cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SCIENTIST: LIX THE ACADEMIC ELITE IN PSYCHOLOGY: LINKAGES AMONG TOP-RANKED GRADUATE PROGRAMS

3urnmaty.-The top-ranked doctoral programs in psychology, based on a national swey of faculty ratings, were substantially linked to each other by hiring each other's graduates. It is suggested that this Linkage helps these departments to maintain and enhance their prestige. Howard, Pion, Gottfredson, Flattau, Oskamp, Pfafflin, Bray, and Burstein (1786) noted some problems that arise when the ratings of faculty members are used to determine the quality of doctoral programs in psychology. These authors suggested that "raters may be swayed by the overall reputation of the university rather than that of the individual department . . ., programs within a department may vary in their quality, and changes within a department over time may not be accounted for" (p. 1316). The present writers investigated an additional problem regarding the use of faculty ratings to determine the quality of graduate programs, namely, that top-ranked programs may tend to maintain and enhance their reputations by hiring their own and each other's graduates. Bair and Thompson (1985) reported that the top-ranked doctoral programs in sociology were substantially linked to each other in this manner, and Bair, Thompson, and Hickey (1786) reported that this linkage also occurred for doctoral programs in anthropology. Likewise, Gross (1970) found that the most prestigious sociology departments hired large numbers of their own graduates. The present study investigated the possibility that the top-ranked or "elite" programs in psychology also might tend to hire large numbers of their own and each other's graduates, since those programs cannot hire large numbers of graduates from lower ranked programs if they are to maintain their prestige (Berelson, 1760; Caplow & McGee, 1965). METHOD A list of the most highly regarded doctoral programs in psychology was presented in Changing Times ("Best places," 1783). Two key measures of reputation from a five-volume study by the National Academy of Sciences (Jones, Lindzey, & Coggeshall, 1982) had been combined by the editors of Changing Tzmn to derive a list of the top ten percent of the doctoral programs for each of 32 disciplines. These measures of reputation were (a) 'Address correspondence to Myron Boor, Ph.D., Newman Hospital, 12th and Chestnut, Ernporia, Kansas 66801.
Friction Consolidation of MA956 powder

Abstract The applicability of Friction Consolidation (FC) to process an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) steel was studied to tackle the downsides of the conventional processing route (high complexity, extremely high raw material final cost). In this work, MA956 ODS powders have been consolidated through the FC process and small compacts of low porosity have been achieved with the desired oxide dispersion. The friction-consolidated sample shows a range of grain sizes when measuring at different locations within the cross section of the sample, and the values were all finer than those of a conventionally-processed sample. With regard to shape, grains in the friction-consolidated sample show an equiaxed cross section. Three particle families were observed: Y–Al–O, Al–O and Ti(C, N). The Y–Al–O and the Al–O were observed in both the conventionally- and the friction-consolidated sample. This result points out the ability to achieve the precipitation of the Y–Al–O by FC. The Ti(C, N) particles were only observed in the conventionally processed sample. The transmission electron microscopy images showed regions with smaller particles on the friction-consolidated sample. However, due to the extremely localized nature of the measurement, more data should be generated and analyzed to make this observation more statistically reliable.
Neuregulins and the neuromuscular system: 10 years of answers and questions.

The neuregulins were originally discovered in searches for the acetylcholine receptor-inducing activity (ARIA), glial growth factor (GGF), and a ligand for the oncogene neu (ErbB2/HER2). Neuregulin1 (NRG1)-mediated cell communication is critical in the central and peripheral nervous system, heart, breast, and other organ systems. This review will focus on the functions of NRG1s in the development and maintenance of the neuromuscular system and on the regulation of NRG1 signaling within this system. The roles of NRG1 signaling in the neuromuscular system are far more pervasive than contemplated when neuregulins were discovered 10 years ago. In fact, neuregulin-mediated cell communication plays an essential role in the biology of most components of the neuromuscular system—including motor and sensory neurons, muscle fibers, Schwann cells, and major specializations (neuromuscular synapses, muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs, and peripheral nerves). It is argued here that while NRG1 proteins are indeed “ARIA” and “GGF”, their involvement in regulating synapse-specific transcription and Schwann cell development is more complex than originally proposed. It is also argued that NRG1 isoforms differ in their signaling properties and that these differences tailor specific isoforms for specific signaling tasks; for example, some NRG1 isoforms may be specialized for paracrine signaling and others for juxtacrine signaling. In the first 10 years of neuregulin research there has been much progress in understanding the actions of neuregulins in shaping and maintaining the neuromuscular system. However, major questions, old and new, remain unanswered; and the second 10 years promises to be at least as exciting as the first.
Peak Flow Values by Gestation in Women With Asthma

