cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Renal and perirenal space involvement in acute pancreatitis: spiral CT findings.

Background: This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence and morphologic computed tomographic (CT) features of renal and perirenal space abnormalities in acute pancreatitis in correlation with the severity of pancreatitis.
The Use of a Photoaffinity Ligand to Compare Androgen-Binding Protein (ABP) Present in Rat Sertoli Cell Culture Media with ABP Present in Epididymal Cytosol*

The kinetic, binding, and physicochemical properties of androgen-binding protein (ABP) produced by rat Sertoli cells in culture [media ABP (mABP)] have been assessed and compared to ABP present in rat epididymal cytosol (eABP). Physicochemical studies were accomplished using ABP that had been covalently labeled using the photoaffinity probe 17β- hydroxy-[l,2-3H]4,6-androstadien-3-one ([3H]Δ6-testosterone). mABP was obtained from serum-free Sertoli cell culture media by ultrafiltration or precipitation with ammonium sulfate. mABP and eABP were photolyzed in the presence of [3H]Δ6- testosterone alone or together with nonphotoreactive 5α-dihydrotestosterone. Electrophoresis of photolabeled mABP and eABP on nondenaturing polyacrylamide gels (PAGE) showed similar mobilities. Site-specific covalent attachment of [3H]Δ6- testosterone to mABP and eABP was demonstrated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-PAGE. This analysis revealed the presence of 2 androgen-specific peaks corresponding to subunit molecular weights of appr...
Clarifying Issues Regarding the Use of Praise with Young Children.

Currently in the popular and academic press, a debate exists as to the usefulness and the potential harm of praising young children. On one side of this debate, there are professionals who are invo...
Energy levels and the oscillator strengths of the Be atom determined by a configuration-interaction calculation with a finite basis set from B splines.

Extension de la methode CI pour inclure la contribution du continuum a la matrice hamiltonienne evaluee sur un ensemble de base construit a partir d'un ensemble quasi complet d'orbitales discretes a une particule. Application a des transitions entre certains etats 1,3 S, 1,3 P et 1,3 D
Molecular characterization of four shrunken mutations induced in Mutator lines in Zea mays L

Abstract Four shrunken (sh) mutants were independenty isolated from Robertson's Mutator lines. A molecular analysis of each mutant determined that the lesions responsible for these mutations were due to DNA inserations located within the 5′ untranslated region of the sh gene. Two of the insertions were similar in size to Mu 1, the predominant transposable element found in all Mutator lines. However, one insertion was 5.5 kb, which, thus far, is the largest insertion observed in a mutant allele isolated from an active Mutator line. These results imply that DNA insertions other than Mu 1 and Mu 1.7 elements may be involved in, or activated by, Mutator .
Responses of a Heteromyid Rodent Community to Large- and Small-scale Resource Pulses: Diversity, Abundance, and Home-range Dynamics

Abstract We augmented food resources to a heteromyid rodent community in the Sonoran Desert of southern California to experimentally ascertain the effect of a resource pulse on rodent abundance, diversity, and home-range dynamics. The same community displayed increased rodent abundance and species diversity in response to the productivity pulse that resulted from the 1997–1998 El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In marked contrast to the response to the ENSO, our experiment resulted in a decline in rodent diversity because the largest pocket mouse present (Chaetodipus formosus) monopolized the added resources and increased its proportional abundance. In addition, the abundance of adult rodents did not change in response to supplemental resources, even though reproduction, and consequently juvenile abundance, increased greatly. This implies that home-range size and overlap by adult animals remained unchanged despite the greater abundance of food. Among caching species such as pocket mice, this may be an a...
The Effect of Formulation on 1–131 Dissolution In Vitro from Sodium Iodide Capsules

