cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Age-related differences in the disposition of nicotine and metabolites in rat brain and plasma.

Introduction: Studies have evaluated the behavioral and neurochemical impact of nicotine administration in rodents. However, the distribution of nicotine and metabolites in rat brain and plasma as a function of age has not been investigated. This is a significant issue because human adolescents have a greater risk for developing nicotine addiction than adults, and reasons underlying this observation have not been fully determined. Thus, in this present study, we evaluated the impact of the transition from adolescence (postnatal day [PND 40]) to adulthood (PND 90) on nicotine distribution in rats.
Stability Analysis of Nonlinear Differential Autonomous Systems with Applications to Flutter

This paper deals with the general theory of stability analysis of nonlinear differential autonomous systems of the type x=A(\)x+f(x, X), with the linear system stable (unstable) for \ *0>- T116 analysis is performed by a singular perturbation method, the multiple time scaling. The solution is obtained in the form of an asymptotic expansion in the neighborhood of the stability boundary, X= \0 . It is shown that there always exists a limit cycle, either for X \0 (stable limit cycle). The analytical expression for the limit cycle amplitude also is given. Applications to nonlinear flutter of panels and wings are included. Numerical results are in excellent agreement with existing ones.
Monetary Reform and the Redemption of National Bank Notes, 1863–1913

It is well known that contemporary critics of the National Banking System complained about its failure to meet peak demands for currency. Less often discussed are complaints about the system's inability to remove excess notes from circulation during periods of slack demand for currency—a problem that critics attributed to the lack of an effective redemption mechanism. Beginning in 1864, important attempts were made to reform redemption arrangements, both privately and through legislation, and redemption reform was a key component of the “asset currency” movement to deregulate note issue. This article examines the motives and outcomes of redemption reform efforts up to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, which substituted a discretionary control over the currency stock for the automatic elasticity that the asset currency movement had originally sought.
A coupled hierarchical modeling approach to simulating the geomorphic response of river systems to anthropogenic climate change

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to change the discharge and sediment transport regime of river systems. Because rivers adjust their channels to accommodate their typical inputs of water and sediment, changes in these variables can potentially alter river morphology. In this study, a hierarchical modeling approach was developed and applied to examine potential changes in reach-averaged bedload transport and spatial patterns of erosion and deposition for three snowmelt-dominated gravel-bed rivers in the interior Pacific Northwest. The modeling hierarchy was based on discharge and suspended-sediment load from a basin-scale hydrologic model driven by a range of downscaled climate-change scenarios. In the field, channel morphology and sediment grain-size data for all three rivers were collected. Changes in reach-averaged bedload transport were estimated using the Bedload Assessment of Gravel-bedded Streams (BAGS) software, and the Cellular Automaton Evolutionary Slope and River (CAESAR) model was used to simulate the spatial pattern of erosion and deposition within each reach to infer potential changes in channel geometry and planform. The duration of critical discharge was found to control bedload transport. Changes in channel geometry were simulated for the two higher-energy river reaches, but no significant morphological changes were found for a lower-energy reach with steep, cohesive banks. Changes in sediment transport and river morphology resulting from climate change could affect the management of river systems for human and ecological uses. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Investigating the effects of atmospheric seeing on the detection of near earth orbiting asteroids

Computer simulations are used to compare the results of correlating a simulated image of an asteroid with a point spread function while varying the atmospheric parameter. The images contain a point source object that is smeared due to the atmosphere. The point spread function is calculated using r0, since r0 can be measured at the time of time of data collection. These results are evaluated against an uncorrelated threshold detection algorithm using the same data input. The resulting receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves show the effects of the different atmospheres on detection of different sized Near Earth Objects (NEOs) for both the correlation and threshold algorithm. These results are discussed and compared. Recommendations are made for applying these algorithms in the search for NEOs.
Fast Computation of Multiscale Morphological Operations for Local Contrast Enhancement

Poor local contrast is a nettlesome problem in biomedical image analysis. The multiscale method based on mathematical morphology has been successfully used in local contrast enhancement. However, the computational time is high. In this paper, the existing method is much improved by using few feature levels in an efficient way. The new algorithm is tested by experiments. Compared with the previous method, the results show that the proposed method is more effective, faster and less sensitive to noise. It is a fast and simple method for eliminating the non-uniformity of the intensities in images
Human-like action segmentation for option learning

Robots learning interactively with a human partner has several open questions, one of which is increasing the efficiency of learning. One approach to this problem in the Reinforcement Learning domain is to use options, temporally extended actions, instead of primitive actions. In this paper, we aim to develop a robot system that can discriminate meaningful options from observations of human use of low-level primitive actions. Our approach is inspired by psychological findings about human action parsing, which posits that we attend to low-level statistical regularities to determine action boundary choices. We implement a human-like action segmentation system for automatic option discovery and evaluate our approach and show that option-based learning converges to the optimal solutions faster compared with primitive-action-based learning.
Dissociation of Bimolecular αIIbβ3-Fibrinogen Complex under a Constant Tensile Force

