cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Impact of external security measures on data access implementation with online database management system

The creation and phenomenal growth of the Internet has spawned the emergence of a global information society. The scientific, engineering, and educational communities are all using the Internet as an indispensable tool for collaboration and rapid dissemination of information on advances and practice at all levels of scientific and engineering endeavors. Critical national infrastructures supporting such vital areas like banking, communications, and defense are growing progressively more dependent upon Internet-based application. All of these benefits that the Internet can provide are subject to disruption by Internet-based cyber attacks that use the speed and global connectivity of the global computer network to cross national boundaries with ease. The local and global implications of an increasingly critical societal dependence on the Internet makes necessary the ability to deter, or to minimize, the effect of cyber attacks, by enhancing the security. The implementation of additional layers to enhance security in either a client/server or online database management system environment does have an impact on the response time for queries. The research presented in this paper was conducted at Howard University as part of a research project at the graduate school.
Shell Model for Atomistic Simulation of Lithium Diffusion in Mixed Mn/Ti Oxides

Mixed Mn/Ti oxides present attractive physicochemical properties such as their ability to accommodate Li for application in Li-ion batteries. In this work, atomic parameters for Mn were developed to extend an existing shell model of the Li–Ti–O system and allow simulations of pure and lithiated Mn and mixed Mn/Ti oxide polymorphs. The shell model yielded good agreement with experimentally derived structures (i.e., lattice parameters and interatomic distances) and represented an improvement over existing potential models. The shell model was employed in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Li diffusion in the 1 × 1 c-direction channels of LixMn1–yTiyO2 with the rutile structure, where 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.25 and 0 ≤ y ≤ 1. In the infinite dilution limit, the arrangement of Mn and Ti ions in the lattice was found to have a significant effect on the activation energy for Li diffusion in the c channels due to the destabilization of half of the interstitial octahedral sites. Anomalous diffusion was demonstrated for Li ...
Precision and accuracy of commercial laboratories' ability to classify positive and/or negative allergen-specific IgE results.

Background Accurate and reliable evaluation of the presence or absence of allergen-specific IgE is important in the differential diagnosis of allergic disease. A variety of different commercial tests are available for this purpose. There are few data available to judge how the results of these different tests compare with one another in everyday use. Objective To examine prospectively the extent of comparability among specific IgE results from different laboratories. Methods Six diagnostic laboratories employing five different methods to assay specific IgE were selected. Aliquots from 26 serum samples that contained variable levels of IgE specific to 17 common aeroallergens were sent in triplicate to each study laboratory during a 6-week time period. Results were reported numerically and by class scores and then compared by examining their concordance using Kendall's W nonparametric statistical test. In addition, cut-off values were compared by a best agreement analysis using reported results. Reproducibility was determined using precision profiles based upon the coefficient of variation among triplicates for each allergen across the range of reported results. Results In all, 7,813 tests were analyzed. Concordance among different assays in commercial use with one exception was not good. This was particularly true around the cut-off region where most assays demonstrated high imprecision. The Pharmacia CAP System used by two different laboratories demonstrated highly comparable results with good precision. Some assays were reproducible but not accurate. Others were neither reproducible nor accurate. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that not all commercial laboratories/assays for specific IgE provide reproducible and accurate data. Significant potential for misdiagnosis was detected for some reported results. Methods were identified that do give sensitive, accurate, and reproducible results.
Management and prevention of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea

Clostridium difficile is a major cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea. While treatment regimens for C. difficile have been available for decades, they remain less than optimal due to the frequent recurrences that occur after therapy is completed. Moreover, the morbidity and expense associated with C. difficile have underscored the need for more effective preventive measures than are currently available. In this review, we outline the current recommendations for treatment and prevention of C. difficile infection and, highlight some promising new approaches that may help to control this common nosocomial pathogen in the future.
Residence Time Distribution and Modeling of Mechanical Properties of Extruded Nanocomposite Foams Using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System

Effects of two screw configurations (compression and mixing screws) and two barrel temperatures (150 and 160°C) on residence time distribution (RTD) and modeling of mechanical properties of nanocomposite foams were studied. Multiple inputs single output (MISO) models were developed using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System Modeling (ANFIS) to predict radial expansion ratio (RER), unit density (UD), bulk spring index (BSI) and bulk compressibility (BC) of the nanocomposite foams. An individual ANFIS model was developed for each mechanical property using torque (Nm), pressure (psi) and melt temperature (°C) as input parameters. Models were evaluated by the R 2 of prediction and root mean squared error (RMSE) for training and testing. Wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) results showed that the diffraction peaks for the mixing screws at 150°C were narrow and had higher intensity indicating a strong intercalation in the nanocomposites. Screw configuration and temperature had significant effects (P<0.05) on the mean residence time (MTR) which affected the mechanical properties of the nanocomposites.
The Case Against Intelligence Testing in Early Intervention