AbstractBecause of the importance of the bioavailability of 1–131 for thyroid uptake studies and thyroid therapy, the present investigation was conducted to determine the influence of diluents, type of lubricant and the concentration of lubricant on the in vitro release rate of 1–131 from 1–131 sodium iodide capsules. Formulations and 1–131 sodium iodide capsules were prepared in-house and dissolution profiles determined using the U.S.P. XXII Dissolution Test. Distilled water was employed as the solvent. Lactose only, calcium phosphate only, a mixture of dicalcium phosphate—Avicel PH 101 and a sodium phosphate formulation consisting of lactose, L-cysteine hydrochloride and sodium phosphate were chosen as diluents. Several concentrations of the lubricant magnesium stearate were employed. The influence of 3% or 5% talc as the lubricant was studied using the sodium phosphate formulation.The results of the study demonstrated the influence of the formulation on the dissolution of 1–131 when the concentration o...
Discourse-pragmatic principles for temporal reference in Mandarin Chinese conversation

This study investigates the Mandarin temporal system in ordinary conversations. It is found that during the dynamic time course of interaction, Mandarin speakers tend to rely more heavily on certain underlying principles, rather than on overt markers, to convey temporal location: In a narrative context, temporal reference is almost always established at the beginning of the story and is not subsequently changed, provided that there is a continuity of action across the verbs. In contexts where turn-by-turn talk is at work, speakers tend to establish the time reference through the inherent semantics of the verbs being employed. The data also suggest that other factors, such as shared knowledge and discourse co-text, appear to play a significant role in helping disambiguate the temporal standpoint of utterances which otherwise have potentially competing temporal anchors.
Development of new tellurite fibers for mid-IR applications

Since the early and fundamental development of the low loss silica fiber, most technological advances in fiber optics have been based on new fiber designs (dispersion-shifted, large mode area, microstructured etc.) and new optical technologies (pumping schemes, modulation formats, signal processing etc.). And so far, most applications have primarily been in the near-IR range of wavelengths (1300nm–1700nm), where silica offers its lowest loss (∼1500 nm) and its lowest dispersion (1310 nm). As fibers have become ubiquitous in a number of fields, they have become attractive solutions for an even broader scope of new applications in an extended range of wavelengths, especially now into the mid-infrared (mid-IR >2 µm). These include defense (free space communications and optical guidance), medical (diagnostic and surgical), biological and environmental (detection/imaging and sensing). With the prospect of these new applications, innovation in optical fibers is going back to the fundamentals of the materials, of the glass and of its forming/processing. The candidate materials for new applications have been fluoride, phosphate, chalcogenide and tellurite glasses.1–3 Whereas silica only transmit up to 2 µm, fluoride glasses transmit up to ∼2.7 µm, tellurites up to ∼6 µm and chalcogenide glasses up to ∼20 µm, these characteristics stemming from the material properties of the glass. Without reviewing in details the advantages and disadvantages of each of these glasses, we believe that tellurite fibers offer the best compromise of all for future applications in the mid-infrared (mid-IR). Besides an extended transmission window compared to fluorides, tellurite glasses offer lower intrinsic loss than chalcogenides, little photosensitivity and high optical damage threshold. Most importantly, tellurites are simple oxide glasses and therefore mechanically, thermally and chemically very stable.4,5 In addition, tellurite glasses can be easily modified with a wide variety of modifiers/formers to adjust their dispersion profile, maximize their nonlinear coefficients and their emission cross-sections when doped. As examples, i) tellurite glasses can be doped with much higher concentrations of rare-earth ions (up to ∼50 times) than silica without clustering of the ions or concentration quenching of their emission and ii) their Raman coefficient, which is intrinsically ∼30 times higher than silica can be further increased by the addition of modifiers.
Abstract A46: Myc and mTOR converge on a common node in protein synthesis control that confers synthetic lethality in Myc-driven cancers

