cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
“A Conformist to Fashion”: Dressing for Duty

Sylvia Kasey Marks calls Sir Charles Grandison “a new species of conduct book,” and, while Richardson’s novel is certainly more than that, it is also true that the novel attempts to educate its readers, precisely in the manner of conduct-book literature. Marks writes: In many ways Grandison harks back to an older aristocratic tradition in which the nature of nobility, the formation of the young man, his education and recreation, and his larger responsibilities to his family and the state were important. At the same time, we see the same emphasis on duty and on the responsibilities one has to one’s superiors, peers, and inferiors found in the conduct books directed toward a more general audience.1
Flowfield dependent variation method

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the computational features of the Flowfield Dependent Variation (FDV) method, a numerical scheme built to simulate flows characterized by multiple speeds, multiple physical phenomena, and by large variations in flow variables. Design/methodology/approach – Fundamentally, the FDV method may be regarded as a variant of the Lax-Wendroff Scheme (LWS) that is obtained by replacing the explicit time derivatives in LWS by a weighted combination of explicit and implicit time derivatives. The weighting factors – referred to as FDV parameters – may be broadly classified as convective and diffusive parameters which, for example, are determined using flow quantities such as the Mach number and Reynolds number, respectively. Hence, the reference to these parameters and the method as “flow field dependent.” A von Neumann Fourier analysis demonstrates that the increased implicitness makes FDV both more stable and less dispersive compared to LWS, a feature crucial to ...
High-intensity locomotor exercise increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor in individuals with incomplete spinal cord injury.

Abstract High-intensity locomotor exercise is suggested to contribute to improved recovery of locomotor function after neurological injury. This may be secondary to exercise-intensity–dependent increases in neurotrophin expression demonstrated previously in control subjects. However, rigorous examination of intensity-dependent changes in neurotrophin levels is lacking in individuals with motor incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI). Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of locomotor exercise intensity on peripheral levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in individuals with incomplete SCI. We also explored the impact of the Val66Met single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) on the BDNF gene on intensity-dependent changes. Serum concentrations of BDNF and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), as well as measures of cardiorespiratory dynamics, were evaluated across different levels of exercise intensity achieved during a graded-intensity, locomotor exercise paradigm in 11 in...
Numerical Divergence Effects of Equivalence Theory in the Nodal Expansion Method

Accurate solutions of the advanced nodal equations require the use of discontinuity factors (DFs) to account for the homogenization errors that are inherent in all coarse-mesh nodal methods. During the last several years, nodal equivalence theory (NET) has successfully been implemented for the Cartesian geometry and has received widespread acceptance in the light water reactor industry. The extension of NET to other reactor types has had limited success. Recent efforts to implement NET within the framework of the nodal expansion method have successfully been applied to the fast breeder reactor. However, attempts to apply the same methods to thermal reactors such as the Modular High-Temperature Gas Reactor (MHTGR) have led to numerical divergence problems that can be attributed directly to the magnitude of the DFs. In the work performed here, it was found that the numerical problems occur in the inner and upscatter iterations of the solution algorithm. These iterations use a Gauss-Seidel iterative technique that is always convergent for problems with unity DFs. However, for an MHTGR model that requires large DFs, both the inner and upscatter iterations were divergent. Initial investigations into methods for bounding the DFs have proven unsatisfactory as a means of remedying the convergence problems.more » Although the DFs could be bounded to yield a convergent solution, several cases were encountered where the resulting flux solution was less accurate than the solution without DFs. For the specific case of problems without upscattering, an alternate numerical method for the inner iteration, an LU decomposition, was identified and shown to be feasible.« less
Look @ Me 2.0: Self-Sexualization in Facebook Photographs, Body Surveillance and Body Image

Growing attention has been paid to examining how women present themselves on Social Networking Sites (SNSs). Recently, researchers have found that SNSs seem to provide a unique forum for the reproduction of traditional gender roles, including the sexualization of women. In the current study, we evaluated various correlates of self-sexualization in the Facebook profile pictures of young women. Ten Facebook profile photographs of each of 98 young adult women, ranging in age from 18 to 28 years old, were coded for self-sexualization. Participants also completed self-report surveys measuring appearance-related contingencies of self-worth, body surveillance, and internalization of sociocultural beauty norms. Appearance-related contingencies of self-worth and body surveillance were both independently positively associated with self-sexualization in Facebook profile photographs. Although internalization of sociocultural appearance attitudes did not have a direct effect on self-sexualization in Facebook profile pictures, it did have an indirect effect through body surveillance. Potential theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Daily Opioid Use Is Common in Adults with Sickle Cell Disease Presenting to an Acute Care Unit for Treatment of Vaso-Occlusive Pain

