cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
General Aviation User Benefits

A user benefits economic impact model of general aviation (GA) travel is developed using data for five publicly owned airports in North Carolina. A 1994 survey of GA users concerning flight origins, destinations, intermediate stops, and local expenditures is geographically represented with TransCAD 3.0, a geographic information system. Minimum-time road paths for these flights are also computed. User costs including passenger value of time, local ground transportation, overnight costs, and expenditures for crew and passengers are then estimated, and costs and travel times for the two modes are calculated for each airport. Findings are compared with the traditional jobs-based method of estimating airport impacts. Results indicate that as the passenger value of time increases, travel using the general aviation mode becomes more advantageous than is automobile travel. In addition, as the trip length increases, more time spent in traveling induces overnight stays and thus travel expenses rise considerably. Ho...
Association of Preanesthesia Hypertension With Adverse Outcomes

Objective To investigate the incidence of preanesthesia hypertension, case cancellation for hypertension, and association with postoperative outcomes. Design Retrospective descriptive, univariate, and multivariate analyses of electronic anesthesia and hospital records. Setting A large urban academic medical center. Participants Adult elective surgical patients with preinduction blood pressure (BP) >140/90 mmHg during calendar years 2002 to 2008. Interventions None. Measurements and Main Results Preinduction hypertension was present in 21,126 of 209,985 (10%) patients, and the incidence of adverse outcomes (elevated troponin or in-hospital death) was 1.3% overall and 2.8% for the subset of patients with baseline systolic BP >200 mmHg. Independent predictors of adverse outcome included increased baseline systolic BP, intraoperative diastolic BP 200 mmHg (2.2%). Among 42 “cancelled” patients who returned for surgery hours to years later, the average preinduction BP was 192/102 mmHg, and adverse cardiovascular outcomes occurred in 4.8%. Conclusions The increasing severity of preinduction hypertension was an independent risk factor for postoperative myocardial injury/infarction or in-hospital death. Only a small percentage of cases with patients presenting with severe hypertension were cancelled, and the delay of surgery did not result in interval normalization of blood pressure.
A system for collecting activity annotations for home energy management

Home energy management is becoming increasingly important and, though there are a plethora of tools for accessing energy consumption data, few provide concrete insights that can directly help users manage demand. Mechanisms that enable a user to draw connections between activities and energy consumption by attaching contextual labels to energy events are a promising step; however solutions for collecting annotations from users can be error prone or intrusive. This work presents a system for collecting in situ annotations using a smartphone application coupled with an off-the-shelf home energy measurement infrastructure. We use a novel power profiling approach to identify important energy consumption events and solicit contextual annotations from the user via a push notification sent to a smartphone. Using a five-week study performed in five homes, we show that our power profiling approach can identify a significant percentage of important energy consumption events using a very small number of monitored devices. We were able to collect an average of over 2 annotations per day and while users provided a wide range of annotations, the motivation to provide annotations varied across subjects.
Comparison of effects of adding Boudouard catalysts before and after coal charring

Abstract The gasification behaviour of coal to which Boudouard catalysts were added before and after charring was compared. For Illinois coal and for Navajo subbituminous coal, experiments showed that it is not of significance if alkali carbonate catalyst is added before or after charring. The results suggest that Boudouard catalysts must be highly mobile under gasification conditions, and their activity dominates the gasification process at these conditions compared to mass transfer constraints.
Center-crossing recurrent neural networks for the evolution of rhythmic behavior

A center-crossing recurrent neural network is one in which the null-(hyper)surfaces of each neuron intersect at their exact centers of symmetry, ensuring that each neuron's activation function is centered over the range of net inputs that it receives. We demonstrate that relative to a random initial population, seeding the initial population of an evolutionary search with center-crossing networks significantly improves both the frequency and the speed with which high-fitness oscillatory circuits evolve on a simple walking task. The improvement is especially striking at low mutation variances. Our results suggest that seeding with center-crossing networks may often be beneficial, since a wider range of dynamics is more likely to be easily accessible from a population of center-crossing networks than from a population of random networks.
What Makes a Photograph Memorable

When glancing at a magazine, or browsing the Internet, we are continuously exposed to photographs. Despite this overflow of visual information, humans are extremely good at remembering thousands of pictures along with some of their visual details. But not all images are equal in memory. Some stick in our minds while others are quickly forgotten. In this paper, we focus on the problem of predicting how memorable an image will be. We show that memorability is an intrinsic and stable property of an image that is shared across different viewers, and remains stable across delays. We introduce a database for which we have measured the probability that each picture will be recognized after a single view. We analyze a collection of image features, labels, and attributes that contribute to making an image memorable, and we train a predictor based on global image descriptors. We find that predicting image memorability is a task that can be addressed with current computer vision techniques. While making memorable images is a challenging task in visualization, photography, and education, this work is a first attempt to quantify this useful property of images.
The Impact of Subsampling on Modis Level-3 Statistics of Cloud Optical Thickness and Effective Radius

