cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
MicroRNA-4719 and microRNA-6756-5p Correlate with Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer Progression through Interleukin-24 Regulation

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. The five-year survival rate for men diagnosed with localized PCa is nearly 100%, yet for those diagnosed with aggressive PCa, it is less than 30%. The pleiotropic cytokine Interleukin-24 (IL-24) has been shown to specifically kill PCa cells compared to normal cells when overexpressed in both in vitro and in vivo studies. Despite this, the mechanisms regulating IL-24 in PCa are not well understood. Since specific microRNAs (miRNAs) are dysregulated in PCa, we used miRNA target prediction algorithm tools to identify miR-4719 and miR-6556-5p as putative regulators of IL-24. This study elucidates the expression profile and role of miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p as regulators of IL-24 in PCa. qRT-PCR analysis shows miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p overexpression significantly decreases the expression of IL-24 in PCa cells compared to the negative control. Compared to the indolent PCa and normal prostate epithelial cells, miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p are significantly overexpressed in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) cell lines, indicating that their gain may be an early event in PCa progression. Moreover, miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p are significantly overexpressed in the CRPC cell line of African-American males (E006AA-hT) compared to CRPC cell lines of Caucasian males (PC-3 and DU-145), indicating that miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p may also play a role in racial disparity. Lastly, the inhibition of expression of miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p significantly increases IL-24 expression and inhibits proliferation and migration of CRPC cell lines. Our findings indicate that miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p may regulate CRPC progression through the targeting of IL-24 expression and may be biomarkers that differentiate between indolent and CRPC. Strategies to inhibit miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p expression to increase IL-24 in PCa may have therapeutic efficacy in aggressive PCa.
Clinical Validation of the Definitions of Resistant and Refractory Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Infection and Disease in Hematopoietic Cell Transplant (HCT) Recipients.

Introduction Resistant or refractory CMV infections are not well defined and are associated with high morbidity and mortality in HCT recipients. Ganciclovir (GCV), Foscarnet (FOS) and valganciclovir (VGC) are available for treatment of CMV infections with successful results, however, toxicities from these drugs are common and associated resistance have been reported. Definitions for “resistant and refractory CMV infections” were published recently for clinical trials use and to provide guidance for clinical practice (Chemaly RF et al, CID, 2018). Methods We performed a single center retrospective chart review (1/2010 to 9/2018) of HCT recipients who had CMV genotype performed for suspected antiviral resistance. Based on the published definitions, we categorized patients as either having refractory CMV (defined as CMV viremia that fails to decrease after at least 2 weeks of appropriately dosed and delivered antiviral therapy; and in the absence of known genetic mutations to the available antiviral agents) or resistant CMV infection (defined as refractory infection with identification of genetic mutations in the UL97 and/or UL54 genes correlating with in vitro antiviral resistance). Primary outcomes were CMV disease and non-relapse mortality (NRM). Results CMV genotype analysis was performed in 120 patients and 29 (24%) patients had UL 97 and/or UL54 mutations. When compared to refractory CMV infection, patients with resistant CMV infection were more likely to have AML (38% vs 76%), had cord blood transplant (8% vs 24%), were diagnosed with resistant infection later after HCT (59 d vs 120 d), had greater number of prior episodes of CMV infections, had more CMV diseases (34% vs 62%), and specifically more CMV GI diseases (22% vs 55%); (all, p Conclusion Our data showed that resistant CMV infections are associated with higher morbidity including CMV disease while refractory CMV infections are associated with higher NRM. Whether this high NRM in patients with refractory CMV infections is a reflection of the host immunosuppression with persistent CMV infection needs to be determined.
Blepharoplasty Pearls: General Tips

Fortunately, when performed carefully and on patients with realistic expectations, blepharoplasty surgery is very rewarding for the patient and the surgeon. Over the last 16 years of performing blepharoplasty surgeries, I have been very grateful to my surgical mentors for teaching the fundamentals but also the multitude of very understanding patients that have taught me through their outcomes how to continually improve. The following tips have been acquired either personally or adopted by listening to and observing “master” eyelid surgeons.
Fragmented ambiguous objects: Stimuli with stable low-level features for object recognition tasks.

