cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Assessment of the Volunteers

An additional aspect of the present research concerns the individuals recruited to work with the juvenile delinquents. The use of volunteers, or nonprofessionals, in community interventions has been promoted in the field of community psychology for the last two decades (Rappaport, 1977; Sobey, 1970; Zax & Specter, 1974). The emphasis on using nonprofessionals, either as volunteers or as paid staff, arose from two main criticisms of traditional psychological intervention. First, the limited pool of professional psychologists substantially restricted their availability to the large numbers of people potentially needing psychological services (Albee, 1959; Pearl & Riessman, 1965). Second, the effectiveness of traditional psychological therapies came under serious scrutiny at about the same time that the positive qualities of nonprofessionals were recognized (Heller & Monahan, 1977). These two perspectives resulted in the increased use of nonprofessionals as service providers. The movement toward the use of nonprofessionals was also encouraged by the notion that nonprofessionals, as well as their clients, benefitted from the experience. This notion has been termed the helper therapy principle (Riessman, 1969).
ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL BASIS FOR REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION IN THE SYMPATRIC ENCHENOPA BINOTATA COMPLEX (HOMOPTERA. MEMBRACIDAE).

A pervasive question in evolutionary biology is whether sympatric speciation can be promoted by the exploitation of new host plants or changes in life history. Recent studies (Maynard Smith, 1966; Alexander, 1968; Huettel and Bush, 1972; Knerer and Atwood, 1973; Bush, 1969, 1975; Tauber and Tauber, 1977a, 1977b; Edmunds and Alstad, 1978) have made sympatric speciation more readily accepted than in the past (Mayr, 1970) but it is still subject to debate (Futuyma and Mayer, 1980). Our past work (Wood, 1980; Guttman et al., 1981) with the treehopper Enchenopa binotata Say suggests that this insect diverged along host plant lines into a complex of sympatric reproductively isolated species. Enchenopa is common in eastern North America on deciduous trees and shrubs as far south as Panama. Enchenopa from each of seven North American host plants are all listed taxonomically as the same species (Metcalf and Wade, 1965), although they differ in nymphal coloration, oviposition site, egg froth composition, time of day they deposit eggs, and nymphal feeding sites. Females from a given host species select that host for oviposition when given a choice, and when confined to a single small cage select mates assortatively by plant species (Wood, 1980). Insects from each host species are electrophoretically distinguishable although differences within "host races" can be found among samples collected from different conspecific trees. Enchenopa on Juglans nigra, Ptelea trifoliata, Robinia pseudoacacia, and Cercis canadensis are electrophoretically different from each other and from those on two species of Viburnum and Celastrus scandens, which are similar to each other (Guttman et al., 1981). Thus E. binotata is a complex of reproductively isolated species. The North American host plants of Enchenopa represent evolutionarily diverse plants which are broadly and locally sympatric. When several host species are found together Enchenopa may occur on each host. Females insert eggs into the branch of the host plant and cover them with a secretion known as egg froth, which protects overwintering eggs (Wood and Patton, 1971), and contains an ovipositional attractant which is responsible for the clumping of egg masses on single branches. The large aggregations of nymphs that result attract mutualistic ants, which apparently increase nymphal survival (Wood and Seilkop, unpubl.). Wood (1980) suggested the following hypothesis based on the work of Bush (1975) to explain the divergence of the Enchenopa binotata complex. Based on present geographical distributions (Metcalf and Wade, 1965), host plant and seasonal records in Costa Rica (Ballou, 1936) and observations by one of us (T.K.W.), the original stock was postulated to be tropical, polyphagous and multivoltine. As Enchenopa progenitors colonized north temperate climates they encountered deciduous hosts which promoted selection for coordination of treehopper life history
Skeletal muscle growth is stimulated by intermittent stretch-relaxation in tissue culture

Avian pectoralis muscle cells differentiated in vitro are mechanically stimulated by repetitive stretch-relaxation of the cell's substratum using a computerized mechanical cell stimulator device. Initiation of mechanical stimulation increases the efflux of creatine kinase from the cells during the first 8-10 h of activity, but the efflux rate returns to control levels after this time period. Decreased total cell protein content accompanies the temporary elevation of creatine kinase efflux. With continued mechanical stimulation for 48-72 h, total cell protein loss recovers and significantly increases in medium supplemented with serum and embryo extract. Myotube diameters increase and cell hyperplasia occurs in the stimulated cultures. In basal medium without supplements, mechanical activity prevents myotube atrophy but does not lead to cell growth. Mechanically induced growth is accompanied by significant increases in protein synthesis rates. The increases in protein synthesis and accumulation induced by mechanical stimulation are not inhibited by tetrodotoxin but are significantly reduced in basal medium without supplements. Mechanically stimulated cell growth is thus dependent on medium growth factors but independent of electrical activity.
Characteristics Analysis of Parallel Supercapacitor and Electrolytic Capacitor Energy Storage System

