cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Emission and Absorption Properties of Low-Mass Type 2 Active Galaxies with XMM-Newton

We present XMM-Newton observations of four low-redshift Seyfert galaxies selected to have low host luminosities (Mg > – 20 mag) and small stellar velocity dispersions (σ* 3σ significance in ~25 ks exposures and two observations had high enough signal-to-noise ratios for rudimentary spectral analysis. We calculate hardness ratios (–0.43 to 0.01) for the three detected objects and use them to estimate photon indices in the range of Γ = 1.1-1.8. Relative to [O III], the type 2 objects are X-ray faint in comparison with Seyfert 1 galaxies, suggesting that the central engines are obscured. We estimate the intrinsic absorption of each object under the assumption that the [O III] emission line luminosities are correlated with the unabsorbed X-ray luminosity. The results are consistent with moderate (N H ~ 1022 cm-2) absorption over the Galactic values in three of the four objects, which might explain the non-detection of broad-line emission in optical spectra. One object in our sample, SDSS J110912.40+612346.7, is a near identical type 2 counterpart of the late-type Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4395. While the two objects have very similar [O III] luminosities, the type 2 object has an X-ray/[O III] flux ratio nearly an order of magnitude lower than NGC 4395. The most plausible explanation for this difference is absorption of the primary X-ray continuum of the type 2 object, providing an indication that obscuration-based unified models of active galaxies can apply even at the lowest luminosities seen among Seyfert nuclei, down to L bol ~1040-1041 erg s–1.
Fuzzy model reference learning control for cargo ship steering

The use of a learning control system to maintain adequate performance of a cargo ship autopilot when there are process disturbances or variations is examined. The objective is to make an initial assessment of what advantages a fuzzy learning control approach has over conventional adaptive control approaches. The simulation results indicate that the fuzzy model reference learning controller (FMRLC) has several potential advantages over model reference adaptive control (MRAC), including improved convergence rates, use of less control energy, enhanced disturbance rejection properties, and lack of dependence on a mathematical model. Using the comparative analysis, the authors discuss how the well-developed concepts in conventional adaptive control can be used to evaluate fuzzy learning control techniques. >
Reducing Operator-Induced Machine Vibration Using a Complex Pole/zero Prefilter

Abstract A systematic prefilter design process for reducing operator-induced rigid body vibrations of rubber tire mounted machines is presented. The contribution of this work is the development of a systematic prefilter design process and interpretation of the results. The class of heavy equipment considered in this work are those machines having rigid body main frame vibrations dominated by linear dynamics. The reduction in machine vibrations is accomplished through the design of prefilters that reduce the machine resonant frequencies from the operator commands. The machine information required for the design process includes the bandwidth of the electro-hydraulic (E/H) valves and rigid body resonant frequencies of the machine mainframe. The prespecified performance in the design process is the desired attenuation of machine resonant frequencies which is related to the acceptable level of machine vibration. The design methodology has been applied to a telescopic boom lift to illustrate the procedure and the effectiveness of the design.
Origins of growth factors: NGF and EGF.

Growing up on the streets of Brooklyn, I remember being interested in how things worked: taking apart an old telephone and the gears of my new 4-speed bicycle was most enjoyable. As a biology major at Brooklyn College in 1945, I was fascinated by embryology. How does an egg turn into a chicken or a frog or a person? My only insight into the problem was the thought that it was necessary to understand the chemical reactions inside the egg and embryo and not simply observe biological structures. I, therefore, became a double major in chemistry and biology (also with the hope of earning a living as a laboratory technician). My first job after graduating was working nights as a bacteriologist in a milk processing plant. One of my professors at Brooklyn College wrote asking whether I was interested in going to graduate school. The college had been sending one student a year to the Biology Department at Oberlin to work as a laboratory assistant while studying for a master's degree. Because Oberlin offered to pay my tuition plus some $300 a semester for living expenses, I jumped at the chance. School and science were both interesting and fun. Upon graduating, I continued my education toward a Ph.D. working as an assistant in the Biochemistry Department of the University of Michigan under Howard B. Lewis. My research involved studying the Krebs urea cycle in the common earthworms that I collected from the university campus. I had been told at Oberlin that the yellow cells surrounding the gut in the worm corresponded to the mammalian liver. I decided to check whether the enzymatic reactions in worms were similar to those in mammals. They were (1). My first “real job” was in the Pediatrics Department at the University of Colorado studying creatine metabolism in premature infants under Harry Gordon. I think he hired me because he was impressed by my ability to stomach tube earthworms. After several years, I decided I needed to learn the then new technique of using radioisotopes in metabolic studies, and I obtained an American Cancer Society fellowship to work in the Radiology Department of Washington University under Martin Kamen where I combined this new knowledge with my interest in embryology. Although fertilized frog eggs and early embryos are impermeable to small molecules (amino acids, phosphates, etc.), sufficient amounts of C14O2 were metabolized by intact eggs and embryos to permit the identification of the radioactive compounds present at various stages of development (2). Upon completion of my fellowship, Dr. Kamen recommended me for a position in the Zoology Department of Washington University in the laboratory of Viktor Hamburger and Rita Levi-Montalcini. This move was critical in determining the direction of my research for the next 40-some odd years: the isolation, structure, and function of the first of the “growth factors,” nerve growth factor (NGF) and epidermal growth factor (EGF).
Is Subjective Duration a Signature of Coding Efficiency