A legal-like format is employed in this article to put intelligence testing in early intervention “on trial”. Six major presumptions that underlie the use of early intelligence tests are presented and disputed. The concerns center on the construct of early intelligence, reliability, prediction, standardized administration, professional acceptability, utility for decision making, and congruence with P.L. 99--457. Logic and evidence are marshaled to refute each presumption. In the summation and closing arguments, we urge professional solidarity in opposing the continued unwarranted use of intelligence testing in early intervention.
Development of Proverb Comprehension in Adolescents: Implications for Instruction

This study demonstrated that proverb comprehension improves during adolescence and that growth is most apparent at two transitional points in development: when students move from late childhood int...
A multi-disciplinary design process for affective robots: Case study of Survivor Buddy 2.0

Designing and constructing affective robots on schedule and within costs is especially challenging because of the qualitative, artistic nature of affective expressions. Detailed affective design principles do not exist, forcing an iterative design process. This paper describes a three step design process created for the Survivor Buddy project that engages artists in the design process and allows animation to guide physical implementation. The process combines creative design of believable agents unconstrained by costs with traditional design decision matrices. The paper provides a case study comparing the resulting design of the Survivor Buddy 2.0 robot with the original (Survivor Buddy 1.0). The multi-disciplinary methodology produced a more pleasing and expressive robot that was 50% less expensive, 78% lighter, and up to 700% faster within the same amount of design time. This methodology is expected to contribute to reducing risk in designing cost-effective affective robots and robots in general.
Developing a care model for hospice and palliative nurses

We would like to reply to Marie Christine Magante’s letter to thank her for outlining the value of nursing education in palliative care, the need for nursing care models and the importance of considering family suffering at the end of a patient’s life. Similar to your experience, we have also witnessed several family members fearing patient death and the dying process. Anguished by the experience of their family member’s death or pain, family caregivers may neglect their basic needs (e.g. sleep, nutrition), sitting for hours on uncomfortable chairs at the patient bedside. This is even more evident in home settings where family caregivers offer care 24 hours a day. There is a deep closeness between patients and family members, especially in the last period of a patient’s life, when the complexity of their needs may also increase. In our experience, while patient needs and uncontrolled symptoms distress his/her relatives, family discomfort may, in turn, condition the beloved quality of life in their journey to death, leading the patient to feel that he or she is a burden (Chochinov et al, 2007). Family distress may also increase when their beloved become unconscious. This particular bonding may lead to considering the patient and the family as a ‘dyad’, encouraging us to assess both patient and family needs to identify each patient-family dyad’s unique interrelated problems and priorities. When communication is no longer feasible and family members might feel useless, our focus of care may shift to a family-centered model of care. Literature reports how effective it is to involve the family in the care process to alleviate any family sense of uselessness and to enhance satisfaction (Azoulay and Pochard, 2003; Bee et al, 2009). However, managing patient comfort and physical care may cause some difficulties to a family member that should be addressed with appropriate communication, relational and education interventions. This process requires nurses, again, to find time. Nevertheless, family partnership in patient care may be extremely rewarding, not only for the family but also for nurses, in our process of progressive understanding of life and of dying, and increasing our professional competence. As nurses, we can prevent family problems that may have an ‘iatrogenic’ cause: for instance, family anxiety may at times be worsened when the team offers too little information. In other situations, family members may have unrealistic hopes and expectations toward the patient’s condition, and feeling that not enough is being done for their loved one. Communicating effectively with the family, sharing information, as well as involving them in decision making may help to implement personalised family-centred care. Therefore, acknowledging palliative care nursing core concepts may guide our interventions to give the necessary value and priority to planning healing interventions for the whole family. However, it should only be a starting point.
Research, Standard Setting, and Global Financial Reporting

The objective of this paper is to aid researchers in conducting research relevant to global financial reporting issues, particularly those of interest to financial reporting standard setters. The mission of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is to develop a single set of financial reporting standards that are accepted worldwide. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is committed to convergence of its standards with those of the IASB. Thus, global financial reporting issues relate to particular topics on the agendas of the IASB and the FASB. They also relate to globalization of financial reporting itself. This paper discusses research related to both types of issues and explains how that research can aid standard setters in resolving global financial reporting issues as well as contribute to the academic literature. The issues facing global financial reporting standard setters are broad, difficult, and complex. Research can provide input to their resolution. To do so, researchers need to understand not only the issues themselves, but also how to develop research questions and designs that are relevant to the issues, from the perspective of both standard setting and the academic literature.
Change in chromatin organization of the 3'-flanking region of the rat apoprotein E gene in neonatal rats after an increase in transcriptional activity.

