cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The epidemiology of microscopic colitis in olmsted county from 2002 to 2010: A population-based study

Background & Aims The increasing incidence of microscopic colitis has been partly attributed to detection bias. We aimed to ascertain recent incidence trends and the overall prevalence of microscopic colitis in a population-based study. Methods Using data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, we identified residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, who were diagnosed with collagenous colitis or lymphocytic colitis from January 1, 2002, through December 31, 2010, based on biopsy results and the presence of diarrhea (N = 182; mean age at diagnosis, 65.8 years; 76.4% women). Poisson regression analyses were performed to evaluate associations between incidence and age, sex, and calendar period. Results The age- and sex-adjusted incidence of microscopic colitis was 21.0 cases per 100,000 person-years (95% confidence interval [CI], 18.0–24.1 cases per 100,000 person-years). The incidence of lymphocytic colitis was 12.0 per 100,000 person-years (95% CI, 9.6–14.3 per 100,000 person-years) and collagenous colitis was 9.1 per 100,000 person-years (95% CI, 7.0–11.1 per 100,000 person-years). The incidence of microscopic colitis and its subtypes remained stable over the study period ( P = .63). Increasing age ( P P Conclusion The incidence of microscopic colitis in Olmsted County residents has stabilized and remains associated with female sex and increasing age.
High-rate overland flow

Abstract Recommended loading rates for treating raw domestic wastewater by overland flow are 6.3–15 cm wk−1. Information provided in the literature yields little insight regarding the upper range of hydraulic loading rates that could be effectively treated by overland flow. Therefore, field investigations were conducted to evaluate the performance of the overland flow system at overland flow rates from 0.95 m3 day−1 m−1 width of slope (13 cm wk−1 to 4.15 m3 day−1 m−1 (57 cm wk−1). Preliminary treated municipal wastewater was pumped to overland flow slopes, each approx. 3.7 m wide and 36.5 m long. The slope of each plot was 2.5%. The cover crop consisted of a mixture of ryegrass, bluegrass and fescue grass. The plots were operated for 2 years at six different hydraulic loading rates. Effluent BOD5 concentration averages varied from 6 to 11 mg l−1. The reduction of influent BOD5 concentration ranged from 87 to 93%. Mean effluent suspended solids values were from 6 to 9 mg l−1 with reductions of influent concentrations of 91–95%. Hydraulic application rate had little effect on percent BOD5 or suspended solids removal. Total phosphorus reductions were minimal at all hydraulic application rates due to limited soil water contact. Ammonia concentration in the effluent ranged from 1 mg l−1 NH3-N at the 0.95 m3 day−1 m−1 (13 cm wk−1) applied flow rate of 11.7 mg l−1 NH3-N at the 4.15 m3 day−1 m−1 (57 cm wk−1) loading rate. Ammonia and nitrogen reductions decreased as the applied flow rate increased. Consequently, lower overland flow rates are necessary for nitrogen removal. The use of high-rate overland flow could potentially reduce the land necessary for this form of land application, if nutrient removal was not a local concern.
Incidence and Severity of Vesicoureteral Reflux in Children Related to Age, Gender, Race and Diagnosis

ABSTRACTPurpose: We determine if the incidence and grade of vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) differs in children based on age, race and gender, and if the incidence and severity of VUR are related to race in girls younger than 7 years presenting for evaluation after urinary tract infection (UTI).Materials and Methods: The records of all children who underwent a voiding cystourethrogram or radionuclide cystogram between 1993 and 2001 were retrospectively reviewed. Age, gender, race, clinical indication and highest grade of VUR were recorded for the first voiding cystourethrogram or radionuclide cystogram. Frequency tables and logistic regression were conducted to correlate demographics to incidence and severity of VUR.Results: A total of 15,504 patients were included in the analysis. Overall, black children were a third as likely as white children (p <0.0001) and females were twice as likely as males (p <0.0001) to have VUR. Compared to children 0 to 2 years old, the occurrence of reflux was 0.5 times as likely...
Magnetic effects of the quiet-time proton belt.

Magnetic effects of quiet time proton belt using data obtained from proton detector aboard Explorer XII satellite
Hardware and software cache prefetching techniques for MPEG benchmarks

With the popularity of multimedia acceleration instructions such as MMX, MPEG decompression is increasingly executed on general purpose processors instead of dedicated MPEG hardware. The gap between processor speed and memory access means that a significant amount of time is spent in the memory system. As processors get faster-both in terms of higher clock speeds and increased instruction level parallelism-the time spent in the memory system becomes even more significant. Data prefetching is a well-known technique for improving cache performance. While several studies have examined prefetch strategies for scientific and commercial applications, this paper focuses on video applications. Data is presented for three types of hardware-prefetching schemes: the stream buffer, the stride prediction table (SPT), and the stream cache, as well as a new software-directed prefetching technique based on emulation of the hardware SPT. Up to 90% of the misses that would otherwise occur with no prefetching are eliminated. The stream cache can cut execution time by more than half with the addition of a relatively small amount of additional hardware. Software prefetching achieves nearly equal performance with minimal additional hardware. Techniques presented in this paper can be used to improve performance in a general-purpose CPU or an embedded MPEG processor. Performance gains achieved for MPEG benchmarks apply equally effectively to similar multimedia applications.
In vivo virus growth competition assays demonstrate equal fitness of fish rhabdovirus strains that co-circulate in aquaculture