The regulated ability of integrin αIIbβ3 to bind fibrinogen plays a crucial role in platelet aggregation, adhesion, and hemostasis. Employing an optical-trap-based electronic force clamp, we studied the thermodynamics and kinetics of αIIbβ3-fibrinogen bond formation and dissociation under constant unbinding forces, mimicking the forces of physiologic blood shear on a thrombus. The distribution of bond lifetimes was bimodal, indicating that the αIIbβ3-fibrinogen complex exists in two bound states with different mechanical stability. The αIIbβ3 antagonist, abciximab, inhibited binding without affecting the unbinding kinetics, whereas Mn2+ biased the αIIbβ3-fibrinogen complex to the strong bound state with reduced off-rate. The average bond lifetimes decreased exponentially with increasing pulling force from ∼5 pN to 50 pN, suggesting that in this force range the αIIbβ3-fibrinogen interactions are classical slip bonds. We found no evidence for catch bonds, which is consistent with the known lack of shear-enhanced platelet adhesion on fibrinogen-coated surfaces. Taken together, these data provide important quantitative and qualitative characteristics of αIIbβ3-fibrinogen binding and unbinding that underlie the dynamics of platelet adhesion and aggregation in blood flow.
Beyond the ethics of admission Stateless people, refugee camps and moral obligations

This article examines our moral obligations to refugees and stateless people. I argue that in order to understand our moral obligations to stateless people, both de jure refugees and de facto stateless people, we ought to reconceptualize the harm of statelessness as entailing both a legal/political harm (the loss of citizenship) and an ontological harm, a deprivation of certain fundamental human qualities. To do this, I draw on the work of Hannah Arendt and show that the ontological deprivation has three distinct though interconnected elements: a reduction to the merely human or bare life, a separation from the common realm of humanity and abandonment, and the diminishment of agency or ability to act in the Arendtian sense. If we pull apart the legal/political harm of statelessness from the ontological harm, we are better able to see that we can address some of the features of the ontological deprivation even though we may not be able to rectify the political harm. I conclude this article by discussing so...
Scoring Workers in Crowdsourcing: How Many Control Questions are Enough?

We study the problem of estimating continuous quantities, such as prices, probabilities, and point spreads, using a crowdsourcing approach. A challenging aspect of combining the crowd's answers is that workers' reliabilities and biases are usually unknown and highly diverse. Control items with known answers can be used to evaluate workers' performance, and hence improve the combined results on the target items with unknown answers. This raises the problem of how many control items to use when the total number of items each workers can answer is limited: more control items evaluates the workers better, but leaves fewer resources for the target items that are of direct interest, and vice versa. We give theoretical results for this problem under different scenarios, and provide a simple rule of thumb for crowdsourcing practitioners. As a byproduct, we also provide theoretical analysis of the accuracy of different consensus methods.
Traceability in atomic frequency standards

HP Santa Clara, the West Coast reference station for the US Naval Observatory, is described. Daily comparison of time between HP and UTC (USNO) are made using common-view GPS (Global Positioning System) techniques. The data obtained permit continuous tracking of a bank of cesium standards. The bank of standards is used internally as a house reference standard. The production area is located several hundred meters from the house standard. In the production area, an active "real-time" ensemble composed of three of the new HP5071A primary frequency standards is used as a local reference. Continuous measurement of the house standard and up to 31 units under test is made relative to the local reference. This permits easy determination of the relative difference between UTC and the standards under test. Each of the elements in the measurement chain between the GPS reference receiver and the frequency standard units under test is discussed. >
Escalation: Competing Perspectives and Empirical Evidence

Since the early days of the Cold War, “escalation” has been used as shorthand to refer to rising hostility in interstate disputes. The escalator metaphor reminds us that the phenomenon is a dynamic process as opposed to a static condition, but in some respects the analogy can be misleading. Unlike escalators, militarized disputes do not always start at the same level. Nearly half of them (49 percent) begin with the use of force by one side (Jones, Bremer, and Singer 1996:195). Moreover, unlike the smooth upward process of an escalator, interstate disputes are likely to exhibit jagged patterns as they move through several phases of escalation, de-escalation, and renewed escalation before terminating (Leng 1993). What is less clear, however, is the extent to which the escalation process is self-reinforcing, as the escalator metaphor suggests, as opposed to remaining under the control of the participants. The survey of empirical findings that follows considers that question as part of a broader examination of what we now know about dispute escalation and its consequences. To provide theoretical focus for the survey, I begin by contrasting the works of those conflict strategists within the realist tradition, who view escalation as manageable and informative, with those political scientists and social psychologists who focus on what they see as escalation's self-reinforcing properties. I then appraise the relative validity of the two perspectives through a survey of empirical findings drawn from three data sets: the Correlates of War Militarized Dispute data, Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld's International Conflict Behavior data, and Russell Leng's Behavioral Correlates of War data. The results are mixed. The findings are consistent with the realist view of the informative properties of escalation; more often than not, states are capable of controlling the escalatory process. But there also is a positive association between escalation …
Minimum Energy Configurations for Liquid Crystals: Computational Results

