cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Tradeoffs among reasons for action

Lexical rules are rules for decision making that give one type of consideration absolute priority over another, e.g., life over money. At the normative level | the level of reasoning designed for people with perfect self-control and unlimited time for reection | there is no good justication for lexical rules. Whenever we are tempted to say that (for example) life is always more important than money, we can imagine a situation in which a tiny probability of loss of life is pitted against a great gain in money for a great many people. Arguments for lexical rules at the prescriptive level | the level appropriate for real people to teach to their children | may be made, but these arguments are often weaker than they rst appear to be. Hence, ‘simple moral systems,’ moral codes based primarily on lexical prohibitions, are fallacious. These arguments may expose other fallacies in everyday moral codes as well, such as reliance on distinctions between omission and commission. A prescriptive theory is proposed that is closer to the normative one. A funny thing happened to me at a workshop given by Professor Lawrence Kohlberg about moral thinking. Kohlberg presented his classic dilemma (e.g., Kohlberg, 1970) about whether a husband should steal a drug in order to save his wife's life. When Kohlberg asked how many thought that the husband should steal the drug, almost all hands went up, including mine. The next question was, roughly, `How many think that a person would be wrong to think that the husband should not steal the drug?' To my surprise, my hand was one of the few not to go up. I wondered why not. Was I really a closet relativist (or subjectivist)? Was I the one who was wrong? This paper is the result of that wondering.
Predicting air quality in smart environments

The pervasive sensing technologies found in smart environments offer unprecedented opportunities for monitoring and assisting the individuals who live and work in these spaces. As aspect of daily life that is often overlooked in maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the air quality of the environment. In this paper we investigate the use of machine learning technologies to predict CO2 levels as an indicator of air quality in smart environments. We introduce techniques for collecting and analyzing sensor information in smart environments and analyze the correlation between resident activities and air quality levels. The effectiveness of our techniques is evaluated using three physical smart environment testbeds.
Primary Left Ventricular Mural Endocarditis Diagnosed by Transesophageal Echocardiography

Primary left ventricular mural abscess was detected by transesophageal echocardiography and was confirmed at necropsy in a 44-year-old woman with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia and cerebrovascular embolism. In two occasions, transthoracic echocardiography failed to show the mural abscess in this patient. Because of the aggressive nature of primary mural endocarditis, early use of transesophageal echocardiography is recommended in patients with Staphylococcal bacteremia and suspected endocarditis even in the absence of valvular abnormalities detectable by the transthoracic approach.
Origin of the turn-on temperature behavior in WTe2

A hallmark of materials with extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) is the transformative turn-on temperature behavior: when the applied magnetic field $H$ is above certain value, the resistivity versus temperature $\ensuremath{\rho}(T)$ curve shows a minimum at a field dependent temperature ${T}^{*}$, which has been interpreted as a magnetic-field-driven metal-insulator transition or attributed to an electronic structure change. Here, we demonstrate that $\ensuremath{\rho}(T)$ curves with turn-on behavior in the newly discovered XMR material ${\mathrm{WTe}}_{2}$ can be scaled as $\text{MR}\ensuremath{\sim}{(H/{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0})}^{m}$ with $m\ensuremath{\approx}2$ and ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ being the resistivity at zero field. We obtained experimentally and also derived from the observed scaling the magnetic field dependence of the turn-on temperature ${T}^{*}\ensuremath{\sim}{(H\ensuremath{-}{H}_{c})}^{\ensuremath{\nu}}$ with $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}1/2$, which was earlier used as evidence for a predicted metal-insulator transition. The scaling also leads to a simple quantitative expression for the resistivity ${\ensuremath{\rho}}^{*}\ensuremath{\approx}2{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ at the onset of the XMR behavior, which fits the data remarkably well. These results exclude the possible existence of a magnetic-field-driven metal-insulator transition or significant contribution of an electronic structure change to the low-temperature XMR in ${\mathrm{WTe}}_{2}$. This work resolves the origin of the turn-on behavior observed in several XMR materials and also provides a general route for a quantitative understanding of the temperature dependence of MR in both XMR and non-XMR materials.
Repeated administration of methylphenidate in young, adolescent, and mature rats affects the response to cocaine later in adulthood.