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Level-3 optical thickness and effective radius cloud product is a gridded 1/spl deg//spl times/1/spl deg/ dataset that is derived from aggregation and subsampling of every fifth pixel, along both spatial directions, of Level-2 orbital swath data (Level-2 granules). The present study examines the impact of this subsampling on the mean, standard deviation, and inhomogeneity parameter statistics of optical thickness and effective radius. The methodology is simple and consists of estimating mean errors for a large collection of Terra and Aqua Level-2 granules by taking the difference of the statistics at the original and subsampled resolutions. It is shown that the Level-3 subsampling does not affect the various quantities investigated to the same degree, with second-order moments suffering greater subsampling errors, as expected. Mean errors drop dramatically when averages over a sufficient number of regions (e.g., monthly and/or zonal averages) are taken, pointing to a dominance of errors that are of random nature. When histograms built from subsampled data with the same binning rules as in the Level-3 dataset are used to reconstruct the quantities of interest, the mean errors do not deteriorate significantly. The results in this paper provide guidance to users of MODIS Level-3 optical thickness and effective radius cloud products on the range of errors due to subsampling they should expect and perhaps account for, in scientific work with this dataset. In general, subsampling errors should not be a serious concern when moderate temporal (e.g., monthly) and/or spatial (e.g., zonal) averaging is performed.
Sets with maximum hamming index

The Hamming distance between two equal lengthed bit strings is the number of positions at which those strings differ. Let the Hamming index of a set S of equal lengthed bit strings be the number of pairs of strings in S that are at unit Hamming distance from each other. The lower the Hamming index of S, the more suitable 5 is as a set of binary codes that may be transmitted over data networks. We show a nontrivial result that the Hamming index of the set of equal lengthed binary representations of the numbers 0, n-1 is never less than the Hamming index of any set of n equal lengthed binary strings. In addition to being of interest in coding theory, our result has applications in graph embeddings and parallel computer architectures
Signal statistics and sequence estimation in intensity modulated fiber optic links containing a single optical pre-amplifier

A natural criterion of performance optimization in a communication system is that of minimizing the probability of error. In this paper, the authors derive the signal statistics by means of Karhunen-Loeve expansions such that the signal waveforms and the noise before the square-law detector are projected onto a set of orthonormal basis.
ROLE OF GROWTH REGULATORS IN THE SENESCENCE OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA LEAVES

A homozygous, dominant, C2H4-resistant line of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh (cv. Columbia; er) was selected from ethylmethylsulfonate-mutagenized seed, and used to test the role of C2H4 and other growth regulators in senescence of mature leaves. Chlorophyll (Chl) loss from disks excised from leaves of er was much slower than that from wild-type (WT) disks, whether they were held in the light or in the dark. C2H4 accelerated Che loss from WT disks but had no effect on the yellowing of mutant disks. C2H4 biosynthesis was higher in disks from the mutant plants, particularly in the light. In the dark, treatment with the cytokinin, 6-benzyladenine (BA), reduced Chl loss from wild-type disks, but had no effect on mutant disks. In the light, BA treatment stimulated chlorophyll breakdown in both wild type and mutant disks. Treatment with abscisic acid (ABA) stimulated chlorophyll loss in wild-type and mutant disks, whether they were held in the light or the dark. C2H4 production was stimulated in ABA-treated disks, but they still yellowed even when C2H4 production was inhibited by application of aminooxyacetic acid (AOA). These data indicate that C2H4 is only one of the factors involved in leaf senescence, and that the promotion of senescence by ABA is not mediated through its stimulation of C2H4 production.
The Usage and Perceived Outcomes of Early Intervention and Early Childhood Programs for Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study investigated families of children with autism spectrum disorders using early intervention and early childhood services, as well as the perceived efficacy and developmental outcomes relat...
Spatial Fragmentation and the Value of Residential Housing

This study examines the impacts of spatial fragmentation and land use diversity on single-family residential real estate values. Through hedonic price analysis, we estimate the implicit price effects of spatial fragmentation and neighborhood land use diversity in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Spatial econometric estimates suggest that house prices are negatively impacted by spatial fragmentation at low levels of fragmentation, yet there is a positive price relationship at high levels of fragmentation. The results also suggest that house prices do not share a statistically significant relationship with land use diversity.
Assessing the effect of time-scaling methods on phylogeny-based analyses in the fossil record

