cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Articular chondrocalcinosis, hydroxyapatite deposition disease, in adult mature rabbits.

The hips and knees of 170 unselected elderly adult New Zealand white rabbits were examined for the presence of chondrocalcinosis. The techniques employed were macroscopic examination, light microscopy including histochemical staining, polarizing microscopy, autoradiography after the intra-articular injection of 35S, 3H-proline, and 3H-glycine, and x-ray diffraction. All joints were examined macroscopically and microscopically. The joints showing macroscopic evidence of chondrocalcinosis were studied in detail. Autoradiography was employed in three animals which showed gross evidence of chondrocalcinosis. Serum calcium determinations were performed on some rabbits. The incidence of abnormal mineralization was 12 per cent by macroscopic examination and 16 per cent by both macroscopic and microscopic examination—a low figure since only ten randomly selected sections from the femoral heads of the animals not showing gross evidence of calcification were examined. Microscopically the deposits were sharply delineated from the surrounding normal cartilage and were located primarily in the deeper and mid-portions above the tidemark. In general the surrounding cartilage appeared normal but in some instances where the tissue was well preserved and fixed there was evidence of death and loss of chondrocytes adjacent to a deposit without mineral deposition in either the matrix or the cells. Increase in basophilia and in the uptake of 35S, 3H-proline, and 3H-glycine was evident in the cells and matrix surrounding the lesions, suggesting an attempt at healing. By x-ray diffraction all of the mineral was shown to be hydroxyapatite. The calcium-phosphorus ratio in ashed samples was 1.66 corresponding exactly to the stoichiometry of hydroxyapatite. The serum calcium levels of twenty rabbits were normal. The literature is reviewed and the possible mechanisms involved in the production of these deposits are discussed.
PASSIVE MULTI-SCALE ALIGNMENT

Methods are presented for self-alignment and assembly of objects with micron and nanometer-level features. The approach is a combination of kinematic coupling and elastic averaging in which mating alignment features spanning multiple length scales are successively brought into contact. When the objects are pressed together, the larger alignment features cause necessary deformation to ensure adequate alignment at the smaller length scales. Analytical and numerical modeling indicate that the largest alignment features can be designed to generally resolve global systematic errors while the smaller alignment features can correct local errors to achieve sub-micron alignment. Physical realization with ion beam etching, deposition, and thermal imprint lithography are also discussed.Copyright © 2011 by ASME
The use of electromagnetic fields in medical diagnostics

The author provides an overview of the use of both endogenous and exogenous electromagnetic fields in medical diagnostics, with particular emphasis on signals recorded from the brain and the problems inherent in source localization. Particular attention is given to the electroencephalogram and event-related responses. >
Fortuna Tessera, Venus: Evidence of horizontal convergence and crustal thickening

Structural and tectonic patterns mapped in Fortuna Tessera are interpreted to reflect a change in the style and intensity of deformation from east to west, beginning with simple tessera terrain at relatively low topographic elevations in the east and progressing through increasingly complex deformation patterns and higher topography to Maxwell Montes in the west. These morphologic and topographic patterns are consistent with east-to-west convergence and compression and the increasing elevations are interpreted to be due to crustal thickening processes associated with the convergent deformational environment. Using an Airy isostatic model, crustal thicknesses of approximately 35 km for the initial tessera terrain, and crustal thicknesses of over 100 km for the Maxwell Montes region are predicted. Detailed mapping with Magellan data will permit the deconvolution of individual components and structures in this terrain.
Children’s Social Competence and Social Supports: Precursors of Early School Adjustment?

Schools are among the most pervasive socialization contexts in our culture, and among the most influential for shaping the course of human development over the life span. Yet, as much as 20% to 30% of the school-age population (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1981; Glidewell & Swallow, 1969; Rubin & Balow, 1978) experience substantial adjustment problems in the classroom and, thus, are at risk for a variety of interpersonal, emotional, and career difficulties in later life (see Cowen, Pederson, Babigian, Izzo, & Trost, 1973; Kohlberg, LaCrosse, & Ricks, 1972; Ladd & Asher, 1985; Parker & Asher, 1987). Many school adjustment problems appear to have lasting or cumulative effects; problems that arise early in children’s school careers are often perpetuated by social-psychological factors (e.g., reputational bias, self-fulfilling prophecies), or are exacerbated when nascent difficulties undermine later progress (see Butler, Marsh, Sheppard, & Sheppard, 1985; Coie & Dodge, 1983; Horn & Packard, 1985; Perry, Guidubaldi, & Kehle, 1971). Given the pervasiveness of this problem, and the potential costs to both the individual and society, research on early school adjustment is needed. In particular, there is a need to identify the factors that forecast children’s school adjustment as they enter grade school (approximately age 5 or 6) and progress through the primary grades (ages 6–12). Findings from this research will expand the empirical, “generative base” (cf. Cowen, 1980) that is needed to devise and extend prevention programs for young children.
Who’s the Best? Data Envelopment Analysis and Ranking Players in the National Football League

