cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Mechanism of Irreversible Electroporation in Cells: Insight from the Models

In the last 20 years, electroporation studies have focused primarily on reversible electroporation because of its importance for drug and gene delivery. Irreversible electroporation (IRE) was mostly studied in the context of the delayed tissue damage in high-voltage accidents [70, 69], the postshock arrhythmias during defibrillation [51, 50], and biofouling control [46, 95]. Very recently, IRE has shown great promise as a nonthermal technique for the ablation of tumors and arrhythmogenic regions in the heart [20, 27, 91, 85, 4, 68]. IRE’s ability to create a complete and predictable cell ablation with a sharp transition between normal and necrotic tissue, while sparing neighboring blood vessels, connective tissue, and nerves, has great advantages in a variety of medical applications.
Forecasting the demand for radiology services.

Since the demand for health services is the key driver for virtually all of a health care organisation’s financial and operational activities, it is imperative that health care managers invest the ...
Integrating Physical Activity Into Routine Medical Care: The Physician's Perspective

Abstract Physicians should play a central role in delivering effective physical activity interventions for their patients with serious mental illness. Despite clear recommendations for frequency and amount of physical activity and effective interventions to support patients in meeting these goals, it still is not the standard of care in primary care to routinely assess physical activity and advice or assist in treatment planning. These health promotion activities are even less likely to occur during psychiatric visits. Given their role as a trusted source of health information, physicians have an obligation to assess their patients' exercise habits and inform them of the risks of living a sedentary lifestyle. This approach is critical to help stem the rising tide of deaths around the world due to chronic diseases, which are closely associated with a sedentary lifestyle and which are highly prevalent among individuals with serious mental illness. Active involvement by community mental health clinicians in cardiovascular risk management represents a powerful population-based approach to prevent diabetes and cardiovascular disease among persons with serious mental illness. This chapter will provide an overview of the evidence supporting the physician's role in physical activity interventions and practical recommendations related to integrating physical activity into primary care and psychiatric practice.
Correction to: Interactive effects of herbivory and substrate orientation on algal community dynamics on a coral reef

The article was originally published electronically on the publishers internet portal currently SpringerLink on 14 September 2018 with open access.
New Materialities and Precarious Mobilities: Reinventing Studies of Space and Place

Communication scholarship on gender, sexuality, and space has expanded in recent years, bringing attention to new places, theories, and methods of analysis. Much of this work engages interdisciplin...
WIND LOADING AND RELIABILITY-BASED DESIGN

The implementation of second-moment formats for the design of wind-sensitive structures requires the clarification of a number of questions which are investigated in this paper. These include: the dependence of reliability-based criteria upon type of extreme wind distribution; the influence upon such criteria of sampling and observation errors in the estimation of extreme winds, as well as of errors in the estimation of aerodynamic and structural parameters; the dependence of member safety upon wind climate; and the validity of linear approximations to the expression for the load factor.
Talking With the 'Hermit Regime'| Mapping Communication Research Concerning North Korea: A Systematic Review (2000–2019)

Although North Korea is increasingly in the limelight of international news, a systematic review has yet to offer an accumulated body of knowledge regarding North Korea and its related communication scholarship. This study assesses the current state of research on media and communication in, around, and about North Korea from 2000 to June 2019. It examines a total of 85 research articles published in 57 journals. Overall, it finds an explosion in research after 2009. Findings reveal that research overwhelmingly deals with content analysis of Western media coverage, which indicates a strong influence of Cold War binaries. Findings also show that North Korea’s media environment has been moving toward more openness and better connectivity. Ultimately, this study finds a need for more comparative research to examine not only content, but also audience and producers—to include those inside North Korea, for which innovative, interdisciplinary approaches are called for.
A Market for Retail Electric Provider Based Demand Response

Deregulated electricity markets operate under the auspices of an Independent System Operator (ISO), which ensures the balance of supply and demand at all times in the most economical manner. Retail Electric Providers (REPs), who purchase electricity to serve residential and medium-scale commercial loads, are typically the largest bidders on the demand side in such marketplaces. Price peaks occur when supply is constrained, but demand is large. Many ISOs conduct Demand Response (DR) programs to reduce demand at peak times to ensure grid stability and long term sustainability. Despite having high demands and the potential to attain reductions through end-user incentive programs, REPs are typically not allowed to participate in such DR markets, since it is hard to determine their true baseline demand, and whether they have actually reduced the load on the grid. Our goal is to design and analyze a DR market for REP participation. We propose a two-stage market under which REPs indicate their baseline usages in the first stage, and a random subset of them are chosen by the ISO to participate in a DR market to attain target reductions in the second stage. We show that when the second stage is conducted in the manner of a reversed uniform price auction, we can ensure that truthful baseline declarations constitute a Nash equilibrium for REPs. Furthermore, the market can be sustained via taxing the REP profit engendered by lower prices. We conduct a data-driven numerical study to illustrate the value of our system.
Fee Abolition and the Promise of Debt-Free Justice for Young People and Their Families in California

