cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
English on Korean television

This study discusses verbal humor in entertainment media and examines polarizing representations of English on Korean television. English is a source of stress as well as a medium of humor. Language anxiety about English speaking skills is frequently focalized and viewed as a personal challenge by Korean celebrities, but they often transform their linguistic ‘complex’ into humorous talk. This study argues that using English, possibly the most revered and yet the most feared language in Korea, in humor is sociolinguistically significant, embodying attitudinal, emotional, and experiential ambivalence about English in globalization-minded contemporary Korea. The findings of the study suggest that generation-conscious ageism regarding English proficiency typically characterizes senior citizens as sociolinguistically underperforming, which sometimes forces them to be in a vulnerable position both in familial and social contexts. Increasing use of English on Korean television divides bilingual viewers and monolingual viewers and whether one can be entertained and humored by television programs may become another English-related stratification variable in Korea.
E-service Based Information Fusion: A User-Level Information Integration Framework

Managing fast-growing personal information is a time-consuming and laborious task that affects people's daily life. In addition, learning new skills is always an obstacle for end users, to fully take advantage of any new technology-based services. A framework is highly desired here to allow people to collect and fuse personal information without dealing with complex emerging technologies. In this paper, we introduce our e-service based Information Fusion framework for end-users. This framework enables end users to collect scattered information from diverse autonomous sources, and transparently create a repeatable process by which newer instances of the same information can be obtained in the future. By exploiting this framework, users won't need to repeat the manual information gathering task over and over again. We present our framework and provide some implementation details.
Soluble TNF binding proteins modulate the negative inotropic properties of TNF-alpha in vitro.

Soluble tumor necrosis factor (TNF) binding proteins (TNF-BPs) were characterized with respect to their capacity to modulate the negative inotropic properties of TNF-alpha in isolated contracting c...
Hybrid genetic programming with accelerating optimizer for 3D metamaterial design

In this paper, the hybridization of previously developed genetic programming (GP) software with a low-level optimizer, which uses genetic algorithm (GA), is presented. Key variables are selected for low-level optimization of each GP topology. Two low frequency design examples are included, with each covering at least 225–450 MHz. The first design (from the 142nd generation of the original GP software) has 73.4% bandwidth (±90° reflection phase) while being 17.0% thinner than a previously presented design covering this band, whereas the second design (from the 6th generation of the hybrid software) has 68.9% bandwidth and is 25.3% thinner.
Career and Life Fusion: The Shift Created in a Multi-generational Workforce Impacted by Technology

Balancing or integrating career and life has been a focus since the 1970s due to changing demographics in the work environment. With the projection that in the next five years, five generations wil...
The New ACC/AHA Cardiovascular Risk Guidelines: Impact and Controversies

The new American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA)2 guidelines for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment and treatment (1), released >6 months ago, have engendered much controversy. A recent New England Journal of Medicine article (2) has estimated the impact of the new guidelines on the use of statins in the US. Extrapolating from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey population, the new guidelines could result in treating approximately 56 million Americans with statins, or 12.8 million more people than would have been treated according to the older Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP-III) guidelines (3). Approximately half the population between the ages of 40 and 75 years would be eligible for statins under the new guidelines, compared with about 37.5% under ATP-III. Given that CVD accounts for about a third of all mortality, and that the lifetime incidence of CVD is about 60%, treating more patients with statins is perhaps reasonable. Furthermore, it is estimated that the new guidelines may reduce CVD by about a half million events every 10 years (2). So why are the new ACC/AHA guidelines controversial? Three of the four major identified patient groups that could benefit from statins are similar between the ACC/AHA and ATP-III guidelines. The first statin benefit group for both sets of guidelines includes individuals with known CVD. In contrast to the ATP-III guidelines, which recommend statin therapy for individuals with LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) ≥100 mg/dL (2.59 mmol/L), the ACC/AHA guidelines no longer use LDL-C as a statin treatment criterion for this patient group. In the second statin benefit group, which includes individuals with LDL-C ≥190 mg/dL (4.92 mmol/L), the recommended treatment is identical in both guidelines. For the third statin benefit group, which includes those with diabetes, the two guidelines slightly differ in their LDL-C inclusion criteria, LDL-C ≥70 …
Clinical significance of hypergastrinaemia: relevance to gastrin monitoring during omeprazole therapy.