The question of which players are best at any position, at any given time, is much more than a philosophical saw. Coaches must know who to play in what situations. In the face of imposed constraints (like the National Foot-ball League “salary cap”) and the operational realities of running a sports franchise, personnel directors must build teams that maximize the potential winning percentage of their squads while minimizing expenditures on overall salary. Player agents and the players themselves need to know the relative strength of individuals in order to gauge what the market will bear for their services.
Optimal space-time transmit signals for multi-mode radar

A structure is presented for constructing non-separable space-time transmit functions for multi-mode radar applications. By writing a space-time transmit signal as an expansion of space-time basis functions, transmit signal optimization can be reduced to simply finding an optimal set of complex weights. These weights form a data vector that can be determined for different optimization criteria, using linear algebraic techniques. Unfortunately, the optimality criteria where solutions are most easily found do not provide useful results for radar applications. Instead, mini-max or maxi-min criteria are often more applicable. An iterative solution for maximizing the minimum individual target-to-clutter-ratio is described, and results are presented. Moreover, the form of the resulting space-transmit signal is investigated, both at the transmitter and when incident on the illuminated targets. It is shown that the time-frequency spectrum incident on different targets can be dissimilar if true space-time transmit signals are applied. Different targets will then appear to be illuminated by different radar transmitters.
On Palindromes and Palindromic Primes

(1969). On Palindromes and Palindromic Primes. Mathematics Magazine: Vol. 42, No. 5, pp. 252-254.
Age-Specific Interaction Between the Greenhouse Whitefly and Encarsia formosa: Influence of the Parasite on Host Development

The life cycle of the greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum Westwood, consists of an egg stage, 4 nymphal instars, and an adult. It is convenient to divide the 4th stage into 3 substages: the “early” 4th instar, the transitional substage, and the unemerged pharate adult. The developmental rate of 2nd, 3rd, and “early” 4th whitefly nymphal instars, parasitized by Encarsia formosa Gahan, does not differ significantly from that of unparasitized hosts. However, developing parasites arrest whitefly development during the transitional and pharate adult substages of the 4th stage.
Bleeding Colonic Tumors

Bleeding colonic tumors represent one of many causes of lower gastrointestinal bleeding (LGIB) and may present acutely or chronically. The evaluation and management LGIB as a whole is discussed elsewhere in this text. This chapter will focus on the etiology, work-up, and treatment of bleeding colonic tumors.
Vibreaker: Securing Vibrational Pairing with Deliberate Acoustic Noise

Pairing between wireless devices may be secured by the use of an auxiliary channel such as audio, visuals or vibrations. A simple approach to pairing involves one of the devices initiating the transmission of a key, or keying material like a short password, over the auxiliary channel to the other device. A successful pairing is achieved when the receiving device is able to decode the key without any errors while the attacker is unable to eavesdrop the key.In this paper, we focus on the security of the vibration channel when used for the key transmission. As shown in some recent work, sending the keying material over a clear vibrational channel poses a significant risk of an acoustic side channel attack. Specifically, an adversary can listen onto the acoustic sounds generated by the vibration motor of the sending device and infer the keying material with a high accuracy. To counteract this threat, we propose a novel pairing scheme, called Vibreaker (a ``Vibrating speaker''), that involves active injection of acoustic noise in order to mask the key signal. In this scheme, the sending device artificially injects noise in the otherwise clear audio channel while transmitting the keying material via vibrations. We experiment with several choices for the noise signal and demonstrate that the security of the audio channel is significantly enhanced with Vibreaker when appropriate noise is used. The scheme requires no additional effort by the user, and imposes minimum hardware requirement and hence can be applied to many different contexts, such as pairing of IoT and implanted devices, wearables and other commodity gadgets.
A compact driver interface for navigation and route guidance

This paper describes a compact driver interface (CDI) for an in-vehicle navigation and route guidance system. The CDI consists of a partially flexible display device, a voice output subsystem, and a driver input device. The display device, which may be mounted in the dashboard or the headliner, is spatially removed from the input device, which is mounted in or near the armrest. Despite its small size, the CDI can comfortably accommodate the features required for route guidance and is easy to operate.
Local therapy as a treatment strategy in EGFR-mutant advanced lung cancers that have developed acquired resistance to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

7527 Background: The utility of EGFR directed therapy for the treatment of EGFR mutant lung cancer is limited by the development of acquired resistance (AR) to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) ...
The significance of air bubbles in glacier ice

