cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Jamming bacterial communication: New approaches for the treatment of infectious diseases

The global rise of anti-microbial resistance, combined with the rapid rate of microbial evolution, and the slower development of novel antibiotics, underscores the urgent need for innovative therapeutics. We are facing a post-antibiotic era with a decreased armamentarium to combat infectious diseases. Development of novel drugs will rely on basic research aimed to increase our understanding of bacterial pathogenesis and the inter-cellular chemical signalling among bacterial cells. Such basic science, when combined with contemporary drug discovery technologies, may be translated into therapeutic applications to combat bacterial infections. In this review, we discuss many strategies aimed to interfere with bacterial cell-to-cell signalling via the quorum-sensing (QS) pathway to inhibit bacterial virulence and/or the development of microbial communities (known as biofilms), which are refractory to antibiotic treatment. QS antagonists should be viewed as blockers of pathogenicity rather than as anti-microbials and because QS is not involved in bacterial growth, inhibition of QS should not yield a strong selective pressure for development of resistance. QS inhibitors (QSIs) hold great expectations and we look forward to their application in fighting bacterial infections.
How accurate is current TKR instrumentation

Mechanical total knee replacement (TKR) alignment systems have fundamental limitations that limit their ultimate accuracy. This study uses an image-free computer-assisted navigation system to assess the accuracy of a currently available conventional mechanical, intramedullary instrumentation system. Mechanical instrumentation allows reasonably accurate and reproducible (within 3° varus-valgus) frontal and sagittal limb alignment. There is a tendency to leave the knee in slight flexion, to hyperextend the femoral component and to posteriorly tilt the tibial implant with mechanical AP guides. There also is a consistent tendency to internally rotate the femoral implant. Although almost all of the 20 TKRs resulted in final limb alignment within 3 of the frontal and sagittal mechanical axes, only four TKRs were done in which all of the measured steps were within 3 of the optimal positions. If implant longevity, pain-relief, and function are related to the accuracy with which TKRs are done, this study emphasizes that current mechanical instrumentation does not result in a high incidence of accuracy when each step of the procedure is measured. Computer-assisted techniques permit measurement of the steps of the TKR procedure with a high degree (error < 1°) of accuracy.
Fabrication and characterization of planar integrated Schottky devices for very high frequency mixers

Many millimeter-wave mixers and frequency multipliers today still employ a whisker contacted Schottky diode as the nonlinear device. In order to reduce the risk and assembly cost associated with these critical receiver components for NASA's present and future space missions, the authors have developed a novel fabrication procedure that integrates a planar Schottky diode with the mixer circuitry thus greatly simplifying the assembly and testing of the diode circuits. The process and DC results obtained so far will be discussed along with some preliminary RF results at 200 GHz. >
EEG phase synchrony differences across visual perception conditions may depend on recording and analysis methods.

Objective: (1) To investigate the neural synchrony hypothesis by examining if there was more synchrony for upright than inverted Mooney faces, replicating a previous study; (2) to investigate whether inverted stimuli evoke neural synchrony by comparing them to a new scrambled control condition, less likely to produce face perception. Methods: Multichannel EEG was recorded via nose reference while participants viewed upright, inverted, and scrambled Mooney face stimuli. Gamma-range spectral power and inter-electrode phase synchrony were calculated via a wavelet-based method for upright stimuli perceived as faces and inverted/scrambled stimuli perceived as non-faces. Results: When the frequency of interest was selected from the upright condition exhibiting maximal spectral power responses (as in the previous study) greater phase synchrony was found in the upright than inverted/scrambled conditions. However, substantial synchrony was present in all conditions, suggesting that choosing the frequency of interest from the upright condition only may have been biased. In addition, artifacts related to nose reference contamination by micro-saccades were found to be differentially present across experimental conditions in the raw EEG. When frequency of interest was selected instead from each experimental condition and the data were transformed to a laplacian ‘reference free’ derivation, the between-condition phase synchrony differences disappeared. Spectral power differences were robust to the change in reference, but not the combined changes in reference and frequency selection criteria. Conclusions: Synchrony differences between face/non-face perceptions depend upon frequency selection and recording reference. Optimal selection of these parameters abolishes differential synchrony between conditions. Significance: Neural synchrony is present not just for face percepts for upright stimuli, but also for non-face percepts achieved for inverted/scrambled Mooney stimuli. q 2004 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Why Teaching Should Be Recognized as an Essential Component of Radiology Residency Training

