cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Physicians’ rhetorical strategies for motivating HPV vaccination

Abstract Rationale. Receiving a healthcare provider's recommendation is a well-documented predictor of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, and yet recommendations remain understudied and undertheorized. Objective. To qualitatively describe strategies providers use to motivate HPV vaccination. Method. We surveyed a national sample of 771 U.S. primary care physicians. Data came from an open-ended item that assessed physicians' perspectives on the most effective thing they could say to persuade parents to get HPV vaccine for their 11- to 12-year-old children. Using a standardized codebook and two independent coders, we conducted a thematic analysis to identify rhetorical strategies underlying physicians' responses. Results. We identified two sets of strategies for motivating HPV vaccination. One set drew parents' attention to specific actors or vaccine characteristics. Physicians using these strategies asked parents to consider their children's individual risk in the short-term, named specific diseases that could be prevented, emphasized the novelty of HPV vaccine as a cancer prevention tool, and gave their personal endorsement for HPV vaccination. In contrast, the second set of strategies was more distancing and impersonal. Physicians using these strategies referenced future risk, described cancer prevention in general terms, framed HPV vaccine as similar to other vaccines, and shared organizational endorsements for HPV vaccination. Across these two sets of strategies, a tension emerged between the goals of engaging parents' perceptions of HPV as a threat to their children versus framing HPV vaccination as a normative standard of care. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that theoretical frameworks, such as Construal Level Theory, may be helpful for positioning provider recommendations in the broader literature on persuasive communication. By identifying competing approaches to motivating HPV vaccination, this study lays the groundwork for future research to test the acceptability and impact of strategies for recommending routine preventive care.
Bibliotherapy and OCD: The Case of Turtles All The Way Down by John Green (2017)

This case study uses three different frameworks of inquiry to examine Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (2017) with a disability lens. The analysis extends beyond the traditional medical/social dichotomy and considers how disability is tied to both agency and identity. Narratives and counter-narratives of disability are also investigated, as well as disability markers used in previous scholarship. The discussion concludes with an argument to include the novel in secondary English classes to create mental health allies. A consideration for medical humanities scholars is also included to use Green’s text with patients with OCD, as a way for readers to find an identifiable protagonist.
Relative Tutte Polynomials of Tensor Products of Coloured Graphs

The tensor product (G1,G2) of a graph G1 and a pointed graph G2 (containing one distinguished edge) is obtained by identifying each edge of G1 with the distinguished edge of a separate copy of G2, and then removing the identified edges. A formula to compute the Tutte polynomial of a tensor product of graphs was originally given by Brylawski. This formula was recently generalized to coloured graphs and the generalized Tutte polynomial introduced by Bollobas and Riordan. In this paper we generalize the coloured tensor product formula to relative Tutte polynomials of relative graphs, containing zero edges to which the usual deletion/contraction rules do not apply. As we have shown in a recent paper, relative Tutte polynomials may be used to compute the Jones polynomial of a virtual knot.
Integrated Review of Psychosocial and Behavioral Health Assessments and Interventions in Pulmonary Hypertension.

Background The medical management of patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) has advanced, with few evidence-based recommendations about psychosocial and behavioral health interventions. There is also a lack of comprehensive understanding of PH psychosocial and behavioral health needs. Some psychosocial and behavioral health interventions have been tested; however, there is a gap in the systematic evaluation of nonpharmacological complementary approaches to augment PH management when addressing psychosocial and behavioral health needs. Objectives The objectives are to explore psychosocial and behavioral health needs and describe psychosocial and behavioral health interventions for patients with PH. Methods We conducted an integrative systematic review of publications between January 1, 2010, and January 31, 2020, obtained from electronic databases: EMBASE, PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Cochrane, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. The literature searches focused on empirical literature reporting psychosocial needs and psychosocial and behavioral health interventions for adult PH patients. We included peer-reviewed studies published in English. Search terms used in the study were: "hypertension," "pulmonary hypertension," "psychosocial," "depression," "anxiety," "quality of life," "behavioral health," "self-management," "psychosocial intervention," and "psychological distress." Excluded were opinion and discussion publications, reviews, non-PH populations, and pediatric articles. We used the constant comparison method to guide the synthesis of reports applying the Joanna Briggs quality assessment guidelines. Results A total of 44 articles meeting the criteria were included for final consideration. We conducted an integrative systematic review of 27 quantitative studies, narrative synthesis of 10 qualitative studies, and 7 psychosocial and behavioral health intervention studies. PH patients reported psychosocial needs, such as financial, social connections, sexual health, and palliative care needs, as well as levels of psychological distress symptoms. The results from both quantitative and qualitative studies revealed similar overarching psychosocial and behavioral health conceptual categories. Patients described their ongoing needs in PH management by relying on their psychosocial and behavioral health capabilities to adjust to changes at each stage of disease progression. Patients had high levels of psychosocial and behavioral health needs requiring interventions beyond medical treatment. Discussion Pilot studies testing psychosocial and behavioral health interventions reported improvement in levels of anxiety and depression and health-related quality of life. Larger scale studies are needed to advance this knowledge. Psychosocial and behavioral health interventions with cognitive-guided foci have the potential of meeting these unmet needs.
Evidence That Agouti-Related Peptide May Directly Regulate Kisspeptin Neurons in Male Sheep