The study of air bubbles in glacier ice can give valuable information on the evolution of the ice. An analysis of the relation between an air bubble and the water associated with it shows that it may be possible to determine the maximum depth from which the ice containing the bubble has emerged. The shapes of the cavities containing water and air bubbles are described. They are found to reflect the anisotropism of ice crystals and reveal that the main crystallographic axis is polar. The question of the mechanism of elimination of air bubbles from glacier ice is raised. The investigations were made on the very old and coarse-grained ice from the foot of the Malaspina Piedmont Glacier in Alaska, which is a temperate glacier.
The interleukin-2 receptor: a target for monoclonal antibody treatment of human T-cell lymphotrophic virus I-induced adult T-cell leukemia

Adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) is a malignancy of mature lymphocytes caused by the retrovirus human T-cell lymphotrophic virus-I (HTLV-I). It is an aggressive leukemia with an overall mortality rate of 50% within 5 months; no conventional chemotherapy regimen appears successful in inducing long-term disease-free survival in ATL patients. However, ATL cells constitutively express high-affinity interleukin-2 receptors (IL-2Rs) identified by the anti-Tac monoclonal antibody, whereas normal resting cells do not. To exploit this difference in receptor expression, we administered anti-Tac intravenously (IV) to 19 patients with ATL. In general the patients did not suffer untoward reactions, and in 18 of 19 cases did not have a reduction in normal formed elements of the blood. Seven patients developed remissions that were mixed (1 patient), partial (4 patients), or complete (2 patients), with partial and complete remissions lasting from 9 weeks to more than 3 years as assessed by routine hematologic tests, immunofluorescence analysis, and molecular genetic analysis of T-cell receptor gene rearrangements and of HTLV-I proviral integration. Furthermore, remission was associated with a return to normal serum calcium levels and an improvement of liver function tests. Remission was also associated in some cases with an amelioration of the profound immunodeficiency state that characterizes ATL. Thus the use of a monoclonal antibody that blocks the interaction of IL-2 with its receptor expressed on ATL cells provides a rational approach for treatment of this aggressive malignancy.
Constraints on long-range spin-gravity and monopole-dipole couplings of the proton

Using an ensemble of Rubidium isotopes, the authors test for exotic monopole-dipole couplings that may arise in modified theories of gravity or with new long-range forces. They improve the limits on such interactions from terrestrial experiments by three orders of magnitude.
Meaningful Deprescribing in the Nursing Home.

The editorialists discuss Wouters and colleagues' study and highlight the important messages for clinicians who practice in nursing homes.
High-speed high-resolution low-power self- calibrated digital-to-analog converters

High-speed and high-resolution low-power digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are basic design blocks in many applications. Several obvious conflicting requirements such as high-speed, high-resolution, low-power, and small-area have to be satisfied. In this dissertation, a modular architecture for continuous self-calibrating DACs is proposed to satisfy the above requirements. This includes a redundant-cell-relay continuous selfcalibration scheme. Several prototype DACs were implemented with self-calibration schemes. Also a DAC synthesis algorithm using a direct-mapping method and the modular structure was developed and implemented in the Cadence SKILL programming language. One of the prototypes is a 250MS/s 8-bit continuous self-calibrated DAC that has been implemented in TSMC's 0.25/x single poly five metal logic CMOS process. The structure of the self-calibrated current cell has high impedance and low sensitivity to output node voltage fluctuations. The chip has achieved 4-0.15/-0.1 LSB DNL, -0.6/4-0.4 LSB INL, and 55dB SFDR with a lower input frequency at a conversion rate of 250MS/s. It consumes 8 mW of power in a 0.13 mm2 die area. Glitches caused by switching of the calibration clock degrade the SFDR especially in high-speed applications. A new redundant-cell-relay continuous self-calibration scheme was proposed to reduce the glitches. Simulation results showed that the glitch energy is reduced 10 fold over existing schemes. A 10-bit DAC was implemented in the 0.25[i CMOS process mentioned above. 4-/-0.5 LSB INL and -0.45/4-0.2 LSB DNL were measured and 70dB SFDR was achieved with a lower input frequency at a 250MS/s
Defending Victims of Bullying in Early Adolescence: A Multilevel Analysis.

Adolescents’ defending behaviors in school bullying situations is likely determined by individual characteristics, social status variables, and classroom/school contextual factors operating simultaneously in the peer ecology. However, there is little research on defending behavior that utilizes this multilevel approach. This study investigated how students’ willingness to defend victims of bullying was affected by feelings of empathy, perceived popularity, and classroom-level perceived prosocial norms. Participants were 1373 adolescents (40% girls, Mage: 14 yrs) from 54 classrooms in six middle schools in South Korea. These youth reported on their feelings of empathy and how prosocial they perceived their classmates to be. Peer-ratings and peer nominations were used to estimate defending behaviors and which students were perceived as popular. Multilevel analyses showed that participants were more likely to defend victims when they had greater empathy and perceived popularity and when classroom-level prosocial norms were higher. The findings have implications for interventions to reduce school bullying and for studying defending behavior in multiple cultural contexts.
Operations 1952–54