In 2017, Governor Jerry Brown signed landmark bipartisan legislation making California the first state to abolish entire categories of monetary sanctions. Starting January 1, 2018, Senate Bill 190 prohibits counties from charging all administrative fees in the juvenile legal system. SB 190 also repealed county authority to charge certain fees to young people ages 18 to 21 in the criminal legal (adult) system. Senators Holly Mitchell and Ricardo Lara authored SB 190 to “eliminate a source of financial harm to some of the state’s most vulnerable families, support the reentry of youth back into their homes and communities, and reduce the likelihood that youth will recidivate.” California became a national model when it abolished these fees, offering the promise of debt-free justice for young people and their families. This study presents key findings about the implementation of SB 190 and the status of fee reform in California since January 1, 2018. The findings, based on extensive public records and stakeholder interviews, document how counties have gone beyond the requirements of SB 190 to relieve hundreds of thousands of families of more than $237 million in previously assessed fees, and counties have taken further steps to end harmful and racially discriminatory fee practices. However, the study finds that not all counties are complying fully with the new law. Some counties continue to charge SB 190 prohibited fees to families through child support orders and to young adults in the criminal legal system. Some counties have also resisted calls to end all collection activity and continue to pursue more than $136 million in previously assessed fees from California families. The study concludes by recommending concrete actions that county and state officials can take to ensure full compliance with SB 190 and to realize the full benefits of fee abolition.
Thermal Wave Techniques for Imaging and Characterization of Materials

Thermal wave imaging is proving to be a useful technique for the nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of subsurface features of opaque solids. This imaging is achieved with various intensity-modulated heat sources, such as laser or particle beams, and with various detectors, such as microphones, ultrasonic transducers, infrared detectors, and laser probes. The authors have recently reviewed these techniques and their application to NDE [1], Common to the techniques is the fact that they each involve the interaction of a highly damped thermal wave with surface or subsurface thermal features. They also have in common the fact that the source is localized. The techniques differ in that the detectors may be local or non-local to a greater or lesser degree. For example, the focused infrared detector is a local point temperature detector; the mirage effect laser probe is a line detector; and the microphone is an area detector. The presence of the localized source gives all of these methods the potential for high spatial resolution. The symmetry of the non-locality of the detector, however, may seriously limit detection of particular kinds of flaws. For some of the detection schemes, comparisons between experiment and theory for imaging of flaws with simple geometry (planar cracks, cylindrical or spherical inclusions) are straightforward, and good agreement has been achieved in most cases.
PsychENCODE and beyond: transcriptomics and epigenomics of brain development and organoids

Crucial decisions involving cell fate and connectivity that shape the distinctive development of the human brain occur in the embryonic and fetal stages-stages that are difficult to access and investigate in humans. The last decade has seen an impressive increase in resources-from atlases and databases to biological models-that is progressively lifting the curtain on this critical period. In this review, we describe the current state of genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic datasets charting the development of normal human brain with a particular focus on recent single-cell technologies. We discuss the emergence of brain organoids generated from pluripotent stem cells as a model to compensate for the limited availability of fetal tissue. Indeed, comparisons of neural lineages, transcriptional dynamics, and noncoding element activity between fetal brain and organoids have helped identify gene regulatory networks functioning at early stages of brain development. Altogether, we argue that large multi-omics investigations have pushed brain development into the "big data" era, and that current and future transversal approaches needed to leverage both fetal brain and organoid resources promise to answer major questions of brain biology and psychiatry.
The use and impact of metadata in civil cases

This article is one of the first to explore and delve into the legal system, with a focus on the burgeoning use of metadata in civil cases. Although metadata is embedded in all kinds of digital files including text, audio, and image files, as well as many social media and game applications, few understand how both the visible and embedded information is being “mined” (collected) for a myriad of uses by organizations, such as, Google or even the United States government. Consequently, in this paper, we explore the implications of metadata use in civil cases and how it could bring a new era of evidence in litigation, which has huge ramifications for how the average citizen may begin to view their privacy in the course of everyday activities.
Factors Associated with Subsequent Cerebral Vascular Disease after Emergency Department Headache Visits: a nested case-control study (984)

