cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Student-generated e-learning for clinical education.

Summary Background Within clinical education, e-learning facilitates a standardised learning experience to augment the clinical experience while enabling learner and teacher flexibility. With the shift of students from consumers to creators, student-generated content is expanding within higher education; however, there is sparse literature evaluating the impact of student-developed e-learning within clinical education. The aim of this study was to implement and evaluate a student-developed e-learning clinical module series within ambulatory care clinical pharmacy experiences. Methods Three clinical e-learning modules were developed by students for use prior to clinical experiences. E-learning modules were created by fourth-year professional pharmacy students and reviewed by pharmacy faculty members. A pre-/post-assessment was performed to evaluate knowledge comprehension before and after participating in the e-learning modules. Additionally, a survey on student perceptions of this educational tool was performed at the end of the clinical experience. There is sparse literature evaluating the impact of student-developed e-learning within clinical education Results Of the 31 students eligible for study inclusion, 94 per cent participated in both the pre- and post-assessments. The combined post-assessment score was significantly improved after participating in the student-developed e-learning modules (p = 0.008). The student perception survey demonstrated positive perceptions of e-learning within clinical education. Discussion Student-generated e-learning was able to enhance knowledge and was positively perceived by learners. As e-learning continues to expand within health sciences education, students can be incorporated into the development and execution of this educational tool.
Analysis on all death causes of residents in Yunlong District of Xuzhou City in 2010

[Objective]To understand the situation of disease and death of residents in Yunlong District of Xuzhou City in 2010,and provide evidence for the government and relevant departments of health decision-making and evaluation of disease prevention and control effects.[Methods]The death card reported with Yunlong District household register in Xuzhou City in the system of China Disease Prevention and Control Information of 2010 were analyzed statistically.Deaths are coded and classified according to "International Classification of Diseases"(ICD-10).Data processing procedures was Death Reg "Medical Death Registration System" of 2005.[Results]The crude death rate of this region in 2010 was 577.57/100 000,the standard mortality rate was 507.60/100 000,the top 5causes of death were cerebrovascular disease,malignant tumor,heart disease,respiratory disease and injury and poisoning.The external injury and poisoning,malignant tumor had great impact on the potential years of life the mean value was19.91 years and 7.9 years,respectively.[Conclusion]Chronic disease and injury are the major causes of death in Yunlong District.In order to reduce the mortality rate of residents radically,health education and behavioral intervention should be enhanced to reduce the incidence of chronic disease and injury.
Morphology and moleculer identification of anopheline mosquitoes in Hainan province

Objective To identify anopheline mosquitoes in Hainan province based on morphological and molecular characteristics. Methods Anopheline adults and larval specimens were collected from four different geographic locations in Hainan province. The adults were morphologically identified,and the rDNA-ITS2 and 28S-D3 fragments of selected adults and larvae were amplified and sequenced for molecular identification. Results The morphological identification of 336 anopheline adults revealed nine species,predominantly Anopheles vagus,which comprised 81.55%. Thirty-seven ITS2 and 41 D3 sequences were amplified. Blast results were consistent with morphological identification;excluding one An. aconitus identified as An. minimus. Molecular identification verified An. sinensis,An. vagus,An. kochi and other anopheline species(highly homogeneous with An. sundaicus and An. subpictus) . Double peaks of one(G/A) and two(A/T) bases were found within the ITS2 sequences of An. vagus and An. minimus and three(G/A) and one(G/A) bases were observed within the D3 sequences of An. vagus and An. kochi. Conclusion The morphological and molecular identification of anopheline mosquitoes is reliable and feasible but suggests ongoing cryptic speciation in An. vagus,An. minimus and An. kochi.
The Design of Pipe Supports and Hangers in Chemical Plant Installations

It was shown that the installation of pipes supports and hangers in chemical engineering devices design should strictly comply with the correct method and selection principles for supports and hangers installation,the space between supports or hangers should not exceed the allowable value of pipe rigidity and meet the flexibility requirement of the piping system.Selection principles of supports and hangers were described in detail.The effects of supports and hangers on both primary and secondary stresses of the pipes and the importance of correct installation of supports and hangers in piping design were also described..
Merestinib blocks MNK kinase activity in acute myeloid leukemia progenitors and exhibits antileukemic effects in vitro and in vivo

Mitogen-activated protein kinase interacting protein kinases (Mnks) play important roles in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by regulating eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) activation. Inhibiting Mnk1/2-induced phosphorylation of eIF4E may represent a unique approach for the treatment of AML. We provide evidence for antileukemic effects of merestinib, an orally bioavailable multikinase inhibitor with suppressive effects on Mnk activity. Our studies show that merestinib effectively blocks eIF4E phosphorylation in AML cells and suppresses primitive leukemic progenitors from AML patients in vitro and in an AML xenograft model in vivo. Our findings provide evidence for potent preclinical antileukemic properties of merestinib and support its clinical development for the treatment of patients with AML.
Minority Stress and the Risk of Unwanted Sexual Experiences in LGBQ Undergraduates