Agouti-related peptide (AgRP) neurons, which relay information from peripheral metabolic signals, may constitute a key central regulator of reproduction. Given that AgRP inhibits luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion and that nutritional suppression of LH elicits an increase in AgRP while suppressing kisspeptin expression in the arcuate nucleus (ARC) of the hypothalamus, we sought to examine the degree to which AgRP could directly regulate ARC kisspeptin neurons. Hypothalamic tissue was collected from four castrated male sheep (10 months of age) and processed for the detection of protein (AgRP input to kisspeptin neurons) using immunohistochemistry and mRNA for melanocortin 3 and 4 receptors (MC3R; MC4R) in kisspeptin neurons using RNAscope. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that the majority of ARC kisspeptin neurons are contacted by presumptive AgRP terminals. RNAscope analysis revealed that nearly two thirds of the ARC kisspeptin neurons express mRNA for MC3R, while a small percentage (<10%) colocalize MC4R. Taken together, this data provides neuroanatomical evidence for a direct link between orexigenic AgRP neurons and reproductively critical kisspeptin neurons in the sheep, and builds upon our current understanding of the central link between energy balance and reproduction.
Early Alectinib Resistance From MET Amplification in ALK-Rearranged NSCLC: Response to Crizotinib with Re-Response to Alectinib and Crizotinib.

Clinical Practice Points • Crizotinib is active as second-line therapy against MET-mediated resistance to alectinib in anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-rearranged non–small-cell lung cancer and can be used in combination. • Repeat molecular analyses including assessment of MET amplification can help guide therapy in ALK-positive non–small-cell lung cancer.
Finding Synergy in Academe: An Interview With Dave L. Edyburn:

Dave L. Edyburn, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Exceptional Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and more recently the Associate Dean for Research in the College of...
Visually Impaired Indoor Navigation using YOLO Based Object Recognition, Monocular Depth Estimation and Binaural Sounds

This paper presents the development of a real-time spatial audio generating software to assist visually impaired people in indoor navigation using computer vision techniques and binaural sound generations. Our computer vision techniques utilize YOLO (You Only Look Once) based algorithm to detect objects, monocular depth estimation techniques to derive the depth map from a single captured image, and linear interpolation to obtain the azimuth and elevation angles of the detected objects. Based on the obtained results, binaural sounds are generated by HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function), where the intensity of the generated spatial audio is varied according to the distance of the detected object. Our test results show the real-time generated binaural sounds were able to accurately specify the position of the object in 2D space to avoid collisions and to provide surrounding information for navigating visually impaired people.
Interactions between the intestinal microbiota and epigenome in individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by variable impairment of cognitive function and interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, some individuals with ASD have gastrointestinal disorders that have been correlated with impairments in intestinal microbiota. Gut microbiota are important not only for intestinal health, but also for many other functions including food digestion, energy production, immune system regulation, and, according to current data, behavior. Disruption of the indigenous microbiota, microbial dysbiosis (imbalance between microorganisms present in the gut), overgrowth of potentially pathogenic microorganisms, a less diverse microbiome, or lower levels of beneficial bacteria in children with ASD can affect behavior. Metabolome analysis in children with ASD has identified perturbations in multiple metabolic pathways that might be associated with cognitive functions. Recent studies have shown that the intestinal microbiome provides environmental signals that can modify host response to stimuli by modifying the host epigenome, which affects DNA methylation, histone modification, and non-coding RNAs. The most studied microbiota-produced epigenetic modifiers are short-chain fatty acids, although other products of intestinal microbiota might also cause epigenetic modifications in the host's DNA. Here we review evidence suggesting that epigenetic alterations caused by modification of gene expression play an important role in understanding ASD.
Representation is Everything: Towards Efficient and Adaptable Similarity Measures for Biological Data.