Visual object recognition is a complex skill that relies on the interaction of many spatially distinct and specialized visual areas in the human brain. One tool that can help us better understand these specializations and interactions is a set of visual stimuli that do not differ along low-level dimensions (e.g., orientation, contrast) but do differ along high-level dimensions, such as whether a real-world object can be detected. The present work creates a set of line segment-based images that are matched for luminance, contrast, and orientation distribution (both for single elements and for pair-wise combinations) but result in a range of object and non-object percepts. Image generation started with images of isolated objects taken from publicly available databases and then progressed through 3-stages: a computer algorithm generating 718 candidate images, expert observers selecting 217 for further consideration, and naive observers performing final ratings. This process identified a set of 100 images that all have the same low-level properties but cover a range of recognizability (proportion of naive observers (N = 120) who indicated that the stimulus "contained a known object") and semantic stability (consistency across the categories of living, non-living/manipulable, and non-living/non-manipulable when the same observers named "known" objects). Stimuli are available at https://github.com/caolman/FAOT.git.
Real Options and Environmental Policies: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The literature on real options shows that irreversibilities, uncertainties about future benefits and costs, and the flexibility in decision making generate benefits and costs of delaying immediate ...
Look who’s talking: A comparison of automated and human-generated speaker tags in naturalistic day-long recordings

The LENA system has revolutionized research on language acquisition, providing both a wearable device to collect day-long recordings of children's environments, and a set of automated outputs that process, identify, and classify speech using proprietary algorithms. This output includes information about input sources (e.g., adult male, electronics). While this system has been tested across a variety of settings, here we delve deeper into validating the accuracy and reliability of LENA's automated diarization, i.e., tags of who is talking. Specifically, we compare LENA's output with a gold standard set of manually generated talker tags from a dataset of 88 day-long recordings, taken from 44 infants at 6 and 7 months, which includes 57,983 utterances. We compare accuracy across a range of classifications from the original Lena Technical Report, alongside a set of analyses examining classification accuracy by utterance type (e.g., declarative, singing). Consistent with previous validations, we find overall high agreement between the human and LENA-generated speaker tags for adult speech in particular, with poorer performance identifying child, overlap, noise, and electronic speech (accuracy range across all measures: 0-92%). We discuss several clear benefits of using this automated system alongside potential caveats based on the error patterns we observe, concluding with implications for research using LENA-generated speaker tags.
Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II

During World War II, the famed Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group and 477th Medium Bombardment Group fought two battles. The first was against racism and prejudice in the United States, as ...
Children's neural responses to a novel mathematics concept

Abstract Background Functional MRI studies have suggested a ‘frontoparietal shift’ over the course of development, whereby children tend to engage prefrontal neural regions to a greater extent than adults when completing mathematics tasks. Although this literature hints that lateral prefrontal regions may be involved in acquiring mathematics knowledge, a key limitation of existing studies is that they have included mathematics content that children already are familiar with as opposed to examining the dynamic learning process. We aimed to address this gap by examining children's neural responses when exposed to a new, unfamiliar mathematics concept. Method Eighteen 8–11 year old children viewed blocked demonstrations of base-2/binary (unfamiliar) and base-10/decimal (familiar) number systems while undergoing functional MRI (fMRI). Children's behavioral understanding of binary numbers was measured between fMRI runs. Results Counter to hypotheses, there were no overall differences in prefrontal activity for binary relative to decimal blocks. However, children with higher levels of behavioral understanding of the novel, binary concept showed enhanced neural activity in the left rostral middle frontal gyrus specifically during binary concept exposure. They also showed enhanced connectivity between this region and pre-and post-central gyri and left parahippocampal regions. Conclusions Individual differences in children's behavioral grasp of a new mathematics concept correlate with prefrontal activity and functional connectivity during exposure to the concept, suggesting that rostral prefrontal cortex may play a role in mathematics learning.
Contrasting Associations of Prudent and Western Dietary Patterns with Risk of Developing Venous Thromboembolism

Abstract Background Published studies are inconsistent about whether differences in diet are associated with risk of venous thromboembolism. We studied the association between dietary patterns and incident venous thromboembolism in a large US cohort. Methods The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study followed 14,818 middle-aged males and females for incident venous thromboembolism over an average of 22 years between 1987 and 2015. Trained interviewers assessed dietary intake at visits 1 and 3, using a food frequency questionnaire. We derived 2 dietary pattern scores using principal component analysis and ascertained and verified hospitalized venous thromboembolism. In separate proportional hazards regression analyses, we examined associations of quintiles of the prudent and the Western dietary pattern scores with risk of developing non-cancer-related and total venous thromboembolism, adjusting for demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors, body mass index, and diabetes. Results With 860 total incident venous thromboembolism events, the hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) of incident non-cancer-related venous thromboembolism (n = 631) across quintiles of the prudent dietary pattern score were 1 (reference), 1.04 (0.81-1.32), 0.84 (0.65-1.08), 0.70 (0.53-0.91), and 0.88 (0.67-1.15), Ptrend = .04. Across quintiles of the Western dietary pattern score, hazard ratios of non-cancer-related venous thromboembolism were 1 (reference), 1.13 (0.87-1.45), 1.20 (0.92-1.56), 1.03 (0.77-1.39), and 1.58 (1.13-2.21), Ptrend = .04. Associations were similar for total venous thromboembolism. Conclusions In this community-based cohort, a prudent dietary pattern was associated with a lower risk of future venous thromboembolism, whereas a Western dietary pattern was associated with a higher risk.
Gas Dynamical Parameters of Detonation Powder Spraying