Sexual assault is prevalent among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) college students, but its relationship to anti-LGBQ stigma has not been established. The goal of the present study was to determine whether minority stress, specifically internalized homophobia, predicted unwanted sexual experiences among LGBQ undergraduates (N = 763), whether routine behaviors (number of consensual sexual partners and alcohol use) mediated this relationship, and whether sense of LGBTQ community was a protective factor. Significant proportions of sexual minority men (10 %), women (18 %), and non-binary or transitioning students (19 %) reported an unwanted sexual experience since entering college. Internalized homophobia was associated with greater risk of unwanted sexual experiences. It also had a negative indirect effect on unwanted sexual experience risk through a negative association with number of sexual partners. Alcohol use did not mediate the relationship between internalized homophobia and unwanted sexual experiences. Sense of LGBTQ community was associated with lower risk, mediated by lower levels of internalized homophobia. The relationships between internalized homophobia and unwanted sexual experience risk were similar for women and men. These findings demonstrate that minority stress increases LGBQ students’ risk of sexual victimization and that in-group social relationships can mitigate this risk. We argue that minority stress is an important risk factor for sexual violence. Violence prevention interventions should attempt to reduce internalized homophobia, and colleges and high schools should establish LGBQ-affirming social climates and provide resources for LGBQ students, including targeted violence prevention efforts and programs that foster a sense of supportive community.
3D finite element modelling of force transmission and particle fracture of sand

Abstract Global compressive loading of granular media causes rearrangements of particles into a denser configuration. Under 1D compression, researchers observed that particles initially translate and rotate which lead to more contacts between particles and the development of force chains to resist applied loads. Particles within force chains resist most of the applied loads while neighbor particles provide lateral support to prevent particles within force chains from buckling. Several experimental and numerical models have been proposed in the literature to characterize force chains within granular materials. This paper presents a 3D finite element (FE) model that simulates 1D compression experiment on F-75 Ottawa sand. The FE mesh of particles closely matched 3D physical shape of sand particles that were acquired using 3D synchrotron micro-computed tomography (SMT) technique. The paper presents a quantitative assessment of the model, in which evolution of force chains, fracture modes, and stress-strain relationships showed an excellent agreement with experimental measurements reported by Cil et al. Alshibli (2017).
Improving PrEP Implementation Through Multilevel Interventions: A Synthesis of the Literature

There are many challenges to accessing PrEP and thus low uptake in the United States. This review (2007–2017) of PrEP implementation identified barriers to PrEP and interventions to match those barriers. The final set of articles (n = 47) included content on cognitive aspects of HIV service providers and individuals at risk for infection, reviews, and case studies. Cognitive barriers and interventions regarding patients and providers included knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about PrEP. The “purview paradox” was identified as a key barrier—HIV specialists often do not see HIV-negative patients, while primary care physicians, who often see uninfected patients, are not trained to provide PrEP. Healthcare systems barriers included lack of communication about, funding for, and access to PrEP. The intersection between PrEP-stigma, HIV-stigma, transphobia, homophobia, and disparities across gender, racial, and ethnic groups were identified; but few interventions addressed these barriers. We recommend multilevel interventions targeting barriers at multiple socioecological domains.
Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization of DNA Probes in the Interphase and Metaphase Stages of the Cell Cycle

In the past decade, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) has been used routinely in detecting molecular abnormalities in the interphase and metaphase stages of the cell cycle. Many of the molecular anomalies which are detected in this manner are diagnostic of a prenatal, postnatal, or neoplastic genetic disorder. With the continuous isolation of commercially available DNA probes specific to a particular chromosome region, FISH analysis has become standardized in its ability to detect characteristic chromosomal anomalies in association with genetic and neoplastic diseases. In recent years, FISH has also become automated to accommodate the increased volume of slide preparations necessary for the number of DNA probes needed to detect characteristic molecular anomalies in cancer tissues and bone marrow samples. FISH technology provides essential information to the physician regarding the diagnosis, response to treatment, and ultimately the prognosis of their patients' disorder. It has become an important source of information routinely used in conjunction with chromosome analyses, and presently to confirm molecular alterations detected by array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) analyses. In this chapter we describe the methods for performing FISH analyses in order to determine the presence or the absence of genetic abnormalities which define whether the patient has either a genetic syndrome or malignant disease.
Heat Shock Proteins and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Heat shock proteins (HSPs), a highly conserved family of stress response proteins, play a very important role in traumatic stress associated with Post-traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD), a psychiatric disorder observed in a high number of combat veterans and in others exposed to natural disasters, traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, etc. In this chapter, we will briefly review the expression of HSPs in the central nervous system (CNS) and discuss the underlying molecular mechanisms of HSPs in PTSD. We will also present evidence regarding the possible role of HSPs in glucocorticoid receptor (GR) trafficking and in the regulation of p11, a PTSD-associated protein. Advances in the understanding of the functions of HSPs have reached a point where clinical trials are warranted to determine the role of HSPs in the treatment and diagnosis of PTSD
The Integration of Pharmacodynamics and Pharmacokinetics in Rational Drug Development

Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analyses have been found to be valuable components of new drug development programs. This chapter will describe developments in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies that have taken place in recent years. An understanding of the relationship between pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and the integration of each type of study will allow even greater contributions to drug development and pharmacological research.
A Comparative Analysis of Online versus Traditional Teaching of Environmental Literacy Using Participatory Action Research.

This dissertation examined the question, "how does a traditional lecture/lab general education course compare to an online format course for developing environmental literacy in a university general education course when participatory action research (PAR) is incorporated into both courses?" I gathered data using pre and post surveys, which measured ecological knowledge, beliefs, and attitude and behaviors. I used participatory action research to obtain qualitative data through focus groups which met 3 times during a semester. Quantitative data were generalized and showed increases in all areas examined in both courses, face-to-face and online. Students reported enjoying having a voice in their educational experience, enjoyed many types of student-centered learning methods, and felt that student-centered learning and their participation in the participatory action research focus groups contributed to their environmental literacy. The quantitative data showed that students in both classes scored higher on the post-survey in the areas of beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes and behaviors. On average, students in the online course increased in the area of "beliefs" by 8 points and the students in the on-campus course increased by 6 points. In the "knowledge" area the online course students, on average increased by 3.5 points and the on-campus by 3 points. In the area of "attitudes" the online students increased by 6 points and the on-campus course by 3 points. Total gains in environmental literacy in the online course were 17.5 points and in the on-campus course 12 points. Based on the qualitative data, the use of participatory action research was also effective in increasing environmental literacy rates. The qualitative data suggest that student involvement in their education helps engage and empower students, therefore increasing their learning and in this case their environmental literacy. Based on this study, both platforms of education are effective in increasing environmental literacy and the data suggest that involvement of students in their education increases their learning through empowerment.
Bimodal porous carbon cathode and prelithiated coalesced carbon onion anode for ultrahigh power energy efficient lithium ion capacitors

Abstract Lithium ion capacitors made using prelithiated coalesced carbon onion based anode showed excellent high energy and power performance with time constant in the order of ∼1.45s. The interconnected carbon onion microstructure facilitated both rapid electron and ion transport thereby minimizing the overall resistance. Additionally, high specific capacitance was achieved through control of pore size distribution in high surface area carbons derived from polyfurfuryl alcohol based polymer blends. The fabricated capacitors can be charged and discharged in less than 30s between 2.2V − 4V with energy efficiencies >90%. The maximum achievable energy density was 120 Wh/kg with the capacitor retaining 77 Wh/kg even at a high power density of 11 kW/kg. The capacitors also demonstrated excellent cycling stability with 80% capacitance retention over 21000 cycles along with good thermal stability up to 60 °C.
Seasonal variations of Pb-210 and Po-210 concentrations in an oligotrophic lake

In order to examine spatial and temporal variability during the seasonal cycle of the oligotrophic Crystal Lake, Wisconsin, vertical distribution measurements of Pb-210 and Po-210 in both the dissolved and particulate phases were conducted. Mass balance considerations indicate that the removal rates of the two isotopes from the water column to the sediment vary temporally by nearly an order of magnitude. The mean removal residence time was estimated to be 0.095 yr for Pb-210 and 0.26 yr for Po-210, suggesting a difference in the extent of water column recycling. Calculations indicate a cyclic response of the water column Po-210 inventory which corresponds to successive time periods when there were net losses or gains; this response may be due to rapid biological removal and subsequent release from the sediment of freshly deposited Po-210.
An evaluation of Tiron (sodium 4,5-dihydroxybenzene-1,3-disulfonate) as a rescue agent for the nephropathy induced by uranyl fluoride (UO2F2) in rats