During the early experience with omeprazole, it was recommended that plasma gastrin levels be monitored to identify patients with 4-5-fold increases above baseline. Such patients were thought to be at
TH-SAMS-AUD B-01: Introduction To: Quality Assurance for Advanced RT Technologies—The Challenge for RT Clinical Trials

We as medical physicists have a crucial role to play in ensuring that all patients on radiotherapy protocols are treated comparably. Without this comparability, the validity of outcome results from the pooled patient data may be jeopardized. Advances in radiation therapy technology and delivery techniques have naturally led to the desire to incorporate such new tools into clinical trials, yet standardized quality assurance (QA) procedures are not fully developed and widely practiced. Although several task groups within the AAPM have been formed to set standards for QA for these new technologies, a major challenge is to conduct clinical trials that involve both the old and new technologies without overwhelming individual physicists with additional testing. National and international multi‐institutional clinical trials uniquely challenge the medical physics community to maintain comparability while at the same time requiring or permitting patient treatments that incorporate advanced technologies such as IMRT, image guided radiotherapy,imagefusion, and other techniques. The AAPM Working Group on Clinical Trials presents this continuing education symposium in order to discuss the efforts underway to design QA methods for advanced radiotherapy technologies especially in the context of clinical trials with the intent to address the issue of comparability and standardization of protocol data. We will present the work of Task Group 113, an important player in these efforts, on providing guidance as to physics practice standards for QA for radiotherapy clinical trials. The task group's recommendations on QA procedures and reporting methods are intended to facilitate highly consistent protocol treatments and data submission. The Working Group on clinical trials has identified several topics that pose significant challenges with respect to consistency of physics practices: dose calculations with heterogeneity corrections, localization verification, imagefusion techniques, and the treatment of moving targets. In this course, the history and the current state of the art will be described for each topic. The discussion about these areas should be of interest whether or not one is involved in clinical trials. Learning objectives for the entire CE course: 1. Understand the quality assurance issues facing Medical Physicists using advanced technologies and how these relate to clinical trial data validity. 2. Learn what Task Group 113 is doing to address the accuracy and consistency of data we send to quality assurance review centers. 3. Understand the problems and potential solutions to controversies in quality assurance measures for imagefusion, target motion, patient localization, and heterogeneity corrections.
Negotiating mothering identities: ethnographic and intergenerational insights to gender and social class in a high-poverty US context

This manuscript draws from a 4-year feminist ethnographic study of eight young girls and their caretakers in a high-poverty, predominantly White, urban community in the USA. Themes of mothers, mothering, and motherhood were dominant across 4 years of data generation and in this article I focus on the girls' and mothers' narratives to explore implications of such themes on the participants' intergenerational identity construction. Bakhtin's concept of answerability is employed in the analyses of the girls' relationships with their mothers and sociocultural theories of identity construction through narrative are used in close-up analyses of participants' discourse and writing. Implications for educators and educational researchers include tending to intergenerational ethnographic understandings of gendered and classed nuances in young children's relational practices and working to engage the strengths of those practices rather than against them.
Correlation Between the Percentages of Myeloblasts in Bone Marrow Obtained by Flow Cytometry and Manual Counting on Glass Slide Smears in 74 Hematologic Patients

To investigate reliability of calculating percentage of myeloblasts by flow cytometric method, data were obtained from 74 hematologic patients (76 paired data). Myeloblast counts obtained by manual count versus flow cytometry were compared. Our data show that the percentage of myeloblasts in the bone marrow obtained with flow cytometric method correlates well with manual count (correlation coefficient is 0.9912). A very high correlation coefficient means that reliable percentage of myeloblasts in the bone marrow can be obtained by either method alone. Flow cytometry is a useful adjunct (or quality control) to validate manual myeloblast count and vice versa.
A new concept for simulation of vegetated land surface dynamics - Part 1: The event driven phenology model

Abstract. Phenologies of the vegetated land surface are being used increasingly for diagnosis and prognosis of climate change consequences. Current prospective and retrospective phenological models stand far apart in their approaches to the subject. We report on an exploratory attempt to implement a phenological model based on a new event driven concept which has both diagnostic and prognostic capabilities in the same modeling framework. This Event Driven Phenological Model (EDPM) is shown to simulate land surface phenologies and phenophase transition dates in agricultural landscapes based on assimilation of weather data and land surface observations from spaceborne sensors. The model enables growing season phenologies to develop in response to changing environmental conditions and disturbance events. It also has the ability to ingest remotely sensed data to adjust its output to improve representation of the modeled variable. We describe the model and report results of initial testing of the EDPM using Level 2 flux tower records from the Ameriflux sites at Mead, Nebraska, USA, and at Bondville, Illinois, USA. Simulating the dynamics of normalized difference vegetation index based on flux tower data, the predictions by the EDPM show good agreement (RMSE 0.8) for maize and soybean during several growing seasons at different locations. This study presents the EDPM used in the companion paper (Kovalskyy and Henebry, 2011) in a coupling scheme to estimate daily actual evapotranspiration over multiple growing seasons.
The incorporation of precursors into Drosophila larval cuticle