Two numerical algorithms which have been successfully employed to compute minimum energy configurations for liquid crystals are given. The results of computational experiments using these algorithms show that several critical points of the energy functional are not local minima.
Metal-support effects on the intramolecular selectivity of crotonaldehyde hydrogenation over platinum

The vapor-phase hydrogenation of crotonaldehyde (CROALD) was studied at low temperature and low conversions over Pt powder and Pt dispersed on SiO2, η)-Al2O3, and TiO2 after either a high or a low-temperature reduction, HTR and LTR, respectively. The hydrogenation of butyraldehyde (BUTALD) and crotyl alcohol (CROALC) to butanol (BUTNOL) and the isomerization of CROALC to BUTALD were also investigated to obtain additional information about this network of reactions. The typical Pt catalysts produced 100% BUTALD, as expected from previous studies of CROALD and the awareness of the high hydrogenation activity of Pt for CC double bonds. However, the TiO2-supported Pt produced both CROALC and BUTNOL, and the best catalyst, sol(HTR) PtTiO2, gave a selectivity of 37% CROALC with no BUTNOL formation. In addition to this marked enhancement in selectivity, the turnover frequencies on the sol(HTR) PtTiO2 samples, based on sites counted by hydrogen chemisorption near reaction temperatures, were more than an order of magnitude higher than the catalysts displaying normal adsorption behavior. Activation energies were somewhat higher on the solPtTiO2 catalysts, however. This behavior is very similar to that observed previously for CO and acetone hydrogenation over these same catalysts, and it is consistent with the proposal that sites created at the Pt-titania interface are responsible for the activation of carbonyl bonds. Previous studies of liquid-phase hydrogenation of CROALD and other molecules with conjugated CC and CO double bonds support this model and indicate that a 1,4 diadsorbed species, rather than 1,2 and 3,4 diadsorbed species (counting the oxygen atom as 1), is formed in polar solvents. By analogy, defect sites on the titania at the metal-support interface may interact with the O atom, polarize the CO bond, and favor this intermediate which can react with hydrogen to give CROALC.
Deadlock resolution via exceptions for dependable Java applications

Deadlock occurrences represent not only abnormal states but also fatal errors, thus it is natural to consider deadlock occurrences as runtime exceptions. Exception handlers can be exploited to resolve potential deadlock occurrences during the execution of code that is not deadlock free and that can be unchangeable, invisible, or dynamically loaded from networks. This paper describes an approach of deadlock resolution via exceptions with an emphasis on the design, application and implementation of deadlock exceptions and their handlers, and shows that the approach is practical and effective in incorporating code that is not deadlock free into dependable Java applications.
Phosphoinositides: Tiny Lipids With Giant Impact on Cell Regulation

Phosphoinositides (PIs) make up only a small fraction of cellular phospholipids, yet they control almost all aspects of a cell's life and death. These lipids gained tremendous research interest as plasma membrane signaling molecules when discovered in the 1970s and 1980s. Research in the last 15 years has added a wide range of biological processes regulated by PIs, turning these lipids into one of the most universal signaling entities in eukaryotic cells. PIs control organelle biology by regulating vesicular trafficking, but they also modulate lipid distribution and metabolism via their close relationship with lipid transfer proteins. PIs regulate ion channels, pumps, and transporters and control both endocytic and exocytic processes. The nuclear phosphoinositides have grown from being an epiphenomenon to a research area of its own. As expected from such pleiotropic regulators, derangements of phosphoinositide metabolism are responsible for a number of human diseases ranging from rare genetic disorders to the most common ones such as cancer, obesity, and diabetes. Moreover, it is increasingly evident that a number of infectious agents hijack the PI regulatory systems of host cells for their intracellular movements, replication, and assembly. As a result, PI converting enzymes began to be noticed by pharmaceutical companies as potential therapeutic targets. This review is an attempt to give an overview of this enormous research field focusing on major developments in diverse areas of basic science linked to cellular physiology and disease.
Assessment of conservative load transfer for fluid–solid interface with non‐matching meshes