Phylogeny-based approaches can be used to infer diversification dynamics and the rate and pattern of trait change. Applying these analyses to fossil data often requires time-scaling a cladogram of morphotaxon relationships. Although several time-scaling methods have been developed for this purpose, the incomplete sampling of the fossil record can distort the apparent timing of branching. It is unclear how well different time-scaling methods reconstruct the true temporal relationships or how any such inaccuracy could affect tree-based evolutionary analyses. I developed process-based simulations of the fossil record that allow the comparison of approximated time-scaled trees to true time-scaled trees. I used this simulation framework to test the effect of time-scaling methods on the fidelity of several commonly applied tree-based analyses, across a range of simulation conditions. When the fidelity of time-scaling methods differed, the stochastic “cal3” time-scaling method with ancestral assignment produced preferable results. Estimating rates and models of continuous trait evolution was particularly sensitive to bias from scenarios that forced the insertion of many short branch lengths, a bias that is not solved by any of the considered time-scaling methods in all scenarios. The cal3 method of time-scaling can be recommended as the preferred time-scaling method among those tested, but caution must be exercised because tree-based analyses are prone to easily overlooked biases.
Is there a link between intermittent hypoxia‐induced respiratory plasticity and obstructive sleep apnoea?

Although neuroplasticity is an important property of the respiratory motor control system, its existence has been appreciated only in recent years and, as a result, its functional significance is not completely understood. The most frequently studied models of respiratory plasticity is respiratory long-term facilitation (LTF) following acute intermittent hypoxia and enhanced LTF following chronic intermittent hypoxia. Since intermittent hypoxia is a prominent feature of sleep-disordered breathing, LTF and/or enhanced LTF may compensate for factors that predispose to sleep-disordered breathing, particularly during obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). Long-term facilitation has been studied most frequently in rats, and exhibits interesting properties consistent with a role in stabilizing breathing during sleep. Specifically, LTF: (1) is prominent in upper airway respiratory motor activity, suggesting that it stabilizes upper airways and maintains airway patency; (2) is most prominent during sleep in unanaesthetized rats; and (3) exhibits sexual dimorphism (greatest in young male and middle-aged female rats; smallest in middle-aged male and young female rats). Although these features are consistent with the hypothesis that upper airway LTF minimizes the prevalence of OSA in humans, there is little direct evidence for such an effect. Here we review advances in our understanding of LTF and its underlying mechanisms and present evidence concerning a potential role for LTF in maintaining upper airway patency, stabilizing breathing and preventing OSA in humans. Regardless of the relationship between LTF and OSA, a detailed understanding of cellular and synaptic mechanisms that underlie LTF may guide the development of new drugs to regulate upper airway tone, thereby offsetting the tendency for upper airway collapse characteristic of heavy snoring and OSA.
Theoretical Perspectives on Goffman: Critique and Commentary

This paper presents a critical examination of the papers by Colomy and Brown, West, and Ostrow. Each is considered in terms of how the author's work connects with topics addressed by Gofftnan and with his own theoretical and methodological approaches.
Physical Violence Inside Prisons: Rates of Victimization

This study estimates prevalence rates of inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate physical victimization. Inmate participants were drawn from 13 adult male prisons and 1 female prison operated by a single mid-Atlantic state. A total of 7,221 men and 564 women participated. Rates of physical victimization varied significantly by gender, perpetrator, question wording, and facility. Prevalence rates of inmate-on-inmate physical violence in the previous 6 months were equal for males and females. Men had significantly higher rates of physical violence perpetrated by staff than by other inmates. By facility, inmate-on-inmate prevalence rates ranged from 129 to 346 per 1,000, whereas the range for staff-on-inmate was 83 to 321 per 1,000 (but the difference was not statistically significant).
Design and implementation of three incoherent feed-forward motif based biological concentration sensors

Synthetic biology is a useful tool to investigate the dynamics of small biological networks and to assess our capacity to predict their behavior from computational models. In this work we report the construction of three different synthetic networks in Escherichia coli based upon the incoherent feed-forward loop architecture. The steady state behavior of the networks was investigated experimentally and computationally under different mutational regimes in a population based assay. Our data shows that the three incoherent feed-forward networks, using three different macromolecular inhibitory elements, reproduce the behavior predicted from our computational model. We also demonstrate that specific biological motifs can be designed to generate similar behavior using different components. In addition we show how it is possible to tune the behavior of the networks in a predicable manner by applying suitable mutations to the inhibitory elements.
Laparoscopic extraperitoneal para-aortic lymphadenectomy in locally advanced cervical cancer: a prospective correlation of surgical findings with positron emission tomography/computed tomography findings.