Objective: To identify factors associated with hospitalization for cerebrovascular disease (CVD) after an Emergency Department (ED) discharge with a diagnosis of primary headache. Background: When patients discharged from the ED with a primary headache diagnosis return with CVD this may represent a preventable medical error. Design/Methods: We conducted a retrospective nested case-control study using a cohort of headache patients seen in 1 of 4 EDs from 9/1/2013 to 9/1/2018. Eligible patients were discharged home with a diagnosis of primary headache. Within 365 days of ED discharge, cases had a subsequent hospitalization for CVD, while controls did not. Controls were matched to cases based on date of ED arrival and ED facility. Covariates were abstracted by chart review and all CVD outcomes were confirmed by a board-certified vascular neurologist. We used standard tests of comparison to compare cases to controls setting an alpha ≤0.05. Results: A total of 224 patients were included in our study; 112 cases and 112 controls. In both groups, 67% (n=75) of patients were female and most were English speaking (71.4% vs. 75%, p=0.65). On average, cases were older than controls (63.5 SD: 15.9 vs. 41.7 SD: 14.8, p=0.001) and were more likely to be Black or African American (39.3% vs. 25.9%, p=0.05). Additional variables including presenting symptoms, vascular comorbidities, headache features, and medications are being assessed. Conclusions: Patients discharged from the ED with a primary headache diagnosis and subsequently hospitalized for CVD are older and more often Black or African American than those without subsequent CVD hospitalization. Factors associated with misdiagnosis (minority race) and CVD risk (advanced age) are associated with subsequent CVD hospitalization; addition data collection is ongoing to improve risk stratification. Awareness of these factors may improve the detection of CVD in patients presenting with headache. Disclosure: Dr. Lu has nothing to disclose. Dr. Lipton has received personal compensation for consulting, serving on a scientific advisory board, speaking, or other activities with Teva Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Lipton has received compensation for serving on the Board of Directors of eNeura and Biohaven. Dr. Lipton holds stock and/or stock options in Biohaven which sponsored research in which Dr. Lipton was involved as an investigator. Dr. Lipton holds stock and/or stock options in Biohaven. Dr. Lipton has received research support from Migraine Research Foundation the National Headache Foundation and Amgen.Dr. Moncrieffe has nothing to disclose. Dr. Labovitz has nothing to disclose. Dr. Liberman has nothing to disclose.
POWER PLANT SITING

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of power plant siting. The location of a nuclear plant contributes to the safety of the operation and determines to what extent such a plant is considered safe by outsiders. Safety is defined in three ways: (1) the risk of damage to the integrity of the system from any cause, (2) the risk of harm to operating personnel from normal or abnormal functioning of the plant, and (3) the risk or hazard from any cause, mechanical, biological, or radioactive, to the surrounding population. The first two safety criteria are usually met by suitable plant design and layout and are affected by the selected site only insofar as unfavorable geological or meteorological phenomena—earthquakes, subsiding ground, flooding, or high winds—might interfere with the proper functioning of the facility. It is the third criterion that is uppermost in the mind of most intervenors and the general public when they raise objections to the location of a nuclear plant in a given locality. All of these are covered by the requirement that they must lead to activity levels that are as low as practicable, which, in practice, may be interpreted as levels below 1% of maximum permissible levels.
Mode of action of oxathiin systemic fungicides: III. Effect on mitochondrial activities

Abstract Carboxin (5,6-dihydro-2-methyl-1,4-oxathiin-3-carboxanilide) was tested for its effect on the activities of mitochondria from several fungi, pinto beans and rat liver. Succinate oxidation by mitochondria from the sensitive fungus Ustilago maydis was inhibited by low concentrations of carboxin, the K i being 0.32 μM. The inhibition was of a noncompetitive nature. Succinate oxidation was also inhibited in the mitochondria from other sources but not to the extent as in those from U. maydis . Carboxin had little effect on the oxidation of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. The dioxide of carboxin, oxycarboxin, was not as effective in inhibiting succinate oxidation as was carboxin, but was more effective than the monoxide. Carboxin did not appear to uncouple oxidative phosphorylation in the presence of succinate in tightly coupled rat liver mitochondria but did decrease the respiratory control ratio. Carboxin was ineffective in releasing oligomycin inhibition in coupled rat liver mitochondria while dinitrophenol and salicylanilide were effective in this respect. It is believed that carboxin inhibits mitochondrial respiration at or close to the site of succinate oxidation and does not greatly affect the remaining portion of the electron transport system or the coupled phosphorylation reactions.
Age-associated alterations in human natural killer cells. 1. Increased activity as per conventional and kinetic analysis.

Abstract We report a positive association between the human peripheral blood natural killer (NK) cell activity and the age (20–94 years) of 137 healthy volunteers. Irrespective of the methods of data representation, the elderly (>80 years) express a statistically significant (at 0.001 level) higher (35–80.7%) mean NK activity when compared to younger adults ( in vivo lymphocyte count. Single-cell assay results suggest that an increase in the frequency of NK cells may be responsible for the higher NK activity in the elderly. These findings were confirmed by an enzyme-like kinetic analysis. V max , the maximum cytotoxic potential of the lymphocytes from the elderly, is nearly four times higher than that of younger adults. It is concluded that unlike the age-related general decline in T- and B-cell reactivity (as demonstrated here with concanavalin A and pokeweed mitogen), the NK cell system is highly active in a majority of the healthy elderly.
Privacy Policies on Global Banks' Websites: Does Culture Matter?

