cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Metabolic aspects of the secretion of stored compounds from blood platelets. III. Effect of NaF on washed platelets.

Abstract Two metabolic effects are described as results of incubation of washed blood platelets with NaF: (1) Before release an early transfer of the terminal P i from ATP to the glycolytic intermediates fructose 1,6-diphosphate and 3-phosphoglycerate, resulting in a small decrease in ATP and a similar increase in ADP and AMP and (2) concomitantly with the release of stored compounds a drop in the ATP and ADP which participate in metabolic processes, a transient accumulation of IMP and a final accumulation of inosine and hypoxanthine which occasionally exceeded 60% of total radioactivity in platelets prelabeled with radioactive adenine. When antimycin was added together with fluoride, there was a massive accumulation of inosine and hypoxanthine even in the absence of the platelet release reaction, but in some cases maximum accumulation was not reached unless release took place. Addition of antimycin during fluoride-induced release resulted in an instantaneous block of this release. It is suggested that the conversion of IMP to inosine and hypoxanthine is partly discharged by the platelet release reaction and possibly caused by structural alterations accompanying the reaction.
Incompatibilities Involving Yeast Mismatch Repair Genes: A Role for Genetic Modifiers and Implications for Disease Penetrance and Variation in Genomic Mutation Rates

Genetic background effects underlie the penetrance of most genetically determined phenotypes, including human diseases. To explore how such effects can modify a mutant phenotype in a genetically tractable system, we examined an incompatibility involving the MLH1 and PMS1 mismatch repair genes using a large population sample of geographically and ecologically diverse Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. The mismatch repair incompatibility segregates into naturally occurring yeast strains, with no strain bearing the deleterious combination. In assays measuring the mutator phenotype conferred by different combinations of MLH1 and PMS1 from these strains, we observed a mutator phenotype only in combinations predicted to be incompatible. Surprisingly, intragenic modifiers could be mapped that specifically altered the strength of the incompatibility over a 20-fold range. Together, these observations provide a powerful model in which to understand the basis of disease penetrance and how such genetic variation, created through mating, could result in new mutations that could be the raw material of adaptive evolution in yeast populations.
Automated biomanipulation of single cells

Transport of individual cells or chemical payloads on a subcellular scale is an enabling tool for the study of cellular communication, cell migration, and other localized phenomena. We present a magnetically actuated robotic system for the fully automated manipulation of cells and microbeads. Our strategy uses autofluorescent robotic transporters and fluorescently labeled microbeads to aid tracking and control in optically obstructed environments. We demonstrate automated delivery of microbeads infused with chemicals to specified positions on neurons.
The Calpain–Calpastatin System and Cellular Proliferation and Differentiation in Rodent Osteoblastic Cells

The calpain-calpastatin system, which consists of calpains I and II (two ubiquitously distributed calcium-activated papain-like cysteine proteases), as well as calpastatin (the endogenous calpain inhibitor), plays an important role in cell proliferation and differentiation in many tissues. However, its contribution to the regulation of osteoprogenitor or pluripotent stem cell proliferation and differentiation into osteoblasts remains poorly defined. In these studies, rat pluripotent mesodermal cells (ROB-C26) and mouse MC3T3-E1 preosteoblasts were induced to differentiate into osteoblasts by long-term culture or in response to bone morphogenetic protein (BMP). The occurrence and distribution of calpain-calpastatin system proteins were determined by immunofluorescent microscopy, measurement of calcium-dependent proteolytic activity, and Western blotting. Treatment of intact MC3T3-E1 cells with an irreversible, membrane-permeable cysteine protease inhibitor attenuated proliferation and alkaline phosphatase upregulation under differentiation-enhancing conditions. Calpain II activity increased during differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells in postconfluent culture. When ROB-C26 cells were maintained in long-term culture, neutral protease, calpain I, and calpain II activities increased 2- to 3-fold in the absence of BMP. In the presence of partially purified native BMP, neutral protease and calpain I activities also increased similarly, but calpain II activity increased by 10-fold in 3 days. The maximal increase in alkaline phosphatase occurred 4 to 11 days after the calpain II activity had peaked. Induction of differentiation in long-term MC3T3-E1 cultures was associated with higher calpain II and 70- and 110-kDa calpastatin protein levels and lower 17-kDa calpastatin degradation product levels. In conclusion, cysteine protease activity is essential for preosteoblastic proliferation and differentiation. The calpain-calpastatin system is regulated during osteoprogenitor proliferation and differentiation, as it is in other cells, and bone morphogenetic protein is a specific regulator of calpain II.
Not every cell is sacred: a reply to Charo.