Tiron (sodium 4,5-dihydroxybenzene-1,3-disulfonate) was tested as a potential rescue agent for the nephropathy induced by uranyl fluoride (UO2F2) in rats. When uranyl fluoride was administered (i.v.) to male Sprague-Dawley rats at a dose that delivered 250 micrograms U/kg, moderate to severe cellular necrosis occurred in pars recta segments of proximal tubules in the cortex and outer stripe of the outer medulla of the rats' kidneys within four days after treatment. The severity of renal tubular injury was not significantly diminished when rats were given a 10, 100 or 1,000 mg/kg dose of Tiron (i.p.) 30 minutes after the administration of uranyl fluoride. No obvious protection was noted even when the rats were given a 1,000 mg/kg dose of Tiron 15, 30 and 90 minutes after the administration of uranyl fluoride. Therefore, Tiron does not appear to provide rats substantial protection against a dose of uranyl fluoride that induces moderate to severe renal injury.
Can we teach students to think like scientists while learning science

In the past 20 years the educational community has accumulated enough data to say with conviction thatinteractive engagement methods lead to better student learning gains than traditional transmission-modemethods (MICHAEL, 2006; FREEMAN et al., 2014). As MITCHELL WALDROP (2015) said “At this point itis unethical to teach in any other way.” But what is this way? There are many models of interactive engagement methods. One popular approach is the “flipped classroom” (FULTON, 2012). In the flipped classroom students read the textbook (or watch a video with the instructor explaining the material), then come to class and discuss what they read through answering questions posed by the instructor. They often work in pairs and participate in voting for the best answer. An example of a flipped classroom in physics education is the method of Peer Instruction (MAZUR, 1997). While the students in these classrooms work collaboratively answering questions and the professor limits lecturing to a minimum, the knowledge that students begin with comes from authority. Students get acquainted with physics concepts by reading the book or watching a video with an authority figure on the screen. While such methods lead to more learning than traditional lecturing, what message about physics are they sending to the students? One answer is that science is an area of study that can be learned by reading the book and discussing what you read in class. Is this the message we want our students to get from our science classes?
The Social and Psychological Characteristics of Norm Deviants: A Field Study in a Small Cohesive University Campus

People who deviate from the established norms of their social group can clarify group boundaries, strengthen group cohesion, and catalyze group and broader social change. Yet social psychologists have recently neglected the study of deviants. We conducted in-depth interviews of Princeton University upperclassmen who deviated from a historical and widely known Princeton norm: joining an “eating club,” a social group that undergraduates join at the end of their sophomore year. We explored the themes of these interviews with two rounds of surveys during the semester when students decide whether to join an eating club (pilot survey, N = 408; and a random subsample of the pilot survey with 90% takeup, N = 212). The surveys asked: what are the social and psychological antecedents of deviance from norms? The data suggest that deviance is a pattern: compared to those who conform, students who deviate by not joining clubs report a history of deviance and of feeling different from the typical member of their social group. They also feel less social belonging and identification with Princeton and its social environment. Students who deviate are lower in self-monitoring, but otherwise are comparable to students who conform in terms of personality traits measured by the Big Five, and of their perception of the self as socially awkward, independent, or rebellious. While some of these findings replicate past research, worth further exploration is the role of previous experience with deviance and its meaning for individuals as they decide whether to deviate.
Generating Representative Headlines for News Stories

Millions of news articles are published online every day, which can be overwhelming for readers to follow. Grouping articles that are reporting the same event into news stories is a common way of assisting readers in their news consumption. However, it remains a challenging research problem to efficiently and effectively generate a representative headline for each story. Automatic summarization of a document set has been studied for decades, while few studies have focused on generating representative headlines for a set of articles. Unlike summaries, which aim to capture most information with least redundancy, headlines aim to capture information jointly shared by the story articles in short length and exclude information specific to each individual article. In this work, we study the problem of generating representative headlines for news stories. We develop a distant supervision approach to train large-scale generation models without any human annotation. The proposed approach centers on two technical components. First, we propose a multi-level pre-training framework that incorporates massive unlabeled corpus with different quality-vs.-quantity balance at different levels. We show that models trained within the multi-level pre-training framework outperform those only trained with human-curated corpus. Second, we propose a novel self-voting-based article attention layer to extract salient information shared by multiple articles. We show that models that incorporate this attention layer are robust to potential noises in news stories and outperform existing baselines on both clean and noisy datasets. We further enhance our model by incorporating human labels, and show that our distant supervision approach significantly reduces the demand on labeled data. Finally, to serve the research community, we publish the first manually curated benchmark dataset on headline generation for news stories, NewSHead, which contains 367K stories (each with 3-5 articles), 6.5 times larger than the current largest multi-document summarization dataset.
Mechanical and viscoelastic properties of wrinkled graphene reinforced polymer nanocomposites – Effect of interlayer sliding within graphene sheets