The rapid pace of scientific and technologic progress has placed a substantial learning burden on the shoulders of radiology residents. They are expected to become proficient in a host of technical skills, to demonstrate in-depth understanding of no fewer than 10 radiologic subspecialties, and to be sufficiently familiar with the general practice of radiology that they could function independently by the time they complete residency. Faced with the daunting task of preparing residents to meet these challenges, many residency programs quickly assimilate their trainees to the role of learners and largely confine them to that role throughout the 5 years of training. In short, most radiology training programs focus on residents as the recipients of teaching and not as teachers. This practice may be grounded in the mistaken presumption that one must first become expert in a field before presuming to teach it. What could residents with only a year or two of training have to teach someone about radiology compared with a faculty member who has been teaching it for decades? Yet teaching is not a prerogative that one acquires 0nly at the end of a long course of training. Rather, teaching is itself one of the skills that residents should be acquiring during their training (1). To tell trainees that they must wait to begin teaching until they have finished their training would be like telling them that they must wait until they have their American Board of Radiology certificates
Determining Thorpe Scales from Ship-Lowered CTD Density Profiles

CTD measurements taken as an integral part of oceanographic cruises could provide valuable information on spatial locations and time variability of significant shear-generated mixing in the ocean interior if used routinely to calculate Thorpe scales, that is, estimates of the scales of vertical overturning in an otherwise stably stratified fluid. This paper outlines methods for calculating reliable Thorpe scales from density profiles taken with a shipborne CTD, including removal of questionable instabilities associated with termination of pressure reversals, reduction of the effects of density noise by computation of an intermediate density profile, and overturn verification by a two-parameter (Ro, N) diagnostic. The Ro criterion alone reliably removes overturns that result from salinity spikes at the high gradient boundaries of a weakly stratified layer, a common cause of highly suspect overturns. The N diagnostic is a new water mass test describing the degree of “tightness” of the temperature–salinity (T–S) relationship. The present twoparameter diagnostic rejects a significantly larger percentage of suspect overturns than does a previous single-parameter water mass test. Despite developing a more reliable water mass diagnostic, the authors conclude that rejection of overturns based on a water mass test that incorporates expectation of T–S tightness is not warranted, given possibilities of T–S “looseness” resulting from mixing over regions of nonlinear T–S structure and/or from potential effects of differential diffusion.
Ophthalmic artery chemosurgery for the management of retinoblastoma in eyes with extensive (>50%) retinal detachment.

Background Superselective delivery of chemotherapy through the ophthalmic artery, i.e. ophthalmic artery chemosurgery, has been used for the treatment of advanced intraocular retinoblastoma. Herein, we evaluate the efficacy of ophthalmic artery chemosurgery for retinoblastoma associated with >50% retinal detachment. Procedure Retrospective review of 37 eyes of 34 retinoblastoma patients who had extensive (>50%) bullous non-rhegmatogenous retinal detachments and received ophthalmic artery chemosurgery either as primary treatment or as “salvage” treatment after failed multi-cycle intravenous chemotherapy and/or external beam radiation (mean follow-up, 21 months). Data on patient and ocular survival, complications of ophthalmic artery chemosurgery treatments, time course of retinal reattachment, and serial electroretinograms (ERG) were collected. Results A total of 134 ophthalmic artery chemosurgery injections were performed. All children survive. Five eyes (5/37; 14%) were enucleated for progression of disease. The Kaplan–Meier enucleation-free survival rate at 2 years was 87.9% (95% confidence interval, 76.5–99.3%). The retina reattached in 28 eyes (28/37; 76%) and the 30-Hz flicker ERGs improved by >25 µV in seven eyes (7/37; 19%), remained stable (change 25 µV in four eyes (4/37; 11%). The Kaplan–Meier retinal reattachment rate was 58% after 3 months and three ophthalmic artery chemosurgery infusions (95% confidence interval, 41.9–74.1%). Conclusions Ophthalmic artery chemosurgery is effective in preventing enucleation, promoting retinal reattachment and preserving or improving retinal function in the majority of eyes with advanced retinoblastoma and >50% retinal detachment that would otherwise be considered for enucleation. Pediatr Blood Cancer 2012; 59: 859–864. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Bounds on bearing and symbol estimation with side information

We develop Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) for bearing, symbol, and channel estimation of communications signals in flat-fading channels. We do this using the constrained CRB formulation of German and Hero (1990), and Stoica and Ng (see IEEE Signal Processing Lett., vol.5, p.177-79, 1998), with the unknown parameters treated as deterministic constants. The equality constraints may be combined arbitrarily, e.g., we may develop CRBs for bearing estimation of constant modulus (CM) signals where a subset of the symbols are known (semi-blind, CM case). The results establish the value of side information in a large variety of communications scenarios. We focus on the CM and semi-blind properties and develop closed-form CRBs for these cases. Examples are presented indicating the relative value of the training and CIM property. These show the significant amount of signal processing information provided under these two conditions. In addition, we consider the performance of the maximum-likelihood beamformer for the semi-blind case, assuming the bearings are known. This semi-blind beamformer achieves the appropriate (constrained) CRB with finite data at finite SNR. Analysis also reveals that in a semi-blind scenario with two closely spaced sources, ten or more training symbols are sufficient to achieve the asymptotic training regime. Together with previous results on angle estimation for known sources, these results indicate that relatively few training samples enable both angle estimation and closely spaced co-channel source separation that approaches the CRB with finite data and finite SNR.
Discussion: Fuzzy Logic Control Technology: A Personal Perspective