Abstract To investigate if a change in chromatin organization is associated with the increased transcriptional activity of the apoprotein E (apo E) gene, a study was done in hepatic nuclei isolated after birth to identify areas in or flanking the rat apo E gene with increased sensitivity to DNase 1. An area of preferential digestion in the 3′-flanking region of the apo E gene was identified in liver nuclei from 3-day-old pups but not in nuclei from fetal livers collected at day 20 of gestation. This hypersensitive area may contain information important for the regulated expression of the rat apo E gene.
Disruption Tolerant Networking Flight Validation Experiment on NASA's EPOXI Mission

In October and November of 2008, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory installed and tested essential elements of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) technology on the Deep Impact spacecraft. This experiment, called Deep Impact Network Experiment (DINET), was performed in close cooperation with the EPOXI project which has responsibility for the spacecraft. During DINET some 300 images were transmitted from the JPL nodes to the spacecraft. Then they were automatically forwarded from the spacecraft back to the JPL nodes, exercising DTN's bundle origination, transmission, acquisition, dynamic route computation, congestion control, prioritization, custody transfer, and automatic retransmission procedures, both on the spacecraft and on the ground, over a period of 27 days. All transmitted bundles were successfully received, without corruption. The DINET experiment demonstrated DTN readiness for operational use in space missions. This activity was part of a larger NASA space DTN development program to mature DTN to flight readiness for a wide variety of mission types by the end of 2011. This paper describes the DTN protocols, the flight demo implementation, validation metrics which were created for the experiment, and validation results.
Influence of dietary saturated fat intake on endothelial fibrinolytic capacity in adults.

Approximately 50% of middle-aged and older adults in the United States regularly consume a diet high in saturated fat. High dietary saturated fat intake has been linked to promote atherothrombotic vascular disease. We tested the hypothesis that endothelial fibrinolytic function is diminished in middle-aged and older adults who habitually consume a diet high in saturated fat. Twenty-four healthy, sedentary middle-aged, and older adults (54 to 71 years) were studied: 10 (8 men and 2 women) with a dietary saturated fat intake
Thermodynamic studies on the gel-sol transition of some pluronic polyols

Studies have been carried out on a number of pluronic polyols with the aim of determining factors which influence the transition temperature of the hydrogels. The gel-sol transition temperatures, Tm, were measured for aqueous solutions of the polyols with and without additives such as sodium chloride, potassium chloride, urea, ethanol, sodium sulfate and sodium dodecylsulfate. A linear relationship was found between the logarithm of the pluronic polyol concentration and the reciprocal of the gel-sol transition temperature. Although no linear relationship was observed between log Mw (molecular weight) and the reciprocal of the gel-sol transition temperature for all polymers, such a relationship does seem to exist among the polymers having the same ratio of poly(oxypropylene) to poly(oxyethylene) units per mole of polymer, (P/E ratio). All of the pluronic polyols studied showed endothermic enthalpy change for the sol-gel process. These results were substantiated with data from calorimetric studies. The driving force for thermal gelation is a result of the large entropic change. Neither Δ Hgelo (for sol-gel) nor ΔSgelo seem to correlate with the molecular weight of the polymer, per se; however, the number of poly(oxypropylene) units per mole of polymer plays a major role in the gelation process. The presence of sodium chloride, potassium chloride and sodium sulfate decreased the transition temperature whereas the opposite effect was observed with urea, alcohol and sodium dodecylsulfate. The enthalpy of gel formation was not
A minutia-based partial fingerprint recognition system

Matching incomplete or partial fingerprints continues to be an important challenge today, despite the advances made in fingerprint identification techniques. While the introduction of compact silicon chip-based sensors that capture only part of the fingerprint has made this problem important from a commercial perspective, there is also considerable interest in processing partial and latent fingerprints obtained at crime scenes. When the partial print does not include structures such as core and delta, common matching methods based on alignment of singular structures fail. We present an approach that uses localized secondary features derived from relative minutiae information. A flow network-based matching technique is introduced to obtain one-to-one correspondence of secondary features. Our method balances the tradeoffs between maximizing the number of matches and minimizing total feature distance between query and reference fingerprints. A two-hidden-layer fully connected neural network is trained to generate the final similarity score based on minutiae matched in the overlapping areas. Since the minutia-based fingerprint representation is an ANSI-NIST standard [American National Standards Institute, New York, 1993], our approach has the advantage of being directly applicable to existing databases. We present results of testing on FVC2002's DB1 and DB2 databases.
Gender determines the acute actions of genistein on intracellular calcium regulation in the guinea-pig heart.