Abstract Multilayer graphene sheets (MLGSs) are promising nano-reinforcements that can effectively enhance the mechanical properties of polymer matrices. Despite many studies on MLGSs-reinforced polymer nanocomposites, the effect of wrinkles formed in MLGSs on the reinforcement effect and the viscoelastic properties of polymer nanocomposites has remained largely unknown. In this study, building upon previously developed coarse-grained models of MLGSs and poly(methyl methacrylate) coupled with molecular dynamics simulations, we have systematically investigated nanocomposites with different numbers of graphene layers and various wrinkle configurations. We find that with decreasing degree of waviness and increasing numbers of layers, the elastic modulus of the nanocomposites increases. Interestingly, we observe a sudden stress drop during shear deformation of certain wrinkled MLGSs-reinforced nanocomposites. We further conduct small amplitude oscillatory shear simulations on these nanocomposites and find that the nanocomposites with these specific wrinkle configurations also show peculiarly large loss tangents, indicating an increasing capability of energy dissipation. These behaviors are attributed to the activation of the interlayer sliding among these wrinkled MLGSs, as their interlayer shear strengths are indeed lower than flat MLGSs measured by steered molecular dynamics technique. Our study demonstrates that the viscoelastic properties and deformation mechanisms of polymer nanocomposites can be tuned through MLGS wrinkle engineering.
Thermodynamically consistent thermoelastic plate and shell formulations for small deformation and small strain using non-classical continuum mechanics incorporating internal rotations

The work presented in a recent paper by the authors [35] for a thermodynamically consistent and kinematic assumption free plate and shell formulation for small deformation and small strain based on the conservation and balance laws of classical continuum mechanics (CCM) is extended here for non-classical continuum mechanics (NCCM). This formulation incorporates additional physics due to internal rotations that arise due to the deformation gradient tensor. This physics is neglected in CCM, hence is absent in the plate and shell formulation of reference [35]. Consideration of this new physics requires modifications of the current balance laws as well as consideration of a new balance law “balance of moment of moments” (BMM) [2, 3]. Cauchy stress tensor becomes non-symmetric. Cauchy moment tensor is conjugate to the symmetric part of the rotation gradient tensor which exists now due to new physics. Balance of angular momenta yields additional three differential equations as part of the mathematical model. The new balance law (BMM) establishes symmetry of the Cauchy moment tensor. The new physics considered here exists in all deforming solid continua as it is due to the deformation gradient tensor, but is ignored in CCM. The consequence of this new physics is additional stiffness, hence additional strain energy storage and change in the time history of displacements and stress field compared to formulations based on CCM. The basic mathematical model for the plate and shell deformation consists of conservation and balance laws in $$\mathbb {R}^3$$ based on NCCM incorporating internal rotations. The associated finite element formulations for obtaining the solution of the mathematical model consists of : (i) geometry of the plate or shell described by the flat or curved middle surface (as done conventionally) and nodal vectors locating the top and bottom faces of the plate/shell (ii) the displacement field approximation that is p-version hierarchical in the plane as well as in the transverse direction (iii) integral form is constructed using Galerkin Method with Weak Form (GM/WF) and the corresponding element equations. The formulation presented here remains valid and accurate for thin as well as thick plate/shell and naturally reduces to the formulation of reference [35] based on classical continuum mechanics. Model problem studies and comparisons with the studies based on CCM formulation [35] will be presented in a follow up paper.
Is IV contrast necessary for MRI follow-up in children with abdominal neuroblastoma?

Abstract Purpose The safety of multiple doses of gadolinium-based MRI IV contrast has recently been called in to question. While the long-term safety is being investigated, here, we seek to determine if there is added value to the use of IV contrast for improving detection of tumoral recurrences in children with a history of abdominal neuroblastoma. Methods This is a retrospective review of children who underwent abdominal MRI with gadolinium contrast. One radiologist reviewer determined presence or absence of tumor, both before and after administration of IV contrast material and documented level of confidence when a finding was encountered. Change in reader confidence after the use of contrast was measured and fraction of missed lesions on pre-contrast was calculated. Liver and spleen lesions were documented separately. Results 453 MRI scans in 110 unique patients were reviewed. 65 patients were documented to have a total of 125 lesions, excluding liver, spleen and bones. There were 23 instances of contrast altering the radiologist's confidence and one lesion was missed without the use of contrast. Among liver and spleen, several hepatic lesions were seen only after contrast, but all were benign lesions. Conclusion In selected patients who are undergoing MRI for neuroblastoma, it may be reasonable to forgo the use of IV contrast.
Inpatient early intervention for serious mental illnesses and post-discharge criminal involvement in a high-volume psychiatric hospital setting.