Supercapacitor is a storage technology proposed as means of supplying short-duration transient energy. Inherent long time constant associated with supercapacitor means that this short-term energy transfer is inefficient. The proposed energy storage system combining supercapacitor and electrolytic capacitor is an improvement to supercapacitor based energy storage system with less volume, less cost and higher efficiency. Although the proposed system structure is simple with only two parallel capacitors, its performance relating to several parameters is improved. Based on constant current discharge mathematical model, relationship between the parallel system parameters and its performance are analysed and verified with experiment. It is shown that the parallel system improves energy transfer efficiency by 10% compared to supercapacitor system, and the efficiency can also be improved by adjusting certain parameters of the parallel system.
Data-driven Order Set Generation and Evaluation in the Pediatric Environment

Order sets as part of the Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) system can improve care delivery through allowing faster and easier physician order entry guided by known best practices. This study examines current utilization patterns of order sets and “a la carte” orders in a pediatric environment with a preliminary investigation of methods to automate the creation and modification of order sets using historical ordering data. We examine the current usage of order sets associated with Asthma Minor and Appendectomy Minor patients to understand how physicians are utilizing order sets, and how order set usage is associated with the time of ordering and characteristics of order sets. K-means clustering was applied to orders to generate evidence-based order sets that are learned from historical hospital data. We demonstrate that coverage rate of order sets and ordering efficiency can be increased through modifications of existing sets and creation of new sets.
Substance Use Disorders and Schizophrenia

Substance use disorders are prevalent co-occurring problems among people with schizophrenia, with lifetime rates approaching 80% in this population when tobacco use is taken into account. Substance use disorders are associated with significant adverse effects among people with schizophrenia, including worse psychiatric symptoms, lower functioning, and increased medical morbidity and mortality compared with schizophrenia patients without co-occurring substance use. The etiology of this relationship is multifactorial, involving neurobiological, genetic, and environmental factors. The substances most commonly used by people with schizophrenia are tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine. Screening, diagnosis, and treatment of substance use disorders are important and can have significant effects on clinical outcomes. Treatments for comorbid disorders include psychopharmacological, psychotherapeutic, and multidisciplinary interventions. Several medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of substance use disorders, which also appear to be helpful for patients with schizophrenia, although few controlled trials have been conducted specifically in this population. Psychosocial and psychological interventions have been adapted for use among patients with schizophrenia as well. Treatment of both psychotic illness and substance use disorders in an integrated way improves functional and clinical outcomes.
Aircraft system identification using artificial neural networks with flight test data

This paper presents linear system identification results using noisy data from a six-degree-of-freedom aircraft simulation and data obtained from flight test of an Unmanned Aerial System using the recently developed novel Artificial Neural Network System Identification algorithm. The method uses an artificial neural network with a single input layer and single output layer to learn the elements of the state transition and control distribution matrices directly. This results in a discrete time state-space model of the aircraft dynamics which is then converted to continuous time using standard techniques. For simulated data, the true linear model is used for verifying the identified model. Linear models are generated from the flight data and are compared with results obtained using the well-established Observer/Kalman Identification algorithm. Results show that the neural-network method identifies valid models for both longitudinal and lateral/directional axes, and performs comparably to Observer/Kalman Identification. Advantages of the method include ease-of-use and low complexity.
Mason Students’ Ideal Personal Learning Environment (PLE): What We Know and Don’t Know About How Students Learn in the Digital Age

A Personal Learning Environment or PLE is described as a process that helps students organize the influx of information and resources that they are faced with on a daily basis into a personalized digital learning space or experience. A PLE is primarily facilitated by cloud-based Web 2.0 technologies and services designed to help students create, organize, and share content, participate in collective knowledge generation, and manage their own meaning making. Hence, a PLE is student-designed around each student’s goals or learning approach. In a PLE, the student develops an individualized digital identity through the perceptual cues and cognitive affordances that the personalized learning environment provides such as what information to share and when, who to share it with, and how to effectively merge formal and informal learning experiences. To gather data on PLEs, Mason students were asked what do they like to learn about; what hardware (devices) and software do they use to learn; what digital tools they wish they had access to for learning; and what their ideal PLE might look like. In this presentation, we will share student responses to these questions and provide recommendations for supporting the development PLEs in teaching and learning contexts.
Bayesian Estimation of Disclosure Risks for Multiply Imputed, Synthetic Data