After reading the article of Laviolette, Seaman, Barrett, and Woodall, I feel compelled to provide the reader with my own perspective on the topic of fuzzy logic control. For this reason, I have formulated two kinds of comments, the tactical comments, limited in scope to the material covered by Laviolette et al. and aimed at providing clarifications and correcting omissions, and the strategic comments, aimed at providing the reader with a broader viewpoint of this topic. (I just want to clarify that I am not at war with the authors, and the militaristic adjectives used to qualify my comments are simply meant to denote their limited or extended scope.) The authors of the article should be congratulated for presenting an interesting and relatively new topic (fuzzy logic control) to the statistical community. Their presentation, however, lacks the appropriate breadth in fuzzy logic, especially with regard to the selection of the references to be used by the readers. Furthermore, there are a few statements in the article that are not corroborated by the facts. With my tactical comments, I will try to provide useful pointers to interested readers, and I will explain my reasons for disagreeing with some of the authors' statements or with their underlying assumptions. Of course, the authors never intended to provide an extensive treatment of fuzzy logic control (FLC). Therefore, their presentation focuses on the first type of FLC, which was proposed by Mamdani and Assilian (1975) and is typically known in the fuzzy set literature as the Mamdanitype. FLC's have made considerable progress since 1975, however, driven by evolving problem requirements and complexity. With my strategic comments, I will attempt to provide the reader with a broader perspective than the one proposed by the authors. In particular, I will define a framework of comparison for FLC applications and propose a different and, one hopes, more challenging set of questions. For brevity's sake, I will limit my comments to the FLC part of the article. The interested reader however, can find an excellent treatment of the use of fuzzy logic in regression and other statistical techniques in the work of Kacprzyk and Fedrizzi (1992), Terano, Asai, and Sugeno (1992, chap. 4), and Lai and Hwang (1992). 2. TACTICAL COMMENTS
Modeling maglev passenger compartment static magnetic fields from linear Halbach permanent-magnet arrays

Passenger compartment magnetic field levels in a low-speed magnetic levitation (maglev) vehicle that uses linear Halbach permanent-magnet arrays for both levitation and propulsion are computed through superposition of fields due to patches of magnetization charge at surfaces where the magnetization is discontinuous. End effects due to the finite lengths of the arrays lead to fields that decay much less rapidly with distance from the arrays than the near-field exponential decay based on array wavelength, and do not have the strong side/weak side character of the near fields. End effects dominate the maglev passenger compartment fields. Contour plots of computed fields due to the magnet arrays for a specific maglev design show field magnitudes of about 1.5 G at floor level, 0.5 G at seat level, and 0.2 G at head level.
Applying Three Strategies for Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Databases in a Mixed Methods Study of a Nontraditional Graduate Education Program

A central issue for mixed methods research is for researchers to effectively integrate (or mix) the quantitative and qualitative data in their studies. Despite extensive methodological discussions ...
Electronically-tunable narrow-band noise source

A new narrow-bandwidth noise generator that can be electronically tuned over a wide frequency range has been developed. The device is based on the frequency-selective power-limiting characteristic of YIG materials.
The Coalescent in a Continuous, Finite, Linear Population

In this article we present a model for analyzing patterns of genetic diversity in a continuous, finite, linear habitat with restricted gene flow. The distribution of coalescent times and locations is derived for a pair of sequences sampled from arbitrary locations along the habitat. The results for mean time to coalescence are compared to simulated data. As expected, mean time to common ancestry increases with the distance separating the two sequences. Additionally, this mean time is greater near the center of the habitat than near the ends. In the distant past, lineages that have not undergone coalescence are more likely to have been at opposite ends of the population range, whereas coalescent events in the distant past are biased toward the center. All of these effects are more pronounced when gene flow is more limited. The pattern of pairwise nucleotide differences predicted by the model is compared to data collected from sardine populations. The sardine data are used to illustrate how demographic parameters can be estimated using the model.
Comparative Genomics of Pneumocystis Species Suggests the Absence of Genes for myo-Inositol Synthesis and Reliance on Inositol Transport and Metabolism