Massimo Reichlin, in an earlier article in this journal, defended a version of the ‘argument from potential’ (AFP), which concludes that the human embryo should be protected from the moment of conception. But R. Alta Charo, in her essay entitled ‘Every Cell is Sacred: Logical Consequences of the Argument from Potential in the Age of Cloning’, claims that versions of the AFP like Reichlin’s are vulnerable to a rather embarrassing problem: with the advent of human cloning, such versions of the AFP entail that every somatic cell in the human body ought to be protected. Since this entailment is clearly absurd, Charo argues, these versions of the AFP should be rejected. I argue that the reasons Charo cites for believing in this entailment are inconclusive. For example, the four reasons she gives for doubting any differences between the nature of skin cells and zygotes are ultimately unconvincing. Against Charo, I maintain that there is a relevant distinction between the sort of potential possessed by the somatic cell and the sort of potential possessed by the early human embryo. Since only the latter sort of potential falls within the scope of the AFP, the alleged absurd entailment Charo invites us to consider is no entailment at all. Hence the AFP cannot be rejected on the grounds Charo advances. Even in an age of cloning, the claim that some cells are ‘sacred’ because of their potential does not entail the claim that every cell is sacred.
Meeting the Needs of Students With Learning Disabilities in Inclusive Mathematics Classrooms: The Role of Schema-Based Instruction on Mathematical Problem-Solving

This article discusses schema-based instruction (SBI) as an alternative to traditional instruction for enhancing the mathematical problem solving performance of students with learning disabilities (LD). In the authors' most recent research and developmental efforts, they designed SBI to meet the needs of middle school students with LD in inclusive mathematics classrooms by addressing the research literatures in special education, cognitive psychology, and mathematics education. This innovative instructional approach encourages students to look beyond surface features of word problems to grasp the underlying mathematical structure of ratio and proportion problems. In addition, SBI introduces students to multiple strategies for solving ratio and proportion problems and encourages the selection of appropriate strategies.
Automated data partitioning for independent distributed transactions

Granola is a recently proposed transactional execution protocol that employs a novel timestamp-based synchronization for executing certain classes of distributed transactions. However, Granola has two critical drawbacks. A) It requires users to manually define a data partitioning scheme and choose the appropriate transaction primitive. We seek to automate this process. We employ an existing graph-based algorithm (Schism) for partitioning transactional data, and extend it to be compatible with the additional insights and requirements of the Granola protocol. B) Granola requires a-priori knowledge of data location for routing transactions to repositories. We develop a routing mechanism based on machine learning to overcome this issue.
Identifying Patients at Risk of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events Using Symbolic Mismatch

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally, resulting in 17 million deaths each year. Despite the availability of various treatment options, existing techniques based upon conventional medical knowledge often fail to identify patients who might have benefited from more aggressive therapy. In this paper, we describe and evaluate a novel unsupervised machine learning approach for cardiac risk stratification. The key idea of our approach is to avoid specialized medical knowledge, and assess patient risk using symbolic mismatch, a new metric to assess similarity in long-term time-series activity. We hypothesize that high risk patients can be identified using symbolic mismatch, as individuals in a population with unusual long-term physiological activity. We describe related approaches that build on these ideas to provide improved medical decision making for patients who have recently suffered coronary attacks. We first describe how to compute the symbolic mismatch between pairs of long term electrocardiographic (ECG) signals. This algorithm maps the original signals into a symbolic domain, and provides a quantitative assessment of the difference between these symbolic representations of the original signals. We then show how this measure can be used with each of a one-class SVM, a nearest neighbor classifier, and hierarchical clustering to improve risk stratification. We evaluated our methods on a population of 686 cardiac patients with available long-term electrocardiographic data. In a univariate analysis, all of the methods provided a statistically significant association with the occurrence of a major adverse cardiac event in the next 90 days. In a multivariate analysis that incorporated the most widely used clinical risk variables, the nearest neighbor and hierarchical clustering approaches were able to statistically significantly distinguish patients with a roughly two-fold risk of suffering a major adverse cardiac event in the next 90 days.
Infantile leukemia presenting with cholestasis secondary to massive pancreatic infiltration

We present a 10-week-old infant who presented with cholestasis. Biliary obstruction secondary to massive pancreatic infiltration was demonstrated by ultrasound. A diagnosis of acute lymphoid leukemia was confirmed. Enlargement of the pancreas is unusual both in this age group and in leukemia. Infantile leukemia, although rare and usually not associated with gastrointestinal presentations, should be considered as a cause of pancreatic enlargement and neonatal cholestasis.
Using Inconsistency Detection to Overcome Structural Ambiguity

The Inconsistency Detection Learner (IDL) is an algorithm for language learning that addresses the problem of structural ambiguity.If an overt form is structurally ambiguous, the learner must be capable of inferring which interpretation of the overt form is correct by reference to other overt data of the language.The IDL does this by attempting to construct grammars for combinations of interpretations of the overt forms, and discarding those combinations that are inconsistent. The potential of this algorithm for overcoming the combinatorial growth in combinations of interpretations is supported by computational results from an implementation of the IDL using an optimalitytheoretic system of metrical stress grammars.
Isolation and characterization of insulin from the Brockmann body of Dissostichus mawsoni, an Antarctic teleost fish.