Distance function computation is an important operation in biological data mining. This is because the notion of similarity is often required as a key subroutine in many data mining algorithms such as clustering, search or indexing. Furthermore, since such applications typically require repeated distance function computation, it is desirable to perform this task as efficiently as possible. A wide variety of alignment functions have been designed in the literature in order to determine similarity between biological strings. Typically, most of these methods such as the edit distance or the Smith-Waterman algorithm rely on either a local or global form of alignment between the two string representations of the biological data. Yet, many of these methods suffer from a variety of drawbacks both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency in measuring similarity. In this paper, we examine the key qualitative issues in measurement of similarity among distance functions, and question the fundamental assumptions in using alignment measures over string representations of the biological data. We argue that the alignment approach is rigid and brittle, ignores several relevant compositional characteristics of the strings, is not easily trainable from examples, and is inherently resistant to an efficient data mining process from a representational point of view. We propose a fundamental overhaul in the methods for similarity computation of biological data by changing the underlying representation of the data. Our proposed methodology (PROSAC) uses PRObabilistic SAmpling for similarity Computations, and results in a new representation of the strings at a higher level of abstraction; yet the abstraction process has the effect of removing the noise in the distance measurements of precise alignment techniques. In addition, some forms of string representation in the PROSAC approach map to well known representational and distance computation methods in the data mining field, and therefore existing data mining software can be used directly and efficiently on the new representation. We also show that the approach is amenable to the use of supervision for parametric determination of efficient distance functions for particular tasks in biological analysis.
How Pollution Taxes may Increase Pollution and Reduce Net Revenues

This paper develops a positive theory of pollution taxation by a federal authority when pollution abatement subsidies are used by local governments. Environmental and industry lobby groups influence governments with campaign contributions. First, pollution may increase in the pollution tax because the abatement subsidy increases (decreases) with the tax, and pollution increases (decreases) in the abatement subsidy. This occurs because the lobbying incentives change at a pollution tax reform. Second, pollution taxes may reduce net revenues because subsidy expenditures rise. Third, pollution may increase simultaneously as net revenues fall. Finally, the welfare effect of a pollution tax may be negative.
Operational Data Analysis: Improved Predictions Using Multi-computer Pattern Detection

Operational Data Analysis (ODA) automatically 1) monitors the performance of a computer through time, 2) stores such information in a data repository, 3) applies data-mining techniques, and 4) generates results. We describe a system implementing the four steps in ODA, focusing our attention on the data-mining step where our goal is to predict the value of a performance parameter (e.g., response time, cpu utilization, memory utilization) in the future. Our approach to the prediction problem extracts patterns from a database containing information from thousands of historical records and across computers. We show empirically how a multivariate linear regression model applied on all available records outperforms 1) a linear univariate model per machine, 2) a linear multivariate model per machine, and 3) a decision tree for regression across all machines. We conclude that global patterns relating characteristics across different computer models exist and can be extracted to improve the accuracy in predicting future performance behavior.
BOXES: a symbolic abstract domain of boxes

Numeric abstract domains are widely used in program analyses. The simplest numeric domains over-approximate disjunction by an imprecise join, typically yielding path-insensitive analyses. This problem is addressed by domain refinements, such as finite powersets, which provide exact disjunction. However, developing correct and efficient disjunctive refinement is challenging. First, there must be an efficient way to represent and manipulate abstract values. The simple approach of using "sets of base abstract values" is often not scalable. Second, while a widening must strike the right balance between precision and the rate of convergence, it is notoriously hard to get correct. In this paper, we present an implementation of the Boxes abstract domain - a refinement of the well-known Box (or Intervals) domain with finite disjunctions. An element of Boxes is a finite union of boxes, i.e., expressible as a propositional formula over upper- and lower-bounds constraints. Our implementation is symbolic, and weds the strengths of Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) and Box. The complexity of the operations (meet, join, transfer functions, and widening) is polynomial in the size of the operands. Empirical evaluation indicates that the performance of Boxes is superior to other existing refinements of Box with comparable expressiveness.
Effects of free gossypol in the diet of pregnant and postpartum Brahman cows on calf development and cow performance.

Pregnant Brahman cows (n = 38) and heifers (n = 12) were assigned, 90 d before expected calving dates, to one of three treatment groups: 1) 0 g of free gossypol(FG).animal-1.d-1 (FGHD) from soybean meal (SBM), controls; 2) 2 g of FGHD from SBM and cottonseed meal (CSM), low FG; or 3) 4 g of FGHD from CSM, high FG, to determine the effects of dietary FG on prepartum and postpartum cow performance, calf development, and selected blood variables. Prepartum and postpartum cow BW, 4-h milk production, and calf BW were similar (P > .10) among treatments. Following 84 d of treatment, cows receiving 4 g of FGHD tended (P .10) calf EF. Serum triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) in cows and T4:T3 ratio in calves were similar (P > .10) among treatments. After 84 d of treatment, cows receiving 4 g of FGHD had lower (P .10) for all cows and calves. On d 7 and 28 after calving, alpha-tocopherol tended to be lower (P < .10) and beta-carotene was lower (P < .05) in calves given 4 than in those given 0 g of FGHD. Calf metacarpal medial cortex tended to be greater (P < .10) in calves from cows given 0 than in those from cows given 2 or 4 g of FGHD, and the lateral cortex (treatment x sex; P < .05) was smaller in male calves from cows given 4 than in those from cows given 0 g of FGHD but was not affected in female calves. By 96 to 105 d after calving, a greater number of (P < .05) cows consuming 4 and 2 g of FGHD experienced luteal activity, and a greater (P < .10) number than of cows receiving 0 g of FGHD had conceived by 112 d after calving. In summary, pre- and postpartum consumption of FG may have impaired some aspects of calf skeletal development and vitamin metabolism, although long-term performance of cows and calves was not affected.
Infrared spectra of Venus