Abstract Incorporation of tritiated leucine, tyrosine and glucosamine into the integument of larval Drosophila melanogaster was followed by electron-microscope autoradiography. Tritiated leucine, tyrosine, and glucosamine were incorporated into the endocuticle by apposition, giving rise to a distinct band of label in the endocuticle at a level which depended on the time between labelling and fixation. The labelled amino acids, but not glucosamine, were also detected in the epicuticle and both above and below the distinct labelled band in the endocuticle. The results indicate that the epicuticle grows within the third instar by intussusception of new materials which are transported from the epidermal cells through the endocuticle to the epicuticle. Breakdown of cuticle which was radioactively labelled by feeding larvae tritiated precursors was also followed by autoradiography. The results indicate that the breakdown products from the old cuticle may be reutilized in the synthesis of new cuticle.
Coagulation Studies in Extremely Premature Infants

Evidence of developmental evolution of coagulation can be seen when the studies of 10 thriving extremely premature (EPT) infants are compared to normal full-term (FT) infants. The prothrombin time, partial thromboplastin time, and thrombin time all became shorter with increasing gestational age. Fibrinogen levels and platelet counts appear to be comparable to term infant and adult levels. Fibrin degradation products (FDP) of 10 micrograms/ml or less were found in the thriving EPT infants. When compared to healthy full-term infants, there is a definite gestational dependency of anti-thrombin III levels. Factors II and VII appear to be related to intrauterine maturation after the age of viability (24 wk), but factor VII-X complex does not. The contact factors XI, XII, high molecular weight kininogen (Fitzgerald factor), and prekallikrein (Fletcher factor) are all markedly decreased in thriving EPT infants. The mean factor V level is lower than that found in FT infants. This study confirms a gestational age dependency of factor VIII activity. The ratio of factor VIII antigen to factor VIII clotting activity is increased (2.8 vs 1.01 in FT and adults). Thriving small for gestational age (SGA) infants had coagulation studies which were not statistically different from those of thriving EPT infants. The coagulation changes which occurred in severely ill EPT were mainly in the factors which decrease during intravascular coagulation (factors I, V, and VIII). The present study suggests that because of the high antigen to activity ratio seen in thriving EPT infants, a dysfunctional or fetal factor VIII may have been produced. However, the further elevation of this ratio in the severely ill EPT infants is in keeping with a pathologic proteolysis or increased endothelial release of factor VIII antigen.
Interstellar abundances toward zeta Ophiuchi

Extensive Copernicus observations of interstellar absorption lines in front of zeta Oph have been combined with similar ground-based data to give column densities or limits on 26 elements in H I clouds. Compared with solar-system abundances, there is a depletion of most elements relative to hydrogen, except S and Zn, by factors of 3 to 4000. The depletions generally are larger for the higher condensation temperatures.
Enabling experts to build knowledge bases from science textbooks

The long-term goal of Project Halo is to build an application called Digital Aristotle that can answer questions on a wide variety of science topics and provide user- and domain-appropriate explanations. As a near-term goal, we are focusing on enabling subject matter experts (SMEs) to construct declarative knowledge bases (KBs) from 50 pages of a science textbook in the domains of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology in a way that the system can answer questions similar to those in an Advanced Placement (AP) exam in the respective discipline. The textbook knowledge is a mixture of textual information, mathematical equations, tables, diagrams, and domain-specific representations such as chemical reactions. In this paper, we explore the following question: Can we build a knowledge capture system to enable SMEs to construct KBs from the knowledge found in science textbooks and use the resulting KB for deductive question answering? We answer this question in the context of a system called AURA that supports knowledge capture from science textbooks.
Heat transfer and fluid flow analysis of interrupted-wall channels with application to heat exchangers

An analysis has been made of laminar flow and heat transfer in channels whose walls are interrupted periodically along the streamwise direction. Such channels are frequently employed in high-performance compact heat exchangers. Numerical solutions of the mass, momentum, and energy conservation equations yielded local heat transfer and pressure drop results. These results were obtained for a range of Reynolds numbers and for several values of a dimensionless geometrical parameter characterizing the streamwise length L of the individual plate segments which make up the interrupted walls. The Prandtl number was fixed at 0.7 for all the calculations. The basic heat transfer and pressure drop results were employed to investigate whether an interrupted-wall channel experiences an augmented heat transfer rate compared with that for a parallel plate channel. For conditions of equal heat transfer surface area and equal pumping power, appreciably higher heat transfer rates prevailed in the interrupted-wall channel for a wide range of operating conditions. The augmentation was especially marked for relatively short channels and high Reynolds numbers. The results also demonstrated the existence of a new type of fully developed regime, one that is periodic. At sufficiently large downstream distances, the velocity and temperature profiles repeat their values at successive axial stations separated by a distance 2L and, in addition, the average heat transfer coefficient for a plate segment takes on a constant value.
Effects of water stress on cryptoendolithic cyanobacteria from hot desert rocks

