cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Antinuclear Antibodies, Rheumatoid Factor and c‐Reactive Protein in Serum of Normal Women Using Oral Contraceptives

To assess the effect of oral contraceptives on antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) rheumatoid factor (RF) and C-reactive protein (CRP) 3 groups of women were studied: 1) 174 women (ages 16-47) from the time of their initial uses of oral contraceptives 2) 119 women (ages 17-39) selected from the community at random and 3) 210 women (ages 17-47) who had been taking oral contraceptives prior to and continuing through the course of this study. Data from the original 174 were available for only 82 of the subjects. 4 women from this group of 82 with negative ANA tests prior to treatment developed positive ANAs (all took oral contraceptive combinations containing 80 mcg mestranol per tablet) 9 developed RF and 30 developed CRP in less than a year. The prevalence of positive tests for ANA RF and CRP was greater in the initial group of 210 women who had been using oral contraceptives than that found in the initial group of 174 women who had not used oral contraceptives until the study. Cross-comparison of the 3 groups demonstrated no significant difference in the prevalence of positive tests for ANA. Data suggest that frequency of positive tests for ANA increases with chronological age. When group comparisons were made only the increase in CRP was statistically significant (p less than .05). Composition and dosage of oral contraceptives may have influenced the induction of antinuclear antibodies in the group of 82 women examined from initial use of oral contraceptives.
Tyramine conjugation deficit in migraine, tension-type headache, and depression

This study was designed to investigate tyramine sulfate conjugation in patients with migraine or tension-type headache, as defined by the newly introduced International Headache Society (IHS) criteria and to examine whether this relationship is mediated by major depression. A total of 62 subjects completed the study: 38 with migraine (22 with aura and 16 without aura), 12 with tension-type headache, and 12 controls. Patients with migraine had significantly lower urinary tyramine sulfate excretion following oral tyramine challenge than normal control. Tension-type headache was also associated with low tyramine conjugation, but only when comorbid with depression. Although mean tyramine sulfate output was lower among subjects with major depression within each of the subtypes of headache, no significant main effect emerged for depression or major subtype thereof. The lower tyramine sulfate excretion values among patients with both migraine and depression compared to those of migraine alone or depression alone in our data and those of others suggests that comorbid migraine with depression may represent a more severe form of migraine than migraine alone. These findings underscore the importance of comorbidity in clinical and epidemiological studies of migraine.
Physical algebras in four dimensions. II. The Majorana algebra

We show that, contrary to the traditional assumption, the Majorana matrices define an algebra that is distinct from the algebra of the Dirac matrices. Furthermore, both algebras are in turn distinct from the Clifford algebra in Minkowski spacetime. This result is discussed within the context of field descriptions in four-dimensional spacetime. It is pointed out why these three algebras are almost impossible to distinguish in the representation space of 4 x 4 matrices.
Effect of population density during development on adult social behavior of the rat

Differential caging conditions (space/animal and animals/cage) during development resulted in altered adult open-field social behaviors even though adult animals had been individually housed for long periods before testing. Crowded cages during development resulted in a decrease of aggressive behavior and an increase in submissive behaviors when the adult animals were paired in the open-field. The observed changes in social behavior might be viewed as adaptations to the social environment in which the animal developed.
Cell density modulates apoptosis in human articular chondrocytes.

This study addresses the effects of cell density and serum on CD95 (APO-1/Fas) and CD95L (Fas Ligand) expression and on the induction of CD95-dependent apoptosis in human articular chondrocytes from normal knees. Subsets of articular chondrocytes in first passage monolayer culture expressed CD95 and CD95L on the cell surface. The expression of both molecules was influenced by cell density: 22.3% of chondrocytes plated at subconfluent density expressed CD95L while expression in confluent cultures was reduced to 8.2%. CD95 expression was 32.1% under subconfluent and 12.2% under confluent conditions. Induction of specific apoptosis by agonistic antibody to CD95 was 15 times higher in confluent cultures than in subconfluent cultures despite higher levels of CD95 and CD95L expression in subconfluent cells, suggesting that protective antiapoptotic mechanisms were activated in low-density cultures. In subconfluent cultures, serum withdrawal had no effect on the sensitivity of the cells toward CD95 antibody-induced apoptosis. However, in confluent cultures, serum withdrawal led to a significant reduction of CD95-dependent apoptosis. Together, these findings demonstrate that cell density is an important modulator of CD95/CD95L expression and susceptibility to CD95-mediated apoptosis in cultured human chondrocytes. J. Cell. Physiol. 180:439–447, 1999. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Life and death in tribal Africa.

