cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Balancing Property Rights and Social Responsibilities: Perspectives of Conservation Easement Landowners

Currently, > 20 million acres in the United States are protected through conservation easements. While the role of property rights in enabling conservation easements is well documented, attitudes of landowners living under those property rights regimes have not been thoroughly researched. To address the knowledge gap, landowners in Texas with perpetual conservation easements participated in a mail survey and resulting data were compared with prior research on the property rights perspectives of a group of noneasement-owning rural landowners. Our study indicates that easement and noneasement landowners differ in their attitudes concerning both property rights and social responsibilities with respect to land management. While landowners in both groups agreed that property ownership conveyed certain fundamental rights, noneasement landowners expressed stronger conventional property rights attitudes than easement landowners. Counter to expectations, noneasement landowners were also more likely to express a stronger land stewardship ethic. We also found significant demographic differences between the two groups with easement landowners tending to be younger, having more formal education, being less likely to live on their rural property and owning their property for a shorter period of time. Those demographic differences, combined with differences between the two groups of landowners with respect to dependence on their land for income, locational differences of the two surveys from which data were obtained, and the 9-yr span between the two surveys limited our ability to extrapolate our findings to a broader population of landowners. Intragroup comparisons among easement landowners failed to find differences between easement-granting and successive generation easement landowners with respect to property rights orientations, but we did find some attitudinal differences between male and female respondents. Our research implies that landowners willing to accept substantial property rights adjustments designed to facilitate environmental protection goals may have inherently different attitudes concerning property rights ideals.
Dixit Mater: The Significance of the Maternal Voice in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels

Drawing primarily on the theories of Julia Kristeva, this chapter examines the modes of representation of motherhood and the maternal in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Trilogy. The act of speaking the maternal experience enables Ferrante to create a literary practice of what Kristeva calls “herethics,” the reconsideration of traditional ethical systems in order to create empathy in the reader. . For both Kristeva and Ferrante, writing motherhood and speaking motherhood are essential and inextricable parts of this project. The mania of Ferrante’s semiotic process of representing motherhood can be identified in the mirroring of traits between the women. Ferrante’s maniacal deconstruction of the mamma, the iterations, repetitions, reflections, and anxieties of the maternal, give voice to what Kristeva describes as the “unspeakable” of the maternal as a female experience.
Satisfaction With Communication in Primary Care for Spanish-Speaking and English-Speaking Parents

Abstract Background and Objective Effective communication with primary care physicians is important yet incompletely understood for Spanish-speaking parents. We predicted lower satisfaction among Spanish-speaking compared to English-speaking Latino and non-Latino parents. Methods Cross-sectional analysis at 2-month well visits within the Greenlight study at 4 pediatric resident clinics. Parents reported satisfaction with 14 physician communication items using the validated Communication Assessment Tool (CAT). High satisfaction was defined as "excellent" on each CAT item. Mean estimations compared satisfaction for communication items among Spanish- and English-speaking Latinos and non-Latinos. We used generalized linear regression modeling, adjusted for parent age, education, income, and clinic site. Among Spanish-speaking parents, we compared visits conducted in Spanish with and without an interpreter, and in English. Results Compared to English-speaking Latino (n = 127) and non-Latino parents (n = 432), fewer Spanish-speaking parents (n = 303) reported satisfaction with 14 communication items. No significant differences were found between English-speaking Latinos and non-Latinos. Greatest differences were found in the use of a greeting that made the parent comfortable (59.4% of Spanish-speaking Latinos endorsing "excellent" vs 77.5% English-speaking Latinos, P P Conclusions Satisfaction with physician communication was associated with language but not ethnicity. Spanish-speaking parents less frequently report satisfaction with communication, and innovative solutions to enhance communication quality are needed.
Racialized legal status as a social determinant of health

This article advances the concept of racialized legal status (RLS) as an overlooked dimension of social stratification with implications for racial/ethnic health disparities. We define RLS as a social position based on an ostensibly race-neutral legal classification that disproportionately impacts racial/ethnic minorities. To illustrate the implications of RLS for health and health disparities in the United States, we spotlight existing research on two cases: criminal status and immigration status. We offer a conceptual framework that outlines how RLS shapes disparities through (1) primary effects on those who hold a legal status and (2) spillover effects on racial/ethnic in-group members, regardless of these individuals' own legal status. Primary effects of RLS operate by marking an individual for material and symbolic exclusion. Spillover effects result from the vicarious experiences of those with social proximity to marked individuals, as well as the discredited meanings that RLS constructs around racial/ethnic group members. We conclude by suggesting multiple avenues for future research that considers RLS as a mechanism of social inequality with fundamental effects on health.
Effect of gender and adiposity on in vivo vascular function in young African Americans.