Agencies seeking to disseminate public use microdata, i.e., data on individual records, can replace confidential values with multiple draws from statistical models estimated with the collected data. We present a famework for evaluating disclosure risks inherent in releasing multiply-imputed, synthetic data. The basic idea is to mimic an intruder who computes posterior distributions of confidential values given the released synthetic data and prior knowledge. We illustrate the methodology with artificial fully synthetic data and with partial synthesis of the Survey of Youth in Custody.
Mechanical properties of neutron-irradiated model and commercial FeCrAl alloys

Abstract The development and understanding of the mechanical properties of neutron-irradiated FeCrAl alloys is increasingly a critical need as these alloys continue to become more mature for nuclear reactor applications. This study focuses on the mechanical properties of model FeCrAl alloys and of a commercial FeCrAl alloy neutron-irradiated to up to 13.8 displacements per atom (dpa) at irradiation temperatures between 320 and 382 °C. Tensile tests were completed at room temperature and at 320 °C, and a subset of fractured tensile specimens was examined by scanning electron microscopy. Results showed typical radiation hardening and embrittlement indicative of high chromium ferritic alloys with strong chromium composition dependencies at lower doses. At and above 7.0 dpa, the mechanical properties saturated for both the commercial and model FeCrAl alloys, although brittle cleavage fracture was observed at the highest dose in the model FeCrAl alloy with the highest chromium content (18 wt %). The results suggest the composition and microstructure of FeCrAl alloys plays a critical role in the mechanical response of FeCrAl alloys irradiated near temperatures relevant to light water reactors.
DBA/2J Haplotype on Distal Chromosome 2 Reduces Mertk Expression, Restricts Efferocytosis, and Increases Susceptibility to Atherosclerosis.

Objective— Arch atherosclerosis 4 ( Aath4 ) is a quantitative trait locus for atherosclerotic plaque formation in the inner curve of the aortic arch previously identified in an F2 cross of Apoe −/− mice on DBA/2J and 129S6 backgrounds. Mertk , coding for a ligand-activated transmembrane tyrosine kinase, is a candidate gene within the same chromosomal region. Our objective was to determine whether strain differences in Mertk influence plaque formation. Approach and Results— To dissect the strain effects of Mertk on atherosclerosis, we first established a congenic mouse line ( Aath4a DBA/DBA ) in which a 5′ region of Aath4 of DBA/2J, including Mertk , was backcrossed onto a 129S6- Apoe −/− background. The resulting Aath4a DBA/DBA male mice developed significantly larger plaques compared with control mice ( Aath4a 129/129 ), proving that the DBA/2J allele of Aath4a is proatherogenic. Thioglycollate-elicited peritoneal macrophages from Aath4a DBA/DBA mice express less than 50% of Mertk mRNA and cell-surface MERTK (c-mer pro- to-oncogene tyrosine kinase coded by the Mertk gene) protein compared with those from the control mice. Moreover, both large and small peritoneal Aath4a DBA/DBA macrophages showed reduced phagocytosis of apoptotic cells. When Mertk cDNAs from 129S6 and DBA/2J mice were overexpressed in HEK293T cells, phagocytosis of apoptotic cells was equally enhanced in direct proportion to Mertk levels, indicating that phagocytosis is modulated by the amount of MERTK, but that it is not affected by MERTK amino acid differences between 129S6 and DBA/2J. Conclusions— Reduced transcription of Mertk , rather than differences in MERTK protein structure, determines the reduced efficiency of apoptotic cell clearance in the Aath4a DBA/DBA mice, which, in turn, contributes to their increased susceptibility to atherosclerosis.
Utilizing the PPET Mnemonic to Guide Classroom-Level PBIS for Students With or at Risk for EBD Across Classroom Settings:

In this article, the authors discuss how the emphasis on classroom-level Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports strategies can establish a foundation for an efficient classroom management pro...
Correlation between Scapular Asymmetry and Differences in Left and Right Side Activity of Muscles Adjacent to the Scapula

Objectives The aim of this study was to analyze the correlation between scapular asymmetry in young female adults and differences in left and right side activity of muscles adjacent to the scapula. Methods This study included 60 female students from U university in Korea. In order to examine scapular asymmetry, the lateral scapular slide test (LSST) was used. The LSST was performed in 3 different postures (LSST-1, LSST-2, and LSST-3; i.e., 0°, 45°, and 90° of upper limb abduction, respectively). Muscle activity was measured during external and internal rotation of the shoulder joints. Muscle activity was measured at the upper, middle, and lower trapezius, and the serratus anterior. Results In external shoulder rotation, there was a significant correlation (R = 0.450) between LSST-2 and the middle trapezius. In internal shoulder rotation, there was a significant correlation (R = 0.472) between LSST-2 and the upper trapezius, and between LSST-3 and the lower trapezius (R = 0.657); these results demonstrated a moderate positive linear correlation. Conclusion There was a positive correlation between left and right scapular asymmetry and the difference in left and right muscle activity of the trapezius in female adults. Problems in the trapezius may lead to scapular asymmetry.
Association between lifetime risk of atrial fibrillation and mortality in the oldest old.