Nurses are with people as they experience a variety of life situations that are paradoxical in nature. In other words, these life experiences hold happiness and sadness, opportunities and limitations all at once.
Integrating Disaster Preparedness Into a Community Health Nursing Course: One School's Experience

It is not practical to wait for a disaster, whether natural or human-made, to learn how to respond and provide specialized care. The Long Island University School of Nursing in Brooklyn, New York, has developed a specific educational experience for undergraduate nursing students enrolled in community health. The course is offered in the senior semester and includes didactic material based on the International Nursing Coalition for Mass Casualty Education–recommended competencies. Students are given the opportunity to apply the learning and develop additional skills by participating in a mock drill. Although anecdotal comments from the students indicate that the coursework has been helpful, additional research is planned to evaluate the program.
Capital structures matrix: a model for public access to project interpretation

A growing demand for transparency and accountability in local decision-making has grown substantially in recent years due to an increasing awareness of finite natural resources. Sustainable development captures the interrelatedness of the economy, the environment and social expectations. In addition, transparency in the decision-making process provides the public a method of accountability for public funds. The Capital Structures Model developed in this paper addresses the demand for accountability by focusing on local development projects classified by type of capital (built, human, social and natural) in order to provide information to the average constituent regarding specific county and community development projects. Local assets are initially categorized according to the type of capital to which they most contribute, and then indicators are employed to measure the contribution of a project with respect to increasing the capacity of each type of capital. These indicators are then cross-referenced wit...
PREDICTION OF EQUILIBRIUM PHASE COMPOSITIONS AND β-GLUCOSIDASE PARTITION COEFFICIENT IN AQUEOUS TWO-PHASE SYSTEMS

Artificial neural networks (ANN) and Flory-Huggins (F-H)-type models were implemented to simulate the binodal curve of an aqueous two-phase, system (ATPS) composed of poly(ethylene glycol), potassium phosphate, and water. The ANN model outperformed the F-H model in predicting the equilibrium compositions of the PEG-rich phase (average percent deviation: 10.0 versus 56.6). However, the estimation of interaction parameters was feasible only in the thermodynamic framework. Beta-glucosidase was introduced into the system under various temperature (25°–50°C) and pH conditions (6.5–8.0). The β-glucosidase partition coefficient increased with the temperature and pH over a range of 0.11–1.18. The network was better suited to predict the partitioning behavior of the enzyme because of the increased number of interaction parameters. The artificial intelligence–guided approach for isolating the enzyme has the potential to reduce costs, improve performance, and identify the most favorable purification conditions.
A Bat Algorithm with Generalized Walk for the Two-Stage Hybrid Flow Shop Problem

In the last years, a set of bio-inspired metaheuristics has proved their efficiencies in combinational and continues optimization areas. This paper intends to hybrid a discrete version of Bat Algorithm BA with Generalized Evolutionary Walk Algorithm GEWA to solve the mono-processors two stages Hybrid Flow Shop scheduling. The authors compare the modified bat algorithm with the original one, with Particle Swarm Optimization PSO and with others results taken from literature. Computational results on a standard two-stage hybrid flow shop benchmark of 70 cases, and about 1700 instances, indicate that the proposed algorithm finds the best makespan Cmax in a good processing time comparing to the original bat algorithm and other algorithms.
Markov Chain Modeling of Multinomial Land-Cover Classes

Quantitatively modeling the spatial distribution and uncertainties of land- cover classes is crucial in geographic information science. However, currently suit- able methods for modeling multinomial categorical variables for geographical anal- yses are rare because of the complex spatial interdependence of multinomial classes. In this paper we use a recently presented two-dimensional Markov chain model to simulate multinomial land-cover classes and to estimate occurrence probability vec- tors for spatial uncertainty representation. Simulated results indicate that the model may provide a potential method for predictive mapping at higher resolutions pos- sibly over large areas and for spatial uncertainty analyses of land-cover classes.
Evaluation of Software-Implemented Fault-Tolerance (SIFT) Approach in Gracefully Degradable Multi-Computer Systems

This paper presents an analytical method for evaluating the reliability improvement for any size of multi-computer system based on Software-Implemented Fault-Tolerance (SIFT). The method is based on the equivalent failure rate Gamma, the single node failure rate lambda, the number of nodes in the system, N, the repair rate mu, the fault coverage factor c, the reconfiguration rate delta, and the percentage of blocking faults b1 and b2. The impact of these parameters on the reliability improvement has been evaluated for a gracefully degradable multi-computer system using our proposed analytical technique based on Markov chains. To validate our approach, we used the SIFT method which implements error detection at the node level, combined with a fast reconfiguration algorithm for avoiding faulty nodes. It is worth noting that the proposed method is applicable to any multi-computer systems' topology. The evaluation work presented in this paper focuses on the combination of analytical and experimental approaches, and more precisely on Markov chains. The SIFT method has been successfully implemented for a multi-computer system, nCube. The time overhead (reconfiguration & recomputation time) incurred by the injected fault, and the fault coverage factor c, are experimentally evaluated by means of a parallel version of the Software Object-Oriented Fault-Injection Tool (nSOFIT). The implemented SIFT approach can be used for real-time applications, when the time constraints should be met despite failures in the gracefully degradable multi-computer system
Heterogeneous photonic integrated circuits and their applications in computing, networking, and imaging