Abstract The relationship between obesity and high blood pressure is not as strong among African Americans (AA) as compared to Caucasians. We designed the current study to determine the effect of adiposity on vascular endothelial function (a harbinger of hypertension) among young healthy AA without additional cardiovascular disease risk factors. A total of 108 AA subjects (46 women) between the ages of 18 and 45 years were recruited. All the subjects were normotensive, nonsmokers, and normoglycemic. Anthropometric and cardiovascular disease risk factor measurements (lipid, insulin resistance, and inflammatory markers) were obtained. Vascular endothelial function was measured by brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD). Adiposity distribution was measured by using magnetic resonance imaging scan. There were no gender differences in age and levels of blood pressure, lipids, insulin resistance, and inflammatory markers. Women had higher total body fat percentage and higher peripheral adiposity compared to men. We observed that total and central adiposity did not correlate significantly with brachial artery FMD in women (r = −0.12 and r = 0.23, respectively; P = NS). However, in men, waist circumference was positively associated with FMD (r = 0.3, P ≤ .05). Hyperemic flow was negatively correlated significantly with total and central adiposity in men (r = −0.34 and r = −0.48, respectively; P P = NS). Our study suggests that increased adiposity may pose greater risk to AA men compared to AA women by adversely affecting resistance vessel function (as measured by hyperemic flow). Larger studies are necessary to validate these findings.
Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide over K-Promoted FeCo Bimetallic Catalysts Prepared from Mixed Metal Oxalates

The hydrogenation of carbon dioxide over K-promoted FeCo bimetallic catalysts prepared by sequential oxalate decomposition and carburization of FeCo with CO was studied in a fixed-bed reactor at 240 °C and 1.2 MPa. The initial CO2 conversion was found to be dependent on K loading, whereas both unpromoted and K-promoted FeCo catalysts (except 90Fe10Co3.0K) exhibited similar levels of CO2 conversion after a few hours of time on stream. A decarburization study on freshly activated and used FeCo suggests that potassium increases the stability of iron carbides and graphitic carbon under a reducing atmosphere. Also, K addition tends to decrease the hydrogenation function of FeCo bimetallic catalysts and, thus, controls product selectivity. Under similar CO2 conversions, potassium enhanced acetic acid formation while suppressing ethanol production, which indicates that a common intermediate might be responsible for the changes observed with C2 oxygenates.
Location shooting in “the Wild East”: risk and masculinity in Hollywood productions in the Philippines

AbstractThis essay argues that risk has become a crucial part of Hollywood’s transnational media productions, revealing these productions’ links to various forms of masculinity. Entailing the deliberate confrontation of uncertainty, the concept of risk connotes rational decision-making, territorial exploration, economic investment, and, more implicitly, the kinds of masculinities associated with these practices. As such, risk becomes a means of understanding how the older forms of white masculinity associated with empire map onto newer geopolitical contexts, gendering production narratives that seek to mythologize filmmakers as auteurs, businessmen, and danger-seekers. Focusing on American productions in the Philippines, the essay examines risk and white masculinity in three cases of filmmaking: 1970s exploitation cinema commemorated in Machete Maidens Unleashed!; Apocalypse Now and Coppola’s subsequent tourism ventures; and the blockbuster The Bourne Legacy.
Complications of Cosmetic Gynecologic Surgery

Whether called cosmetogynecology or genitoplasty, the desire for enhancement of the genitalia is becoming more prevalent. As this field grows and is more in demand, surgeons have devised various techniques in the hopes of generating better outcomes. In the recent past, there has been a tremendous amount of direct to consumer marketing of these modalities by individual surgeons, promising improved sexual function.
Evaluating the Resilience of Forest Dependent Communities in Central India by Combining the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and the Cross Scale Resilience Analysis

Resilience has moved from being a peripheral ecological concept to a central goal, in the development discourse. While the concept has become popular, operationalizing resilience has been difficult. Many frameworks have been proposed to operationalize resilience but no common framework has been agreed upon. The present article demonstrates a step by step method to operationalize livelihood resilience analysis, for communities that are affected by climate change by taking the case of rural household livelihoods in villages around Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary in Central India. The article combines the Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) with the Cross Scale Resilience Analysis (CSRA), as a way to operationalize resilience. The CSRA is found to be simple, systematic and applicable in diverse contexts. The systematic and holistic asset, process and institution-based analysis under the SLF, supports the CSRA by defining the system and identifying associated important shocks that affect the system. Through the analysis, it was realized that the impact of shifts in government policies on rural livelihoods is much greater than the impacts of climate change. The livelihood is worst affected when the shift in government policies coincides with impacts of climate change. The article argues that combining the SLF with the CSRA can provide a standardized method for livelihood resilience analysis of poor natural- resource dependent communities in developing countries. Handling the dynamic nature of these complex adaptive social-ecological systems in the resilience analysis should be the next goal to tackle.
Adversarial Adaptation of Synthetic or Stale Data.