Information privacy, the ability to control the information about oneself, is increasingly relevant as advancing technologies provide opportunities for ever faster and more extensive data collection. Electronic business continues to see the collection and storage of various types of customer information for use in increasingly innovative ways, resulting in enhanced marketing and services as well as concern from the customer about privacy. Online banking, in particular, is strongly impacted by customers' concerns for privacy due to the sensitivity of the information it handles. Previous research has examined privacy concerns, including the impact of culture. This study is a global examination of global banks' privacy policies as promulgated on their websites designed to gain insight into the communication of privacy practices throughout the world. Results indicate that there is a great deal of variation among what is disclosed on banks' websites in different countries.
Validation of self-report of rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus: The Women's Health Initiative.

OBJECTIVE: The Women9s Health Initiative (WHI), initiated in 1993, enrolled 161,808 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years and followed them with annual questionnaires for 8 years in order to study major causes of morbidity and mortality. Our objective was to determine the most effective and efficient means to validate self-reported rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in the WHI. METHODS: Data from 2 of 40 WHI clinical centers were used. Of these 7443 women, 643 self-reported RA and 106 self-reported SLE. Research coordinators contacted these women using mailers and telephone calls to obtain medical record releases and a Connective Tissue Screening Questionnaire (CSQ). Medical records were obtained on 286 self-reported RA and 34 self-reported SLE and reviewed by 3 rheumatologists blind to the self-reported diagnoses. Sensitivity, specificity, and the kappa statistic were computed to evaluate the level of agreement between self-report and chart review. RESULTS: Self-reported RA was accurate only 14.7% (42/286 cases) of the time. Coupling the self-report to medication data improved the positive predictive value (PPV; 62.2%) and kappa (0.53), suggesting a moderate agreement to chart review. Self-reported SLE was accurate only 11.8% (4/34 cases) of the time. Coupling the self-report to medication data improved the PPV (40.0%) and kappa (0.44), suggesting a moderate agreement to chart review. The CSQ was inferior to using medication data but was substantially better than self-report alone. CONCLUSION: The performance of disease self-report coupled with medication history in validating RA and SLE was very good and should obviate the need for time-consuming medical record reviews.
Information into intelligence: an interaction between two dynamical processes

We give a general sketch of the architecture of the dynamical processes that make it possible for a natural system to interact semiotically with its environment. The two foci are on the relation the semiotic characteristics bear to the internal dynamical processes that enable them, and on the manner in which material interactions become conceptualised. The paper is in two parts. In the first one, the dynamical profile of energetically complex systems is introduced to show the manner in which emergent properties are related to those of their material substrate in natural systems. The second part is devoted to a sketch of the manner in which information, in the sense of Shannon, is transformed into the semiotic dimensions of intelligence. In a brief coda, the value of this analysis is shown to lie in the fact that the only systems that can be said to be semiotic in the full sense of this expression are natural ones, and that any modelling of these processes is bound to be constrained by the laws which govern their natural expressions.
From graphs to tables the design of scalable systems for graph analytics

From social networks to language modeling, the growing scale and importance of graph data has driven the development of new graph-parallel systems. In this talk, I will review the graph-parallel abstraction and describe how it can be used to express important machine learning and graph analytics algorithms like PageRank and Latent factor models. I will present how systems like GraphLab and Pregel exploit restrictions in the graph-parallel abstraction along with advances in distributed graph representation to efficiently execute iterative graph algorithms orders of magnitude faster than more general data-parallel systems. Unfortunately, the same restrictions that enable graph-parallel systems to achieve substantial performance gains also limit their ability to express many of the important stages in a typical graph-analytics pipeline. As a consequence, existing approaches to graph-analytics typically compose multiple systems through brittle and costly file interfaces. To fill the need for a holistic approach to graph-analytics we introduce GraphX, which unifies graph-parallel and data-parallel computation under a single API and system. I will show how a simple set of data-parallel operators can be used to express graph-parallel computation and how, by applying a collection of query optimizations derived from our work on graph-parallel systems, we can execute entire graph-analytics pipelines efficiently in a more general data-parallel distributed fault-tolerant system achieving performance comparable to specialized state-of-the-art systems.
Style and de Stijl, or Morningstar and Mondrian: Use and Misuse of Style Boxes