Previous studies have shown that the expression of behavioral sensitization to psychostimulants depends on the age and gender of the animal. This study was conducted to determine the pattern of behavioral sensitization to repeated administration of methylphenidate (MPD) at three different developmental ages and to assess the response to a cocaine challenge in adulthood. We gave five daily i.p. injections of 10 or 20 mg kg−1 of MPD (10 MPD, 20 MPD) or saline to male and female rats beginning on postnatal days (PND) 21, 45, or 60. When all groups reached PND 90, rats were challenged with 10 mg kg−1 cocaine. For both MPD administration and cocaine challenge, locomotion and stereotyped behaviors were assessed for 1 h. The 10 MPD dose produced increased locomotion over the other two treatments at all ages. Rats that received 20 MPD showed a decline in locomotion across days with an increase in the time spent in high intensity stereotypy by day 5. Animals treated with 10 MPD showed diverse behavioral responses with adolescents showing somewhat dampened stereotypy than the other two age groups. In response to cocaine, pretreatment with MPD at all ages enhanced the cocaine response and produced qualitatively different patterns of stereotyped behavior for each gender and pretreatment age group. MPD produced clear age-specific sensitization of behavior in rats. Furthermore, exposure to MPD cross-sensitized with cocaine regardless of the age at which MPD exposure occurred with each pretreatment age group showing a unique pattern of responses.
Epigenomic reprogramming of the developing reproductive tract and disease susceptibility in adulthood

During development, epigenetic programs are "installed" on the genome that direct differentiation and normal tissue and organ function in adulthood. Consequently, development is also a period of susceptibility to reprogramming of the epigenome. Developmental reprogramming occurs when an adverse stimulus or insult interrupts the proper "install" of epigenetic programs during development, reprogramming normal physiologic responses in such a way as to promote disease later in life. Some of the best examples of developmental reprogramming involve the reproductive tract, where early life exposures to environmental estrogens can increase susceptibility to benign and malignant tumors in adulthood including leiomyoma (fibroids), endometrial, and prostate cancer. Although specific mechanism(s) by which environmental estrogens reprogram the developing epigenome were unknown, both DNA and histone methylation were considered likely targets for epigenetic reprogramming. We have now identified a mechanism by which developmental exposures to environmental estrogens reprogram the epigenome by inducing inappropriate activation of nongenomic estrogen receptor (ER) signaling. Activation of nongenomic ER signaling via the phosphotidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) pathway activates the kinase AKT/PKB in the developing reproductive tract, which phosphorylates the histone lysine methyltransferase (HKMT) EZH2, the key "installer" of epigenetic histone H3 lysine 27 trimethylation (H3K27me3). AKT phosphorylation inactivates EZH2, decreasing levels of H3K27 methylation, a repressive mark that inhibits gene expression, in the developing uterus. As a result of this developmental reprogramming, many estrogen-responsive genes become hypersensitive to estrogen in adulthood, exhibiting elevated expression throughout the estrus cycle, and resulting in a "hyper-estrogenized" phenotype in the adult uterus that promotes development of hormone-dependent tumors.
A novel fluorescent assay for sucrose transporters

We have developed a novel assay based on the ability of type I sucrose uptake transporters (SUTs) to transport the fluorescent coumarin β-glucoside, esculin. Budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is routinely used for the heterologous expression of SUTs and does not take up esculin. When type I sucrose transporters StSUT1 from potato or AtSUC2 from Arabidopsis were expressed in yeast, the cells were able to take up esculin and became brightly fluorescent. We tested a variety of incubation times, esculin concentrations, and buffer pH values and found that for these transporters, a 1 hr incubation at 0.1 to 1 mM esculin at pH 4.0 produced fluorescent cells that were easily distinguished from vector controls. Esculin uptake was assayed by several methods including fluorescence microscopy, spectrofluorometry and fluorescence-activiated cell sorting (FACS). Expression of the type II sucrose transporter OsSUT1 from rice did not result in increased esculin uptake under any conditions tested. Results were reproduced successfully in two distinct yeast strains, SEY6210 (an invertase mutant) and BY4742. The esculin uptake assay is rapid and sensitive and should be generally useful for preliminary tests of sucrose transporter function by heterologous expression in yeast. This assay is also suitable for selection of yeast showing esculin uptake activity using FACS.
Multivariable Burchnall-Chaundy theory

Burchnall & Chaundy (Burchnall & Chaundy 1928 Proc. R. Soc. A 118, 557583) classified the (rank 1) commutative subalgebras of the algebra of ordinary differential operators. To date, there is no su...
An early increase in somatostatin mRNA expression in the frontal cortex of rhesus monkeys infected with simian immunodeficiency virus.

Abstract Motor and cognitive impairment is common in human immunodeficiency virus disease in humans and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) disease in rhesus monkeys. We have examined peptide neurotransmitter expression in the frontal cortex of SIV-infected rhesus monkeys to identify alterations in cortical neurons that might explain this impairment. A 2-fold higher number of preprosomatostatin (SRIF) mRNA-positive interneurons was observed in layer IV of frontal cortex in two separate cohorts of SIV-infected animals compared to uninfected controls. Increased SRIF mRNA expression in layer IV was independent of clinical signs of immunodeficiency disease and was associated with both motor and cognitive impairment. Altered SRIF mRNA expression in deeper cortical layers was associated specifically with motor impairment. Increased SRIF mRNA expression occurred without detectable changes in cortical cell density. These data suggest two mechanisms for cortical dysfunction associated with lentivirus infection. Increased SRIF mRNA expression in layer IV may be due to altered patterns of activity in cortical afferents that project to layer IV, while increased SRIF mRNA expression in deeper cortical layers could reflect susceptibility to locally generated mediators in response to primate lentivirus infection of the brain. Altered function of somatostatinergic interneurons may contribute to primate lentivirus-induced encephalopathy.
Technology mapping for electrically programmable gate arrays