A novel virus growth competition assay for determining relative fitness of RNA virus variants in vivo has been developed using the fish rhabdovirus, Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV), in juvenile rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). We have conducted assays with IHNV isolates designated B, C, and D, representing the three most common genetic subtypes that co-circulate in Idaho trout farm aquaculture. In each assay, groups of 30 fish were immersed in a 1:1 mixture of two genotypes of IHNV, and then held in individual beakers for a 72h period of in vivo competitive virus replication. Progeny virus populations in each fish were analyzed for the presence and proportion of each viral genotype. In two independent assays of the B:C isolate pair, and two assays of the B:D pair, all fish were co-infected and there was a high level of fish-to-fish variation in the ratio of the two competing genotypes. However, in each assay the average ratio in the 30-fish group was not significantly different from the input ratio of 1:1, indicating equal or nearly equal viral fitness on a host population basis, under the conditions tested.
Boundary Management in Psychological Work with Groups

Group events are conceptualized in this paper as temporary institutions in which and through which a variety of tasks or goals may be pursued. The role of group leader is viewed as encompassing sig...
Parallel software architecture for experimental workflows in computational biology on clouds

Cloud computing opens new possibilities for computational biologists. Given the pay-as-you-go model and the commodity hardware base, new tools for extensive parallelism are needed to make experimentation in the cloud an attractive option. In this paper, we present EasyProt, a parallel message-passing architecture designed for developing experimental workflows in computational biology while harnessing the power of cloud resources. The system exploits parallelism in two ways: by multithreading modular components on virtual machines while respecting data dependencies and by allowing expansion across multiple virtual machines. Components of the system, called elements, are easily configured for efficient modification and testing of workflows during ever-changing experimentation. Though EasyProt, as an abstract cloud programming model, can be extended beyond computational biology, current development brings cloud computing to experimenters in this important discipline who are facing unprecedented data-processing challenges, with a type system designed for proteomics, interactomics and comparative genomics data, and a suite of elements that perform useful analysis tasks on biological data using cloud resources. Availability: EasyProt is available as a public abstract machine image (AMI) on Amazon EC2 cloud service, with an open source license, registered with manifest easyprot-ami/easyprot.img.manifest.xml.
Molybdenum–molybdenum quadruple bonds supported by 9,10-anthraquinone carboxylate ligands. Molecular, electronic, ground state and unusual photoexcited state properties

The preparation of trans-Mo2(TiPB)2(O2C-2-AnQ)2, I, and Mo2(DAniF)3(O2C-2-AnQ), II, where, O2C-2-AnQ = 9,10-anthraquinone-2-carboxylate, TiPB = 2,4,6-triisopropylbenzoate and DAniF = N,N′-di-(p-anisyl)formamidinate are described together with electronic structure calculations employing density functional theory on model compounds. Compounds I and II have been further characterized by 1H NMR spectroscopy, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, electrochemical studies, UV-vis-NIR and steady state emission spectroscopy, time-resolved (fs and ns) transient absorption and infrared spectroscopy. Compound II has been structurally characterized by a single crystal X-ray crystallography study. Both compounds show metal-to-ligand charge transfer transitions, 1MLCT, corresponding to Mo2 δ to L π* (L = O2C-2-AnQ) and have S1 states with relatively long lifetimes (τI ∼ 8 ps; τII ∼ 2 ps). Femtosecond time-resolved IR studies, fs-TRIR indicate that for I, despite its relatively small HOMO–LUMO gap, and II the negative charge in the S1 state resides on one anthraquinone carboxylate ligand. For II, fs-TRIR spectroscopy detects the Mo23δδ* state with τ ∼ 100 ns despite the presence of a lower energy 3MLCT state. This, together with earlier findings indicates a significant kinetic barrier to the interconversion of MLCT and Mo2 δδ* states.
Homodyne en face optical coherence tomography.

