cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Increased male reproductive success in Ts65Dn “Down syndrome” mice

The Ts65Dn mouse is trisomic for orthologs of about half the genes on Hsa21. A number of phenotypes in these trisomic mice parallel those in humans with trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), including cognitive deficits due to hippocampal malfunction that are sufficiently similar to human that “therapies” developed in Ts65Dn mice are making their way to human clinical trials. However, the impact of the model is limited by availability. Ts65Dn cannot be completely inbred and males are generally considered to be sterile. Females have few, small litters and they exhibit poor care of offspring, frequently abandoning entire litters. Here we report identification and selective breeding of rare fertile males from two working colonies of Ts65Dn mice. Trisomic offspring can be propagated by natural matings or by in vitro fertilization (IVF) to produce large cohorts of closely related siblings. The use of a robust euploid strain as recipients of fertilized embryos in IVF or as the female in natural matings greatly improves husbandry. Extra zygotes cultured to the blastocyst stage were used to create trisomic and euploid embryonic stem (ES) cells from littermates. We developed parameters for cryopreserving sperm from Ts65Dn males and used it to produce trisomic offspring by IVF. Use of cryopreserved sperm provides additional flexibility in the choice of oocyte donors from different genetic backgrounds, facilitating rapid production of complex crosses. This approach greatly increases the power of this important trisomic model to interrogate modifying effects of trisomic or disomic genes that contribute to trisomic phenotypes.
Unwinding of origin-specific structures by human replication protein A occurs in a two-step process

The simian virus 40 (SV40) large tumor antigen(T antigen) has been shown to induce the melting of 8 bp within the SV40 origin of replication. We found previously that a 'pseudo-origin' DNA molecule (PO-8) containing a central 8 nt single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) bubble was efficiently bound and denatured by human replication protein A (hRPA). To understand the mechanism by which hRPA denatures these pseudo-origin molecules, as well as the role that hRPA plays during the initiation of SV40 DNA replication, we characterized the key parameters for the pseudo-origin binding and denaturation reactions. The dissociation constant of hRPA binding to PO-8 was observed to be 7.7 x 10(-7) M, compared to 9.0 x 10(-8) M for binding to an identical length ssDNA under the same reaction conditions. The binding and denaturation of PO-8 occurred with different kinetics with the rate of binding determined to be approximately 4-fold greater than the rate of denaturation. Although hRPA binding to PO-8 was relatively temperature independent, an increase in incubation temperature from 4 to 37 degreesC stimulated denaturation nearly 4-fold. At 37 degreesC, denaturation occurred on approximately 1/3 of those substrate molecules bound by hRPA, showing that hRPA can bind the pseudo-origin substrate without causing its complete denaturation. Tests of other single-stranded DNA-binding proteins (SSBs) over a range of SSB concentrations revealed that the ability of the SSBs to bind the pseudo-origin substrate, rather than denature the substrate, correlated best with the known ability of these SSBs to support the T antigen-dependent SV40 origin-unwinding activity. Our data indicate that hRPA first binds the DNA substrate using a combination of contacts with the ssDNA bubble and duplex DNA flanks and then, on only a fraction of the bound substrate molecules, denatures the DNA substrate.
New Parents in a Changing World

Becoming a parent is a profound psychological and existential event. It is an experience that can potentially change one’s perspective from the trivial preoccupations of daily life to an attitude of greater self-awareness. Often, deciding to parent raises issues of personal identity, encourages a reevaluation of values, goals, and aspirations, and involves a reordering of priorities. Irvin Yalom, the existential psychotherapist, uses the term boundary situation to describe events “that propel one into a confrontation with one’s existential situation in the world.” For Yalom, the prototypic boundary situation is death awareness, but his description could just as readily apply to birth awareness. Giving birth, like facing death, potentially creates a massive shift in the way one lives in the world. Yalom sees decisions as boundary experiences as well. He writes: “Decision, especially an irreversible decision, is a boundary situation in the same way that awareness of ‘my death’ is a boundary situation. Both act as a catalyst to shift one from the everyday attitude to the ontological attitude—that is, to a mode of being in which one is mindful of being” (1980, p. 319).
Radiative Lifetime Measurement of the Ba + Metastable D 3 / 2 State

The extremely long lifetimes of the metastable $D$ states of the ${\mathrm{Ba}}^{+}$ ion make it difficult to measure them accurately due to their high sensitivity to collisional effects. Thus a discrepancy exists between theories and experiments for the ${\mathrm{Ba}}^{+}$ ${D}_{3/2}$ state. We have measured the ${D}_{3/2}$ lifetime under a nearly ideal condition, i.e., single trapped ${\mathrm{Ba}}^{+}$ ions in ultrahigh vacuum. The obtained value of $79.8\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}4.6\mathrm{s}$ resolves the existing discrepancy. The collisional quenching is found insignificant in our experiment, but there are indications of a non-negligible fine-structure mixing effect.
Achieving medication safety during acute kidney injury: the impact of clinical decision support and real-time pharmacy surveillance