We describe a new approach for technology mapping of electrically programmable gate arrays (EPGAs). These are arrays of uncommitted modules, where the personalization is achieved by fuselantifuse technology and can be modeled by stuck-at and/or bridging inputs. We present a matching algorithm that determines whether a portion of a combinational logic circuit can be implemented by personalizing a module. The algorithm has the advantage of considering the entire library of functions that can be implemented by the module without resorting to an explicit enumeration. The benefits are an increased efficiency in technology mapping, as well as portability to different types of electrically programmable gate arrays. Experimental results on standard benchmarks are reported.
Effect of Corynebacterium acnes on interferon production in mice.

Abstract Exposure to Corynebacterium acnes, the most prominent member of our normal skin flora, produces stimulation of lymphoid tissue and certain reticuloendothelial system functions, as well as the immune response. Alteration of the host response is extended by these studies to include changes in the pattern of interferon production in response to a representative group of inducing agents. Serum interferon levels induced by the injection of endotoxin in mice are enhanced, whereas interferon production after injection of Newcastle disease virus, Chikungunya virus, and polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid is depressed in animals inoculated with viable or nonviable C. acnes organisms.
Characteristics of the normal menstrual cycle.

Previous studies which have shown that the lengths of apparently normal menstrual cycles vary widely and that absolute regularity in the individual patient is exceptional have not eliminated anovulatory cycles patients with subtle endocrine disturbances and such lesser disturbances as travel monor illnesses or alterations of working hours. Variable schedules make data based on nurses especially suspect. In this study 109 women were carefully selected and all cycles showing late hours restless sleep travel febrile illnesses and other disrupting factors were eliminated. Of the 524 recorded cycles 500 or 95.4% were ovulatory 13 or 2.5% were anovulatory and 11 or 2.1% were indeterminate. All 58 biopsies from cycles with ovulatory temperature patterns revealed progestational endometriums. Of the 500 ovulatory cyc les 0 were shorter than 19 days; 1 was longer than 60 days; 3.2% were 19-22 days; 21.4% were 23-25 days; 53.6% were 26-29 days; 17.8% were 30-36 days and 4% were longer than 36 days. More than 1/2 were 26-29 days and 92.8% fell within the 23-26 day interval. Comparison with the data of others shows that when anovulatory cycles are eliminated short cycles (less than 19 days) apparently disappear from the curve. Studies with a larger number of mature women have fewer anovulatory cycles. In 79.6% of the women the estrogenic phase was 10-16 days long. In 1.9% it was less than 10 days in length but in 15.6% it was 17-25 days and in 2.9% longer than 25 days. Except for 1 progestation rise which was only 5 days long the progestational phase was 8-19 days long. 69.5% showed progestational phases of 11-14 days 94.0% of 10-16 days 1.8% less than 10 days and 4.3% 17-19 days. This confirms the belief that the unusual length of the ovulatory cycles results from a longer estrogen phase. In 68.4% of patients bleeding was 3-5 days in duration and in 95.4% 3-7 days. The mean temperature differential between pre- and pos tovulatory phases is often relatively small (.2-.5 degrees F). In 78.9% the rise was .6-.9 degrees F. This emphasizes the value of recording the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit on a relatively large scale rather than using a small scale or degrees Centrigrade.
Gonadotrophic Hormone Excretion of the Pregnant Monkey (Macaca mulatto).

SummaryThe urinary excretion of gonadotrophin by pregnant Macaca mulatto, was assayed at intervals from day 22 to 179 of gestation. Hypophysectomized immature female rats were injected with concentrates equivalent to 1/4 day's output of urine. Only urine excreted between days 22 and 34 of pregnancy had a gonadotrophs action, and the action was restricted to repair of the interstitial tissue. The gonadotrophic stimulus observed in normal immature rats was comparable to that from low doses of human chorionic gonadotropin during this extremely limited period of pregnancy.
Teamwork satisfaction: Exploring the multilevel interaction of teamwork interest and group extraversion

Multilevel modeling is used to examine the impact of teamwork interest and group extraversion on group satisfaction. Participants included 206 undergraduates in 65 groups who were surveyed at the beginning and end of a requisite term-length group project for an upper-division university course. We hypothesized that teamwork interest and both extraversion dispersion and higher mean extraversion would predict satisfaction with the group. Results indicated both teamwork interest and mean extraversion were not a predictor of satisfaction. Contrary to the hypothesis, greater extraversion dispersion and the interaction between teamwork interest and extraversion dispersion predicted less satisfaction. Extraversion dispersion was a better predictor of student satisfaction when individuals were more interested in teamwork. Additionally, extraversion dispersion may be a suppressor variable for teamwork interest. These results have implications for instructors facilitating group work and ensuring students have a pos...
The Report of two Cases Silicosis from Manufacturing Bathroom things