We discuss heterogeneous integrations and their impacts on computing, networking, and imaging applications. We will review photonic integration technologies including silicon, InP, GaAs, SiO2, Si3N4, and magneto-optical materials such as YIG and BIG. We will address new architectures, new capabilities, and performance enhancement brought into computing, networking, and imaging architectures through heterogeneous photonic integration.
Selection against instability: stable subgraphs are most frequent in empirical food webs

Food web structure can be characterized by the particular frequencies of subgraphs found within them. Although there are thirteen possible configurations of three species subgraphs, some are consistently over-represented in empirical food webs. This is a robust pattern that is found across marine, freshwater or terrestrial environments. The preferential elimination of unstable subgraphs during the assembly of the food web can explain the observed pattern. It follows from this hypothesis that there should be differences in the stability of different subgraphs, and that stability should be positively correlated to their frequency in food webs. Using 50 food webs collected from a variety of databases I determined the frequency of each of the thirteen possible subgraphs with respect to randomized webs. Then by numerical simulation I determined the quasi sign stability (QSS) of each subgraph. My results clearly show a positive correlation between QSS and over-representation of the different subgraphs in empirical food webs.
SURF — STRUCTURAL UNDUPLICATED REACH AND FREQUENCY: LATENT CLASS TURF AND SHAPLEY VALUE ANALYSES

Lazarsfeld's Latent Structure Analysis (LSA) is applied to problems in marketing involving the choice of products with maximum customer coverage. The LSA is combined with Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency (TURF) technique, and also with a tool from cooperative game theory, the Shapley Value (SV), also known as the fuzzy Choquet integral. SV is used for ordering the items by their strength in covering the maximum number of consumers, which provides more stable results than TURF. Structural Unduplicated Reach and Frequency (SURF) analysis is introduced as the LSA segmentation of customers with different preferences across the products. The blending of LSA with TURF and SV yields new abilities of the latent structured TURF and SV. The marketing strategy based on using these techniques permits the identification of the preferred combinations in media or product mix for different population segments.
Betrayal Trauma: Relational Models of Harm and Healing

We examine a model that emphasizes the importance of relationships as the context of trauma and healing. First, we present an overview of the effects of betrayal trauma and oppression on psychologi- cal functioning. Then, we propose a relational model of healing, using elements of the Stone Center's Relational-Cultural theory. Finally, we dis- cuss healing in the wider context of community and an ethic of compas- sion and mutuality. doi:10.1300/J189v05n01_04 (Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.)
Employment at Closure Is Associated With Enhanced Quality of Life and Subjective Well-Being for Persons With Spinal Cord Injuries

This study assessed whether persons with spinal cord injuries who had been successfully rehabilitated into employment following receipt of rehabilitation services had better quality of life and sub...
Sparse coding models demonstrate some non-classical receptive field effects

Non-classical receptive field (nCRF) effects include several response properties in V1 neurons not explained by a linear-nonlinear (LN) receptive field model, but instead requiring significant interactions between V1 neurons. Using a sparse coding model [1,2] and bar and grating stimuli, simulated physiology experiments were carried out that replicated several nCRF phenomena reported previously in neurophysiology experiments. These include: end-stopping [3] (Fig. ​(Fig.1),1), contrast invariance of orientation tuning [4] (Fig. ​(Fig.2),2), radius, orientation, and contrast tunings of surround suppression [5,6] (Fig. ​(Fig.3,3, ​,4,4, ​,5).5). The results suggest that a sparse coding model can explain many of the nonlinear effects in V1 cells, and is therefore a reasonable candidate for a functional model of striate cortex. Figure 1 End-stopping. Comparison with a LN model. Figure 2 Contrast invariance of orientation tuning. Figure 3 Surround suppression at different contrasts. Figure 4 Orientation tuning of surround suppression. Figure 5 Surround orientation influences contrast tuning.
Software for the high-throughput collection of SAXS data using an enhanced Blu-Ice/DCS control system

Biological small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) provides powerful complementary data for macromolecular crystallography (MX) by defining shape, conformation and assembly in solution. Although SAXS is in principle the highest throughput technique for structural biology, data collection is limited in practice by current data collection software. Here the adaption of beamline control software, historically developed for MX beamlines, for the efficient operation and high-throughput data collection at synchrotron SAXS beamlines is reported. The Blu-Ice GUI and Distributed Control System (DCS) developed in the Macromolecular Crystallography Group at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory has been optimized, extended and enhanced to suit the specific needs of the biological SAXS endstation at the SIBYLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source. The customizations reported here provide a potential route for other SAXS beamlines in need of robust and efficient beamline control software. As a great deal of effort and optimization has gone into crystallographic software, the adaption and extension of crystallographic software may prove to be a general strategy to provide advanced SAXS software for the synchrotron community. In this way effort can be put into optimizing features for SAXS rather than reproducing those that have already been successfully implemented for the crystallographic community.
Reply to Ahiakpor