Objectives: The soy-isoflavone, genistein, appears to be cardioprotective partly through direct actions on the heart, although the relative benefits between men and women are not fully known. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether gender influences the acute electrophysiological actions of genistein at the level of isolated cardiac myocytes and to elucidate the mechanisms involved. Methods: Left ventricular myocytes, isolated from weight-matched male and female guinea-pigs and rats, were field stimulated at a rate of 1 Hz in a superfusion chamber (37 °C). The effects of acute application of genistein on cell shortening and the Ca2+ transients were measured. Electrophysiological recordings were performed using single electrode voltage-clamp. Results: Genistein increased cell contraction and the Ca2+ transients in a concentration-dependent manner in myocytes from male guinea-pigs [by 54±11% and 22±4%, respectively (mean±S.E.M., p 23, p <0.001). In order to explain these observations, we measured sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+ contents by integrating the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger currents ( I NCX) following rapid caffeine application. Genistein increased I NCX integrals by 27% in males ( n = 12, p <0.01) and 20% in females ( n = 14, p <0.01). The increased SR Ca2+ load in males, but not females, could be related to an impaired ability of the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger to extrude Ca2+. Conclusions: We have demonstrated novel, gender-related differences in the acute cardiac actions of genistein, which can be attributed to actions at distinct points of the intracellular Ca2+ cycle. Our results suggest that genistein may afford greater cardioprotection in females than in males.
A generalized method for distinguishing between radiation and surface-wave losses in microstrip discontinuities

A generalized method for calculating both radiation and surface-wave losses is developed for microstrip discontinuities. The losses are determined by a rigorous Poynting vector analysis where the current distribution over the microstrip discontinuities is a result of a full-wave moment method solution. The power loss mechanism of such microstrip discontinuities as open-end, right-angle-bend, gap and stub lines, EMC lines, and rectangular patches are investigated. A self-consistency check of the result based on power conservation is performed to confirm the numerical results. It is found that, above a certain frequency, the surface-wave loss becomes more important than the radiation loss. >
Autonomous, teleoperated, and shared control of robot systems

This paper illustrates how different modes of operation such as bilateral teleoperation, autonomous control, and shared control can be described and implemented using combinations of modules in the SMART robot control architecture. Telerobotics modes are characterized by different "grids" of SMART icons, where each icon represents a portion of run-time code that implements a passive control law. By placing strict requirements on the module's input-output behavior and using scattering theory to develop a passive sampling technique, a flexible, expansible telerobot architecture is achieved. An automatic code generation tool for generating SMART systems is also described.
Revising and Improving the African American Acculturation Scale

The African American Acculturation Scale (AAAS) was revised and improved with a sample of 520 African American adults. Items that some participants in prior studies found objectionable were dropped, and a new version of the scale was created by factor analyzing the remaining items. The revised AAAS (AAAS-R) consists of 47 items that no participant has objected to; these comprise eight new, empirically derived subscales (i.e., factors) that have high reliability and validity and correlate r = .97 with the original 74-item version of the scale. It is strongly recommended that researchers interested in studying acculturation among African Americans use this new version of the scale.
Benchmarking Seismic Performance of Reinforced Concrete Frame Buildings

With the ultimate goal to benchmark the seismic performance of new (building-code compliant) reinforced concrete frame structures, we have applied a probabilistic assessment methodology, developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, to a four-story office building. A key component of the assessment is characterization of the structural response through nonlinear time history analyses organized using an Incremental Dynamic Analysis approach. The results show that the seismic performance of the building is generally consistent with the expectations of current building codes, having a life-safety performance level (ASCE 356) for the 2% in 50 year event. A sensitivity study shows that the record-to-record variability is the single most important contributor to the total variability in structural response; however, the cumulative affect of other modeling and design uncertainties is also shown to be significant – resulting in the total dispersion being roughly double the dispersion due to record-to-record effects. To further investigate modeling uncertainties, we have compared the responses predicted by using a force-based fiber model and a lumped plasticity model. These comparisons show that the concrete tensile strength and tension stiffening effect significantly impact the response predictions, especially for structures with highly under-reinforced members subjected to lower ground motion intensity levels.
Crosstalk and switching characteristics in directional couplers