Asthma is one of the most common medical complications of pregnancy. Asthma control is associated with improved perinatal outcomes. Peak flow measures have been recommended to determine the status of asthma, yet norms for peak flow values in women with asthma are missing from the literature. The purpose of this study was to determine average peak flow values in pregnant women with asthma. Forty-three women were recruited into the study prior to the 20th week of pregnancy. Demographic data, including age, ethnic background, and number of pregnancies, were collected. Type and severity of asthma, medications used for asthma, and past hospitalizations for asthma were recorded. Peak flow values increased across the three trimesters. Significant differences were found in peak flow values between the first and third trimesters (>.001) and the second and third trimesters (>.007). Findings from the present study contradict those of studies on pregnant women without asthma.
Size-distribution analysis of respirable particulates in cosmetic aerosols: A methodological comparison

Abstract The size spectra of respirable particulates from five cosmetic aerosol products were determined using the methods of microscopy, cascade impaction, and single particle aerodynamic relaxationtime (SPART) analysis. In order to facilitate methodological comparisons, the same sampling apparatus was used in all phases of the study. The results obtained using the three methods were similar in most cases. The pressurized aerosol products produced particulates with count median diameters of 0·6-1·5 μm and mass median diameters of 2·2–3·2 μm as measured by all methods. The pump spray also yielded particulates with median diameters in these ranges in the microscope and SPART analyses, but in the cascade impaction analysis, the mass median diameter was determined to be 12·8 μm.
NOTE ON TRAVEL TIME SHIFTS DUE TO AMPLITUDE MODULATION IN TIME-DISTANCE HELIOSEISMOLOGY MEASUREMENTS

Correct interpretation of acoustic travel times measured by time-distance helioseismology is essential to get an accurate understanding of the solar properties that are inferred from them. It has long been observed that sunspots suppress p-mode amplitude, but its implications on travel times have not been fully investigated so far. It has been found in test measurements using a 'masking' procedure, in which the solar Doppler signal in a localized quiet region of the Sun is artificially suppressed by a spatial function, and using numerical simulations that the amplitude modulations in combination with the phase-speed filtering may cause systematic shifts of acoustic travel times. To understand the properties of this procedure, we derive an analytical expression for the cross-covariance of a signal that has been modulated locally by a spatial function that has azimuthal symmetry and then filtered by a phase-speed filter typically used in time-distance helioseismology. Comparing this expression to the Gabor wavelet fitting formula without this effect, we find that there is a shift in the travel times that is introduced by the amplitude modulation. The analytical model presented in this paper can be useful also for interpretation of travel time measurements for the non-uniform distribution of oscillation amplitudemore » due to observational effects.« less
Dynamics of the Immune Reaction to Pancreatic Cancer from Inception to Invasion

The dynamics of cancer immunosurveillance remain incompletely understood, hampering efforts to develop immunotherapy of cancer. We evaluated the evolving in vivo immune response to a spontaneous tumor in a genetically defined mouse model of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma from the inception of preinvasive disease to invasive cancer. We observed a prominent leukocytic infiltration even around the lowest grade preinvasive lesions, but immunosuppressive cells, including tumor-associated macrophages, myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC), and regulatory T cells (Treg), dominated the early response and persisted through invasive cancer. Effector T cells, however, were scarce in preinvasive lesions, found in only a subset of advanced cancers, and showed no evidence of activation. The lack of tumor-infiltrating effector T cells strongly correlated with the presence of intratumoral MDSC with a near mutual exclusion. In vitro, we found that MDSC suppressed T-cell proliferation. Overall, our results show that suppressive cells of the host immune system appear early during pancreatic tumorigenesis, preceding and outweighing antitumor cellular immunity, and likely contribute to disease progression. Thus, in contrast to the hypothesis that an early "elimination phase" of cancer immunosurveillance is eventually overwhelmed by a growing invasive tumor, our findings suggest that productive tumor immunity may be undermined from the start. Efforts to test potent inhibitors of MDSC, tumor-associated macrophages, and Treg, particularly early in the disease represent important next steps for developing novel immunotherapy of cancer.
Lyapunov methods in nonsmooth optimization. Part II: Persistently exciting finite differences

For Part I see ibid. (2000). A recent converse Lyapunov theorem for differential inclusions is used to generate a class of finite difference algorithms for nonsmooth optimization. The algorithms rely on a proof of asymptotic stability for differential inclusions that contain persistently exciting signals and the ability to approximate these differential inclusions with finite differences. The notion of persistency of excitation that is used here generalizes that which is typically used in the identification and adaptive control literature.
Count Models for Software Quality Estimation