We demonstrate, for what we believe to be the first time, the use of a 3×3 fiber-optic coupler to realize a homodyne optical coherence tomography (OCT) system for en face imaging of highly scattering tissues and turbid media. The homodyne OCT setup exploits the inherent phase shifts between different output ports of a 3×3 fiber-optic coupler to extract amplitude information of a sample. Our homodyne en face OCT system features a measured resolution of 14 μm axially and 9.4 μm laterally with a 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio at 10 μs integration time. En face OCT imaging of a stage 52 Xenopus laevis was successfully demonstrated at a depth of 600 μm within the sample.
The Realities of Environmental Governance

The scholarly community has made great strides in both offering critiques of and rec ommending reforms in environmental policy making. Critiques have ranged from revealing inef ficiencies in regulatory governance structures to iden tifying the disproportionate impacts of environmental pollutants on poor and minority communities. "Command and control" regulation has been found particularly wanting, and, for good or for ill, recent departures from traditional command and control regulation have included market-based instruments, voluntary agreements, public-private partnerships, multinational corporate and government participa tion, greater stakeholder involvement in policy mak ing, and devolution in governance. Indeed, the use of the word "governance" rather than "government" to connote the driver of environmental policy making recognizes the greater involvement of and depen dence on multiple sectors to improve environmental quality.
Research Article: A Greenhouse Gas Inventory as a Measure of Sustainability for an Urban Public Research University

Greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories are becoming a common measure of environmental impact and sustainability for institutions. The University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) prepared a GHG inventory for ...
Differential Effects of Pretraining Influences on Readiness to Change

Training and development are integral to organizational change but are difficult to accomplish effectively in dynamic and complex work environments. Such environments can lead to nonoptimal training conditions that reduce individuals' readiness to change and training effectiveness. On the basis of the transtheoretical model of change (J. O. Prochaska, C. C. DiClemente, & J. C. Norcross, 1992), the authors examined pretraining influences (choice, social support, and motivation to learn) on readiness to change under nonoptimal training conditions. They examined specific dimensions of readiness to change rather than a global readiness to change construct. Participants were 183 driving under the influence (DUI) offenders participating in a court-mandated, alcohol-related Weekend Intervention Program. Perceived choice to attend training, social support, and motivation to learn affected readiness to change when individuals were resisting, considering, acting on, or maintaining behavior or attitude change. These...
Oxidative stress and disruption of labile iron generate specific auxotrophic requirements in Salmonella enterica.

The response of a cell to integrated stresses was investigated using environmental and/or genetic perturbations that disrupted labile iron homeostasis and increased oxidative stress. The effects of the perturbations were monitored as nutritional requirements, and were traced to specific enzymic targets. A yggX gshA cyaY mutant strain required exogenous thiamine and methionine for growth. The thiamine requirement, which had previously been linked to the Fe–S cluster proteins ThiH and ThiC, was responsive to oxidative stress and was not directly affected by manipulation of the iron pool. The methionine requirement was associated with the activity of sulfite reductase, an enzyme that appeared responsive to disruption of labile iron homeostasis. The results are incorporated in a model to suggest how the activity of iron-containing enzymes not directly sensitive to oxygen can be decreased by oxidation of the labile iron pool.
Information Technology Professionals’ Perceived Organizational Values and Managerial Ethics: An Empirical Study

This paper summarizes the results of an analysis of empirical data on ethical attitudes of professionals and managers in relation to organizational core values in the Information Technology (IT) industry. This study investigates the association between key organizational values as independent variables and the ethical attitudes of IT managers as dependent variables. The study also delves into differences among IT non-managerial professionals, mid-level managers, and upper-level managers in their ethical attitudes and perceptions. Research results indicated that IT professionals from mechanistic organizations were much more likely to report – compared to those from organic organizations – that managers in their corporate environment engage in behaviors considered unethical and that successful managers were more unethical relative to unsuccessful managers. There were significant differences between the upper-level managers and the mid-level managers and between the mid-level managers and the IT non-managerial professionals on certain key ethical issues. This paper discusses the conceptual framework, hypotheses, research methodology, data analysis, implications of the findings, and suggested areas of further research.
Love Styles, Masculinity/Femininity, Physical Attractiveness, and Sexual Behavior: A Test of Evolutionary Theory

Abstract This study explores sexual behavior, in the form of number of sexual partners, from an evolutionary perspective. Evolved phylogenetic traits result in males being more sexually promiscuous than females. However, males and females do not pursue their reproductive strategies unalloyed by more proximate factors that constrain or enhance the success of this pursuit. Males and females must compromise with the strategy of the opposite sex, and the extent of this compromise is hypothesized to depend on various attitudinal factors and on physical attractiveness. Males were found to be significantly more promiscuous than females, but factors that militated against sexual activity—feminity and a pragmatic love style—accounted for more variance in the dependent variable than factors that moved them toward it—masculinity and physical appearance. The strongest variable effecting female sexual behavior was self-assessment of physical appearance—the more negative the assessment the greater the number of sexual partners. This finding illustrates the compromise factor in sexual behavior.
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and the Landscape of Marketing History

The consummate scholarship of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. has reinforced strong tendencies to focus on the histories of marketing practices of high-profile, high-volume firms and those working with them, such as advertising agencies. While Chandler’s work can inform all marketing historians’ work, it has major limitations and critics. Differing responses to and uses of Chandler’s work map out terrain of marketing history scholarship, including its divisions. One major divide falls between scholars whose academic efforts focus on marketing techniques and strategies and those whose primary focus specializes in historical analysis. Richard Tedlow, whose work owes much to Chandler, successfully employs both methodologies. Scholars on both sides of the divide could benefit by learning more of each other’s expertise.
Flow cytometry enables a high-throughput homogeneous fluorescent antibody-binding assay for cytotoxic T cell lytic granule exocytosis.