BACKGROUND: Failure to detect metastasis to para-aortic nodes in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer leads to suboptimal treatment. No previous studies have prospectively compared positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) with laparoscopic extraperitoneal staging in the evaluation of para-aortic lymph nodes. METHODS: Sixty-five patients were enrolled; 60 were available for analysis. Patients with stage IB2-IVA cervical cancer without evidence of para-aortic lymphadenopathy on preoperative CT or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were prospectively enrolled. All patients underwent preoperative PET/CT. Laparoscopic extraperitoneal lymphadenectomy was performed from the common iliac vessels to the left renal vein. RESULTS: The median age at diagnosis was 48 years (range, 23-84). The median operative time was 140 minutes (range, 89-252). The median blood loss was 22.5 mL (range, 5-150). The median length of hospital stay was 1 day (range, 0-4). The median number of lymph nodes retrieved was 11 (range, 1-39). Fourteen (23%) patients had histopathologically positive para-aortic nodes. Of the 26 patients with negative pelvic and para-aortic nodes on PET/CT, 3 (12%) had histopathologically positive para-aortic nodes. Of the 27 patients with positive pelvic but negative para-aortic nodes on PET/CT, 6 (22%) had histopathologically positive para-aortic nodes. The sensitivity and specificity of PET/CT in detecting positive para-aortic nodes when nodes were negative on CT or MRI were 36% and 96%, respectively. Eleven (18.3%) patients had a treatment modification based on surgical findings. CONCLUSIONS: Laparoscopic extraperitoneal para-aortic lymphadenectomy is safe and feasible. Surgical staging of patients with locally advanced cervical cancer should be considered before planned radiation and chemotherapy. Cancer 2011. © 2010 American Cancer Society.
Photonic Band Structure Computation Using FLAME

The flexible local approximation method (FLAME) is applied for the first time to the computation of the band diagrams of periodic dielectric structures (photonic crystals). Numerical experiments show that FLAME attains high accuracy on fairly coarse grids, with 6-8 orders of magnitude lower errors in the dispersion curves than alternative methods such as finite-element analysis or plane wave expansion with the same number of degrees of freedom.
Migration of Copper Between Different Fractions of Milk

Abstract About 35% of the naturally occuring copper in milk is associated with the fat fraction as calculated by the procedure of Mulder and Koppejan. On storage copper migrated into the nonfat fraction until only 0 to 7% remained with the fat. Only a small proportion of added copper was associated with the fat although the amount increased as more copper was added to milk. The data may be interpreted as follows: The naturally occurring copper associated with fat is largely or wholly a part of copper containing components which desorb from the surface of fat globules during storage. Added copper associates with the inner nondesorbing part of the membrane and remains there for at least 144 hours of storage.
The RoboFlag testbed

This paper describes the RoboFlag hardware/software testbed. The RoboFlag game consists of two teams of 6-10 robots and 2 people, each attempting to capture the other teams flag while defending their own. Limited sensing capability, distributed processing, and limited bandwidth communications are integral parts of the system. The game can be played with real robots or with simulated robots. Some aspects of the game, such as the arbiter and communications network, are completely simulated.
Tempo and mode in evolution: phylogenetic inertia, adaptation and comparative methods

Before the Evolutionary Synthesis, ‘phylogenetic inertia’ was associated with theories of orthogenesis, which claimed that organisms possessed an endogenous perfecting principle. The concept in the modern literature dates to Simpson (1944), who used ‘evolutionary inertia’ as a description of pattern in the fossil record. Wilson (1975) used ‘phylogenetic inertia’ to describe population-level or organismal properties that can affect the course of evolution in response to selection. Many current authors now view phylogenetic inertia as an alternative hypothesis to adaptation by natural selection when attempting to explain interspecific variation, covariation or lack thereof in phenotypic traits. Some phylogenetic comparative methods have been claimed to allow quantification and testing of phylogenetic inertia. Although some existing methods do allow valid tests of whether related species tend to resemble each other, which we term ‘phylogenetic signal’, this is simply pattern recognition and does not imply any underlying process. Moreover, comparative data sets generally do not include information that would allow rigorous inferences concerning causal processes underlying such patterns. The concept of phylogenetic inertia needs to be defined and studied with as much care as ‘adaptation’.
Relationship between platelet serotonin uptake sites and measures of impulsivity, aggression, and craving among African-American cocaine abusers.

We investigated whether platelet-tritiated paroxetine binding, a measure of serotonin uptake sites, and behavioral measures of impulsivity, aggression, and craving differed between cocaine-dependent subjects and controls and whether paroxetine binding was related to these behavioral measures. One hundred and five African-American cocaine-dependent outpatients and 44 African-American controls were studied. Tritiated paroxetine binding sites on platelets were assayed, and standardized assessments of impulsivity, aggression, and craving were performed. The Bmax values of paroxetine binding were significantly reduced among cocaine patients compared to controls. Cocaine patients showed significantly higher scores on certain measures of sensation seeking, impulsivity, and aggression as compared to controls. Furthermore, paroxetine binding showed a significant negative correlation with most measures of sensation seeking, impulsivity, and aggression--though not craving--among cocaine patients. Our findings indica...
The Place of Mathematics and Science in Undergraduate Psychology Education

A national survey of psychology departments (N = 520) revealed that their institutions' general education programs require that undergraduates take an average of one course in mathematics (algebra or above) and two natural or physical science courses. Requirements for BA and BS degrees were nearly identical. Some psychology departments are attempting to increase the scientific literacy of their majors through a variety of course and proficiency retirements. Two recommendations for further research concerning mathematics and science education are offered.
An Investigation Of Institutional Enhancement Factors On Student College Success

This study focuses on the importance of student’s hard work and institutional factors? technology, advising, mentoring, and tutoring on student’s academic performance. It is important for institutions to emphasize both student’s hard work and effective institutional factors that will have positive impact on student success.
Maternal cardiac troponin levels in pre-eclampsia: a systematic review.

