded in terms of the number of eggs laid by females and, separately, the development time of offspring. We found that T. castaneum fecundity was reduced when beetles experienced flour conditioned by T. confusum. In contrast, fecundity of T. confusum was largely unaffected by flour conditioned by T. castaneum. Additionally, we found that interspecific conditioning decreased development times for beetles of both species, particularly the development of larvae to pupae. Our results indicate that interspecific chemical competition impacts the life history of Tribolium species and suggests that models incorporating chemical competition may more accurately describe the biology of flour beetle communities.
The effect of woodchip bioreactors on microbial concentration in subsurface drainage water and the associated risk of antibiotic resistance dissemination

Abstract Woodchip bioreactors (WBs) are a promising technology capable of decreasing nitrate concentration in subsurface (tile) drainage system (SDS) effluent. Although they are effective in removing nitrate, little is known regarding the potential impact on microbes and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in subsurface drainage waters. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to measure how bioreactors influence microbial concentrations and AMR concentrations in tile drainage water with different flow conditions and microbial communities. A column study was conducted to simulate an existing, field denitrifying woodchip bioreactor. Four synthetic waters were spiked with different combinations of microbes isolated from the influent of a field-scale bioreactor and pumped through the columns during the experiment. Steady and wet-dry flow conditions were examined. The results of this work demonstrated the potential for denitrifying bioreactors to reduce E. coli concentrations within SDSs under different flow conditions, which expands the potential benefits of WBs. However, the results also illustrated that WBs have the potential to increase phenotypic antibiotic-resistant microbes in the subsurface drainage waters. Applying different microbial communities had significant effects on culturable microbial concentrations, as columns receiving more microbes with a greater diversity had a greater increase in culturable microbial concentrations. A statistically significant and consistent increase in phenotypic AMR concentrations was also found within woodchip bioreactors after assessing the sensitivity of recovered isolates to five different antibiotics. Additional laboratory and future in-field studies are warranted to improve the prediction of pathogen removal and AMR changes in tile drainage water, as well as to support the development of an effective design for microbial contaminant removal from waters passing through denitrifying bioreactors.
Defining Cybersecurity Due Diligence Under International Law: Lessons from the Private Sector

Although there has been a relative abundance of work done on exploring the contours of the law of cyber war, far less attention has been paid to defining a law of cyber peace applicable below the armed attack threshold. Among the most important unanswered questions is what exactly nations’ due diligence obligations are to their respective private sectors and to one another. The International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) has not explicitly considered the legality of cyber weapons to this point, though it has ruled in the Corfu Channel case that one country’s territory should not be “used for acts that unlawfully harm other States.” But what steps exactly do nations and companies under their jurisdiction have to take under international law to secure their networks, and what of the rights and responsibilities of transit states? This chapter reviews the arguments surrounding the creation of a cybersecurity due diligence norm and argues for a proactive regime that takes into account the common but differentiated responsibilities of public- and private-sector actors in cyberspace. The analogy is drawn to cybersecurity due diligence in the private sector and the experience of the 2014 National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) Framework to help guide and broaden the discussion.
Below-ground competition favors character convergence but not character displacement in root traits.

Character displacement can play a major role in species ecology and evolution; however, research testing whether character displacement can influence the evolution of root traits in plant systems remains scarce in the literature. Here we investigated the potential that character displacement may influence the evolution of root traits using two closely related morning glory species, Ipomoea purpurea and Ipomoea hederacea. We performed a field experiment where we grew the common morning glory, I. purpurea, in the presence and absence of competition from I. hederacea and examined the potential that the process of character displacement could influence the evolution of root traits. We found maternal line variation in root phenotypes and evidence that below-ground competition acts as an agent of selection on these traits. Our test of character displacement, however, showed evidence of character convergence on our measure of root architecture rather than displacement. These results suggest that plants may be constrained by their local environments to express a phenotype that enhances fitness. Therefore, the conditions of the competitive environment experienced by a plant may influence the potential for character convergence or displacement to influence the evolution of root traits.
African Cinema in the Shadow of Hollywood: Indigenous Entrepreneurs and the Americanization of the African Movie Business, 1945-1960