In the context of deciphering the metabolic strategies of the obligate pathogenic fungi in the genus Pneumocystis, the genomes of three species (P. carinii, P. murina, and P. jirovecii) were compared among themselves and with the free-living, phy- logenetically related fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). The underrepresentation of amino acid metabolism pathways compared to those in S. pombe, as well as the incomplete steroid biosynthesis pathway, were confirmed for P. carinii and P. jirovecii and extended to P. murina. All three Pneumocystis species showed overrepresentation of the inositol phosphate me- tabolism pathway compared to that in the fission yeast. In addition to those known in S. pombe, four genes, encoding inositol- polyphosphate multikinase (EC 2.7.1.151), inositol-pentakisphosphate 2-kinase (EC 2.7.1.158), phosphoinositide 5-phosphatase (EC 3.1.3.36), and inositol-1,4-bisphosphate 1-phosphatase (EC 3.1.3.57), were identified in the two rodent Pneumocystisge- nomes, P. carinii and P. murina. The P. jirovecii genome appeared to contain three of these genes but lacked phosphoinositide 5-phosphatase. Notably, two genes encoding enzymes essential for myo-inositol synthesis, inositol-1-phosphate synthase (INO1) and inositol monophosphatase (INM1), were absent from all three genomes, suggesting that Pneumocystisspecies are inositol auxotrophs. In keeping with the need to acquire exogenous inositol, two genes with products homologous to fungal inositol transporters, ITR1 and ITR2, were identified in P. carinii and P. murina, while P. jirovecii contained only the ITR1 homolog. The ITR and inositol metabolism genes in P. murina and P. carinii were expressed during fulminant infection as determined by reverse transcriptase real-time PCR of cDNA from infected lung tissue. Supplementation of in vitro culture with inositol yielded significant improvement of the viability of P. carinii for days 7 through 14. IMPORTANCE Microbes in the genus Pneumocystis are obligate pathogenic fungi that reside in mammalian lungs and cause Pneu- mocystispneumonia in hosts with weakened immune systems. These fungal infections are not responsive to standard antifungal therapy. A long-term in vitro culture system is not available for these fungi, impeding the study of their biology and genetics and new drug development. Given that all genomes of the Pneumocystisspecies analyzed lack the genes for inositol synthesis and contain inositol transporters, Pneumocystis fungi, like S. pombe, appear to be inositol auxotrophs. Inositol is important for the pathogenesis, virulence, and mating processes in Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans, suggesting similar importance within thePneumocystis species as well. This is thefirst report to (i) characterize genes in the inositol phosphate metabolism and transport pathways in Pneumocystis species and (ii) identify inositol as a supplement that improved the viability of P. carinii in in vitro culture.
Applying placement-based synthesis for on-time system-on-a-chip design

This paper examines the fundamental issues in timing closure, using present-day methodologies, for designs enabled by System-on-a-Chip (SOC) silicon technologies. Placement-based synthesis is proposed as a method to address these issues, and its benefits are contrasted against the problems of current methods. Finally, this paper discusses application of placement-based synthesis for optimum benefit in enabling on-schedule SOC design.
Doping-spike LWIR PtSi schottky IR detector fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy

Summary form only given. It is demonstrated that by thinning the p/sup +/ layer to approximately 10 AA, the effective Schottky barrier heights can be reduced without the formation of a potential spike, and, consequently, the undesired tunneling process can be eliminated. Doping-spike PtSi detectors were fabricated on double-side polished Si
The Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment: A Factorial Validity Study:

The present study attempts to determine the factorial validity of scores on the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment in a normative population of mothers and their 12-month-old infants. Parent, child, and dyadic items scored from free play interactions were analyzed as separate components of the instrument. Scores on three parent, three infant, and two dyadic subscales were examined for reliability and convergent and discriminant validity using confirmatory factor analysis. To provide confidence in the results, a factorial invariance study using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using a separate sample. All subscale scores demonstrated high levels of internal consistency, with coefficients ranging from .75 to .96. Evidence was also found for convergent and discriminant validity.
A Biofunctional Perspective on Learning Environments.

This paper proposes that the principles of learning, as highlighted by Bransford and colleagues, require biological grounding. This process essentially amounts to the facilitation of, and development of, an enriched capacity for ongoing biofunctional activity (OBA)—physical biology in action. The learning sciences’ principles of active learning, i.e., accessing prior understanding, organizing knowledge through schemas, and self-monitoring are psychological-understanding vehicles that work only in the ground of biofunctional (deep) understanding. Biofunctional understanding is a form of understanding that rises out of OBA. In this sense, biofunctional understanding juxtaposes and inherently complements psychological understanding. Without biofunctional understanding, psychological understanding becomes synonymous with superficial understanding. By contrast, in the illuminating context of biofunctional understanding, psychological understanding enables accomplishments of the kind enjoyed by experts in the rich and deep, metaphorically speaking, experiences of their respective fields of specialization. In this perspective article, I show how and why the psychological principles of active learning are ready for grounding in biofunctional understanding.
Role of Component Sensitivity Analysis in the Risk Assessment of a Large and Complex System

This paper presents a sensitivity analysis method that provides a powerful tool for understanding the behavior of large and complex systems. This method produces easy-to-understand results that can explain the performance of a system clearly at the component level rather than parameter by parameter. A system model for the proposed disposal of high-level radioactive waste at a potential geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada is used as an example to illustrate the use of the method. The component sensitivity analysis, together with parametric sensitivity analysis, can produce a more complete picture of system behavior.
Effect of butazoldin on I131 uptake by the thyroid gland-II.