BACKGROUND Age is the strongest predictor of atrial fibrillation (AF), yet little is known about AF incidence in the oldest old. HYPOTHESIS AF incidence declines after age 90 years, and morbidity is compressed into a brief period at the end of life. METHODS In this retrospective, longitudinal cohort study of patients (born 1905-1935), we examined cumulative lifetime incidence of AF and its impact on mortality. Data included records from 1 062 610 octogenarians, 317 161 nonagenarians, and 3572 centenarians. Kaplan-Meier curves were used to estimate cumulative incidence of AF by age group, incidence rates were compared using log-rank tests, and Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate unadjusted hazard ratios. The primary outcome was AF incidence at age > 80 years; the secondary outcome was mortality. RESULTS The cumulative AF incidence rate was 5.0% in octogenarians, 5.4% in nonagenarians, and 2.3% in centenarians. Octogenarians and nonagenarians had a higher risk of AF incidence compared to centenarians (adjusted hazard ratio 8.74, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 6.31-12.04; and 2.98, 95% CI: 2.17-4.1, respectively). The lowest hazard ratio for mortality in patients with AF compared to those without was 2.3 (95% CI: 2.3-2.4) in patients who were on antiplatelet and anticoagulant medication and had a score of 0 on the Elixhauser comorbidity index score. CONCLUSIONS Although AF incidence increased with age, being a centenarian was associated with reduced incidence and compression of morbidity. Patients with AF had a higher adjusted mortality rate. However, data suggest that a regimen of anticoagulants and antiplatelets may reduce risk of mortality in patients over 80 with an AF diagnosis.
Complex Lower-Extremity Venous Disease:

Venous insufficiency is a potentially debilitating condition causing symptoms such as tiredness in the legs, chronic pain, and in many instances ulcerations and skin changes. Although the diagnosis of venous insufficiency by duplex ultrasound has been previously described in the literature, there are cases that present to the vascular laboratory with unusual presentations of venous insufficiency. The case described in this study is one such presentation. The use of duplex ultrasound in this case was instrumental in determining the clinical pathway for the treatment of his chronic venous disease.
The Utility of Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy for Measuring Cortical Activity during Cycling Exercise.

ABSTRACTPurposeReal-time measurement of dynamic brain activity during exercise can help advance our understanding of the role of exercise upon brain health and function. In exercise science, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has primarily been used to measure the effects of exercise inte
The Need for a National Strategy to Assess and Reduce Disaster-Related Mortality in the United States.

The author argues the need for a national strategy to assess and reduce disaster-related mortality in the U.S. Topics include an increase in the number of extreme weather disasters in the U.S., the tendency for the majority of U.S. disaster-related deaths to be a result of injury normally occurring near the first hour after injury before most disaster assistance is deployed, and the need for primary and secondary prevention measures.
Biochemistry instructors’ use of intentions for student learning to evaluate and select external representations of protein translation

Instructors draw on their intentions for student learning in the enactment of curriculum, particularly in the selection and presentation of external representation of scientific phenomena. These representations both create opportunities for students to experience non-experiential biochemical phenomena, such as protein translation, and constrain the possibilities for student learning based on the limited number of features depicted and the visual cues used to draw viewers attention to those features. In this study, we explore biochemistry instructors’ intentions for student learning about protein translation and how those intentions influence their selection of external representations for instruction. A series of instructor interviews were used to identify information that students need to know in order to develop a biochemically accurate understanding of protein translation. We refer to this information as the “critical features” of protein translation. Two dominant themes of critical features were identified: (1) components/structures of protein translation and (2) interactions/chemistry of protein translation. Three general components (the ribosome, the mRNA, and the tRNA) and two primary interactions (base pairing and peptide bond formation) were described by all instructors. Instructors tended to favor simpler, stylized representations that closely aligned with their stated critical features of translation for instructional purposes.
Filtered Inner Product Projection for Crosslingual Embedding Alignment