Identifying which software modules, during the software development process, are likely to be faulty is an effective technique for improving software quality. Such an approach allows a more focused software quality & reliability enhancement endeavor. The development team may also like to know the number of faults that are likely to exist in a given program module, i.e., a quantitative quality prediction. However, classification techniques such as the logistic regression model (lrm) cannot be used to predict the number of faults. In contrast, count models such as the Poisson regression model (prm), and the zero-inflated Poisson (zip) regression model can be used to obtain both a qualitative classification, and a quantitative prediction for software quality. In the case of the classification models, a classification rule based on our previously developed generalized classification rule is used. In the context of count models, this study is the first to propose a generalized classification rule. Case studies of two industrial software systems are examined, and for each we developed two count models, (prm, and zip), and a classification model (lrm). Evaluating the predictive capabilities of the models, we concluded that the prm, and the zip models have similar classification accuracies as the lrm. The count models are also used to predict the number of faults for the two case studies. The zip model yielded better fault prediction accuracy than the prm. As compared to other quantitative prediction models for software quality, such as multiple linear regression (mlr), the prm, and zip models have a unique property of yielding the probability that a given number of faults will occur in any module
Children’s Surnames, Moral Dilemmas: Accounting for the Predominance of Fathers’ Surnames for Children

This content analysis examines online accounts of choices of marital and child surnames to understand the predominance of exclusively patrilineal surnames. I demonstrate how surnaming processes present the classic tension between commitment to self and others as moral dilemmas of self versus family, children, and spouse. Social and cultural mechanisms create an either/or exclusive framing and a false dichotomy where women’s selves and others’ needs are incompatible. I also show how some parents reconceptualize family, children, and expectations for men and women, which helps reconfigure dilemmas into a both/and inclusive framework and permits outcomes integrating self, family, children, and partnership. This study illustrates how maintaining a system that promotes giving fathers’ surnames to children as the only proper choice feeds the inertia of micro- and macro-structures that reflect and reinforce gendered differences in moral responsibility regarding self-sacrifice for family, children, and spouses.
Polarization and convergence in academic controversies

Not many years ago both anthropology and political science experienced internal disputes—in the first case over the publication of a book accusing a noted anthropologist of endangering indigenous subjects and in the second over the nature of the field. While the first led to polarization, the second produced a partial convergence and modest reforms. This article examines the two processes and seeks the key mechanisms that produced those differences, closing with a call for broadening the study of contentious politics to cover non-public controversies like the ones examined in this article.
A Photographic View of Cumulative Distribution Functions

This article shows a concrete and easy recognizable view of a cumulative distribution function(cdf). Photograph views of the search tabs on dictionaries are used to increase students' understanding...
A practical guide to the staggered herringbone mixer.

An analytical model of mixing in the staggered herringbone mixer (SHM) was derived to estimate mixing parameters and provide practical expressions to guide mixer design and operation for a wide range of possible solutes and flow conditions. Mixing in microfluidic systems has historically been characterized by the mixing of a specific solute system or by the redistribution of flow streams; this approach does not give any insight into the ideal operational parameters of the mixer with an arbitrary real system. For Stokes-flow mixers, mixing can be computed from a relationship between solute diffusivity, flow rate, and mixer length. Confocal microscopy and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling were used to directly determine the extent of mixing for several solutes in the staggered herringbone mixer over a range of Reynolds numbers (Re) and Peclet numbers (Pe); the results were used to develop and evaluate an analytical model of its behavior. Mixing was found to be a function of only Pe and downstream position in the mixer. Required mixer length was proportional to log(Pe); this analytical model matched well with the confocal data and CFD model for Pe < 5 × 104, at which point the experiments reached the limit of resolution. For particular solutes, required length and mixing time depend upon Re and diffusivity. This analytical model is applicable to other solute systems, and possibly to other embodiments of the mixer, to enable optimal design, operation, and estimation of performance.
Activation of the Fas/Fas ligand pathway in hypertensive renal disease in Dahl/Rapp rats

Hypertensive nephrosclerosis is the second most common cause of end-stage renal failure in the United States. The mechanism by which hypertension produces renal failure is incompletely understood. Recent evidence demonstrated that an unscheduled and inappropriate increase in apoptosis occurred in the Dahl/Rapp rat, an inbred strain of rat that uniformly develops hypertension and hypertensive nephrosclerosis; early correction of the hypertension prevents the renal injury. The present study examined the role of the Fas/FasL pathway in this process. Young male Dahl/Rapp salt-sensitive (S) and Sprague-Dawley rats were fed diets that contained 0.3% or 8.0% NaCl diets. Kidneys were examined at days 7 and 21 of the study. An increase in Fas and FasL expression was observed in glomerular and tubular compartments of kidneys of hypertensive S rats, whereas dietary salt did not change expression of either of these molecules in normotensive Sprague-Dawley rats. Associated with this increase was cleavage of Bid and activation of caspase-8, the initiator caspase in this apoptotic pathway, by day 21 of the study. Augmented expression of apoptotic signaling by the Fas/FasL pathway occurred during development of end-stage renal failure in this model of hypertensive nephrosclerosis.
MyD88-mediated signals induce the bactericidal lectin RegIIIγ and protect mice against intestinal Listeria monocytogenes infection

Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne bacterial pathogen that causes systemic infection by traversing the intestinal mucosa. Although MyD88-mediated signals are essential for defense against systemic L. monocytogenes infection, the role of Toll-like receptor and MyD88 signaling in intestinal immunity against this pathogen has not been defined. We show that clearance of L. monocytogenes from the lumen of the distal small intestine is impaired in MyD88−/− mice. The distal ileum of wild-type (wt) mice expresses high levels of RegIIIγ, which is a bactericidal lectin that is secreted into the bowel lumen, whereas RegIIIγ expression in MyD88−/− mice is nearly undetectable. In vivo depletion of RegIIIγ from the small intestine of wt mice diminishes killing of luminal L. monocytogenes , whereas reconstitution of MyD88-deficient mice with recombinant RegIIIγ enhances intestinal bacterial clearance. Experiments with bone marrow chimeric mice reveal that MyD88-mediated signals in nonhematopoietic cells induce RegIIIγ expression in the small intestine, thereby enhancing bacterial killing. Our findings support a model of MyD88-mediated epithelial conditioning that protects the intestinal mucosa against bacterial invasion by inducing RegIIIγ.
A method for determining the stability of a class of autonomous nonlinear continuous chaotic dynamical systems

This paper presents a method for analyzing the stability of a nonlinear chaotic system that is substantially different from existing methods. First, the systems of equations are rewritten in terms of equivalence classes of ratios of polynomials of the operator ξ over the real field. Next, conditions are developed using the Banach Fixed Pont Theorem that guarantees that the solution to the system of equations is exponentially stable. Then the concept of an equivalent system is derived. If a system has an equivalent system that satisfied the conditions that guarantee exponentially stability, then the solution to the original system of equations is shown to be exponentially stable. Finally, if an equivalent system of equations that satisfy the conditions that guarantee exponentially stability cannot be found, an approximation to an equivalent system that is exponentially stable in some region of the state space is developed and is used to determine the stability of the system.
Abu Ghraib: its legacy for military medicine

Summary The complicity of US military medical personnel during abuses of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay is of great importance to human rights, medical ethics, and military medicine. Government documents show that the US military medical system failed to protect detainees' human rights, sometimes collaborated with interrogators or abusive guards, and failed to properly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings. 1–23 An inquiry into the behaviour of medical personnel in places such as Abu Ghraib could lead to valuable reforms within military medicine.
The relationships between motivations and answering strategies: An exploratory review of health answerers' behaviors in Yahoo! answers

The purpose of the current study is to identify and explore relationships between motivations and answering strategies of health answerers in social Q&A. From a comprehensive review of literature and research experiences with social Q&A, a model of health answering processes, composed of ten motivations and five steps of answering strategies, was proposed and tested using an online survey. As a result, it was observed that the answering strategies varied according to motivations. The findings can be used to promote the contributions of health answerers in social Q&A services, as well as in other services, targeting answerers that are highly motivated by altruism, enjoyment, or efficacy, rather than by reputation, reciprocity, or personal gain.
Higher-order chromatin domains link eQTLs with the expression of far-away genes

Distal expression quantitative trait loci (distal eQTLs) are genetic mutations that affect the expression of genes genomically far away. However, the mechanisms that cause a distal eQTL to modulate gene expression are not yet clear. Recent high-resolution chromosome conformation capture experiments along with a growing database of eQTLs provide an opportunity to understand the spatial mechanisms influencing distal eQTL associations on a genome-wide scale. We test the hypothesis that spatial proximity contributes to eQTL-gene regulation in the context of the higher-order domain structure of chromatin as determined from recent Hi-C chromosome conformation experiments. This analysis suggests that the large-scale topology of chromatin is coupled with eQTL associations by providing evidence that eQTLs are in general spatially close to their target genes, occur often around topological domain boundaries and preferentially associate with genes across domains. We also find that within-domain eQTLs that overlap with regulatory elements such as promoters and enhancers are spatially more close than the overall set of within-domain eQTLs, suggesting that spatial proximity derived from the domain structure in chromatin plays an important role in the regulation of gene expression.
Mitral anulus motion. Relation to pulmonary venous and transmitral flows in normal subjects and in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy

The dynamics between mitral anulus motion, and, thus, motion of the base of the heart, and filling of the left atrium and ventricle were studied by Doppler echocardiography in 12 normal subjects and 28 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. The normal motion of the mitral anulus is associated with two phases of inflow from the pulmonary veins. The first phase (J) of pulmonary venous inflow occurs during ventricular systole, concomitant with the descent of the mitral anulus toward the ventricular apex, the extent of which is 12.8 +/- 1.4 mm. The end of the descent of the anulus occurs at the cessation of aortic ejection. About 100 msec later, a rapid recoil of the mitral anulus toward the atrium coincides with the onset of transmitral filling. This rapid recoil contributes to the displacement of blood from the atria into the ventricles in early diastole. The second phase (K) of pulmonary venous flow begins in early diastole, with its peak occurring about 50 msec after the peak of transmitral flow. During atrial contraction, the mitral anulus moves slightly (2.4 +/- 0.7 mm) toward the atrium and then returns toward its initial position within 120 msec. This motion coincides with the A wave of transmitral flow. In patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, pulmonary venous flow and mitral anulus motion are markedly altered in comparison with normal subjects. In all patients, motion of the mitral anulus is either reduced or absent.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Companion diagnostics at the intersection of personalized medicine and healthcare delivery

Progress in understanding biological circuits, advances in enabling technologies including the high-throughput platforms of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, the evolution in drug target discovery and the development of companion diagnostics set the healthcare enterprise on the verge of personalized disease management [1]. This revolution in clinical care is dependent on molecular diagnostics that predict and prevent disease, enabling the diagnosis and treatment of individual patients and populations [2]. Diagnostic biomarkers are quantifiable disease characteristics that provide information about underlying molecular processes to define disease progression or predict treatment response. Familiar diagnostic biomarkers include traditional measurements (heart rate and blood pressure), imaging techniques (chest x-ray and mammograms) and protein measurements (PSA and CEA). The revolution in biology and high-throughput technology has provided an opportunity to develop a new generation of companion and complementary diagnostics, including single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis, genomic and proteomic profiling, epigenetic profiling and gene expression profiling [3]. In turn, these diagnostics increase disease-specific sensitivity and specificity, contributing to the accuracy of personalized disease management. This advancing wave of innovation has induced the next generation of biotechnology to capture the use of companion diagnostics for the application of specific therapeutic agents to the clinical care of individuals and populations [4]. Yet, as pointed out in this issue by Milne et al., the potential of biomarker technologies, in the form of companion and complementary diagnostics, to revolutionize clinical care has not been fully realized, reflecting a disconnect between the emergence of discovery technologies and models for their validation, early adoption and application across disease populations [5]. These limitations in the validation of molecular diagnostics have raised considerations regarding approval and marketing by regulatory agencies. Moreover, as highlighted in this issue by Cohen et al., the paucity of biomarker validation serves as a considerable obstacle to the adoption of companion diagnostics by healthcare providers and payors [6]. The evolving regulatory and reimbursement environments, in conjunction with the central importance of analytic validation and clinical qualification, has resulted in barriers to adoption that have restricted the full impact of companion diagnostics in clinical practice [5,6]. The emergence of analytic technologies for evaluating nucleic acids and proteins, which are associated with the deconvolution of the human genome, provided the technological push to develop molecular biomarkers for disease management [7]. Conversely, Companion diagnostics at the intersection of personalized medicine and healthcare delivery
Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Objective – At the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), researchers compared how well the library collections supported doctoral research in the three related disciplines of education, psychology, and social welfare. The goal of this project was to gather empirical data to answer questions about materials cited in dissertations, including ownership, age of materials and disciplinary usage. Methods – Researchers analyzed the bibliographies of doctoral dissertations from three academic departments at UCB: education (2009-2010), psychology (2009-2010), and social welfare (2009-2011). The sampling methodology used a systematic sample with a random start. To achieve a 95% (+/-4%) confidence interval, the sample included a total of 3,372 citations from 107 dissertations. Researchers consulted with a statistician to determine the statistical significance of the results. The test for the age of citation used a signed ranks test, which is typical for ordinal data or skewed interval data. The test for ownership was a chi-square test, which is typical for nominal data or dichotomous data. Results – Researchers determined that a very high percentage of the cited journals were owned or licensed by the Library. The ownership rate for cited journals was 97% for both education and social welfare, and 99% for psychology. There was a statistically significant difference between the three disciplines, with psychology better supported than either education (p=.02) or social welfare (p=.01). However, since ownership rates for journals in all three disciplines were extremely high, this was not a meaningful difference. For books, the researchers found a significantly smaller percentage of books owned in social welfare compared to either education (p=.00) or psychology (p=.00). We found no significant difference between the percentages of books owned in psychology versus education (p=.27). Psychology students cited the highest percentage of journals while education students cited the highest percentage of books. Psychology students cited almost no free web resources, but education and social welfare students did cite free web resources (primarily government documents, working papers, or non-governmental organization reports). All three disciplines cited older material than anticipated. Conclusions – The citation analysis, while time-consuming, provided new and important information about the use of the Library’s collections and the level of support the collections afford doctoral students in the three related disciplines of education, psychology and social welfare. This data has informed collections-related decisions including format purchases and fund allocations.
Endoscopic treatment of intraventricular cystic tumors.