Have the actual operations of CSC institutions lived up to the supranational expectations raised by the stipulations of the Treaty? By the end of 1954, after about two years of the common market, it was too early to reach even tentative conclusions on this point. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the following account may contribute some first impressions toward an understanding of the political and constitutional reality of the Community.
Symbolic dynamics-based structural health monitoring

Extraction of robust, damage-sensitive, low-dimensional features lies at the heart of any structural health monitoring (SHM) process. Symbolic dynamics provides a largely unexplored framework for extracting features applicable to multiple damage types and structural platforms. Dynamic systems theory dictates that dynamical systems (continuous-valued in continuous time) have a fully isomorphic (same structure) representation in symbolic dynamics (discrete-time, discrete-alphabet digital streams). Discretization occurs through a process called partitioning, and practical algorithms for partitioning noisy data have been recently developed. The symbolic transformation greatly reduces data-handling requirements while maintaining full data fidelity, and allows the use of sophisticated algorithms from information theory and communications engineering for statistically classifying the features. Thus, utilization of symbolic data and analysis techniques in SHM systems can greatly reduce memory requirements and necessary computational power which can be of great benefit for use in SHM network nodes employing wireless data transfer and energy harvesting technologies. In this preliminary study, a symbolic dynamics-based damage detection algorithm using a partitioning scheme rooted in extreme value statistics is proposed and experimentally validated.
The relationship between whole bone stiffness and strength is age and sex dependent.

Abstract Accurately estimating whole bone strength is critical for identifying individuals that may benefit from prophylactic treatments aimed at reducing fracture risk. Strength is often estimated from stiffness, but it is not known whether the relationship between stiffness and strength varies with age and sex. Cadaveric proximal femurs (44 Male: 18–78 years; 40 Female: 24–95 years) and radial (36 Male: 18–89 years; 19 Female: 24–95 years) and femoral diaphyses (34 Male: 18–89 years; 19 Female: 24–95 years) were loaded to failure to evaluate how the stiffness-strength relationship varies with age and sex. Strength correlated significantly with stiffness at all sites and for both sexes, as expected. However, females exhibited significantly less strength for the proximal femur (58% difference, p
Optical Associative Memories

Abstract Four associative memory schemes (Hopfield associative memory, generalized inverse associative memory, spectral associative memory and Ho-Kashyap associative memory) that are suitable for optical processor implementation are described. Numerical results are presented that compare the capabilities of these 4 associative memories.
Identifying important military installations for continental-scale conservation of marsh bird breeding habitat

Abstract Degradation of wetland ecosystems has negatively impacted many species, perhaps none more so than marsh birds that breed in vegetative emergent wetlands throughout North America. The U.S. Department of Defense manages approximately 29 million acres of land within the continental U.S., and many military installations contain wetland complexes that may be important for wetland birds. Thus, failure to adequately manage habitat for marsh birds could result in species extirpations and additional listings under the Endangered Species Act, and may result in regulatory burdens that reduce military readiness. We conducted spatial analyses to identify important breeding habitat on > 500 military installations for 12 species of marsh birds, with the goal of identifying installations that are, and are not, likely to harbor breeding habitat for each species. We also sought to assess the local value of military installations for species of greatest concern by comparing habitat suitability within installations to that in areas directly adjacent to those sites. We built range-wide, spatially-explicit models of species distribution to project suitability of breeding habitat for marsh birds within and adjacent to military installations. Our results demonstrate that installations with the best marsh bird habitat are geographically aggregated (both among and within species), primarily at sites along the eastern seaboard and within the southern U.S. In addition, only a few sites appear to contain high-quality habitat for most species. Five or fewer sites contained most of the high-quality habitat for 9 of 12 species, whereas most of the high-quality habitat for remaining species was found at ≤ 10 sites. This work fills an information gap regarding the distribution of breeding habitat for marsh birds on military lands across the U.S., and should facilitate both strategic conservation of habitat over broad scales and the integration of marsh birds into management efforts at the site level. Our analyses also identify installations that are not likely to harbor breeding habitat for priority species, and thus should help minimize conflicts between needs of the military and marsh-bird conservation.
Building the case for developing a medical affairs patient-centric framework collaboratively

Within the biopharmaceutical environment there are increased expectations for medical affairs to serve as a patient understanding facilitator, engagement champion and empowerment enabler. The collaborative development of a medical affairs patient-centricity framework to characterize avenues of medical affairs patient-centric activity could enhance transparency of objectives, input and outputs of medical affairs interactions with the patient. This article presents an initial opinion regarding how medical affairs interacts with patients to advance patient centricity. The proposal: medical affairs engages and collaborates with patients through strategic leadership, medical communication, evidence generation, patient engagement and experience of patient care. Once validated, such a framework’s implementation could help clarify medical affairs competencies and behaviors necessary to optimize associated effort.
Higher dosing of alglucosidase alfa improves outcomes in children with Pompe disease: a clinical study and review of the literature

Enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) with recombinant human acid-α glucosidase (rhGAA) at standard dose of 20 mg/kg every other week is insufficient to halt the long-term progression of myopathy in Pompe disease. We conducted a retrospective study on infantile-onset Pompe disease (IPD) and late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD) patients with onset before age 5 years, ≥12 months of treatment with standard dose ERT, and rhGAA immunogenic tolerance prior to dose escalation. Long-term follow-up of up to 18 years was obtained. We obtained physical therapy, lingual strength, biochemical, and pulmonary assessments as dose was escalated. Eleven patients with IPD (n = 7) or LOPD (n = 4) were treated with higher doses of up to 40 mg/kg weekly. There were improvements in gross motor function measure in 9/10 patients, in lingual strength in 6/6 patients, and in pulmonary function in 4/11. Significant reductions in urinary glucose tetrasaccharide, creatine kinase, aspartate aminotransferase, and alanine aminotransferase were observed at 40 mg/kg weekly compared with lower doses (p < 0.05). No safety or immunogenicity concerns were observed at higher doses. Higher rhGAA doses are safe, improve gross motor outcomes, lingual strength, pulmonary function measures, and biochemical markers in early-onset Pompe disease, and should be considered in patients with clinical and functional decline.
Violence victimization and negative health correlates of youth in post-earthquake Haiti: Findings from the cross-sectional violence against children survey

Abstract Background We examined the prevalence of and relationships between violence victimization and negative health correlates of Haitian youth exposed to the 2010 earthquake. Methods Participants were randomly selected 13–24 year-old youth (1457 females; 1459 males) living in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Data collected via Haiti's 2012 Violence against Children Survey (VACS) were analyzed. Results Participants reported violence victimization in the past 12 months (females: 49.93%; males: 41.68%), moderate-to-severe mental distress (females: 76.56%; males: 66.41%), and suicidal ideation (females: 26.79%; males: 8.05%). Compared to participants without experiences of violence, victims of violence had significantly higher mean number of sexual partners (females: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.81–2.16, p = .02; males: 4.33, 95% CI: 3.50–5.16, p = .03), mental distress (females: 80.39%, p = .01; males: 72.95%, p = .002), and suicidal ideation (females: 36.09%, p Limitations Data were collected via self-report. Disaster exposure experiences were not assessed. Analysis was correlational and did not control for potential confounding variables. Conclusions Disaster-exposed youth endorsed high levels of violence victimization and negative health correlates. Earthquake survivors who experienced violence were more likely to report negative health correlates. Greater attention to downstream sequelae of natural disasters is needed.
Protests as a Double-Edged Sword in Emerging Industries: Evidence from the Commercial Drone Industry

Although emerging industries are increasingly seen as the outcome of social movement processes, protests have seldom been studied as sources of the liabilities of newness. We find that that anti- t...
Optimizing the Spinal Interbody Implant: Current Advances in Material Modification and Surface Treatment Technologies

Interbody implants allow for fusion of the anterior column of the spine between vertebral body endplates. As rates of spinal fusion surgery have increased over the past several years, significant research has been devoted to optimizing both the mechanical and biologic properties of the interbody implant in order to promote bony fusion. The first interbody implants used decades ago were fashioned from cortical autograft. Currently, titanium alloy and polyetheretherketone (PEEK) are the most widely used and studied materials for this purpose. This review focuses on recent innovations in material modification and surface treatment techniques for both titanium and PEEK implants to maximize fusion rates in spinal surgery. Titanium has an elastic modulus much higher than native bone and however has better osseointegrative properties than PEEK. PEEK, however, has an elastic modulus closer to that of bone without any of the advantageous biologic properties that titanium has. Increasing porosity and surface roughness of titanium implants have been shown to improve the mechanical properties of titanium implants, while the biologic properties of PEEK have been enhanced using surface coating technology, either with titanium or with hydroxyapatite (HA). Techniques such as increasing porosity, surface roughening, and surface coating are just some of the recent innovations aimed at optimizing both mechanical and biologic properties of interbody implants to promote spinal fusion. The future of interbody implant design will rely on continued improvements of PEEK and titanium implants as well as exploring new implant materials altogether.
Feature Whitening via Gradient Transformation for Improved Convergence.

Feature whitening is a known technique for speeding up training of DNN. Under certain assumptions, whitening the activations reduces the Fisher information matrix to a simple identity matrix, in which case stochastic gradient descent is equivalent to the faster natural gradient descent. Due to the additional complexity resulting from transforming the layer inputs and their corresponding gradients in the forward and backward propagation, and from repeatedly computing the Eigenvalue decomposition (EVD), this method is not commonly used to date. In this work, we address the complexity drawbacks of feature whitening. Our contribution is twofold. First, we derive an equivalent method, which replaces the sample transformations by a transformation to the weight gradients, applied to every batch of B samples. The complexity is reduced by a factor of S=(2B), where S denotes the feature dimension of the layer output. As the batch size increases with distributed training, the benefit of using the proposed method becomes more compelling. Second, motivated by the theoretical relation between the condition number of the sample covariance matrix and the convergence speed, we derive an alternative sub-optimal algorithm which recursively reduces the condition number of the latter matrix. Compared to EVD, complexity is reduced by a factor of the input feature dimension M. We exemplify the proposed algorithms with ResNet-based networks for image classification demonstrated on the CIFAR and Imagenet datasets. Parallelizing the proposed algorithms is straightforward and we implement a distributed version thereof. Improved convergence, in terms of speed and attained accuracy, can be observed in our experiments.
Early loss of fixation after surgical treatment of distal radius fractures: Does the number of screws matter?