Two types of data shift common in practice are 1. transferring from synthetic data to live user data (a deployment shift), and 2. transferring from stale data to current data (a temporal shift). Both cause a distribution mismatch between training and evaluation, leading to a model that overfits the flawed training data and performs poorly on the test data. We propose a solution to this mismatch problem by framing it as domain adaptation, treating the flawed training dataset as a source domain and the evaluation dataset as a target domain. To this end, we use and build on several recent advances in neural domain adaptation such as adversarial training (Ganinet al., 2016) and domain separation network (Bousmalis et al., 2016), proposing a new effective adversarial training scheme. In both supervised and unsupervised adaptation scenarios, our approach yields clear improvement over strong baselines.
Cardiovascular Measurements on College-Age Smokers and Non-Smokers

Abstract Thirty-six male college students were measured in six cardiovascular factors as recorded by the Cameron Heartometer. Seventeen of these subjects were smokers and 19 were non-smokers. The purpose of this investigation was to find what residual, as opposed to acute, effects, smoking has on young men. Each subject in both groups was measured in six cardiovascular factors, nine times successively, during his testing period. The smokers abstained from smoking on the day of testing. The residual effects of smoking in young men, if there be any, cannot be demonstrated in a statistically significant manner in certain cardiovascular factor measurements in the quiet state.
Bilingual Court Proceedings

Ethnographers interested in linguistic behavior have long looked at speaker role as a key variable in determining what a person will say in a given situation and how he or she will say it (Hymes, 1962, 1972). Participants in a particular linguistic setting have various sorts of expectations regarding the verbal behavior of other participants. This chapter intends to explore the verbal behavior of a relatively new participant in what is typically a highly ritualized linguistic setting: the courtroom. It intends to demonstrate that what is expected in terms of verbal behavior on the part of an official verbal participant in the courtroom is far from fulfilled. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the behavior of the foreign language court interpreter and tries to show what it is that the social setting would require of her,2 and why it is that these expectations in reality are not fulfilled.
Chapter 22 Asymmetric Manual Interference as an Indicator of Lateralized Brain Function

Many concurrent tasks interfere more with the activity of one hand than with the activity of the other hand. The existence of this asymmetric manual interference can provide important insights into attention-related processes. Data from right-handed and left-handed subjects indicate that two factors contribute to the direction and magnitude of asymmetric manual interference: hemisphere-specific competition for attentional resources and hand dominance. Accordingly, when the goal is to use asymmetric manual interference to study one of these factors, it is necessary to control for the other. Procedures are outlined that can accomplish this. When these procedures are employed, it is possible to use asymmetric manual interference to study lateralized brain function and to investigate hypotheses about hemisphere-specific processing capacity.
Garlic and Cancer Prevention

1. Research during the past decade has provided a wealth of evidence that links garlic intake and its associated sulfur compounds as an important deterrent to cancer.
Where you live matters to your health.

Health practitioners can help reduce health disparities if they consider the implications and affect that patients' geographical location has on their health. Virtual Mentor is a monthly bioethics journal published by the American Medical Association.
Recent Changes in Identification and Classification of Some Anaerobes

Contrary to the belief of many, Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology has no official taxonomic status but does affect taxonomy in that taxonomic status can become established on the basis of common usage. Bergey’s Manual is one of the manuals commonly used when persons are trying to identify organisms or attempting to establish changes in nomenclature. Therefore, it seems appropriate to review changes in nomenclature of known taxa that have occurred since the eighth edition of Bergey’s Manual was published and to discuss the reasons for some of these changes. A few of the new species that have been described recently, particularly those isolated from clinical infections or species that are similar to clinically important species, also will be discussed.
Liberal Subjectivity, Religion, and the State

This chapter lays out the scope of the book by discussing connections between political unrest in the 1960s and 2019. It lays out a postsecular perspective and argues for an aesthetic approach to the material, connecting philosophical discourse between Europe and the United States and defines liberalism. Building a poetic and metonymic description of psychedelic aesthetics, it particularly addresses affective waves and notions of insurrection as espoused by groups such as The Invisible Committee in France. It argues for a broader framing of psychedelic aesthetics by discussing shifts in twentieth-century European thought regarding aesthetics and briefly contextualizes the domestication of rhetoric around psychedelics in recent years.
Putting Within-Country Political Differences in (Global) Perspective