A historical account of observations of Venus and their interpretation is given. The major constituent of the atmosphere on Venus (CO2) was detected spectroscopically forty years ago, and minor constituents (CO, HF, HCl) have been found more recently. The infrared spectra also provide a means of studying the motions of her cloudy atmosphere. The composition of the clouds has been sought in the reflection spectrum of Venus, and some of the evidence for their nature is discussed.
Sleep disturbances predict prospective declines in resident physicians’ psychological well-being

Background : Medical residency can be a time of increased psychological stress and sleep disturbance. We examine the prospective associations between self-reported sleep quality and resident wellness across a single training year. Methods : Sixty-nine ( N =69) resident physicians completed the Brief Resident Wellness Profile ( M =17.66, standard deviation [SD]=3.45, range: 0–17) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index ( M =6.22, SD=2.86, range: 12–25) at multiple occasions in a single training year. We examined the 1-month lagged effect of sleep disturbances on residents’ self-reported wellness. Results : Accounting for residents’ overall level of sleep disturbance across the entire study period, both the concurrent (within-person) within-occasion effect of sleep disturbance ( B =−0.20, standard error [SE]=0.06, p= 0.003, 95% confidence interval [CI]: −0.33, −0.07) and the lagged within-person effect of resident sleep disturbance ( B= −0.15, SE=0.07, p= 0.037, 95% CI: −0.29, −0.009) were significant predictors of decreased resident wellness. Increases in sleep disturbances are a leading indicator of resident wellness, predicting decreased well-being 1 month later. Conclusions : Sleep quality exerts a significant effect on self-reported resident wellness. Periodic evaluation of sleep quality may alert program leadership and the residents themselves to impending decreases in psychological well-being. Keywords: wellness; sleep quality; residency training (Published: 21 June 2015) Citation: Med Educ Online 2015, 20: 28530 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/meo.v20.28530
Experimental data from an alternate topology HVCM for the Second Target Station (STS) at SNS

The proposed Second Target Station (STS) increases the beam energy at the SNS to 1.3 GeV by adding 7 additional cryomodules (28 cavities) to the end of the existing linear accelerator. To achieve the required gradients, these cavities will be powered with up to 700 kW peak power utilizing upgraded 550 kW klystrons. To meet the additional peak power needs, an enhancement to the present High Voltage Converter Modulator (HVCM) topology is being investigated. A discussion of the benefits derived from this alternate topology will be combined with experimental data from a prototype at SNS.
Toward Robust High Resolution Fluorescence Tomography: A Hybrid Row-action Edge Preserving Regularization

Depth-resolved localization and quantification of fluorescence distribution in tissue, called Fluorescence Molecular Tomography (FMT), is highly ill-conditioned as depth information should be extracted from limited number of surface measurements. Inverse solvers resort to regularization algorithms that penalize Euclidean norm of the solution to overcome ill-posedness. While these regularization algorithms offer good accuracy, their smoothing effects result in continuous distributions which lack high-frequency edge-type features of the actual fluorescence distribution and hence limit the resolution offered by FMT. We propose an algorithm that penalizes the total variation (TV) norm of the solution to preserve sharp transitions and high-frequency components in the reconstructed fluorescence map while overcoming ill-posedness. The hybrid algorithm is composed of two levels: 1) An Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (ART), performed on FMT data for fast recovery of a smooth solution that serves as an initial guess for the iterative TV regularization, 2) A time marching TV regularization algorithm, inspired by the Rudin-Osher-Fatemi TV image restoration, performed on the initial guess to further enhance the resolution and accuracy of the reconstruction. The performance of the proposed method in resolving fluorescent tubes inserted in a liquid tissue phantom imaged by a non-contact CW trans-illumination FMT system is studied and compared to conventional regularization schemes. It is observed that the proposed method performs better in resolving fluorescence inclusions at higher depths.
Advances in EPA's Indirect Exposure Modeling Methodology

ABSTRACTThe Environmental Protection Agency's National Center for Environmental Assessment is currently revising and updating its approach to modeling the health risks from indirect exposure to combustor emissions. The updated method is intended to provide the necessary tools for estimating these health risks and to provide the necessary algorithms for the calculation of contaminant concentrations in water bodies, soil, and the terrestrial and aquatic food chains resulting from the deposition and transfer of atmospheric pollutants. Significant additions to the approach include the expansion of the application of exposure methods at a site, the description of procedures for defining the study population at a site, and ways to develop distributions of individual risk for members of the study population. This paper focuses on the changes in the human exposure scenarios of the updated method and presents an overview of the development of an exposure scenario.
Cardiac MRI improves identification of etiology of ischemic stroke