Due to widespread interest in machine translation and transfer learning, there are numerous algorithms for mapping multiple embeddings to a shared representation space. Recently, these algorithms have been studied in the setting of bilingual dictionary induction where one seeks to align the embeddings of a source and a target language such that translated word pairs lie close to one another in a common representation space. In this paper, we propose a method, Filtered Inner Product Projection (FIPP), for mapping embeddings to a common representation space and evaluate FIPP in the context of bilingual dictionary induction. As semantic shifts are pervasive across languages and domains, FIPP first identifies the common geometric structure in both embeddings and then, only on the common structure, aligns the Gram matrices of these embeddings. Unlike previous approaches, FIPP is applicable even when the source and target embeddings are of differing dimensionalities. We show that our approach outperforms existing methods on the MUSE dataset for various language pairs. Furthermore, FIPP provides computational benefits both in ease of implementation and scalability.
Elucidating Structure–Composition–Property Relationships of Ni-Based Prussian Blue Analogues for Electrochemical Seawater Desalination

Nickel hexacyanoferrate (NiHCF), a type of Prussian blue analogue (PBA), has recently emerged as one of the most promising Na-storage electrodes for use in electrochemical desalination. Previous st...
D L P Output Format

The D L P output format is a set of conventions used to return an optimal solution. As with the input format, two types of usage are envisioned, namely: 1. The D L P output can be read and manipulated directly by a decision maker in order to obtain information on the optimal solution that has been returned, or on the nature of the infeasibility, if the problem specified has no feasible solution. 2. In analogy with standard linear programming, a user-supplied routine, called a report generator, can be written to turn the D L P output information into a more presentable form—tabular, histogram, graphical or pie-chart—as suits the needs of the application at hand.
Advanced Markov Logic Techniques for Scalable Joint Inference in NLP

In the early days of the statistical NLP era, many language processing tasks were tackled using the so-called pipeline architecture: the given task is broken into a series of sub-tasks such that the output of one sub-task is an input to the next sub-task in the sequence. The pipeline architecture is appealing for various reasons, including modularity, modeling convenience, and manageable computational complexity. However, it suffers from the error propagation problem: errors made in one sub-task are propagated to the next sub-task in the sequence, leading to poor accuracy on that sub-task, which in turn leads to more errors downstream. Another disadvantage associated with it is lack of feedback: errors made in a sub-task are often not corrected using knowledge uncovered while solving another sub-task down the pipeline.Realizing these weaknesses, researchers have turned to joint inference approaches in recent years. One such approach involves the use of Markov logic, which is defined as a set of weighted first-order logic formulas and, at a high level, unifies first-order logic with probabilistic graphical models. It is an ideal modeling language (knowledge representation) for compactly representing relational and uncertain knowledge in NLP. In a typical use case of MLNs in NLP, the application designer describes the background knowledge using a few first-order logic sentences and then uses software packages such as Alchemy, Tuffy, and Markov the beast to perform learning and inference (prediction) over the MLN. However, despite its obvious advantages, over the years, researchers and practitioners have found it difficult to use MLNs effectively in many NLP applications. The main reason for this is that it is hard to scale inference and learning algorithms for MLNs to large datasets and complex models, that are typical in NLP.In this tutorial, we will introduce the audience to recent advances in scaling up inference and learning in MLNs as well as new approaches to make MLNs a "black-box" for NLP applications (with only minor tuning required on the part of the user). Specifically, we will introduce attendees to a key idea that has emerged in the MLN research community over the last few years, lifted inference , which refers to inference techniques that take advantage of symmetries (e.g., synonyms), both exact and approximate, in the MLN . We will describe how these next-generation inference techniques can be used to perform effective joint inference. We will also present our new software package for inference and learning in MLNs, Alchemy 2.0, which is based on lifted inference, focusing primarily on how it can be used to scale up inference and learning in large models and datasets for applications such as semantic similarity determination, information extraction and question answering.
Copper-based alloys for structural high-heat-flux applications: a review of development, properties, and performance of Cu-rich Cu–Cr–Nb alloys

This review examines the development and current state of Cu-rich Cu–Cr–Nb alloys commonly referred to as GRCop or Glenn Research copper alloys with emphasis on Cu–8Cr–4Nb (at%), or GRCop-84, and C...
Covid-19 Vaccine Trials and Incarcerated People - The Ethics of Inclusion.