An investigation is conducted of the gas dynamics of a gas detonation coating process and the mechanism of particle acceleration by the shock wave inside the coating apparatus. Velocities of gas detonation in different gas mixtures are analyzed by applying the conventional hydrodynamic theory of detonation, and the effect of addition gases on the velocity of detonation in oxygen/hydrogen and oxygen/acetylene mixtures is studied. The authors propose a model that allows calculation of particle acceleration and final velocity. This model utilizes the Chapman-Jouquet picture of detonation and assumptions about the linear distribution of the velocity of detonation products behind the front of the detonation wave. The kinetics of particle acceleration by a detonation wave exhibits several novel features and is distinctly different from particle acceleration in other methods of spraying, such as plasma and high-velocity oxyfuel. There is a nonmonotonic dependence of particle velocity upon its coordinate and change in the direction of particle acceleration. Loading distance and total barrel length are important parameters that affect final particle velocity. Results indicate that final particle velocity and, as a consequence, the quality of detonation coatings can be significantly affected by changing the gas mixture composition and the powder loading distance while keeping the remaining operational parameters constant.
Further Distinctions Among Major Concepts of Wellbeing

This chapter describes a plethora of studies that have closely examined distinctions among concepts related to subjective aspects of quality of life, such as those that were spelled out in the earlier chapter. I start out with the distinction between subjective and objective indicators of quality of life; then I make the distinction between input and outcome indicators of quality of life, after which I discuss the distinction between inner and outer aspects of quality of life. Then, I shift gears and describe studies that have focused on making a clear distinction between happiness and life satisfaction. Following this discussion, the concept of subjective wellbeing is described as an umbrella concept incorporating both affective and cognitive dimensions of wellbeing. I also discuss research distinguishing between subjective wellbeing and Eudaimonia and its variants as well as the differences between hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing. Two models were also presented making further distinctions of between wellbeing and illbeing, namely the structural model and the hierarchical model.
Using a Systematic Approach to Teach Analysis of the Aging Face.

Objective To assess the efficacy of a novel systematic approach aimed at improving a resident physician's ability to perform analysis of the aging face. Study design Prospective randomized case-control study. Setting Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education accredited Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery residency program. Methods Twenty otolaryngology-head and neck surgery residents were randomized into 2 groups with even representation in each postgraduate year level in each cohort. One group used traditional materials (textbooks), and the other group was given exclusive access to the online learning module featuring a systematic approach to aging-face analysis. Both groups completed preactivity, postactivity, and retention assessments to gauge their ability to perform a comprehensive analysis of the aging face. Results When compared with a matched control cohort, the residents who used the systematic approach performed more comprehensive facial aging assessments immediately after the intervention and at a retention time point. Conclusion A systematic approach delivered via an 11-minute online module can significantly improve a resident physician's ability to perform analysis of the aging face. This systematic approach could be easily integrated into other online or traditional educational curriculums. Moreover, this methodology could be applied to additional areas in which residents have limited exposure but must develop expertise.
Virtual Self-learning Modules Integrating Pharmacology Concepts into a Geriatric Elective

Given barriers to vertical integration during clinical rotations, many struggle with employing effective virtual strategies to revisit foundational sciences during clerkship. To address this, we developed virtual geriatric pharmacology self-learning modules (SLMs) for a fourth-year geriatric elective using cases, interactive exercises, resources, feedback, and quizzes. To evaluate effectiveness, learners were administered a pre- and post-elective quiz with survey. Learners improved performance after using SLMs, valued pharmacology clerkship integration and reinforcement, and agreed SLMs improved understanding, confidence, and attitudes. Thus, SLMs were an effective virtual method for integrating pharmacology that could be modified to teach other foundational sciences during clerkships.
New insights into the conserved mechanism of pluripotency maintenance.