Objective To study the clinic feature of silicosis from manufacturing bathroom things. Methods To analyze the clinic feature of two silicosis from manufacturing bathroom things. Results The clinic features were lower age of patient suffering from silicosis, shorter legth from dust exposure to the silicosis onset, obvious symptoms of respiratory system and less physical sign. Chest radiographic showed mainly small round opacities “q”. There were no significant changes of the items in biochemistry and immunity (IgG、IgA、IgM 、LDH、AKP),pulmonary function and blood gas analysis. Conclusion Silicosis from manufacturing bathroom things do harm to the worker's health and measures should be taken on control and prevention.
Study on Facture Appearance Transition Temperature of SA335P91 & 12CrMoV Dissimilar Steel Welding Metal

With the rapid development of power industry wide application of new steel,dissimilar steel welding is more and more popular.The paper studies the facture appearance transition temperature(FATT)of SA335P91/12CrMoV dissimilar steel welding metal.Through the calculation and analysis of charpy nothch impact test of welding metal with three different matches,the FATT of welding metal with 3 matches of welded joint for SA335P91/12CrMoV dissimilar steel welding are 78℃for low match,79℃for mid match,91℃for high match respectively.
Over expression of histone deacetylases and their clinicopathological significance in ovarian serous carcinoma

Purpose To investigate the clinicopathological significance of histone deacetylases (HDACs) expression in ovarian serous tumors. Methods Total 147 cases of paraffin embedded ovarian lesion blocks were collected,including 39 cases of serous cystadenoma,26 serous borderline cystadenoma,and 82 serous adenocarcinoma. The protein expression of HDAC1 and HDAC6 was detected by immunohistochemistry,and the clinicopathological significance of HDAC1 and HDAC6 expression in ovarian serous carcinoma was analyzed. Results Immunohistochemical staining showed that the strongly positive rate of HDAC1 protein was 7.7% (3/39),65.4% (17/26),and 80.5% (66/82) in serous cystadenoma,serous borderline cystadenoma,and serous adenocarcinoma,respectively. Similarly,the HDAC6 protein was negative in all 39 cases of serous cystadenoma,however,the strongly positive rate of HDAC6 protein were 34.6% (9/26) and 86.6% (71/86) in serous borderline cystadenoma and serous adenocarcinomas,respectively. The differences were statistically significant. Conclusions HDAC1 and HDAC6 genes play a key role in the progression of ovarian cancer. The detection of HDAC1 and HDAC6 proteins expression can be used as markers for the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer,and they might be the molecular target for the ovarian cancer therapy.
Neonatal Transport: Outreach Educational Program

Neonatal transport is an integral part of a regionalized system of perinatal health care delivery. An effective outreach educational program promotes early identification of high-risk neonates, consultation, communication, and referral. The education offered in several formats also promotes optimal pretransport and intratransport stabilization of referred neonates. This improved stabilization may favorably influence the overall neonatal outcome. The impact of education in the region can be determined by a systematic review of referral patterns, standard of care during stabilization, and neonatal outcome. An organized outreach educational effort is therefore an essential aspect of any neonatal transport program.
Immunodeficiency syndromes : X-linked agammaglobulinemia, common variable immunodeficiency, Chédiak-Higashi syndrome, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, and X-linked lymphoproliferative disorder

The incidence and mortality of neoplasia in patients with primary immunodeficiencies exceed the anticipated rates in the normal population by approximately 100 to 300 times. Lymphoreticular malignancies account for the majority of tumors, although solid tumors, especially gastric carcinoma, occur with increased frequency as well. More than half of these neoplasms are diagnosed by ten years of age, except in patients with a later age of onset of immunodeficiency. Five primary immunodeficiency disorders with an increased risk of neoplasia are reviewed.
An anion exchanger mediates bile acid transport across the placental microvillous membrane