We present a detailed comparative study of three conservative schemes used to transfer interface loads in fluid–solid interaction simulations involving non-matching meshes. The three load transfer schemes investigated are the node-projection scheme, the quadrature-projection scheme and the common-refinement based scheme. The accuracy associated with these schemes is assessed with the aid of 2-D fluid–solid interaction problems of increasing complexity. This includes a static load transfer and three transient problems, namely, elastic piston, superseismic shock and flexible inhibitor involving large deformations. We show how the load transfer schemes may affect the accuracy of the solutions along the fluid–solid interface and in the fluid and solid domains. We introduce a grid mismatching function which correlates well with the errors of the traditional load transfer schemes. We also compare the computational costs of these load transfer schemes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Durkheim: via Fournier, via Lukes

Lukes’s great biography came out when Durkheim’s reputation was at its nadir. Fournier’s even bigger biography appears as neo-Durkheimian influence animates many branches of today’s sociology. We now have an almost day-to-day account of Durkheim building a network of scholars and researchers, simultaneously being shaped by and reshaping its milieu. The result was a sophisticated intellectual movement that could jocularly refer to Durkheim as its sacred object, a symbol of itself. In effect, we have the collective production of the biography of a collective movement making new discoveries, which is what the intellectual world at its best is about.
Planning with macro-actions in decentralized POMDPs

Decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDPs) are general models for decentralized decision making under uncertainty. However, they typically model a problem at a low level of granularity, where each agent's actions are primitive operations lasting exactly one time step. We address the case where each agent has macro-actions: temporally extended actions which may require different amounts of time to execute. We model macro-actions as 'options' in a factored Dec-POMDP model, focusing on options which depend only on information available to an individual agent while executing. This enables us to model systems where coordination decisions only occur at the level of deciding which macro-actions to execute, and the macro-actions themselves can then be executed to completion. The core technical difficulty when using options in a Dec-POMDP is that the options chosen by the agents no longer terminate at the same time. We present extensions of two leading Dec-POMDP algorithms for generating a policy with options and discuss the resulting form of optimality. Our results show that these algorithms retain agent coordination while allowing near-optimal solutions to be generated for significantly longer horizons and larger state-spaces than previous Dec-POMDP methods.
Team-based stepped care in integrated delivery settings

Fragmented health care delivery is recognized as increasingly problematic. Integrated care has been advanced as a reform that will improve quality of care and lower costs. Despite the application of integrated care systems in the United States, there has been a limited amount of empirical work explicating the most effective health care pathways. Stepped care has been proposed as a framework by which to implement coordinated team-based care and has gained preliminary empirical support. In this manuscript a rationale for team-based stepped care is presented, tools for implementation are provided, and future research directions are suggested.
Antimicrobial activity of a natural and a synthetic polypeptide.

SummaryThe antibacterial and antiviral properties of a tissue polypeptide were compared with the activity of a synthetic lysine polypeptide. On a weight basis, the activity of the synthetic peptide...
THE PARADOX OF THE PHYLOGENY: CHARACTER DISPLACEMENT OF ANALYSES OF BODY SIZE IN ISLAND ANOLIS.

The evolution of body size in Anolis lizards of the Lesser Antilles Islands has been the subject of intensive, if divisive, study. Early research by Schoener revealed a regularity in the number of Anolis species that coexisted on islands and the difference in body size between coexisting congeners in the Northern Lesser Antilles. This consistent pattern of body size was suggested to be the result of competitive character displacement. Two recent studies critically evaluated this hypothesis by incorporating information about the phylogenetic relationships of insular Anolis. Rough- garden and Pacala suggested that the patterns of body-size differences in the Northern Lesser Antilles could be explained as a cyclical phenomenon that they labeled a taxon cycle. However, Losos supported the character-dis- placement hypothesis ("size adjustment"). The conflict between these two studies is important because both inves- tigations were based on the same phylogenetic hypothesis. We investigated body-size evolution in Lesser Antilles Anolis to resolve the differences in the conclusions of these studies. Our new analysis supported the taxon-cycle hypothesis but nevertheless failed to reject the character-displacement hypothesis. We argue that this curious scenario is largely a function of the method by which phylogenetic information is incorporated in comparative analyses. Different comparative analyses may lead to dramatic differences in results and ambiguity in the conclusions to be drawn. We suggest that ecologists and evolutionary biologists specifically consider the underlying assumptions and models of character evolution inherent to each of the phylogenetically based analytical methods now available.
Racial/ethnic disparities in environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals and women's reproductive health outcomes: epidemiological examples across the life course.