Abstract Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) are at increased risk for arrest and incarceration relative to the same-community population without SMI. Publicly-funded inpatient psychiatric hospitals usually feature short lengths of stay and limited opportunities for extended services that might impact criminal justice involvement after discharge. This study examined the influence of an early intervention program for SMI at a high-volume public psychiatric hospital on involvement in the criminal justice system post-discharge. The Early Onset Treatment Program (EOTP) is an extended service intervention program for uninsured patients who are within 5 years of SMI onset. Criminal justice records (number of arrests with conviction, days of incarceration) were obtained for EOTP participants (n = 164) and comparison patients (n = 164) matched on demographics, diagnosis, and discharge date via propensity score matching. Data were zero-inflated and analyzed using hurdle models, controlling for prior arrests. The EOTP group was less likely to be convicted of at least one crime post-discharge (0 arrests vs. > 0, p
Abnormal Gait Recognition based on Integrated Gait Features in Machine Learning

Human gait has various movements by individuals and enables normal and abnormal gaits to be recognized by their characteristics. Gait abnormalities are the most common symptoms caused by various neurological disorders such as hemiparetic, myopathic, sciatic neuralgia, and Parkinson’s disease. Abnormal gaits from functional disorders have different types of characteristics. Based on the characteristics, we propose a gait abnormality recognition method that uses integrated gait features extracted from the individual’s walking movement using the Kinect depth camera. Diagnosing a detailed pathological level of the disorders requires a high knowledge of the physiological and pathological gait characteristics. Furthermore, it commonly requires a much complex environment and wearable sensors. However, using our proposed method, the initial characteristics of the gait disorders can be detected without the requirements. Thus, we build a k-NN classifier and an SVM classifier to classify abnormal gait from a walking person. In the result of our experiment, our proposed method with the gait features shows the potentiality for classifying gait abnormalities.
Complementary Ensemble Learning.

To achieve high performance of a machine learning (ML) task, a deep learning-based model must implicitly capture the entire distribution from data. Thus, it requires a huge amount of training samples, and data are expected to fully present the real distribution, especially for high dimensional data, e.g., images, videos. In practice, however, data are usually collected with a diversity of styles, and several of them have insufficient number of representatives. This might lead to uncertainty in models' prediction, and significantly reduce ML task performance. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive study on this problem by looking at model uncertainty. From this, we derive a simple but efficient technique to improve performance of state-of-the-art deep learning models. Specifically, we train auxiliary models which are able to complement state-of-the-art model uncertainty. As a result, by assembling these models, we can significantly improve the ML task performance for types of data mentioned earlier. While slightly improving ML classification accuracy on benchmark datasets (e.g., 0.2% on MNIST), our proposed method significantly improves on limited data (i.e., 1.3% on Eardrum and 3.5% on ChestXray).
Occupancy Detection Using a Temperature-sensitive Adaptive Algorithm

By using a liquid crystal shutter to periodically modulate the infrared energy received by the on-board passive infrared (PIR) sensor, the synchronized low energy electronically chopped PIR (SLEEPIR) sensor recently developed by our team can detect stationary occupancy. However, the fixed threshold value-based detection accuracy is largely dependent on environmental settings, such as the room and floor surface temperature. In this letter, we first developed a thermoelectric model to quantify the environmental impact on the threshold value and then created an adaptive algorithm to generate temperature-sensitive threshold values to compensate environmental effects. We validated our thermoelectric model tested our adaptive algorithm in two uncontrolled environmental settings, and results show that the detection accuracy reaches over 92%, which is much higher than that using the fixed threshold approach.
Summary Remarks and Recommendations

After over a decade of steady decline in the number of traffic fatalities per vehicle mile traveled, the fatality rate increased for three consecutive years beginning in 1961. Traffic fatalities increased by 25 percent over the three year period. During congressional hearings it was made clear to all that traffic accidents were a major cause of accidental death and a major cause of all deaths among children and young adults. The perception that these traffic deaths represented a social problem led to the passage of two laws which are still in effect. The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 represented the new social regulatory, consumer protection, approach through promulgation of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards designed primarily to increase vehicle crashworthiness and avoid injury due to the “second collision.” The Highway Safety Act of 1966 focused on highway design, traffic control and driver behavior using the traditional approach of federal grants to states for safety programs. The mandate in both acts was to reduce the fatality rate and protect the public from “unreasonable risks.”
The Education Center at The Wall and the Rewriting of History

Abstract This article examines plans for “The Education Center at The Wall,” a new facility on the National Mall that will present the history of the Vietnam War as a series of military engagements devoid of political opposition. I argue that this commemorative site promises the intellectual weight of a museum while providing only the emotional impact of a patriotic shrine. By focusing on individual acts of heroism and sacrifice by American soldiers, the Education Center will enable visitors to re-imagine the Vietnam War, which was once regarded as an American tragedy, as both a “good war” and the ennobling “lost cause” of the twentieth century.
On Anonymous Electronic Cash and Crime