The utilization of clinical decision support (CDS) is increasing among healthcare facilities that have implemented computerized physician order entry or electronic medical records. Formal prospective evaluation of CDS implementations rarely occurs, and misuse or flaws in system design are often not recognized or corrected. Through retrospective nephrologist adjudication of acute kidney injury (AKI) CDS alerts, we identified patient and knowledgebase factors that contributed to inappropriate or false positive, alerts. We also estimated the rate of inappropriate provider responses, which occurred in the setting of both true and false positive alerts. We found that few alerts were determined to be inappropriate. Unintended adverse consequences, or inappropriate provider responses resulting from inappropriate alerts, were rare. Retrospective review often occurs too late to make critical corrections or initiate redesign efforts. We developed a real-time, web-based surveillance tool for nephrotoxic and renally cleared medications that integrates provider responses to CDS recommendations with relevant medication ordering, administration, and therapeutic monitoring data. The surveillance view displays all currently admitted, eligible patients and provides brief demographics with triggering order, laboratory, and CDS interactions to facilitate the identification of high-risk patient conditions, such as an imminent adverse drug event (ADE) or potential ADE (pADE). The patient detail view displays a detailed timeline of orders, order administrations, laboratory values, and CDS interactions for an individual patient and allows users to understand provider actions and patient condition changes occurring in conjunction with CDS interactions. We evaluated the surveillance tool with a randomized trial, where intervention patients were monitored on the surveillance tool daily by a clinical pharmacist and control patients received only existing CDS and standard of care. Despite interventions made by the study pharmacist from the surveillance tool, we found no significant change in the timeliness of provider modifications or discontinuations of targeted medications or occurrence of pADEs or ADEs. We concluded that clinical pharmacist surveillance of AKI-related medication alerts did not improve the timeliness or quality of provider responses or patient outcomes.
Synthesis and structures of cuprous triptycylthiolate complexes.

A synthesis of 1-(thioacetyl)triptycene (5), a convenient protected form of 1-(thiolato)triptycene [STrip]−, is described, a key transformation being the high yield conversion of tert-butyl 1-triptycenyl sulfide (8) to 5 by a protocol employing BBr3/AcCl. Syntheses of the two-coordinate copper(I) compounds [Bu4N][Cu(STrip)2], [Bu4N]10, and [(Cu(IMes)(STrip)] (13) proceed readily by chloride displacement from CuCl and [Cu(IMes)Cl], respectively. Reaction of 10 with Ph3SiSH or Me3SiI produces the heteroleptic species [Cu(STrip)(SSiPh3)]− (11) and [Cu(STrip)I]− (12), detected by mass spectrometry, in mixture with the homoleptic bis(thiolate) anions. Structural identification by X-ray crystallography of the ligand precursor molecules 9-(thioacetyl)anthracene (4, triclinic and orthorhombic polymorphs), tert-butyl 9-anthracenyl sulfide (7), 5, and tert-butyl 1-triptycenyl sulfide (8) are presented. Crystallographic characterization of bis(9-anthracenyl)sulfide (3), which features a C–S–C angle of 104.0° and twi...
Phonon Frequencies and Thermal Expansion of III-V Compounds

Thermal expansion is an important parameter for the design and manufacturing of dimensionally thermally stable opto-electronic integrated circuits and superlattices. In earlier work1, 2 we established the quantitative relationships between phonon frequencies and thermal expansion for Group IV semiconductors. In this paper we extend this approach to the III-V compounds GaAs, GaP, InP, GaSb, InAs, AlSb and InSb.
Analysis and Modeling of Electro-Mechanical Coupling in an Electroactive Polymer-Based Actuator

A non-linear constitutive model was formulated for ionic electroactive polymers (EAP) to describe the energetic coupling between electrical and mechanical domains. The polymer was modeled as a multi-port energy storage element with inputs from the electrical and mechanical domain. Using energy conservation methods, general relationships between stress, strain, voltage, and charge were determined. A solution to the uniaxial loading boundary condition was developed fully and compared to a linear model published by Madden and an electrochemical model published by Mazzoldi et al. Experimental results from a conducting polymer actuator composed of polypyrrole were used to validate the electro-mechanical coupling model. It was found that the correlation between the model and experimental data was very good for strains up to 3% and applied voltages up to 1 Volt; these are within the typical operating range of polypyrrole. The model is sufficiently simply to allow real-time control while also exceeding the linear coupling models in its ability to predict polymer behavior in normal operating ranges.
Foot problems in the diabetic patient.

The most prevalent of the common foot problems of the diabetic patient are arterial insufficiency, neurotrophic disease, and infections. It is important to identify the lesion type because the treatment and prognosis of each is different. With proper examination, the extent of involvement of each type of lesion can usually be delineated. Effective patient education in prevention of injuries and infections is critical.
Treating infections in the newborn.