Myc is one of the most highly activated oncogenes in human cancer, yet therapeutic approaches to directly target Myc are not currently available in the clinic. The evolutionarily conserved function of Myc in regulating ribosome biogenesis and protein synthesis is critical for the Myc oncogenic program. Indeed, deregulated control of mRNA translation leads to increased cellular proliferation, survival and genomic instability during Myc tumorigenesis. Therefore, inhibiting enhanced protein synthesis may represent an attractive strategy for the treatment of Myc-dependent cancers. To this end, we asked if specific components of the protein synthesis machinery could be effective therapeutic targets in Myc-driven cancers. We uncovered a novel functional link between Myc and increased mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) kinase-dependent phosphorylation of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E binding protein (4EBP1), a master regulator of protein synthesis. Specifically, we found in a transgenic model of Myc-driven lymphoma that oncogenic Myc activates mTOR-dependent phosphorylation of 4EBP1 prior to tumor formation while phosphorylation of other mTOR substrates is not increased. Employing a pharmacogenetic approach, we found that mTOR-dependent 4EBP1 phosphorylation is required for cellular survival during Myc-dependent tumor initiation and maintenance. Furthermore, we demonstrated the preclinical efficacy of a newly developed clinical mTOR active site inhibitor MLN0128, which is capable of fully blocking 4EBP1 phosphorylation, in Myc-driven hematologic malignancies. We found that MLN0128 significantly prolonged survival compared to treatment with vehicle or the allosteric mTOR inhibitor, RAD001, which was incapable of inhibiting 4EBP1 phosphorylation. Additionally, we extended the implications of our findings to human diffuse large B-cell lymphomas by demonstrating that high Myc expression correlated with increased phosphorylation of 4EBP1 in a large cohort of patients. Ongoing work will determine the specific translationally regulated mRNAs downstream of 4EBP1-eIF4E that are required for survival of Myc-overexpressing tumors and elucidate the mechanism by which Myc overexpression leads to increased mTOR-dependent phosphorylation of 4EBP1. Together, our findings reveal that an important mTOR substrate is found hyperactivated downstream of Myc oncogenic activity to promote tumor survival and confers synthetic lethality, thereby revealing a unique therapeutic approach to render Myc druggable in the clinic. Citation Format: Michael Pourdehnad, Morgan L. Truitt, Imran N. Siddiqi, Gregory S. Ducker, Kevan M. Shokat, Davide Ruggero. Myc and mTOR converge on a common node in protein synthesis control that confers synthetic lethality in Myc-driven cancers. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Third AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Basic Cancer Research; Sep 18-22, 2013; National Harbor, MD. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(19 Suppl):Abstract nr A46.
Level of Student Effort Should Replace Contact Time in Course Design

The academic credit hour, developed over 100 years ago, does not accommodate online and other instructional innovations. The academic credit hour is an Industrial Age metric based on seattime, or contact time that faculty and students spend together in a classroom. Online education does not require that students and faculty be in the same place for teaching and learning to occur, and it does not necessarily fit a fifteen-week semester model. Instead of requiring that online educators articulate the equivalence of their model with the traditional model, a new framework based on level of student effort is proposed that will free faculty and instructional designers to be more innovative. As academic currency, the academic credit hour represents some level of engagement by students. It is not a measure of what they have learned or the academic quality of the educational experience in which they participated. To reframe the academic credit hour, the author proposes making “level of student effort” the foundation of the definition. If a one-credit course is designed to engage students for forty hours, a three-credit course is designed to engage students with the course content and outcomes for approximately 120 to 130 hours. Faculty can use their experience to estimate the time and effort needed by the typical student to engage successfully in each of the learning activities in a particular field, course, and program. Faculty and course designers can determine how and to what degree students will engage with the course content, through resources, projects, laboratory experiences, dialogue other students, etc., and the size of these activities in terms of expected student effort. Within clear parameters faculty and course designers have freedom to innovate in the facilitation of learning.
Automated Acquisition of Disease–Drug Knowledge from Biomedical and Clinical Documents: An Initial Study