The current political discourse in the United States focuses on extreme political polarization as a contributor to ills ranging from government shutdowns to awkward family holidays. And indeed, a large body of research has documented differences between liberals and conservatives-primarily focused on Republicans and Democrats in the United States. We combine large international surveys and more fine-grained surveys of United States citizens to compare differences in opinion between Republicans and Democrats to the full range of world opinion on moral issues (N = 37,653 in 39 countries) and issues of free speech (N = 40,786 in 38 countries). When viewed in the full distribution, polarization between Democrats and Republicans appears relatively small, even on divisive issues such as abortion, sexual preference, and freedom of religious speech. The average Democrat-Republic overlap is greater than 70% of the country pair overlaps across eight moral issues, meaning that 70% of the country pairs are more dissimilar from each other than Democrats and Republicans are dissimilar; similarly, the average Democrat-Republic overlap is greater than 79% of the country pair overlaps across five freedom of speech issues. These results suggest that cross-cultural comparisons are useful for putting differences between political partisans within the same country in context.
Depressive and anxiety symptoms and suicidality in adolescent and young adult females with moderate to severe obesity before and after weight loss surgery.

Data are conflicting regarding the impact of weight loss on mood and anxiety in adolescent and young adult females with moderate to severe obesity (OB), who are at increased risk for mood dysfunction compared with normal-weight females (NW). We examined depressive and anxiety symptoms in 94 females 13-21 years old: 39 in the NW group (body mass index [BMI]: 5th -85th percentiles) and 55 in the OB group (BMI >40 kg/m2 or >35 kg/m2 with comorbidities). Fifteen participants in the OB group who underwent bariatric surgery (gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy) and 15 getting routine care were re-assessed after 6 months. The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) assessed depressive and anxiety symptoms, respectively. The OB group had higher BDI-II and STAI T-scores (P < .0001), a higher prevalence of clinical depression and anxiety (P < .001), and reported greater suicidal ideation (P = .02) vs the NW group. The bariatric surgery and non-surgical groups did not differ for changes in BDI-II and STAI T-Scores and suicidality over 6-month follow-up, despite greater weight loss in the former. Depressive and anxiety symptoms and suicidality were more frequently observed in the OB vs NW group. These symptoms did not improve following bariatric surgery despite significant weight loss, underscoring the need to investigate determinants of emergence and resolution of these symptoms in the OB group.
Parents' genetic attributions for children's eating behaviors: Relationships with beliefs, emotions, and food choice behavior.

Abstract Considering genetic influences on children's eating behavior could result in reduced self-efficacy for healthy child feeding and less healthy feeding behavior among parents. Indeed, one's eating behaviors are typically thought of as the volitional aspects of weight management that one can directly control. The current study assessed parental genetic attributions for their child's eating behavior, and relationships between these attributions and self-efficacy, guilt, and feeding behaviors. Participants included 190 parents of a child between 4 and 7 years old. Parents' genetic attributions for child eating behaviors were lower than genetic attributions related to child weight. Higher genetic attributions for child eating behaviors were related to lower self-efficacy for feeding the right amounts of food, higher-calorie food choices for the child in a virtual reality-based buffet simulation, and higher levels of guilt. The current findings suggest that heightened beliefs about role of genetics in children's eating behavior is associated with maladaptive affect and behavior among parents. This should be kept in mind when considering whether, when, and how to provide information to parents highlighting the role of genetics in children's eating behavior.
Curtailing the Intercept between Cybercrime, Intellectual Property and Privacy

Following the recent passage of the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 (Cth) in August 2012, the Australian government has gained the power to demand storage of an entity’s personal data from international and telephone usage upon to demand of foreign governments, amongst other reasons.
Memeability in an Attention Economy: On the Form of the Nike Kaepernick Meme

This essay calls for understanding memes within the context of an attention economy, illustrating how the form of the Kaepernick Nike meme adapts to its conditions. These include a digital media ec...
Modeling the systemic risks of COVID-19 on the wildland firefighting workforce