Newborns with severe infections may die quickly, and physicians usually must start treatment before they confirm the diagnosis or isolate the organism. If Escherichia coli or Klebsiella infection is suspected, start aqueous penicillin G and kanamycin. If a Pseudomonas infection seems probable, use polymyxin B sulfate. The same drugs are effective against organisms causing severe pneumonias, but in staphylococcal pneumonia, intramuscular bacitracin works best.
Terrorist Threat, Male Stereotypes, and Candidate Evaluations

How does the threat of terrorism affect evaluations of female (vs. male) political leaders, and do these effects vary by the politician’s partisanship? Using two national surveys, we document a propensity for the U.S. public to prefer male Republican leadership the most in times of security threat, and female Democratic leadership the least. We theorize a causal process by which terrorist threat influences the effect of stereotypes on candidate evaluations conditional on politician partisanship. We test this framework with an original experiment:a nationally representative sample was presented with a mock election that varied the threat context and the gender and partisanship of the candidates. We find that masculine stereotypes have a negative influence on both male and female Democratic candidates in good times (thus reaffirming the primacy of party stereotypes), but only on the female Democratic candidate when terror threat is primed. Republican candidates—both male and female—are unaffected by masculi...
Clinical features and management of severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis

Objective To discuss the clinical characteristic and treatment of severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Methods Thirteen patients were diagnosed as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis complicated with fatal complications. Their medical history, physical examination and laboratory examination were recorded in detail. The clinical characteristic and treatment were analyzed. Long-term follow-up was carried out. Results Thirteen patients were JIA, 9 patients were diagnosed as MAS, 6 with heart failure, 5 with acute encephalopathy, 4 with oliguria or renal failure, 2 with hepar failure,2 with respiratory failure, 9 with shock, 4 with DIC, 1 with septicemia complicated huge deep abscess, 4 with pleural effusion, 2 with pericardial effusion, 7 with pneumonia. 10 patients who complicated with important organ failure recovered within 1~2 weeks. Patients who complicated with severe hemorrhage or anemia recovered within 2 weeks. Liver and renal function test were absolutely normal after one month. Patients who complicated with spasm or coma recovered completely. Secondary epilepsy was not found in follow-up, and no MAS.Three patients died. Conclusions Severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis progresses rapidly, meanwhile involves many organs. Congestive heart failure, acute renal failure and acute encephalopathy are common. Macrophage activation syndrome is common. Large-dose hormone and integrate treatment are essential. The mortality rate of severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is high, but it may have a favorable prognosis if treated timely and appropriately.
"Wide or tall" and "sparse matrix dense matrix" multiplications

Sparse matrix dense matrix (SMDM) multiplications are useful in block Krylov or block Lanczos methods. SMDM computations are AU, and VA, multiplication of a large sparse m x n matrix A by a matrix V of k rows of length m or a matrix U of k columns of length n, k
The Role of Forensic Investigation Professionals in the Prevention of Fraud and Corruption in Developing Countries.

Fraud and corruption in developing countries is regarded as a way of life, norm in public service or a culture that cannot be wish away. Auditors concentrate of error detection and regards fraud and corruption as a secondary assignment in a given engagement. The primary role of Forensic Investigation Professionals (FIPs) or forensic accountants is to examine incidence of fraud in financial records. Auditors are fact witness, whereas Forensic investigation professionals or forensic accountants are expert witness not fact witness, they can testify in courts as expert witnesses for either the prosecution or the defense. This study evaluates the role of forensic investigation professionals in curbing the menace of fraud and corruption practice in developing countries using exploratory research design. Finding in the study point to the fact that forensic investigation professional plays a complimentary role to the government anti-fraud and anti-corruption agencies in strategies and policies to curb menace of corruption in the system. Also, finding shows that Forensic Investigation Professionals (FIPs) have significant role in curbing the menace of fraud and corruption in developing countries.
Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis in Neurosurgery

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is an encompassing term used to collectively refer to the syndromes of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). Extremity DVT classically presents as a painful, swollen, and erythematous limb, while PE manifests with shortness of breath, pleuritic chest pain, and tachycardia. Almost one million persons are affected by VTE in the United States annually causing almost 300,000 deaths, a third of which occur within a month of the diagnosis. Neurosurgical patients are at high risk for VTE. This is the most frequent systemic complication in these patients and it adds morbidity and mortality and extends the length of stay. It is the leading cause of preventable death in hospitalized patients. Prophylactic measures reduce the incidence of VTE, and both mechanical and pharmacological modalities are effective; however, while the former is largely without risk, the latter is associated with the risk of fresh or worsening cranial or spinal hemorrhage precluding its ubiquitous implementation. A nuanced approach to the problem of VTE in neurosurgical patients with identification of high-risk groups that benefit maximally from prophylactic measures is prudent to avoid complications. This manuscript details the epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, prevention, and management of VTE among neurosurgical patients.
Neuroimaging in Paraneoplastic Syndromes