Disparities in women’s reproductive health outcomes across the life course have been well-documented. Endocrine disrupting chemicals may be one factor driving disparities, as studies suggest exposure to certain environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as certain phthalates, bisphenol A, parabens, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers, is higher in non-Whites. Yet, a limited amount of research has focused on these chemical exposures as a potential mediator of racial/ethnic differences in women’s reproductive health outcomes, such as pubertal development, fibroids, infertility, and pregnancy complications. Given that race/ethnicity is a social construct, the purpose of this review was to present the current state of the literature on racial/ethnic disparities in both environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals, as well as associations between these chemicals and selected women’s reproductive health outcomes. Our goal was to evaluate literature from populations based in the USA to (1) characterize racial/ethnic differences in environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals and (2) systematically review literature on environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals and selected women’s health outcomes in populations containing more than one racial/ethnic group. This review highlights the need for future work in determining whether higher exposures to some environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals might partly explain differences in women’s reproductive health outcomes in these higher-exposure and high-risk groups.
A Case Analysis on Pneumosilicosis Diagnosis Involving Work Injury Appraisal and Administrative Litigation

This paper assessed the accuracy of executions in the diagnosis and appraisal of work injuries and the applicability of administrative litigation for a pneumosilicosis case.The case revealed deviations in understanding and implementation among judiciaries and institutions of occupational disease diagnosis and work injury appraisal as well as deficiencies in applied rules.Therefore,relevant executive agencies should strengthen study of applicable rules and prosecute their duties strictly in accordance with the relevant laws;the legislature should also pay attention to the constant improvement of the systems of occupational disease diagnosis and work injury appraisal in order to protect the legitimate right of the persons concerned.
Please Don’t Use the Restraints Forgetting, Failure, and Childbirth

The end of the story is all you care about. So, let’s get that out of the way first. Penelope Jane was born on March 23rd. She was healthy. The trauma of that day still resonates within my body, called into being through subsequent visits to the hospital and a review of my own medical records from that day. A life-threatening fever and 9 hours of pushing led to a powerfully negative birth experience, one that I am consistently told to just forget. After she had a weeklong stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), I have a healthy daughter. In this article, I use auto/archeology as a tool to examine my own medical records and the affective traces of my experience in the hospital to call into question Halberstam’s advocacy of forgetting as queer resistance to dominant cultural logics. While Halberstam explains that “forgetting allows for a release from the weight of the past and the menace of the future” I hold tightly to my memories of that day. This article marks the disconnects between an advocacy...
Daytime Wetting (Diurnal Enuresis)

An attempt is made to differentiate organic from non-organic daytime wetting. Types of nonorganic daytime wetting and programs for their treatment are covered in detail. The habit of daytime frequency is also reviewed.
The Social Consequences of Public Policy: A Market-Based Assessment

The social consequences of public policy decision making are assessed in the case of recently enacted NHTSA regulations regarding automobile child restraint systems. This is accomplished with the u...
A fractional decline curve analysis model for shale gas reservoirs

Abstract In the past several decades, in order to have quick and direct methods to perform production forecasting and reserves estimation in practice, petroleum engineers have designed various techniques to interpolate the production rate both analytically and numerically, among which many decline curve analysis models have been proposed and widely used because of their simplicity and efficiency. Although all decline curve analysis models could be employed in some cases under certain assumptions, each has its own limitations and is not applicable for all cases. With the increasing interest in shale gas reservoirs, engineers have found a common long-tail behavior for gas production profile of shale gas wells, which cannot be well described by the current decline curve models. In this paper, based on the anomalous diffusion phenomena that also have the long-tail behavior, we developed a new fractional decline curve (FDC) model with three fitting parameters using the general solution of the fractional diffusion equations, which is a special case of so-called Mittag-Leffler function. In addition, we proposed a four-step scheme according to the asymptotic properties of the Mittag-Leffler function to quantify the three parameters. We verified the new FDC model against a numerical reservoir model. In addition, we applied the FDC model to perform history matching and production forecasting for five actual shale-gas wells from the Fayetteville Shale. The results show that the new model is easy to use and provides a reliable estimated ultimate recovery (EUR), which can help the petroleum industry to perform data analysis rapidly and forecast production more accurately in shale gas reservoirs.
The Origins of Epistemological Theory