Perceived duration is conventionally assumed to correspond with objective duration, but a growing literature suggests a more complex picture. For example, repeated stimuli appear briefer in duration than a novel stimulus of equal physical duration. We suggest that such duration illusions appear to parallel the neural phenomenon of repetition suppression, and we marshal evidence for a new hypothesis: the experience of duration is a signature of the amount of energy expended in representing a stimulus, i.e. the coding efficiency. This novel hypothesis offers a unified explanation for almost a dozen illusions in the literature in which subjective duration is modulated by properties of the stimulus such as size, brightness, motion and rate of flicker.
Composition Mixing during Blue Straggler Formation and Evolution

We use smoothed-particle hydrodynamics to examine differences between direct collisions of single stars and binary star mergers in their roles as possible blue straggler star formation mechanisms. From our simulations, we find in all cases that core helium in the progenitor stars is largely retained in the core of the remnant, almost independent of the type of interaction or the central concentration of the progenitor stars. We have also modeled the subsequent evolution of the hydrostatic remnants, including mass loss and energy input from the hydrodynamical interaction. The combination of the hydrodynamical and hydrostatic models enables us to predict that little mixing will occur during the merger of two globular cluster stars of equal mass. Unmixed and completely mixed models can both explain the luminosities of the brightest blue straggler stars (BSSs) by the merger of two turnoff mass stars. In contrast to the results of Proctor Sills, Bailyn, & Demarque, we find that neither completely mixed nor unmixed models can match the absolute colors of observed blue stragglers in NGC 6397 at all luminosity levels. We also find that the color distribution is probably the crucial test for explanations of BSS formation—if stellar collisions or mergers are the correct mechanisms, a large fraction of the lifetime of the straggler must be spent away from the main sequence. This constraint appears to rule out the possibility of completely mixed models. For NGC 6397, unmixed models predict blue straggler lifetimes ranging from about 0.1 to 4 Gyr, while completely mixed models predict a range from about 0.6 to 4 Gyr.
Unextendible Product Bases and Locally Unconvertible Bound Entangled States

Mutual convertibility of bound entangled states under local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC) is studied. We focus on states associated with unextendible product bases (UPB) in a system of three qubits. A complete classification of such UPBs is suggested. We prove that for any pair of UPBs S and T the associated bound entangled states ρS and ρT cannot be converted to each other by LOCC, unless S and T coincide up to local unitaries. More specifically, there exists a finite precision e (S,T) > 0 such that for any LOCC protocol mapping ρS into a probabilistic ensemble (pα, ρα), the fidelity between ρT and any possible final state ρα satisfies F(ρT, ρα) = 1 - e(S,T). PACS: 03.65.Bz; 03.67.-a; 89.70+c.
Exploring Large-Scale Structure with Billions of Galaxies

We consider cosmological applications of galaxy number density correlations to be inferred from future deep and wide multi-band optical surveys. We mostly focus on very large scales as a probe of possible features in the primordial power spectrum. We find the proposed survey of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope may be competitive with future all-sky CMB experiments over a broad range of scales. On very large scales the inferred power spectrum is robust to photometric redshift errors, and, given a sufficient number density of galaxies, to angular variations in dust extinction and photometric calibration errors. We also consider other applications, such as constraining dark energy with the two CMB-calibrated standard rulers in the matter power spectrum, and controlling the effect of photometric redshift errors to facilitate the interpretation of cosmic shear data. We find that deep photometric surveys over wide area can provide constraints that are competitive with spectroscopic surveys in small volumes.
Bicalutamide for Advanced Prostate Cancer: The Natural Versus Treated History of Disease

PURPOSETo determine the therapeutic effects of bicalutamide 200 mg in patients with prostate cancers of different hormone sensitivities.METHODSPatients with progressive prostate cancer were treated with bicalutamide 200 mg daily. Before treatment, patients' tumors were classified on the basis of prior hormone exposure and by serum testosterone levels into androgen-dependent and androgen-independent groups. Prior exposure to flutamide and response to flutamide withdrawal was also considered. Outcomes were reported independently on the basis of posttherapy changes in prostate-specific antigen (PSA), measurable disease, and radionuclide bone scans.RESULTSOutcomes varied by prior hormone exposure as a higher proportion of patients with progression of androgen-dependent tumors showed posttherapy PSA decreases of more than 50% or more than 80%, measurable disease regression, and improvement on radionuclide bone scans than did patients with androgen-independent progression. Within the category of androgen-indepe...
Beyond the concordance Lotus and dBASE as text analysis tools