Four strains of Chroococcidiopsis and one Chroococcus, all isolated from extreme arid desert rocks, and one marine Chroococcus, were subjected to water stress using both matric and osmotic control methods. For all Chroococcidiopsis strains, photosynthetic rates decreased with decreasing water potential. After 24h preincubation the decrease was linear but after 72h there was a sharp drop below-3400 kPa (aw≏0.976). In contrast, the two Chroococcus strains showed optimum photosynthesis between-3000 and-4000 KPa. It appears, therefore, that Chroococcidiopsis in deserts may have a different survival strategy in response to aridity than Chroococcus (rare in deserts).
Fabrication and characterization of vias for contacting YBa2Cu3O7−x multilayers

Abstract In order to connect multiple layers of high temperature superconductor (HTS) interconnects, low contact resistance vias must be used to maintain high signal propagation speeds and to minimize signal losses. In this work, 40 μm via contacts through YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−x /SrTiO 3 /SiO 2 /YSZ/YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−x multilayers utilizing dry etching techniques and sputter deposited Au for contacting through the vias have been successfully fabricated and characterized. The vias connect two laser ablated YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−x (YBCO) signal lines through thick (4–5 μm) SiO 2 insulating layers. This approach to making multilayer superconductor vias provides a low resistance contact between the YBCO layers while maintaining space efficiency and fabrication compatibility with the superconductor.
Raising Expectations for Grandparents: a Three Generational Study

Previous research resulted in the nation's first curriculum for grandparents. To determine the program benefits, 210 experimental subjects received instruction. Each of these persons chose one son or daughter and one grandchild to help evaluate changes in grandparent attitudes and behavior. All three generations completed separate versions of the Grandparent Strengths and Needs Inventory prior to the classes, at the end of intervention, and three months later. Posttesting of grandparents revealed significant improvement. These gains were corroborated by parents and grandchildren. Multivariate analyses identified the impact of eleven independent variables on grandparent performance. A control group of 185 subjects made no improvement.
Takeaway food and health.

Change the menu, not the venue Takeaway or fast food has been a tempting target for public health advocates but a confounding one for researchers. It makes intuitive sense that people with ready access to takeaway food will eat more of it, yet results of research linking fast food access to diet or weight have been quite mixed. In a linked study (doi:10.1136/bmj.g1464), Burgoine and colleagues take a novel approach to describing food environment exposures. Unlike most research, which considers only the home neighbourhood, this study measured food outlets around the workplace and along commuting routes as well as near the home. The authors even adjusted the commute route “buffer” based on travel mode: because drivers might deviate farther from their route than other commuters, Burgoine and colleagues counted takeaway outlets within 500 m of the route for drivers and only 100 m for pedestrians and cyclists. The study population was drawn from the Fenland Study, which is tracking a cohort of adults born in Cambridgeshire, UK, between 1950 and 1975. Consumption …
Single-Pole Switching - A Study of System Transients with Transposed and Intransposed Lines

Single-pole switching is investigated on a 150 km, 500 kV transmission line using a hybrid computer simulation which has been verified by comparison with field tests. The effects of transpositions along with changes in the neutral and shunt reactors are studied. Also, a detailed representation of a synchronous machine is incorporated with the simulation of the transmission line to study the effects of single-pole switching upon the electrical and mechanical transients of the machine. This method of representation offers a means of predicting the instantaneous torque as well as the couple-frequency rotor currents during single-pole switching.
Left ventricular function in ischemic mitral regurgitation--a precatheterization assessment.

Abstract The clinical characteristics of 150 patients with unstable ischemic heart disease were evaluated for the ability to diagnose mitral regurgitation (MR). A careful assessment of physical findings, ECG- and radionuclide-determined global and regional left ventricular function was performed in all patients to characterize the population with ischemic MR. Twenty-nine patients were found to have MR and in 65% the degree of MR was 2+ or more. All of the patients with significant MR had a systolic murmur on physical examination, and although this finding was 90% sensitive for MR it had a poor predictive value (42%). Even a characteristic apical holosystolic murmur, although specific for MR (90%), had a low sensitivity and predictive value. Two regional wall motion abnormalities (inferoposterior akinesis and apical dyskinesis with an ejection fraction ≤35%) identified 26 of 29 patients with MR and all with 2+ or more MR, as well as the 10 patients who required mitral valve replacement in addition to coronary artery bypass grafting. This finding was complementary to the results of physical examination and when used together improved the diagnostic accuracy of identifying MR. The radionuclide regurgitant index was evaluated for its predictive value in assessing MR in this group of patients but was found to be a poor discriminator in patients with abnormal ejection fractions and regional wall motion abnormalities. The precatheterization assessment of left ventricular function with radionuclide angiography can provide important insight into the presence of ischemic MR.
Intelligent assistance for human supervisory control of multiple robots