The status of epistemology has always been somewhat ambiguous. Philosophers' questions about our claims to knowledge have often appeared to be of one kind, while the methods employed in answering them were of another. About the questions, there has been a strong flavour of psychology, the epistemologist's object of study being described as the ‘understanding’, the ‘intellect’, or the ‘human reason’: on the other hand, if we take psychology to be an experimental science, the methods used by philosophers in tackling these questions have only rarely been psychological ones—until recent years, when Piaget began to study methodically the manner and order in which children acquire their intellectual capacities, the development of the human understanding had been the object of little deliberate experimental inquiry. Instead of conducting elaborate scientific investigations and building up their picture of the human understanding a posteriori , philosophers had proceeded quite otherwise: namely, by considering the arguments upon which claims to knowledge can be based, and judging them against a priori standards. Epistemology, in short, has comprised a set of logical-looking answers to psychological-looking questions. To say this is not to condemn the way in which philosophers have attacked the subject. There are, it is true, some people who talk as though no serious questions whatever could be answered a priori ; and who would advocate the massive collection of factual observations and experimental readings as a necessary preliminary to any intellectual inquiry.
The Simplest Problem in Calculus of Variations

In calculus one studies the problem of minimizing f(x), where x is real or more generally x=(x1…,xn) denotes an n-tuple of real numbers. However, in many problems of interest the domain of the function to be miminized is not a portion of some finite-dimensional space V. Rather, the function is defined on some portion of an infinite-dimensional space if. We shall begin by outlining the elementary theory of minima of a function J on an abstract space V (§2).
Autophagy and ubiquitin–proteasome system contribute to sperm mitophagy after mammalian fertilization

Maternal inheritance of mitochondria and mtDNA is a universal principle in human and animal development, guided by selective ubiquitin-dependent degradation of the sperm-borne mitochondria after fertilization. However, it is not clear how the 26S proteasome, the ubiquitin-dependent protease that is only capable of degrading one protein molecule at a time, can dispose of a whole sperm mitochondrial sheath. We hypothesized that the canonical ubiquitin-like autophagy receptors [sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1), microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 (LC3), gamma-aminobutyric acid receptor-associated protein (GABARAP)] and the nontraditional mitophagy pathways involving ubiquitin-proteasome system and the ubiquitin-binding protein dislocase, valosin-containing protein (VCP), may act in concert during mammalian sperm mitophagy. We found that the SQSTM1, but not GABARAP or LC3, associated with sperm mitochondria after fertilization in pig and rhesus monkey zygotes. Three sperm mitochondrial proteins copurified with the recombinant, ubiquitin-associated domain of SQSTM1. The accumulation of GABARAP-containing protein aggregates was observed in the vicinity of sperm mitochondrial sheaths in the zygotes and increased in the embryos treated with proteasomal inhibitor MG132, in which intact sperm mitochondrial sheaths were observed. Pharmacological inhibition of VCP significantly delayed the process of sperm mitophagy and completely prevented it when combined with microinjection of autophagy-targeting antibodies specific to SQSTM1 and/or GABARAP. Sperm mitophagy in higher mammals thus relies on a combined action of SQSTM1-dependent autophagy and VCP-mediated dislocation and presentation of ubiquitinated sperm mitochondrial proteins to the 26S proteasome, explaining how the whole sperm mitochondria are degraded inside the fertilized mammalian oocytes by a protein recycling system involved in degradation of single protein molecules.
Negative mood and interference control in nonsuicidal self-injury

People who engage in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) often report high levels of impulsivity. However, results from behavioral tasks measuring impulsivity have been mixed: those with a history of NSSI generally perform comparably to healthy controls. Recent research suggests, however, that people who self-injure have specific deficits in response inhibition to negative emotional stimuli. Here, we extend this work by testing whether negative mood impairs interference control in NSSI. 33 participants reporting a history of NSSI (approximately half in the past year) and 31 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed the multi-source interference task before and after a written negative mood induction designed to increase feelings of worthlessness, guilt, and shame. After the induction, the NSSI group reported increased negative mood but did not show worse interference control. In other words, increased negative mood did not correspond to increased behavioral impulsivity in participants reporting NSSI. Consistent with past research, the NSSI and healthy control groups showed equivalent task performance. This study adds to evidence that NSSI is not characterized by behavioral impulsivity, even in the context of negative mood.
Illegitimate Tasks as an Impediment to Job Satisfaction and Intrinsic Motivation: Moderated Mediation Effects of Gender and Effort-Reward Imbalance.