The Brockmann body of fish synthesizes and secretes insulin. The Brockmann body of Antarctic fish has been described anatomically and shown to contain insulin immunoreactive sites, however, the primary structure of an Antarctic fish insulin has yet to be reported. Insulin was isolated from the Brockmann bodies of the Antarctic perciform teleost, Dissostichus mawsoni. The peptide was purified to homogeneity by gel filtration and reversed-phase HPLC. Insulin-containing fractions were identified by radioimmunoassay using antisera raised against porcine insulin. Electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry determined the mass of the isolated product to be 5725.27 a.m.u. The amino acid composition and primary structure were determined for the pyridylethylated A- and B-chains. The amino acid sequences of the A chain and B chain were H-Gly-lle-Val-Glu-Gln-Cys-Cys-His-Gln-Pro10-Cys-Asn-Ile-Phe- Asp-Leu-Gln-Asn-Tyr-Cys20-Asn-OH and H-Ala-Pro-Gly-Pro-GIn-His-Leu-Cys-Gly-Ser10-His-Leu-Val-Asp-Ala-Le u-Tyr-Leu-Val-Cys20-Gly-Glu-Arg-Gly-Phe-Phe-Tyr-Asn-Pro-Lys30++ +-OH, respectively. The primary structure of insulin from Antarctic fish is compared with known structures of insulin from other vertebrates.
The electrification of thunderstorms and the formation of precipitation

The problem of how thunderstorms become so highly electrified and whether the electricity in thunderstorms has anything to do with the growth of precipitation, especially in some of its unusual forms like hail, has been with science for a long time. Many controversies have developed over the explanation of the electrification. I t now seems probable that the complexity of the questions and the severe difficulties encountered in making scientific measurements within thunderstorms have held up progress in this field. The acquisition of very high-speed high-storage capacity computers and high-resolution fast-response airborne instruments to cope with this complexity has made possible some recent and very significant progress in the understanding of these phenomena. We may conclude now that the bouncing, shattering and breaking of colliding particles in the developing electric field of cumulonimbus clouds will organize the electrical conditions in the cloud to produce the observed characteristics of thunderstorms. An extremely rapid growth rate of the small droplets being formed continuously at cloud base is required in mature thunderstorms to insure that they are not carried through the cloud by the strong updraft without producing the observed heavy precipitation and hail. It has been shown that the electrical conditions inside thunderstorms ,:an act to produce a greatly enhanced growth rate among these very small cloud droplets that otherwise would accrete only extremely slowly.
A dual-grid automatic history-matching technique with applications to 3D formation testing in the presence of oil-based muds

Probe-type formation testers are often used to estimate permeability and permeability anisotropy from pressure transient measurements. The interpretation of these measurements is not trivial in the presence of oil-base mudfiltrate invasion due to miscibility with formation oil and gas. Simple analytical expressions of spherical and linear singlephase flow may not give correct estimates of permeability in miscible or partially miscible flow regimes. A computationally demanding three-dimensional (3D) numerical model is required to provide accurate and reliable estimates of formation properties. Because pressure transients are nonlinearly dependent on the permeability of the formation, repeated 3D numerical simulations are necessary to match the measured pressure transients. We describe the development and successful implementation of a new inversion method that efficiently estimates permeability and permeability anisotropy with a cascade sequence of least-squares minimizations. Measurements consist of pressure transients acquired at the sand face with a probe-type wireline formation tester (WFT). The new inversion method executes the forward 3D problem only in an outer loop. In the inner loop, we perform fast minimizations with an equivalent two-dimensional (2D) cylindrical grid. Transient measurements of pressure at the sand face simulated with the 2D cylindrical grid are correlated to the corresponding measurements simulated with the 3D grid. Once the 2D minimization is completed, we perform a 3D simulation of transient pressure to update the 2D-3D correlation parameter and a new 2D minimization is performed until convergence is reached. The process repeats itself until the simulated 3D pressure transients reproduce the field measurements within pre-stipulated error bounds. We perform tests of the new inversion algorithm on synthetic and field data sets acquired in the presence of oil-base mudfiltrate invasion. Results successfully confirm that our coupled 2D/3D hybrid inversion approach enables significant savings in computer time and provides reliable and accurate estimates of permeability and anisotropy. In most cases, we are able to estimate permeability under 2% error within 20% of the computational time required by 3D minimization. Sensitivity analysis indicates that permeability estimates may be biased by noisy measurements and uncertainty in (a) flow rates, (b) relative permeability, (c) radial extent of invasion, (d) formation damage, and (e) location of bed boundaries.
Surgery for Medullary Thyroid Cancer

Medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is a neuroendocrine malignancy of the calcitonin producing thyroid C cells, accounting for 5–10% of all thyroid cancers. While the majority of cases are sporadic (75%), hereditary syndromes account for 25% of all cases and should be considered whenever evaluating a patient. Compared to differentiated thyroid cancer, MTC is more aggressive yet remains a relatively indolent malignancy, with 10-year survival rates reported from 69% to 89%. Sporadic cases usually present with a palpable thyroid mass. Hereditary cases may be detected and treated on the basis of a genomic diagnosis once the syndrome is diagnosed in a family. Unlike differentiated thyroid cancer, there is no known effective systemic therapy for medullary thyroid cancer.
Analysis of parameter sensitivity and experimental design for a class of nonlinear partial differential equations

SUMMARY The purpose of this work is to analyse the parameter sensitivity problem for a class of nonlinear elliptic partial dierential equations, and to show how numerical simulations can help to optimize experiments for the estimation of parameters in such equations. As a representative example we consider the Laplace- Young problem describing the free surface between twouids in contact with the walls of a bounded domain, with the parameters being those associated with surface tension and contact. We investigate the sensitivity of the solution and associated functionals to the parameters, examining in particular under what conditions the solution is sensitive to parameter choice. From this, the important practical question of how to optimally design experiments is discussed; i.e. how to choose the shape of the domain and the type of measurements to be performed, such that a subsequent inversion of the measured data for the model parameters yields maximal accuracy in the parameters. We investigate this through numerical studies of the behaviour of the eigenvalues of the sensitivity matrix and their relation to experimental design. These studies show that the accuracy with which parameters can be identied from given measurements can be improved signicantly by numerical experiments. Copyright ? 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Binding of ICP4, TATA-Binding Protein, and RNA Polymerase II to Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Immediate-Early, Early, and Late Promoters in Virus-Infected Cells

The binding of herpes simplex virus type 1 ICP4, TATA-binding protein (TBP), and RNA polymerase II (polII) to the promoter regions of representative immediate-early (IE) (ICP0), early (E) (thymidine kinase [tk]), and late (L) (glycoprotein C [gC]) genes on the viral genome was examined as a function of time postinfection, viral DNA replication, cis-acting sites for TFIID in the tk and gC promoters, and genetic background of ICP4. The binding of TBP and polII to the IE ICP0 promoter was independent of the presence of ICP4, whereas the binding of TBP and polII to the tk and gC promoters occurred only when ICP4 also bound to the promoters, suggesting that the presence of ICP4 at the promoters of E and L genes in virus-infected cells is crucial for the formation of transcription complexes on these promoters. When the TATA box of the tk promoter or the initiator element (INR) of the gC promoter was mutated, a reduction in the amount of TBP and polII binding was observed. However, a reduction in the amount of ICP4 binding to the promoters was also observed, suggesting that the binding of TBP-containing complexes and ICP4 is cooperative. The binding of ICP4, TBP, and polII was also observed on the gC promoter at early times postinfection or when DNA synthesis was inhibited, suggesting that transcription complexes may be formed early on L promoters and that additional events or proteins are required for expression. The ability to form these early complexes on the gC promoter required the DNA-binding domain but in addition required the carboxyl-terminal 524 amino acids of ICP4, which is missing the virus n208. This region was not required to form TBP- and polII-containing complexes on the tk promoter. n208 activates E but not L genes during viral infection. These data suggest that a region of ICP4 may differentiate between forming TBP- and polII-containing complexes on E and L promoters.
Going viral: flash crowds in an open CDN

Handling flash crowds poses a difficult task for web services. Content distribution networks (CDNs), hierarchical web caches, and peer-to-peer networks have all been proposed as mechanisms for mitigating the effects of these sudden spikes in traffic to under-provisioned origin sites. Other than a few anecdotal examples of isolated events to a single server, however, no large-scale analysis of flash-crowd behavior has been published to date.In this paper, we characterize and quantify the behavior of thousands of flash crowds on CoralCDN, an open content distribution network running at several hundred POPs. Our analysis considers over four years of CDN traffic, comprising more than 33 billion HTTP requests. We draw conclusions in several areas, including (i) the potential benefits of cooperative vs. independent caching by CDN nodes, (ii) the efficacy of elastic redirection and resource provisioning, and (iii) the ecosystem of portals, aggregators, and social networks that drive traffic to third-party websites.
The mechanism of deep earthquakes

Most earthquakes occur within a few tens of kilometers below the Earth's surface by the familiar processes of brittle fracture and frictional sliding along preexisting faults [Scholz, 1990]. However, about 20% of all earthquakes occur at great depth (up to 680 km) where the high pressure prohibits conventional faulting. At these pressures, rock should flow rather than break, hence deep earthquakes would appear to be impossible. This paradox was recognized shortly after the discovery of deep earthquakes in the 1920s and it has remained unresolved since then.
An exploratory study of responses to low-dose lithium in African Americans and Hispanics