This paper reviews on-going collaborative efforts between the Colorado School of Mines and Clark-Atlanta University in cooperative assistance for coordination and control of multiple vehicles. It reports on progress in developing an intelligent assistance agent (IAA) for aiding a human operator in diagnosing problems and generating recovery strategies in remote ground robots. The current work has focused on the identification and incorporation of categories of additional information from multiple robots and other agents. These categories are: mission-related sources, such as peer robots working nearby; facility- related sources, such as security cameras; and opportunistically available agents, such as overhead satellites or humans working in the area as part of another mission. The incorporation of additional sources of information requires enhancement to the previously developed teleVIA architecture. In particular, the teleVIA, IAA must provide more strategic management support, sophisticate viewpoint and data management and presentation, and simplified control of the additional agents for diagnosis and recovery activities. These enhancements are encapsulated in software agents within the IAA.
Postsynaptic Regulation of Long-Term Facilitation in Aplysia

Summary Repeated exposure to serotonin (5-HT), an endogenous neurotransmitter that mediates behavioral sensitization in Aplysia [1–3], induces long-term facilitation (LTF) of the Aplysia sensorimotor synapse [4]. LTF, a prominent form of invertebrate synaptic plasticity, is believed to play a major role in long-term learning in Aplysia [5]. Until now, LTF has been thought to be due predominantly to cellular processes activated by 5-HT within the presynaptic sensory neuron [6]. Recent work indicates that LTF depends on the increased expression and release of a sensory neuron-specific neuropeptide, sensorin [7]. Sensorin released during LTF appears to bind to autoreceptors on the sensory neuron, thereby activating critical presynaptic signals, including mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) [8, 9]. Here, we show that LTF depends on elevated postsynaptic Ca 2+ and postsynaptic protein synthesis. Furthermore, we find that the increased expression of presynaptic sensorin resulting from 5-HT stimulation requires elevation of postsynaptic intracellular Ca 2+ . Our results represent perhaps the strongest evidence to date that the increased expression of a specific presynaptic neuropeptide during LTF is regulated by retrograde signals.
Terahertz Scattering from Granular Material

Terahertz (THz) imaging is emerging as a potentially powerful method of detecting explosive devices, even in the presence of occluding materials. However, the characteristic spectral signatures of pure explosive materials may be altered or obscured by electromagnetic scattering caused by their granular nature. This paper presents THz transmission measurements of granular systems representative of explosives and presents results from dense media theory that accurately explain the observed scattering response.
Calculation of impurity diffusivities in α-Fe using first-principles methods

Abstract Self- and impurity diffusivities in body-centered-cubic (bcc) iron have been calculated within the formalisms of harmonic transition-state theory and the Le Claire nine-frequency model for vacancy-mediated diffusion. The approach combines first-principles calculations of vacancy formation, migration, and solute-binding enthalpies and entropies in the ferromagnetic phase, with an empirical relationship for the effect of magnetic disorder on diffusion activation energies. Calculated Fe self-diffusion and Mo and W impurity-diffusion coefficients are shown to agree within a factor of five with the most recent experimental measurements in both the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases. Calculated diffusion coefficients for Mo and W impurities are comparable to or larger than that for Fe self-diffusion at all temperatures below the α–γ phase transition. Calculated activation energies for Ta and Hf impurities suggest that these solutes should also display impurity-diffusion coefficients larger than that for self-diffusion in body-centered cubic Fe.
Influence of gelatin on the properties of hydroxyapatite–polyacrylamide nanocomposite as a potential bone substitute

The controlled integration of organic and inorganic components confers superior mechanical properties onto natural bone. The present work adds to the continuing efforts of designing a natural bone-like structure. In this study, the hydroxyapatite (HAP) impregnated polymeric composites of polyacrylamide (PAM) and the same with gelatin have been synthesized by a suspension polymerization method in order to study their blood compatibility, water sorption behavior, and mechanical properties; and network parameters, such as average molecular weight between crosslinks (M c), crosslink density (q) have been calculated. Both, HAP–PAM and PAM–gelatin–HAP composites were characterized using techniques like Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The composites were also evaluated for their mechanical properties like compressive strength and modulus (E).
Comment on “Otitis media in laboratory rats”

This letter points out that the incidence of otitis media in rats, as reported by Daniel et al (1973), most probably resulted from inadequate conditions of animal supply and care.
Atomic-layer titration of surface reactions