Background Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Ischemic etiologies account for the vast majority of all cases of stroke from which about 20-25% have a cardiogenic cause. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is widely used as the initial test for evaluating patients with a suspected cardioembolic of stroke while additional studies are often required to further detect a cardiac source in patients with unremarkable TTE. While transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) has provided clinicians with invaluable information in these cases, most physicians find it cumbersome at best and patients it extremely uncomfortable. CMR is a novel imaging modality that is increasingly being used in assessing patients with cardiovascular disease. The noninvasive nature of this test makes it an attractive option for evaluating strokes for which a TTE is non-diagnostic. In this study, we assessed the feasibility of using CMR as an imaging modality additional to TTE for detection of cardioembolic strokes. Methods CMR was performed on 54 patients (25 men), age of 64.5± 16.3 years, who presented between August 2009 and June 2011 to our hospital with an acute stroke detected by diffusion weighted imaging brain MRI. In addition to the CMR all patients received a “routine” stroke workup which included a TTE, MRA of head and neck, carotid duplex, and laboratory workup. Patients without an obvious stroke etiology underwent additional studies such as transcranial duplex with or without a bubble study, and/or a cerebral angiogram. We divided patients based on the TOAST criteria for classification of ischemic stroke into atherothrombotic, cardioembolic, lacunar, other causes, and cryptogenic subtypes based on routine workup. We then assessed whether CMR could help to further identify a cardiac cause in patients with cryptogenic stroke. Results Table 1 summarizes our results. Based on initial assessment we found 15 patients (27.8%) with cryptogenic stroke. In 10 of these patients, CMR detected an underlying cardiac cause (Table 2). Overall CMR findings reduced the rate of cryptogenic stroke by 66.7% in our study population. From the patients that were classified as cardioembolic, there were 2 with TTE finding of severe annular calcification of the mitral valve, a relative risk factor for cardiogenic stroke. In one of these patients, CMR detected diffuse atherosclerosis of the ascending aorta and in the other, CMR detected transmural infarction of the septum, both which were undetected by TTE. Conclusions
The effect of field modulation amplitude and frequency upon the line shape analysis for unresolved hyperfine splitting

Abstract The use of magnetic field modulation amplitudes or frequencies which are too large with respect to the resonance line width lead to magnetic resonance line shape distortions. In this paper, the effect of modulation amplitude and frequency upon the magnetic resonance line shape and upon the recently discussed line shape analysis for the determination of unresolved hyperfine splitting are considered. Limits are suggested for both the experimental variables (field modulation amplitudes and frequencies) in terms of the observed line widths. The limits if observed will minimize line shape distortions and allow the use of the originally proposed line shape analysis. Attempts to modify the line shape analysis to include the effects of modulation frequency were not successful. The reasons for this lack of success are discussed. Experimental observations made upon dilute solutions of peroxylamine disulfonate confirm the results reported here.
Bacteriophage Tracer for Fecal Contamination Sources in Coastal Waters

Septic systems are designed for on-site treatment of wastewater, often for individual households with dependence on homeowner maintenance. They frequently become overloaded and fail, short-circuiting wastewater treatment within the tank, allowing untreated wastes into groundwater or surface water. Current methods for detection of such leaks rely on the use of inert dye and are often inadequate. The work described here included development and testing of bacteriophage-based tracking approaches to improve assessment of on-site sewage disposal systems and identification of leaks. The hypothesis is that a benign bacteriophage can be used to detect chronically failing septic systems with greater sensitivity and longevity than inert dye technology. Testing was conducted in both open waterway and coastal groundwater systems subject to astronomical tidal forcing. Results in open (surface) water demonstrated correlation between dye and phage presence initially, but the phage was detectable at greater distances and longer durations than the dye. Phage detection in groundwater did not correlate with dye presence, and revealed that phage moves more quickly through soils than dye. Details of the development, testing, and deployment of the bacteriophage tracer are provided, illuminating both the pros and cons of the approach. The ultimate advantage is that the use of a sentinel bacteriophage improves detectability of failing septic systems in coastal and other environments. This approach may thus be useful for establishing new science-based criteria for the installation of new septic systems in coastal areas.
Spectral purity of high-intensity laser beams

Three experiments are described in which high-intensity ruby and Nd: glass laser beams were analyzed for spectral purity. The aim of the experiments was to verify whether the nonlinear relation for photon energy $\ensuremath{\epsilon}=\frac{h\ensuremath{\nu}}{[1\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\beta}}_{\ensuremath{\nu}}f(I)]}$, previously used to explain ionization phenomena in gases irradiated with laser beams, admitted an interpretation in terms of change of light frequency as a function of intensity. Standard methods of frequency measurement, namely spectroscopic, interferometric, and filtering methods, were used. The results consistently exclude the idea of monochromatic laser beams and seem to indicate that, at the intensities used in the experiments, which ranged from a few hundred kilowatts/${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$ to a few gigawatts/${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, the laser line is broadened by several hundred angstroms.
Screening trauma patients for alcohol problems: are insurance companies barriers?