Abstract Objectives Few prospective studies examine the impact of ethnicity or race on outcomes with lithium for bipolar disorder. This exploratory study examines differences in lithium response and treatment outcomes in Hispanics, African Americans, and non-Hispanic whites with bipolar disorder in the Lithium Treatment Moderate Dose Use Study (LiTMUS). Methods LiTMUS was a six-site randomized controlled trial of low-dose lithium added to optimized treatment (OPT; personalized, evidence-based pharmacotherapy) vs. OPT alone in outpatients with bipolar disorder. Of 283 participants, 47 African Americans, 39 Hispanics, and 175 non-Hispanic whites were examined. We predicted minority groups would have more negative medication attitudes and higher attrition rates, but better clinical outcomes. Results African Americans in the lithium group improved more on depression and life functioning compared to whites over the 6 month study. African Americans in the OPT only group had marginal improvement on depression symptoms. For Hispanics, satisfaction with life did not significantly improve in the OPT only group, in contrast to whites and African Americans who improved over time on all measures. Attitudes toward medications did not differ across ethnic/racial groups. Conclusions African Americans show some greater improvements with lithium than non-Hispanic whites, and Hispanics showed more consistent improvements in the lithium group. The impact of low-dose lithium should be studied in a larger sample as there may be particular benefit for African Americans and Hispanics. Given that the control group (regardless of ethnicity/race) had significant improvements, optimized treatment may be beneficial for any ethnic group.
COMBAT: mobile-Cloud-based cOmpute/coMmunications infrastructure for BATtlefield applications

The amount of data processed annually over the Internet has crossed the zetabyte boundary, yet this Big Data cannot be efficiently processed or stored using today's mobile devices. Parallel to this explosive growth in data, a substantial increase in mobile compute-capability and the advances in cloud computing have brought the state-of-the- art in mobile-cloud computing to an inflection point, where the right architecture may allow mobile devices to run applications utilizing Big Data and intensive computing. In this paper, we propose the MObile Cloud-based Hybrid Architecture (MOCHA), which formulates a solution to permit mobile-cloud computing applications such as object recognition in the battlefield by introducing a mid-stage compute- and storage-layer, called the cloudlet. MOCHA is built on the key observation that many mobile-cloud applications have the following characteristics: 1) they are compute-intensive, requiring the compute-power of a supercomputer, and 2) they use Big Data, requiring a communications link to cloud-based database sources in near-real-time. In this paper, we describe the operation of MOCHA in battlefield applications, by formulating the aforementioned mobile and cloudlet to be housed within a soldier's vest and inside a military vehicle, respectively, and enabling access to the cloud through high latency satellite links. We provide simulations using the traditional mobile-cloud approach as well as utilizing MOCHA with a mid-stage cloudlet to quantify the utility of this architecture. We show that the MOCHA platform for mobile-cloud computing promises a future for critical battlefield applications that access Big Data, which is currently not possible using existing technology.
How, When, and Why to Predict IDDM

Insulin-dependent diabetes remains a serious disease replete with life-threatening complications. The onset of the disease is becoming increasingly predictable through the detection of its associated autoantibodies. The natural history of pathogenic events is attenuated in those with adult onset over that seen in infants and children. Immunosuppression therapies in newly diagnosed patients have been shown to induce remissions, whereas various intervention strategies in rodent models (BB rats and nonobese diabetic mice) can delay and even prevent the onset of diabetes. The stage is set for serious consideration of intervention trials to delay the clinical disease in humans.
Damage assessment of hydrokinetic composite turbine blades

Damage assessment of composite blades is investigated for hydrokinetic turbine applications in which lowvelocity impact damage is possible. The blades are carbon/epoxy laminates that are made using an out-of-autoclave process and the blade design is a hydrofoil with constant cross-section. Both undamaged and damaged blades are manufactured and instrumented with strain sensors. Water tunnel testing is conducted with varying flow velocities and for different blade angles. A theoretical simulation is included that is based on finite-element method. The influence of damage on the response characteristics is discussed as an indicator of structural health.
Effects of the RBC membrane and increased perfusate viscosity on hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction.

Red blood cells (RBCs) augment hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) in part by scavenging of nitric oxide (NO) by Hb (Deem S, Swenson ER, Alberts MK, Hedges RG, and Bishop MJ,Am J Respir Crit C...
Intelligent matchmaking for Polar Ice Sheet Data collection and delivery