Wildfire management in the US relies on a complex nationwide network of shared resources that are allocated based on regional need. While this network bolsters firefighting capacity, it may also provide pathways for COVID-19 transmission between fire sites. We develop an agent-based model of COVID-19 built on historical wildland fire assignments using detailed dispatch data from 2016-2018, which form a network of firefighters dispersed spatially and temporally across the US. We use this model to simulate SARS-CoV-2 transmission under several intervention scenarios including vaccination and social distancing. We find vaccination and social distancing are effective at reducing transmission at fire incidents. Under a scenario assuming High Compliance with recommended mitigations (including vaccination), infection rates, number of outbreaks, and worker days missed are effectively negligible. Under a contrasting Low Compliance scenario, it is possible for cascading outbreaks to emerge leading to relatively high numbers of worker days missed. The current set of interventions in place successfully mitigate the risk of cascading infections between fires, and off-assignment infection may be the dominant infection concern in the 2021 season. COVID-19 control measures in place in wildfire management are highly beneficial at decreasing both the health and resource impacts of the ongoing pandemic.
Racism and Confederate Monument Construction: Temporal Regimes Distinguishing the 1900s, 1960s, and Contemporary Decades:

The bulk of Confederate monuments were constructed by White southerners in the early 1900s, but some were built much later. Recent research has assessed average relationships across the decades, bu...
The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective

Why is it that victims of abuse so often become perpetrators, and what can psychoanalysis offer to these survivor-perpetrators, whose criminal conduct seems to transcend the possibilities of empathic psychoanalytic inquiry. In The Reproduction of Evil, Sue Grand engages these deeply troublesome issues in the belief that psychoanalysts can and should reclaim the study of what lies beyond ordinary human empathy. Her goal is to elucidate the link between traumatic memory and the perpetration of evil. To this end, she presents an interdisciplinary analysis, at once scholarly and passionate, of the ways in which families and cultures transform victims of malignant trauma into perpetrators of these very traumas on others. Through intensive case studies, Grand draws the reader into the world of the survivor-perpetrators who commit acts of child abuse, of incest, of racial persecution, even of homicide and genocide. By infusing psychoanalytic inquiry with cultural analysis and by supplementing clinical vignettes with well-chosen literary illustrations, Grand is able to convey the survivor-perpetrator's immediacy of experience in a manner that readers may find unsettling, even uncanny. By interweaving psychoanalytic, sociohistorical, and literary perspectives, Grand fills a critical lacuna in the literature about trauma and its intergenerational transmission. Her analysis of the psychodynamic processes and cultural tensions that bind perpetrators, victims, and bystanders provides trenchant insights into the violence and fragmentation that beset our society. Essential reading for a wide clinical audience, The Reproduction of Evil will also be powerfully informative for academic and lay readers interested in the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and cultural factors that account for the perpetuation of evil from generation to generation.
Field Experiences in Evaluation Courses: Increasing Their Value to Students and Sponsors.

Abstract Previous authors have expressed doubts that students can design and conduct a meaningful piece of evaluation research in one semester. This paper describes and analyzes a fieldwork procedure that attempts to provide students with such an opportunity. Consumer satisfaction data from both students and project sponsors suggest that the procedure has been successful. Projects share at least four characteristics that have contributed to their success: They are client-driven, small-scale, regulated by strict deadlines, and campus-based. Limitations of the one-semester approach are discussed.
Water Towers, Pump Houses, and Mountain Streams: Students' Ideas about Watersheds

The watershed concept is important in many areas of geology and environmental science, and the purpose of this study was to investigate students' ideas about watersheds and how these ideas change across grade level. A total of 95 students were sampled: 28 sixth graders, 25 seventh graders, 22 eight graders, and 23 ninth graders. To elicit students' ideas about watersheds a task was developed that required students to draw a picture of a watershed and explain their drawing. In general, students understand a watershed from a very limited scientific perspective. For sixth and some seventh grade students a watershed is a water storage facility or a facility that supplies water. Eighth and ninth grade students' ideas about a watershed focused on a mountainous stream. Older students also incorporated the hydrologic cycle, but rarely represented linkages between land and watercourses. For all students, humans do not appear to be a part of a watershed, but separate from it. The implications of these findings are ...
A Visualization ToolKit Based Application for Representing Macromolecular Surfaces

Macromolecular structural analysis has been used for a long time, in particular for proteins, with the aim of correlating three dimensional structures with possible functions and interactions. An innovative approach is to tackle these aspects by working on macromolecular surfaces instead of using amino acid or atomic configurations directly, because protein interaction is mainly driven by the macromolecular external characteristics. However, it is difficult to work with surfaces because applications for molecular visualization lack appropriate functions to manipulate these data structures properly. In this paper we describe a visualization pipeline to represent molecular surfaces in three-dimensional space. The pipeline relies on the Visualization Toolkit libraries, and provides a high level functions and easy user interface. This software has been developed in the context of a surface analysis project, but its classes and methods can be used and integrated in a wide range of applications.
Evidence-based review of silver dressing use on chronic wounds.