Background: Pain is the hallmark of sickle cell disease (SCD), and the most common reason for emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations in adults and children with SCD. The Emory University Sickle Cell Center at Grady Memorial Hospital has been providing specialized services for adult SCD patients for 30 years. In addition to daily sickle cell specialized clinics, the center is set up with a 24/7 acute care unit (ACU) that is staffed by specialized SCD providers and manages vaso-occlusive episodes (VOE). The patients are started on intravenous narcotics, fluids and antibiotics within 30 minutes of presenting to the ACU. After eight hours of management, the patient is then either discharged home if the VOE is controlled or admitted to the hospital for continued management. Annually, around 3000 ACU visits are recorded with 17% hospital admission rate (over the last 5 years). Little information is known about the clinical characteristics of adults with SCD and chronic opioid use in the setting of VOE pain. Methods: Clinical data from adult SCD patient visits for VOE presenting to the ACU was prospectively collected over a 4-month period (March 1, 2015- July 1 2015) as part of a screening process of an ongoing clinical trial. Results: 214 patients were evaluated for VOE requiring parenteral opioids, with an admission rate of 18%. Mean age was 31+/-14 years, 53% were male and the majority (80%) had hemoglobin (Hb) SS. See Table 1 for clinical characteristics. Over 80% of patients treated in the ACU were ultimately discharged home. Interestingly, the rate of chronic opioid use was around 50% in both admitted and discharged patients from the ACU. Conclusions: The admission rate for VOE in adults with SCD is low at our center through the utilization of the ACU. 51% of patients requiring admission for continued pain therapy were on daily opioids and most of these patients had Hb-SS. 50% of the patients discharged from the ACU were also on daily opioids which represents a significant finding when trying to recruit opioid-na•ve patients on clinical trials to manage VOE. Additionally, this high percentage of daily opioid users reflects a group of patients with possibly more severe disease, who are at risk of tolerance, hyperanalgesia and difficulty in managing VOE in the outpatient setting. This information is valuable for clinical trial design, as chronicopioid use is often an exclusion criterion for enrollment into novel pain therapy trials in SCD. More research is needed on this important topic. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
Valuations of Ambiguity in Prescription Drug Risks: Evidence by Framing and Risk Type

Prescription drug use is a risky endeavor. These risks are rarely precisely known, and patients may react to this ambiguity in unpredictable ways. Patient perceptions of ambiguous drug risks are difficult to elicit from market data. This paper uses an incentivized experiment to explore the effect of ambiguity on perceptions of different risks in the presence of framing effects. The experiment finds that consumers are ambiguity seeking in the “loss domain” and ambiguity-averse in the “gains domain.” Additionally, in the loss domain, there are significant differences between the attitudes toward ambiguity in the risk that a drug is ineffective and the risk that a drug is unsafe. These deviations from ambiguity neutrality suggest that techniques to reduce perceived ambiguity or to synthesize ambiguous results for patients may result in better patient outcomes.
Experimental Demonstration of Firing Rate Neural Networks Based on Metal-Oxide Memristive Crossbars

Limitations of currently dominating von Neumann architectures have pushed the research toward brain-inspired solutions like neural networks to reach new levels of computing efficiency. While these highly parallelized architectures have achieved outstanding performances at software level, their hardware implementation is still a challenging problem due to the large amount of memory and arithmetic units required to store synaptic weights and implement synaptic transmission functions. One possible solution to tackle this challenging problem is to build neural networks with analog circuits and implement the functionality of synapses with the same nonvolatile memory unit that stores synaptic weights (a so-called in-memory computing). Scalability, analog behavior (multilevel programmability), speed, and power consumption are fundamental performance requirements for such memory arrays, given the huge number of synapses in state-of-the-art neural networks. Among different choices, Resistive Random Access Memories (RRAMs) are considered as one of the main candidates due to their excellent scalability and the possibility of their integration with fully mature CMOS technology. Here in this chapter, we will show the basic principles of such devices, alongside their performance as single devices and also when integrated in crossbars, all induced from experiments. We will also present the results of the first experimental realizations of single- and multi-layer neural networks with synapses implemented through crossbar arrays with detailed explanation on their in situ training. Finally, we conclude the chapter by presenting our recent progress on the 3D integration of resistive switching devices on top of CMOS-based circuitries and also by discussing the limitations of current implementations and future challenges.
A Short Note on the Probabilistic Set Covering Problem

In this paper we address the following probabilistic version (PSC) of the set covering problem: min{cx | P(Ax ≥ ξ) ≥ p, xj ∈ {0, 1} j ∈ N} where A is a 0-1 matrix, ξ is a random 0-1 vector and p ∈ (0, 1] is the threshold probability level. In a recent development Saxena, Goyal and Lejeune proposed a MIP reformulation of (PSC) and reported extensive computational results with small and medium sized (PSC) instances. Their reformulation, however, suffers from the curse of exponentiality − the number of constraints in their model can grow exponentially rendering the MIP reformulation intractable for all practical purposes. In this paper, we give a polynomial-time algorithm to separate the (possibly exponential sized) constraint set of their MIP reformulation. Our separation routine is independent of the specific nature (concave, convex, linear, non-linear etc) of the distribution function of ξ, and can be easily embedded within a branch-and-cut framework yielding a distribution-free algorithm to solve (PSC). The resulting algorithm can solve (PSC) instances of arbitrarily large block sizes by generating only a small subset of constraints in the MIP reformulation and verifying the remaining constraints implicitly. Furthermore, the constraints generated by the separation routine are independent of the coefficient matrix A and cost-vector c thereby facilitating their application in sensitivity analysis, re-optimization and warm-starting (PSC). We give preliminary computational results to illustrate our findings on a test-bed of 40 (PSC) instances created from the OR-Lib set-covering instance scp41.
Regression of atherosclerosis with therapeutic antibodies pipe cleaner or pipe dream

Oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) is an immunogen that plays an important role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis ([1][1]). Active immunization with oxLDL in model systems prone to atherosclerosis results in a heightened adaptive immune response and protection against lesion
Microbial community response to silver nanoparticles and Ag+ in nitrifying activated sludge revealed by ion semiconductor sequencing

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), which are known to act as biocides, are incorporated into medical and consumer products including athletic clothing, stuffed animals, liquid dietary supplements, and more. The increasing use of AgNPs in these products is likely to lead to their entry into both natural and engineered systems, which has the potential to disrupt bacterial processes including those involved in nutrient cycling in wastewater treatment. In the present study, sequencing batch reactors (SBR) mimicking secondary wastewater treatment were operated to determine the effects of AgNPs on the microbial communities contained within activated sludge of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). SBRs were treated with 0.2 and 2ppm of either gum Arabic (GA)-coated AgNPs, citrate (Ca)-coated AgNPs, or Ag+ as AgNO3. Cell samples were collected and DNA isolated periodically throughout SBR operation. DNA was used for Ion Torrent Next Gen Sequencing of the V3 region of the 16S rDNA gene. Subsequent analyses revealed that the microbial community both shifted and recovered quickly in response to Ag+. Both AgNP treatments resulted in slower initial community shifts than that observed with the Ag+ treatment. GA-AgNPs elicited the longest lasting effect. Additional examination of nitrogen removal bacteria suggested the possibility of an increase in sludge bulking species with increased concentrations of AgNPs in WWTPs. This study supports the hypothesis that Ag+ release from AgNPs is largely coating-dependent and thus a key driver in dictating AgNP toxicity.
Gender and Feminist Studies in History

Gender history, feminist history, and women's history identify overlapping areas of inquiry whose relationships to each other have become more complex and more contested in the past decade. Feminist history, which emerged as a distinct field in the 1970s, initially was conceived as nearly synonymous with women's history in the sense that most practitioners of the latter embraced the politics of the former. But feminist history could also define an area of investigation—the origins and development of movements for women's rights and sex equality. Building on earlier concerns with the social relations of the sexes, gender analysis appeared as a separate but related approach to history in the mid-1980s. Advocates of gender analysis asserted the critical importance of exploring historical changes in individual and collective subjectivities in relational terms and the centrality of gender in signifying forms and relationships of power. Drawing examples from medieval England, colonial North America, modern Latin America, Europe, the USA, and the African diaspora, this article sketches out various ways that gender and feminist historians have transformed basic terms and categories of historical analysis; explored the interplay of gender with class, race, nationality, and sexuality; examined differences among women as well as between women and men; wielded and critiqued postmodernist theories; and analyzed the impact of globalization and transnationalism on women, women's movements, and gender relations.
Treatment of Urinary and Fecal Incontinence in Children

Bladder and bowel control typically occurs by age 3. Toilet training is usually accomplished by parents without the need for professional intervention. However, because of the use of ineffective training procedures or physical limitations, many children remain incontinent throughout the early school years. Lack of bladder or bowel control is one of the most prevalent childhood disorders. Although spontaneous remissions occur from early childhood through adolescence, the majority of incontinent children will require treatment.
Odontogenic Tumors for General Pathologists

The process of tooth formation (odontogenesis) encompasses complex processes, which combine two principal phenomenons: cellular morphodifferentiation and histodifferentiation. Epithelial odontogenic tumors, in essence, recapitulate odontogenesis at various stages of development and are histologically related to remnants of odontogenic epithelium, left behind near the crown and root portions, following the cessation of this complex and detailed process. Theoretically, odontogenic tumors may develop from these rests or any of the cells that contributed to the process of odontogenesis.
Transspinal Direct Current Stimulation Produces Persistent Plasticity in Human Motor Pathways.