Anonymous electronic cash systems can be vulnerable to criminal abuse. Two approaches were suggested for solving this problem. In an escrowed cash system users are given anonymity which can be lifted by trustees. In an amount-limited system each user enjoys unconditional anonymity but only for payments up to a limited amount during a given time-frame. In this paper we discuss the two approaches.
Messing with Common Sense

Defending Science -- Within Reason Between Scientism and Cynicism. by Susan Haack. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2003. 411 pp. $28. ISBN 1-59102-117-0. In an account written for both scientists and the public, the author explores issues of scientific evidence and method as well as the interdependence of science and society.
Enhancement of peripheral nerve regeneration due to treadmill training and electrical stimulation is dependent on androgen receptor signaling

Moderate exercise in the form of treadmill training and brief electrical nerve stimulation both enhance axon regeneration after peripheral nerve injury. Different regimens of exercise are required to enhance axon regeneration in male and female mice (Wood et al.: Dev Neurobiol 72 (2012) 688-698), and androgens are suspected to be involved. We treated mice with the androgen receptor blocker, flutamide, during either exercise or electrical stimulation, to evaluate the role of androgen receptor signaling in these activity-based methods of enhancing axon regeneration. The common fibular (CF) and tibial (TIB) nerves of thy-1-YFP-H mice, in which axons in peripheral nerves are marked by yellow fluorescent protein (YFP), were transected and repaired using CF and TIB nerve grafts harvested from non-fluorescent donor mice. Silastic capsules filled with flutamide were implanted subcutaneously to release the drug continuously. Exercised mice were treadmill trained 5 days/week for 2 weeks, starting on the third day post-transection. For electrical stimulation, the sciatic nerve was stimulated continuously for 1 h prior to nerve transection. After 2 weeks, lengths of YFP+ profiles of regenerating axons were measured from harvested nerves. Both exercise and electrical stimulation enhanced axon regeneration, but this enhancement was blocked completely by flutamide treatments. Signaling through androgen receptors is necessary for the enhancing effects of treadmill exercise or electrical stimulation on axon regeneration in cut peripheral nerves.
School violence: The effectiveness of a school resource officer program in a southern city

Abstract The safety of America’s school children is constantly being threatened by violence, drugs, alcohol, gang-related activities, and other social ills. It is becoming increasingly difficult for school administrators across the United States to provide youth with a safe learning environment. With the nation’s youth becoming increasingly exposed to violence in schools, it is important for school officials, community leaders, and community service workers to acknowledge and address school disciplinary problems. The School Resource Officer Program has been developed to help school officials cope with the growing incidence of school violence and to make the school environment safe and conducive to enriched learning. This study was designed to evaluate a School Resource Officer Program in a southern city and its impact on school violence and school disciplinary problems. The data revealed that the placement of police officers in city schools has a positive effect on school violence and disciplinary infractions. The total number of intermediate and major offenses in high schools and middle schools decreased from 3,267 in 1994–95 (before the School Resource Officers were permanently assigned to city schools) to 2,710 in 1995–96 (after the School Resource Officers were permanently assigned to city schools).
Regional neurohypophysial and hypothalamic blood flow in rats during hypercapnia

Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured in the neurohypophysis and hypothalamus in normocapnic and hypercapnic rats using [14C]isopropyliodoamphetamine. Rats were surgically prepared using nitrous oxide and halothane and placed in plaster restraining casts. Hypercapnia was produced by increasing the fractional concentration of inspired CO2 (FICO2). rCBF in normocapnic rats was higher in the paraventricular nucleus, supraoptic nucleus, median eminence, and neural lobe than rates previously measured by use of diffusible tracers. During hypercapnia blood flow increased linearly with arterial PCO2 (PACO2) in all regions except the median eminence and neural lobe, which were not affected by hypercapnia. When rats were pretreated with phentolamine (1 mg/kg) to block the alpha-adrenergic receptors, blood flow in the median eminence and neural lobe increased significantly during hypercapnia. We conclude that blood flow in the cell bodies of the paraventricular nucleus and supraoptic nucleus is regulated differently during hypercapnia than blood flow in the nerve terminals in the median eminence and neural lobe. Furthermore, vasodilation produced by increased CO2 is offset by alpha-receptor stimulation in the median eminence and neural lobe.
Fluid phase of solid tumors, circulating tumor cells in high definition