Graphics distill and convey information. The clarity and power of the simple style box efficiently convey two vital dimensions of investment style for equities valuation and size. In promoting awareness of style variations, style boxes—Morningstar9s particularly—have advanced investment literacy. However, as currently constructed, the style box misleads and can induce unwanted behavior and unintended consequences.
Work Stress among Receptionists: A Comparative Study

This descriptive research work has been undertaken in Tirunelveli city, Tamilnadu as a comparative study to identify and differentiate the sources stress and impact of stress among the receptionists working in both private multi-specialty hospitals and private single specialty hospitals. The sources of stress has been identified under two dimensions namely organization structure and processes related stressors and receptionists' specific stressors. Sampling has been done in two phases. In the first phase, the subject has been stratified into two groups: the receptionist working in private multi-specialty hospital and the receptionist working in private single specialty hospitals using stratified random sampling technique. In the second phase, 100 receptionists have been sampled from both divisions (50 respondents from private multi-specialty hospitals and 50 respondents from private single specialty hospitals) using judgement sampling technique. The study has applied mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and Kruskal Wallis test to analyze the data. The result of the study has proved that most of the stressors discussed under the headings of organization structure and processes related stressors and receptionists' specific stressors have equally perceived by the receptionists working in both kinds of hospitals.
Does Learning-Centered Teaching Promote Grade Improvement?.

When the grade distribution within a course shifts towards higher grades, it may be due to grade inflation or grade improvement. If the positive shift is accompanied by an increase in achievement or learning, it should be considered grade improvement, not grade inflation. Effective learning-centered teaching is designed to promote student learning due to increased responsibility for learning, engagement with course material, and opportunity for formative assessments prior to summative assessments of course learning outcomes, which leads to improved grades. We suggest ways that faculty members practicing learning-centered teaching can collect and analyze data to support increased learning and grade improvement.
Overexpression of Batf induces an apoptotic defect and an associated lymphoproliferative disorder in mice.

Activator protein-1 (AP-1) is a dimeric transcription factor composed of the Jun, Fos and Atf families of proteins. Batf is expressed in the immune system and participates in AP-1 dimers that modulate gene expression in response to a variety of stimuli. Transgenic (Tg) mice overexpressing human BATF in T cells were generated using the human CD2 promoter (CD2-HA (hemagglutinin antigen) - BATF). By 1 year of age, over 90% of the mice developed a lymphoproliferative disorder (LPD). The enlarged lymph nodes characteristic of this LPD contain a polyclonal accumulation of T cells with a CD4+ bias, yet efforts to propagate these tumor cells in vitro demonstrate that they do not proliferate as well as wild-type CD4+ T cells. Instead, the accumulation of these cells is likely due to an apoptotic defect as CD2-HA-BATF Tg T cells challenged by trophic factor withdrawal in vitro resist apoptosis and display a pro-survival pattern of Bcl-2 family protein expression. As elevated levels of Batf expression are a feature of lymphoid tumors in both humans and mice, these observations support the use of CD2-HA-BATF mice as a model for investigating the molecular details of apoptotic dysregulation in LPD.
Impact of feature saliency on visual category learning

People have to sort numerous objects into a large number of meaningful categories while operating in varying contexts. This requires identifying the visual features that best predict the ‘essence’ of objects (e.g., edibility), rather than categorizing objects based on the most salient features in a given context. To gain this capacity, visual category learning (VCL) relies on multiple cognitive processes. These may include unsupervised statistical learning, that requires observing multiple objects for learning the statistics of their features. Other learning processes enable incorporating different sources of supervisory information, alongside the visual features of the categorized objects, from which the categorical relations between few objects can be deduced. These deductions enable inferring that objects from the same category may differ from one another in some high-saliency feature dimensions, whereas lower-saliency feature dimensions can best differentiate objects from distinct categories. Here I illustrate how feature saliency affects VCL, by also discussing kinds of supervisory information enabling reflective categorization. Arguably, principles debated here are often being ignored in categorization studies.
Comparison of methods for estimating real process derivatives in on-line optimization

Abstract The problem of derivative information estimation for the on-line optimization control problem has been widely recognized. This paper investigates methods and techniques for the estimation of these derivatives, to be used within the well-known integrated system optimization and parameter estimation algorithm. Methods of finite difference approximation, dual control optimization, Broydon’s method and a dynamic identification method, with a linear and non-linear models, are discussed and applied, under simulation, to a cascade continuous stirred tank reactor system.
“Remote” dianions 5. Synthesis of δ-coniceine

Abstract A total synthesis of (+/-) δ-coniceine from 1,4-butanediol is herein reported. A pivotal transformation of the synthesis involves the addition of the dianion of 4-(phenylsulfonyl)butanoic acid to an activated imine followed by subsequent cyclization to form a substituted piperidone intermediate.
Sedimentation characteristics of native glycogens from human glycogen-storage diseases.