Concordances are not the only computer tools available to literary scholars. This article looks at two general purpose software packages, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase III. Several suggested approaches to organizing the texts are presented. Each program allows the words to have multiple levels — something standard concordance programs lack. This encourages the researcher to view the text as texture rather than as words strung together linearly. Lotus is easier to use than dBase but lacks the ability to relate information between files. With programming skills, the researcher can develop complex queries in dBase.
Manager fee contracts and managerial incentives

Under the principal-agent framework, we study and compare different compensation schemes commonly adopted by hedge fund and mutual fund managers. We find that the option-like performance fee structure prevalent among hedge funds is suboptimal to the symmetric performance fee structure. However, the use of high water mark (HWM) mitigates the suboptimality, though to a very limited extent. Both our theoretical models and simulation results show that HWM will induce more managerial efforts only when a fund is slightly under the water but it will unfavorably dampen incentives when a fund is too deep under the water and when the manager’s skill is poor. Allowing managers to invest personal wealth in their own funds, however, helps align interests and provides positive managerial incentives.
The Diene Effect: The Design, Development, and Mechanistic Investigation of Metal-Catalyzed Diene-yne, Diene-ene, and Diene-allene [2+2+1] Cycloaddition Reactions

Metal-catalyzed diene-yne, diene-ene, and diene-allene [2+2+1] cycloaddition reactions provide new methods for the facile construction of highly functionalized five-membered rings. These reactions can be conducted with a variety of substrate substitution patterns and functional groups and often in the absence of solvent. The special reactivity of dienes, a key to enabling or enhancing the effectiveness of the [2+2+1] and other reactions, is significantly different from that of alkynes, alkenes, or allenes. For example, the [2+2+1] reaction of a diene-yne is accelerated compared to that of the corresponding ene-yne. An even more dramatic "diene effect" is found with diene-enes and diene-allenes. While bis-enes and ene-allenes are not reported to yield [2+2+1] cycloadducts, the related diene-enes and diene-allenes undergo efficient [2+2+1] cycloadditions, providing new routes to cyclopentanones and alkylidenecyclopentanones. Mechanistic studies suggest that the unique reactivity observed with dienes arises from their participation in the putative rate-determining reductive elimination step by providing an additional energy-lowering coordination site for the transition metal catalyst.
Persistence of cigarette advertising across media and smoking rates

This article uses state-level US panel data to examine the effects of cigarette advertising on smoking. We disaggregate cigarette advertising into (1) print, (2) outdoor, (3) entertainment and (4) store. How does advertising persist over time across advertising media? Are there differences in effectiveness of advertising across different smoking rates? Results show that the price elasticity of cigarette demand is negative and within the range of recent estimates, whereas border price elasticities and income elasticities are positive. All elasticities, however, are uniquely sensitive to smoking rates, as is the effectiveness of the Master Settlement Agreement. Current aggregate advertising increases cigarette demand, whereas accompanying negative advertising takes hold in the third year. Upon disaggregation, current store advertising increases smoking in most cases. However, store advertising has a negative effect by the third year, especially in states with smoking rates at or above the median. Other adve...
Electrochemical Growth of a Cu2O/PbS Epitaxial Heterojunction on Single Crystal Au(100)

Schematic of the Cu2O/PbS semiconductor heterojunction on Au (100) showing the epitaxial relations between the layers. The 0.5-μm-thick PbS and Cu2O films were consecutively electrodeposited onto a Au(100) single crystal at room temperature. Both layers showed a strong (100) out-of-plane texture. Azimuthal X-ray diffraction studies of the in-plane relationships revealed that the PbS structure is rotated 45° relative to the substrate, while the Cu2O overlayer shows no rotation with respect to Au.
Lattice Charge Overlap II. Aspects of Charged Pion Polarizability

Abstract Formulas are developed for use in lattice studies of charged hadron polarizabilities. In particular, the valence quark different-flavor component of the charged pion polarizability is examined on a 163×24 lattice atβ=6.0 using Wilson fermions. Using the elastic limit results of Part I of this series, it is concluded that this represents a small negative component of the total charged polarizabilty.
Secure and efficient proof of storage with deduplication

Both security and efficiency are crucial to the success of cloud storage. So far, security and efficiency of cloud storage have been separately investigated as follows: On one hand, security notions such as Proof of Data Possession (PDP) and Proof of Retrievability (POR) have been introduced for detecting that the data stored in the cloud has been tampered with. On the other hand, the notion of Proof of Ownership (POW) has also been proposed to alleviate the cloud server from storing multiple copies of the same data, which could substantially reduce the consumption of both network bandwidth and server storage space. These two aspects are seemingly quite to the opposite of each other. In this paper, we show, somewhat surprisingly, that the two aspects can actually co-exist within the same framework. This is possible fundamentally because of the following insight: The public verifiability offered by PDP/POR schemes can be naturally exploited to achieve POW. This "one stone, two birds" phenomenon not only inspired us to propose the novel notion of Proof of Storage with Deduplication (POSD), but also guided us to design a concrete scheme that is provably secure in the Random Oracle model based on the Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption.
A unified interprocedural program representation for a maintenance environment