Imaging the central nervous system is an important facet of diagnosing paraneoplastic neurological disorders. Many such disorders have characteristic imaging findings. However, even in syndromes without corollary imaging abnormalities, exclusion of additional or alternative diagnoses by neuraxis imaging is prudent. Here, we discuss the most commonly associated imaging abnormalities in such cases, as well as information on differentiation from common mimicking disorders. We also discuss imaging of the body for identification of a primary tumor in patients with suspected paraneoplastic disorders, including data for the most sensitive imaging modality.
Structure – Activity Relationships in Enkephalin Peptides

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the structure–activity relationships in enkephalin peptides. Selectivity effects of COOH-terminal extension appear to have been explored only in two series. It is found that Thr6 led to enhanced δ-preference and sequential extension to metorphamid, H-Tyr-Gly-Gly-Phe-Met-Arg-Arg-Val-NH2, led erratically to twice the potency in guinea pig ileum and much greater μ-selectivity than [Met]enkephalin. Many of the changes that have led to interesting new potency or selectivity affect not only the conformation but also the spatial requirements, the hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity balance, the electronic distribution, and the enzymic resistance of the peptide. Extension of the NH2 terminus is an alteration involving all the foregoing parameters. It has resulted in increased-selectivity when the extension is a five-carbon alkyl function. N-methylations of tyrosine have often led to modest increases in potency in vitro and on one occasion to an impressive increase in oral potency in vivo despite a loss of in vitro and subcutaneous potency. There were increases in μ-selectivity in those cases for which data are available. All other monoalkylations lead to very modest increases μ-preference and substantial decreases in potency and affinity.
Volatile metabolic diversity of Klebsiella pneumoniae in nutrient-replete conditions

Microorganisms catabolize carbon-containing compounds in their environment during growth, releasing a subset of metabolic byproducts as volatile compounds. However, the relationship between growth media and the production of volatile compounds has been largely unexplored to-date. To assess the core and media-specific components of the Klebsiella pneumoniae volatile metabolome via growth in four in vitro culture media. Headspace volatiles produced by cultures of K. pneumoniae after growth to stationary phase in four rich media (brain heart infusion broth, lysogeny broth, Mueller-Hinton broth, and tryptic soy broth) were analyzed using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS). Differences in the composition of headspace volatiles as a function of growth media were assessed using hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). A total of 365 volatile compounds were associated with the growth of K. pneumoniae across all media, of which 36 (10%) were common to all growth media, and 148 (41%) were specific to a single medium. In addition, utilizing all K. pneumoniae-associated volatile compounds, strains clustered as a function of growth media, demonstrating the importance of media in determining the metabolic profile of this organism. K. pneumoniae produces a core suite of volatile compounds across all growth media studied, although the volatile metabolic signature of this organism is fundamentally media-dependent.
Aberrant CpG Island Methylation in AML Is Associated with Disease Progression and Relapse.

The role of DNA methylation in relapse and progression of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) is incompletely understood. We studied DNA methylation of 9 promoter-associated CpG islands of genes frequently hypermethylated in leukemic cell lines. These were NOR1, NPM2, HIN1, SLC26A4, CDH13, PGRA, PGRB, OLIG2 and the tumor suppressor gene p15INK4b. We examined bone marrow and/or peripheral blood cells collected at the time of diagnosis and at the first relapse from 32 patients (13 females, 19 males) with AML. The median age was 58 years (20–68), the median survival was 18 months (8–80), the median blast count was 64% (20–98), and 10 patients had additional solid tumors and/or lymphatic/hematologic malignancies. Bisulfite treatment of DNA, followed by PCR and pyrosequencing were used to quantitatively measure levels of cytosine methylation in promoter-associated CpG islands. We analyzed methylation data for individual genes and for a methylation index derived after Z-score (z = [value –mean]/standard deviation) transformation to equalize absolute differences between individual genes and we used paired t-tests for statistical analysis. Abnormal hypermethylation (≥10%) in bone marrow and peripheral blood cells at diagnosis was detected in all 9 investigated genes, with a range of 7/29 (24%) for HIN1 to 24/32 (75%) for CDH13. On average, an increase in methylation between diagnosis and relapse was detected in all genes, and was significant for CDH13 (mean 10%, p=0.0006), SLC26A4 (mean 7%, p=0.0012), HIN1 (mean 8%, p=0.0037), NPM2 (mean 7%, p=0.0073), p15INK4b (mean 13%, p=0.0081), NOR1 (mean 4%, p=0.0124), PGRB (mean 6%, p=0.0144), PGRA (mean 9%, p=0.0275), and OLIG2 (mean 3%, p=0.0732). When analyzed by change in methylation status: negative (methylation below 10%) turning positive (methylation ≥ 10%) and vice versa, of 238 analyses, 39 (16%) showed a negative to positive switch, 15 (6%) showed a positive to negative switch, and the remaining 184 (77%) were either positive or negative unchanged. Finally, when analyzed in individual patients, an increase in methylation was noted in 29 of 32 patients (91%). The median increase in methylation index between diagnosis and relapse calculated as a delta-Z-score was 30% (range from −10% to 147%), and was highly significant (p Download : Download high-res image (155KB) Download : Download full-size image
Evidence-based practice knowledge, attitudes, and practice of online graduate nursing students.