Pluripotent stem cells provide a powerful tool for both basic and translational research. The establishment and maintenance of germline-competent pluripotent stem cells in vitro, however, have only succeeded in the mouse and rat. From in vivo studies on pluripotency during embryogenesis and in vitro studies on existing pluripotent stem cells, several mechanisms have been uncovered for maintenance of both the naive and the primed pluripotent states. Current clues strongly indicate that such mechanisms are likely conserved among different species. A better understanding of how these mechanisms work together to control cell fate choice will guide future research in both stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.
Accelerated Dual-Path Asynchronous Circuit

This brief presents a novel design approach that accelerates an asynchronous circuit system by circumventing transient-fault-induced delays and tolerates latchups and other permanent faults. Specifically, a dual-path asynchronous circuit design and an associated arbiter are developed. Asynchronous circuits inherently tolerate transient errors by incurring an additional delay. This, in turn, can debilitate the circuit to suspend in an environment where the fault rate (FR) is excessively high. The dual-path design approach presented in this brief eliminates this problem by using whichever output or outcome combination becomes valid first from the two asynchronous stages. The design approach is illustrated with a low-density parity-check decoder architecture that must exhibit a high degree of reliability in error-prone operating conditions. Results show that the decoder reduces the delay overhead from 19.5% to 7.5% when the FR is 400/clock cycle. However, the arbiter only introduces about 2% area overhead in addition to the duplication overhead, which is exactly 2X.
Quantitative test of a microscopic mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity

One of the main challenges to theoretical attempts to understand the microscopic mechanism of high-transition-temperature (high- T c) superconductivity is to account quantitatively for the superconducting condensation energy, the energy by which the normal state differs from the superconducting state1,2,3,4,5,6. A microscopic model commonly used to describe the superconducting copper oxides, the t - J model7, is thought to capture the essential physics of the phenomenon: the interplay between the electrons' kinetic energy and their antiferromagnetic exchange interaction. Within the t - J model the condensation energy can be related to the change in the dynamical spin structure between the superconducting and the normal states8. Here we propose a microscopic mechanism for the condensation energy of high- T c superconductors. Within this mechanism, the appearance of a resonance in the superconducting state9,10,11,12,13 enables the antiferromagnetic exchange energy in this state to be lowered relative to the normal state. We show that the intensity of the resonant neutron-scattering peak observed previously in YBa2Cu3O7 when it undergoes the transition to the superconducting state14,15,16 is in quantitative agreement with the condensation energy of these materials2,3.
Implicit Many-to-One Communication in Online Communities

The recent explosive growth of popular social communities such as Flickr.com, YouTube.com and Digg.com has generated much renewed interest on the Internet as a new medium. This new movement is often considered attributable to the Web 2.0 technologies (e.g., Ajax, XML, RSS, and Wiki) and social computing concepts (e.g. blog, tagging, and voting) that make mass user interactions both easy and multi-faceted. They retain the existing ingredients of online community-based communications, such as individual relationship and message-based conversations. At the same time, non-message-based and often collective interactions, e.g., voting and ranking, enrich user communication.
Molecular Dynamics Study of 2-D Melting: Long Range Potentials

Melting of a two dimensional electron lattice and a two dimensional dipolar solid are studied using molecular dynamics technique. The existence of hysteresis and latent heat of melting are observed, and the melting transitions in the two cases are found to be first order. For an electron lattice the melting occurs between Γ=129±3 whereas in the dipolar solid it is between Γ=62±3, with a transition entropy of 0.3 kg per particle for both the systems.
International Human Rights: A Comprehensive Introduction

1. Introduction 2. The Philosophical Basis for Human Rights 3. The Historical Basis for Human Rights 4. The Contemporary Basis for Human Rights 5. Civil and Political Rights 6. Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights 7. Crimes Against Humanity, Crimes Against Peace, & War Crimes 8. Quantitative Dimensions 9. United Nations Charter-Based Organizations 10. Other Treaty-Based Global International Organizations 11. American Approaches to International Human Rights 12. European Approaches to International Human Rights 13. Third World Approaches to International Human Rights 14. New Dimensions & Challenges
The interaction of proteins with hydroxyapatite: II. Role of acidic and basic groups

The elution behavior from hydroxyapatite columns of the modification products of seven basic and three acidic proteins has been investigated. Three classes of NH2 derivatives were prepared. These consisted of (1) replacement by a guanidyl group with no change in charge; (2) blocking with loss of charge; and (3) replacement of positive charges by negative ones. Two types of COOH derivatives were prepared: (1) blocking with loss of charge; and (2) replacement of COOH by SO3H with no change in charge. The elution behavior of the derivatives in PO4, F-, Cl-, ClO-4, and Ca2+ ion eluants showed that (1) the elution patterns are determined by the isoelectric points of the proteins, there being no symmetry between the binding or elution behavior of acidic and basic proteins; (2) the binding of basic proteins requires the presence of a high density of positively charged groups; (3) the binding of all proteins to hydroxyapatite equilibrated with phosphate buffer is enhanced by a decrease in the number of their negative charges; and (4) calcium ions affect the binding of proteins to hydroxyapatite at the level of carboxyls, since clusters of carboxyls strengthen both the interaction with Ca2+ and the binding to hydroxyapatite.
Robust Monocular Visual Odometry for a Ground Vehicle in Undulating Terrain