Unified interprocedural graph (UIG) that extracts the important features of existing program representations and adds new information to provide an integrated representation for maintenance tasks is presented. Algorithms that were developed for previous representations are adapted to use the UIG by identifying the subset of nodes and edges in the UIG required for that computation. Newly developed algorithms can use the UIG since it contains data flow, control flow, data dependence, and control dependence information. The main benefits of this approach are the reduction in storage space since individual representations are not kept, the savings in maintenance time of a single representation over the individual representations, and the convenience of accessing a single program representation without increase in access time. A single program representation also assists in program understanding since relationships among program elements are incorporated into one graph. >
The game world is flat: the complexity of nash equilibria in succinct games

A recent sequence of results established that computing Nash equilibria in normal form games is a PPAD-complete problem even in the case of two players [11,6,4]. By extending these techniques we prove a general theorem, showing that, for a far more general class of families of succinctly representable multiplayer games, the Nash equilibrium problem can also be reduced to the two-player case. In view of empirically successful algorithms available for this problem, this is in essence a positive result — even though, due to the complexity of the reductions, it is of no immediate practical significance. We further extend this conclusion to extensive form games and network congestion games, two classes which do not fall into the same succinct representation framework, and for which no positive algorithmic result had been known.
Cycloaddition reactions of 3-fluorobutenone

3-Fluorobutenone (8) reacted as a dienophile with several dienes 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 to give cycloaddition products in moderate yields. The regio- and stereoselectivity of the reactions are given. Compound 8 is slightly less reactive than methyl vinyl ketone.
Parallel orientation of polygonal parts

Manufacturing processes often produce a stream of parts that must be oriented precisely before assembly. Given the description of an n-sided planar polygonal part, K.Y. Goldberg (Ph.D. Diss., Carnegie-Mellon Univ., 1990) presents an O(n/sup 3/) serial algorithm that produces an optimal sequence of gripper actions to orient the part up to symmetry using a sensorless parallel jaw gripper. The authors consider an online version of this problem and given an O(n) parallel solution for it on an n*n mesh-connected computer. >
Campaign Ads, Online Messaging, and Participation: Extending the Communication Mediation Model

Political communication researchers have devoted a great deal of attention to the role of political advertising, the Internet, and political discussion in civic and political life. In this article, we integrate and extend this research by developing a campaign communication mediation model of civic and campaign participation. Two data sets are merged for this inquiry: (a) content-coded ad-buy data on the placement of campaign messages on a market-by-market and program-by-program basis and (b) a national panel study concerning patterns of traditional and digital media consumption and levels of civic and campaign participation. Exposure to televised campaign advertising is estimated by developing an algorithm based on the market and program placement of specific ads and geocoded survey respondents’ viewing of certain categories of television content in which these ads were concentrated. Structural equation models reveal that advertising exposure drives online news use in ways that complement conventional news influences on political discussion and political messaging. However, campaign exposure emphasizing ‘‘attack’’ messages appears to diminish information seeking motivations via broadcast and print media, yet only indirectly and weakly suppresses participation in civic and political life. Further, alternative specifications reveal that our original model produces the best fit, empirically and theoretically. We use these insights to propose an O-S-R-O-R (orientations-stimuli-reasoning-orientations-responses) framework as an alternative to the longstanding O-S-O-R model in communication and social psychology.
Nuclear hyperpolarization in solids and the prospects for nuclear spintronics

Nuclear hyperpolarization can be achieved in a number of ways. This article focuses on the use of coupling of nuclei to (nearly) pure quantum states, with particular emphasis on those states obtained by optical excitation in bulk semiconductors. I seek an answer to this question: "What is to prevent the design and analysis of nuclear spintronics devices that use the extremely long-lived hyperpolarized nuclear spin states, and their weak couplings to each other, to affect computation, memory, or informational technology schemes?" The answer, I argue, is in part because there remains a lack of fundamental understanding of how to generate and control nuclear polarization with schemes other than with rf coils.
Lewis acid-promoted addition of allyl(cyclopentadienyl)iron(II) dicarbonyl to unactivated ketones

Abstract The Lewis acid-promoted addition of allyl(cyclopentadienyl)iron(II) dicarbonyl ( 1 ) to unactivated ketones provides zwitterionic iron-olefin complexes 5 as isolable salts. Treatment of these complexes with NaI in wet acetone affords homoallylic alcohols in good to excellent overall yields.
The Luxembourg Income Study