Purpose: Use of silver containing dressings has become prevalent in clinical practice to manage chronics wounds at risk for infections. This literature review examines the evidence for the efficacy of using silver dressings in the chronic wound management. Data sources: Relevant in vitro articles on antimicrobial activity of silver dressings, relevant randomized controlled studies (RCTs), and one retrospective cohort study were selected to assess the effectiveness of silver dressings on human chronic wounds. Conclusions: The emerging evidence base for this use of silver dressings in clinical practice on chronic wounds does not provide absolute evidence of antimicrobial efficacy because there are limited large, well-designed RCTs. To supplement this gap, more rigorously controlled long-term, randomized studies of human subjects with chronic wounds are needed. Implications for practice: It is essential that advanced practice nurses (APNs) be knowledgeable of the wound bacterial balance continuum. For deciding appropriate wound healing strategies, they also need to critically appraise the current literature as it changes for the latest information on antimicrobial efficacy of silver dressings. Until research clarifies the inconclusive evidence, APNs must provide holistic and accurate assessments of both the patient and the wound before selecting silver dressings.
Heart of the Matter

See related article, p 1758. Stroke is the leading neurological cause of death and disability, but, despite awareness of many modifiable vascular risk factors for stroke, the United States continues to record 800 000 events each year. Identifying circulating biomarkers associated with a disease outcome, such as stroke or coronary heart disease, has been a time-honored method to improve our understanding of disease pathophysiology and improve risk prediction, but it has proven challenging to identify such markers associated with stroke risk.1 In a recent attempt to identify circulating biomarkers associated with stroke, higher levels of B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) were found, along with an elevated urinary albumin/creatinine ratio, to be associated with a 30% to 40% greater risk of stroke and transient ischemic attack.2 Natriuretic peptides are biologically plausible biomarkers for stroke risk because of their role in regulation of intravascular volume and blood pressure, and their relationship with cardiac structure and function. The prohormone of BNP, proBNP, is stored within granules in cardiac myocytes and is released when the cardiac myocytes are stretched; this happens with ventricular volume expansion or pressure overload. ProBNP is cleaved by a previously unknown enzyme into 2 fragments: the inactive N-terminal proBNP and the bioactive peptide BNP. The transmembrane serine protease responsible for this cleavage has recently been characterized in vitro and in animal models and named corin because of its abundant presence in the heart.3,4 In this issue of Stroke , Peng et al …
Silicon Migration from High‐barrier Coated Multilayer Polymeric Films to Selected Food Simulants after Microwave Processing Treatments

The use of microwave (MW) technology for in-package food sterilization and pasteurization has the potential for widespread use in the food industry. Because the use of MW technology requires that food be processed inside its packaging, the interaction between food and its packaging during processing must be studied to ensure package integrity as well as consumer safety. In this study, two commercially available multilayer films developed for retort sterilization were evaluated for their suitability to MW processing. Film A was composed of oriented nylon//coated polyethylene terephthalate//cast polypropylene (CPP); film B consisted of oriented nylon//coated nylon//CPP with overall oxygen transmission rates 0.05) between the level of Si migration from films to FSL and the stability of Si–O–Si bonds during MW processing as compared with the conventional thermal processing. However, we found that the final processing temperature and time had a significant (p < 0.05) impact on Si migration into the FSL. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Enhanced Flight Vision Systems operational feasibility study using radar and infrared sensors

Approach and landing operations during periods of reduced visibility have plagued aircraft pilots since the beginning of aviation. Although techniques are currently available to mitigate some of the visibility conditions, these operations are still ultimately limited by the pilot's ability to “see” required visual landing references (e.g., markings and/or lights of threshold and touchdown zone) and require significant and costly ground infrastructure. Certified Enhanced Flight Vision Systems (EFVS) have shown promise to lift the obscuration veil. They allow the pilot to operate with enhanced vision, in lieu of natural vision, in the visual segment to enable equivalent visual operations (EVO).
Democracy and Chinese political discourses.