Abstract Glycogen was extracted by a mild cold water procedure from humab liver specimens, and sedimentation characteristics were determined in the analytical ultracentrifuge. The molecular weight spectra of glycogens obtained from the livers of patients with types I, II, and VI glycogen-storage disease were characteristic for the specific type of glycogenosis. The spectra obtained from patients with type III resembled either those with type I or type VI. There was marked heterogeneity within the specimens of control subjects with other liver diseases.
Decentralized control using observers

The problem of decentralized Luenberger-type observers for large-scale systems is considered. The observers are then used as parts of a general decentralized compensation scheme for linear systems. Lyapunov-type conditions are obtained to ensure overall system stability under local controllability and observability conditions. The overall approach is suboptimal, and performance degradation due to the decentralized structure is computed for comparative study of structures.
DIVIDING NEURON PRECURSORS EXPRESS NEURON-SPECIFIC TUBULIN

Neuronal differentiation involves specific molecular and morphological changes in precursors and results in mature, postmitotic neurons. The expression of neuron-specific beta tubulin, as detected by the monoclonal antibody TuJ1, begins during the period of neurogenesis. Indeed, TuJ1 expression precedes that of the 160 kD neurofilament protein in both the central and peripheral nervous systems. In the embryonic rat spinal cord, bipolar cells and some mitotic cells in the ventricular zone were TuJ1 immunoreactive (IR). Sensory ganglia also contained cells with TuJ1-IR mitotic spindles in situ. In embryonic rat sensory and sympathetic ganglion cell cultures pulsed with the thymidine analog bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), TuJ1 label was detected in the spindle of mitotic cells and in the midbody of cells joined at cytokinesis, indicating that neuron-specific tubulin expression was initiated during or before the final mitosis of neuronal progenitors. Dorsal root ganglion cultures included TuJ1-IR cells with several shapes that may reflect morphological transitions, from flattened stellate neural crest-like cells to differentiated bipolar neurons. Indeed, the presence of flattened TuJ1-IR cells was correlated with neurogenesis. Some sympathetic neuron precursors possessed long TuJ1-IR neurites, as well as TuJ1-IR spindle microtubules and BrdU-labeled chromosomes, indicating that these precursors can possess long processes during metaphase. These results support the hypothesis that neuron-specific tubulin expression represents an early molecular event in neuronal differentiation exhibited by a wide range of neuronal precursors. The cessation of proliferation can occur at different points during neuronal differentiation, as TuJ1-IR was detected in cells undergoing mitosis. Future studies directed toward understanding the molecules that initiate neuron-specific tubulin expression may lead to the factors that control the initial phases of neuronal differentiation.
Cellular aspects of the action of cytosine arabinoside

The cellular effects of Ara-C are reviewed including its S-phase sensitivity, its proliferative-dependent cytotoxicity and progression delay effects which result in unbalance growth. Both direct and indirect cytotoxic mechanisms are discussed. The impact of such cellular information on the scheduling of Ara-C is presented with regard to normal and tumor cell population cytotoxicity. Based on these data a therapeutic rationale is presented.
A different need for sequencing contracts using state-based aspects

Aspect technology has been used to describe concerns that had been thought to be unmodularizable. Some of those concerns have to do with workflows in an application's domain and sequencing of operation invocations within the application. Another principle of software engineering that has generated some interest and controversy within the aspect community is design by contract. Over the years some have suggested that a component's contracts be expressed through one or several aspects attached to it. This paper will describe a use of aspects that is a hybrid of the above ideas: the enforcement of operation invocation ordering through the component's contract and expressed as an aspect. The aspect is in turn modeled with a state machine whose description can be used to enhance the clarity of a component's description at the analysis and design phases, and whose implementation can be used to monitor invocations on the component for proper sequencing.
Use of the Broselow tape may result in the underresuscitation of children.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the concordance of the Broselow tape with the measured heights and weights of a community-based population of children, especially in light of the increase in obesity in today’s children. Methods: The authors examined more than 7,500 children in a cross-sectional, descriptive study in two different cohorts of children to compare their actual weight with their predicted weight by a color-coded tape measure. Results: In all patients, the percent agreement and k values of the Broselow color predicted by height versus the actual color by weight for the 2002A tape were 66.2% and 0.61, respectively. The concordance was best in infants, followed by school-age children, toddlers, and preschoolers (k = 0.66, 0.44, 0.39, and 0.39, respectively; percent agreement, 81.3%, 58.2%, 60.7%, and 64.0%, respectively). The tapes accurately predicted (within 10%) medication dosages for resuscitation in 55.3%–60.0% of the children. The number of children who were underdosed (by R10%) exceeded those who were overdosed (by R10%) by 2.5 to 4.4 times (p < 0.05). The tapes accurately predicted uncuffed endotracheal tube sizes when compared with age-based guidelines in 71% of the children, with undersizing (R0.5 mm) exceeding oversizing by threefold to fourfold (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The Broselow tape color-coded system inaccurately predicted actual weight in one third of children. Caregivers need to take into consideration the accuracy of this device when estimating children’s weight during the resuscitation of a child. ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE 2006; 13:1011–1019 a 2006 by the Society for Academic Emergency
Update on leukaemia