Here we present a robust method for monocular visual odometry capable of accurate position estimation even when operating in undulating terrain. Our algorithm uses a steering model to separately recover rotation and translation. Robot 3DOF orientation is recovered by minimizing image projection error, while, robot translation is recovered by solving an NP-hard optimization problem through an approximation. The decoupled estimation ensures a low computational cost. The proposed method handles undulating terrain by approximating ground patches as locally flat but not necessarily level, and recovers the inclination angle of the local ground in motion estimation. Also, it can automatically detect when the assumption is violated by analysis of the residuals. If the imaged terrain cannot be sufficiently approximated by locally flat patches, wheel odometry is used to provide robust estimation. Our field experiments show a mean relative error of less than 1 %.
Analysis of speech and language communication for cochlear implant users in noisy lombard conditions

Acoustic/linguistic modification of speech production with respect to auditory feedback is an important research domain for robust human-to-human and human-to-machine communication. For instance, in the presence of environmental noise, a speaker experiences the well-known phenomenon termed as Lombard effect. Lombard effect has been well studied for normal hearing listeners as well as for automatic speech/speaker recognition systems. However, limited effort has been employed to study if the speech production of cochlear implant (CI) users is influenced by the auditory feedback. The purpose of this study is to analyze the speech production and natural language model of CI users with respect to environmental changes. A mobile personal audio recording from continuous single-session audio streams collected over an individual's daily life was used for our study. The findings from this study will provide fundamental knowledge on the characteristics of speech production under Lombard effect in CI users. These specific variations in speech production can be leveraged in new algorithm development and further applications in speech systems to benefit cochlear implant users.?
Experimental intrauterine growth retardation in the sheep.

Abstract This report describes a procedure for investigation of the pathophysiology of fetal growth retardation in the sheep. In ewes with single fetuses (96 to 125 day's gestation) a polyvinyl catheter was inserted into a distal branch of the uterine artery supplying the pregnant horn and cdvanced retrograde to the main uterine artery. Catheters were also placed in fetal blood vessels. Gradual embolization of the uteroplacental vascular bed was accomplished by injecting carbonised microspheres, 15 μ in diameter, into the uterine artery daily, if fetal blood gases were normal. When compared with control fetuses, the embolication group showed a mean decrease of 30 per cent in weight, variable decreases in certain organ weights, and a significant increase in the brain-to-liver weight ratio. In the embolization group, mean fetal Po 2 decreased 11 and 18 per cent, respectively, in each of the last two weeks of the study.
Image restoration of high resolution observations of the M87 jet

Image-restoration techniques are applied to high-resolution (FWHM 0.5-1.0 arcsec) plates of the M87 jet obtained with the CFH telescope by Nieto and Lelievre (1982), and their description of the optical jet is confirmed. Most of the features detected are similar to those shown by the VLA map of Biretta et al. (1982), having a resolution of 0.12 arcsec. In particular, the restored images show evidence for an elongated nucleus and for a very sharp discontinuity in knot A which is not perpendicular to the jet axis. It also seems that the start of the oscillations and this discontinuity are not related. This similarity at a 0.2-arcsec scale suggests no relativistic motion (v less than 25,000 km/sec) throughout the jet.
Improving MapReduce performance in heterogeneous environments

MapReduce is emerging as an important programming model for large-scale data-parallel applications such as web indexing, data mining, and scientific simulation. Hadoop is an open-source implementation of MapReduce enjoying wide adoption and is often used for short jobs where low response time is critical. Hadoop's performance is closely tied to its task scheduler, which implicitly assumes that cluster nodes are homogeneous and tasks make progress linearly, and uses these assumptions to decide when to speculatively re-execute tasks that appear to be stragglers. In practice, the homogeneity assumptions do not always hold. An especially compelling setting where this occurs is a virtualized data center, such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). We show that Hadoop's scheduler can cause severe performance degradation in heterogeneous environments. We design a new scheduling algorithm, Longest Approximate Time to End (LATE), that is highly robust to heterogeneity. LATE can improve Hadoop response times by a factor of 2 in clusters of 200 virtual machines on EC2.
Capturing habitual, in-home gait parameter trends using an inexpensive depth camera