Abstract Fixation methods in distal radius fractures has been studied biomechanically, but studies evaluating clinical correlation of that data are lacking. We hypothesize that the use of unthreaded pegs and decreased screw number would correlate with an early failure of fixation. There were 50 operatively treated distal radius fractures with initial post-operative radiographs that demonstrated loss of fixation. An age, BMI, and fracture-type matched cohort of 50 non-failed distal radius fractures was used for comparison. The average number of distal screws in the failed fixation group was 5.3 compared to 4.8 in the group with no loss of fixation (p = 0.07). The average number of proximal shaft screws used in the failed fixation group was 3.2 compared to 3.2 in the control group (p = 0.60). There was no difference between the use of pegs in either group. There was a significant difference between distal screw number between constructs that failed from distal screw pullout as compared to the control group, 5.6 vs. 4.8 (p = 0.0001). In conclusion, there was no difference in the number of proximal screws used in distal radius fractures that demonstrated loss of early fixation. Additionally, having more than five screws in the distal fragment had a higher rate of failure from distal screw pullout, however this was likely confounded by the more severe intra-articular fractures that had additional fixation applied in an attempt to increase stability. Finally, using smooth pegs or screws in the distal fragment made no difference in loss of fixation.
Cu2s As a Superior Anode for Sodium-Ion Batteries

There has been an ever-increasing demand on renewable clean energies (e.g., solar energy and wind energy), given the facts that fossil fuels (i.e., petroleum, coal, and natural gas) are depleting and causing environmental issues. Because of their intermittent operations, however, these renewable clean energies rely on large-scale electrical energy storage (EES) systems to realize their wide implementation in the grids. To this end, sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have been highly regarded as the promising EES candidates, due to their low cost and natural abundance. One of the biggest challenges for SIBs lies in developing high-performance anodes [1-3] that enable high capacity and long-term stable cyclability. In this regard, conversion-based materials (e.g., metal oxides and metal sulfides) hold great promise, but have not been well explored. In this context, we recently investigated copper sulfide (Cu2S) as a high-performance anode for SIBs. Our study revealed that Cu2S could achieve a sustainable capacity of ~300 mAh/g. In addition, our study also demonstrated that Cu2S could realize high rate capability up to 10 C and long-term cyclability. In the study, we characterized Cu2S as a new anode using galvanostatic cycling, cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, high-magnification scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction. This study provides an in-depth understanding on Cu­2S electrochemistry in SIBs. Meng, X., Atomic-scale surface modifications and novel electrode designs for high-performance sodium-ion batteries via atomic layer deposition. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2017. 5: p. 10127-10149. Li, L., et al., Recent progress on sodium ion batteries: potential high-performance anodes. Energy & Environmental Science, 2018. 11(9): p. 2310-2340. Luo, W., et al., Na-Ion Battery Anodes: Materials and Electrochemistry. Accounts of Chemical Research, 2016. 49(2): p. 231-240. Figure 1
Assessment of the ecological status of Sicilian coastal waters according to a macroalgae based index (CARLIT)

In the frame of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC), a macroalgae based index (CARLIT) was applied along the Sicilian coastal water bodies (WBs) in order to assess for the first time their ecological status and collect accurate information on the distribution and abundance of shallow-water communities, especially of those most sensitive. The ecological quality ratio values, sensu WFD, showed “high”/“good” levels in all WBs with lushy forests of Cystoseira amentacea except two with “moderate” level due to the presence of stress-tolerant species related to local factors.
Reactive electrically conducting membranes for phosphorus recovery from livestock wastewater effluents.