Abstract In the 1980s and 1990s, successive large, national leukaemia trials helped to determine basic treatment strategies that are effective in most children with leukaemia. In acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, the UKALL studies addressed CNS prophylaxis, duration of therapy, and intensive treatment blocks in improving event-free survival. Sufficient patients were recruited to permit direct comparison of individual drugs and deliver the answers within a timescale relevant to clinical practice. In acute myeloid leukaemia, collaboration with UK adult trials led to results in children that were not bettered anywhere in the world. The results of these trials were improved by advances in supportive care that were highly effective in reducing treatment-related mortality. The emphasis for paediatric leukaemia studies has changed over the last decade; more attention is being paid to patient subgroups that are performing badly, such as infants, Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukaemias, and relapsed and refractory acute myeloid leukaemia. Studies of these rare patients have been made possible by increased international collaboration that has allowed patients from many different countries to enter the same clinical trials. Interest in these difficult therapeutic areas has also been stimulated by the development of new agents and treatment strategies that have come directly from improved understanding of leukaemia biology.
The effect of substitution patterns on the release rates of opioid peptides DADLE and [Leu5]-enkephalin from coumarin prodrug moieties

Abstract A coumarin-based prodrug system has been developed in our laboratory for the preparation of esterase-sensitive prodrugs of amines, peptides, and peptidomimetics. The drug release rates from this prodrug system were found to be dependent on the structural features of the drug moiety. The effect of the phenyl ring substitutions on the release kinetics of such prodrugs of model amines was examined recently and it was found that appropriately positioned alkyl substituents on the phenyl ring could help to facilitate the release. Aimed at further understanding the structure–release rate relationship of the coumarin-based cyclic prodrugs, we synthesized and examined a series of substituted coumarinic acid derivatives of opioid peptides, DADLE, and [Leu 5 ]-enkephalin.
Swallow Function in Patients Before and After Intra‐Arterial Chemoradiation

Objectives/Hypothesis To prospectively evaluate swallow function in patients with advanced head and neck cancer before and after completion of intra-arterial chemoradiation therapy and planned neck dissection. Study Design Prospective nonrandomized study. Methods Swallow function was evaluated in 11 patients with resectable T4 and selected T3 head and neck cancer before and, on average, 19 weeks after completion of treatment. Results The Performance Status Scale demonstrated worse scores for both eating in public (P = .004) and normalcy of diet (P = .004) after treatment. Patients who underwent neck dissections had significantly worse scores (P = .02) in normalcy of diet. A significant decline was noted in swallowing functional measures at the time of the repeat evaluation (P = .02). Videofluoroscopic swallow studies revealed altered swallow function in 9 of 11 patients before treatment, with aspiration seen in 3 patients. Following treatment, the incidence of aspiration increased to seven patients. Tongue base retraction, reduced laryngeal elevation, and increased laryngeal vestibule penetration of thick liquid were all statistically significantly worse after treatment. The overall score on the quality of life instrument was not significantly changed from before to after treatment. Conclusions The majority of patients demonstrated significantly worse swallow function on all three methods of analysis at 19 weeks after completion of treatment. Continued detailed monitoring of patients' swallow function is critical in determining long-term effects of intra-arterial chemoradiation therapy and neck dissection.
Structural Features from Reflection Spectra: Orientation of 1, 3,-bis-(Dimethylamino) trimethinium Perchlorate Molecules in the Crystal

Abstract If the orientation of a molecular electronic transition moment with respect to the molecular framework is known, reflection spectra of crystalline samples on various faces may be used to locate the molecules in question. This can be done through projection of the transition moment on the faces, or through use of the optical indicatrix. The two methods are briefly compared, and the preferred indicatrix method is applied to crystals of the dye 1,3-bis-(dim-ethylamino)trimethinium perchlorate. Along each principal axis of the indicatrix, best fit values for reasonant frequency, plasma frequency, and damping constant are obtained in the frequency range of the first singlet. Parameters of the crystal structure having to do with the orientation of the dye molecules are then deduced from this information.
Particulate and active soil nitrogen fractions are reduced by sheep grazing in dryland cropping systems