Objective: Explore the automated acquisition of knowledge in biomedical and clinical documents using text mining and statistical techniques to identify disease-drug associations. Design: Biomedical literature and clinical narratives from the patient record were mined to gather knowledge about disease-drug associations. Two NLP systems, BioMedLEE and MedLEE, were applied to Medline articles and discharge summaries, respectively. Disease and drug entities were identified using the NLP systems in addition to MeSH annotations for the Medline articles. Focusing on eight diseases, co-occurrence statistics were applied to compute and evaluate the strength of association between each disease and relevant drugs. Results: Ranked lists of disease-drug pairs were generated and cutoffs calculated for identifying stronger associations among these pairs for further analysis. Differences and similarities between the text sources (i.e., biomedical literature and patient record) and annotations (i.e., MeSH and NLP-extracted UMLS concepts) with regards to disease-drug knowledge were observed. Conclusion: This paper presents a method for acquiring disease-specific knowledge and a feasibility study of the method. The method is based on applying a combination of NLP and statistical techniques to both biomedical and clinical documents. The approach enabled extraction of knowledge about the drugs clinicians are using for patients with specific diseases based on the patient record, while it is also acquired knowledge of drugs frequently involved in controlled trials for those same diseases. In comparing the disease-drug associations, we found the results to be appropriate: the two text sources contained consistent as well as complementary knowledge, and manual review of the top five disease-drug associations by a medical expert supported their correctness across the diseases.
Organizational Commitment and Turnover Intention in Union and Non-Union Firms

There are differences in organizational architecture between union and non-union construction firms in early 1990s. The construction industry has traditionally been dominated by strong union firms. However, non-union construction firms began to emerge in the 1990s and this change caused to bring conflicts between union and non-union construction firms. This presents a unique opportunity to study employees’ attitude toward organization. This article investigates workers’ attitudes toward union and non-union construction firms in terms of organizational commitment (OC) and turnover intention. Control variables in OC and turnover intention include personal characteristics, job characteristics, group−leader relations and organizational characteristics. The study found that employees in union firms are more committed to the organization than non-union organization, but they have higher intention to job turnover although the regression coefficients of union variable in commitment and turnover intention are not statistically significant at the conventional level of significance.
Linguistic and Auditory Milestones During the First Two Years of Life A Language Inventory for the Practitioner

Although language is recognized as one of the best predictors of development, the lack of a simple evaluation tool has contributed to the general pediatrician's unfamiliarity with linguistic milestones. Here described is a 32-item instrument for the recording and assessment by the practicing pediatrician of language milestones during the first two years of life.
Individual Growth and Foraging Responses of age-0 Largemouth Bass to Mixed Prey Assemblages during Winter

Synopsis We conducted an outdoor pool experiment at a mid-temperate latitude (Ohio, 40°N) to determine how commonly occurring prey assemblages affect individual foraging and growth of individually marked, age-0 largemouth bass during winter. The treatments were low prey, bluegill prey only, macroinvertebrates only, and bluegill plus macroinvertebrates. Across all treatments, growth in mass (g) was unrelated to body size. Conversely, small individuals lost more energy (kJ) than large counterparts in all but the macroinvertebrate-only treatment. With low prey, overall growth of largemouth bass was negative, with losses varying among individuals by 30% and 60% for mass and energy content, respectively. Counterparts in bluegill-only pools also consistently lost mass and energy, with less variability (15% mass; 30% energy). In the macroinvertebrate-only treatment, 31% of individuals gained mass, reflecting the greatest range in mass (100%) and energy (60%) change. With macroinvertebrates plus bluegill, overall growth was generally negative, with intermediate variance among individuals. Variation in growth among individuals typically increased with the frequency that prey occurred in diets during sampling. Apparently, some individuals were inactive, foraged infrequently, and consistently lost intermediate quantities of mass and energy. Others were active and foraged with variable success. Because activity and growth vary among individuals as a function of prey composition during winter, prey assemblages during this season will affect patterns of firstyear survival and cohort strength.
Tenofovir-based HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with daily oral tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) or TDF–emtricitabine (FTC) has been shown to be effective against sexual and injection-drug related HIV acquisition in four out of six large clinical trials. This article reviews the pharmacology of TDF and FTC as it relates both to PrEP efficacy and the emergence of viral resistance, summarizes the six trials and the inherent challenges to PrEP they highlighted, and proposes some future areas for further exploration.
Differentiation of Ventricular Tachyarrhythmias