Abstract We present a novel ‘proof-of-concept’ electrochemically based membrane filtration process for the recovery of nitrogen and phosphorus from livestock wastewater following an anaerobic digestion step. Reactive electrically conducting membranes are shown to precipitate and separate struvite, an eco-friendly fertilizer from synthetic livestock wastewater, resulting in the production of a solid fertilizer and a high-quality water stream, fit for irrigation. The recovery process is based on electrochemical hydrolysis and control of local pH in proximity to the surface of the membrane, and therefore, does not require chemical additives for pH adjustment. The system was assessed at varying concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus corresponding to diluted and concentrated livestock wastewater (up to 1000 mg/L of N and P). Experimental results show up to 65% removal of phosphorus and nitrogen in the first 30 min of electrochemical filtration, and the precipitates were analytically confirmed to be struvite. In addition, the recovery process was shown efficient as it resulted in limited membrane fouling and flux reduction. Fouling and precipitation results were explained by a mathematical model describing the concentration of N, P, Mg ions in the presence of an external electric field. Accordingly, precipitation takes place in proximity to the membrane's surface but not directly on it, thus, limiting surface fouling. The electrochemical filtration system does not require chemical additives for pH adjustment, and the cost associated with electrochemical membrane-based struvite recovery was calculated to be $158 per ton of dry struvite, which is about 1.4 times lower in comparison to conventional recovery approaches. Overall, the electrochemical filtration system may be a promising alternative for nutrient recovery from livestock wastewater in terms of operational costs, recovery efficiency, and fouling mitigation.
The labor of speech: sound and productive affect in the YMCA's speech pedagogy for immigrant industrial workers

This essay recovers the communication pedagogy that the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) developed as part of their outreach to immigrant men in the industries in the early-20th-century U.S...
Fano Resonance Through Quantum Dots in Tunable Aharonov-Bohm Rings

Stimulated by recent intriguing experiments with a quantum dot in an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) ring, we investigate novel resonant phenomena by studying the total transmission probability of nanoscale AB rings with an embedded scattering center in one arm and a magnetic flux passing through its center. In the AB ring with double coupled-quantum dots (QDs), we show that the overlapping of Fano resonances arises from the strong interaction between two quasi-bound levels in the coupled QDs, and that the zero of the Fano resonance is shifted to the complex plane. In addition, we also study the effects of an asymmetry in the arm by inserting an attractive potential well (dot) in one arm. The combined transmission resonance effects as functions of variables of the ring structure and the potential are presented. It is shown that an attractive potential in one of the arms in the AB ring generates an asymmetric Fano resonance in the transmission.
Reconstitution and biochemical assays of an active human histone pre-mRNA 3′-end processing machinery

In animal cells, replication-dependent histone pre-mRNAs are processed at the 3'-end by an endonucleolytic cleavage carried out by the U7 snRNP, a machinery that contains the U7 snRNA and many protein subunits. Studies on the composition of this machinery and understanding of its role in 3'-end processing were greatly facilitated by the development of an in vitro system utilizing nuclear extracts from mammalian cells 35 years ago and later from Drosophila cells. Most recently, recombinant expression and purification of the components of the machinery have enabled the full reconstitution of an active machinery and its complex with a model pre-mRNA substrate, using 13 proteins and 2 RNAs, and the determination of the structure of this active machinery. This chapter presents protocols for preparing nuclear extracts containing endogenous processing machinery, for assembling semi-recombinant and fully reconstituted machineries, and for histone pre-mRNA 3'-end processing assays with these samples.
Clinical use of lefamulin: A first-in-class semisynthetic pleuromutilin antibiotic

Lefamulin is a novel antibiotic agent within the pleuromutilin derivative class approved for the treatment of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP) by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Commission (EC) in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The objective of this article is to provide a summary of clinically relevant data underlying lefamulin, and to provide recommendations for its place in therapy. In vitro data establishes lefamulin's activity against a number of gram-positive, gram-negative, and atypical organisms relevant in the treatment of CABP, including S. pneumoniae, H. influenzae, M. catarrhalis, L. pneumophila, M. pneumoniae, and C. pneumoniae. Two phase 3 studies, the Lefamulin Evaluation Against Pneumonia (LEAP) trials, established non-inferiority of lefamulin against moxifloxacin in the treatment of CABP, including sequential transition from intravenous to oral therapy and across a broad set of patient demographics and severities. Pooled and post-hoc analyses have confirmed these effects for a variety of subgroups and secondary endpoints. Real-world study data post-approval has largely not yet emerged for lefamulin, and there is a need for further investigation into safety/efficacy for off-label indications such as acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSIs) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Further data regarding tolerability, particularly with longer term use, as well as the emergence of resistance over time are still undefined. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Reducing the Number of Rabbits in Eye and Skin Irritancy Tests

Reduction in the number of rabbits used for acute testing of irritation in the eye and skin is a worthwhile goal, and some recent publications have supported such reduction from six to three animals. In anticipation of making such reductions in our laboratory, data from 185 eye and 179 skin irritation tests performed in-house were evaluated within the framework of several schemes of classification. Mean scores for irritation in all possible two, three, four, and five-rabbit subsets were compared to scores with all six rabbits. Parameters included mean weighted Draize scores (eye) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) primary irritation index (skin). Classification of irritants is often based on scales with two or more categories of relative severity (e.g., nonirritating, mild, moderate, severe). Therefore, irritation scores of each subset were grouped into two, three, four, or five categories of irritation. Overall agreement of rankings for the subsets was closer to rankings with six ra...
The paradox of early intervention: Families' participation driven by professionals throughout service process