The PRISM (Polar Radar for Ice Sheet Measurement) project is developing mobile, autonomous sensors for the measurement and study of the mass balance of the polar ice sheets. These sensors consist of intelligent radars integrated into robotic vehicles. They autonomously decide where and how to measure by examining a variety of information including onboard sensor data and collections of a priori knowledge. These data include the health and status of the rover, health and status of the sensors themselves, the state of the environment as measured by the sensors, satellite measurements of the area indicating expected ice sheet motion, and so on. All of this information is used to direct the data collection process by allowing for the dynamic configuration of sensors and the motion of the rovers that carry them. The PRISM intelligent sensor and rover control system is built upon a multiagent collaborative architecture that involves a number of distinct data collection and data dissemination agents functioning continuously and autonomously in a distributed computing framework. A critical component of this system is an agent service called the Matchmaker. The Matchmaker coordinates requests for information and services within the agent community and allows decision-making agents to locate and communicate with the data source-agents that can fulfill these requests
Efficacy of Acupuncture Sites for Delivery of Agents to Control Estrus and Ovulation in Mares

Abstract This study was designed to determine if prostaglandin F 2 α (PGF 2 α) when administered on d 6 post-ovulation in a low dose in the lumbosacral space (LSS) would induce luteolysis while minimizing side effects usually associated with intramuscular administration of this analogue in mares. A second objective was to determine if human chorionic gonadotropin ( hCG ) injected into the LSS would reduce time to ovulation in the mare. Ten normally cycling mares served as their own controls in a crossover design, receiving intramuscular injections of PGF 2 α(10 mg), intravenous injections of hCG (3000 IU) and injections of PGF and hCG at the acupuncture site (2 mg and 3000 IU, respectively), as well as sham injections of saline. Beginning 12 h after injection, mean progesterone concentrations were less (P 2 α-treated mares than in mares receiving saline. Moreover, progesterone concentrations were similar (P 2 α. In addition, there was no difference (P>0.1) between mares receiving the acupuncture injection of PGF 2 α and the intramuscular injection in days to ovulation. However, duration and severity of side effects associated with PGF 2 α administration were dramatically decreased (P 2 α was delivered to the acupuncture site compared to intramuscular delivery. The time to ovulation was similar (P>0.1) for mares receiving shams, or hCG. These data indicate that delivery of 2 mg of PGF 2 α in the LSS induces luteolysis and reduces the sweating and muscle cramping associated with PGF 2 α administration. There was no advantage to the delivery of hCG in the LSS.
The Post Earnings Announcement Drift and Option Traders

The Post-Earnings Announcement Drift (PEAD) anomaly refers to the tendency of stock prices to continue drifting in the same direction as earnings surprises well through the subsequent earnings announcements; ignoring the autocorrelations in extreme earnings surprises across adjacent quarters. Currently, the two major competing theories to explain PEAD are: the risk premium hypothesis (RPH), which argues that the anomaly exists only because risk has been measured improperly; and, the under-reaction (behavioral) hypothesis (URH), which assumes investors do not completely utilize the auto-correlations of earnings surprises. We test the former (RPH) by using a finer metric for risk than used in prior research, namely, the change in implied volatilities obtained from options prices immediately before and after the earnings announcements. Inconsistent with the predictions of RPH: (1) we do not find a positive correlation between the implied volatility changes and earnings surprises; and (2) we find that implied volatilities (risk) actually decrease most after the earnings announcements for firms with the most positive earnings surprises. Using volatility based option trading strategies (straddles), we examine if option traders have a similar URH bias to those of equity traders. We find that option straddles based on extreme earnings surprises in the prior quarter are not more profitable than straddles on mild earnings surprises, indicating that option traders already incorporate the prior earnings surprise in option prices.
Potential Problems with Information Security Risk Assessments

To protect the information assets of any organization, management must rely on accurate information security risk management. Management must access the risk to the organizations assets then develop information security strategies to reduce the risks. This assessment is difficult because of rapidly changing technology and new threats that are frequently being discovered. Research to address methods associated with information security risk management includes quantitative and qualitative methods. More comprehensive approaches combine both the quantitative and qualitative methods. This paper argues that current methods of information security assessment are flawed because management decisions regarding information security are often based on heuristics and optimistic perceptions.
The impact of comorbidities on inpatient Charcot neuroarthropathy cost and utilization.

Abstract Aims The purpose of this study was to portray the impact of comorbidities on inpatient cost and utilization in Charcot neuroarthropathy (CN) patients. Methods Two cohorts, CN and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN), were identified by ICD-9 codes in the California Office for Statewide Health Planning and Development 2009–2012 public patient discharge files. DPN and CN costs and length of stay (LOS) were compared adjusting for the number of chronic conditions. The impact of the Elixhauser comorbidity measures and other comorbidities on costs and LOS in CN subjects was evaluated. Results CN was associated with 17.2% higher costs and 1.4 days longer LOS compared to DPN alone. Adjusting for 0.71 additional chronic conditions in CN patients accounted for 79.8% of variance and estimated a 13.9% cost difference between cohorts. Subjects averaged 4.5 Elixhauser comorbidities with higher scores corresponding to increased cost, LOS, and inpatient mortality. Other diabetic foot risk factors demonstrated that foot ulcers, foot infections, and osteomyelitis had significantly higher costs. Patients with foot ulcers, osteomyelitis, and depression had significantly increased LOS. Conclusions Systemic and local comorbidities significantly impact the cost, utilization, and inpatient mortality in inpatient management of Charcot foot.
Spin transport in antiferromagnetic insulators mediated by magnetic correlations