Abstract Objectives This study aimed to evaluate changes in evidence-based practice (EBP) knowledge, attitudes, and practice of nursing students before and after completing an online, graduate level, introductory research/EBP course. Design A prospective one-group pretest-posttest design. Settings A private university in the Midwestern, USA. Participants Sixty-three online nurse practitioner students in Master's program. Methods A convenient sample of online graduate nursing students who enrolled in the research/EBP course was invited to participate in the study. Study outcomes were measured using the Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire (EBPQ) before and after completing the course. Descriptive statistics and paired-Samples t -test was used to assess the mean differences between pre-and post-test scores. Results Overall, students' post-test EBP scores were significantly improved over pre-test scores, t(63) = − 9.034, p p = 0.001). No significant differences were found between pre and post-tests on knowledge and attitudes toward EBP scores. Most frequently cited barriers to EBP were lack of understanding of statistics, interpretation of findings, lack of time, and lack of library resources.
Traffic Sign Detection from Lower-quality and Noisy Mobile Videos

Accurate traffic sign detection, from vehicle-mounted cameras, is an important task for autonomous driving and driver assistance. It is a challenging task especially when the videos acquired from mobile cameras on portable devices are low-quality. In this paper, we focus on naturalistic videos captured from vehicle-mounted cameras. It has been shown that Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks provide high accuracy rates in object detection tasks. Yet, they are computationally expensive, and often require a GPU for faster training and processing. In this paper, we present a new method, incorporating Aggregate Channel Features and Chain Code Histograms, with the goal of much faster training and testing, and comparable or better performance without requiring specialized processors. Our test videos cover a range of different weather and daytime scenarios. The experimental results show the promise of the proposed method and a faster performance compared to the other detectors.
Geriatric Assessment of Physical and Cognitive Functioning in a Diverse Cohort of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Patients: A Pilot Study

OBJECTIVE To use multidomain functional assessment, which is commonly performed in geriatric patients but is novel in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), to better understand functional impairment in patients with SLE. METHODS We recruited 60 adult participants (aged 20-39 years [26.7%], 40-59 years [50.0%], and ≥60 years [23.3%]; 80.0% African American and 90.0% female) from an existing cohort of SLE patients. During in-person visits (from October 2016 to April 2017), we evaluated physical performance (range 0-4, with higher scores indicating better performance), cognitive performance (5 fluid cognition domains; adjusted T scores), and self-reported measures including physical functioning (T scores), activities of daily living (ADLs), falls, and life-space mobility. RESULTS In the SLE patients, the mean balance score (3.7) and gait speed score (3.4) were high, while the mean lower body strength score was low (1.8). Cognitive performance was average (score of 5.0) for episodic (47.7) and working (48.6) memory and low average for cognitive flexibility (43.7), processing speed (42.6), and attention/inhibitory control (38.8 [>1 SD below average]) when compared with healthy individuals of the same age, sex, race, ethnicity, and education level. Most participants reported the ability to independently perform basic ADLs, but many reported the inability to independently perform instrumental ADLs. Nearly half (45.0%) of participants reported falling in the prior year. Only 40.0% reported unlimited ability to travel without the help of another person. Scores generally did not differ substantially according to age. CONCLUSION Our results suggest a high prevalence of impairment across multiple domains of function in SLE patients of all ages, similar to or exceeding the prevalence observed in much older geriatric populations. Further research into the added value of geriatric assessment in routine care for SLE is warranted.
How the relationships between preterm birth and ambient air pollution vary over space: A case study in Georgia, USA using geographically weighted logistic regression

Abstract Preterm birth (PTB) is a major cause of infant mortality and morbidity. The relationships between PTB and ambient air pollution have been examined by many previous studies worldwide, but the results vary among different studies, and no general conclusion could be drawn about the relationships. We analyzed 116,112 live and singleton births in year 2000 in Georgia, USA in this cross-sectional study. A spatial statistical method, Geographically Weighted Logistic Regression (GWLR), was employed to model the relationships between PTB and two ambient air pollutants, ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), with nine individual-level birth and maternal demographic, socioeconomic, behavioral, and lifestyle factors, and three community socioeconomic status (SES) and urbanization variables as covariates. Different from the results calculated from global logistic regression, the results obtained from the GWLR model show that the relationships between PTB and the two pollutants vary over space. Positively significant (a higher risk of PTB is associated with a higher concentration of air pollutant), negatively significant (a lower risk of PTB is associated with a higher concentration of air pollutant), and non-significant relationships between PTB and air pollutants are all discovered in different regions of Georgia, and the varying relationships are strongly related to the varying SES and urbanization level of the communities of the births. PTB is not significantly associated with either O3 or PM2.5 in most of the state, especially in urban communities. The positively significant relationship between PTB and O3 or PM2.5 that indicates either air pollutant might be a significant PTB risk factor is primarily located in rural communities with low SES. These findings suggest that in order to more successfully reduce PTB risk, it is necessary to consider the varying relationships between PTB and air pollution across the communities with different levels of urbanization and SES for making and implementation of local public health policies.
BACODINE, the real-time BATSE gamma-ray burst coordinates distribution network