Microvillous membrane vesicles from the term human placental syncytiotrophoblast were used to characterize further the properties of a transport mechanism for bile acids. Taurocholate (TC) uptake into an osmotically reactive intravesicular space was temperature dependent and independent of sodium. TC uptake (2 microM) was markedly inhibited by 250 microM taurine and glycine-conjugated cholate and chenodeoxycholate and unconjugated cholate but not by chenodeoxycholate, deoxycholate, etianic acid, bromosulfophthalein, pyruvate, lactate, alanine, or taurine. The initial rate of TC uptake was inhibited significantly by the anion transport inhibitor 4,4'-diisothiocyanostilbene-2,2'-disulfonic acid (DIDS) but was not inhibited significantly by 4-acetamido-4'-isothiocyanostilbene-2,2'-disulfonic acid, amiloride, or furosemide. Preincubation of vesicles with DIDS in the presence of TC partially blocked the action of the inhibitor. Efflux of 5 microM TC from membrane vesicles was stimulated by the presence of 50 microM TC in the incubation media. Basal as well as transstimulated TC efflux was inhibited by DIDS. The initial rate of TC influx followed saturation kinetics with an apparent Michaelis constant of 112 +/- 23 microM and maximal velocity of 2.01 +/- 0.19 nmol.mg protein-1.min-1. When the transmembrane electrical potential difference across the brush-border membrane vesicles was altered by external anion replacement or by valinomycin-induced K+ diffusion potentials, TC uptake was not significantly affected. DIDS-sensitive TC uptake was stimulated two-to threefold by an outwardly directed hydroxyl gradient (pH 7.7in/5.5out) compared with TC influx under pH-equilibrated conditions (pH 7.7in/7.7out). These studies are consistent with an electroneutral anion-exchange mechanism that mediates transfer of conjugated bile acids across the microvillous membrane of the syncytiotrophoblast.
The Holy Land of Matrimony: The Complex Legacy of the Broomstick Wedding in American History

Many enslaved people in North America married by jumping the broomstick, but following their emancipation in 1865 most newly freed African Americans discarded the tradition. They believed it held embarrassing reminders of a period when black relationships were widely disrespected. By the late twentieth century, however, the custom recaptured African American interest, building on the popularity of scholarly literature and popular movements that emphasized the unique cultural traditions of enslaved Americans. This article examines the broomstick wedding’s broader appeal in American history, providing context to recent debates surrounding the custom’s pertinence to black and white Americans. I reveal that broomstick weddings were initially produced through transatlantic cultural exchanges during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Couples marrying in broomstick fashion were associated with multiple groups upon the British Isles, such as gypsies and Celtic peoples, as well as poor whites and slaves in North America. Analyzing the ritual’s importance within these various communities provides context for examining the broomstick wedding’s function for enslaved laborers in North America before and after Emancipation. This study then analyzes the custom’s lingering influence in postbellum America and moves beyond the publication of Alex Haley’s Roots as the singular event that restructured African American culture and heritage. We should more appropriately view Roots’ depiction of Kunta Kinte’s broomstick marriage as a product of a preceding literary movement in African American scholarship and folk culture. By examining the ritual’s multicultural origins, this article provides the first detailed analysis of the broomstick wedding’s unique position in American history.
The Effects of Heat Treatment on the Gene Expression of Several Heat Shock Protein Genes in Two Cultivars of Strawberry

Heat treatment has been shown to be an effective method for reducing systemic pathogens in strawberry but the process often has adverse effects on plant health. Research has shown that a brief heat...
America’s Empire

For the Americans, ‘Imperialism’ is other people’s history. It had nothing to do with a people who had fought a revolutionary war to gain their independence from an imperialist power, and whose leaders for a century and more had openly disclaimed any territorial ambitions in the world. Placing themselves outside history, they looked upon the earlier expansion of the mercantilist states of Europe, as well as their later ‘scramble’ for parts of Africa, Asia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, as evil; whereas their own conquest of a continent was the ‘Manifest Destiny’ of a people who had inherited ‘God’s country’.
A New Look at the Predicating Particles in Hausa

In this paper I wish to consider the status of three words in Hausa which have been called 'predicating particles' by Kraft.
Optimizing Technical Education Pathways: Does Dual-Credit Course Completion Predict Students’ College and Labor Market Success?

Post-recession Federal policy initiatives, such as secondary/postsecondary career pathways and gainful employment higher education accountability standards, prioritize the alignment of education practices with market-driven outcomes. Using longitudinal student record data merged from college and state K-12 data systems with the Unemployment Insurance wage records, this study examined the relationship between college and career success and the completion of dual credit courses in high school. During 2008-10, nearly 30% of graduates from 20 high schools who subsequently enrolled at a regional public technical college transferred an average of 6.0 dual high school and college credits. After controlling for several high school-level and individual-level factors, hierarchical linear models revealed that dual credit learners had significantly better outcomes than non-dual credit learners in terms of college course completion rates, second year retention, three-year graduation rate, as well as earnings in 2012-13. While our findings are limited to an upper Midwest community, they extend and highlight the positive relationship between high school dual credit completion and later college and labor market outcomes. Compared to dual credit courses completed on the college campus, courses offered at the high school and taught by high school career and technical instructors consistently predicted greater levels of college student success and better labor market outcomes. Additionally, several actionable student-level factors were associated with the significant college and career pathway outcomes, including high school preparation in mathematics.
Effect of material flexibility on the thermodynamics and kinetics of hydrophobically induced evaporation of water.