This paper explores the rise and fall of African cinema businesses in the late imperial period. The 1930s witnessed the rise of fledgling theatre chains is West Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa. In the post war era, as these industries experienced rapid growth, they faced the shared threat of American influence. A close analysis of the fate of these local business networks illuminates the uneven effects of American capital and managerial influence in post-war colonial Africa. It also demonstrates the agency of local entrepreneurs in navigating the opportunities and hazards that accompanied Hollywood's global reach.
Research Computing on Campus - Application of a Production Function to the Value of Academic High-Performance Computing

High-performance computing is used by research institutions worldwide for managing research data, modeling, simulation, and big data analysis. This capability is critical for higher education institutions to attract top researchers and faculty, maximizing competitiveness for future funding, and training students in current data-intensive research methods. As a corollary, procurement and operation of advanced cyberinfrastructure incurs substantial operating and capital expenses to an organization. In this paper we present an analysis of value metrics gathered at Purdue University to measure the return on investment (ROI) of institutional investment in cyberinfrastructure resources; and an application of an economic production function to measure the cyberinfrastructure’s impact on the institution’s academic, financial, and reputational output.
A Unifying Doctrine of Subsurface Property Rights

This Article systematizes the law of subsurface property into a formal doctrine—the “fair opportunity doctrine”—to provide a more effective legal technology for furthering important social interests in the subsurface of the earth. In doing so, the Article also addresses a broader theoretical question: how might we approach property doctrine to achieve societal interests more effectively? First, the Article illustrates that property rights in natural resources located deep underground are in disarray. It argues that lack of coherence and intelligibility in this area hampers society’s ability to use deep subsurface resources for a variety of beneficial uses, including efficient development of oil and gas reserves and storage for renewable energy and anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Next, the Article argues the law’s central failure is the lack of formal, systematized legal doctrine to define property rights, with overreliance on functionalist standards and extra-legal considerations, such as economics, industry interests, and politics. The Article then proposes a formal method of systematizing the case law and employs it to recast the law into the fair opportunity doctrine. Recasting the law into a formal doctrine reveals the immanent rationality, coherence, and intelligibility of subsurface property rights. It also furnishes a number of instrumental values, including predictability and transparency, that are supportive of the rule of law. The Article asserts that applying this formal doctrine would, in turn, achieve political, social, and economic benefits for society, by furnishing the predictability necessary for private actors to make greater use of the earth’s subsurface. Finally, in synthesizing the fair opportunity doctrine, the Article develops and demonstrates the application of a method of formalizing property above and beyond the subsurface. This method furnishes a more usable and less ideological approach to property law than leading contemporary theories.
Reserve Price Signaling with Public Information: Evidence from Online Auto Auctions

This paper studies the problem of information provision in auctions. The linkage principle indicates that credibly revealing private information would benefit the seller, which implies that a seller should prefer a public reserve price to a secret one if the reserve price could reveal her private information. However, information revelation may backfire if the seller's information is not verifiable, and the reserve price works as a signaling device. In this paper, we consider an auction model in which a seller's choice of reserve price signals her private information about the object's quality. We show that such a signaling incentive could decrease the seller's profit and probability of sale in equilibrium, with a larger impact when the seller's private information is more precise relative to the public information announced by a third party. We estimate the reserve price signaling model using a novel dataset from a large online auto auction platform. We find that the signaling incentive could cost the seller 4% of her profit, and decrease the probability of sale by 15 percentage points. Counterfactual simulations suggest that a secret reserve price can improve both the seller's profit and probability of sale, especially when the signaling incentive is strong. Our findings support the prevalent use of secret reserve prices in practice, contrary to the predictions of linkage principle.