The normal mode approach is used to calculate the fundamental limits on crosstalk and switching characteristics in directional coupler switches of the stepped delta beta type. The normal modes are calculated numerically as well as analytically using a method for computing the eigenmodes of two coupled, identical waveguides with an antisymmetric index perturbation. The results of the two methods are compared to one another as well as to the results of coupled-mode theory. It is shown that the theoretical minimum for the crosstalk level is very low for the stepped delta beta structure. Nonzero crosstalk was found in some cases where coupled-mode theory predicts zero crosstalk. This is attributed to the improper handling of discontinuities in coupled-mode theory. >
Estimating the usefulness of search engines

In this paper, we present a statistical method to estimate the usefulness of a search engine for any given query. The estimates can be used by a metasearch engine to choose local search engines to invoke. For a given query, the usefulness of a search engine in this paper is defined to be a combination of the number of documents in the search engine that are sufficiently similar to the query and the average similarity of these documents. Experimental results indicate that the proposed estimation method is quite accurate.
Effect of tin and gold on sodium ion movement in a sodium silicate glass

Since Roman times the addition of tin is known to induce a deep red color in ruby glass based on gold nanoparticles, but very little information is available on how electrical properties of such glasses are affected by the presence of gold nanoparticles or tin doping. Therefore, we have explored the electrical effects of the addition of tin (≤0.1 mol%) to sodium trisilicate glass, which was doped with 0.1 mol% gold. The addition of both 0.1 mol% gold and 0.1 mol% tin increases the DC electrical conductivity, which arises from sodium ion transport, compared to base glass. The activation energy of DC conductivity decreases when the amount of tin increases with the gold content held constant. The mechanism of the enhancement of Na+ ion transport appears to be different for the two types of dopings: Au doping causes general expansion of molar volume whereas tin doping enhances the polarizability of the medium.
Diagnostic and Symptom-Based Predictors of Emotional Processing in Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Study

The delineation of specific versus overlapping mechanisms in GAD and MDD could shed light on the integrity of these diagnostic categories. For example, negative emotion generation is one mechanism that may be especially relevant to both disorders. Emotional processing abnormalities were examined among 97 outpatients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or major depressive disorder (MDD) and 25 healthy adults, using the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential that is larger for emotional versus neutral stimuli. GAD and MDD were also assessed dimensionally across all participants. Both MDD diagnosis and dimensional depression scores were associated with reduced ΔLPP. When controlling for MDD diagnosis/dimension, both the diagnosis and dimension of GAD were associated with increased ΔLPP. Both MDD and GAD dimensions, but not diagnoses, were associated with increased ΔRT to targets that followed emotional pictures. Therefore, MDD and GAD have distinguishable and opposing features evident in neural measures of emotion processing.
Beams Subjected to a Follower Force within the Span

Some unusual instability effects are shown to occur in beams subjected to a tangential follower force within the span. Depending on the support and load placement conditions either no flutter occurs at all, or the flutter stability boundaries are determined by a series of progressively higher order flutter modes. The behavior of a demonstration model which approximates the system is in essential agreement with the theory.
Review of Kadenge & Simango's 'Comparing vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona: An Optimality Theory analysis'

1. Summary The article provides a formal comparative analysis of repair strategies used to resolve vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and chiShona within the Optimality Theory framework and shows that while vowel hiatus resolution is categorical in chiShona, it is domain-specific in ciNsenga. The analysis shows that vocalic hiatus is generally dispreferred and the two languages use similar repair strategies in most cases to resolve it. These include glide formation, secondary articulation (labialisation) and deletion. Where the repair strategies differ the variation is attributed to the fact that hiatus resolution is sensitive to phonology and morphosyntax, hiatus resolution strategies applying differently depending on the phonological and morphosyntactic context. In fact ciNsenga permits vowel hiatus in these cases while Shona resolves it through spreading (glide epenthesis). After the introduction, the article begins by providing some background about the two languages, including the regions where they are spoken, and their morphosyntactic structures particularly regarding verbs and nouns. This is followed by a brief sketch of the Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004, among others), thereby laying the foundation for the analysis that follows. The first of the two main parts of the article focuses chiefly on similarities in repair strategies used in resolving vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and chiShona. There are three important subsections that focus on glide formation, secondary articulation (labialisation) and vowel elision. In each subsection, relevant constraints are discussed and there are tableaux illustrating the points considered. A wide variety of data from both chiShona and ciNsenga is presented, with supporting data from other languages such as Shimakonde, Ivie and Luganda. The second main part deals with vowel hiatus across the prosodic stem boundary where the two languages exhibit contrasting behaviour. While ciNsenga tolerates vowel hiatus across the prosodic stem boundary chiShona does not. For both ciNsenga and chiShona the three vowel hiatus resolution strategies (glide formation, secondary articulation and vowel elision) that apply to examples in the preceding section are blocked. ChiShona, which does not tolerate vowel hiatus, resolves the problem through glide epenthesis. To account for the tolerance of vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and glide epenthesis in
Straw Infusion Attractiveness to Gravid Female Culex salinarius