Results are presented for measuring the gait parameters of walking speed, stride time, and stride length of five older adults continuously, in their homes, over a four month period. The gait parameters were measured passively, using an inexpensive, environmentally mounted depth camera, the Microsoft Kinect. Research has indicated the importance of measuring a person's gait for a variety of purposes from fall risk assessment to early detection of health problems such as cognitive impairment. However, such assessments are often done infrequently and most current technologies are not suitable for continuous, long term use. For this work, a single Microsoft Kinect sensor was deployed in four apartments, containing a total of five residents. A methodology for generating trends in walking speed, stride time, and stride length based on data from identified walking sequences in the home is presented, along with trend estimates for the five participants who were monitored for this work.
Use of structured design and development in the validation of application software

Abstract The structured design and testing of application software is an important element of GMP compliance. Because application software is custom-developed, one cannot rely on ‘market hardness’ as an indicator of software quality. Structured design provides a means for understanding complex problems and evaluating system requirements. Communication among users, designers and implementers is facilitated. Valuable and usable documentation is produced. There are many existing CASE tools which can assist in the structured design approach. The many benefits of structured programming toward the end of validation are discussed within this paper.
Anoxic–oxic activated‐sludge of cyanides and phenols

The anoxic-oxic activated-sludge process has been evaluated in a laboratory investigation as a means for effective treatment of cyanide-laden wastewaters, with phenols used as the organic carbon sources for denitrification reactions. The performance of the process was evaluated at different levels of feed cyanide concentration and mean cell residence time (MCRT). The results obtained indicate that the phenolic compounds used can be effectively used as the organic carbon sources to promote denitrification reactions. The effects of cyanide inhibition on overall TOC removal can be alleviated at longer MCRTs. Between 1.2 and 2.2 g TOC can be utilized per gram NO(2) + NO(3) (-) -N removed in the anoxic chamber depending on the prevailing MCRT. Microbial oxidation of cyanide and thiocyanate which yields ammonia is the main mechanism responsible for the removal of cyanide and thiocyanate observed in the anoxic-oxic activated-sludge process. Excellent removal efficiencies have been observed with feed concentrations up to 60 mg CN(-)/L and 100 mg SCN(-)/L Frequent exposure of autotrophic and aerobic cyanideutilizing microbes does not impede their activities in the oxic environment. Good nitrification and denitrification efficiencies are attainable in the anoxic-oxic activated-sludge process in the presence of high feed cyanide and thiocyanate concentrations, provided that MCRT is maintained at a desirable level. As a result, the microbial degradation of cyanide and thiocyanate in conjunction with nitrification and denitrification to produce innocuous nitrogen gas is feasible in the anoxic-oxic activated-sludge process.
Essential roles of mesenchyme-derived beta-catenin in mouse Müllerian duct morphogenesis

Members of the Wnt family of genes such as Wnt4, Wnt5a, and Wnt7a have been implicated in the formation and morphogenesis of the Mullerian duct into various parts of the female reproductive tract. These WNT ligands elicit their action via either the canonical WNT/beta-catenin or the non-canonical WNT/calcium pathway and could possibly function redundantly in Mullerian duct differentiation. By using the Mullerian duct-specific anti-Mullerian hormone receptor 2 cre (Amhr2-cre) mouse line, we established a conditional knockout model that removed beta-catenin specifically in the mesenchyme of the Mullerian duct. At birth, loss of beta-catenin in the Mullerian duct mesenchyme disrupted the normal coiling of the oviduct in the knockout embryo, resembling the phenotype of the Wnt7a knockout. The overall development of the female reproductive tract was stunted at birth with a decrease in proliferation in the mesenchyme and epithelium. We also discovered that Wnt5a and Wnt7a expression remained normal, excluding the possibility that the phenotypes resulted from a loss of these WNT ligands. We examined the expression of Frizzled (Fzd), the receptors for WNT, and found that Fzd1 is one receptor present in the Mullerian duct mesenchyme and could be the putative receptor for beta-catenin activation in the Mullerian duct. In summary, our findings suggest that mesenchymal beta-catenin is a downstream effector of Wnt7a that mediates the patterning of the oviduct and proper differentiation of the uterus.
Socioeconomic Factors Affecting Local Support for Black Bear Recovery Strategies

There is global interest in recovering locally extirpated carnivore species. Successful efforts to recover Louisiana black bear in Louisiana have prompted interest in recovery throughout the species' historical range. We evaluated support for three potential black bear recovery strategies prior to public release of a black bear conservation and management plan for eastern Texas, United States. Data were collected from 1,006 residents living in proximity to potential recovery locations, particularly Big Thicket National Preserve. In addition to traditional logistic regression analysis, we used conditional probability analysis to statistically and visually evaluate probabilities of public support for potential black bear recovery strategies based on socioeconomic characteristics. Allowing black bears to repopulate the region on their own (i.e., without active reintroduction) was the recovery strategy with the greatest probability of acceptance. Recovery strategy acceptance was influenced by many socioeconomic factors. Older and long-time local residents were most likely to want to exclude black bears from the area. Concern about the problems that black bears may cause was the only variable significantly related to support or non-support across all strategies. Lack of personal knowledge about black bears was the most fre- quent reason for uncertainty about preferred strategy. In order to reduce local uncertainty about possible recovery strategies, we suggest that wildlife managers focus outreach efforts on providing local residents with general information about black bears, as well as information pertinent to min- imizing the potential for human-black bear conflict.
Identification of genetic polymorphisms through comparative DNA sequence analysis on the K-ras gene: implications for lung tumor susceptibility.