The spinal cord is an integration center for descending, ascending, and segmental neural signals. Noninvasive transspinal stimulation may thus constitute an effective method for concomitant modulation of local and distal neural circuits. In this study, we established changes in cortical excitability and input/output function of corticospinal and spinal neural circuits before, at 0–15 and at 30–45 minutes after cathodal, anodal, and sham transspinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) to the thoracic region in healthy individuals. We found that intracortical inhibition was different among stimulation polarities, however remained unchanged over time. Intracortical facilitation increased after cathodal and anodal tsDCS delivered with subjects seated, and decreased after cathodal tsDCS delivered with subjects lying supine. Both cathodal and anodal tsDCS increased corticospinal excitability, yet facilitation was larger and persisted for 30 minutes post stimulation only when cathodal tsDCS was delivered with subjects lying supine. Spinal input/output reflex function was decreased by cathodal and not anodal tsDCS. These changes may be attributed to altered spontaneous neural activity and membrane potentials of corticomotoneuronal cells by tsDCS involving similar mechanisms to those mediating motor learning. Our findings indicate that thoracic tsDCS has the ability to concomitantly alter cortical, corticospinal, and spinal motor output in humans.
Few-photon scattering and emission from low-dimensional quantum systems

We show how to use the input-output formalism to compute the propagator for a low-dimensional quantum system coupled to an optical field under the rotating wave and Markovian approximation. The propagator for this coupled system is expressed in terms of the Green's functions of the low-dimensional system, and it is shown that these Green's functions can be computed entirely from the evolution of the low-dimensional system under an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Our formalism generalizes the previous works that have focused on time-independent Hamiltonians to systems with time-dependent Hamiltonians (e.g., coherently driven systems), making it a suitable computational tool for the analysis of a number of experimentally interesting quantum systems. We illustrate our formalism by applying it to analyze photon emission and scattering from the driven and undriven two-level system and the three-level lambda system.
The Impact of Dietary Transition Metals on Host-Bacterial Interactions

Transition metals are required cofactors for many proteins that are critical for life, and their concentration within cells is carefully maintained to avoid both deficiency and toxicity. To defend against bacterial pathogens, vertebrate immune proteins sequester metals, in particular zinc, iron, and manganese, as a strategy to limit bacterial acquisition of these necessary nutrients in a process termed "nutritional immunity." In response, bacteria have evolved elegant strategies to access metals and counteract this host defense. In mammals, metal abundance can drastically shift due to changes in dietary intake or absorption from the intestinal tract, disrupting the balance between host and pathogen in the fight for metals and altering susceptibility to disease. This review describes the current understanding of how dietary metals modulate host-microbe interactions and the subsequent impact on the outcome of disease.
The effect of processing on veterinary residues in foods.

Heat stability of antibiotics in foods to cooking has been determined by a variety of methods. These include heating in such liquid media as milk, water, buffers and meat extracts, and in solids such as buffered meat homogenates and various sausages. Inactivation of incurred residues in tissues and eggs was also studied. Time and temperature of heating were more easily controlled in liquid media, but results in actual meat products are more indicative of actual cooking processes. Ordinary cooking procedures for meat, even to “well-done”, cannot be relied on to inactivate even the more heat sensitive compounds such as penicillins and tetracyclines. More severe heating as for canning or prolonged cooking with moist heat can inactivate the more heat sensitive compounds. The relevance to food safety is uncertain since the nature of the degradation products is unknown in most cases.
IT-basierte Prozesssteuerung – Geschäftsprozessmonitoring am Beispiel der Versicherungsindustrie

Viele der grosen Sparten in den Schadenund Unfallversicherungen sind bereits seit mehreren Jahren einem signifikanten Beitragseineinbruch aufgrund eines starken Preiswettbewerbs bei steigenden Schadenaufwendungen ausgesetzt (vgl. GDV 2007, S. 36). Das daraus resultierende sinkende versicherungstechnische Ergebnis setzt viele Versicherer unter erheblichen Handlungsdruck. Vor diesem Hintergrund unterziehen viele Versicherungsunternehmen ihre Schadenprozesse einer eingehenden Untersuchung, da sie hier – vollkommen zu Recht – die grosten Einsparpotenziale erwarten. Die im Rahmen der Untersuchungen ermittelten Masnahmen folgen dabei immer haufiger der Leitidee der Prozessindustrialisierung, die sich durch Standardisierung und Automatisierung der Schadenprozesse auszeichnet. Die gezielte, vollautomatische Integration externer Partner (z. B. Restwertborsen, Sachverstandigenorganisationen oder Prufdienstleister) sowie automatischer Prufregelwerke (z. B. zur Betrugsabwehr) garantieren daruber hinaus die Identifikation von sachlich und rechtlich nicht gerechtfertigten Forderungen. Als zentrale Voraussetzung fur die effiziente Steuerung automatischer Geschaftsprozesse gilt die Verfugbarkeit eines Prozessmonitorings, mit dem sich die Prozesse aus betriebswirtschaftlicher Sicht in Echtzeit uberwachen und analysieren lassen, damit Anpassungsbedarfe zeitnah von den Prozessverantwortlichen erkannt und entsprechende Steuerungsmasnahmen ergriffen werden konnen. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt die Grundlagen und die Vorgehensweise zur Konzeption und Implementierung eines robusten Prozessmonitors. Dazu geht Abschnitt 2 auf die Prozessautomatisierung anhand eines konkreten Beispiels aus dem Schadenmanagement in der Kfz-Versicherung ein und zeigt auserdem das Zusammenspiel zwischen Modellierung, Automatisierung und Monitoring von Geschaftsprozessen auf. Abschnitt 3 erlautert grundlegende technische und organisatorische Aspekte des Prozessmonitorings. Abschnitt 4 schildert die Vorgehensweise und Werkzeug-Unterstutzung in Monitoring-Projekten. In Abschnitt 5 findet sich ein kurzes Fazit und ein Ausblick auf zukunftige Entwicklungen. 2 Ausgangssituation
Treatment Related Sequelae Following External Beam Radiation for Prostate Cancer: A Review With an Update in Patients with Stages T1 And T2 Tumor