Results of replicated field-plot studies and observations at Bombay Hook Refuge. Del., from 1959 to 1964 indicated that certain chemical factors of apparent protein origin are responsible for the pronounced attractiveness of straw infusion to gravid females of Culex salinarius Coquillett. Physical factors such as cover or shelter proved less significant. These chemical attractant substances were isolated by treating concentrated straw infusion with 10% trichloracetic acid. Subsequently, water suspensions of the acid-free residues were field tested against straw infusion, natural habitat, and tap water. Field observations and experimental data showed that the trichloracetic acid extract actively attracted more ovipositing females of C. salinarius than did the straw infusion, whereas natural habitat and tap water attracted relatively insignificant numbers. These findings suggest the means by which mosquito oviposition site selection takes place and provide a basis for understanding the ecological distribution of larvae. Although further chemical definition of the attractant substance is needed before it can have practical application, the results of this work may lead to the development of an oviposition “lurc” applicable to highly selective control measures.
Nonperturbative calculation of the London–van der Waals interaction potential

The Helmholtz free energy of an oscillator coupled to a heat bath is used to derive the London-van der Waals interaction potential for all separations and temperatures, extending the well-known results for the interaction energy beyond the weak-coupling limit.
Ophthalmologic signs in genetic disease.

Many inherited systemic disorders affect the lens, cornea, or eye alignment. Early recognition of ocular manifestations in the child with a suspected genetic disease may help to differentiate otherwise similar pathologies.
Squamous Bladder Carcinoma

The most common cause of squamous bladder cancer is the liver fluke ( Schistosoma hematobium ). This parasite, common in east Africa, migrates to the tissues around the bladder and causes scarring, which presumably is a cause of the malignancy. In the United States, this form of bladder cancer is much less common than transitional cell carcinoma. It occurs in heavy smokers and also in persons who have been scarred from repeated bacterial bladder infections, such as older persons with long-standing indwelling urinary catheters. This malignancy is slightly less common in Los Angeles County than in other areas, except for Utah, where the rate is even lower. It occurs twice as commonly among men as among women, and is less common among Asians than it is among the members of other racial/ethnic groups. The cases in the high-risk census tracts have tended to occur among older Jewish men and women, but were diagnosed in the same facilities responsible for the diagnosis of the more common transitional cell bladder cancer.
Intervention to Improve Quality of life for African-AmericaN lupus patients (IQAN): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a unique a la carte intervention approach to self-management of lupus in African Americans

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (lupus) is a chronic autoimmune disease that can impact any organ system and result in life-threatening complications. African-Americans are at increased risk for morbidity and mortality from lupus. Self-management programs have demonstrated significant improvements in health distress, self-reported global health, and activity limitation among people with lupus. Despite benefits, arthritis self-management education has reached only a limited number of people. Self-selection of program could improve such trends. The aim of the current study is to test a novel intervention to improve quality of life, decrease indicators of depression, and reduce perceived and biological indicators of stress in African-American lupus patients in South Carolina. In a three armed randomized, wait list controlled trial, we will evaluate the effectiveness of a patient-centered ‘a–la-carte’ approach that offers subjects a variety of modes of interaction from which they can choose as many or few as they wish, compared to a ‘set menu’ approach and usual care. This unique ‘a-la-carte’ self-management program will be offered to 50 African-American lupus patients participating in a longitudinal observational web-based SLE Database at the Medical University of South Carolina. Each individualized intervention plan will include 1–4 options, including a mail-delivered arthritis kit, addition and access to an online message board, participation in a support group, and enrollment in a local self-management program. A ‘set menu’ control group of 50 lupus patients will be offered a standardized chronic disease self-management program only, and a control group of 50 lupus patients will receive usual care. Outcomes will include changes in (a) health behaviors, (b) health status, (c) health care utilization, and (d) biological markers (urinary catecholamines). Such a culturally sensitive educational intervention which includes self-selection of program components has the potential to improve disparate trends in quality of life, disease activity, depression, and stress among African-American lupus patients, as better outcomes have been documented when participants are able to choose/dictate the content and/or pace of the respective treatment/intervention program. Since there is currently no “gold standard” self-management program specifically for lupus, this project may have a considerable impact on future research and policy decisions. NCT01837875 ; April 18, 2013
OpenMili: a 60 GHz software radio with a programmable phased-array antenna: demo