The Luxembourg Income Study (now known as LIS) provides public access for research purposes to harmonized unit-record data sets for multiple countries, in addition to providing summary statistics from those data, including poverty and inequality measures. LIS is a well-managed and undeniably important global public institution for research on inequality and social policy in rich countries. However, LIS’s eligibility criteria, country coverage, timeliness and some of its measurement practices limit its usefulness for many other purposes. The paper identifies a number of issues that would need to be addressed by a truly global micro-data base for studying poverty and inequality.
Performance issues of a superscalar microprocessor

Abstract Cache, dynamic scheduling, bypassing, branch prediction and fetch efficiency are primary issues concerning the performance of a superscalar microprocessor. This paper considers all these issues and shows their impact on performance by running a simulator on 17 different programs. The approach in handling branch prediction is shown to significantly decrease the bad branch penalty. Furthermore, results show that the average instruction fetch places an upper bound on speedup and is the most critical factor in determining overall performance. Its performance impact is greater than all other factors combined.
Optimal control for unitary preparation of many-body states: application to Luttinger liquids.

Many-body ground states can be prepared via unitary evolution in cold atomic systems. Given the initial state and a fixed time for the evolution, how close can we get to a desired ground state if we can tune the Hamiltonian in time? Here we study this optimal control problem focusing on Luttinger liquids with tunable interactions. We show that the optimal protocol can be obtained by simulated annealing. We find that the optimal interaction strength of the Luttinger liquid can have a nonmonotonic time dependence. Moreover, the system exhibits a marked transition when the ratio $\ensuremath{\tau}/L$ of the preparation time to the system size exceeds a critical value. In this regime, the optimal protocols can prepare the states with almost perfect accuracy. The optimal protocols are robust against dynamical noise.
Lewis acid catalyzed rearrangement of donor-acceptor substituted vinylcyclopropanes

Abstract A donor-acceptor substituted vinylcyclopropane has been found to readily rearrange with concomitant loss of methanol to form a cyclopentadiene system.
The Mechanical Threshold Stress model for various tempers of AISI 4340 steel

Abstract Numerical simulations of high strain rate and high temperature deformation of pure metals and alloys require realistic plastic constitutive models. Empirical models include the widely used Johnson–Cook model and the semi-empirical Steinberg–Cochran–Guinan–Lund model. Physically based models such as the Zerilli–Armstrong model, the Mechanical Threshold Stress model, and the Preston–Tonks–Wallace model are also coming into wide use. In this paper, we determine the Mechanical Threshold Stress model parameters for various tempers of AISI 4340 steel using experimental data from the open literature. We also compare stress–strain curves and Taylor impact test profiles predicted by the Mechanical Threshold Stress model with those from the Johnson–Cook model for 4340 steel. Relevant temperature- and pressure-dependent shear modulus models, melting temperature models, a specific heat model, and an equation of state for 4340 steel are discussed and their parameters are presented.
Economic Evaluation of Bt Corn Refuge Insurance

The effect of marketing uncertainty due to consumer opposition over genetically modified (GM) grain is modeled in the context of a producer’s decision to plant GM. The model shows that a tendency to plant less GM acreage and obtain premium prices for Non-GM grain is tempered by increased price risk.
Non-equilibrium fractional quantum Hall state of light

We investigate the quantum dynamics of systems involving small numbers of strongly interacting photons. Specifically, we develop an efficient method to investigate such systems when they are externally driven with a coherent field. Furthermore, we show how to quantify the many-body quantum state of light via correlation functions. Finally, we apply this method to two strongly interacting cases: the Bose-Hubbard and fractional quantum Hall models, and discuss an implementation of these ideas in atom-photon system.
Development toward high-power sub-1-ohm DC-67 GHz RF switches using phase change materials for reconfigurable RF front-end

We report GeTe-based phase change material RF switches with on-state resistance of 0.07 ohm*mm and off-state capacitance of 20 fF/mm. The RF switch figure-of-merit, R on *C off is comparable to RF MEMS ohmic switches. The PCM RF shunt and series switches were fabricated for the first time in a lateral FET configuration to reduce parasitics, different from the vertical via switches. In a shunt switch configuration, isolation of 30 dB was achieved up to 67 GHz with return loss of 15 dB. RF power handling was tested with ~10 W for series and 3 W for shunt configurations. Harmonic powers were suppressed more than 100 dBc at fundamental power of 1 W, for future tunable and reconfigurable RF technology.
Is Radiation Therapy a Preferred Alternative to Surgery for Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Base of Tongue

PURPOSE: To evaluate irradiation alone for treatment of base-of-tongue cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Two hundred seventeen patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the base of tongue were treated with radiation alone and had follow-up for ≥ 2 years. RESULTS: Local control rates at 5 years were as follows: T1, 96%; T2, 91%; T3, 81%; and T4, 38%. Multivariate analysis revealed that T stage (P = .0001) and overall treatment time (P = .0006) significantly influenced local control. The 5-year rates of local-regional control were as follows: I, 100%; II, 100%; III, 83%; IVA, 64%; and IVB, 65%. Multivariate analysis revealed that the following parameters significantly affect the probability of this end point: T stage (P = .0001), overall treatment time (P = .0001), overall stage (P = .0131), and addition of a neck dissection (P = .0021). The rates of absolute and cause-specific survival at 5 years were as follows: I, 50% and 100%; II, 81% and 100%; III, 65% and 76%; IVA, 42% and 56%; and IVB, 44% and 52%. Severe...
A Comparison of Equality Constraint Formulations for Concurrent Design Optimization