SummaryThe intramuscular injection of butazolidinR in a daily dose of 1.0 g for 2-3 days reduces I131 uptake by the thyroid gland.
Information Extraction for Scholarly Digital Libraries

Scholarly documents contain many data entities, such as titles, authors, affiliations, figures, and tables. These entities can be used to enhance digital library services through enhanced metadata and enable the development of new services and tools for interacting with and exploring scholarly data. However, in a world of scholarly big data, extracting these entities in a scalable, efficient and accurate manner can be challenging. In this tutorial, we introduce the broad field of information extraction for scholarly digital libraries. Drawing on our experience in running the Cite-SeerX digital library, which has performed information extraction on over 7 million academic documents, we argue for the need for automatic information extraction, describe different approaches for performing information extraction, present tools and datasets that are readily available, and describe best practices and areas of research interest.
Examining a Self-Report Measure of Parent–Teacher Cocaring Relationships and Associations With Parental Involvement

ABSTRACTBy adapting a self-administered assessment of coparenting, we sought to provide a new tool, the Cocaring Relationship Questionnaire, to measure parent-teacher, or cocaring relationships, and provide additional construct validity for the multidimensional concept of cocaring. Next, recognizing the importance of parental involvement for young children’s development, we examined the associations between dimensions of cocaring and aspects of parental involvement. We investigated the parent-teacher relationships of 90 families utilizing full-time, center-based childcare for their 12–36 month old children. Parents and teachers completed a set of questionnaires. Research findings: exploratory factor analysis revealed a four factor structure for the cocaring relationship: Support, Undermining, Endorsement, and Agreement. After controlling for a number of child- and parent-level covariates, parents’ perceptions of different dimensions within the cocaring relationship were associated with different aspects o...
Synchrophasor reference algorithm for PMU Calibration System

This paper describes a reference algorithm specifically designed for PMU Calibration System. Contrary to existing DFT-based and curve fitting-based methods, which use a single signal model, the proposed algorithm applies an adaptive mechanism, and switches signal models according to specific signal input. Signals are modeled with parameters with apparent and certain physical meaning, fundamentally avoiding error magnification from derivative calculation for frequency and rate of change of frequency estimation. Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is used for solving the signal parameters. The test results show that the proposed algorithm has a much higher accuracy than the requirements of IEEE standard C37.118.1, and hence can serve as a reference algorithm in a PMU Calibration System.
Teaching NeuroImages: Aphasia after infarction of the left pulvinar nucleus.

A 79-year-old man, admitted for left knee replacement, complained of right-sided vision loss on postoperative day 3. Examination revealed a right homonymous hemianopsia, fluent speech with semantic paraphasias, and impaired naming and comprehension, with intact repetition. MRI of the brain (figure) showed restricted diffusion affecting the left pulvinar nucleus, without signal abnormality in the cortical language areas.
Statistical analysis of symbol sequence distributions for machine condition monitoring

This paper introduces a novel method of investigating the frequency distributions of symbol sequences of discrete signals that have been generated from time series measurements of machine components. The approach is different from conventional spectral methods as the focus is on the time domain, and is therefore suited for monitoring systems that generate non-stationary measurements. A method of statistically analyzing symbolic time series methods is presented. Theoretical background of the method has been introduced and its efficacy is studied through experimental investigation of vibration signals recorded from a rolling bearing elements. Results indicate that the method is robust and can effectively characterize defects and varying operating conditions.
Kizzle- an app for learning

To enhance the computer science curriculum, a mobile device application (smart phone app), Kizzle, was developed and is currently tested in an introductory course in computer science. The motivation for the app comes from recent literature that indicates that women and students of color are less likely to participate in class, either to ask or answer questions [1][2]. As a result of this “shyness” - for lack of a better word - teachers often assume these students are not as engaged in the material, and the students either lose interest in the subject or fall behind their peers. The app can help with engagement in two ways. In this paper, we will share our preliminary results and detail the design and implementation of Kizzle.
Continuation of comprehensive quality control of the itG 68Ge/68Ga generator and production of 68Ga-DOTATOC and 68Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC for clinical research studies.