The evaporation of water induced by confinement between hydrophobic surfaces has received much attention due to its suggested functional role in numerous biophysical phenomena and its importance as a general mechanism of hydrophobic self-assembly. Although much progress has been made in understanding the basic physics of hydrophobically induced evaporation, a comprehensive understanding of the substrate material features (e.g., geometry, chemistry, and mechanical properties) that promote or inhibit such transitions remains lacking. In particular, comparatively little research has explored the relationship between water’s phase behavior in hydrophobic confinement and the mechanical properties of the confining material. Here, we report the results of extensive molecular simulations characterizing the rates, free energy barriers, and mechanism of water evaporation when confined between model hydrophobic materials with tunable flexibility. A single-order-of-magnitude reduction in the material’s modulus results in up to a nine-orders-of-magnitude increase in the evaporation rate, with the corresponding characteristic time decreasing from tens of seconds to tens of nanoseconds. Such a modulus reduction results in a 24-orders-of-magnitude decrease in the reverse rate of condensation, with time scales increasing from nanoseconds to tens of millions of years. Free energy calculations provide the barriers to evaporation and confirm our previous theoretical predictions that making the material more flexible stabilizes the confined vapor with respect to liquid. The mechanism of evaporation involves surface bubbles growing/coalescing to form a subcritical gap-spanning tube, which then must grow to cross the barrier.
Up the nose of the beholder? Aesthetic perception in olfaction as a decision-making process

Abstract Is the sense of smell a source of aesthetic perception? Traditional philosophical aesthetics has centered on vision and audition but eliminated smell for its subjective and inherently affective character. This article dismantles the myth that olfaction is an unsophisticated sense. It makes a case for olfactory aesthetics by integrating recent insights in neuroscience with traditional expertise about flavor and fragrance assessment in perfumery and wine tasting. My analysis concerns the importance of observational refinement in aesthetic experience. I argue that the active engagement with stimulus features in perceptual processing shapes the phenomenological content, so much so that the perceptual structure of trained smelling varies significantly from naive smelling. In a second step, I interpret the processes that determine such perceptual refinement in the context of neural decision-making processes, and I end with a positive outlook on how research in neuroscience can be used to benefit philosophical aesthetics.
Attitudes and anxiety levels in women conceiving through in vitro fertilization and gamete intrafallopian transfer

Anxiety and attitudes have been examined in a series of women conceiving through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT). Women were assessed before and after their first ultrasound examination conducted between 6 and 8 weeks' gestation. A comparison group of women attending for genetic counseling for advanced maternal age also was assessed. The results showed the two patient groups to be comparable on psychological testing. The IVF-GIFT group tended to be more concerned about a problem developing but were not more anxious. Attitude ratings showed the IVF-GIFT women to have greater investment in the pregnancy and the fetus. A comparison of scores before and after the ultrasound showed anxiety reduction for women seeing the fetal heartbeat. Attitude ratings were more positive for the women seeing the fetal heartbeat, with change less pronounced in women denied this feedback. These results confirm the effects of diagnostic testing on emotional state. Women with IVF-GIFT pregnancies show both higher concern than documented elsewhere in low-risk pregnancies, as well as greater emotional investment in the fetus.
Ionic liquids with thioether motifs as synthetic cationic lipids for gene delivery

This study introduces a novel class of imidazolium- and ammonium-based ionic liquids possessing two C12 and C14 tails and thioether linkers designed for lipoplex-mediated DNA delivery. Imidazolium-based ionic liquids displayed efficient gene delivery properties with low toxicity. Thiol-yne click chemistry was employed for the facile and robust synthesis of these thioether-based cationic lipioids with enhanced lipophilicity and low fluidity.
Sex Trafficking as a News Story: Evolving Structure and Reporting Strategies

This quantitative content analysis uses sex trafficking as a case study to understand how news reporting techniques evolve as a social problem emerges on the public agenda. Results indicate that as...
Equality during end-of-life cancer care: Trends in aggressiveness of cancer care at the end of life.

77Background: Aggressive cancer care at the end of life (EOL) can impact quality of life and have major economic burden. The purpose of this study was to portray the aggressiveness of EOL cancer care, and its relation to race, gender and social factors in Eastern North Carolina with high rural and minority population. Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of 401 stage 4 solid tumor patients who died between 2011 and 2014. Aggressiveness of care was calculated by a composite score adopted from Earle et al. Scores range from 0 to 7 with higher scores indicating more aggressive EOL care. 1 point was given to each indicator of aggressiveness in the last 30 days of life: ED visits ≥2,hospital admissions ≥2,any ICU admission,hospitalized days ≥14,new chemotherapy, hospice care ≤ 3 days, and any chemotherapy in the last 14 days. Results: Among the 401 patients, 217 (54%) were white and 178 (44%) were black. The mean composite score of aggressiveness (CSA) for whites was 1.18 and for blacks it was 1.87. (p<0....
Effect of umbilical artery catheters on oxygen supply to extremities.