In this research two comparative studies are conducted in application to the concurrent design optimization method of Simulta neous ANalysis and Design (SAND) In one study three different forms of ...
Metabolic Syndrome Abolishes Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Receptor Agonist Stimulation of SERCA in Coronary Smooth Muscle

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) doubles the risk of adverse cardiovascular events. Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists induce weight loss, increase insulin secretion, and improve glucose tolerance. Studies in healthy animals suggest cardioprotective properties of GLP-1 receptor agonists, perhaps partially mediated by improved sarco-endoplasmic reticulum Ca 2+ ATPase (SERCA) activity. We examined the acute effect of GLP-1 receptor agonists on coronary smooth muscle cells (CSM) enzymatically isolated from lean, healthy Ossabaw miniature swine. Intracellular Ca 2+ handling was interrogated with fura-2. The GLP-1 receptor agonist exenatide activated SERCA but did not alter other Ca 2+ transporters. Further, we tested the hypothesis that chronic, in vivo treatment with GLP-1 receptor agonist AC3174 would attenuate coronary artery disease (CAD) in swine with MetS. MetS was induced in 20 swine by 6 months9 feeding of a hypercaloric, atherogenic diet. Swine were then randomized ( n = 10/group) into placebo or AC3174 treatment groups and continued the diet for an additional 6 months. AC3174 treatment attenuated weight gain, increased insulin secretion, and improved glucose tolerance. Intravascular ultrasound and histology showed no effect of AC3174 on CAD. MetS abolished SERCA activation by GLP-1 receptor agonists. We conclude that MetS confers vascular resistance to GLP-1 receptor agonists, partially through impaired cellular signaling steps involving SERCA.
Snake Venom Poisoning in the United States

In the United States, approximately 45,000 bites are inflicted by snakes each year, of which about 8000 are caused by venomous snakes, and 6800 of these are reported (Parrish, 1966; Russell, 1969). During the past five years, fewer than 12 people have died each year from snake venom poisoning. Before the advent of antivenin and antibiotics, more than 100 persons a year died from rattlesnake bites in the United States. Most of the present deaths occur in small children, untreated or mistreated cases, and in members of religious sects who handle rattlesnakes during worship services.
OPTIMUM CORPORATE LEVERAGE WITH RISKY DEBT: A DEMAND APPROACH

Traditional models of corporate interior optimum leverage rely on institutional schemes such as taxes, bankruptcy, and agency costs. Theories of leverage indifference in the presence of risky debt depend on various features of perfect and complete markets and on the assumption that all investors hold a uniform portfolio. In the model developed here, corporate interior optimum leverage is obtained as a result of a fundamental risk-return trade-off for investors who hold nonuniform portfolios of risky equity and debt claims in the absence of market mechanisms, forcing leverage indifference. The dynamic optimization solution accommodates bankruptcy costs and specialized institutional factors but does not rely on their presence.
A coherent perceptron for all-optical learning

We present nonlinear photonic circuit models for constructing programmable linear transformations and use these to realize a coherent perceptron, i.e., an all-optical linear classifier capable of learning the classification boundary iteratively from training data through a coherent feedback rule. Through extensive semi-classical stochastic simulations we demonstrate that the device nearly attains the theoretical error bound for a model classification problem.
Synthesis of ferrocenethiols containing oligo(phenylenevinylene) bridges and their characterization on gold electrodes.

Ferrocene-terminated oligo(phenylenevinylene) (OPV) methyl thiols have been prepared by orthogonal coupling of phenylene monomers. Ethoxy substituents on the phenyl rings improve the solubility of ...
Do specialty courts achieve better outcomes for children in foster care than general courts

Objective:This study assessed the effects of unified family and drug treatment courts (DTCs) on the resolution of cases involving foster care children and the resulting effects on school performance.Method:The first analytic step was to assess the impacts of presence of unified and DTCs in North Carolina counties on time children spent in foster care and the type of placement at exit from foster care. In the second step, the same data on foster care placements were merged with school records for youth in Grades 3–8 in public schools. The effect of children’s time in foster care and placement outcomes on school performance as measured by math and reading tests, grade retention, and attendance was assessed using child fixed-effects regression.Results:Children in counties with unified family courts experienced shorter foster care spells and higher rates of reunification with parents or primary caregivers. Shorter foster care spells translated into improved school performance measured by end-of-grade reading ...
Discovering the Millennials’ Personal Values Orientation: A Comparison to Two Managerial Populations