Sheep (Ovis aries L.) grazing, a cost- effective method of weed control compared to herbi- cide application and tillage, may influence N cycling by consuming crop residue and weeds and returning N through feces and urine to the soil. The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the effect of sheep grazing compared to tillage and herbicide application for weed control on soil particulate and active soil N fractions in dryland cropping systems. Our hypothesis was that sheep grazing used for weed control would increase particulate and active soil N fractions com- pared to tillage and herbicide application. Soil samples collected at the 0-30 cm depth from a Blackmore silt loam were analyzed for particulate organic N (PON), microbial biomass N (MBN), and potential N miner- alization (PNM) under dryland cropping systems from 2009 to 2011 in southwestern Montana, USA.
Inverse scattering transform for the time dependent Schrödinger equation with applications to the KPI equation

For the direct-inverse scattering transform of the time dependent Schrodinger equation, rigorous results are obtained based on an opertor-triangular-factorization approach. By viewing the equation as a first order operator equation, similar results as for the first ordern x n matrix system are obtained. The nonlocal Riemann-Hilbert problem for inverse scattering is shown to have solution.
Micro-optic array applications in terawatt ultrafast laser amplifiers

Recent developments in micro-optics offer the potential of higher power and more robust ultrafast laser technology operating at high efficiency. Results using micro-optic lenslet arrays in an ultrafast, Ti:sapphire terawatt amplifier are presented. We report a final ultrafast amplified laser mode can be shaped to within 1% of the target Gaussian with a 532nm pump energy to 800nm laser pulse energy conversion efficiency of 35% in Ti:sapphire. Focusing studies demonstrate the laser system with microlens arrays can achieve a peak intensity of 10 19 W/cm 2 . Future applications of microlens arrays in 100 terawatt and possibly petawatt peak power systems will be discussed.
The Treaty of Nice, the Convention Draft and the Constitution for Europe Under a Veto Players Analysis

Triple majority for changing the status quo in Treaty of Nice (2001): qualified majority of weighted votes, majority of countries, qualified majority of the population. Convention proposal (2003): requirements from three to two by dropping the qualified majority of weighted votes and reducing the qualified majority threshold of the population from 62% to 60%. Important consequences for the political institutions of the Union: 1) facilitates political decision-making; 2) reduces relative weight of governments participating in the Council and increases the importance of the European Parliament; 3) reduces the role of the judiciary and bureaucracies in the Union in favor of the political process. Consequences of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe signed in Rome 29 October 2004. Exactly in the middle between Nice and the European Convention.
Medical Image Compression and Vector Quantization

In this paper, we describe a particular set of algorithms for clustering and show how they lead to codes which can be used to com- press images. The approach is called tree-structured vector quantization (TSVQ) and amounts to a binary tree-structured two-means clustering, very much in the spirit of CART. This coding is thereafter put into the larger framework of information theory. Finally, we report the method- ology for how image compression was applied in a clinical setting, where the medical issue was the measurement of major blood vessels in the chest and the technology was magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Mea- suring the sizes of blood vessels, of other organs and of tumors is fun- damental to evaluating aneurysms, especially prior to surgery. We argue for digital approaches to imaging in general, two benefits being improved archiving and transmission, and another improved clinical usefulness through the application of digital image processing. These goals seem particularly appropriate for technologies like MR that are inherently digital. However, even in this modern age, archiving the images of a busy radiological service is not possible without substantially compress- ing them. This means that the codes by which images are stored digi- tally, whether they arise from TSVQ or not, need to be "lossy," that is, not invertible. Since lossy coding necessarily entails the loss of digital in- formation, it behooves those who recommend it to demonstrate that the quality of medicine practiced is not diminished thereby. There is a grow- ing literature concerning the impact of lossy compression upon tasks that involve detection. However, we are not aware of similar studies of mea- surement. We feel that the study reported here of 30 scans compressed to 5 different levels, with measurements being made by 3 accomplished radiologists, is consistent with 16:1 lossy compression as we practice it being acceptable for the problem at hand.
Human nature without a soul

Rapid developments in neuroscience over the past four decades continue to receive wide media attention. Each new reported advance points to ever tightening links between mind and brain. For many centuries, what is today called ‘mind-talk’ was familiar as ‘soul-talk’. Since, for some, the possession of a soul is what makes us human, the challenges of cognitive neuroscience directly address this. This paper affords the non-specialist a brief overview of some of the scientific evidence pointing to the ever tightening of the mind-brain links and explores its wider implications for our understanding of human nature. In particular it brings together the findings from so-called bottom-up research, in which we observe changes in behaviour and cognition resulting from experimental interventions in neural processes, with top-down research where we track changes in neural substrates accompanying habitual modes of cognition or behaviour. Further reflection alerts one to how the dualist views widely held by New Agers, some humanists and many religious people, contrast with the views of academic philosophers, theologians and biblical scholars, who agree in emphasizing the unity of the person.