We have established a fluid phase biopsy approach that identifies circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the context of peripheral blood leukocytes, with no protein-based enrichment, and presents them in sufficiently high definition (HD) to satisfy diagnostic pathology image quality requirements. We refer to this technique as the HD-CTC assay and report on the use of this methodology to characterize the incidence of HD-CTCs in peripheral blood samples from a small cohort of metastatic cancer patients, including those with prostate cancer, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, along with set of normal controls. Importantly, we find HD-CTC clusters ranging from 2 HD-CTCs to greater than 30 HD-CTCs in the majority of the cancer patients in this cohort. As a case study, one patient was followed over time and both cytology from a solid tumor metastasis and the HD-CTCs were quantitatively characterized. This initial validation of an enrichment-free assay demonstrates the ability to identify significant numbers of HD-CTCs in a majority of patients in prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers. Due to the enrichment free approach, the HD-CTC assay has significant implications for determining the biology of cancer spread and therapy response in both the HD-CTC population and the populations of rare events that are outside of the strict HD-CTC definition but are still fully characterized and tracked in this assay. This fluid biopsy can then be used for routine pathology evaluation and additional molecular characterization. Future studies will investigate the clinical utility of this methodology.
Electrical, magnetic and biological effects: a systems model

Biological effects from electromagnetics are discussed. A summary of the leading interactions is presented. An electrical model which explains the biological interactions in electrical terms is presented. Methods of mitigating the effect of power systems on biological systems are noted. An appendix provides a comprehensive mathematical development of the model components. >
Orientation-specific joining of AID-initiated DNA breaks promotes antibody class switching

During B-cell development, RAG endonuclease cleaves immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) V, D, and J gene segments and orchestrates their fusion as deletional events that assemble a V(D)J exon in the same transcriptional orientation as adjacent Cμ constant region exons. In mice, six additional sets of constant region exons (CHs) lie 100-200 kilobases downstream in the same transcriptional orientation as V(D)J and Cμ exons. Long repetitive switch (S) regions precede Cμ and downstream CHs. In mature B cells, class switch recombination (CSR) generates different antibody classes by replacing Cμ with a downstream CH (ref. 2). Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) initiates CSR by promoting deamination lesions within Sμ and a downstream acceptor S region; these lesions are converted into DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) by general DNA repair factors. Productive CSR must occur in a deletional orientation by joining the upstream end of an Sμ DSB to the downstream end of an acceptor S-region DSB. However, the relative frequency of deletional to inversional CSR junctions has not been measured. Thus, whether orientation-specific joining is a programmed mechanistic feature of CSR as it is for V(D)J recombination and, if so, how this is achieved is unknown. To address this question, we adapt high-throughput genome-wide translocation sequencing into a highly sensitive DSB end-joining assay and apply it to endogenous AID-initiated S-region DSBs in mouse B cells. We show that CSR is programmed to occur in a productive deletional orientation and does so via an unprecedented mechanism that involves in cis Igh organizational features in combination with frequent S-region DSBs initiated by AID. We further implicate ATM-dependent DSB-response factors in enforcing this mechanism and provide an explanation of why CSR is so reliant on the 53BP1 DSB-response factor.
Generative topographic mapping by deterministic annealing

Abstract Generative Topographic Mapping (GTM) is an important technique for dimension reduction which has been successfully applied to many fields. However the usual Expectation-Maximization (EM) approach to GTM can easily get stuck in local minima and so we introduce a Deterministic Annealing (DA) approach to GTM which is more robust and less sensitive to initial conditions so we do not need to use many initial values to find good solutions. DA has been very successful in clustering, hidden Markov Models and Multidimensional Scaling but typically uses a fixed cooling schemes to control the temperature of the system. We propose a new cooling scheme which can adaptively adjust the choice of temperature in the middle of process to find better solutions. Our experimental measurements suggest that deterministic annealing improves the quality of GTM solutions.
Periodic Extinctions of Transposable Elements in Bacterial Lineages: Evidence from Intragenomic Variation in Multiple Genomes

Most previous work on the evolution of mobile DNA was limited by incomplete sequence information. Whole genome sequences allow us to overcome this limitation. I study the nucleotide diversity of prominent members of five insertion sequence families whose transposition activity is encoded by a single transposase gene. Eighteen among 376 completely sequenced bacterial genomes and plasmids carry between 3 and 20 copies of a given insertion sequence. I show that these copies generally show very low DNA divergence. Specifically, more than 68% of the transposase genes are identical within a genome. The average number of amino acid replacement substitutions at amino acid replacement sites is Ka = 0.013, that at silent sites is Ks = 0.1. This low intragenomic diversity stands in stark contrast to a much higher divergence of the same insertion sequences among distantly related genomes. Gene conversion among protein-coding genes is unlikely to account for this lack of diversity. The relation between transposition frequencies and silent substitution rates suggests that most insertion sequences in a typical genome are evolutionarily young and have been recently acquired. They may undergo periodic extinction in bacterial lineages. By implication, they are detrimental to their host in the long run. This is also suggested by the highly skewed and patchy distribution of insertion sequences among genomes. In sum, one can think of insertion sequences as slow-acting infectious diseases of cell lineages.