The celestial coordinates of gamma-ray burst sources observed with BATSE on GRO are automatically determined and distributed in real time to members of the global scientific community. These data are now being used by more than 20 operations to enable searches for associated transients in a variety of other wavelength or energy regimes to identify the burst source objects. The minimum total delay time from the onset of a burst to the receipt of its coordinates by distant experimenters can be under 4 sec, less than the duration of a typical GRB, and the maximum total delay is 7 sec, or longer, depending on the distribution method. Some improvements to the BACODINE system and a summary of the follow-up observations made by some of the sites are given.
Direct measurements of anode/cathode gap plasma in cylindrically imploding loads on the Z machine

By deploying a photon Doppler velocimetry based plasma diagnostic, we have directly observed low density plasma in the load anode/cathode gap of cylindrically converging pulsed power targets. The arrival of this plasma is temporally correlated with gross current loss and subtle power flow differences between the anode and the cathode. The density is in the range where Hall terms in the electromagnetic equations are relevant, but this physics is lacking in the magnetohydrodynamics codes commonly used to design, analyze, and optimize pulsed power experiments. The present work presents evidence of the importance of physics beyond traditional resistive magnetohydrodynamics for the design of pulsed power targets and drivers.
Traditional Types of Rate Forms

Chapter 10 covers the types of rate forms for the energy industries which have been developed and tested throughout the past century and which are widely used today. Distinctions are made as to whether the rate incorporates only a single price (a single-part rate), or two or more prices, which in combination comprise the total charge (a two- or three-part rate). The single-part rate is the most common for a large customer group with relatively small usages per customer, such as the residential customer class. The two-part rate is almost universally applicable to customers with greater usages, where their takes can be divided, and priced separately, for total volumes taken (the commodity or energy charge) and for the highest amount required at any one time (the demand charge). By far the most popular rate form for larger electric customers is the two-part Hopkinson rate, which combines a commodity charge per kilowatt-hour for total volumes taken, with a demand charge per kilowatt for the greatest amount taken at any one time. All rate forms are discussed in Chap. 10.
Characterizing Covalently Sidewall-Functionalized SWCNTs by using (1)H NMR Spectroscopy.

Unambiguous evidence for covalent sidewall functionalization of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) has been a difficult task, especially for nanomaterials in which slight differences in functionality structure produce significant changes in molecular characteristics. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides clear information about the structural skeleton of molecules attached to SWCNTs. In order to establish the generality of proton NMR as an analytical technique for characterizing covalently functionalized SWCNTs, we have obtained and analyzed proton NMR data of SWCNT-substituted benzenes across a variety of para substituents. Trends obtained for differences in proton NMR chemical shifts and the impact of o-, p-, and m-directing effects of electrophilic aromatic substituents on phenyl groups covalently bonded to SWCNTs are discussed.
On Restating the Common Law of Employee Privacy

The American Law Institute (ALI) has circulated the initial draft of the chapter of its proposed Restatement of Employment Law dealing with employee privacy. This essay, which will be the Preface to the third edition of the author’s Privacy In Employment Law now in press (Bureau of National Affairs), takes up the draft’s stated presupposition, its methodology, and the resulting restated principles. It finds fundamental flaws in each as measured against extant law. In a nutshell, the draft is an effort at invention, not restatement. The dilemma it poses for the ALI is that parts of what the ALI has already adopted as a Restatement of Employment Law suffer from analogous infirmities. Thus the approach taken in this draft presents a challenge to what the restatement project is about.
Secondary Rhinoplasty: Decision Making

In a primary rhinoplasty, a great deal of decision making goes into the operative plan, which is then executed with minimal changes in 90% of cases. When modifications are required, it is usually a single step moved up or down the scale; i.e., a combined sill base excision rather than a pure nostril sill excision. In contrast, the operative plan for a secondary case is complex and a challenge to figure out. Intraoperatively, the best conceived plan serves merely as a guide, the execution of which requires constant decision making and often radical changes to its fundamental components. An example of constant decision making is elevating the skin envelope – a relatively straightforward step in a primary case, but stressful in a scarred thin secondary case. A radical change in the operative plan can be the creation of symmetrical rim strips. In a primary case, the surgeon knows that a 6 mm alar rim strip is possible, only in rare cases will the lateral crura need to be relocated (alar malposition) or flipped (severe concavity). No matter how much experience the surgeon has, no one knows for sure what the alar cartilages will be like in a secondary case and the same goes for the septum. Thus, every secondary rhinoplasty is a surprise, often bad, and one must be prepared for significant intraoperative stress. The three requirements most essential for doing secondary rhinoplasty are the following: (1) know exactly what the patient dislikes about their nose and what they want, (2) do photographic analysis and write out an operative plan, but stay flexible as major changes will be required, and (3) the more surgical techniques you have experience with the better. This chapter is an attempt to guide you through the decision-making process of secondary rhinoplasty, which will hopefully teach the reader to recognize the challenges ahead of time and deal with them intraoperatively.
Neurotrophins and cortical development.