The primary goal of radical radiation therapy in men with localized prostate carcinoma is cure and a secondary but important goal is to achieve cure without treatment related sequelae, such as loss of continence, rectal injury, loss of potency and the need for castration. A literature review of 2,611 men undergoing irradiation for all stages of localized prostatic carcinoma documented a 0.2% incidence of treatment related mortality, 1.9% severe complications, 0.9% incontinence and 33 to 60% maintenance of full potency 5 or more years after treatment. A separate analysis was made of 331 patients with only early tumors (stages T1 and T2) treated with conventional external beam radiation therapy to doses of 63 to 74 Gy. from 2 individual centers (Massachusetts General Hospital and M.D. Anderson Hospital) and 1 multi-institutional group (Radiation Therapy Oncology Group). Median followup was 6.1 years; however, in 2 series followup ranged to 14 years. This analysis revealed frequencies of treatment associated sequelae of 0% for mortality, 0% severe complications, 0.4% urinary incontinence, 5.4% genitourinary structures (1.2% persisting), 5.1% hematuria (0.9% persisting) and 5.4% rectal bleeding (0.6% persisting). This composite analysis of men undergoing irradiation for stages T1 and T2 tumors with conventional fractionation and doses indicates that acute morbidity is minor and usually transient, severe injury is rare, most late gastrointestinal and genitourinary symptoms of radiation injury are neither permanent nor debilitating, and few symptoms of radiation injury develop beyond 5 years from treatment. These data, combined with the low progression rates (using prostate specific antigen criteria) following irradiation of men with early tumors, further substantiate the primary role of radical radiotherapy in the treatment of surgical risk adversive patients.
[2] Sur un principe nouveau pour l’évaluation des fonctions holomorphes

In this early paper, Schiffer applies the Schwarz lemma and the classical growth and distortion theorems of geometric function theory to deduce similar inequalities for a general analytic function \(f(z) = z + a_{2}{z}^{2} + \cdots \) in the unit disk \(\mathbb{D}\). Let Ω denote the set of values assumed by f, and let \(\widehat{\Omega }\) be the simply connected domain bounded by the outer boundary C of Ω.
Evaluation of single molecule array digital immunoassay technology to quantitate neurofilament light chain

Aim: Globally, neurodegeneration accounts for significant morbidity and mortality among the elderly. Millions of people are afflicted with neurodegenerative diseases, with the most notable cases attributed to Alzheimer's, Huntington's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinson's diseases. Sensitive assays that can detect proteopathic anomalies indicative of early neurodegeneration have remained elusive. Therefore, there is an urgent need for sensitive diagnostic and prognostic biomarker assays that can guide the therapeutic regimen in the clinic. Materials & methods: Single molecule array digital immunoassay platform has sensitivity about 1000-fold higher than traditional ligand binding assays. Consequently, we are now beginning to implement ultrasensitive techniques in bioanalysis. Conclusion: In the current study, we evaluated single molecule array technology and report specifications to quantitate neurofilament light chain, a bona-fide biomarker for neurodegeneration. Preliminary neurofilament light screening results from 100 human geriatric cerebrospinal fluid samples displayed huge biological variation and warrants further investigation.
Cache efficient Value Iteration using clustering and annealing

Abstract Value Iteration (VI) is a powerful, though time consuming, approach to solve Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Exisiting algorithms for VI incur a large number of cache misses. Motivated by the observation that, on modern computers, the cost of a cache miss is two to three orders of magnitude more than that of an arithmetic operation, we explore the possibility of improving the performance of VI by reducing the number of cache misses, possibly at the expense of increasing the number of arithmetic operations. Cache efficiency is obtained by performing VI on partitions of the MDP state space that fit in the lowest level cache of the computational platform on which the code is to run. Further performance improvement, motivated by the use of MDP partitions, is obtained using a clustering scheme to construct the partitions and an annealing schedule to converge to the target accuracy. We demonstrate experimentally that incorporating partitioning, clustering, and annealing into state-of-the-art VI software result in speedups of up to a factor of 8.1 on our computational platforms.
An Empirical Study on Algorithmic Bias