Early intervention conceived as a program for young infants and toddlers with developmental needs and their families, how early intervention practice establishes family participation in the service process - from referral, evaluation, Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) meeting, to service delivery - was considered in this article. Employing disability studies perspectives, the study contends that although families have gained legal rights for family participation in the law, the requirements do not guarantee the quality of family participation. Using a qualitative case study approach, this study looked at both participation and perceptions of families in the early intervention service process in the metropolitan area of the US. Three families’ experience in the process of early intervention was observed, and how these parents reflect on their participation in the development of early intervention service planning and delivery was examined through in-depth interviews. Findings showed that the families’ participation varied by service providers. The disparity resulted from variable availability, competency levels, and approaches of individual service providers during the service process. In addition, early intervention professionals who are bounded by the requirements in a professional bureaucracy, including the procedural requirements, often impinge on the quality of family participation and limit families’ opportunities for quality service provision. The paper suggests rethinking about how the practice can be implemented.
Toward a Basis for Protocol Specification and Process Decomposition

Abstract In a formalism of top-down design, we consider the decomposition of behavioral specifications into interacting sequential components. The higher level of description specifies the operations to be performed in a major computation step. The goal is to incorporate a given interface specification in a lower-level specification that accounts for interactions with and among sequential components. This construction generalizes the earlier formalism of system factorization [14] to include interface protocols. It expands on the objectives of high-level synthesis by considering control-synchronization loops in scheduling. This paper presents a specification language for sequential process interaction and develops an interpretation based on finite-state-machines. Operations of minimization, composition and complementation are defined; the last of these being the key to top-down decomposition. A small example is used to illustrate the ideas.
Auctions for Share-Averse Bidders

We introduce and study share-averse auctions , a class of auctions with allocation externalities, in which items can be allocated to arbitrarily many bidders, but the valuation of each individual bidder decreases as the items get allocated to more other bidders. For single-item auctions where players have incomplete information about each others' valuation, we characterize the truthful mechanism that maximizes the auctioneer's revenue, and analyze it for some interesting cases. We then move beyond single-item auctions, and analyze single-minded combinatorial auctions. We derive sufficient conditions for a truthful allocation in this setting. We also obtain a $\sqrt{m}$-approximation algorithm for maximizing social welfare, which is essentially tight unless P=NP.
Perinatal course of Ebstein's anomaly and tricuspid valve dysplasia in the fetus

Objective We sought to better define echocardiographic predictors of perinatal mortality in fetuses with Ebstein's anomaly (EA) or tricuspid valve dysplasia (TVD). Method Parameters included measured chamber size, the presence of hydrops, and Doppler recordings of the left ventricular (LV) myocardial performance index (MPI). Results Between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2008, 21 fetuses were diagnosed with either EA (17) or TVD (4). Five fetuses were lost to follow-up, and 12 of 16 fetuses were born live (75%). Survivors were found to have smaller right atrial area index scores when compared with non-survivors (1.025 ± 0312 vs 1.502 ± 0.105, respectively, p = 0.013) and were less likely to present with hydrops (0% survivors vs 75% of non-survivors, p < 0.01). LV MPI sub-analysis revealed a shorter combined isovolemic contraction and relaxation time for non-survivors compared wth survivors (46.5 ± 8.2 ms vs 82.3 ± 21.2 ms, respectively, p = 0.004) although no difference was observed for LV ejection times or overall LV MPI between survivors and non-survivors. Conclusion Physiologic analysis of left ventricular function via the LV Tei index and its component measurements demonstrates potentially novel insights into hemodynamic derangements and their association with outcomes in patients with EA/TVD. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Identification of H. volcanii Phosphomevalonate Decarboxylase and Isopentenyl Phosphate Kinase as Catalysts of the Terminal Enzymatic Reactions in an Archaeal Alternate Mevalonate Pathway (LB139)

To identify the enzymes responsible for metabolism of mevalonate 5-phosphate to isopentenyl diphosphate in H. volcanii, two open reading frames (HVO_2762; HVO_1412) were selected for expression and characterization. Characterization of these proteins indicates that one enzyme is an isopentenyl phosphate kinase that forms isopentenyl diphosphate. The second enzyme exhibits a decarboxylase activity that has never been directly attributed to this protein or any homologous protein. It catalyzes the synthesis of isopentenyl phosphate from mevalonate 5-phosphate, a reaction proposed but never demonstrated by direct experimental proof. This enzyme, phosphomevalonate decarboxylase (PMD), exhibits strong inhibition by 6-fluoromevalonate monophosphate but negligible inhibition by 6-fluoromevalonate diphosphate (a potent inhibitor of the classical mevalonate pathway), reinforcing its selectivity for monophosphorylated ligands. Inhibition by the fluorinated analog also suggests that the PMD utilizes a reaction mechan...