Background: Impairment caused by alcohol is the leading risk factor for trauma. However, many physicians do not screen for alcohol use because of concerns about confidentiality and denial of insurance coverage. The purpose of this study was to examine objectively the confidentiality issues and insurance statutes affecting alcohol screening in trauma centers. Methods: We conducted a survey of insurance commissioners in all 50 states to determine the prevalence of statutes allowing denial of coverage for injuries sustained while impaired due to alcohol, reviewed state insurance laws, and reviewed federal regulations protecting the confidentiality of alcohol information in patients seeking alcohol treatment. Results: Special federal regulations protecting confidentiality of alcohol screening data depend on how such information is acquired and do not routinely cover trauma patients. Concerns about screening on insurance coverage are valid in 38 states. Conclusion: Segregating information about alcohol use in the medical record and assigning designated chemical dependency counselors to screen all trauma patients would provide confidentiality of alcohol information under current federal regulations, allowing denial of release of such information, except under subpoena.
Remote sensing for land management and planning

The primary role of remote sensing in land management and planning has been to provide information concerning the physical characteristics of the land which influence the management of individual land parcels or the allocation of lands to various uses These physical characteristics have typically been assessed through aerial photography, which is used to develop resource maps and to monitor changing environmental conditions These uses are well developed and currently well integrated into the planning infrastructure at local, state, and federal levels in the United States. Many newly emerging uses of remote sensing involve digital images which are collected, stored, and processed automatically by electromechanical scanning devices and electronic computers Some scanning devices operate from aircraft or spacecraft to scan ground scenes directly; others scan conventional aerial transparencies to yield digital images. Digital imagery offers the potential for computer-based automated map production, a process that can significantly increase the amount and timeliness of information available to land managers and planners. Future uses of remote sensing in land planning and management will involve geographic information systems, which store resource information in a geocoded format. Geographic information systems allow the automated integration of disparate types of resource data through various types of spatial models so that with accompanying sample ground data, information in the form of thematic maps and/ or aerially aggregated statistics can be produced Key issues confronting the development and integration of geographic information systems into planning pathways are restoration and rectification of digital images, automated techniques for combining both quantitative and qualitative types of data in information-extracting procedures, and the compatibility of alternative data storage modes
Transcriptional control of regulatory T cell development and function

Regulatory T (Treg) cells differentiate from thymocytes or peripheral T cells in response to host and environmental cues, culminating in induction of the transcription factor forkhead box P3 (Foxp3) and the Treg cell-specific epigenome. An intermediate amount of antigen stimulation is required to induce Foxp3 expression by engaging T cell receptor (TCR)-activated [e.g., nuclear factor (NF)-κB] and TCR-inhibited (e.g., Foxo) transcription factors. Furthermore, Treg cell differentiation is associated with attenuated Akt signaling, resulting in enhanced nuclear retention of Foxo1, which is indispensable for Treg cell function. These findings reveal that Treg cell lineage commitment is not only controlled by genetic and epigenetic imprinting, but also modulated by transcriptional programs responding to extracellular signals.
Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land

Chinese Characters is an eclectic mix of essays from some of the major luminaries of journalistic and academic writing on contemporary China. The essays on Chinese intellectuals and religion might ...
Loss of benefit from estrogen replacement therapy in diabetic ovariectomized female rats subjected to transient forebrain ischemia

In nondiabetic animals, estrogen has been shown to provide significant neuroprotection in focal and transient forebrain ischemia models. However, that neuroprotection may be diminished or lost in the diabetic. In this study, we compared the level of brain damage in intact, ovariectomized (OVX) and 17beta-estradiol (E(2))-treated OVX female rats rendered diabetic and chronically ( approximately 4 weeks) hyperglycemic via streptozotocin (STZ). Rats were subjected to 20 min of unilateral transient forebrain ischemia (reduction in cortical CBF to 20% of baseline). Neurologic function was analyzed daily and brain histopathology (in H&E-stained sections) was evaluated at 72 h of reperfusion. Supplemental histopathologic information was obtained from additional TUNEL-stained sections. When comparing neurologic outcome scores in the three groups, E(2)-treated OVX females displayed the highest degree of dysfunction and intact females the least (OVX rats not treated with E(2) were intermediate), with the difference between the intact and E(2)-treated groups being statistically significant. That same order was often observed with the regional histopathologic analyses of H&E-stained tissue. A significantly higher magnitude of neuronal loss in both OVX groups, when compared to intact females, was observed in the CA4 sector of the hippocampus and in the cortex. In addition, cell loss in the dorsal thalamus of the E(2)-treated group was significantly greater than in the intact females. Those results were generally corroborated by TUNEL-analysis, with 67% of the E(2)-treated, 33% of the control OVX, and only 17% of the intact females displaying TUNEL-positive cells in multiple regions. In conclusion, the present findings strongly suggest that the neuroprotective benefits of estrogen replacement therapy may be lost in the diabetic female rat.
On-Line Identification and Control of Part-Preparation and Fixturing Errors in Arc Welding