We developed a homogeneous phenotypic fluorescence end-point assay for cytotoxic T lymphocyte lytic granule exocytosis. This flow cytometric assay measures binding of an antibody to a luminal epitope of a lysosomal membrane protein (LAMP1) that is exposed by exocytosis to the extracellular solution. Washing to remove unbound antibody is not required. Confirming the assay’s ability to detect novel active compounds, we screened at a concentration of 50 µM a synthetic diversity library of 91 compounds in a 96-well plate format, identifying 17 compounds that blocked by 90% or more. The actions of six structurally related tetracyano-hexahydroisoindole compounds that inhibited by ~90% at a concentration of 10 µM were investigated further. Four reduced elevations in intracellular Ca 2+ ; it is likely that depolarization of the cells’ membrane potential underlies the effect for at least two of the compounds. Another compound was found to be a potent inhibitor of the activation of the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase ERK. Finally, we transferred the assay to a 384-well format and screened the Prestwick Compound Library using high-throughput flow cytometry. Our results indicate that our assay will likely be a useful means of screening libraries for novel compounds with important biological activities.
Optical Communication over Atmospheric Turbulence with Limited Channel State Information at the Transmitter

In recent results, a theoretical framework has been developed that shows that wavefront predistortion with transmitter channel state information can effectively mitigate turbulence induced fading for free space communication systems. The theoretical framework, however, relies on the assumption of perfect channel state information available at the transmitter, which is not physically realizable since it would require an infinite rate feedback link. This paper extends the theoretical framework to physically realizable systems with finite rate feedback. Specifically, we provide the performance and optimal feedback strategy given a finite rate feedback link.
Spinoza’s Liberalism

While Spinoza’s political philosophy is often described as liberal, it is not always clear what this label means or whether it is warranted. Calling Spinoza ‘liberal’ implies that he belongs to a historical tradition of political philosophers, who formulated and defended claims, which later became identified as central to political liberalism. Consequently, clarifying how Spinoza is a liberal requires specifying precisely which liberal views he articulated and defended. This paper, first, examines the various ways that commentators have interpreted Spinoza as defending liberal commitments. This examination shows that most commentators describe Spinoza as liberal on the grounds that his politics defends the value of individual political freedom, specifically of speech and thought. The paper, second, considers whether he upholds a claim that is important to contemporary liberalism, what is sometimes called the fundamental liberal principle. The paper concludes that Spinoza does not, which suggests that he does not sit as easily in the liberal tradition as some scholars have suggested.
Pipelined adaptive DFE architectures

Fine-grain pipelined adaptive decision-feedback equalizer (ADFE) architectures are developed using the relaxed look-ahead technique. This technique, which is an approximation to the conventional look-ahead computation, maintains functionality of the algorithm rather than the input-output behavior. Thus, it results in substantial hardware savings as compared to either parallel processing or look-ahead techniques. The delay relaxation, delay transfer relaxation, and sum relaxation are introduced for purposes of pipelining. Both the conventional and the predictor form of ADFE have been pipelined. The performance of the pipelined algorithms for the equalization of a magnetic recording channel is studied. It is demonstrated via simulations that, for a byte error rate of 10-7 or less, speed-ups of up to 8 can be easily achieved with the conventional ADFE. The predictor form of ADFE allows much higher speed-ups (up to 32) for less than 1 dB of SNR degradation.
IDEA: integrated distributed energy awareness for wireless sensor networks

Energy in sensor networks is a distributed, non-transferable resource. Over time, differences in energy availability are likely to arise. Protocols like routing trees may concentrate energy usage at certain nodes. Differences in energy harvesting arising from environmental variations, such as if one node is in the sun and another is in the shade, can produce variations in charging rates and battery levels. Because many sensor network applications require nodes to collaborate -- to ensure complete sensor coverage or route data to the network's edge -- a small set of nodes whose continued operation is threatened by low batteries can have a disproportionate impact on the fidelity provided by the network as a whole. In the most extreme case, the loss of a single sink node may render the remainder of the network unreachable.While previous research has addressed reducing the energy usage of individual nodes, the challenge of collaborative energy management has been largely ignored. We present Integrated Distributed Energy Awareness (IDEA), a sensor network service enabling effective network-wide energy decision making. IDEA integrates into the sensor network application by providing an API allowing components to evaluate their impact on other nodes. IDEA distributes information about each node's load rate, charging rate, and battery level to other nodes whose decisions affect it. Finally, IDEA enables awareness of the connection between the behavior of each node and the application's energy goals, guiding the network toward states that improve performance.This paper describes the IDEA architecture and demonstrates its use through three case studies. Using both simulation and testbed experiments, we evaluate each IDEA application by comparing it to simpler approaches that do not integrate distributed energy awareness. We show that using IDEA can significantly improve performance compared with solutions operating with purely local information.
Policing After 9/11: Community Policing in an Age of Homeland Security