We report a systematic study of spin transport in antiferromagnetic (AF) insulators having a wide range of ordering temperatures. Spin current is dynamically injected from ${\mathrm{Y}}_{3}\mathrm{F}{\mathrm{e}}_{5}{\mathrm{O}}_{12}$ (YIG) into various AF insulators in Pt/insulator/YIG trilayers. Robust, long-distance spin transport in the AF insulators is observed, which shows a strong correlation with the AF ordering temperatures. We find a striking linear relationship between the spin decay length in the AFs and the damping enhancement in YIG, suggesting the critical role of magnetic correlations in the AF insulators as well as at the $\mathrm{AF}/\mathrm{YIG}$ interfaces for spin transport in magnetic insulators.
Medicaid as Coverture

Antiquated views of women’s property rights and the status conferred by a marital relationship deprived a woman of separate property rights, treated the spouses as one unit incapable of contracting with one another, and transferred liability for one spouse’s debts to the other. These archaic, even offensive laws were largely repealed in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, women expect to enjoy a legal existence that is not consumed by the status of marriage, and to exercise property rights largely free from interference or paternalism. An examination of Medicaid eligibility rules reveals the retention and even reinstatement of the legal fiction of spousal unity. On account of the substantial risk of wealth loss to nursing home costs, Medicaid eligibility rules represent a disquieting view of married women’s separate property rights.
Accountants' Awareness And Perceptions About Assurance On XBRL Financial Statements

The purpose of this study is to gather information about accountants and auditors level of knowledge of XBRL and their perceptions about the importance of providing assurance and the level of assurance needed. An online survey questionnaire was used to gather data from CPAs at all levels of experience and was open from December 2009 through February 2010. The survey gathered information about the participants level of knowledge and awareness about XBRL, and their perceptions about the importance, relevance, and need for assurance on XBRL financial information. The results suggest that accountants and auditors believe that assurance on XBRL financial statements is important and will improve the accuracy and reliability of the XBRL tagged financial statements. Participants were also asked to rank the importance of assurance criteria on XBRL financial statements such as assurance on the accuracy, completeness, existence, proper taxonomies, proper extensions, valid extensions and validity and well-formedness. The results show that participants ranked assurance on the accuracy and completeness assertions as being most important and assurance on validity and well-formedness being the least important. The findings have important implications for the audit profession, as the implementation of XBRL has the potential to not only expand the role of the auditor to include auditing their clients application of XBRL tags, but might also influence the cost and time involved to conduct audit services.
Luminescent Solar Concentrators

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are planar waveguides containing an organic or inorganic dye and inorganic solar cells attached to the edges. Light is absorbed by the dye and reemitted into waveguide modes for collection by the solar cells. We describe LSCs based on: (i) organic dyes, (ii) cast LSCs constructed from phycobilisomes, model antenna systems from photosynthesis, (iii) linearly polarized LSCs employing polymerizable liquid crystals, and (iv) hybrid organic/inorganic LSCs based on neodymium glass.
Chemically-mediated attraction of Ichneumon (=Pterocormus) promissorius (Hymenoptera : Ichneumonidae) males by females

Data supporting chemically-mediated communication between males and females of a pupal parasitoid Ichneumon (=Pterocormus) promissorius (Erichson) (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) were gathered with a behavioral bioassay and electroantennography. Live I. promissorius females and a whole-body extract of females elicited greater responses from male antennae than did live males, a whole-body extract of them or a control. In behavioral bioassays, more I. promissorius males were recovered from traps baited with live females or the diethyl ether rinse of a glass substrate to which females were exposed than with live males, the diethyl ether rinse of a glass substrate to which males were exposed or a control. Volatile materials collected from live females either effluvially or by their immersion in solvent did not attract males.
Doppler left ventricular ejection dynamics: Correlation with nuclear ejection indices during exercise

Exercise testing is commonly used in both the diagnosis of coronary artery disease and in assessment of its physiological significance. Stress electrocardiography has a diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of 64% and 93% [1], respectively, using 1.0 mm depression as an ischemic threshold. The sensitivity of exercise testing can be significantly increased by adding radionuclide angiography [2], but exercise nuclear ventriculography is expensive and technically difficult to perform. Two dimensional echocardiography has been used to detect ischemic wall motion abnormalities occurring with exercise, but the success rate of obtaining an optimal study has been disappointing. The use of Doppler echocardiography to interrogate flow in the ascending aorta offers the advantage of a high success rate (81–100%) [3, 4], except in obese subjects and those with hypertrophied neck muscles. In addition, Doppler echocardiography entails little equipment, and can be performed at relatively low cost. Both pulsed and continuous wave systems can be used to analyze maximal acceleration, peak velocity, and systolic velocity integral.
Role of Ca2+/CaMK II in Ca(2+)-induced K+ channel inhibition in rat CCD principal cell