Values theory posits that individuals have values and they are formed by upbringing and life’s experiences and influence an individuals’ cognitive processes, decisions, and behavior. Emerging onto the business scene is a new population group, the Millennials. This research seeks to explore Millennials’ values from the viewpoint of their personal value orientation (PVO). Managerial PVO from the 1980s and 2010s are used as comparative populations. The Millennials’ PVO is generally consistent with managerial PVO from past research. They tend toward a Personal, rather than Social, and Competence, rather than Moral, value orientation. Yet, some subtle differences emerged. Millennials are more self-focused and less other-focused than managers from the 1980s or 2010s. They emphasize competency skills more than today’s managers but less than the managers of the 1980s and place more worth on moral values than managers of the 1980s but less than today’s managers.
Rapid Conventional and Microwave-Assisted Decarboxylation of L-Histidine and Other Amino Acids via Organocatalysis with R-Carvone Under Superheated Conditions

AbstractThis article reports a new methodology taking advantage of superheated chemistry via either microwave or conventional heating for the facile decarboxylation of alpha amino acids using the recoverable organocatalyst, R-carvone. The decarboxylation of amino acids is an important synthetic route to biologically active amines, and traditional methods of amino acid decarboxylation are time consuming (taking up to several days in the case of L-histidine), are narrow in scope, and make use of toxic catalysts. Decarboxylations of amino acids including L-histidine occur in just minutes while replacing toxic catalysts with green catalyst, spearmint oil. Yields are comparable to or exceed previous methods and purification of product ammonium chloride salts is aided by an isomerization reaction of residual catalyst to phenolic carvacrol. The method has been shown to be effective for the decarboxylations of a range of natural, synthetic, and protected amino acids.
New performance-driven FPGA routing algorithms

Motivated by the goal of increasing the performance of FPGA-based designs, we propose new Steiner and arborescence FPGA routing algorithms. Our Steiner tree constructions significantly outperform the best known ones and have provably good performance bounds. Our arborescence heuristics produce routing solutions with optimal source-sink pathlengths, and with wirelength on par with the best existing Steiner tree heuristics. We have incorporated these algorithms into an actual FPGA router, which routed a number of industrial circuits using channel width considerably smaller than is achievable by previous routers. Our routing results for both the 3000 and 4000-series Xilinx parts are currently the best known in the Literature.
The Forsaken-Liberty Syndrome: Looking at Published Judgments to Say Whether Economists Reach a Conclusion

Do economists reach a conclusion on a given policy issue? One way to answer the question is to survey economists at large. Another is to look at the published judgments of economists who have gone on the record. Relative to an anonymous survey, going on the record makes for much greater accountability, and presumably more personal responsibility. I discuss 11 studies of economists’ published judgments. Several of them show greater support for liberalization than found among economists at large. This is offered as evidence of what I call the forsaken-liberty syndrome. I discuss the nature of this test of such syndrome and point to some of the larger questions to which it relates.
Modeling Three and Four Coupled Phase Qubits

The Josephson junction phase qubit has been shown to be a viable candidate for quantum computation. In recent years, the two coupled phase system has been extensively studied theoretically and experimentally. We have analysed the quantum behavior of three and four capacitively-coupled phase qubits with different possible configurations, using a two-level system model. Energy levels and eigenstates have been calculated as a function of bias current and detuning. The properties of these simple networks are discussed.
Enumerating colorings, tensions and flows in cell complexes

We study quasipolynomials enumerating proper colorings, nowhere-zero tensions, and nowhere-zero flows in an arbitrary CW-complex X, generalizing the chromatic, tension and flow polynomials of a graph. Our colorings, tensions and flows may be either modular (with values in Z / k Z for some k) or integral (with values in { - k + 1 , ? , k - 1 } ). We obtain deletion-contraction recurrences and closed formulas for the chromatic, tension and flow quasipolynomials, assuming certain unimodularity conditions. We use geometric methods, specifically Ehrhart theory and inside-out polytopes, to obtain reciprocity theorems for all of the aforementioned quasipolynomials, giving combinatorial interpretations of their values at negative integers as well as formulas for the numbers of acyclic and totally cyclic orientations of X.
Rocket stabilization as a structured singular value synthesis design example

Stabilization of a rocket's rigid body and elastic dynamics is addressed. The method discussed is based on structured singular-value analysis and H-infinity optimization and is known as mu synthesis. Three different control designs are discussed: a mixed-sensitivity design, three-block mu synthesis design, and an alternate design for comparison. The mixed-sensitivity design inverts the rocket's first elastic mode poles and zeros. This is undesirable because these poles and zeros are near the j omega axis and hence can be destabilized for small model perturbations. The three-block mu synthesis design attacks this problem directly with blocks for mixed sensitivity, pole perturbation, and zero perturbation. The mu synthesis approach is successful in finding a compensator that is more robust to these perturbations while simultaneously satisfying the mixed-sensitivity objective. The alternate design also does not invert the first elastic mode pole and zero. However, it does not provide sufficient rolloff to attenuate or gain stabilize the second and higher frequency modes, as does the mu synthesis design. >
A Context Quantization Approach to Universal Denoising