THE composition of surface layers on solid substrates is critical to many technological problems, such as semiconductor processing and heterogeneous catalysis. Deposited adatoms commonly react with the surface of the substrate to form a new, often two-dimensional structure. The stoichiometry of the surface phase can be difficult to determine by techniques of surface analysis, however; one can monitor the quantity of material deposited (using a quartz microbalance, for example), but the amount of substrate consumed is harder to assess. Here we present a technique for monitoring surface reactions in real time, which allows us to determine the amount of substrate material incorporated into the surface phase. We use the fact that surface reactions commonly involve surface roughening owing to extraction of substrate atoms. By supplying such atoms in advance in the form of sub-monolayer islands, we can titrate the subsequent adatoms against these pre-deposited islands of 'substrate" until a perfectly smooth surface (observed microscopically) is obtained. This should allow accurate characterization of surface reactions with stoichiometric ratios as great as 10:1.
Market Equilibrium for dispatchable transmission using FACT devices

Traditionally system operators would minimize generation cost considering transmission as a passive system. Having the smart grid technology transmission network topology can be optimized simultaneously with the generation system. This can be done either by switching lines on and off, or by continuously controlling the admittance of the lines. FACTS devices make adjustment of a transmission line's admittance possible. Here we study a market design for operation of such FACTS devices based on Supply Function Equilibrium (SFE). We model the variable cost associated with utilization of the FACTS devices as the relative additional cost of losses. The owners are being paid the market clearing price for the additional transfer capacity they provide. The problem is formulated for a simple two-node two-transmission line system. It is shown that the marginal cost functions are increasing and it is not clear that FACTS devices are natural monopoly. Our simulation study shows that a market-mechanism can be employed for operation of the devices. Under the market mechanism that we consider, owners of FACTS devices are permitted make supply offers to the market alongside generators. Market-clearing consists of determining nodal prices for generators and admittance-based pricing for transmission or FACTS device owners. Such a market would be beneficial to the device owners by providing revenue for them and the system by increasing the social welfare.
ER-annulate lamellar associations of mucosal epithelial cells of the rat jejunum

Mucosal cells of the rat jejunum vary greatly in the relative abundance and kind of endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Many cells have few rough surfaced cisternal ER elements; these cells frequently are located in basal villous regions and generally are less differentiated than those near apices. Profiles of rough ER cisternae were often encountered in stacks of 3-4 parallel units in apical cells. A number of differentiating basal cells were found to contain ER-annulate lamellar associations arranged similarly to the ER stacks of apical cells. The annulate lamellae of this complex resemble those described for other rapidly differentiating or embryonic cells and may be derived from the nuclear envelope. They could be involved in the formation of the ER.
Dissolution and precipitation of silica at low temperatures

Abstract The dissolution of amorphous silica as monosilicic acid and the establishment of solubility equilibrium with silica gel and with colloidal silica have been demonstrated in recent chemical papers. The rates of dissolution and precipitation are slow at ordinary temperatures; at temperatures near the boiling-point both solubilities and rates of dissolution are much higher. The solubility is little affected by pH between values of 1 and 9, but rises rapidly at pH's over 9. On the basis of this work and supplementary experiments, the geologic literature on the low-temperature solubility of silica is reviewed and various geologic applications are suggested. Much of the confusion in the literature can be traced to failure to recognize the slowness with which silica dissolves and precipitates or polymerizes. Opal dissolves in hot water to about the same extent as other forms of amorphous silica; probably it has a comparable solubility also at lower temperatures, but the rate of dissolution is so extremely slow that massive opal and diatomite can exist almost indefinitely in the presence of natural waters. In sea water amorphous silica has about the same solubility as in fresh water. Silica in true solution is not precipitated by electrolytes; colloidal silica may be precipitated by electrolytes, the rate and completeness of precipitation depending on pH and on the kind and concentration of the ions. Most of the silica in natural waters is in true solution rather than in colloidal dispersion. This means that silica brought to the sea by streams cannot be coagulated by the electrolytes of sea water. The factors that keep the concentration of silica below its equilibrium solubility (with respect to amorphous silica) in most natural waters are not completely understood; the slowness of dissolution, the use of silica by organisms and slowly-established equilibria with crystalline silica or with authigenic silicates doubtless all play a part. The origin of sedimentary chert may be plausibly ascribed to dissolution of remains of siliceous organisms and reprecipitation of the silica (initially as amorphous silica), but not in general to direct inorganic precipitation.
The Popliteal Approach: A New Approach to Percutaneous Laser-Assisted Angioplasty