Abstract. Professor Reisman responds to Professor James C. W. Ahiakpor's criticisms pp. 715–717.
Effects of slip on the viscosity of polymer melts

We use existing scaling theories by de Gennes, Brochard, and Ajdari to calculate the apparent viscosity of multilayer blends with weakly entangled interfaces. The lowering of the apparent viscosity with respect to the bulk is a manifestation of interfacial slip. The theoretical predictions are compared with the recent experimental data of Zhao and Macosko. The theory is able to describe a continuous transition from a low-slip regime to a high-slip regime when the bulk rheology is still Newtonian, in agreement with experiments. However, the dependence of the apparent viscosity on the shear rate and layer thicknesses is much stronger than what is observed experimentally. The apparent viscosity is also calculated for dilute polymer emulsions. We modify a theory of Palierne, which is valid in the linear viscoelastic regime for the bulk, to include the effects of interfacial slip.
High order parallel discontinuous Galerkin time domain method with curvilinear element and continuously varying material properties for Maxwell's equations

Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method is well-suited on unstructured meshes for high order approximation with the freedom of choosing the order of basis functions in each element locally. Moreover, DG can handle complicated geometries with curved boundary easily. Further, since information exchange in DG only involves neighboring elements, high efficiency in parallelization can be achieved. The conformal perfect matched layer (PML) with continuously changing material property tensors in space is adopted to truncate the computational domain. And the model presented in this paper treats the material property tensor in PML region with polynomial representation using a universal array approach.
The kinetics of G-CSF mobilization of CD34+ cells in healthy people

When healthy people are given granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) for 10 days the number of CD34+ cells in the peripheral blood begins to increase on the fourth day, reaches a maximum on the sixth day and then decreases. In this study, we further define the time and variability of peak mobilization of CD34+ cells. Twenty-two healthy people were given G-CSF (7.5 or 10 micrograms kg-1 day-1) subcutaneously each morning for 5 days and peripheral blood CD34+ cell counts were analysed immediately prior to the fourth (day 4) and fifth (day 5) G-CSF injection and 24 h after the fifth injection (Day 6). White blood cell (WBC) and neutrophil counts were greatest on day 6 [WBC = 43.8 +/- 13.9 x 10(9) L-1 (mean +/- 1 SD) and neutrophils = 36.6 +/- 12.8 x 10(9) L-1]. In contrast the CD34+ cell counts on day 6 (107 +/- 104 x 10(6) L-1) were less than on day 5 (128 +/- 136 x 10(6) L-1) (P = 0.048) but still greater than on day 4 (60.7 +/- 40.2 x 10(6) L-1) (P < 0.0001). The CD34+ cell counts of 10 donors were measured 2, 4 and 6 h after the fifth injection to determine if the counts increased further between days 5 and 6. The number of CD34+ cells in the blood on day 5 2 h after the fifth injection (193 +/- 277 x 10(6) L-1) was greater than the number prior to the injection (158 +/- 190 x 10(6) L-1), 4 h post-injection (139 +/- 158 x 10(6) L-1) and 6 h post-injection (170 +/- 236 x 10(6) L-1), but the differences were not significant (P = 0.29, 0.25 and 0.45). The number of CD34+ cells in the blood of 12 people were measured before and after the fourth G-CSF dose. Prior to the day 4 injection the CD34+ count was 61 +/- 40 x 10(6) L-1. At 2, 4 and 6 h the counts were 60 +/- 40, 61 +/- 29 and 64 +/- 30 x 10(6) L-1, respectively, and the differences were not significant (P = 0.99, P = 0.98, and P = 0.73). In conclusion, when healthy volunteers are given daily G-CSF injections, the number of mobilized CD34+ cells was the greatest on day 5, slightly less on day 6 and the least on day 4. If only one PBSC component is needed, PBSCs can be collected on day 5 after only 4 days of G-CSF. If PBSC components are collected on both days 5 and 6, the fifth dose can be given either before or after the collection of the first PBSC component.
Ectopic Vesicular Glutamate Release at the Optic Nerve Head and Axon Loss in Mouse Experimental Glaucoma