This article examines the relevance of community oriented policing (COP) in an age of increased prioritization of homeland security planning among U.S. police departments. The current study utilizes 2003 multi-wave survey data drawn from a random sample of 281 municipal police departments serving populations of 25,000+ in 47 states. Ordered logistic regression revealed police departments that give higher prioritization to homeland security planning (e.g. hazard mitigation) are associated with less officers devoted solely to community policing and smaller or static departmental budgets. Homeland security planning was also positively associated with community policing programs and activities. Research and policy implications are discussed.
Noise propagation in diffraction tomography: comparison of conventional algorithms with a new reconstruction algorithm

In ultrasonic diffraction tomography, ultrasonic waves are used to probe the object of interest at various angles. The incident waves scatter when encountering inhomogeneities, unlike conventional X-ray CT. Theoretically, when the scattering inhomogeneities are considered weak, the scattering object can be reconstructed by algorithms developed from a generalized central slice theorem. The authors develop a hybrid algorithm for reconstruction of a scattering object by transforming the scattered data into a conventional X-ray-like sinogram thus allowing standard X-ray reconstruction algorithms, such as filtered back-projection, to be applied. The authors investigate the statistical properties of the filtered back-propagation, direct Fourier, and newly proposed hybrid reconstruction algorithms by performing analytical as well as numerical studies.
Structure of DNA polymerase I Klenow fragment bound to duplex DNA

Klenow fragment of Escherichia coli DNA polymerase I, which was cocrystallized with duplex DNA, positioned 11 base pairs of DNA in a groove that lies at right angles to the cleft that contains the polymerase active site and is adjacent to the 3' to 5' exonuclease domain. When the fragment bound DNA, a region previously referred to as the "disordered domain" became more ordered and moved along with two helices toward the 3' to 5' exonuclease domain to form the binding groove. A single-stranded, 3' extension of three nucleotides bound to the 3' to 5' exonuclease active site. Although this cocrystal structure appears to be an editing complex, it suggests that the primer strand approaches the catalytic site of the polymerase from the direction of the 3' to 5' exonuclease domain and that the duplex DNA product may bend to enter the cleft that contains the polymerase catalytic site.
Interactions between Native and Nonnative Fishes of the Upper Muddy River, Nevada

Abstract I investigated interactions between native and nonnative fishes in the upper Muddy River system to add insight into (1) the mechanism causing the decline of the Moapa dace Moapa coriacea after the introduction of the shortfin molly Poecilia mexicana, (2) the reason Moapa White River springfish Crenichthys bailevi moapae were less affected by the introduction, and (3) the reason interactions between natives is relatively benign. I investigated the hypothesis that the shortfin molly caused the decline of the Moapa dace through competition or predation on larvae, pressures not experienced by the Moapa White River springfish. Relative interspecific competition was analyzed by contrasting the ranges of spatial and dietary overlap among larval, juvenile, and adult life stages. There appeared to be moderate to low spatial overlap between the various life stages of native and nonnative fishes. Overlap in diet was highest between adult Moapa White River springfish and shortfin mollies. Laboratory experime...
Iterative Solution of Boundary Integral Equations for Shallow Water Waves

The motion of shallow water, unlike deep water, is influenced by the bottom topology. In order to obtain the velocity potential at any given point of the surface at any given time, we apply boundary integral techniques and solve a system of two integral equations, one expresses the velocity potential at the free surface and on the bottom, the other expresses the streamfunction at the free surface and on the bottom. Boundary integrals can produce very accurate results for shallow water equations but they are too complex to solve analytically and must be solved numerically. In this paper, we use three different numerical methods to compute the solutions to these integral equations: by Gaussian elimination which has high compuational cost; by iteration to construct the Neumann series which converges; and by a preconditioned version of the iteration which effectively lowers the total computation cost.
Isotopic analysis of plutonium impurity in neptunium target

Recently a Np-237 target (26 mg) was analyzed for trace Pu isotopes (approximately 300 ppb). This work describes the chemistry required for a Np/Pu separation sufficient for Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry (TIMS), as well as the Pu purification from other potential contaminants. A point source was prepared from the purified Pu fraction and the atom ratios were measured via TIMS. The Pu isotopics provide a picture of the Np target’s irradiation history, which will also be discussed.
The Power of Incremental Outcomes: How Small Victories and Defeats Affect Social Movement Organizations