In all goal-oriented selection activities, an existence of certain level of bias is unavoidable and may be desired for efficient artificial intelligence based decision support systems. However, a fair independent comparison of all eligible entities is essential to alleviate explicit bias in competitive marketplace. For example, searching online for a good or service, it is expected that the underlying algorithm will provide fair results by searching all available entities in the category mentioned. However, a biased search can make a narrow or collaborative query, ignoring competitive outcomes, resulting customers in costing more or getting lower quality products or services for the money they spend. This paper describes algorithmic bias in different contexts with examples and scenarios, best practices to detect bias, and two case studies to identify algorithmic bias.
CAD for Security: A Full Reverse Engineering Toolchain from Layout to RTL

To protect the SoC supply chain from such vulnerabilities, academic and industry researchers have proposed many design for security and hardware Trojan detection techniques. However, these techniques either rely on RTL verification methods which may not be applicable to netlist/layout level designs or leverage testing/measurement results to indirectly identify possible hardware vulnerabilities. There lacks a CAD tool based deterministic process which can convert layouts/netlists into RTL code for design verifications. In this talk, I will introduce our recent effort in building such a CAD toolchain through which a layout in GDS-II format can be de-syntheiszed and converted to the high level description, e.g., RTL code, for security analysis. The CAD toolchain includes a series of circuit reverse engineering tools which can also be applied individually for specific tasks such as design deobfuscation, hardware Trojan detection, etc. This toolchain fits in an even larger concept of CAD for Security, a recent trend for SoC/IC protection and trust verification.
Non-invasive assessment of mesenteric hemodynamics in patients with suspected chronic mesenteric ischemia using 4D flow MRI

Chronic mesenteric ischemia (CMI) is a rare disease with a particularly difficult diagnosis. In this study, 4D flow MRI is used to quantitatively evaluate mesenteric hemodynamics before and after a meal in patients suspected of having CMI and healthy individuals. Nineteen patients suspected of CMI and twenty control subjects were analyzed. Subjects were scanned using a radially undersampled 4D flow MR sequence (PC-VIPR). Flow rates were assessed in the supraceliac (SCAo) and infrarenal aorta, celiac artery, superior mesenteric artery (SMA), left and right renal arteries, superior mesenteric vein (SMV), splenic vein, and portal vein (PV) in a fasting state (preprandial) and 20 min after a 700-kcal meal (postprandial). Patients were subcategorized into positive diagnosis (CMI+, N = 6) and negative diagnosis (CMI−, N = 13) groups based on imaging and clinical findings. Preprandial, postprandial, and percent change in flow rates were compared between subgroups using a Welch t test. In controls and CMI− patients, SCAo, SMA, SMV, and PV flow increased significantly after meal ingestion. No significant flow increases were observed in CMI+ patients. Percent changes in SMA, SMV, and PV flow were significantly greater in controls compared to CMI+ patients. Additionally, percent changes in flow in the SMV and PV were significantly greater in CMI− patients compared to CMI+ patients. 4D flow MRI with large volumetric coverage demonstrated significant differences in the redistribution of blood flow in SMA, SMV, and PV in CMI+ patients after a meal challenge. This approach may assist in the challenging diagnosis of CMI.
Office Anesthesia: Past, Present, and Future Considerations

SUMMARY The study and practice of pain and anxiety control in dentistry have made significant progress since the early discovery days. Steps have been taken to improve the training of dentists and to ensure that only those qualified by training may practice advanced modalities of pain and anxiety control. More progress is needed, however. The recent diminishing availability of training programs for dentists must be reversed. Predoctoral students must become more aware of the needs of their patients and more sophisticated in dealing with those needs. The profession must come to grips with the fact that many millions of individuals still equate dentistry with fear and pain. Until that perception is eliminated, our image will remain tarnished and we will not be available to all who need our services. Solutions are at hand; we just need to be open-minded enough to discuss them and act on them with the interests of the public paramount.
To racketeer among neighbors: spatial features of criminal collaboration in the American Mafia

The American Mafia is a network of criminals engaged in drug trafficking, violence and other illegal activities. Here, we analyze a historical spatial social network (SSN) of 680 Mafia members foun...
Economic Significance in Corporate Finance

Reporting the economic significance of findings in empirical corporate finance has become increasingly common, but a review of the literature from 2000 to 2018 reveals problems with standard practice that make it difficult to judge the importance of reported results. Common problems include making unsubstantiated absolute claims of economic significance, using nonstandardized and unreliable measures of significance, and failing to report benchmarks for evaluating significance. To help address these problems, I define standardized measures of economic significance, show which measures are reliable, and provide benchmarks for economic significance based on established findings.
Relative Fundamental Frequency in Individuals with Globus Syndrome and Muscle Tension Dysphagia.