Although clinical and experimental observations indicate that the optic nerve head (ONH) is a major site of axon degeneration in glaucoma, the mechanisms by which local retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons are injured and damage spreads among axons remain poorly defined. Using a laser-induced ocular hypertension (LIOH) mouse model of glaucoma, we found that within 48 h of intraocular pressure elevation, RGC axon segments within the ONH exhibited ectopic accumulation and colocalization of multiple components of the glutamatergic presynaptic machinery including the vesicular glutamate transporter VGLUT2, several synaptic vesicle marker proteins, glutamate, the soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor complex and active zone cytomatrix components, as well as ultrastructurally identified, synaptophysin-containing vesicles. Ectopic vesicle exocytosis and glutamate release were detected in acute preparations of the LIOH ONH. Immunolocalization and analysis using the ionotropic receptor channel-permeant cation agmatine indicated that ONH axon segments and glia expressed glutamate receptors, and these receptors were more active after LIOH compared with controls. Pharmacological antagonism of glutamate receptors and neuronal activity resulted in increased RGC axon sparing in vivo. Furthermore, in vivo RGC-specific genetic disruption of the vesicular glutamate transporter VGLUT2 or the obligatory NMDA receptor subunit NR1 promoted axon survival in experimental glaucoma. As the inhibition of ectopic glutamate vesicular release or glutamate receptivity can independently modify the severity of RGC axon loss, synaptic release mechanisms may provide useful therapeutic entry points into glaucomatous axon degeneration.
VIOLIN: vaccine investigation and online information network

Vaccines are among the most efficacious and cost-effective tools for reducing morbidity and mortality caused by infectious diseases. The vaccine investigation and online information network (VIOLIN) is a web-based central resource, allowing easy curation, comparison and analysis of vaccine-related research data across various human pathogens (e.g. Haemophilus influenzae, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Plasmodium falciparum) of medical importance and across humans, other natural hosts and laboratory animals. Vaccine-related peer-reviewed literature data have been downloaded into the database from PubMed and are searchable through various literature search programs. Vaccine data are also annotated, edited and submitted to the database through a web-based interactive system that integrates efficient computational literature mining and accurate manual curation. Curated information includes general microbial pathogenesis and host protective immunity, vaccine preparation and characteristics, stimulated host responses after vaccination and protection efficacy after challenge. Vaccine-related pathogen and host genes are also annotated and available for searching through customized BLAST programs. All VIOLIN data are available for download in an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based data exchange format. VIOLIN is expected to become a centralized source of vaccine information and to provide investigators in basic and clinical sciences with curated data and bioinformatics tools for vaccine research and development. VIOLIN is publicly available at http://www.violinet.org.
Knudsen Thermal Force Generation at the Microscale

The paper reports on the experimental studies targeting Knudsen forces on silicon microcantilevers. The devices were fabricated on a Silicon-On-Insulator wafer with one end anchored to the substrate. Measurements were performed through direct external heating of the underlying substrate. Device deflection was quantified using confocal microscopy, showing an increase in force magnitude for decreasing Knudsen number. Measurements were carried out at a constant substrate temperature with Knudsen number being controlled directly via ambient pressure.Copyright © 2014 by ASME
Lateral Surface Superlattices

As semiconductor technology continues to pursue the scaling down of integrated circuit dimensions into the submicron and ultrasubmicron regimes, many novel and interesting questions will emerge concerning the physics of charged particles in semiconductors. One of the more important topics to be considered is that of carrier confinement in structures that reduce the dimensionality of the system. Notable among these structures are MOS quantized inversion layers discussed in previous chapters and the heterojunction superlattice. In particular, the fabrication of the quantum well superlattice has been possible due to the advent of MBE and MOCVD technology, which we have discussed previously.
Environmental induction of photononresponsiveness in the Siberian hamster, Phodopus sungorus

In seasonally breeding rodent species, a fraction of the population is unresponsive to short day lengths (DL) and remains reproductively competent during winter. We previously observed that incidence of nonresponsiveness to short days was affected by photoperiodic history. Here we tested whether exposure to long DL (18 h light/day; 18L) renders animals unresponsive to short DL (10L). Hamsters, maintained from birth in 10L, were transferred at week 6 to 18L or 14L. Ten weeks later (week 16), groups were transferred to 10L for 10 wk. All hamsters maintained in short DL from birth had undeveloped testes at week 6. At week 26, however, 92% of hamsters previously kept in 18L failed to undergo complete gonadal regression in 10L, compared with only 10% of hamsters previously in 14L. Entrainment of locomotor activity in 10L in nonresponsive hamsters resembled that typically observed under long DL. Exposure to 18L may induce nonresponsiveness by altering interactions of component circadian oscillators that mediate gonadal regression in short DL.
The effects of a high protein diet on indices of health and body composition – a crossover trial in resistance-trained men