Implantable devices capable of several modes of therapy will require differentiation of various ventricular tachyarrhythmias. Three methods of arrhythmia analysis, magnitude-squared coherence, ventricular rate, and irregularity of cycle length were performed for 45 episodes of induced ventricular tachyarrhythmia in 15 patients. Differentiation of monomorphic ventricular tachycardia from polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation was possible by mean magnitude-squared coherence, less possible by rate, and not possible by beat-to-beat irregularity. Faster monomorphic ventricular tachycardia overlapped with rates of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. Differentiation of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation was not possible by rate or irregularity. A progressive decrease in mean magnitude-squared coherence from monomorphic ventricular tachycardia to polymorphic ventricular tachycardia to ventricular fibrillation strengthens previous observations that coherence is a measure of rhythm "organization."
The Impact of School Violence on School Personnel: Implications for Psychologists

Each year, approximately 234,000 teachers in the United States are victims of school-related violence. After a violent incident, school-based mental health professionals, psychologists from the community, and administrators appropriately intervene to provide counseling and other services for students. Unfortunately, many school personnel who have been victimized do not receive adequate treatment after such incidents occur. In this article, the authors argue that psychologists, school personnel, and mental health counselors must be aware of the needs of teachers and administrators who have been affected by these events and must, therefore, provide counseling for them as well.
Defining the Service Needs of Homeless Mentally Ill Persons

If prevention of homelessness among the chronic mentally ill is to be achieved, the mental health system must take responsibility for developing a continuous service model that matches patients with programs that meet their needs. An improved array of programs and services are required to address the strengths and limitations of this vulnerable population.
Development of advanced compact railguns for injection of hypervelocity hydrogen pellets into magnetic fusion plasmas

We have designed, fabricated, and tested a number of compact railguns utilizing a variety of gun geometries, augmentation schemes, and state-of-the-art rail and insulator materials in order to develop an injector that can accelerate pellets of hydrogen isotopes to very high velocities (/spl sim/10 km/s) continuously and at high repetition rates for refueling magnetically confined fusion plasmas. These advanced guns are designed to achieve two goals: to minimize or eliminate gunwall erosion and to produce the maximum possible pellet acceleration. These closely related goals assure long gun lifetimes. Using an advanced transaugmented compact gun with an acceleration length of only 45-cm, we have recently achieved hydrogen pellet velocities as high as 2.2 km/s with a time-averaged pellet acceleration of 4.7/spl times/10/sup 6/ m/s/sup 2/ at a modest rail current of 10 kA. This paper includes a brief overview of our railgun control and diagnostic systems and discusses recent results of our railgun experiments using both plexiglass and cryogenic hydrogen pellets.
Generating Named Road Vector Data from Raster Maps

Raster maps contain rich road information, such as the topology and names of roads, but this information is “locked” in images and inaccessible in a geographic information system (GIS). Previous approaches for road extraction from raster maps typically handle this problem as raster-to-vector conversion and hence the extracted road vector data are line segments without the knowledge of road names and where a road starts and ends. This paper presents a technique that builds on the results from our previous road vectorization and text recognition work to generate named road vector data from raster maps. This technique first segments road vectorization results using road intersections to determine the lines that represent individual roads in the map. Then the technique exploits spatial relationships between roads and recognized text labels to generate road names for individual road segments. We implemented this approach in our map processing system, called Strabo, and demonstrate that the system generates accurate named road vector data on example maps with 92.83% accuracy.
An integrated two-parameter adaptive cable equalizer using continuous-time filters