Sensing elements need to be incorporated in robotic welding systems to enable the robot to perceive and adapt to on-line variations occurring in the welding process. In this work, infrared thermal imaging techniques have been used to track variations produced by inadequate control during the joint preparation and fixturing stages. Variations in two joint parameters, gap and position, were studied. Changes in these parameters were found to have peculiar effects on the surface temperature distributions. The observed effects were used to develop quantitative error signals. These error signals were then used to measure the joint gaps and joint-torch offsets in real-time. The joint torch offset error signal was successfully used to control an initial error in joint position during real-time welding.
Typologies in Comparative Criminal Justice Research

This article focuses on typology construction as a focal technique in the analysis of crime and crime control systems from a world perspective. The relationship between theories and typologies is discussed. The author stresses the structure of theory when the world is defined as a system which includes sub-systems. Theoretical schemes depend on the existence of world sub-system typologies. Crime typologies and legal system typologies are needed because the formulation of a world law will be affected by the existence of typologies which clarify the similarities and dissimilarities of world legal systems.
Bismuth and ^(208)Pb microdistributions in enstatite chondrites

Polished sections of 5 enstatite chondrites have been irradiated with 30 MeV ^4He ions to produce the alpha-radioactive nuclei ^(211)At and ^(210)Po from ^(209)Bi and ^(208)Pb, respectively. The distribution of alpha activity can be mapped, using cellulose nitrate as an alpha track detector, to give the corresponding Bi or Pb distributions in the meteorite. No strong localization of Bi or ^(208)Pb was found; relatively uniform track distributions were observed. In particular, metal or sulfide grains are not enriched in Bi or Pb (relative to bulk), which is in agreement with the predictions of nebular condensation calculations. While the track distributions appear uniform, the results of detailed, track-by-track mappings of the Bi detectors indicate that the Bi is not totally randomly distributed; the statistical fluctuations in the observed track density are different for the cases where the Bi is totally randomly distributed and where the Bi is localized in point sources. Assuming that the Bi in a given sample is localized in identical point sources which are uniformly distributed throughout the sample, the observed relative population densities of clusters (‘stars’) of small numbers of tracks (2–5) corresponds to Bi being localized, with ~90% in grains with about 10^(−16)g-Bi (~3 × 10^5 Bi atoms), and with ~10% in 4 × 10^(−14) g-Bi sources. If these are elemental Bi, as predicted theoretically, they are ~ 10^2 A and 10^3 A in size, respectively.
Cytogenetic investigation of occupational exposure to epichlorohydrin

Cytogenetic evaluation of peripheral lymphocytes from 93 workers currently exposed to epichlorohydrin has revealed an increase in aberration rates as compared to that of a 75-person group seen for preemployment examination. Statistically significant differences were found in the distribution of individuals with chromatid breaks, chromosome breaks, severely damaged cells, and total abnormal cells. These results confirm the observations of Kucerova et al. in a similar occupational group.
Bioautography: a general method for the visualization of isozymes.

A new method has been developed for visualization of isozymes which are difficult or impossible to detect with standard histochemical or autoradiographic methods. The principle of this method, bioautography, is the use of a microbial reagent to locate an enzyme after gel electrophoresis. When bioautography was compared to other staining procedures, the bioautographic method yielded identical results to those observed by the histochemical method for lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) or by the autoradiographic method for the adenine phosphoribosyl-transferase (APRT). Using the bioautographic method, stains for enzymes which could not be visualized by any other procedure have been developed: argininosuccinate lyase and branched-chain aminotransferase. By employing appropriately genetically marked bacterial strains, it should be possible to develop new isozyme stains for a large number of unstudied isozymes.
Insurmountable antagonism of ouabain-induced coronary constriction by prazosin

A linear dose-response curve was produced by the addition of ouabain (10(-8)-10(-6) M) to the media bathing segments of porcine right coronary arteries. A concentration of 10(-6) M ouabain produced constriction equal to 47% of that resulting from exposure to 35 mM KCl. The ouabain dose-response curve was competitively displaced one order of magnitude by the previous addition of verapamil (2.2 X 10(-8) M), and non-competitively by the prior exposure to prazosin (6.5 X 10(-7)-6.5 X 10(-13) M). The inhibitory effect of prazosin appears to be unrelated to its alpha 1-adrenergic blocking action.
A new species and new records of Hentzia (Araneae: Salticidae: Dendryphantinae) from the United States