Objective Intraventricular cystic tumors constitute a surgical challenge, because of their deep location and the histologically benign nature of most of them. We aim to present concisely, yet comprehensively, the role of neuroendoscopy in the treatment of intraventricular cystic tumors. Methods A literature review searching for applications of endoscopy in the treatment of intraventricular cystic tumors is presented. Our experience is added to the presented data. In controversial issues, a comparison is made with traditional treatment methods. Results Intraventricular endoscopy has been successfully used in the treatment of the whole range of intraventricular cystic tumors. The most common indication is the treatment of colloid cysts. In the treatment of colloid cysts, a comparison with microsurgical techniques showed that endoscopy is advantageous in regard to operative morbidity and postoperative shunt dependency but is associated with a slightly higher recurrence rate. Conclusion Intraventricular endoscopy has emerged as a viable option in the treatment of intraventricular cystic tumors.
Phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate promotes budding yeast septin filament assembly and organization

Septins are a conserved family of GTP-binding proteins that assemble into symmetric linear heterooligomeric complexes, which in turn are able to polymerize into apolar filaments and higher-order structures. In budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and other eukaryotes, proper septin organization is essential for processes that involve membrane remodeling, such as the execution of cytokinesis. In yeast, four septin subunits form a Cdc11-Cdc12-Cdc3-Cdc10-Cdc10-Cdc3-Cdc12-Cdc11 heterooctameric rod that polymerizes into filaments thought to form a collar around the bud neck in close contact with the inner surface of the plasma membrane. To explore septin-membrane interactions, we examined the effect of lipid monolayers on septin organization at the ultrastructural level using electron microscopy. Using this methodology, we have acquired new insights into the potential effect of septin-membrane interactions on filament assembly and, more specifically, on the role of phosphoinositides. Our studies demonstrate that budding yeast septins interact specifically with phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) and indicate that the N terminus of Cdc10 makes a major contribution to the interaction of septin filaments with PIP2. Furthermore, we found that the presence of PIP2 promotes filament polymerization and organization on monolayers, even under conditions that prevent filament formation in solution or for mutants that prevent filament formation in solution. In the extreme case of septin complexes lacking the normally terminal subunit Cdc11 or the normally central Cdc10 doublet, the combination of the PIP2-containing monolayer and nucleotide permitted filament formation in vitro via atypical Cdc12-Cdc12 and Cdc3-Cdc3 interactions, respectively.
The dimensionality of counterproductivity: Are all counterproductive behaviors created equal?

Most studies of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) assess it as one or two overall dimensions that might obscure relationships of potential antecedents with more speciWc forms of behavior. A Wner-grained analysis of the relationship between counterproductive work behavior and antecedents was conducted with the Wve-subscales (abuse toward others, production deviance, sabotage, theft, and withdrawal) taken from the 45-item Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist, a measure that has been used in a number of prior studies. Described is the rationale for each of the Wve dimensions, which have been discussed individually in the literature. Data from three combined studies provide evidence for diVerential relationships with potential antecedents that suggest the use of more speciWc subscales to assess CWB. Most notably, abuse and sabotage were most strongly related to anger and stress, theft was unrelated to emotion, and withdrawal was associated with boredom and being upset. Finally, the distinct forms of CWB may suggest distinct underlying dynamics, that vary in their balance of hostile and instrumental motivational systems.
Pancreatic Duct Stenosis Secondary to Small Endocrine Neoplasms: A Manifestation of Serotonin Production?