This paper describes an analog continuous-time adaptive cable equalizer that can be implemented in a standard CMOS integrated circuit technology. The equalizer can be designed with as many poles and zeros as are necessary to compensate for cable distortion. However, only two control voltages, gain control and bandwidth control, are needed for adaptive control of the equalizer. By properly designing the relative locations of the poles and zeros, these control voltages will adjust to compensate for cable distortion and the large process and temperature tolerances on the integrated circuit. Since there are only two control voltages, the circuitry required to produce these control voltages is very simple. Also, if independent parameters of the received signal are used to develop these control voltages, such as the autocorrelation and the signal amplitude, no training is required to adapt the equalizer. Since the gain of the equalizer can be adjusted independently of the shape of the frequency response, no additional VGA is necessary.
Detection of Recurrent Prostate Cancer After Radical Prostatectomy: Comparison of 11C-Choline PET/CT with Pelvic Multiparametric MR Imaging with Endorectal Coil

The aim of this study was to compare 11C-choline PET/CT with pelvic multiparametric MR imaging for detection of recurrent prostate carcinoma in patients with suspected recurrence after radical prostatectomy and to identify an optimal imaging method to restage these patients. Methods: This was a retrospective, single-institution study of 115 prostatectomy patients with suspected tumor recurrence who underwent both 11C-choline PET/CT and multiparametric MR imaging with endorectal coil. The reference standard included histopathology, treatment change, and imaging follow-up for determination of locally recurrent tumor, lymph node (LN) metastases, and skeletal metastases. Two nuclear medicine and 2 genitourinary radiologists independently and in a masked manner reviewed PET/CT and multiparametric MR imaging, respectively. The reviewers assessed for local recurrence in the prostatectomy bed as well as LN and bone metastases, rating their diagnostic confidence with a 5-point scoring system for each location. Receiver-operating-characteristic analysis was used to compare the 2 modalities. Results: The standard of reference (either positive or negative) for the diagnosis of local recurrence and pelvic LN and bone metastases was met in 87, 70, and 95 patients, respectively. Documented local recurrence and pelvic LN and bone metastases was present in 61 of 87 (70.1%), 50 of 70 (71.4%), and 16 of 95 (16.8%) patients, respectively. Patient-based area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curves of multiparametric MR imaging versus PET/CT for the diagnosis of local recurrence and pelvic LN and bone metastases were 0.909 versus 0.761 (P = 0.0079), 0.812 versus 0.952 (P = 0.0064), and 0.927 versus 0.898 (P = 0.69), respectively. Among 61 patients with local recurrence, 32 patients (52.4%) were correctly diagnosed as having local recurrence by both multiparametric MR imaging and PET/CT, 22 (36.1%) were correctly diagnosed by multiparametric MR imaging only, 6 (9.8%) could not be diagnosed by either modality, and 1 (1.6%) was correctly diagnosed by PET/CT only. The patient-based sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of multiparametric MR imaging for diagnosing local recurrence were 88.5% (54/61), 84.6% (22/26), and 87.4% (76/87) whereas those of PET/CT for detecting body LN or bone metastases were 92.3% (72/78), 100% (18/18), and 93.8% (90/96), respectively. Conclusion: Multiparametric MR imaging with endorectal coil is superior for the detection of local recurrence, PET/CT is superior for pelvic LN metastasis, and both were equally excellent for pelvic bone metastasis. 11C-choline PET/CT and pelvic multiparametric MR imaging are complementary for restaging prostatectomy patients with suspected recurrent disease.
Rousseau's Anti–Agenda-Setting Agenda and Contemporary Democratic Theory