Umbilical artery catheters are routinely used in patient management. Reported complications of this procedure include thrombosis, infection, vessel perforation, extremity blanching, and visceral necrosis (1,2). A catheter placed in an artery produces a partial acute mechanical obstruction equivalent to coarctation of the aorta.
Admission control strategies for tandem Markovian loss systems

Motivated by communication networks, we study an admission control problem for a Markovian loss system comprised of two finite capacity service stations in tandem. Customers arrive to station 1 according to a Poisson process, and a gatekeeper, who has complete knowledge of the number of customers at both stations, decides whether to accept or reject each arriving customer. If a customer is rejected, a rejection cost is incurred. If an admitted customer finds that station 2 is full at the time of his service completion at station 1, he leaves the system and a loss cost is incurred. The goal is to find easy-to-implement policies that minimize long-run average cost per unit time. We formulate two intuitive, extremal policies and provide analytical results on their performances. We also present necessary and/or sufficient conditions under which each of these policies is optimal. Next, we show that for some states of the system it is always optimal to admit new arrivals. We also fully characterize the optimal policy when the capacity of each station is two and discuss some characteristics of optimal policies in general. Finally, we design heuristic admission control policies using these insights. Numerical experiments indicate that these heuristic policies yield near-optimal long-run average cost performance.
Integrative CO2 Capture and Hydrogenation to Methanol with Reusable Catalyst and Amine: Toward a Carbon Neutral Methanol Economy

Herein we report an efficient and recyclable system for tandem CO2 capture and hydrogenation to methanol. After capture in an aqueous amine solution, CO2 is hydrogenated in high yield to CH3OH (>90%) in a biphasic 2-MTHF/water system, which also allows for easy separation and recycling of the amine and catalyst for multiple reaction cycles. Between cycles, the produced methanol can be conveniently removed in vacuo. Employing this strategy, catalyst Ru-MACHO-BH and polyamine PEHA were recycled three times with 87% of the methanol producibility of the first cycle retained, along with 95% of catalyst activity after four cycles. CO2 from dilute sources such as air can also be converted to CH3OH using this route. We postulate that the CO2 capture and hydrogenation to methanol system presented here could be an important step toward the implementation of the carbon neutral methanol economy concept.
A Multi-layered Desires Based Framework to Detect Users' Evolving Non-functional Requirements

Non-functional requirements (NFRs) play a crucial role in all the downstream activities of a software life-cycle process. Capturing newly emerged NFRs is key to software evolution. Recent research shows functional requirements in the form of task-level alternative features can be elicited from user behavioral and system contextual data through user goal inference. Considering the close connection between the concept of goal and desire, we posit that there is an opportunity to extract new NFRs based on users' mental states, particularly their desires. We propose to use a statistical model to infer desires with multiple-levels of abstraction based on contextual data under Situ framework. Our multi-layered desire inference method takes inference confidence into consideration, and tries to make sense of inference results with both high-and low-inference confidence. By utilizing the different abstraction levels of desires, we provide an illustrative example with three cases to elicit users' new NFRs including new high-level and low-level desires and new contributing relationships between them. Several implications of this work are also discussed. We plan to conduct experiments on human subjects to validate the proposed method as IRB has just approved our proposal.
Progress in Surgery for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia

Over the last century, surgical correction of bladder outlet obstruction secondary to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) has become a commonly accepted procedure. The surgery has been performed either as an open enucleation of the prostate (retropubic, suprapubic, perineal) or as a transurethral resection or incision of the prostate (TURP, TUIP). The choice between the various procedures is usually based on the size of the prostate and the discretion of the surgeon (Fig. 8.1). In the United States, 90% of prostatectomies for BPH are performed transurethraly and approximately 400 000 TURPs are performed annually. The procedure is considered relatively free of life-threatening complications, and in most patients a satisfactory outcome is achieved, though significant problems can occur.
Memory gradient method for the minimization of functions

A new accelerated gradient method for finding the minimum of a function f(x) whose variables are unconstrained is investigated. The new algorithm can be stated as follows: $$\tilde x = x + \delta x,\delta x = - \alpha g(x) + \beta \delta \hat x$$ where δx is the change in the position vector x, (g(x) is the gradient of the function f(x), and α and β are scalars chosen at each step so as to yield the greatest decrease in the function. The symbol \(\delta \hat x\) denotes the change in the position vector for the iteration preceding that under consideration.
Host-cell receptors for Sindbis virus

Sindbis virus has a very wide host range, infecting many species of mosquitoes and other hematophagous insects and infecting many species of higher vertebrates. We have used two approaches to study host cell receptors used by Sindbis virus to enter cells. Antiidiotype antibodies to neutralizing antibodies directed against glycoprotein E2 of the virus identified a 63-kDa protein as a putative receptor in chicken cells. In a second approach, monoclonal antibodies identified a 67 kDa protein, believed to be a high affinity laminin receptor, as a putative receptor in mammalian cells and in mosquito cells. We conclude that the virus attains its very wide host range by two mechanisms. In one mechanism, the virus is able to use more than one protein as a receptor. In a second mechanism, the virus utilizes proteins as receptors that are highly conserved across the animal kingdom.
A Research Agenda for Six Sigma Research

A look at what has been studied regarding Six Sigma in an attempt to close the research gap.
Performance of biodegradative microorganisms in soil: xenobiotic chemicals as unexploited metabolic niches.