The expression of serotonin may be associated with stromal fibrosis, and fibrosis, in turn, can cause stenosis of the pancreatic duct.
A Review of: “Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. ”

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives makes striking claims about the relevance of research regarding social networks and an increased understanding of...
Visualization Tools for Teaching Computer Security

Using animated visualization tools has been an important teaching approach in computer science education. We have developed three visualization and animation tools that demonstrate various information security concepts and actively engage learners. The information security concepts illustrated include: packet sniffer and related computer network concepts, the Kerberos authentication architecture, and wireless network attacks. These tools are implemented using Macromedia Flash MX Professional Edition. The animations can run from a Web page as Flash Applets or as standalone applications. These visualization tools are intended to be used in undergraduate level computer network and security courses. They can be used as classroom instructor demos, student exercises, or Web-based student learning resources. These tools have been used in various computer network and information security courses at North Carolina A&T State University, and have received positive feedback from the students.
The Grid Menu: Efficient and Robust Selection of Menu-Items

With the increasing use of e-business web sites, users are often asked to select a menu-item from a large numbers of options. In this research, the pull-down menu, fisheye menu and grid menu were tested to compare the performance time, error rate, user satisfaction, simplicity, user friendliness, usefulness, and overall user preference of each menu type. The grid menu was more efficient in selection speed than the pull-down and fisheye menus when the number of menu-items was 50 and 100. The time needed to choose a menu-item with a grid menu was less affected by the size of menu and the physical location of an item within a menu. The pull-down and the grid menus were considered to be more satisfactory, simple, user friendly, and useful than the fisheye menu. 42.3 percent of subjects indicated that the grid menu was their preferred selection tool among the menus. The grid menu is an efficient and robust alternative menu choice for small and middle size menu lists.
Peptic ulcer disease in pregnancy

In general, peptic ulcer disease during pregnancy is relatively rare. Certainly, gastroesophageal reflux symptomatology and hyperemesis gravidarum are the primary pregnancy-associated upper gastrointestinal tract illnesses. The symptoms of dyspepsia accompanies all three diagnoses and makes it difficult to determine whether peptic ulcer is playing a role in the patient's symptomatology. Patients with a previous history of complicated peptic ulcer diatheses should be suspected of having recurrent ulcer disease and treated accordingly. Endoscopy is not to be feared if needed to confirm a diagnosis of peptic ulcer disease or to aid in the diagnosis of the patient with upper gastrointestinal tract hemorrhage. There is thought to be some improvement in peptic ulcer disease with pregnancy, which may be secondary to lower gastric acid output and increased protective mucus production associated with elevated progesterone levels. This may afford some level of protection against this disease process in pregnant women. Patients who are smokers and have a previous history of peptic ulcer disease are at highest risk for ulcer disease during pregnancy. Multiple agents have been found to be relatively safe and effective for ulcer healing, with H2 antagonists the mainstay of therapy during pregnancy.
Measuring causal propagation of overhead of inefficiencies in parallel applications

Parallel applications are notorious for their intractability to performance debugging. Automatic performance analysis techniques, such as those used by Kojak and KappaPI, are promising in alleviating the difficulty of discovering performance inefficiencies in parallel applications. However, as we show in this paper, the results produced by these tool can be potentially misleading and sometimes, outright incorrect. The reason is that the overhead due to performance inefficiencies originating at a certain point in the program can causally propagate and manifest itself at other points. Current techniques perform a flat analysis, i.e., they do not account for causal propagation. In this paper, we present a method of causal analysis that current analysis techniques can be retrofitted with to account for causal propagation of overhead to arrive at a more accurate description of performance bottlenecks. We also show various advantages rendered by this technique to improving the effectiveness of automatic performance analysis. In this paper, we only tackle overhead related to communication operations in MPI parallel application. In general, however, our technique can be used for non-communication related overhead for any parallel programming paradigm.
Evidence that summer jellyfish blooms impact Pacific Northwest salmon production

Interannual variability in salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) production in the northeast Pacific is understood to be driven by oceanographic variability and bottom-up processes affecting prey availability to juvenile salmon. Scyphozoan jellyfish have an important role in shaping the pathways of energy flow through pelagic food webs. While jellyfish obtain high production rates and biomasses as major consumers of zooplankton production, they have few predators and may divert plankton production away from higher trophic levels. Although jellyfish are planktivorous and juvenile coho (O. kisutch) and Chinook (O. tshawytscha) salmon are mainly piscivorous, they may be indirect competitors for plankton production. Ecosystem model simulations suggested that among all trophic interactions within the Pacific Northwest coastal food web, juvenile salmon are particularly sensitive to jellyfish blooms, and that salmon production will be suppressed in years of high summer jellyfish biomass. Pelagic surveys off Oregon and Washington (1999–2012) were used to examine the interannual relationship between salmon production and the dominant jellyfish species, the sea nettle Chrysaora fuscescens, off the Pacific Northwest coast. There was a significant, negative correlation between sea nettle biomass and the strength of adult coho and Chinook salmon returns to the Columbia River. Examination of spatial distributions across years showed a positive association between sea nettles and salmon. Within individual years, significant differences between the distribution of sea nettles and yearling coho and Chinook salmon generally occurred during cooler ocean summers, perhaps due to the greater expanse of optimal salmon habitat resulting from more upwelling. Whether the association is behavioral or a product of oceanographic processes, association enhances the opportunity for indirect competition. Examination of feeding incidence in September showed that salmon stomachs were less full at locations with higher sea nettle biomass.
Does inhibitory control training transfer?: behavioral and neural effects on an untrained emotion regulation task