Summary Objective Relative fundamental frequency (RFF) has been investigated as an acoustic measure to assess for changes in laryngeal tension. This study aimed to assess RFF in individuals with globus syndrome, individuals with muscle tension dysphagia (MTDg), and individuals with typical voices. Methods RFF values were calculated from the speech acoustics of individuals with globus syndrome (n = 12), individuals with MTDg (n = 12), and age- and sex-matched controls with typical voices (n = 24). An analysis of variance was performed on RFF values to assess the effect of group. Results There was no statistically significant effect of group on RFF values, with similar values for individuals with globus syndrome, individuals with MTDg, and control participants. Conclusions These results suggest that individuals with these disorders do not appear to possess paralaryngeal muscle tension in a locus and/or manner that directly impacts voice production.
Effective learning environments in preschools

or not present) that involves telling a story but also expressing the meaning attached to the events in the story (Uchikoshi, 2005). Narrative skills have been linked to the acquisition of literacy skills and of communication skills that are decontextualized (Guterrez-Clellen, 2002; Uchikoshi). Narrative skills vary by culture, ethnicity, and social class (Dart, 1992; Peterson, Jesso, & McCabe, 1999; Silva & McCabe, 1996; Uchikoshi). Silva and McCabe note all children need to develop narrative skills since it is tied to later literacy skills. However, they point out students who are ELs have often grown up with a home narrative style which is often culturally different from what is expected by teachers. Tabors (2008) and Uchikoshi suggested teachers can foster narrative skills by asking open-ended questions of children to help them develop narrative skills, especially questions following or preceding reading a book. Teachers can also promote children’s narratives during a show-and-tell or sharing time when children are able to discuss personal experiences (Peterson, Jesso, & McCabe; Uchikoshi). Conversation skills. Conversation skills, also referred to as discourse skills, are important for all children to develop (DeBruin-Parecki, 2008). Conversation skills center around the ability to use decontextualized language, DeBruin notes developing these language skills may be particularly challenging for ELs since decontextualized language does not involve communicating about things or objects that are present in the immediate environment, which an EL could point to if the child did not know the word the object is referred to as. Thus, decontextualized language demands the speakers have a large vocabulary with which to one can refer to objects and people that may not be immediately present.
Reinforcement learning in multidimensional environments relies on attention mechanisms

In recent years, ideas from the computational field of reinforcement learning have revolutionized the study of learning in the brain, famously providing new, precise theories of how dopamine affects learning in the basal ganglia. However, reinforcement learning algorithms are notorious for not scaling well to multidimensional environments, as is required for real-world learning. We hypothesized that the brain naturally reduces the dimensionality of real-world problems to only those dimensions that are relevant to predicting reward, and conducted an experiment to assess by what algorithms and with what neural mechanisms this “representation learning” process is realized in humans. Our results suggest that a bilateral attentional control network comprising the intraparietal sulcus, precuneus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in selecting what dimensions are relevant to the task at hand, effectively updating the task representation through trial and error. In this way, cortical attention mechanisms interact with learning in the basal ganglia to solve the “curse of dimensionality” in reinforcement learning.
Parent-Adolescent Intimacy: Impact on Adolescent Functioning.

This paper examines the influence of parent-adolescent intimacy on adolescent functioning. Intimacy for both adolescent males and females was assessed in relation to their mothers and fathers. Adolescent development was measured using two scales: self-esteem and problem behavior. No significant differences were found between males and females on the measures of self-esteem, problem behavior, and intimacy. However, mothers were found to share greater degrees of intimacy than did fathers for both male and female adolescents. A regression analysis revealed that father intimacy was a better predictor of positive adolescent functioning than was mother intimacy.
Explicit characterization of bandgap references

Conspicuously absent in the literature are explicit relationships between the output voltage and temperature of bandgap references. In this paper an explicit relationship for the output voltage of a popular bandgap reference structure is developed. Within the context of this explicit relationship, temperature stability properties of references are explored.
Opening Blind Eyes: A Revisioning of Mark 8:22-10:52:

Keller argues that Mark uses the stories of the two blind men in his Gospel to serve as metaphors for his community. The “Man from Bethsaida” (8:22–26) represents where Mark's community is in their...
Electrophysiological characteristics of dopamine neurons: a 35-year update.

This chapter consists of four sections. The first section provides a general description of the electrophysiological characteristics of dopamine (DA) neurons in both the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area. Emphasis is placed on the differences between DA and neighboring non-DA neurons. The second section discusses the ionic mechanisms underlying the generation of action potential in DA cells. Evidence is provided to suggest that these mechanisms differ not only between DA and non-DA neurons but also between DA cells located in different areas, with different projection sites and at different developmental stages. Some of the differences may play a critical role in the vulnerability of a DA neuron to cell death. The third section describes the firing patterns of DA cells. Data are presented to show that the current “80/160 ms” criteria for burst identification need to be revised and that the burst firing, originally described by Bunney et al., can be described as slow oscillations in firing rate. In the ventral tegmental area, the slow oscillations are, at least partially, derived from the prefrontal cortex and part of prefrontal information is transferred to DA cells indirectly through inhibitory neurons. The final section focuses on the feedback regulation of DA cells. New evidence suggests that DA autoreceptors are coupled to multiple effectors, and both D1 and D2-like receptors are involved in long-loop feedback control of DA neurons. Because of the presence of multiple feedback and nonfeedback pathways, the effect of a drug on a DA neuron can be far more complex than an inhibition or excitation. A better understanding of the intrinsic properties of DA neurons and their regulation by afferent input will, in time, help to point to the way to more effective and safer treatments for disorders including schizophrenia, drug addiction, and Parkinson’s disease.
Neuronal LR11 Expression Does Not Differentiate between Clinically-Defined Alzheimer's Disease and Control Brains