Microorganisms are where they are because there is a food source or a metabolic niche to exploit. The word “niche,” as derived from the old French nicher (i.e., “to nest”), has been synonymous in rnacroecology to location or habitat. In microbial ecology, niche refers to function rather than location. This is particularly significant with respect to bacteria, since the basic principle of nutritional selection has been used for isolating them from soil since the time of Beijerinck and Winogradsky a century ago. Reduced to basic simplicity, nutrition is the single most powerful selection force in microbial ecology in the absence of extreme environments. The microorganisms that are the best fitted for exploiting the metabolic niches of the environment are the ones that comprise the microbial community in accordance with Darwinian principles of natural selection. Thus, cellulitic fungi and proteolytic bacteria co-exist side by side spatially, while exploiting different niches, and can be isolated exclusively from each other on different selective media. The vast diversity of metabolic niches ranges in simplicity from ammonium to large, uncharacterized macromolecules.
Play Therapy in Residential Treatment Centers for Children

Residential Treatment Centers (RTCs) serve youth who have suffered extreme abuse and trauma and must reside in 24-hour facilities to receive mental health, medication, and social services. Currentl...
Días de ira (1930) de Helios Gómez: La encrucijada del artista revolucionario de entreguerras

Helios Gomez (Seville 1905-Barcelona 1956), versatile artist and man of action, was, according to his biographer Ursula Tjaden, “the best-known political graphic artist of the Spanish State” (27). His ink drawings, xylographs and posters were a reference point for the progressive forces of the inter-war period, combining avant-garde art, popular tradition, and political message. Exiled in Berlin in 1930 due to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Helios publishes his portfolio entitled Dias de ira. That same year, he abandoned his anarchist militancy and joined several communist organizations until finally being expelled in 1938 and returning to the libertarian ranks. This portfolio, therefore, appears at an ideological and aesthetic turning point in the life of the artist. In this article, we will examine how this transition (from anarchism to communism) is translated, in the case of Helios, into a more direct and explicit type of drawing, and into a new idea of the leading role of the artist in the processes of social change. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere’s contrast between the “ignorant schoolmaster” and the “stultifying pedagogue”, we will explore how the aesthetic tension that characterizes the drawings in Dias de ira responds, fundamentally, to the artist´s degree of confidence in the interpretative capacity of the popular classes.
Classifying the Imaginary: An Expansion of Library of Congress’ Subclass G9930 for Local Use

AbstractClass G provides granular classification for most cartographic materials through a well-established and expanded Cuttering system, maps of imaginary places are classified under G9930 which has no formal expansion. With the creation of a collection of imaginary maps at the Texas A&M University Libraries, the lack of expansion under G9930 created access and filing complications. This case study describes the problem that growing a collection under the unexpanded classification system posed and the solution that was found through the creation of an in-house expansion for G9930.
Fission Properties Relevant for GW170817

The recent observation of gravitational waves and electromagnetic counterpart to GW170817 [1] has provided fresh impetus to understand the formation of the heaviest elements on the periodic table. The merging of two neutron stars offers a potentially robust site for the neutron-rich nucleosynthesis of these elements in the rapid neutron capture process (r process). However, many challenging problems remain in both the astrophysical modeling of merger events and the nuclear physics inputs. Among the nuclear physics needs for the r process, fission properties may be particularly important. The dynamical ejecta of mergers is expected to be so neutron-rich that the resulting r process produces nuclei above the predicted \(N=184\) shell closure and terminates via fission. We focus our discourse on recent nuclear model developments in the description of fission, apart of the Fission In R-process Elements (FIRE) collaboration. We discuss new calculations of neutron-induced and \(\beta \)-delayed fission properties using FRDM2012. We present new microscopic fission yields predicted from FRLDM. We report on the relevance of these calculations to nucleosynthetic yields, the impact on reheating of the ejecta in addition to the influence on kilonova observables.
Orbifolds from modular orbits

Given a two-dimensional conformal field theory with a global symmetry, we propose a method to implement an orbifold construction by taking orbits of the modular group. For the case of cyclic symmetries we find that this approach always seems to be consistent, even in asymmetric orbifold cases where the usual construction does not yield a modular invariant theory; our approach keeps modular invariance manifest but may give a result that is equivalent to the original theory. For the case that the symmetry is a subgroup of a continuous flavor symmetry, we can give explicit constructions of the spectrum, with twisted sectors corresponding to a nonstandard group projection on an enlarged twisted sector Hilbert space.
Association of immune-checkpoint inhibitors and the risk of immune-related colitis among elderly patients with advanced melanoma: real-world evidence from the SEER-Medicare database.

Background:The use of anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (anti-CTLA4) therapy (ipilimumab) and anti-programmed cell-death 1 (anti-PD1) agents (nivolumab and pembrolizumab) in advanced melanoma h...