The 60 GHz wireless technology holds great potential for multi-Gbps communications and high-precision radio sensing. But the lack of an accessible experimental platform has been impeding its progress. We propose to overcome the barrier with OpenMili, a reconfigurable 60 GHz radio architecture. OpenMili builds from off-the-shelf FPGA processor, data converters and 60 GHz RF front-end. It employs customized clocking, channelization and interfacing modules, to achieve Gsps sampling bandwidth, Gbps wireless bit-rate, and Gsps sample streaming from/to a PC host. It also incorporates the first programmable, electronically steerable 60 GHz phased-array antenna. OpenMili adopts programming models that ease development, through automatic parallelization inside signal processing blocks, and modular, rate-insensitive interfaces across blocks. In this demo, we will showcase OpenMili's hardware modules, and demonstrate example communication and sensing applications based on it.
Accountability as Resistance: Helping Others be Autonomous?

On March 10, 2010, former US President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for championing policies that destroyed Haiti’s rice production in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Clinton testified that “I have had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce rice crops in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did.” This apology was for forcing Haiti to drop tariffs on imported, subsidized US rice during his time in office. These lower tariffs would allow United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide more food aid. Unfortunately, that aid had systemically undermined the long-term food production of Haiti and thereby, its food security. Clinton’s apology points to the dangers of focusing simply on the amount of aid given, e.g. the yearly average of over $50 million in gratuitous US surplus beans, corn, rice, and cracked wheat delivered to Haiti in order to assess aid. Any adequate ethics of NGO aid must track whose interests were being served by the particular form of aid given and to recognize how beneficiaries and aid organizations can have different and sometimes conflicting interests. For example, the multi-year food assistance programs to Haiti that spent over $23 million on ocean freights to deliver $67 million worth of commodities benefitted US shipping interests disproportionately over the interests of Haitians receiving that aid (CEPR 2012). Clinton’s apology, though, was not for allocating funds poorly, e.g. spending too much on transporting food and not enough on local production of that food. 2 Rather, his apology centered on how help — that is, the large flows of food aid into Haiti — harmed Haitians. As recipients of aid, Haitians weren’t allowed to be “choosers.” They had to take whatever form of help they were given.
CMOS ADCs Towards 100 GS/s and Beyond

The implementation of a 64x time-interleaved ADC in 32nm CMOS SOI is analyzed. Measurement results confirm 33 dB SNDR up to 19.9 GHz at 90 GS/s and 1.2V supply. Architecture details and analysis show insights into limitations and potentials of the chosen architecture. In par-ticular the input bandwidth is of concern for ADCs at more than 64 GS/s, as a larger number of sampling switches in-creases the parasitic load and reduces the input bandwidth. Insights on a simplified analysis of interleaver structures and existing solutions to bandwidth issues are highlighted and show a path to extend the sampling speed of CMOS ADCs beyond 100 GS/s.
Lanthanum deposition from oral lanthanum carbonate in the upper gastrointestinal tract.

Aims Lanthanum carbonate is used an alternative to calcium-based phosphate binders to manage hyperphosphatemia in patients with renal failure. The deposition of lanthanum within gastroduodenal mucosa of patients treated with the medication has been described, but given the relative novelty of this entity, the histiocytic deposits in the gastroduodenal mucosa can be confused with a variety of other processes, including infections and other drug-induced forms of injury. Methods and Results We describe 5 cases of lanthanum phosphate deposition in upper gastrointestinal tract biopsies. Three cases were confirmed with scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray analysis, including one unique patient, status post renal transplant for polycystic kidney disease, who had last taken lanthanum 7 years prior to biopsy. Conclusion Lanthanum deposition in the upper GI tract is a mimic of other drug related forms of gastrointestinal injury, including iron pill related gastropathy. The key to making this diagnosis is a thorough drug history and awareness of the histologic features. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Using machine learning for black-box autoscaling

Autoscaling is the practice of automatically adding or removing resources for an application deployment to meet performance targets in response to changing workload conditions. However, existing autoscaling approaches typically require expert application and system knowledge to minimize resource costs and performance target violations, thus limiting their applicability. We present MLscale, an application-agnostic, machine learning based autoscaler that is composed of: (i) a neural network based online (black-box) performance modeler, and (ii) a regression based metrics predictor to estimate post-scaling application and system metrics. Implementation results for diverse applications across several traces highlight MLscale's application-agnostic behavior and show that MLscale (i) reduces resource costs by about 50% compared to the optimal static policy, (ii) is within 15% of the cost of the optimal dynamic policy, and (iii) provides similar cost-performance tradeoffs, without requiring any tuning, when compared to carefully tuned threshold-based policies.
Remote control of BBB: A tale of exosomes and microRNA