Eight weeks of a high protein diet (>3 g/kg/day) coupled with a periodized heavy resistance training program has been shown to positively affect body composition with no deleterious effects on health. Using a randomized, crossover design, resistance-trained male subjects underwent a 16-week intervention (i.e., two 8-week periods) in which they consumed either their normal (i.e., habitual) or a higher protein diet (>3 g/kg/day). Thus, the purpose of this study was to ascertain if significantly increasing protein intake would affect clinical markers of health (i.e., lipids, kidney function, etc.) as well as performance and body composition in young males with extensive resistance training experience. Twelve healthy resistance-trained men volunteered for this study (mean ± SD: age 25.9 ± 3.7 years; height 178.0 ± 8.5 cm; years of resistance training experience 7.6 ± 3.6) with 11 subjects completing most of the assessments. In a randomized crossover trial, subjects were tested at baseline and after two 8-week treatment periods (i.e., habitual [normal] diet and high protein diet) for body composition, measures of health (i.e., blood lipids, comprehensive metabolic panel) and performance. Each subject maintained a food diary for the 16-week treatment period (i.e., 8 weeks on their normal or habitual diet and 8 weeks on a high protein diet). Each subject provided a food diary of two weekdays and one weekend day per week. In addition, subjects kept a diary of their training regimen that was used to calculate total work performed. During the normal and high protein phase of the treatment period, subjects consumed 2.6 ± 0.8 and 3.3 ± 0.8 g/kg/day of dietary protein, respectively. The mean protein intake over the 4-month period was 2.9 ± 0.9 g/kg/day. The high protein group consumed significantly more calories and protein (p < 0.05) than the normal protein group. There were no differences in dietary intake between the groups for any other measure. Moreover, there were no significant changes in body composition or markers of health in either group. There were no side effects (i.e., blood lipids, glucose, renal, kidney function etc.) regarding high protein consumption. In resistance-trained young men who do not significantly alter their training regimen, consuming a high protein diet (2.6 to 3.3 g/kg/day) over a 4-month period has no effect on blood lipids or markers of renal and hepatic function. Nor were there any changes in performance or body composition. This is the first crossover trial using resistance-trained subjects in which the elevation of protein intake to over four times the recommended dietary allowance has shown no harmful effects.
Can Natural Language Processing Become Natural Language Coaching

How we teach and learn is undergoing a revolution, due to changes in technology and connectivity. Education may be one of the best application areas for advanced NLP techniques, and NLP researchers have much to contribute to this problem, especially in the areas of learning to write, mastery learning, and peer learning. In this paper I consider what happens when we convert natural language processors into natural language coaches. 1 Why Should You Care, NLP Researcher? There is a revolution in learning underway. Students are taking Massive Open Online Courses as well as online tutorials and paid online courses. Technology and connectivity makes it possible for students to learn from anywhere in the world, at any time, to fit their schedules. And in today’s knowledge-based economy, going to school only in one’s early years is no longer enough; in future most people are going to need continuous, lifelong education. Students are changing too — they expect to interact with information and technology. Fortunately, pedagogical research shows significant benefits of active learning over passive methods. The modern view of teaching means students work actively in class, talk with peers, and are coached more than graded by their instructors. In this new world of education, there is a great need for NLP research to step in and help. I hope in this paper to excite colleagues about the possibilities and suggest a few new ways of looking at them. I do not attempt to cover the field of language and learning comprehensively, nor do I claim there is no work in the field. In fact there is quite a bit, such as a recent special issue on language learning resources (Sharoff et al., 2014), the long running ACL workshops on Building Educational Applications using NLP (Tetreault et al., 2015), and a recent shared task competition on grammatical error detection for second language learners (Ng et al., 2014). But I hope I am casting a few interesting thoughts in this direction for those colleagues who are not focused on this particular topic.
Questioning the veil, open letters to Muslim women

Questioning the veil, open letters to Muslim women, by Marnia Lazreg, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2009, 156 pp., $22.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-691-13818-3 We are living in a much more ...
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Story of the Hunter College Collection of Puerto Rican Graphic Arts

AbstractThe Hunter College Collection of Puerto Rican Graphic Arts includes over 150 works produced between 1954 and 1985 and represents the work of forty-one artists. It is illustrative of the growth of the printmaking tradition in Puerto Rico during the twentieth century. Acquired through a misappropriation of funds by a student group in the mid-1980s and ultimately purchased by and displayed in the college, the story of this collection raises important questions regarding institutional responsibility for the purchase and stewardship of art objects. Should art be collected if no plans are made for its maintenance and care?
Altruistic Agencies and Compassionate Consumers Moral Framing of Transnational Surrogacy

What makes a multimillion-dollar, transnational intimate industry possible when most people see it as exploitative? Using the newly emergent case of commercial surrogacy in India, this article extends the literature on stratified reproduction and intimate industries by examining how surrogacy persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the “rent-a-womb industry” and “baby factory.” Using interview data with eight infertility specialists, 20 intended parents, and 70 Indian surrogate mothers, as well as blogs and media stories, we demonstrate how market actors justify their pursuits through narrating moral frames of compassion and altruism that are not incidental but systematic to and constitutive of transnational surrogacy. We observed two predominant moral frames: (1) surrogacy liberates and empowers Indian women from patriarchal control; and (2) surrogacy furthers reproductive rights. Within these frames, the market exchange of money for babies is cast as compassion, which allows commissioning c...
A generalizable adaptive brain-machine interface design for control of anesthesia