Covid-19 Vaccine Trials and Incarcerated People Amid ongoing efforts to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection in correctional facilities, researchers are considering whether incarcerated people sho...
Value, Wild Animals and the Law

Human animals protect that which we value. As such, developing appreciation for the many values exhibited by wild animals, especially their intrinsic value, is key to providing greater protection for their individual welfare. Traditionally, humans have focused on wild animals as resources for human consumption. However, wild animals, as sentient beings with interests of their own, have intrinsic value independent of their utility to humans. To a very modest degree, domestic anti-cruelty and welfare laws, and provisions in international treaties that prohibit especially cruel methods of killing wild animals, reflect an understanding of animals’ intrinsic value and their interest in well-being. However, because our current anthropocentric legal system is focused largely on conservation – viewing wild animals as resources for human use and focusing on the preservation of species rather than the protection of the well-being of individual animals – the law does not adequately protect the well-being of individual wild animals. What is required is a paradigm shift towards a non-anthropocentric ethic where human interests do not automatically dominate over the interests of wild animals and where the law protects the well-being of individual wild animals for their own interest, independent of their use to humans or the status of their species. Recognising and accounting for the intrinsic value of wild animals that justifies their moral significance is key to creating this paradigm shift that will in turn take wild animal well-being seriously and provide greater protection for the well-being of wild animals under international and domestic law. Achieving this paradigm shift requires both emphasising the non-consumptive and existence values of wild animals to humans that will provide direct incentives for society to protect their well-being and developing empathy among the public and policymakers for wild animals and their interests such that we recognise and respect their intrinsic value. Finally, the basic contours of a legal regime that takes the well-being of wild animals seriously includes several components. The first is moving away from viewing wild animals as resources for human use by emphasising protection and preservation over conservation. The second is emphasising protecting wild animals from all human-induced harm over allowing humans to harm wild animals and only protecting them from ‘unnecessary’ pain and suffering. And third, in the limited situations where wild animals must be harmed by humans, is placing the burden of proof on the entity proposing the harm and setting an objective standard that minimises pain and suffering and is enforceable.
Factors associated with change in frailty scores and long-term outcomes in older adults with coronary artery disease.

Objective Older adults with coronary artery disease (CAD) are at risk for frailty. However, little is known regarding transition in frailty measures over time or its impact on outcomes. We sought to determine the association of temporal change in frailty with long-term outcome in older adults with CAD. Methods We re-assessed for phenotypic frailty using the Fried index (0 = not frail; 1-2 = pre-frail; ≥ 3 frail) in a cohort of CAD patients ≥ 65 years old at 2 time points 5 years apart. Factors associated with frailty worsening were assessed with scatterplots and outcomes estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Cox models were used to assess the risk of worsening frailty on outcome. Results There were 45 subjects that completed both baseline and 5-year Fried frailty assessment. Mean age was 74.6 ± 5.9 and 30 (67%) were men. Frailty incidence increased over time: baseline (3% frail, 37% pre-frail); 5 years (10% frail, 40% pre-frail). Baseline factors were not predictors of worsening frailty score, while both slower walk time (r = 0.46; P = 0.004) and diminishing grip strength (r = -0.39; P = 0.01) were associated with worsening frailty transitions. In follow-up (median 5.2 years), long-term major adverse cardiac event (MACE) free survival (P = 0.12) or hospitalization (P = 0.98) was not different for those with worsening frailty score (referent: improved/unchanged frailty). Frailty worsening had a trend towards increased risk of MACE (HR = 1.86; 95% CI: 0.65-5.27, P = 0.25). Conclusions Frailty transitions, specifically, declines in walk time and grip strength, were strongly associated with worsening frailty score in a cohort of older adults with CAD than were baseline indices, though frailty change status was not independently associated with MACE outcomes.
Team Policy Production

I develop a model of policy making by a team. In the model, policy outcomes are the product of the joint efforts of a legislature and an executive where each branch is modeled as a unitary actor. Substantively, this captures the idea that policy outcomes under the separation of powers are a function of legislative design, deliberation, and oversight working in conjunction with executive branch implementation. The actions of the agents generate outcomes that vary across two dimensions: a distributive dimension and a quality dimension. The distributive dimension reflects how the divergent policy goals of the agents are reconciled. The quality dimension reflects a set of features that enhance the efficacy, efficiency, or equity of policy outcomes. Quality outcomes are jointly determined by the efforts and capacities of of both actors.
Generalized Algorithm to Deal With Temperature-Dependent Demagnetization Curves of Permanent Magnets for FEA

This article introduces a temperature-dependent demagnetization model and presents a generalized algorithm to deal with temperature-dependent demagnetization curves for permanent magnet materials. It supports the input of both intrinsic curve type and normal curve type. The algorithm is based on the intrinsic curve type. If the input curves are of normal type, they will be converted into intrinsic type and be extended to the whole second quadrant. The presented algorithm is validated by comparing the derived curves at specified temperatures with the original vendor-provided temperature-dependent demagnetization curves of various permanent magnet (PM) materials. The temperature effects on the performance of permanent magnet machines are illustrated in two application examples.
Walking the party line: The growing role of political ideology in shaping health behavior in the United States.