Abstract Performance of a second itG 68 Ge/ 68 Ga generator system and production of 68 Ga-DOTATOC and 68 Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC were tested over one year as an accompaniment to a previously published study ( J Nucl Med. 2016;57:1402–1405 ). Methods Performance of a 1951MBq 68 Ge/ 68 Ga generator was characterized and the eluate used for preparation of 68 Ga-DOTATOC and 68 Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC. Weekly elution profiles of 68 Ga elution yield and 68 Ge breakthrough were determined. Results 68 Ga elution yields averaged 82% (61.8–98.4%) and 68 Ge breakthrough averaged 0.002% (0.0007% to 0.004%). The radiochemical purities of 68 Ga-DOTATOC and 68 Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC were determined by HPLC analysis to be >98% and specific activity was 12.6 and 42GBq/μmol, respectively. 68 Ge contamination in the product was under the detection limit (0.00001%). Final sterile, pyrogen-free formulation of 68 Ga-DOTATOC and 68 Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC in physiologic saline with 5%–7% ethanol was achieved. Conclusion Performance of a 68 Ge/ 68 Ga generator was studied over one year with satisfactory results. The generator eluate was used to synthesize 68 Ga-DOTATOC and 68 Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC on a routine basis in high purity.
Resident Autonomy in the Operating Room: Expectations Versus Reality

Background There is concern about graduating thoracic trainees' independent operative skills due to limited autonomy in training. This study compared faculty and trainee expected levels of autonomy with intraoperative measurements of autonomy for common cardiothoracic operations. Methods Participants underwent frame-of-reference training on the 4-point Zwisch scale of operative autonomy (show and tell → active help → passive help → supervision only) and evaluated autonomy in actual cases using the Zwisch Me!! mobile application. A separate "expected autonomy" survey elicited faculty and resident perceptions of how much autonomy a resident should have for six common operations: decortication, wedge resection, thoracoscopic lobectomy, coronary artery bypass grafting, aortic valve replacement, and mitral valve repair. Results Thirty-three trainees from 7 institutions submitted evaluations of 596 cases over 18 months (March 2015 to September 2016). Thirty attendings subsequently provided their evaluation of 476 of those cases (79.9% response rate). Expected autonomy surveys were completed by 21 attendings and 19 trainees from 5 institutions. The six operations included in the survey constituted 47% (226 of 476) of the cases evaluated. Trainee and attending expectations did not differ significantly for senior trainees. Both groups expected significantly higher levels of autonomy than observed in the operating room for all six types of cases. Conclusions Although faculty and trainees both expect similar levels of autonomy in the operating room, real-time measurements of autonomy show a gap between expectations and reality. Decreasing this gap will require a concerted effort by both faculty and residents to focus on the development of independent operative skills.
Migration, Immigration, and the Political Geography of American Cities:

How do migration and immigration shape the political geography of American cities? In this article, we propose a mechanism of partisan sorting and demographic change which is tested using the mass ...
Honey, I Froze the Kids: Implications for the Practitioner in Reproductive Technologies and Spousal Consent

Frontier issues of reproductive technology continue to reveal just how vast are the implications for marriage and the family. A most interesting aspect of this area of reproductive medicine is that clients often fail to consider the many concerns that arise with this treatment. For more on the personal decision-making process couples go through see "A Hitchhiker's Guide to ART: Implementing Self-Governed Personally Responsible Decision-Making in the Context of Artificial Reproductive Technology," 39 CAPITAL U. L. REV. 413 (2011) at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1957205. This article considers the critical aspect of marital unity and the spousal consent ramifications of new reproductive technologies in light of case law, statutory law, and traditional notions of marital unity. It specifically considers the question of whether a spouse's reproductive gametes can be considered as marital property.
Ethical Evaluation and Action Research: Toward New North-South Research Collaborations?

This case study examines the author's experience gaining ethics approval for an action research project, to build capacity for new North-South research collaborations among graduate students trained in health and environment. It is argued that the ethics review process and action research framework seem to talk past each other. While the former may reinforce the divide between researchers and researched communities, potentially exacerbating North-South power asymmetries, the latter may presume that such asymmetries are overcome too easily through the good intentions of northern researchers, rather than through the work of southern actors to take back power. Considerations are offered for more realistic approaches to ethical North-South research collaborations.
Quantifying Sentiment with News Media across Local Housing Markets

This paper develops first measures of housing sentiment for 34 cities across the United States by quantifying the qualitative tone of local housing news. Housing media sentiment has significant predictive power for future house prices, leading prices by nearly two years. Consistent with theories of investor sentiment, the media sentiment index has a greater effect in markets in which speculative investors are more prevalent and demand appears less informed. Directly examining the content across news articles finds that results are not driven by news stories of unobserved fundamentals. Received October 21, 2015; editorial decision December 19, 2017 by Editor Robin Greenwood. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
Text-Independent Speaker Verification Based on Triplet Convolutional Neural Network Embeddings