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) for closed-loop control of anesthesia have the potential to automatically monitor and control brain states under anesthesia. Since a variety of anesthetic states are needed in different clinical scenarios, designing a generalizable BMI architecture that can control a wide range of anesthetic states is essential. In addition, drug dynamics are non-stationary over time and could change with the depth of anesthesia. Hence for precise control, a BMI needs to track these non-stationarities online. Here we design a BMI architecture that generalizes to control of various anesthetic states and their associated neural signatures, and is adaptive to time-varying drug dynamics. We provide a systematic approach to build general parametric models that quantify the anesthetic state and describe the drug dynamics. Based on these models, we develop an adaptive closed-loop controller within the framework of stochastic optimal feedback control. This controller tracks the non-stationarities in drug dynamics, achieves tight control in a time-varying environment, and removes the need for an offline system identification session. For robustness, the BMI also ensures small drug infusion rate variations at steady state. We test the BMI architecture for control of two common anesthetic states, i.e., burst suppression in medically-induced coma and unconsciousness in general anesthesia. Using numerical experiments, we find that the BMI generalizes to control of both these anesthetic states; in a time-varying environment, even without initial knowledge of model parameters, the BMI accurately controls these two different anesthetic states, reducing bias and error more than 70 times and 9 times, respectively, compared with a non-adaptive system.
Multi-Level Partitioning and Distribution of the Assignment Problem for Large-Scale Multi-Robot Task Allocation

A team of robots can handle failures and dynamic tasks by repeatedly assigning functioning robots to tasks. This paper introduces an algorithm that scales to large numbers of robots and tasks by exploiting both task locality and sparsity. The algorithm mixes both centralized and decentralized approaches at different scales to produce a fast, robust method that is accurate and scalable, and reduces both the global communication and unnecessary repeated computation. We depart from optimization and bipartite matching formulations of the problem, observing instead that an assignment can be computed through coarsening and partitioning operations on the utility matrix. First, a coarse assignment is calculated by evaluating the global utility information and partitioning it into clusters in a problem-domain independent way. Next, the assignment solutions in each partition are refined (either recursively, or via an existing algorithm). This multilevel framework allows the repeated reassignment to execute among interrelated partitions. The results suggest that only a minor sacrifice in solution quality is required for gains in efficiency. The proposed algorithm is validated using extensive simulation experiments and the results show advantages over the traditional optimal assignment algorithms.
Excess pay and deficient performance

Abstract We investigate the link between abnormal CEO compensation and firm performance, asking whether high unexplained compensation relative to several benchmarks is a sign of hard-to-measure but desirable executive attributes or is instead a symptom of unsolved agency problems. We find that abnormally high CEO pay predicts worse future firm performance. Abnormally high compensation that is performance-contingent is a less ominous signal about the future success of the firm. But abnormal levels of even performance-contingent compensation predict worse future performance. We conclude that abnormally high CEO pay can be useful as an independent indicator of agency problems.
Leukopenic and thrombocytopenic effect of hypothermia in dogs.

Summary1. Attention is drawn to the complication of impaired coagulation encountered in experimental hypothermia in dogs. 2. The method used for anesthetizing and rapidly reducing the body temperature by packing in cracked ice is described. 3. The following changes were associated with hypothermia: The leukocyte count was reduced an average of 86%, the total eosinophil count was reduced an average of 86%; and the platelet count was reduced an average of 81%. 4. The coagulation mechanism was not studied directly, but data from these experiments suggest that the strong thrombocytopenic effect observed may be a factor in the impaired coagulation.
Probing the dependence of long-range, four-atom interactions on intermolecular orientation: 3. Hydrogen and iodine.

Two-laser, action spectroscopy experiments have been performed in the I 2 B-X, v'-0 spectral region on H 2 ··· I 2 and D 2 ··· I 2 complexes to investigate the dependence of the H 2 /D 2 + I 2 intermolecular interactions on orientation. The spectra contain features associated with at least two different conformers of the ground-state H 2 /D 2 ···I 2 (X,v" = 0) complexes; one conformer has a preferred T-shaped geometry with the H 2 /D 2 moiety localized in a potential minimum that is orthogonal to the I-I bond axis, and the second conformer has a linear geometry with the H 2 /D 2 moiety positioned in minima at either end of the I 2 molecule, along the bond axis. Those features associated with complexes containing para-H 2 (j = 0), ortho-H 2 (j = 1), ortho-D 2 (j = 0), and para-D 2 (j = 1) are also assigned. The linear conformers are found to be more strongly bound than the T-shaped conformers with binding energies of 118.9(1.9) cm -1 versus 91.3-93.3 cm -1 for the ortho-H 2 ···I 2 complexes and 144.2(2.1) cm -1 versus 107.9 cm -1 for the para-D 2 ···I 2 complexes, respectively. Electronic structure calculations of the complexes containing ICl and I 2 with H 2 , He, Ne, and Ar were performed to reveal the nature of the interactions and to shed insight into the origins of the different binding energies. The most stable minima in the H 2 /D 2 + I 2 (B,v') excited-state potentials have T-shaped geometries. Calculated energies and probability amplitudes of the excited-state levels provide insight into the different excited-state intermolecular vibrational levels accessed by transitions of the two ground-state conformers.
Some design characteristics of the AMPTE turn and orbit change maneuvers