Objective To assess the extent to which political ideology affects COVID-19 preventive behaviors and related beliefs and attitudes in the U.S. Methods Two surveys, one using a convenience sample and another using a nationally representative sample, were conducted in September and November 2020, respectively. Multiple regressions compared political ideology with identified COVID-19 risk factors and demographics as well as knowledge measures. Surveys were followed by a review of the emerging COVID-19 behavioral literature (completed in January 2021) to assess the frequency of ideological effects in publicly reported data. Results In the survey data, political ideology was a significant predictor for all dependent variables in both surveys, and the strongest predictor for most of them. Out of 141 estimates from 44 selected studies, political ideology was a significant predictor of responses in 112 (79%) and showed the largest effect on COVID-19-related measures in close to half of these estimates (44%). Conclusions This study reinforces previous research that found partisan differences in engaging in behaviors with long-term health consequences by showing that these ideologically-driven differences manifest in situations where the possibility of severe illness or death is immediate and the potential societal impact is significant. The substantial implications for public health research and practice are both methodological and conceptual.
The Run Length Distribution of the CUSUM with Estimated Parameters

The performance of the CUSUM control chart used to monitor the performance of production processes is usually evaluated with the assumption that the process parameters are know. In practice, however, the parameters are seldom known and are often replace..
Science, Culture, and Philosophy: The Relation between Human, All Too Human and Nietzsche's Early Thought

The goal of this article is to trace the transformations in Nietzsche's early thinking that led to the ideas published in Human, All Too Human, the first book of his mature philosophy. In contrast to his early works, in which he sides with art and philosophy in criticizing the scientific culture of his time, Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human, hails the methodology of science as a way to overcome the metaphysical delusions of philosophy, art, and religion. However, in disagreement with popular scholarly view, I show that Human, All Too Human does not represent a complete break with his earlier writings, but rather a shift in emphasis. I argue that the overall project connecting Nietzsche's early thought to Human, All Too Human is, first, the attempt to come to terms with the upheavals introduced into the cultural terrain by the Socratic turn, and second, to affirm a higher culture.
Decentralized Modeling and Decentralized Thinking

The Era of Decentralization It seems fair to say that we live in an era of decentralization. Almost every time you pick up a newspaper, you can see evidence of the growing interest in decentralized systems. On the front page, you might read an article about the transition of the former Communist states from centrally planned economies to market-based economies. Turn to the business page, and you might find an article about the shift in corporate organizations away from top-down hierarchies toward decentralized management structures. The science section might carry an article about new distributed models of the mind, and it might include a technology column about the role of the Internet in promoting distributed approaches to computing. And in the book review, you might discover how the latest literary theories are based on the idea that literary meaning itself is decentralized—always constructed by individual readers, not imposed by a centralized author.
Coverage-aware sensor engagement in dense sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are capable of carrying out surveillance missions for various applications in remote areas without human interventions. An essential issue of sensor networks is to search for the balance between the limited battery supply and the desired lifetime of network operations. Beside data communication between sensors, maintaining sufficient surveillance, or sensing coverage, over a target region by coordination within the network is critical for many sensor networks due to the limited supply of energy source for each sensor. This paper presents a novel sensor network coverage maintenance protocol, called Coverage-Aware Sensor Engagement (CASE), to efficiently maintain the required degree of sensing coverage by activating a small number of sensors while putting the others to sleep mode. Different from other coverage maintenance protocols, CASE schedules active/inactive sensing states of a sensor according to the sensor's contribution to the network sensing coverage, therefore preserving the expected behavior of the sensor network. Coverage contribution of each sensor is quantitatively measured by a metric called "coverage merit". By activating sensors with relatively large coverage merit and deactivating those with small coverage merit, CASE effectively achieves energy conservation while maintaining sufficient sensor network coverage. We provide simulation results to show that CASE considerably improves the energy efficiency of coverage maintenance with low communication overhead.
Cognitive processes in comorbid poor sleep and chronic pain

We examined the unique and shared contributions of pain catastrophizing, cognitive pre-sleep arousal, and somatic pre-sleep arousal, to the prediction of insomnia severity in chronic pain. Forty-eight adults with chronic pain completed self-report measures of these study variables, health, and mood. Hierarchical regression showed that pain catastrophizing accounted for unique variance in insomnia severity, independent of pain intensity, depression, restless legs symptoms, and demographics. However, when cognitive and somatic pre-sleep arousal were also taken into account, the significance of cognitive pre-sleep arousal rendered pain catastrophizing non-significant. We identify research and clinical implications of this study.
Time-based intrusion detection in cyber-physical systems