The effectiveness of introducing deep neural networks into conventional speaker recognition pipelines has been broadly shown to benefit system performance. A novel text-independent speaker verification (SV) framework based on the triplet loss and a very deep convolutional neural network architecture (i.e., Inception-Resnet-v1) are investigated in this study, where a fixed-length speaker discriminative embedding is learned from sparse speech features and utilized as a feature representation for the SV tasks. A concise description of the neural network based speaker discriminative training with triplet loss is presented. An Euclidean distance similarity metric is applied in both network training and SV testing, which ensures the SV system to follow an end-to-end fashion. By replacing the final max/average pooling layer with a spatial pyramid pooling layer in the Inception-Resnet-v1 architecture, the fixed-length input constraint is relaxed and an obvious performance gain is achieved compared with the fixed-length input speaker embedding system. For datasets with more severe training/test condition mismatches, the probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) back end is further introduced to replace the distance based scoring for the proposed speaker embedding system. Thus, we reconstruct the SV task with a neural network based front-end speaker embedding system and a PLDA that provides channel and noise variabilities compensation in the back end. Extensive experiments are conducted to provide useful hints that lead to a better testing performance. Comparison with the state-of-the-art SV frameworks on three public datasets (i.e., a prompt speech corpus, a conversational speech Switchboard corpus, and NIST SRE10 10 s–10 s condition) justifies the effectiveness of our proposed speaker embedding system.
Surgery vs. SBRT in retrospective analyses: confounding by operability is the elephant in the room.

Anatomic lobar resection is the standard of care for medically operable patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), while stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is preferred among patients deemed medically inoperable and those who wish to avoid surgery (1). The role of SBRT in the medically operable setting has emerged as an area of active research and debate in the thoracic oncology community in recent years. Several randomized trials comparing SBRT and surgery have been launched but subsequently closed early due to poor accrual.
Cultivation Fosters Plant Naturalization by Reducing Environmental Stochasticity

A large fraction of the immigrant (or founder) populations of terrestrial plants are small (< 104) and are acutely sensitive to environmental stochasticity. As a result, they undergo radical size fluctuations during a prolonged lag phase that almost always result in their extirpation. Naturalizations are those rare examples in which an immigrant population increases above a threshold size such that the consequences of environmental stochasticity are markedly lower. The likelihood that a non-indigenous population will reach this threshold size would be enhanced substantially through either deliberate or inadvertent cultivation. Cultivation (e.g. protection from predators, parasites, drought, frost) shields small immigrant populations from the extreme expressions of environmental stochasticity. In addition, cultivation can preserve through seed storage a residual non-indigenous population from which new populations can be established. As disseminules are spread locally, and even regionally, immigrant populations sample a wide variety of micro-habitats, thus increasing the likelihood that some plants will survive even without cultivation. Origins of naturalized floras in Australia and the US reveal a strong circumstantial link between cultivation and subsequent naturalization: the single largest group of naturalized species was deliberately introduced as either crops, forage spp., or ornamentals. Another group was introduced inadvertently as contaminants in crop seeds. This correspondence between cultivation and subsequent naturalization provides a common demographic explanation for non-indigenous plant persistence that largely transcends species’ attributes and the commonly ascribed features of communities that are vulnerable to the entry of non-indigenous plants. Humans have played a more profound role in fostering plant naturalizations than by acting simply as plant dispersers; their post-immigration cultivation fosters much naturalization.
Philosophy and ‘Experience’: A Conflict of Interests?*

Material things are typically opaque. This corresponds to two facts about how they are seen. First, they always occlude themselves partly from view; their visual features never appear to you all at once. Second, they occlude what is behind them; you cannot look through them. Two fundamental traits of perceptual awareness have been expressed metaphorically by contrasting perceptual experiences to these two ways in which opacity determines the perception of material things:
Clinical outcome of patients with microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) treated with pembrolizumab.

e24127Background: We examined efficacy of the anti-PD-1 antibody, pembrolizumab (PEM), in consecutive patients with MSI-H mCRC. PEM is FDA approved for treatment of MSI-H CRC after progression on s...
Gout and the risk of Parkinson’s disease in older adults: a study of U.S. Medicare data

In the presence of limited available data, our objective was to assess the association of gout with the risk of incident Parkinson’s disease (PD) in adults 65 years or older. We used the 5% random sample of Medicare claims data from 2006 to 2012 to examine the association of gout with incident PD. The multivariable Cox regression model adjusted for demographics, comorbidity, and common cardiovascular disease and gout medications. We calculated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Sensitivity analyses adjusted for comorbidity categorically, or individually and for additional cardiovascular comorbidities. In a cohort study, 1.72 million Medicare beneficiaries were eligible. The mean age was 75 years (standard deviation [SD], 7.6), 58% were female, 86% were White and 37% had Charlson-Romano comorbidity index score of ≥2. We found that 22,636 people developed incident PD, 1129 with gout and 21,507 without gout. The respective crude incidence rates of incident PD were 3.7 vs. 2.2 per 1000 person-years. We found that gout was associated with 1.14-times higher hazard ratio (95% CI, 1.07, 1.21) of PD in the main analysis; findings were confirmed in sensitivity analyses. We noted that the risk differed slightly by age; ages 65–75, 75–85 and > 85 had hazard ratios of incident PD with gout of 1.27 (95% CI, 1.16, 1.39), 1.07 (95% CI, 0.97, 1.16) and 0.97 (95% CI, 0.79, 1.20), respectively, but no gender or race differences were noted. Gout was associated with a higher risk of incident PD in older adults, with the risk being significant in the age group 65–75 years. Future studies need to assess the mechanisms of this increased risk.
Cartesian Monoids