We revisit the problem of denoising a discrete-time, continuous-amplitude signal corrupted by a known memoryless channel. By modifying our earlier approach to the problem, we obtain a scheme that is much more tractable than the original one and at the same time retains the universal optimality properties. The universality refers to the fact that the proposed denoiser asymptotically (with increasing block length of the data) achieves the performance of an optimum denoiser that has full knowledge of the distribution of a source generating the underlying clean sequence; the only restriction being that the distribution is stationary. The optimality, in a sense we will make precise, of the denoiser also holds in the case where the underlying clean sequence is unknown and deterministic and the only source of randomness is in the noise. The schemes involve a simple preprocessing step of quantizing the noisy symbols to generate quantized contexts. The quantized context value corresponding to each sequence component is then used to partition the unquantized symbols into subsequences. A universal symbol-by-symbol denoiser (for unquantized sequences) is then separately employed on each of the subsequences. We identify a rate at which the context length and quantization resolution should be increased so that the resulting scheme is universal. The proposed family of schemes is computationally attractive with an upper bound on complexity which is independent of the context length and the quantization resolution. Initial experimentation seems to indicate that these schemes are not only superior from a computational viewpoint, but also achieve better denoising in practice.
The Follower's Dilemma: Innovation and Imitation in the Professional Services Industry

Firm decision makers contemplating imitation of a competitor's innovation face a dilemma: Imitate a new, unproven offering, or forgo imitation and perhaps miss out on the “next big thing”? Approach...
The Effects of Business‐to‐Business E‐Commerce on Transaction Costs

This paper studies transaction costs changes arising from the introduction of the Internet in transactions between firms. We divide transaction costs into coordination costs and motivation costs. We classify coordination efficiencies into three categories: process improvements, marketplace benefits, and indirect improvements. For motivation costs, we focus on informational asymmetries. We apply this framework to internal data from an Internet-based firm to measure process improvements, marketplace benefits, and motivation costs. Our results suggest potentially large process improvements and marketplace benefits. We find little evidence that informational asymmetries are more important in the electronic marketplace than in the existing physical ones.
Dirichlet Process Mixtures of Generalized Linear Models

We propose Dirichlet Process mixtures of Generalized Linear Models (DP-GLM), a new class of methods for nonparametric regression. Given a data set of input-response pairs, the DP-GLM produces a global model of the joint distribution through a mixture of local generalized linear models. DP-GLMs allow both continuous and categorical inputs, and can model the same class of responses that can be modeled with a generalized linear model. We study the properties of the DP-GLM, and show why it provides better predictions and density estimates than existing Dirichlet process mixture regression models. We give conditions for weak consistency of the joint distribution and pointwise consistency of the regression estimate.
Spurious Eccentricities of Distorted Binary Components

I discuss the effect of physical distortion on the velocities of close binary components and how we may use the resulting distortion of velocity curves to constrain some properties of binary systems, such as inclination and mass ratio.Precisenewvelocitiesfor5Cetconvincinglydetectthesedistortionswiththeirtheoreticallypredictedphasedependence. We can even use such distortions of velocity curves to test Lucy’s theory of convective gravity darkening. The observed distortions for TT Hya and 5 Cet require the contact components of those systems to be gravity darkened, probably somewhat more than predicted by Lucy’s theory, but clearly not as much as expected for a radiative star. These results imply there is no credible evidence for eccentric orbits in binaries with contact components. I also present some speculative analyses of the observed properties of a binary encased in a nonrotating common envelope, if such an object could actually exist, and discuss how the limb darkening of some recently calculated model atmospheres for giant stars may bias my results for velocity-curve distortions, as well as other results from a wide range of analyses of binary stars.
Fixed Capital Adjustment: Is Latin America Different?

We examine capital adjustment patterns using two large and largely novel plant-level data sets from the manufacturing sectors of Colombia and Mexico. The data suggest that irreversibilities play a more important role than in more-advanced economies. However, we do not find support for the presence of increasing returns in the adjustment cost technology, such as arising from fixed costs. Firms go through periods of inaction and rarely sell capital, but they do not invest at discrete times only. An examination of the dynamic patterns of adjustment of factors differing in their flexibility supports this interpretation.
Translated tori in the characteristic varieties of complex hyperplane arrangements

Abstract We give examples of complex hyperplane arrangements A for which the top characteristic variety, V 1 ( A ) , contains positive-dimensional irreducible components that do not pass through the origin of the algebraic torus ( C ∗ ) ∣ A ∣ . These examples answer several questions of Libgober and Yuzvinsky. As an application, we exhibit a pair of arrangements for which the resonance varieties of the Orlik–Solomon algebra are (abstractly) isomorphic, yet whose characteristic varieties are not isomorphic. The difference comes from translated components, which are not detected by the tangent cone at the origin.