Embedded systems, particularly real-time systems with temporal constraints, are increasingly deployed in every day life. Such systems that interact with the physical world are also referred to as cyber-physical systems (CPS). These systems commonly find use in critical infrastructure from transportation to health care. While security in CPS-based real-time embedded systems has been an afterthought, it is becoming a critical issue as these systems are increasingly networked and inter-dependent. The advancement in their functionality has resulted in more conspicuous interfaces that may be exploited to attack them.In this paper, we present three mechanisms for time-based intrusion detection. More specifically, we detect the execution of unauthorized instructions in real-time CPS environments. Such intrusion detection utilizes information obtained by static timing analysis. For real-time CPS systems, timing bounds on code sections are readily available as they are already determined prior to the schedulability analysis. We demonstrate how to provide micro-timings for multiple granularity levels of application code. Through bounds checking of these micro-timings, we develop techniques to detect intrusions (1) in a self-checking manner by the application and (2) through the operating system scheduler, which are novel contributions to the real-time/embedded systems domain to the best of our knowledge.
Adaptive control of multivariable thermal processes in HVAC systems

Abstract The application of adaptive control for a class of multivariable processes in heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems is studied. As an example, a two zone fan-coil heating (FCH) system is considered. The thermal dynamics of the FCH system and environmental zones are simulated by a nonlinear model. The environmental zones are acted upon by multiple disturbances, such as changes in outdoor temperature, solar radiation fluxes and dynamic disturbances due to the thermal inertia of the enclosure elements. The control objective is to hold the zone temperatures and the boiler temperature close to their respective setpoints irrespective of the changes in disturbances acting on the system. A multivariable adaptive controller based on LQR (Linear Quadratic Regulator) theory is designed. Simulation results showing the closed loop response of the system to changes in operating points, external disturbances, changes in system parameters and unmodeled dynamics are presented. It is shown that the adaptive controller is able to adapt to a wide range of operating conditions and is able to maintain the zone temperatures and the boiler temperature close to their respective setpoints.
Increased expression of keratinocyte growth factor messenger RNA associated with inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract BACKGROUND & AIMS: Alterations in intestinal epithelial cell function are common in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) is an epithelial cell-specific mitogen. The aim of this study was to examine IBD tissue for altered KGF expression. METHODS: Expression levels of the KGF and KGF receptor transcripts were analyzed by ribonuclease protection assay. The cellular localization of each transcript was determined using in situ hybridization. RESULTS: KGF messenger RNA levels were increased in inflamed IBD tissue in comparison with control tissues. In normal tissue, KGF messenger RNA was localized to the mesenchymal cells at the tip of the villi in the small intestine and directly underlying the mature enterocytes in the colon, whereas in IBD it was present throughout the lamina propria, although distinct from the germinal centers. The topographic distribution of the KGF in situ hybridization signal in IBD was similar to that observed for T lymphocytes. In contrast, KGF receptor transcripts were localized to the cryptal region of the mucosal epithelium in both normal and IBD tissue, with no apparent differences in the level of expression. CONCLUSIONS: The increased expression of KGF in IBD suggests that it may be involved in mediating the altered regulatory functions of intestinal epithelial cells in this disease. (Gastroenterology 1996 Feb;110(2):441-51)
Designing aggregation mechanisms for reputation systems in online marketplaces

A seller in an online marketplace with an effective reputation mechanism should expect that dishonest behavior results in higher payments now, while honest behavior results in higher reputation---and thus higher payments---in the future. We briefly survey recent results on the Window Aggregation Mechanism, a widely used class of mechanisms that shows the average value of the seller's ratings within some fixed window of past transactions. We suggest approaches for choosing the window size that maximizes the range of parameters for which it is optimal for the seller to be truthful. We show that mechanisms that use information from a larger number of past transactions tend to provide incentives for patient sellers to be more truthful, but for higher quality sellers to be less truthful. We then discuss a broader class of aggregation mechanisms that weight recent ratings more heavily and show that the same insight applies.
An analytical investigation of an energy flow divider to attenuate hand-transmitted vibration

Abstract A five-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) bio-mechanical model of the hand-arm system is developed to study the vibration transmissibility characteristics of the human hand-arm. The model parameters are identified from the characteristics of vibration transmitted to the hand, forearm and upper arm, measured in the 10–200 Hz frequency range under a constant 25.0 N grip force. A concept of an energy flow divider is proposed to reduce the flow of vibration energy into the hand. The coupled hand-arm-divider is modeled as a six-DOF dynamical system and the response characteristics are evaluated for handle excitations caused by a palm-grip orbital sander. The response characteristics of the coupled hand-arm-divider model are compared to those of the hand-arm model to demonstrate the potential performance benefits of the proposed energy flow divider. The hand-transmitted vibration is further assessed using the overall weighted acceleration response, and it is concluded that the proposed energy flow divider can reduce the magnitude of hand-transmitted vibration considerably.