The absence of mass approval on the model of democracy has marked the debate both inside and outside China on the countrys political future. The lack of linkage between theories of democracy and the mass of the Chinese people diminishes the relevance of the debate. In this perspective this study intends to provide that linkage between democratic theory and the people who compose an actual or potential democracy within China. It approaches the issue from an empirical point of view utilizing the Q methodology on 64 statements from within the Chinese political context. Overall 4 Chinese political discourses are identified: radical democracy established conservatism concerned traditionalism and alienated populism. The study shows that although the Chinese are not politically homogenous they agree unanimously on the desirability of democracy. It uncovers opinions that are both pro-liberal democracy and pro-status quo as well as reveals widespread discontent about what is best described as rampant “rent seeking” under the present regime coupled with a strong sense of crisis and cynicism. Sharing the same cultural background these discourses have Chinese characteristics such as a concern over unity and a favorable opinion of meritocracy. Finally it does not support any argument that the Chinese peasants are apolitical or politically ignorant. Rather they do have distinctive political views.
Outcome assessment with blinded versus unblinded POP-Q exams.

Objective To determine whether blinded and unblinded Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification (POP-Q) examinations differ in a randomized trial. Study Design Blinded POP-Q examinations performed at 3 months and 1 year were compared with unblinded examinations performed by the surgeon in a randomized trial of vaginal mesh for pelvic organ prolapse. Results Sixty-five patients were included in the study. Correlations between the blinded and unblinded POP-Q points and stages varied from low to moderate (rho = 0.29-0.78). At 3 months, the blinded overall prolapse recurrence rate was 45.3% compared with 39.1% based on unblinded staging ( P = .34). At 1 year, the blinded overall recurrence rate was significantly higher than the unblinded recurrence rate: 68.3% vs 53.3% ( P = .004). The 1-year blinded anterior wall recurrence rate was also higher than the recurrence based on unblinded staging: 56.7% vs 43.3% ( P = .021). Conclusion Use of unblinded POP-Q staging resulted in underestimation of 1-year overall recurrence after prolapse repair.
The Canonical Alfred Hitchcock

When the call went out, about a generation ago, that the Western canon must be purged of its surfeit of "dead white males," the cry was loudest in departments of English. (Why this should be so--why it is easier to rally a mob against Milton and Spenser, say, than Michelangelo and Mozart--has never been satisfactorily explained.) And it is more than ironic that that same canon has in the intervening years been expanded to include someone who might be regarded as the double-distilled quintessence of the dead white male--that arch-brutalizer of women, Alfred Hitchcock--and that this should happen precisely in departments of English. In recent years, Hitchcock has been the subject of seminars and surveys throughout the country, almost all of them offered by English departments. A small selection might include "Theories of Authorship in the Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock" (Bryn Mawr); "Hitchcock: Cinema, Gender, Ideology" (Tufts); "Hitchcock in England and America" (Vanderbilt); "The Cinema of Alfre... Language: en
Designing a Measure of Visual Selective Attention to Assess Individual Differences in Information Processing

A new method for determining individual differ ences in information processing was developed and illustrated. The measure, Visual Selective Attention, was constructed according to the parameters and specifications of a standardized measure of auditory selective attention. Emphasis was placed upon es tablishing the relationship of this new measure with traditional measures of information processing (i.e., perceptual style and selective attention). The results provided initial evidence for the reliability and val idity of the new measure. Applications for Visual Selective Attention and interpretation of the find ings are discussed in view of the current state of the information-processing literature. Implications for additional research focus upon the practical appli cations of the new measure.
Understanding GaN nucleation layer evolution on sapphire and its impact on GaN dislocation density

For improved GaN films on sapphire, GaN nucleation layers (NLs) are typically grown prior to high temperature growth. Using optical reflectance and AFM image analysis we have uncovered mechanistic details of GaN NL evolution during the ramp to high temperature. As the temperature is increased the NL decomposes and GaN nuclei form. We will demonstrate that the GaN nuclei are formed from gas phase Ga atoms generated during the NL decomposition which recombine with ambient NH 3 . Continued GaN growth on these nuclei results in GaN films with dislocation densities as low as 4x10 8 cm -2 . We will show how the NL decomposition kinetics can be extracted from the optical reflectance waveforms and used to control the nuclei formation and growth. More recently we have investigated possible correlations between the GaN nucleation density and the resultant film dislocation density. We have initiated studies of ultra-low ( 7 cm -2 ) nucleation densities on sapphire using multi-step NL growth and annealing schemes. We find that over a wide range of nucleation densities that the nucleation density scales quadratically with the NL thickness. The dependence of the dislocation density on the nucleation density is currently being explored.
Mechanistic and structural analyses of the roles of active site residues in yeast polyamine oxidase Fms1: characterization of the N195A and D94N enzymes.