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia in the elderly. Because the pathological changes underlying this disease can begin decades prior to the onset of cognitive impairment, identifying the earliest events in the AD pathological cascade has critical implications for both the diagnosis and treatment of this disease. We previously reported that compared to autopsy confirmed healthy control brain, expression of LR11 (or SorLA) is markedly reduced in AD brain as well as in a subset of people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a prodromal clinical stage of AD. Recent studies of the LR11 gene SORL1 have suggested that the association between SORL1 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and AD risk may not be universal. Therefore, we sought to confirm our earlier findings in a population chosen solely based on clinical criteria, as in most genetic studies. Quantitative immunohistochemistry was used to measure LR11 expression in 43 cases from the Religious Orders Study that were chosen based on a final pre-mortem clinical diagnosis of MCI, mild/moderate AD or no cognitive impairment (NCI). LR11 expression was highly variable in all three diagnostic groups, with no significant group differences. Low LR11 cases were identified using the lowest tertile of LR11 expression observed across all cases as a threshold. Contrary to previous reports, low LR11 expression was found in only 29% of AD cases. A similar proportion of both the MCI and NCI cases also displayed low LR11 expression. AD-associated lesions were present in the majority of cases regardless of diagnostic group, although we found no association between LR11 levels and pathological variables. These findings suggest that the relationship between LR11 expression and the development of AD may be more complicated than originally believed.
Episodic Monoplane Transesophageal Echocardiography Impacts Postoperative Management of the Cardiac Surgery Patient

Objective A new slender, flexible, and miniaturized disposable monoplane transesophageal TEE probe has been approved for episodic hemodynamic transesophageal echocardiographic monitoring. The authors hypothesized that episodic monoplane TEE with a limited examination would help guide the postoperative management of high-risk cardiac surgery patients. Design The authors analyzed the initial consecutive observational experience with the miniaturized transesophageal echocardiography monitoring system (ClariTEE, ImaCor, Uniondale, New York). Setting Single institution in a university setting. Participants Unstable cardiac surgery patients. Interventions The authors assessed fluid responsiveness, echocardiographic data, and concordance among hemodynamic data. Measurements and Main Results From June 2010 to February 2011, 21 unstable cardiac surgery patients with postoperative instability were identified. Two patients (10%) required reoperation for bleeding and tamponade physiology. Right ventricular dysfunction was diagnosed by episodic TEE monitoring in 7 patients (33%), while hypovolemia was documented in 12 patients (57%). Volume responsiveness was documented in 11 patients. In this observational study, discordance between hemodynamic monitoring and episodic TEE was qualitatively observed in 14 patients (66%). Conclusion The authors demonstrated the ability of episodic monoplane TEE to identify discordance between hemodynamic monitoring to better define clinical scenarios in unstable cardiac surgery patients. For these challenging patients, limited episodic TEE assessment has become a cornerstone of ICU care in this institution.
Molecular characterization of a human VλVIII germline gene

Abstract Human λ light chains of the recently recognized variable region (V L ) subgroup V λVIII can be distinguished from proteins of other V λ gene families on the basis of distinctive chemical and serologic properties and by their preferential association with certain types of autoantibodies, i.e. rheumatoid factors (RFs). We now report that we have cloned from a human placental library a V λVIII -encoding germline gene, designated IGLV8A1, using as a molecular probe a partial V λVIII fragment generated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from genomic DNA. IGLV8A1 contained all the requisite elements of a potentially functional gene, including a V λ exon with an open reading frame encoding 103 residues. Its expressed products were identified through analyses of cDNA cloned from two different monoclonal λVIII B-cell populations. The primary structure of λVIII light chains differed from that of λI, λII, λIII, λIV and λVI proteins by the presence of distinctive residues within the first framework region (FR1) and an 11- rather than 7-residue second complementarity-determining region (CDR2). Remarkably, the IGLV8A1 gene was more homologous to the two functional rabbit V λ germline genes, RVλ2 and RVλ3 (including the presence of one extra codon within the leader sequence), and to the murine V λx gene. Light chains encoded by the human, rabbit and mouse λVIII-related genes shared certain unique primary structural features, notably the four additional CDR2 residues. The evolutionary conserved nature of the human V λ gene and, in particular, the apparently novel tertiary structural effects induced by an elongated CDR2 provide evidence for the biological and functional importance of the V λVIII subgroup.