"Hot-tip" laser angioplasty has been proven safe and effective in treating periperal vascular disease. There is, however, a group of patients with lesions or occlusions at the origin of the superficial femoral artery (SFA) that are difficult to approach from a standard antegrade femoral approach. The authors have developed a new retrograde popliteal approach that allows laser angioplasty to be performed percutaneously in these patients; 51 consecutive cases have been treated and followed up for more than one year. There were 40 cases with lesions greater than 9 cm long (Group A), while 11 cases had lesions less than 9 cm long (Group B). The mean lesion length was 15 cm. The initial success rate was 32 of 51 cases (63%): 24 of 40 cases (60%) in Group A and 8 of 11 cases (73%) in Group B proved successful. A three-month follow-up showed that clinical patency was 100% in initially successful cases (32 of 32 cases overall, 24 of 24 cases in Group A, and 8 of 8 cases in Group B). A twelve-month follow-up showe...
Structure of an α-Keto β-Amido Acid, 3-(Phenylacetamido)pyruvic Acid, and Its Methyl Ester in the Solid State and in Organic and Aqueous Solvents

3-(Phenylacetamido)pyruvic acid and its methyl ester both exist in the enol form in the solid state and when dissolved in organic solvents. In aqueous solution, the pKa's of the enol acid are 3.28 (CO2H) and 10.14 (enolic OH) and that of the ester is 8.14 (enolic OH). The thermodynamically stable form of both acid and ester in aqueous solution, however, is the keto species. Ketonization rates of 3-(phenylacetamido)pyruvic acid were determined spectrophotometrically in acid and in buffered solution at neutral pH. The dominant reaction at low pH is the pH-independent protonation of the enol carboxylate monoanion with a rate constant of 0.062 s-1 M-1. At neutral pH, the ketonization in water alone is very slow but is strongly catalyzed by buffer acids. Rapid, partial (ca. 30%) hydration of the keto form also occurs in aqueous solution. The pKa of the pyruvate as a carbon acid is around 12.5. These results are compared with literature data for pyruvic acid itself. Application of peptidyl pyruvates and their d...
Decomposing energy productivity change: A distance function approach

Abstract By using output distance functions, this paper decomposes energy productivity change into several components: effects of the changes in the ratios of non-energy inputs to energy, energy supply composition, and output composition; technical efficiency change; technological change. We apply this method to decompose energy productivity change in 23 OECD countries between 1980 and 1990. Results show that technological change is the most important source; increase in capital–energy ratio and the growing importance within total energy supply of electricity also contribute to it.
Satellite remote sensing of drought conditions

Multitemporal satellite data have application in the detection and quantification of drought through the ability of these data to estimate the photosynthetic capacity of the terrestrial surface and record microwave surface brightness at the 37 GHz frequency. With proper calibration and registration, comparisons can be made between and among years for specific months using the photosynthetic capacity and the 37 GHz microwave surface brightness for selected time periods or growing seasons. This technology has application in identifying and quantifying areas experiencing drought.
Boron Spectral Density and Disorder Broadening in B-doped Diamond

Comparison of periodic B dopants with a random alloy of substitional boron in diamond is carried out using several supercells and the coherent potential approximation (CPA) for the random alloy case. The main peak in the B local density of states is shifted to lower binding energy compared to the corresponding C peak in intrinsic diamond. In supercells, this shows up as strongly B-character bands split from bulk C bands away from the zone center, in an energy region around $\ensuremath{-}1\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{eV}$. Even for a $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4$ supercell $({\mathrm{BC}}_{127})$, effects of the dopant order are evident in the form of primarily B-character bands just below the Fermi level at the supercell zone boundary. The bands resulting from the CPA are of continuous mixed C-B character. They resemble virtual crystal bands, but broadened somewhat reflecting the disorder-induced lifetime, and are consistent with angle-resolved photoemission band maps. The B character is 1.7 times larger than for C (per atom) near the top of the valence bands for CPA, and roughly the same for supercells. CPA results are particularly useful since they characterize the wave vector and energy dependence of disorder broadening.
The Criminalization of Immigrants & the Immigration-Industrial Complex

Over the last few decades, and particularly after 9/11, we have witnessed the increasing criminalization of immigrants in the United States. Changing policies have subjected immigrants to intensified apprehension and detention programs. This essay provides an overview of the context and policies that have produced the rising criminalization of immigrants. We draw on the institutional theory of migration to understand the business of detention centers and the construction of the immigration-industrial complex. We link government contracts and private corporations in the formation of the immigration-industrial complex, highlighting the increasing profits that private corporations are making through the detention of immigrants. We conclude with a discussion of how the privatization of detention centers is part of a larger trend in which basic functions of societal institutions are being farmed out to private corporations with little consideration for basic human rights.
Effects of 2-chloroadenine substitution in DNA on restriction endonuclease cleavage reactions