Exosome-mediated intercellular communication has become an emerging field of human health and diseases. A recent study published by Cell Research reports that in zebrafish neurons can remotely regulate blood-brain barrier integrity by delivering miR-132 through secretion of exosomes.
“Who’s the Nigger Now?”: Rhetoric and Identity in James Baldwin’s Revolution from Within

Despite the proliferation of interest in James Baldwin across popular culture and the academy, few, if any, critical studies of his public oratory have been conducted. This is unfortunate and ironic—unfortunate because Baldwin was a marvelous orator, and ironic in that his preferred solution to what ailed whites and blacks as the Civil Rights movement unfolded was thoroughly rhetorical. That is, Baldwin’s racial rhetorical revolution involved a re-valuing of the historical evidence used to keep blacks enslaved both mentally and physically across countless generations. Moreover, for Baldwin the act of naming functions to chain both whites and blacks to a version of American history psychologically damaging to both. Three speeches that Baldwin delivered in 1963 amid the crucible of civil rights protest illustrate these claims.
Neoadjuvant chemoradiation for non-metastatic pancreatic cancer increases margin-negative and node-negative rates at resection.

Aim Preoperative chemoradiation for non-metastatic pancreatic cancer patients has been associated with improved outcomes; however, direct comparisons to adjuvant therapy are limited. Methods Single institution data were obtained for non-metastatic pancreatic cancer patients treated with concurrent chemoradiation +/- resection from 2011-2014. Univariate analyses were performed to evaluate clinical and pathologic outcomes. Results Fifty-two well matched patients met inclusion criteria (neoadjuvant chemoradiation = 21, adjuvant chemoradiation = 11, definitive = 20). Pretreatment median tumor size was 2.6 cm and 2.5 cm after neoadjuvant chemoradiation but 3.2 cm on pathology with treatment effect in 95% of specimens. Clinical node positivity at diagnosis for the neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemoradiation groups was similar (29% and 27% respectively, p=0.12). Twenty-one of the 36 neoadjuvant patients (58%) underwent complete resection. In the neoadjuvant versus adjuvant chemoradiation groups, positive margins were decreased (3% vs. 63%, p<0.001) as was pathologic nodal positivity (23% vs. 91%, p<0.001). After median follow up of 13.3 months, median locoregional control for neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemoradiation was 7.7 and 7.2 months respectively (p=0.12) and for the definitive group was 1.2 months (p=0.014 when compared to the surgical cohort). One year overall survival was improved with neoadjuvant compared to adjuvant chemoradiation but was not significant (94% vs. 82%, p=0.2); one year survival for the definitive group was 59% (p=0.03 when compared to the surgical cohort). Conclusions Neoadjuvant chemoradiation remains a promising approach for non-metastatic pancreatic cancer to improve resectability and pathologic and clinical findings. CT may not fully demonstrate the effectiveness of neoadjuvant treatment.
Neuromorphic computing's yesterday, today, and tomorrow an evolutional view

Neuromorphic computing was originally referred to as the hardware that mimics neuro-biological architectures to implement models of neural systems. The concept was then extended to the computing systems that can run bio-inspired computing models, e.g., neural networks and deep learning networks. In recent years, the rapid growth of cognitive applications and the limited processing capability of conventional von Neumann architecture on these applications motivated worldwide research on neuromorphic computing systems. In this paper, we review the evolution of neuromorphic computing technique in both computing model and hardware implementation from a historical perspective. Various implementation methods and practices are also discussed. Finally, we present some emerging technologies that may potentially change the landscape of neuromorphic computing in the future, e.g., new devices and interdisciplinary computing architectures.
Integration of bottom-up statistical models of loads on a residential feeder with the GridLAB-D distribution system simulator, and applications

Management of power flow at the distribution level will undergo major changes in coming years as a result of increasing penetration of distributed generation, storage and enhanced capability to control loads. Better management is especially important for the purpose of improving resilience of power delivery, for example in the case where part of the distribution system islands during a blackout to provide service to critical loads. To model such situations, an accurate description of power flow must be coupled to an accurate description how customers use electricity services. Here, a co-simulation involving a bottom-up residential load synthesis framework and the GridLAB-D distribution system simulator is described. An example based on a real distribution feeder, combining residential loads, a set of critical loads, including a hospital, a supermarket and a water treatment plant, as well as a large battery and a distribution-level solar array, is used to demonstrate the combined capabilities of the customer load and distribution models. The example shows how demand-response behavior can be modeled with the co-simulation. An enhanced capacity to integrate human behavior models with power flow simulators will become essential for designing distribution management systems, as grid modernization leads to more customer-owned devices that can be used to match generation and load.