The Cartesian monoid of partial piecewise shift operators is developed as a model for programming systems such as Backus' FP. Special attention is paid to those elements which are equationally implicitly definable.
On the Use and Abuse of Teleology for Life: Intentionality, Naturalism, and Meaning Rationalism in Husserl and Millikan

Both Millikan’s brand of naturalistic analytic philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology have held on to teleological notions, despite their being out of favor in mainstream Western philosophy for most of the twentieth century. Both traditions have recognized the need for teleology in order to adequately account for intentionality, the need to adequately account for intentionality in order to adequately account for meaning, and the need for an adequate theory of meaning in order to precisely and consistently describe the world and life. The stark differences between their accounts of these fundamental concepts stem from radically different conceptions of the world, the natural and life. I argue that Millikan’s teleosemantic approach relies on a teleology of determination by means of the lawfulness of nature that leaves no room for the freedom of self-determination, for reason, or for experience—for the reality of lived human life. In contrast to Millikan’s account, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology situates teleology as a function of reason and first-personal experience, part of an extended account of intentionality and meaning according to which the full range of our making sense of the world is conceived as a rational activity that is itself a part of that world, and not an unnatural activity to be separated from it. While Husserl’s account of these issues is indeed symptomatic of what Millikan calls “meaning rationalism,” I argue that it is immune to the sorts of problems she claims will plague any such account, since these problems arise only against the background of a set of presuppositions about intentionality (representationalism, the “mythiness” of all givens) that Husserl does not share. Husserl’s position can itself be understood to be within the bounds of a suitably liberal conception of naturalism, and interpreting him in this way it has the added benefit—contra Millikan—of not divorcing teleology from reason, the latter construed as our first-personal striving to make sense of the world as we experience it—of life.
Association of Symptoms of Obstructive Lung Disease and All-Cause Mortality in Older Adult Smokers

OBJECTIVES This study aims to investigate the impact of respiratory symptoms in current and former smokers with and without obstructive lung disease (OLD) on all-cause mortality. DESIGN Secondary analysis in a prospective cohort (the Health, Aging and Body Composition study). SETTING Memphis, Tennessee, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. PARTICIPANTS Black and white men and women with a history of current and former smoking (N = 596; 63% male and 37% female) aged 70-79 years followed for 13 years. Participants were categorized into 4 mutually exclusive groups based on symptom profile and forced expiratory volume in the 1st second to forced vital capacity ratio. The groups were Less Dyspnea-No OLD (N = 196), More Dyspnea-No OLD (N = 104), Less Dyspnea-With OLD (N = 162), and More Dyspnea-With OLD (N = 134). MEASUREMENTS All-cause mortality. RESULTS Overall, 53% in Less Dyspnea-No OLD, 63% in More Dyspnea-No OLD, 67% in Less Dyspnea-With OLD, and 84% in More Dyspnea-With OLD died within the 13- year follow up period (log-rank χ2 = 44.4, P < .0001). The hazard ratio was highest for participants with OLD, both with (HR =1.91, 95% CI 1.44 - 2.54; P < .0001) and without dyspnea (HR = 1.52, 95% CI 1.15 - 2.02; p = .004). Participants without OLD but with dyspnea had a similar risk of death to subjects who had OLD but fewer symptoms. CONCLUSIONS OLD is associated with high risk of death with different risk profiles based on symptom group. Patients with symptoms of shortness of breath without OLD should be considered an at-risk group given their similar mortality to those with OLD with minimal symptoms. J Am Geriatr Soc 67:2116-2122, 2019.
Acute Myeloid Leukemia: from Mutation Profiling to Treatment Decisions

Awareness of the molecular landscape of AML has improved AML care over the last 5 years. This review summarizes updates regarding the diagnostic and therapeutic relevance of key mutations in AML. Molecular mutations in genes including NPM1, CEBPA, FLT3, IDH1/2, TP53, RUNX1, and ASXL1 provide important prognostic and/or therapeutic information in AML, including best treatment strategies, transplant recommendations, and significance of MRD detection. Mutational analysis has led to the recognition of new entities including hereditary leukemia syndromes and clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP). FLT3 and IDH1/2 mutations are the focus of targeted therapies in the treatment of AML. Advances in the molecular characterization of AML have provided an improved understanding of leukemogenesis and AML risk stratification, improved disease monitoring techniques, optimized therapeutic strategies, and have led to the development of novel molecular-targeted therapeutics. Ongoing genomic advances will continue to improve upon the outcome of patients with AML.