In his recent article, “Rousseau on Agenda-Setting and Majority Rule” (2003), Ethan Putterman examines how the democratic principle of popular majority rule might be reconciled with agenda-setting by legislative experts through an analysis of Rousseau's political theory. He argues that Rousseau accomplishes this reconciliation through a novel separation of powers between the legislative and the executive powers where the sovereign people delegates the exclusive power to initiate laws to the executive. Putterman thereby identifies as a solution to the problem of democratic self-legislation what Rousseau sees as the most important danger to it. At issue is not merely the correct interpretation of Rousseau's theory, for Putterman's argument raises far-reaching questions concerning the compatibility of democratic principles and institutions. After demonstrating that Putterman is incorrect that the sovereign people in Rousseau's state delegate the power of legislative initiative, I examine how Rousseau anticipates and addresses a related question central to contemporary democratic and social choice theory: the problem of preference aggregation through voting in the absence of agenda-setting institutions.
Efficient Interaction between Two GTPases Allows the Chloroplast SRP Pathway to Bypass the Requirement for an SRP RNA

Cotranslational protein targeting to membranes is regulated by two GTPases in the signal recognition particle (SRP) and the SRP receptor; association between the two GTPases is slow and is accelerated 400-fold by the SRP RNA. Intriguingly, the otherwise universally conserved SRP RNA is missing in a novel chloroplast SRP pathway. We found that even in the absence of an SRP RNA, the chloroplast SRP and receptor GTPases can interact efficiently with one another; the kinetics of interaction between the chloroplast GTPases is 400-fold faster than their bacterial homologues, and matches the rate at which the bacterial SRP and receptor interact with the help of SRP RNA. Biochemical analyses further suggest that the chloroplast SRP receptor is pre-organized in a conformation that allows optimal interaction with its binding partner, so that conformational changes during complex formation are minimized. Our results highlight intriguing differences between the classical and chloroplast SRP and SRP receptor GTPases, and help explain how the chloroplast SRP pathway can mediate efficient targeting of proteins to the thylakoid membrane in the absence of the SRP RNA, which plays an indispensable role in all the other SRP pathways.
Vertical monolithic integration of quantum cascade lasers for high-power broadband applications

We demonstrate 1.1W peak power from a monolithic broadband laser composed of four quantum cascade laser active regions distributed over two uncoupled optical waveguides. This work paves the way for high-brightness broadband mid-infrared sources.
Septo-Optic Dysplasia: A Neurosonographic Review

Septo-optic dysplasia (de Morsier syndrome) is a rare intracranial malformation characterized by the absence of the septum pellucidum with optic disk hypoplasia. Associated clinical symptoms include hypothalamic-pituitary dysfunction and varying degrees of visual impairment. Although the exact etiopathology is unknown, some researchers postulate that septo-optic dysplasia is the result of a vascular disruption sequence, an environmental anomaly, an autosomal-recessive inheritance, or a genetic abnormality. The associated intracranial malformations with septo-optic dysplasia are agenesis of the corpus callosum, schizencephaly, and lobar holoprosencephaly. To detect septo-optic dysplasia and its associated anomalies, sonographers must scan beyond the routine axial views in utero as well as the standard, neonatal axial, coronal, and sagittal views.
Tornadoes, Social Science, and the False Alarm Effect

AbstractDespite considerable interest in the weather enterprise, there is little focused research on the “false alarm effect.” Within the body of research that does exist, findings are mixed. Some studies suggest that the false alarm effect is overstated, while several recent efforts have provided evidence that FAR may be a significant determinate of behavior. This effort contributes to the understanding of FAR through a sociological analysis of public perceptions and behavioral responses to tornadoes. This analysis begins by addressing public definitions of FAR and then provides two statistical models, one focused on perception of FAR and one focused on behavioral response to tornado warnings. The authors’ approach incorporates a number of sociological and other social science concepts as predictors in both of these models. Findings provide a number of important insights. Most notably, it is found that 1) there is a wide degree of variation in public definitions of false alarm, 2) actual county FAR rates...
Declining Dixie: Regional Identification in the Modern American South