The mammalian cerebral cortex requires the proper formation of exquisitely precise circuits to function correctly. These neuronal circuits are assembled during development by the formation of synaptic connections between hundreds of thousands of differentiating neurons. Although the development of the cerebral cortex has been well described anatomically, the cellular and molecular mechanisms that guide neuronal differentiation and formation of connections are just beginning to be understood. Moreover, despite evidence that coordinated patterns of activity underlie reorganization of brain circuits during critical periods of development, the molecular signals that translate activity into structural and functional changes in connections remain unknown. Recently, the neurotrophins have emerged as attractive candidates not only for regulating neuronal differentiation in the developing brain, but also for mediating activitydependent synaptic plasticity. The neurotrophins meet many of the criteria required for molecular signals involved in neuronal differentiation and plasticity. They are present in the cerebral cortex during development and their expression is regulated by synaptic activity. In turn, the neurotrophins themselves strongly influence both short-term synaptic plasticity and longterm potentiation and depression. In addition to their functional effects, the neurotrophins also profoundly regulate the structural changes that underlie axonal and dendritic differentiation. Finally, the neurotrophins have been implicated in mediating synaptic competition required for activity-dependent plasticity during the critical period. This chapter presents and discusses the rapidly accumulating evidence that the neurotrophins are critical for neuronal differentiation and that they may be involved in activity-dependent synaptic refinement in the developing cerebral cortex.
The decline of the death penalty: How media framing changed capital punishment in america

1. Introduction, by Brian F. Schaffner and Patrick J. Sellers Part One: Origins 2. Framing and Value Recruitment in the Debate over Teaching Evolution, by Thomas E. Nelson, Dana E. Wittmer, and Allyson P. Shortle 3. Partisan Framing in Legislative Debates, by Douglas B. Harris 4. Building a Framing Campaign: Interest Groups and the Debate on Partial-birth Abortion, by Jessica C. Gerrity 5. Mobilizing to Frame Election Campaigns, by Taylor Ansley and Patrick J. Sellers Part Two: Impact 6. Competing Frames in a Political Campaign, by James N. Druckman 7. Taxing Death or Estates? When Frames Influences Citizens' Issue Beliefs, by Brian F. Schaffner and Mary Layton Atkinson 8. Great Communicators? The Influence of Presidential and Congressional Issue Framing on Party Identification, by Michael W. Wagner 9. The Decline of the Death Penalty: How Media Framing Changed Capital Punishment in America, by Frank R. Baumgartner, Suzanna Linn, and Amber Boydstun 10. Framing Research: The Next Steps, by Shanto Iyengar
Asphaltene precipitation and deposition during CO2 injection in nano shale pore structure and its impact on oil recovery

Abstract Carbon dioxide (CO2) injection has been shown to improve oil recovery from conventional oil reservoirs, with a relatively high rate of success. Recently, it has also been applied in unconventional shale reservoirs, with hopes that it could improve oil recovery from them as well. The process proved successful in some shale plays, but failed in others. This research investigates the CO2 flow mechanism in nano-pores and its impact on asphaltene precipitation, which could lead to pore plugging and a reduction in oil recovery. Nano-composite filter membranes were used to conduct all experiments. The setup used was a specially designed filtration apparatus that could incorporate the nano filter membranes. The factors studied include the CO2 injection pressure, temperature, oil viscosity, CO2 soaking time, porous media thickness, nano-pore size, and pore size heterogeneity. Asphaltene wt% was quantified for all the experiments, both for the produced and bypassed oil. Increasing the CO2 injection pressure resulted in a higher oil recovery and a shorter CO2 breakthrough time. Also, the percentage of asphaltene in the recovered oil was higher for the higher CO2 injection pressure. Results indicated that increasing the temperature also resulted in a higher oil recovery, however, the asphaltene wt% in the bypassed oil also increased with temperature due to instability of the oil stabilizing agent, resin. It was found that the higher oil viscosity had a larger asphaltene weight percent. Increasing the thickness and heterogeneity resulted in a decrease in oil recovery and also a higher asphaltene weight percent. Increasing the nano-pore size resulted in a significantly higher oil recovery, and less pore plugging. This research investigates the flow mechanism of CO2 injection and asphaltene precipitation due to CO2 injection in nano-pores in order to better understand the main factors that will impact the success of CO2 injection in unconventional shale reservoirs.
The Fragility Index in Randomized Clinical Trials as a Means of Optimizing Patient Care.