Abstract Hentzia alamosa (Salticidae) is described from Big Bend Ranch State Park in Presidio County, Texas, and a closely related species, Hentzia fimbriata (F.O. Pickard-Cambridge 1901) is recorded for the first time from the USA. Both species are also closely related to Hentzia palmarum (Hentz 1832), the type species for the genus. New locality records provided by the Texas A & M University Insect Collection (TAMUIC) for H. palmarum are also included.
SC-net: a hybrid connectionist, symbolic system

Abstract This paper describes the SC-net system that has been developed to provide expert systems capability augmented with learning in a hybrid connectionist/symbolic approach. A distributed connectionist representation of cells connected by links is used to represent symbolic knowledge. Rules may be directly encoded in the connectionist network or learned from examples. The learning method is a form of instance-based learning in which some of the individual instances in the training set are encoded by adding structure to the network and others cause modifications to biases in the network. Both continuous and nominal attributes are directly represented in the network structure. A limited form of variables in the form of attribute value bindings on the right-hand side of rules is supported. Relational comparators in the form of cell groups are also supported. Relational comparators and attribute value structures are represented by groups of connected cells in the network. The learning algorithm is presented and methods for providing generalization in an instance-based connectionist environment are presented. Empirical results are presented, which include learning in domains (fevers and gems) that contain uncertainty and the well-known iris, and soybean data sets together with a real world domain for semiconductor wafer fault diagnosis. The generalization ability of the learned network is shown to be good in several domains including iris. The system is shown to compare favorably with a nonneural instance-based learning algorithm IBL.
THE INTERACTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF ASYMMETRY: The Medical Agenda as a Resource for Delaying Response to Patient Questions

This study is based on transcriptions of twenty-one audiotaped encounters between patients with breast cancer and their oncologists. Using a conversation analytic approach, findings reveal how oncologists invoke a clinical agenda to postopone response to certain patient questions or to mark them retroactively as ‘out of order.’ These deferral actions take the shape of “pre-insert expansions” in which the physician mentions an activity to be performed (e.g. the physical exam) prior to actually initiating the activity. Once this clinical exigency has been invoked, patients do not prusue their questions further. Tney thereby relinquish their request for information and “accept’ that answers will be forthcoming. Thus, the oncologist uses the clinical agenda as a resource for managing the direction of the talk, and patients orient collaboratively to that agenda.
Tensor low-energy electron diffraction analysis of the surface structure of NaCl(100) thin films grown on Pd(100) and Pt(111)

Abstract Thin films of NaCl were molecularly deposited and subsequently ordered on Pd(100) and Pt(111). These films exhibited the same adsorbate–substrate interaction on Pd(100) and Pt(111) as evidenced by the lone multilayer desorption peak observed in the temperature programmed desorption spectra of NaCl on these two substrates. The ordered structures of the films were produced by exposing a heated substrate to a flux of NaCl emanating from a Knudsen cell and investigated through the use of low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). On Pd(100), the adsorbed multilayer yielded a (1×1) NaCl(100) LEED pattern. The (1×1) pattern was seen as the result of the film's thickness being greater than the sampling depth of the elastically scattered electrons used in the LEED experiment, thus removing the contribution of the substrate's lattice to the observed pattern. For the (1×1) pattern of NaCl(100) on Pd(100), it was found that the NaCl film grew along the [010]-type surface directions of Pd(100) to take advantage of a near 1:1 lattice match. On Pt(111), the ordered NaCl multilayer gave a (1×1) NaCl(100) LEED pattern also, but, unlike Pd(100), one of the overlayer's unit cell vectors lies parallel to that of the substrate's with the other rotated by 90° from the previous one to preserve the geometry of the NaCl(100) lattice. Multiple intensity versus electron energy ( IV ) data sets were gathered for the NaCl(100) multilayer film on both Pd(100) and Pt(111). An analysis of the I – V curves of the multilayer NaCl(100) pattern on both substrates showed that the multilayer has the same structure on both substrates to a depth sampled by the electrons in the experimental energy range. Data from both systems were used in a fully dynamical LEED calculation. In the final structure, which refined down to a Pendry R -factor ( R P ) of 0.16, the largest deviation from the ideally terminated NaCl(100) structure was the movement of the surface Na + towards the bulk, thereby causing a 0.12±0.03 A corrugation of the surface layer. This shift of the surface cations was not followed by a corresponding displacement of the underlying anions, so the first interlayer spacing, d (Cl 2 –Na 1 ), was reduced to 2.72±0.03 A from its bulk value of 2.82 A. Deviations from the bulk were smaller in subsequent layers, e.g. the second interlayer spacing, d (Na 3 –Cl 2 ), was 2.77±0.03 A, and there was essentially no buckling of the second layer.