In the present study, the authors performed a comparative DNA sequence analysis of the K-ras gene. By comparing sequences from different mouse inbred strains, the authors have identified new nucleotide polymorphisms in the noncoding regions of mouse K-ras gene. They have also identified noncoding DNA segments evolutionarily conserved among the human, mouse, and rat. Computational analysis for transcription factor binding sites suggests that these polymorphic and conserved DNA sequences harbor potential cis-regulatory elements, which may contribute to the transcriptional regulation of the K-ras gene. Further studies on these potential regulatory sites may help to elucidate the fundamental mechanism underlying allele-specific activation and expression of K-ras gene in hybrid mouse lung tumors, which determines lung tumor susceptibility in mice.
Use of 3-dimensional printing to demonstrate complex intracardiac relationships in double-outlet right ventricle for surgical planning.

Double-outlet right ventricle falls under the category of congenital heart disease known as conotruncal defects, which possess abnormal ventriculoarterial relationships.1 For complex cases, the surgeon must determine whether the left ventricle and one of the great arteries can be aligned using the ventricular septal defect to construct an unobstructed pathway or baffle, resulting in a 2-ventricle repair.2 Creation of the baffle can be complicated by anatomic obstructions because of prominent conal septum, straddling atrioventricular valve attachments, or location of the ventricular septal defect in the inlet septum, remote from any great artery. Three-dimensional (3D) printing has been applied in the management of many different congenital heart diseases.3 In this specific patient population, in whom communicating the complex intracardiac anatomy to the surgeon is so critical, the use of 3D modeling and printing is invaluable. We used this approach in a patient with dextrocardia, complex double-outlet right ventricle (S,L,A)1 and supratricuspid ring. She underwent pulmonary artery banding in infancy and had been doing relatively well clinically; so that any further surgical intervention was deferred until she was 8 years old. Although she was growing well and required no medication, …
First-pass perfusion cardiac MRI using the Partially Separable Functions model with generalized support

Dynamic imaging methods based on the Partially Separable Functions (PSF) model have been used to perform ungated cardiac MRI, and the critical parameter determining the quality of the reconstructed images is the order, L, of the PSF model. This work extends previous methods by increasing L in the cardiac region to improve the ability of the PSF model to represent complex spatiotemporal signals. The resulting higher order PSF model is fit to sparse (k, t)-space data using spatial-spectral support, spatial-eigenbasis support, and spectral sparsity constraints. This new method is demonstrated in the context of 2D first-pass perfusion MRI in a healthy rat heart.
Defending against packet dropping attack in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are becoming very popular and a promising application of the so-called mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) technology. It has attracted recently an increasing attention from many car manufacturers as well as the wireless communication research community. Despite its tremendous potential to enhance road safety and to facilitate traffic management, VANET suffers from a variety of security and privacy issues which may dramatically limit their applications. In this paper, we address the problem of packet dropping attack launched against routing protocol's control packets, which represents one of the most aggressive attacks in MANET. The aim of this attack is to force nodes in the network to choose hostile nodes as relays to disseminate the partial topological information, thereby exploiting the functionality of the routing protocol to retain control packets. In particular, in optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol, if a collusive packet dropping attack is launched during the propagation of the topology control (TC) packets, the topology information will fail in being disseminated to the entire network, which finally results in routing disruption. This paper focuses on the packet dropping attack, launched against OLSR, where two malicious multipoint relay (MPR) nodes collude to disrupt the topology discovery process. Based on the analysis of the attacker's behavior and the attack's consequence, we propose an acknowledgement-based mechanism as a countermeasure to enhance the security of OLSR. This mechanism helps the OLSR protocol to be less vulnerable to such attack by detecting and then isolating malicious nodes in the network. The simulation results of the proposed scheme show high detection rate under various scenarios. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Orientation Evolution in the {0001}-Oriented Hexagonal Crystal during Channel Die Compression

The activity of deformation modes and orientation evolution in the {0001}- oriented hexagonal crystals with basal slip as easy slip mode during channel die compression were investigated by crystal plasticity finite element method (CPFEM). Material parameters of magnesium and its alloys were used in CPFEM simulation. The pyramidal slip contributes most of the strain in all cases of relative CRSS value and friction coefficient between mold and material. The friction coefficient has a more significant influence on the activity of various deformation modes and the orientation deviation from ideal {0001} orientation ( //ND) compared with the relative CRSS value. The deviation angle can reach about 20° after 70% applied reduction under the friction coefficient of 0.20.
MR imaging of silicone gel-filled breast implants in vivo with a method that visualizes silicone selectively.