The current work examines a contemporary workplace stressor that has only recently been introduced into the literature: illegitimate tasks. Illegitimate tasks are work tasks that violate identity role norms about what can reasonably be expected from an employee in a given position. Although illegitimate tasks have been linked to employee well-being in past work, we know little about the potential explanatory mechanisms linking illegitimate tasks to work-relevant negative psychological states. Using a sample of 213 US-based employees of mixed occupations and a cross-sectional design, the present study examines job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation as outcomes of illegitimate tasks. Additionally, we examine perception of effort-reward imbalance as a potential mediating mechanism through which illegitimate tasks relate to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, highlighting a possible pathway by which these relationships are functioning. Finally, we explore gender as a socially constructed variable that could contribute to variation in responses to illegitimate tasks and moderate the mediated link between illegitimate tasks and outcomes. Results indicated that illegitimate tasks were significantly related to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation both directly and indirectly through perceptions of effort-reward imbalance in the predicted directions. Moreover, a moderated-mediation effect was found such that male workers reacted more than female workers to illegitimate tasks through the mechanism of perceived effort-reward imbalance.
Is the new heroin epidemic really new? Racializing heroin

Heroin abuse as an outcome of the prior use of painkillers increased rapidly over the past decade. This "new epidemic" is unique because the new heroin users are primarily young White Americans in rural areas of virtually every state. This commentary argues that the painkiller-to-heroin transition could not be the only cause of heroin use on such a scale and that the new and old heroin epidemics are linked. The social marketing that so successfully drove the old heroin epidemic has innovated and expanded due to the use of cell-phones, text messaging and the "dark web" which requires a Tor browser, and software that allows one to communicate with encrypted sites without detection. Central city gentrification has forced traffickers to take advantage of larger and more lucrative markets. A second outcome is that urban black and Latino communities are no longer needed as heroin stages areas for suburban and exurban illicit drug distribution. Drug dealing can be done directly in predominantly white suburbs and rural areas without the accompanying violence associated with the old epidemic. Denial of the link between the new and old heroin epidemics racially segregates heroin users and more proactive prevention and treatment in the new epidemic than in the old. It also cuts off a half-century of knowledge about the supply-side of heroin drug dealing and the inevitable public policy measures that will have to be implemented to effectively slow and stop both the old and new epidemic.
Real-time maintenance prioritization with learning capability

This paper presents a radical approach for real-time maintenance prioritization where the main idea is drawn from neuroscience studies. In this approach, maintenance prioritization is a product of a learning process. Failures and maintenance experiences are learned from and applied through “habituation” and “gist generation”. During real-time operations, the knowledge is retrieved when maintenance prioritization is demanded. The brain's “dual-process” model is applied as the basic framework for conducting maintenance prioritization. The central processing unit, e.g., the “slow brain”, conducts high-fidelity analyses and prioritizes equipment according to their “criticality”. The distributed processing units, e.g., the “fast brain”, provide efficient reactions in real time. These two processes work in parallel to ensure the performance of the real-time maintenance prioritization. A prototyping tool has been developed to demonstrate the concepts.
Civic and natural place attachment as correlates of resident invasive species control behavior in Hawaii

• Residents' invasive species control behavior is associated with emotional attachments to place.
A new earthworm eel of the genus Chaudhuria from the Ayeyarwaddy River Drainage, Myanmar (Teleostei: Synbranchiformes: Chaudhuriidae)

Chaudhuria ritvae, new species, from the lower Ayeyarwaddy River Drainage, southern Myanmar, is distinguished from C. caudata by a greater number of caudal vertebrae, shorter jaws, larger and broader ribs, neural arches of vertebrae without fenestration, absence of spots associated with base of dorsaland anal-fin rays, sparse body pigmentation consisting of only minute widely separated melanophores, and absence of pigmentation along pectoral-fin rays. It differs from its only other congener, C. fusipinnis, by having the dorsal and anal fins separate from the caudal fin, by a smaller number of dorsaland anal-fin rays, by a greater number of caudal-fin rays and by the presence of teeth on hypobranchial 3.
A Neural Network Analysis of Treatment Quality and Efficiency of Hospitals

Abstract Objectives: Due to the escalating healthcare expenditure and the number of hospitalizations, it is becoming increasingly important for healthcare organizations to evaluate the cost and improve the quality and efficiency of treatment. Method: We deploy neural networks to examine the strategic association between hospitalization experience and treatment results. The healthcare data for the years 2009-2012 is downloaded from the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) of the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH). We operationalize the hospitalization experience using the indicators facility ID, procedure description, type of admission, patient disposition upon discharge, APR severity of illness, source of payment, and age group; and the treatment result using indicators hospital length of stay and APR risk of mortality Results: Our findings show that there are significant differences in length of stay and mortality rates depending on the treatment procedure. Treatment result shows a strong association with procedure and with the patients’ disposition upon discharge. Interestingly, under similar health conditions, patients who are under the public healthcare system tend to have longer length of hospital stays than others. Conclusions: We offer a portfolio of factors to be considered in evaluating patient health outcomes from hospitalization. We emphasize the need for efficient utilization of investment in healthcare, be it public or private.
Evaluation of the Implementation of the Trauma Triage and Destination Plan on the Field Triage of Injured Patients in North Carolina.