Inhibitory control (IC) is a critical neurocognitive skill for successfully navigating challenges across domains. Several studies have attempted to use training to improve neurocognitive skills such as IC, but few have found that training generalizes to performance on non-trained tasks. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effect of IC training on a related but untrained emotion regulation (ER) task with the goal of clarifying how training alters brain function and why its effects typically do not transfer across tasks. We suggest hypotheses for training-related changes in activation relevant to transfer effects: the strength model and several plausible alternatives (shifting priorities, stimulus-response automaticity, scaffolding). Sixty participants completed three weeks of IC training and underwent fMRI scanning before and after. The training produced pre- to post-training changes in neural activation during the ER task in the absence of behavioral changes. Specifically, individuals in the training group demonstrated reduced activation during ER in the left inferior frontal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus, key regions in the IC neural network. This result is less consistent with the strength model and more consistent with a motivational account. Implications for future work aiming to further pinpoint mechanisms of training transfer are discussed.
Supramolecular block copolymer photovoltaics through ureido-pyrimidinone hydrogen bonding interactions

A challenge in the development of bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics (BHJ OPVs) is achieving a desirable nanoscale morphology. This is particularly true for polymer blend OPVs in which large-scale phase separation occurs during processing. Here, we present a versatile approach to control the morphology in polymer blend OPVs through incorporation of self-associating 4 2-ureido-4[1H]-pyrimidinone (UPy) endgroups onto donor and acceptor conjugated polymers. These UPy functionalized polymers associate to form supramolecular block copolymers during solution blending and film casting. Atomic force microscopy measurements show that supramolecular associations can improve film uniformity. We find that the performance of supramolecular block copolymer OPVs improves from 0.45% to 0.77% relative to the non-associating conjugated polymer blends at the same 155 °C annealing conditions. Impedance measurements reveal that UPy endgroups both increase the resistance for charge recombination and for bulk charge transport. This work represents a versatile approach to reducing large-scale phase separation in polymer–polymer blends and directing the morphology through supramolecular interactions.
High dissimilarity within a multiyear annual record of pollen assemblages from a North American tallgrass prairie

Citation: Commerford, J. L., McLauchlan, K. K., & Minckley, T. A. (2016). High dissimilarity within a multiyear annual record of pollen assemblages from a North American tallgrass prairie. Ecology and Evolution, 6(15), 5273-5289. doi:10.1002/ece3.2259
Depression in late life. An historic account demonstrates the importance of making the diagnosis.

Was Scrooge depressed? An historic account demonstrates the importance of diagnosing depression
Extreme Climatic Events

Climate extremes, such as severe drought and heat waves, can have profound consequences for ecological systems and for human welfare. Changes in climate statistics would alter the frequency and intensity of climate extremes, and there is an urgent need to understand their possible impacts on ecosystem function and services. Key to advancing our understanding of the ecological consequences of climate extremes is being able to attribute a climate extreme as the driver of a profound ecosystem response, defined as an extreme climatic event (ECE). A major challenge for future research is to understand how and why ecosystems may differ in their vulnerability to experiencing ECEs.
Seeking Dynamically Connected Chaotic Variables

It is of interest to determine whether two scalar time series can belong to the same chaotic dynamical system. In geophysical and biological systems, where the observables relevant to modeling may need to be uncovered, and also in extended physical systems such as turbulent ones, the question of dynamical connectedness is important. Different parts of an extended turbulent system can possess different values of the correlation dimension D2 [1], and one easily finds different systems with nearly equal D2. Therefore, equality of D2 is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for dynamical connectedness. Also, the cross-correlation function can be misleading. In Fig. 1 we give the plots of the cross-correlation functions for (x1,x2) of the Roessler and (x1,x3) of the Lorenz attractors [2]. The Lorenz case shows a cross-correlation amplitude of only a few percent. Surprisingly, the amplitude is slightly increased when a multiplicative noise signal of up to 0.1 is injected. The Roessler case, with little correlation at nearly equal times, is more typical of strongly correlated systems. Clearly, a small cross-correlation function is an indecisive test of whether two different observables are dynamically connected. Consequently, for example, the interpretation of the disappearance of the cross-correlation function at two different points in a Rayleigh-Benard cell at the onset of soft turbulence [3] is ambiguous.