AbstractObjective: We systematically review the literature for potential alterations in cardiac troponin I (cTnI) in patients who suffer from pre-eclampsia.Methods: We used the Medline (1966–2015), Scopus (2004–2015), Popline (1974–2015), ClinicalTrials.gov (2008–2015) and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (1999–2015) databases for our primary search; we also employed the reference lists of the full-text articles that we retrieved electronically.Results: We included nine studies involving 719 women. Five of these studies suggested that cTnI increases in pre-eclamptic patients above the normal threshold. However, all studies reported outcomes at a single time point, and they failed to perform consecutive measurements to observe whether this effect was long lasting and whether it evolved during the course of pregnancy.Conclusions: Current evidence suggests that cTnI might be elevated in pre-eclamptic pregnant women, although this observation is not always reported. Future studies are ...
The effects of epinephrine on glycerol production in segments of adipose tissue preincubated with dexamethasone and growth hormone.

SummaryAfter preincubation with dexamethasone (0.016 μg/ml) and growth hormone (1 μg/ml), segments of epididymal fat were tested for sensitivity to the lipolytic effects of epinephrine. When the data from the entire group of 36 rats were pooled and analyzed, it appeared that dexamethasone and growth hormone significantly increased basal lipolysis, but had no significant effect on epinephrine-induced lipolysis. Tissues from only 13 of the 36 rats had increased basal lipolysis of the order of twofold or greater. When the data from these rats were pooled, it appeared that pretreatment with dexamethasone and growth hormone actually reduced lipolysis in response to 0.001 μg/ml of epinephrine and had no effect on higher concentrations of epinephrine. Pooling the data from the remaining 23 rats indicated that the preincubation procedure did not increase basal lipolysis, but significantly increased lipolysis in response to 0.001 and 0.01 μg/ml of epinephrine. The difference in the response of the two groups of ra...
Calmodulin-like proteins and communicating junctions. Electrical uncoupling of crayfish septate axons is inhibited by the calmodulin inhibitor W7 and is not affected by cyclic nucleotides.

The effects of W7, a calmodulin (CaM)-inhibitor, and cyclic nucleotides on electrical coupling and uncoupling are studied in crayfish lateral giant axons (septate axons). The septate axons provide a relatively simple two cell system in which both surface membrane and junctional resistance can be measured independently. Four microelectrodes are inserted into a septate axon, two on each side of the septum. Hyperpolarizing current pulses (150 nA) are injected alternatively in the caudal and rostral axon segment and the resulting electrotonic potentials are recorded. The axons are uncoupled at regular intervals by superfusing them with acetate-containing saline solution (pH 6.3) in the presence or absence of W7 (50–100 μM) or, as a control, its nonchlorinated form (W5). W7 strongly inhibits the acetate-induced increased in junctional resistance, while W5 is ineffective. The uncoupling inhibition does not appear to be caused by an increase in cyclic nucleotide concentration, because in preliminary experiments exposure to db-cAMP or db-cGMP (up to 1 mM) does not seem to influence either the basic values of Rj or their changes with acetate. The data confirm previous evidence for a participation of CaM-like proteins in cell-to-cell channel gating.
Epidemiological investigation of the first case of human avian influenza A(H7N9) virus infection in Qimen county

Objective To analyze the data from epidemiological investigation of the case infected with H7N9 influenza,and provide a scientific basis for further prevention and control. Methods Epidemiological investigation was conducted on the patient,close contact,poultry farms where the patients exposed to and live poultry market located in urban area. External environment samples were collected for testing and analyzing. Close contacts and patients were searched and influenza-like cases monitor were strengthened. Results The patient was laboratory confirmed case,and died 7 days after the onset of disease. The 61 close contacts were not found symptoms of discomfort. Type A influenza virus nucleic acid of chicken farm manure specimens was positive. The patients were engaged in live poultry farming before the onset of disease,which indicating that exposure to live poultry may be a source of infection. Conclusion The case of human infection with H7N9 flu had the exact poultry exposure history and no human- to- human transmission was found. Exposure to domestic poultry may be the source of infection for the patient.
Race against Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe

Racism and racial “science” emerged in Europe as an elite response to a worldwide wave of rural insurgencies that began in the era of the French and Haitian Revolutions and continues, in its own way, to this day. In his dialectic of lord and bondsman, G.W.F. Hegel formulated political, economic, and biopolitical ideas from the uprisings occurring in his world, creating a now long-standing dialogue between dialectical theory, including Marxism, and rural insurgency. Racism was part of a biopolitical counterrevolution that sought to maintain the power of elites over insurgent populations. Here Prussia played a central role, as its struggle against the autonomy of migrant agricultural labors took the form of campaigns against the “Polonization” of Prussia. The social scientist Max Weber theorized this struggle in a series of essays on race and rural labor that produced a racism based on culture rather than biology. This cultural racism, like the insurgent discourses it opposes, persists in many forms in Central Europe and around the world.
Lope de Vega's La inocente Laura and the Early Modern Transnational World (Cinzio, Greene, d'Ouville, and Pasca)

This article focuses on La inocente Laura, a play written by Lope de Vega in the first decade of the 1600s that has received little critical attention in spite of its role in a transnational networ...
An Investigation of Low-Dose 3D Scout Scans for Computed Tomography.

Purpose: Commonly 2D scouts or topograms are used prior to CT scan acquisition. However, low-dose 3D scouts could potentially provide additional information for more effective patient positioning and selection of acquisition protocols. We propose using model-based iterative reconstruction to reconstruct low exposure tomographic data to maintain image quality in both low-dose 3D scouts and reprojected topograms based on those 3D scouts. Methods: We performed tomographic acquisitions on a CBCT test-bench using a range of exposure settings from 16.6 to 231.9 total mAs. Both an anthropomorphic phantom and a 32 cm CTDI phantom were scanned. The penalized-likelihood reconstructions were made using Matlab and CUDA libraries and reconstruction parameters were tuned to determine the best regularization strength and delta parameter. RMS error between reconstructions and the highest exposure reconstruction were computed, and CTDIW values were reported for each exposure setting. RMS error for reprojected topograms were also computed. Results: We find that we are able to produce low-dose (0.417 mGy) 3D scouts that show high-contrast and large anatomical features while maintaining the ability to produce traditional topograms. Conclusions: We demonstrated that iterative reconstruction can mitigate noise in very low exposure CT acquisitions to enable 3D CT scout. Such additional 3D information may lead to improved protocols for patient positioning and acquisition refinements as well as a number of advanced dose reduction strategies that require localization of anatomical features and quantities that are not provided by simple 2D topograms.
Manipulating the Energetics and Rates of Electron Transfer in Rhodobacter capsulatus Reaction Centers with Asymmetric Pigment Content

Seemingly redundant parallel pathways for electron transfer (ET), composed of identical sets of cofactors, are a cornerstone feature of photosynthetic reaction centers (RCs) involved in light-energy conversion. In native bacterial RCs, both A and B branches house one bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) and one bacteriopheophytin (BPh), but the A branch is used exclusively. Described herein are the results obtained for two Rhodobacter capsulatus RCs with an unnaturally high degree of cofactor asymmetry, two BPh on the RC’s B side and two BChl on the A side. These pigment changes derive, respectively, from the His(M180)Leu mutation [a BPh (ΦB) replaces the B-side BChl (BB)], and the Leu(M212)His mutation [a BChl (βA) replaces the A-side BPh (HA)]. Additionally, Tyr(M208)Phe was employed to disfavor ET to the A branch; in one mutant, Val(M131)Glu creates a hydrogen bond to HB to enhance ET to HB. In both ΦB mutants, the decay kinetics of the excited primary ET donor (P*) resolve three populations with lifetimes of ∼9...
Evaluating Pile Setup Using Numerical Simulation and Introducing an Elastoplastic Constitutive Model for Clays

An elastoplastic constitutive model was developed to define cohesive soil behavior. During pile installation in saturated ground, the soil adjacent to the pile disturbs causing large displacements and numerous variation in the porewater pressure in the soil-pile interface zone. Therefore, the soil disturbance and the corresponding decline in the soil shear strength were included in the developed constitutive model. After end of pile driving (EOD), the surrounding disturbed soil tends to regain its strength over time due to both consolidation and thixotropic effects. In this paper, the soil thixotropy was simulated by applying a time-dependent reduction parameter, β, which affects both the interface friction and the soil shear strength parameters. In order to examine the proposed model, numerical simulation of pile installation and the following increase in the pile capacity over time (pile setup) was performed for a full-scale pile load test case study. Finite element (FE) software Abaqus utilized to simulate the pile installation and following pile load tests. Dissipation of the induced excess porewater pressure was modeled through applying conventional consolidation theory. The proposed model was developed based on disturbed state concept and application of the modified Cam-Clay model. Pile installation was modeled by combination of two phases in an axisymmetric FE model: creating a volumetric cavity expansion followed by applying a vertical shear displacement (penetration). The FE simulation results included: (1)-developed excess porewater pressure in the soil body during pile installation and its dissipation over time after EOD, (2)-increase in effective lateral stresses at the pile-soil interface, and (3)-the pile setup values attributed to both the soil consolidation and its thixotropic responses. Comparison of the FE simulation results with the measured values obtained from load tests conducted on a full-scale instrumented pile indicated that the developed constitutive model is able to appropriately predict pile installation and following setup.
When the Party Comes to Town: Experiential Learning During a Presidential Nominating Convention