The lack of an adequately sensitive method for detecting silicone leakage and reported serious complications due to silicone leakage were cited as justification by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for imposing the current restrictions on silicone gel-filled breast prostheses. The authors report a new magnetic resonance imaging method for visualizing silicone leakage: the silicone-only sequence (SOS). The method uses the conventional STIR (short-inversion-time inversion-recovery) technique combined with a 1331 radio-frequency pulse train widely used for water suppression in spectroscopy. With the SOS, silicone can be imaged while signals from fat and water are suppressed. The authors used the SOS to image phantoms and normal and ruptured silicone gel-filled breast prostheses.
Aphagia and adipsia after preferential destruction of nerve cell bodies in hypothalamus

Microinjections of the excitatory neurotoxin kainic acid into the lateral hypothalamus of rats produced a period aphagia and adipsia. Kainate-treated rats displayed transient motor effects during the first hours after the injection but did not show the persisting sensory-motor and arousal disturbances typically observed in animals with electrolytic lesions in this part of the hypothalamus. Histological examination revealed a significant reduction in the number of nerve cell bodies in the lateral hypothalamus. Silver-stained material indicated no evidence of damage to fiber systems passing through the affected region. Assays of dopamine in hypothalamus, striatum, and telencephalon did not indicate significant differences between experimental and control animals. These results are in agreement with recent reports of the anatomical and biochemical effects of intracerebral kainic acid injections and suggest that the observed effect on feeding behavior is related to the destruction of neurons in the lateral hypothalamus.
Drug treatment of Alzheimer's disease

Drugs may be part of the treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Drug treatment can be divided into two categories: treatment to improve cognitive function and treatment to improve abnormal behaviors. There are at least 16 new drugs undergoing evaluation that may improve cognitive function. Some of these drugs are intended to augment acetylcholine neurotransmitter function. Others are nootropics that affect neuron metabolism with little effect elsewhere. A third major category is drugs that affect brain vasculature. A miscellaneous group includes drugs aimed at modifying other defects found in Alzheimer's disease. Drugs to affect behavior have been available for some time. These include neuroleptics, anxiolytics, and antirage drugs. Use of all these drugs has been controversial. Recent federal legislation and guidelines affect their use in nursing homes. Specific indications for neuroleptics are psychotic features and agitation. Dosage for patients with dementia is different than for other psychotic patients. There is no consensus on the use of other psychoactive medications. ( Arch Intern Med . 1991;151:245-249)
The consumer second economy: Size and effects

(1980). The consumer second economy: Size and effects. Soviet Studies: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 218-234.
Spectroscopic and Laser properties of the dye chromogen red B

Abstract The title compound, the xanthene merocyanine related to rhodamine B and fluorescein, shows a slightly larger Stokes shift than either dye and lases at intermediate wavelengths. A weak response under nitrogen laser pumping is ascribed to strong excited state absorption.
Presentation of the Roebling Medal for 2006 of the Mineralogical Society of America to W. Gary Ernst

President John Valley, members of the society, and guests: I am really delighted to have this opportunity to introduce Gary Ernst for the Roebling Medal, 25 years after he was our President handing out these awards. First, I emphasize that it is no surprise to find Gary up here today. The only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner. Anyone brave enough to tackle the experimental synthesis and phase relationships of amphiboles for his Ph.D. thesis in 1959 deserves the Roebling Medal. In fact, it earned him the MSA Award in 1969.
Field measurements of the hydrodynamic roughness of the deep-sea boundary

Abstract Measurements were made of the velocity profile within a meter of the deep-sea floor at four locations off the California coast. Photographs of the boundary were taken to provide a means of evaluating the bed configuration. From these data it was possible to estimate the boundary shear stress, the drag coefficient, and the approximate height of the bed deformities. It is concluded that the deep-sea boundary-layer flow is hydrodynamically smooth only during periods of relatively low velocity and that it is generally transitional in nature. The boundary-layer flow is characterized by a drag coefficient that is highly variable and is related to the flow conditions as well as the bed configuration. The commonly used roughness Reynolds number criterion appears adequate to predict the transition from hydrodynamically smooth boundary conditions as long as the bed-roughness height, rather than the sediments diameter, is used as the characteristic length.