The maneuvers carried out by the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) including the Charge Composition Explorer (CCE) and the Ion Release Module (IRM) spacecraft are analyzed. Analytic and graphical methods are developed in order to carry out sensitivity analyses that helped design the nominal maneuvers, by taking into account errors in burn initiating time, motor performance, and spin axis pointing. A tradeoff analysis between errors in timing and Delta V magnitude is shown for the IRM orbit transfer, and a technique that allows for the determination of the attitude of spinner spacecraft by way of the observed Doppler shift resulting from an unbalanced turn is investigated.
Behavioral mapping: An ecological analysis of activities in a residential setting

This research is based on the premise that there is a relationship between children's play behaviour and the designed features of the residential environment in which they reside. Through systematic and unobtrusive observation, outdoor activities were monitored and described in behavioral as well as physical terms. Through successive observations, patterns emerge that suggest site planning arrangements provide certain perceptual clues and ambiguities for individual as well as group activities, depending upon age distribution and sex. Residential site planning, particularly for low‐income families, is an important factor in the range of experiences, behavior and development of its inhabitants, particularly children.
The detection and analysis of Benzo(a) pyrene in fried foods and grilled foods in Nanyang

Objective We sampling tested the fried foods and grilled foods in Nanyang in order to understand the situation of Benzo(a)pyrene contamination of these kinds of local foods. Methods We did the random sampling of the fried foods and grilled foods in the 13 counties of Nanyang to test the purity of Benzo(a)pyrene. Results A total of 680 samples were collected, and the average content of Benzo(a)pyrene was 0.69 μg/kg, which had exceeded the rate of1.18 %, where the content of Benzo(a)pyrene in fried foods reached to 0.51 μg / kg, exceeding the rate of 0.48 % and the content of Benzo(a)pyrene in barbecue foods reached to 0.77 μg / kg, exceeding the rate of 1.48 %. Conclusion The overall food pollution situation in fried foods and grilled foods is nothing serious but individual barbecue foods have a high detection value, which requires relevant departments to strengthen supervision and management in order to protect the safety of the table food.
The Code of Conduct for Earthquake Rescuing Teams

This paper explores the capacity of earthquake rescuing teams according to rescuing factors,qualifications in terms of the scale of the earthquake.In this paper,the earthquake rescuing procedures,the length of rescuing period and rescuing action requirements are defined.The things that need to be focused on in the rescuing action is also discussed to avoid the further casualties and improve the rescuing abilities.
Bird community responses to afforested eucalyptus plantations in the Argentine pampas

Land-use change driven by human population growth and economic activity will continue to impact both natural habitats and land currently being used for food, fiber, and fuel production. The effects of this conversion on economically important ecological services will in large part depend on how native biodiversity responds to these changes. We investigated how agriculture-related land use change influences the avian community in northeastern Argentina by examining common agricultural land uses (pasture/annual crops, young and mature large-scale eucalyptus plantations, mixed-use farms with citrus, blueberry and small stands of eucalyptus) and remnant native espinal savannas. In this region, afforested eucalyptus plantations represent a new land-use change from the land cover of pasture with intermixed annual crops that has dominated the region. In this mosaic, we used point counts to assess how avian diversity and community structure differed between land uses. Bird species richness was lowest in older plantations and highest in the espinal savanna, with the other land uses having intermediate richness. Abundance trends followed the same pattern, with low overall abundance in the plantations, intermediate levels for pasture/annual crops, and highest abundance in the espinal. Distinct bird community assemblages were strongly associated with each land use, and between young and mature eucalyptus stands. Birds can be useful indicators for biodiversity as a whole, and the depopulated and depauperate avian community within the eucalyptus plantations will likely lead to reduced provision of many ecosystem services in this region if the spatial extent of plantations continues to expand.
Neodymium:YAG Laser Treatment of Benign Urethral Strictures

AbstractA total of 17 patients with benign urethral strictures underwent treatment with circumferential application of neodymium:YAG laser irradiation to the strictured area. Foley catheter drainage was used postoperatively in only 2 patients and no treatment complications were observed. Although early postoperative results were good 11 patients (64 per cent) suffered recurrent stricture within 6 months of treatment. With the method described, neodymium:YAG laser phototherapy of urethral strictures appears to offer no treatment advantages over conventional therapy and is associated with a high recurrence rate.