The apical low-conductance K+ channel of rat cortical collecting duct (CCD) is inhibited by increased intracellular Ca2+ concentrations. This effect has been shown to be mediated at least in part by activation of protein kinase C (PKC). In the present study, we used the patch-clamp technique to examine the role of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMK II) in mediating the Ca(2+)-induced inhibitory effect. In cell-attached patches of principal cells of rat tubules, clamping of intracellular Ca2+ concentration at 400 nM by using 1 microM ionomycin reduced channel activity to 26.5% of the control value. A further reduction in channel activity, to 8.8% of the control value, was observed following the addition of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), an agent known to activate PKC. Pretreatment of cells with KN-62 (CaMK II inhibitor) or GF-109203X (PKC inhibitor) attenuated the inhibitory effect of Ca2+ on K+ channel activity (83.2 and 50.7% of the control value, respectively). Even in the presence of KN-62, addition of 10 microM PMA significantly decreased channel activity to 57.2% of the control value. The Ca(2+)-induced inhibition was completely abolished by simultaneous incubation with both KN-62 and GF-109203X. In inside-out patches, addition of 20 micrograms/ml CaMK II in the presence of a PKC inhibitor reduced channel activity to 66.2% of control values. It is concluded that CaMK II is involved in mediating the Ca(2+)-induced inhibition of the activity of the apical K+ channel of rat CCD.
Effect of cisapride and renzapride on gastrointestinal motility and plasma motilin concentration in dogs.

The effects of cisapride and renzapride (BRL 24924), on plasma concentration of motilin and gastroduodenal motility were studied in seven dogs with implanted force transducers in the antrum and duodenum. In the interdigestive state, the i.v. administration of cisapride (5 mg) or renzapride (5 mg) administered in phase I resulted in a prompt and marked increase in plasma motilin concentration and in gastroduodenal motility. Mean plasma motilin levels during the first 30 min after cisapride and after renzapride injection were 85.0 ± 6.5 (± S.E.) and 96.1 ± 6.3 pM., respectively. These values were significantly greater (P < .001) than those for the corresponding time period of the control cycle, 52.2 ± 5.6 and 57.4 ± 5.3 pM (mean phase III level, 120 ± 8.1 pM), respectively. The increases in the motilin level after cisapride or renzapride coincided with significant increases in contractile activities of the antrum to 43.2 ± 5.3% and 44.9 ± 4.6% and of the duodenum to 28.4 ± 3.1% and 34.2 ± 2.2% of phase III activity (100%) from that in the corresponding control period, 0.7 ± 0.4% and 0.2 ± 0.1%, respectively. The changes in both plasma motilin and motility in response to the two drugs were abolished completely by the i.v. administration of atropine. The drugs also enhanced the meal-induced contractile activities of the antrum as well as the duodenum but failed to influence the postprandial plasma motilin concentration. We conclude that cisapride and renzapride have similar effects on plasma motilin and gastroduodenal motility: 1) the two drugs increase plasma motilin levels and stimulate gastroduodenal motility in the interdigestive state, and 2) in the digestive state, both drugs enhance motility without influencing the plasma motilin levels.
Mismatched Platelet Transfusions to Alloimmunized Patients

To the Editor: The recent report by Hussein et al,[1][1] was of great interest to physicians who deal with patients who are alloimmunized and require support with platelet transfusions. It is often difficult or impossible to find perfect matches for all four HLA antigens. The investigators
RESEARCH ON STABILITY OF ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS BASEED ON HYDRO-ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES AND WATER-ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Based on systemic introduction of the latest research development,the following viewpoints were put forward for the research on stability of wetlands ecosystem :firstly,attention should be paid to the response mechanism between the stability of natural wetlands ecosystem and the transformationfluctuation of hydrology,nutrient and biogeochemical cycle.Secondly,related integrated assessment mode and index system should be eatablished to objectively assess and recognize the history,present situation and future trend of natural wetlands ecosystem.Lastly,related protection countermeasures should be made to maintain the stability of wetlands ecosystem.
Why We Gesture: The Surprising Role of Hand Movements in Communication

Gestures are fundamental to the way we communicate, yet our understanding of this communicative impulse is clouded by a number of ingrained assumptions. Are gestures merely ornamentation to speech? Are they simply an 'add-on' to spoken language? Why do we gesture? These and other questions are addressed in this fascinating book. McNeill explains that the common view of language and gesture as separate entities is misinformed: language is inseparable from gesture. There is gesture-speech unity. Containing over 100 illustrations, Why We Gesture provides visual evidence to support the book's central argument that gestures orchestrate speech. This compelling book will be welcomed by students and researchers working in linguistics, psychology and communication.