Winthrop University used its location in the Charlotte metropolitan area to develop a course that combined academic content with an experiential component during the Democratic National Convention....
Oculoplastics Considerations in Ocular Surface Disease

Eyelid disease in the form of malpositions and/or scarring (symblepharon/akyloblepharon) can be both the cause and the consequence of ocular surface disease. It is present in nearly every patient with advanced surface disease. An oculoplastics specialist is an important member of the ocular surface team. One of the most important and effective eyelid procedures for chronic epithelial disease is a tarsorrhaphy. The most common pitfall in the use of a tarsorrhaphy is waiting too long to perform one and often if done earlier it can prevent the development of complications such as melting or perforation. Another very effective procedure for ocular surface disease is mucous membrane grafting which is necessary in severe conjunctival deficiency. The following three cases highlight the importance of oculoplastics in the effective management of ocular surface disease.
Multi-Objective Parallel Optimization of Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Architectures

This research explores a parallel implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize geosynchronous orbit (GEO) Space Situational Awareness (SSA) architectures. It does so by parallel evaluatio...
HIV enteropathy : a challenge in diagnosis and management

The gastrointestinal tract is the largest lymphoid reservoir of the body and is subject to damage that compromises the cellular and humoral defense mechanism. With the increasing numbers of patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), health-care practitioners need to be familiar with infections that affect the gastrointestinal tract. These infections cause severe morbidity and sometimes even death in immunocompromised patients. This article reviews the diagnosis and management of gastrointestinal infections in the immunocompromised patient.
Lumbosacral ventral spinal nerve root atrophy identified on MRI in a case of spinal muscular atrophy type II.

Abstract Spinal muscular atrophies are rare genetic disorders most often caused by homozygous deletion mutations in SMN1 that lead to progressive neurodegeneration of anterior horn cells. Ventral spinal root atrophy is a consistent pathological finding in post-mortem examinations of patients who suffered from various subtypes of spinal muscular atrophy; however, corresponding radiographic findings have not been previously reported. We present a patient with hypotonia and weakness who was found to have ventral spinal root atrophy in the lumbosacral region on MRI and was subsequently diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy. More systematic analyses of imaging studies in spinal muscular atrophy will help determine whether such findings have the potential to serve as reliable diagnostic markers for clinical evaluations or as outcome measure for clinical trials.
Classifying Treated vs. Untreated MDD Adolescents from Anatomical Connectivity using Nonlinear SVM

Identification of the treatment-related responders for adolescent Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is urgently needed to develop effective treatments. In this paper, machine learning based classifiers are used to reveal anatomical features as responders for distinguishing MDD patients who have received treatment from those who never received any treatment. The features are drawn from two sets of measurements: 1) anatomical connectivity defined by diffusion tensor imaging measurements between a pair of brain regions, and 2) topological measurements from anatomical networks. Feature selection was performed based on p-value and minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR) method to achieve improved classification accuracy. The classification performance is evaluated with a leave-one-out cross-validation method using 37 treated and 15 untreated subjects. The proposed methodology achieves 73% accuracy, 100% specificity, and 100% precision for 52 subjects. The most distinguishing features are the strength of the right hippocampus of the mean diffusivity (MD) network at 18% density and of the track-count (TR) network, the participation coefficient of the left middle temporal gyrus of the radial diffusivity (RD) network at 20% density, the axial diffusivity (AD) connectivity between right middle temporal gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus, the betweenness centrality of the right hippocampus of the TR network at 11% density, the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) connectivity between the left pars opercularis and the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex, the clustering coefficient of the middle anterior corpus callosum of the TR network at 11% density, and the AD connectivity between the left pars opercularis and the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex.
Control of physicochemical and cargo release properties of cross-linked alginate microcapsules formed by spray-drying