Flavoprotein Fms1 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae catalyzes the oxidation of spermine in the biosynthetic pathway for pantothenic acid. The same reaction is catalyzed by the mammalian polyamine and spermine oxidases. The active site of Fms1 contains three amino acid residues positioned to interact with the polyamine substrate, His67, Asn195, and Asp94. These three residues form a hydrogen-bonding triad with Asn195 being the central residue. Previous studies of the effects of mutating His67 are consistent with that residue being important both for interacting with the substrate and for maintaining the hydrogen bonds in the triad [Adachi, M. S., Taylor, A. B., Hart, P. J., and Fitzpatrick, P. F. (2012) Biochemistry 51, 4888–4897]. The N195A and D94N enzymes have now been characterized to evaluate their roles in catalysis. Both mutations primarily affect the reductive half-reaction. With N1-acetylspermine as the substrate, the rate constant for flavin reduction decreases ∼450-fold for both mutations; the effec...
Effects of acute administration of nicotine, amphetamine, diazepam, morphine, and ethanol on risky decision-making in rats

Rationale Most individuals can accurately assess the risks and rewards associated with choice alternatives and decide accordingly; however, drug users often display maladaptive decision-making, such that choices are biased toward excessively risky options.
Optimum quantization for detector fusion: some proofs, examples, and pathology

Abstract We consider optimal decentralized (or equivalently, quantized) detection for the Neyman– Pearson, Bayes, Ali–Silvey distance, and mutual (Shannon) information criteria. In all cases, it is shown that the optimal sensor decision rules are quantizers that operate on the likelihood ratio of the observations. We further show that randomized fusion rules are suboptimal for the mutual information criterion. We also show that if the processes observed at the sensors are conditionally independent and identically distributed, and the criterion for optimization is either a member of a subclass of the Ali–Silvey distances or local mutual information, then the quantizers used at all of the sensors are identical. We give an example to show that for the Neyman–Pearson and Bayes criteria this is not generally true. We go into some detail with respect to this last, and derive necessary conditions for an assumptions of identical sensor quantizer maps to be reasonable.
Seeing the Unseen: Prospective Loading and Knowledge Forms in Archaeological Discovery

How does an object in the ground become a discovery on the ground? This paper analyzes how archaeologists produce the content and status of a discovery before it is unearthed, a phenomenon I call “prospective loading.” It includes intense social knowledge of the soil, a form of embodied knowledge that I call “dirt sense”. These forces and mechanisms do not always work together harmoniously. Qualitative data from three excavations demonstrate how deep sensory perception thrives alongside sophisticated technology, and is construed as vital to the discovery process. The case has implications for how we think about cultural knowledge in scientific work and theorize the role of nationalism and politics in archaeology.
To Screen or Not Is Not the Question— It Is When and How to Screen

The year 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” by James Watson and Francis Crick.1 In just 50 years, the human genome has been sequenced, along with those of more than 1000 viruses and 100 microbes (see the National Center of Biotechnology Information’s list of completed and ongoing projects2). The stage is set for the identification of the approximately 30 000 genes thought to be present in the human genome. There are as yet only 1300 genes listed in the databases for human diseases (see the Human Gene Mutation Database at the Institute of Medical Genetics in Cardiff3). One would expect that within the next 5 to 10 years, all genes in the human genome will be identified. Additional decades will be needed to determine their roles in human diseases and develop techniques to manipulate them to the benefit of human beings. Nonetheless, the genetic revolution is well underway, and we in the cardiovascular world must prepare for its application and consequences. The 21st century is likely to be earmarked for its achievements in genetic and restorative biology. See p 2227 Revolutions in science are often nonuniform but kindled by sparks of success. The success in genetics of cardiomyopathies could be such a spark for the cardiovascular world. The first gene for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) was identified in 1991,4 and in one decade, more than 10 genes and over 200 mutations have been identified.5,6 The article in the present issue of Circulation by Richard et al7 is a tour de force in terms of attempts to identify these mutations in preparation for clinical application. The authors are to be congratulated for analyzing the entire coding sequence of 9 major causal genes …
Japan's peanut import demand: implications for United States exports

Japan's import demand for both raw peanuts and processed peanut products was estimated using the Rotterdam model in order to determine the impact of an increase in the Japanese raw peanut quota on peanut imports from the USA and its competitors. The results indicate that if a larger import budget were allocated to raw peanut imports by Japan, most of the increase would be allocated to imports of Chinese raw peanuts. Furthermore, U.S. exports of peanut products could be affected if Japanese expenditures on peanut product imports change as a result of an increase in the quota for raw peanut imports. Thus, this study concludes that an increase in the Japanese import quota for raw peanuts provides only limited market opportunity for U.S. peanut exports, and China appears to benefit more than the USA from an increase in the Japanese raw peanut import quota. In contrast, the value added trade of peanut products could provide a better market opportunity for the U.S. peanut industry.