*† This article examines how incremental outcomes—gains and losses that stop short of decisive victory or defeat—influence movement organizations, particularly in terms of the public financial support they enjoy and the amount of money they subsequently allocate to programmatic expenses. Drawing on data from the US anti-death penalty movement, I find that small gains and losses significantly influence support and spending patterns. Movement success initially increases both financial contributions and programmatic spending, but over time, decreases both. Moreover, the particular effect is mediated by the type of venue in which the outcome takes place: formal institutions produce different rates of increase and decline than informal ones. These differences have important implications for movement organizations’ choice of venue in which they make their claims while emphasizing the importance of considering incremental outcomes not only as end products of contention, but as inputs that are consequential for future movement development.
Clear as mud: another look at autism, childhood apraxia of speech and auditory processing.

Purpose of reviewAutism, childhood apraxia of speech and central auditory processing disorder are associated with significant disability. These conditions can be more difficult to diagnose. With significant controversy surrounding their definitions and most effective treatment options, understanding
Plasma coagulation factors in acute pancreatitis.

SummaryFollowing 6 attacks of acute interstitial pancreatitis in 5 patients and the obstruction of both pancreatic ducts in 9 dogs, the thromboplastic plasma component showed a consistently marked elevation. The significance of this observation is discussed. The increase in plasma fibrinogen concentration in acute pancreatitis was confirmed. Prothrombin did not vary significantly. In addition the levels of plasma coagulation factors in 6 patients with chronic pancreatitis, in 6 dogs with incomplete obstruction of the pancreatic ducts and in 13 normal untreated dogs are reported. The coagulation factors were determined quantitatively on plasma fractions obtained by a low temperature procedure. Amylase determinations were done on all specimens.
Optimal Selection of Control Surfaces for Active Aeroelastic Control of Prescribed Modes

Efficient distribution of control through actuating control surfaces plays a critical role in designing the optimal active aeroelastic control. A wing planform may consist of multiple control surfaces which may be used to facilitate certain desired control objectives such as suppression of flutter instabilities, flutter boundary extension and gust load alleviation. This leads to the design of control surfaces for facilitating the desired control while still satisfying the sizing constraints of the control surfaces and other cost functions i.e. controller norms and actuator saturation. Wing configurations having multiple control surfaces also present an opportunity to select “an optimal combination of control surfaces” which can satisfy the control objective. Moreover, the aeroelastic structures have an inherently large number of modes, therefore it is desired to design a controller for some targeted modes without affecting any other aeroelastic modes. In this research, these two aspects of active aeroelastic control are considered. An investigation of the optimal placement of control surfaces is considered such that a prescribed flutter boundary extension is achieved for a given flight envelope by controlling only a few targeted modes. A multi-input state feedback controller based on the method of receptances is designed for controlling the targeted modes of interest. Several performance measures are developed for identifying the optimal placement of control surfaces which also satisfies the dynamic constraint of pole placement for a desired flutter boundary extension. Numerical examples involving multi-mode wing models having multiple control surfaces are presented to highlight the effectiveness of a controller with the optimal placement of control surfaces.
Antimicrobials in Food, 3rd Edition

The new edition of this book follows 12 years after the appearance of the second edition. Obviously, many changes have occurred in the intervening years. The first chapter is a general introduction to Food Antimicrobials by two of the editors. It lists approved antimicrobials and their target organisms and briefly discusses some considerations related to their use.
Assessing the relationship between patient safety culture and EHR strategy

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between hospitals' electronic health record (EHR) adoption characteristics and their patient safety cultures. The "Meaningful Use" (MU) program is designed to increase hospitals' adoption of EHR, which will lead to better care quality, reduce medical errors, avoid unnecessary cost, and promote a patient safety culture. To reduce medical errors, hospital leaders have been encouraged to promote safety cultures common to high-reliability organizations. Expecting a positive relationship between EHR adoption and improved patient safety cultures appears sound in theory, but it has yet to be empirically demonstrated. Design/methodology/approach - Providers' perceptions of patient safety culture and counts of patient safety incidents are explored in relationship to hospital EHR adoption patterns. Multi-level modeling is employed to data drawn from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's surveys on patient safety culture (level 1) and the American Hospital Association's survey and healthcare information technology supplement (level 2). Findings - The findings suggest that the early adoption of EHR capabilities hold a negative association to the number of patient safety events reported. However, this relationship was not present in providers' perceptions of overall patient safety cultures. These mixed results suggest that the understanding of the EHR-patient safety culture relationship needs further research. Originality/value - Relating EHR MU and providers' care quality attitudes is an important leading indicator for improved patient safety cultures. For healthcare facility managers and providers, the ability to effectively quantify the impact of new technologies on efforts to change organizational cultures is important for pinpointing clinical areas for process improvements.
The Impact of the Allied Occupation: Nishina and Nakasone