Importance The Fragility Index (FI) is the minimum number of participants in a randomized clinical trial (RCT) whose status would have to change from a nonevent (not experiencing the primary end point) to an event (experiencing the primary end point) required to turn a statistically significant result to a nonsignificant result. The FI measures the robustness (or fragility) of the results of an RCT and is an important aid to the clinician’s interpretation of RCT results. It has now been recognized that RCTs, which provide the foundation for treatment guideline recommendations, may not be robust. Observations Most RCTs in surgery and general medicine are fragile (with a low FI score), in contrast to those in cardiac disease and heart failure, where most RCTs are robust (with high FI scores). For clinical trials of trauma, we identified that the median (interquartile range) FI score was 3 (1-8), which means that adding 3 events to the opposite treatment arm in a given RCT eliminated statistical significance. The median Fragility Quotient (the FI score divided by the total study sample size) was 0.016 (0.0043-0.0408). Conclusions and Relevance The provision of high-quality, evidence-based clinical care in surgery for optimal patient outcomes requires a foundation of robust clinical research evidence, and knowledge of the FI will assist in future surgical RCT design. We strongly recommend the routine reporting of FI scores for all future trauma and surgical RCTs to assist in appropriate and optimal decision making in the care of patients who have experienced trauma and/or need surgery. We also recommend the routine inclusion of the FI score in the development of clinical guidelines to assist the clinician in ascertaining whether guideline recommendations are robust. Surgeons should be aware to particularly exercise caution when considering a potential change in clinical practice based on RCTs with a low FI score.
Chapter 5 – Circles which kiss: A note on osculatory packing

Publisher Summary This chapter provides several simple recipes for graphically interesting structures based on the osculatory packing of finite areas using circles and spheres. The problem of covering a finite area with a given set of circles has received frequent attention. As background, the densest packing of non-overlapping uniform circles is the hexagonal lattice packing. This applies to cases where each of the uncovered areas, or interstices, is also hexagonally packed by smaller circles. Past work has usually defined a distribution of circles as “osculatory” if any available area is always covered by the largest possible circle. If the original area to be covered is a tricuspid area, then the first circle to be placed must be tangent to the three original larger circles. This kind of packing is also often referred to as “Apollonian packing.” In contrast to past work, the criterion for osculatory packing as discussed in this chapter is that each successively placed circle on the plane only needs to be tangent to at least one previous circle (tangent-l packing). To generate the artistic figures in the chapter, a circle center is randomly placed within the available interstice––the circle then grows until it becomes tangent to its closest neighbor. This process is repeated several thousand times.
Fractional calculus: an introduction for physicists, 3rd edition

Fractional Calculus can be viewed as extending the concept of an ‘nth-order derivative’ from the integers (‘n’ is an integer) to an ‘α-th’ order derivative, where ‘α’ is a real number, complex numb...
Viral-DNA Vectors in the Analysis of Mammalian Differentiation

Advances in molecular biology and methods in mammalian cell culture have been utilized in the construction of DNA-transformed, pluripotent murine teratocarcinoma stem cells (Linnenbach et al., 1980) that have proven to be a useful in vitro model for the study of the regulation of gene expression during differentiation (Huebner et al., 1981; Croce et al., 1981; Linnenbach et al., 1981).
A Novel Hardware and PWM Scheme for Modular Multilevel Converter using Wide Band Gap Devices

This paper presents a new modulation scheme for a low loss, low cost, modular multi-level converter to connect renewables to the grid at medium or high voltage. The proposed scheme generates a multi-level voltage output with low loss, low harmonic distortion, and is modular in nature. Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) with high frequency transformers are becoming popular due to high efficiency, lower harmonics and less size compared to conventional transformer. The topology discussed in this paper compromises of a full-bridge converter, which is then connected to multiple High Frequency Link sub-modules via high frequency transformers. Each sub-module produces its own isolated DC voltage, and modules are inserted or removed to synthesize high AC voltages. In this paper, the switching loss and cost is analyzed for different modulation techniques and is compared with the proposed scheme which includes wide band devices. Various PWM schemes are analyzed using MATLAB/Simulink and the simulation results are presented in this paper.
Narrative Review: Botulinum Toxin Applications in Sports Medicine

Intramuscular injections of botulinum toxin (BoNT) induce muscle relaxation by blocking acetylcholinesterase at the neuromuscular junction by cleavage of synaptosomal associated protein 25 kDa (SNAP-25)
Estimating the Operational Costs of Pricing

We build a structural econometric model of pricing substitutes with menu costs and apply it to quasi-experimental data to estimate the share of physical menu costs (material and labor costs of price adjustment) in total menu costs. The data comes from the adoption of electronic shelf labels (ESLs) by some---but not all---of the UK stores of an international retailer in 2015. ESLs replace the physical price adjustment process (printing new price stickers, locating the products in the aisles, and replacing the old stickers) with a digital one, thus eliminating physical menu costs. We estimate physical menu costs using both moment inequalities and maximum likelihood. Our estimate of the share of physical menu costs in total menu costs ranges between 30 percent and 60 percent across specifications.
An Unusual Presentation of Recurrent Ovarian Torsion in an Adolescent Female

Background: Ovarian torsion without an adnexal mass is an uncommon finding in an adolescent girl. Ipsilateral recurrent ovarian torsion is even more rare. This article presents a case of a recurren...