AbstractObjective: Timely triage and appropriate destination decision making for injured patients are central challenges faced by emergency medical services (EMS) systems. In 2010, North Carolina (NC) adopted a statewide Trauma Triage and Destination Plan (TTDP) based on the CDC's Field Triage Guidelines to better address these challenges. We sought to characterize the implementation of these guidelines by quantifying their effect on multiple metrics of patient care. Methods: We employed a retrospective pre-post study design utilizing a statewide EMS medical record database. We assessed several metrics of patient care—including changes in destination choice, appropriateness of EMS destination, transit time to first hospital, transit time to definitive care, and others—in a six-month period in the year before and after the implementation of the guidelines. Results: We evaluated a total of 190,307 EMS encounters pre- (n = 93,927) and post-implementation (n = 96,380). Among all patients, there was not a sign...
Colorectal Cancer Screening in Average Risk Patients

Colorectal cancer (CRC) contributes a major burden of cancer mortality in the United States. There are multiple effective screening approaches that can reduce CRC mortality. These approaches are supported by different levels of evidence, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Implementing a systematic approach to screening that addresses the multiple steps involved in the screening process is essential to improving population-level CRC screening. Offering patients stool-based screening is important for increasing screening uptake. However, programs that offer stool testing must support the population health infrastructure needed to promote adherence to repeat testing and follow-up of abnormal tests.
Development of the Teacher Rating of Academic Achievement Motivation: TRAAM

This study reported the initial effort to develop the Teacher Rating of Academic Achievement Motivation (TRAAM). Nine teacher volunteers from two schools in a medium-sized midwestern public school ...
Impact of the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative on family planning uptake at facilities in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal

The 2012 London Summit on Family Planning set ambitious goals to enable 120 million more women and adolescent girls to use modern contraceptives by 2020. The Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (URHI) was a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded program designed to help contribute to these goals in urban areas in India, Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. URHI implemented a range of country-specific demand and supply side interventions, with supply interventions generally focused on improved service quality, provider training, outreach to patients, and commodity stock management. This study uses data collected by the Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project to examine the effectiveness of these supply-side interventions by considering URHI’s influence on the number of family planning clients at health facilities over a four-year period in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. The analysis used facility audits and provider surveys. Principal-components analysis was used to create country-specific program exposure variables for health facilities. Fixed-effects regression was used to determine whether family planning uptake increased at facilities with higher exposure. Outcomes of interest were the number of new family planning acceptors and the total number of family planning clients per reproductive health care provider in the last year. Higher program component scores were associated with an increase in new family planning acceptors per provider in Kenya (β = 18, 95% CI = 7–29), Nigeria (β = 14, 95% CI = 8–20), and Senegal (β = 7, 95% CI = 3–12). Higher scores were also associated with more family planning clients per provider in Kenya (β = 31, 95% CI = 7–56) and Nigeria (β = 26, 95% CI = 15–38), but not in Senegal. Supply-side interventions have increased the number of new family planning acceptors at facilities in urban Nigeria, Kenya, and Senegal and the overall number of clients in urban Nigeria and Kenya. While tailoring to the local environment, programs seeking to increase family planning use should include components to improve availability and quality of family planning services, which are part of a rights-based approach to family planning programming.
Copper-Coupled Electron Transfer in Colloidal Plasmonic Copper-Sulfide Nanocrystals Probed by in Situ Spectroelectrochemistry

Copper-sulfide nanocrystals can accommodate considerable densities of delocalized valence-band holes, introducing localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) attractive for infrared plasmonic applications. Chemical control over nanocrystal shape, composition, and charge-carrier densities further broadens their scope of potential properties and applications. Although a great deal of control over LSPRs in these materials has been demonstrated, structural complexities have inhibited detailed descriptions of the microscopic chemical processes that transform them from nearly intrinsic to degenerately doped semiconductors. A comprehensive understanding of these transformations will facilitate use of these materials in emerging technologies. Here, we apply spectroelectrochemical potentiometry as a quantitative in situ probe of copper-sulfide nanocrystal Fermi-level energies ( EF) during redox reactions that switch their LSPR bands on and off. We demonstrate spectroscopically indistinguishable LSPR bands in low-chalcocite copper-sulfide nanocrystals with and without lattice cation vacancies and show that cation vacancies are much more effective than surface anions at stabilizing excess free carriers. The appearance of the LSPR band, the shift in EF, and the change in crystal structure upon nanocrystal oxidation are all fully reversible upon addition of outer-sphere reductants. These measurements further allow quantitative comparison of the coupled and stepwise oxidation/cation-vacancy-formation reactions associated with LSPRs in copper-sulfide nanocrystals, highlighting fundamental thermodynamic considerations relevant to technologies that rely on reversible or low-driving-force plasmon generation in semiconductor nanostructures.