Jean-Jacques Salomon has written that throughout the world, at the end of the war, the demobilization of researchers, far from signalling the end of “mobilized” science as such, gave rise, on the contrary, to systematic efforts to take advantage of research activities in the context of “national and international objectives.”1
A method for easily customizable gradient gel electrophoresis

Gradient polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis is a powerful tool for the resolution of polypeptides by relative mobility. Here, we present a simplified method for generating polyacrylamide gradient gels for routine analysis without the need for specialized mixing equipment. The method allows for easily customizable gradients which can be optimized for specific polypeptide resolution requirements. Moreover, the method eliminates the possibility of buffer cross contamination in mixing equipment, and the time and resources saved with this method in place of traditional gradient mixing, or the purchase of pre-cast gels, are noteworthy given the frequency with which many labs use gradient gel SDS-PAGE.
Music for Music’s Sake and Tech for Tech’s Sake:

Technology is constantly changing, and it can be challenging to move beyond the “bells and whistles” of a new app or piece of software to confirm worthiness for classroom use. This article explores the balance point between technology use and more traditional modalities in the music classroom.
No Conservative Consensus Yet: Douglas Ginsburg, Brett Kavanaugh, and Diane Sykes on the Second Amendment

The landmark Supreme Court decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago held that handgun bans violate the Second Amendment, while indicating that several other kinds of gun control are presumptively constitutional. It is widely recognized that the Court failed to provide clear guidance for lower courts reviewing regulations that were not addressed in those opinions. The federal circuit courts have reached a consensus that such regulations should be analyzed under a “tiers of scrutiny” approach borrowed from other areas of constitutional law, especially the First Amendment.The consensus may be less stable, or at least less consistent, than it appears. The District of Columbia and the City of Chicago both responded to their losses in the Supreme Court by adopting highly restrictive new regulations. In two cases that challenged some of these regulations, disparate approaches were taken by three prominent circuit judges, all of whom are generally considered judicial conservatives. This short paper compares these approaches, and concludes that one of them is clearly superior to the others.
Endocarditis as a Marker for New Epidemics of Injection Drug Use

Abstract Background We examined discharges for infective endocarditis (IE) at an academic teaching hospital for over 10 years to evaluate if an increase in hospitalizations for IE and increase in hepatitis C virus (HCV) in patients with IE could predict a new epidemic of injection drug use (IDU). Materials and Methods Retrospective medical record review of discharged patients with the diagnosis of IE as defined by the modified Duke criteria. Student's t test, chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test were used to calculate P values. Results There were 542 discharges among 392 unique patients with IE and 104 patients were readmitted 2-7 times. Of the total discharges, 367 (67.7%) were not screened for HCV, and of those tested, 86 (49.1%) were HCV+; 404 (74.5%) were not screened for HIV and of those tested, 28 (20.3%) were HIV+. Patients who self-identify as a person who injects drugs were more likely to be tested for HCV, 75 (69.4%) versus 12 (31.5%, P P P P Conclusions Although IDU is a known risk factor for IE, the observation of a sharp increase in IE cases may signal a new epidemic of IDU and HCV.
Transmission electron microscopy study of Ruddlesden-Popper Can+1MnnO3n+1 n = 2 and 3 compounds

Abstract Two Ruddlesden–Popper compounds Can+1MnnO3n+1 with n=2 and 3 synthesized by a citrate gel technique have been studied by TEM. The structure of Ca4Mn3O10 is consistent with the previously determined structure having the space group Pbca and a− a− c+/a− a− c+ tilt system. The presence of defects suggests the possible high-temperature phase transition from untilted I4/mmm to Pbca. The structure of Ca3Mn2O7 was found to be different from the previously suggested I4/mmm symmetry. Ca3Mn2O7 forms with an orthorhombic structure with either Cmcm or Cmc21 space group. A structural model for Cmc21 based on the tilting of almost-rigid octahedra with a+ c− c−/a+ c− c− tilt system is proposed. The lamellar defects were shown to be twin variants of the Cmc21 structure with the (001)t interfaces, which suggests the possible tilting phase transition from the ideal I4/mmm to Cmc21 following the maximal group–subgroup symmetry tree: I4/mmm→Fmmm→Bbmm(Cmcm)→Bb21m(Cmc21).
Target Selection for Pursuit and Saccades

Animals with foveal vision use a combination of pursuit and saccadic eye movements when exploring their visual surroundings. The two types of movements must be tightly coordinated to effectively improve the ability to see. This article reviews findings from behavioral and electrophysiological studies that clarify the neural mechanisms that accomplish this coordination. Current evidence points to shared mechanisms for gating the two movements and for selecting a common target stimulus. Although cortical circuits are involved, brainstem regions such as the superior colliculus play a prominent role in target selection for both pursuit and saccades.
The Importance of Hemolysis and Its Clinical Detection in Neonates with Hyperbilirubinemia.