The purine analog, 2-chloro-2'-deoxyadenosine triphosphate (CldATP), was incorporated enzymatically in place of dATP into the minus strand of M13mp18 duplex DNA. Its effect on protein-DNA interactions was assessed by determining the amount of DNA cleavage by type II restriction endonucleases. Substitution of chloroadenine (CIAde) for adenine (Ade) in DNA appreciably decreased the amount and rate of DNA cleavage of the minus strand when the analog was situated within the appropriate endonuclease recognition site. CIAde residues flanking a restriction site had variable effects. SmaI cleaved both CIAde-containing and control substrates with equal efficiency. NarI, however, was stimulated 1.5-fold by the presence of CIAde outside its recognition site. The effects of analog incorporation on restriction enzyme cleavage of an opposing unsubstituted strand of duplex DNA was examined by enzymatically incorporating CIdATP into the complementary minus strand of a 36-base oligonucleotide. Endonucleolytic cleavage of both plus and minus strands was reduced on 36-mers containing CIAde residues located within only the minus strand. These data suggest that CIAde residues incorporated into a single DNA strand may have an appreciable effect on DNA-protein interactions that involve one or both strands of duplex DNA.
Marie Anne Paulze Lavoisier: The Mother of Modern Chemistry

Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze was a significant contributor to the understanding of chemistry in the late 1700s. Marie Anne married Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, known as the ‘Father of Modern Chemistry,’ and was his chief collaborator and laboratory assistant. Marie Anne Lavoisier translated Richard Kirwan’s ‘Essay on Phlogiston’ from English to French which allowed her husband and others to dispute Kirwan’s ideas. She drew many sketches and carved engravings of the laboratory instruments used by Lavoisier and his colleagues. She edited and published Lavoisier’s Memoirs and hosted many parties where eminent scientists discussed new chemistry and ideas. As a result of her close work with Antoine Lavoisier, it is difficult to separate her individual contributions from his, but it is correctly assumed that much of the work accredited to him bears her fingerprints.
A Proposal for a Standard File Format for the Electronic Transfer of Spectral Data and Related Information

AbstractThis article proposes a standard file format for the electronic transfer of five classes of spectral data: 1) spectral power distributions (SPDs) from commercial light sources, 2) SPDs from theoretical illuminants, 3) spectral reflectance distributions, 4) spectral transmittance distributions, and 5) spectral weighting functions. The file structure is adapted from ANSI/IESNA LM-63–02, which is employed for the electronic transfer of luminaire photometric data. Use of the proposed file format, or one similar, would aid communication between manufacturers, researchers, designers, and software developers and would facilitate the creation of spectrally-based lighting software.
Reconsidering the 'idea' of evidence in evidence-based policy and practice

Evidence-based policy and practice (EBP) has become an important social work conceptual framework. Yet, the core EBP concept, the concept of evidence, remains ill-defined. I propose a modification of the concept of evidence as applied to EBP effectiveness questions. As a basis for this reformulation ideas about evidence are examined from cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives including epistemology, philosophy of science, evidence-science, and law. I propose that for EBP effectiveness questions: (1) to be considered ‘relevant evidence’ an explanatory connection between an intervention and an outcome must be established rather than a mere association; (2) the EBP definition of ‘best available evidence’ should include total available evidence (rather than a subset) about effectiveness, causal roles (i.e., mechanisms), and support factors and be inclusive of high-quality experimental and observational studies as well as high-quality mechanistic reasoning; (3) the familiar five-step EBP process...
Anatomical, physiological, and behavioral effects of neonatal sensorimotor cortex ablation in the rat

Abstract Rats receiving one-stage bilateral lesions of the sensorimotor cortex or sham operations at 2 days of age were tested at maturity for the ability to master a series of tactile discriminations. A significant lesion effect appeared, and performance was found to be highly correlated with the locus and extent of sensorimotor cortex damage. The latter was evaluated by (a) the surface configuration of the lesion, (b) electrophysiological identification of units still responsive to peripheral somatic stimulation, (c) an analysis of the remaining “barrels” in the SmI cortex, and (d) the integrity of the ventrobasal thalamus. In addition, tactile learning was found to be directly related to number of deficits on a series of neurological tests (e.g., hopping, grip strength), although the rats performed reasonably well on most items of this battery. When all infants with lesions were compared to rats with sensorimotor lesions made in adulthood, the former appeared to be less debilitated. After infant-operated rats with sizable remaining fragments of target tissue were removed from the analysis, however, thus making the ablations of the young and old groups more comparable, the groups were found to be equally impaired. These data thus fail to show enhanced recovery of tactile discriminative function after relatively complete lesions of the sensorimotor cortex in infancy. The results further suggest that tactile learning, when observed in infant-operated animals, was mediated by spared fragments of an afferent system whose cortical components continued to develop normally after incomplete neonatal ablation. It is suggested that infant-ablated rats may be better able to use spared fragments of target tissue than matched adult ablated rats when more than a small fraction of SmI cortex is spared.