Abstract Encapsulation in dry cross-linked alginate microbeads has numerous applications in pharmaceutics, food, and agriculture. Recently, we developed an innovative, industrially scalable, and cost-effective method in which alginates are cross-linked in-situ during spray-drying to form cross-linked alginate microcapsules (CLAMs), consolidating a series of unit operations into a single step. This study investigated the control of alginate matrix cross-linking by modulating the CaHPO4 content and explored the subsequent impact on CLAM physicochemical properties. Maximum cross-linking was achieved at CaHPO4 feed contents greater than 0.2% (w/w). CLAMs prepared with ≥0.25% CaHPO4 in the spray-dryer inlet feed contained residual insoluble CaHPO4, and particle morphology of such CLAMs tended to appear more spherical and less dramatically collapsed than less cross-linked CLAMs. Cross-linking of CLAMs did not influence particle size. The release of dextran from CLAMs was examined in the context of matrix hydration and the dissociation of non cross-linked alginate from the matrix. Dextran release was characterized by a brief delay, followed by rapid release, concluding within 2 h. Elevated cross-linking slightly hindered the early release of FITC-labeled dextran from CLAMs. Alginate dissociation was delayed and less extensive in highly cross-linked CLAMs, suggesting alginate dissociation may govern the early stage of cargo release.
Between-side differences in hand-grip strength across the age span: Findings from 2011-2014 NHANES and 2011 NIH Toolbox studies

This project was undertaken to describe percentage differences in the grip strength between the dominant and nondominant-sides of left- and right-handed males and females across the age span. Data used in the project were from population-based samples of participants: 13,653 from the 2011-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and 3,571 from the 2011 normative phase of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox project. Depending on how percentage differences were calculated, the overall grip strength was a mean 5.0-5.6% greater on the dominant than nondominant side. The percentage differences were significantly greater for individuals who were right-hand dominant rather than left-hand dominant. The differences also varied according to gender. We present summary data for percentage differences stratified by study, handedness, and gender. The values can be used to determine whether grip strength on one side is limited relative to the other.
Adopting Again: A Qualitative Study of the Second Transition to Parenthood in Adoptive Families

The transition to second-time parenthood—i.e., becoming a parent to a second child—is a time of adjustment and change for the whole family. While research has demonstrated that family transitions c...
Demographic Predictors of the Perceived Likelihood of Hiring a Health Care Advocate

Background and Significance: The field of health care advocacy developed in response to the growing complexity of the health care system. A Health Care Advocate (HCA) is a trained professional who can help patients navigate the health care system. In the present study we investigated the effects of social support, number of people with whom individuals reside, gender, age, income, and race on the perceived likelihood of hiring an HCA for oneself. Method: Nine hundred and eighty-seven adults (Mage = 45.48 years, SD = 17.33 years, 55.4% female) were randomly selected and asked to complete a questionnaire. To explore the relationships of the perceived likelihood of hiring an HCA, path-analytic models using full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation were tested, using Stata 12.1. Results: The model fit well statistically, ? 2 (5, N = 987) = 8.50, p = 0.131, and descriptively, CFI = 0.999, RMSEA = 0.027, pclose = 0.891, CD = 0.205. Conclusion: Overall, the model accounted for 4.30% of the variance in Hire HCA. More research is needed to better understand the role of an HCA in our complex and everchanging health care system.
110th Anniversary: Generalized Singular Value Decomposition Reduced-Order Observers for Linear Time-Invariant Systems with Noisy Measurements

The use of observers for improvement of output feedback process control is important for achieving accuracy and processing efficiency, especially for large multivariate process systems. Reduced-ord...
Pointless or Powerful: The Case for Oaths of Office:

The practice of making oaths comes from ancient times, a tradition common to virtually all peoples and cultures. Recent calls for ethics reform have included questions about how or whether these de...
Probing Selectivity and Creating Structural Diversity Through Hybrid Polyketide Synthases

Engineering polyketide synthases (PKS) to produce new metabolites requires an understanding of catalytic points of failure during substrate processing. Growing evidence indicates the thioesterase (TE) domain as a significant bottleneck within engineered PKS systems. We created a series of hybrid PKS modules bearing exchanged TE domains from heterologous pathways and challenged them with both native and non-native polyketide substrates. Reactions pairing wildtype PKS modules with non-native substrates primarily resulted in poor conversions to anticipated macrolactones. Likewise, product formation with native substrates and hybrid PKS modules bearing non-cognate TE domains was severely reduced. In contrast, non-native substrates were converted by most hybrid modules containing a substrate compatible TE, directly implicating this domain as the major catalytic gatekeeper and highlighting its value as a target for protein engineering to improve analog production in PKS pathways.
LiDAR-equipped UAV path planning considering potential locations of defects for bridge inspection

Abstract Conventional visual bridge inspection methods are time consuming and may put the inspector in dangerous situations. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been recently introduced as an effective tool for bridge inspection. This paper proposes a 3D path planning method for using a UAV equipped with a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanner for bridge inspection. The method integrates a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and A* algorithm to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) considering the potential locations of bridge surface defects such as cracks. The objective is minimizing time of flight while achieving maximum visibility. The method provides the potential locations of surface defects to efficiently achieve perpendicular and overlapping views for sampling the viewpoints. Calculating the visibility with respect to the level of criticality leads to giving the priority to covering the areas with higher risk levels. The results reveal that considering overlapping views based on the level of criticality of the zones and perpendicular view for all viewpoints result in accurate and time-efficient data collection.