Hyperbilirubinemia is a benign transitional phenomenon that occurs in 60% to 80% of all term infants. The degree of hyperbilirubinemia and hence risk for developing bilirubin-induced neurologic dysfunction or BIND is dependent upon two major processes: (i) bilirubin production and its elimination.The aim of this review is to address the importance of hemolysis and its clinical detection in neonates with hyperbilirubinemia.In newborns, an increased bilirubin production rate due to hemolysis is often the primary cause of hyperbilirubinemia during the first week of life. If undiagnosed or untreated, it may lead to an increased risk for BIND. Therefore, the ability to identify infants with hemolytic disease is important in assessing those at risk for developing BIND. In addition, an infant's genetic profile and bilirubin binding status can also affect their overall capacity to cope with the resultant tissue bilirubin load and affect risk and guide appropriate management strategies.Therefore, the determination of a newborn's bilirubin production rate is critical to the assessment of a newborn's risk for developing unpredictable extreme hyperbilirubinemia and preventing BIND.
Cluster Leader Election Problem for Distributed Controller Placement in SDN

This paper discusses the intractability and heuristics of the Cluster Leader Election Problem (CLEP), which is to assign a controller to one of the switches in each cluster of a network. In order to improve scalability in Software Defined Networking (SDN), a network can be clustered into subnetworks and managed by multiple distributed controllers. CLEP deals with the optimal placement of the distributed controllers in the subnetworks considering metrics between the controllers, such as distance and connectivity. Additionally, it is shown that some metrics within each subnetwork, which are discussed in other literature can be guaranteed by selecting specific clustering methods before the placement.
Competing subsistence needs are associated with retention in care and detectable viral load among people living with HIV.

Competing priorities between subsistence needs and health care may interfere with HIV health. Longitudinal data from the Los Angeles-based HIV Outreach Initiative were analyzed to examine the assoc...
Reliability Theoretic Methods and Aging: Critical Elements, Hierarchies and Longevity—Interpreting Survival Curves

Studying the processes of senescence is, in a sense, equivalent to studying the processes of longevity. In studies of this type we may ask a variety of questions concerning the longevity of a specified biological organism. For example, given that a specified organism has survived until time t, what is the chance that it will survive until time t + Δt (where Δ is a small increment in time)?
Simplicity in the Copernican Revolution: Galileo, Descartes, Newton

“Copernican Revolution” is too simple. The shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered system required a century to occur. It was not “revolutionary” in the swift sense, though it was a huge conceptual change. Moreover, Copernicus was hardly alone in causing the change. Those who supported Copernicus (Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton) did so dramatically differently. Indeed, for those four, Copernicus arguably provided only superficial similarity. This history is complicated, serving as one of many examples as to why historians seek and prefer complicated historical explanations. Nevertheless, they habitually employ simple phrases to state the gist of those complexities, examples being the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.
The Sixth Book

From Apollonius to Attalus: peace be on you. I have sent you the sixth book of the Conics. My aim in it is to report on conic sections which are equal to each other and those unequal to each other, and on those similar to each other and dissimilar to each other, and on segments of conic sections. In this we have enunciated more than what was composed by others among our predecessors. In this Book there is also how to find a section in a given right cone equal to a given section, and how to find a right cone, containing a given conic section, similar to a given cone. What we have stated on this [subject] is fuller and clearer than the statements of our predecessors. Farewell.
Fatty acid and lipid reference spectra

The number of publications reporting lipid and fatty acid time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) analysis has increased as ToF-SIMS is increasingly applied toward the analysis of biological systems. Tissue and cell analysis through ToF-SIMS typically involves collecting mass spectrometry images that are used to characterize the local distribution of lipids and fatty acids throughout the analyzed area. Complete and reliable sets of reference spectra are required for fatty acids and lipids in order to aid in the interpretation of ToF-SIMS data from tissues and cells. Here, we present the reference spectra for eight fatty acids and one lipid. This database contains positive and negative polarity spectra using a Bi3+ primary ion species.
Decentralized Goal Assignment and Safe Trajectory Generation in Multirobot Networks via Multiple Lyapunov Functions

This article considers the problem of decentralized goal assignment and trajectory generation for multirobot networks when only local communication is available and proposes an approach based on methods related to switched systems and set invariance. A family of Lyapunov-like functions is employed to encode the (local) decision making among candidate goal assignments, under which a group of connected agents chooses the assignment that results in the shortest total distance to the goals. An additional family of Lyapunov-like barrier functions is activated in the case when the optimal assignment may lead to colliding trajectories, maintaining thus system safety while preserving the convergence guarantees. The proposed switching strategies give rise to feedback control policies that are computationally efficient and scalable with the number of agents and, therefore, suitable for applications, including first-response deployment of robotic networks under limited information sharing. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated via simulation results and experiments with six ground robots.