We replicate and extend John Shelton Reed’s classic work on regional identification by examining and modeling the prevalence of the words “Dixie” and “Southern” in business names across 100 cities and four decades. We find that the instances of “Dixie” have dropped precipitously, although identification with the word “Southern” has remained more constant, providing evidence of a trend we term re-southernization. We also find that the relative number of blacks in the population provides the most consistent explanation of regional identity. Population density has also emerged as a significant predictor of regional identification in more recent time periods. These findings contribute to the literature on regional identification, the politics of naming and the sociology of the South.
Gadolinium-Enhancing Lesions Lead to Decreases in White Matter Tract Fractional Anisotropy in Multiple Sclerosis.

PURPOSE Although MRI identification of new lesions forms the basis for monitoring disease progression in multiple sclerosis patients, how lesion activity relates to longitudinal white matter changes in the brain is unknown. We hypothesized that patients with gadolinium-enhancing lesions would show greater longitudinal decline in fractional anisotropy in major tracts compared to those with stable disease. METHODS Thirty patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis were included in this study—13 had enhancing lesions at baseline and 17 did not. Each patient underwent at least two 3 Tesla contrast-enhanced MRI scans with a DTI sequence with a median interval of 2.1 years between scans. The forceps major and minor of the corpus callosum and the bilateral corticospinal tracts were selected as the major white matter tracts of interest. These tracts were reconstructed using region-of-interest placement on standard anatomical landmarks and a fiber assignment by continuous tracking algorithm using TrackVis (version 0.5.2.2) software. Mixed-effects regression models were used to determine the association between enhancing lesions and subsequent longitudinal change in fractional anisotropy. RESULTS In patients with enhancing lesions, there was greater decline in fractional anisotropy compared to those with stable disease in the forceps major (P = .026), right corticospinal tract (P = .032), and marginally in the left corticospinal tract (P = .050), but not the forceps minor (P = .11). CONCLUSION Fractional anisotropy of major white matter tracts declined more rapidly in patients with enhancing lesions, suggesting greater diffuse white matter injury with active inflammatory disease. DTI may provide a means of monitoring white matter injury following relapses.
Successful management of recurrent ventricular tachycardia by electrical isolation of anterolateral papillary muscle

a w a p F ( i b ntroduction adiofrequency ablation is increasingly used as adjuncive therapy for the management of ventricular arrhythias. Ablation is performed to decrease painful imlantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) shocks and to mprove quality of life. The propensity for difficulty with blation as a result of epicardial and deep midmyocardial ubstrate is well recognized. Although endocavitary tructures, such as false tendons, have been suggested to e arrhythmogenic, the role, if any, of the papillary uscles as the origin of ventricular tachycardia has not een described.
The Behavior of Plasmodium berghei Strains isolated from Relapsed Infections of White Mice.

SYNOPSIS. A previous study of parasites from relapsed P. berghei infections of mice indicated that the behavior of the relapse parasites differed from that of their parent strain. Experiments have been performed comparing the behavior of relapse and parent parasite infections in mice under two sets of conditions. In one group of experiments the behavior after antimalarial treatments, designed to result in chronic or latent states of infection, was tested. In all, 8 relapse strains were tested against their parent strains in six different experiments which employed 536 mice. It was observed that the mice infected with the relapse strains had a statistically significant greater mortality after the treatments than did mice infected with parent strains. This difference was observed regardless of how the relapse strain had been previously treated, or of what treatment was used in the experiments. In a second group of experiments, the behavior of infections with relapse and parent parasites was compared in normal mice. Five relapse strains were compared to their parent strains in a total of 5 experiments using 356 mice. It was observed that the mean survival time of mice infected with relapse strains was significantly greater than that of mice infected with the parent strains. It is not known whether this apparent difference in the behavior of relapse and parent parasites is related to the mechanism for relapse of P. berghei infections, or is merely a characteristic of parasites that had survived in an immune host.
Microeconometrics: Mixture Models and Unobserved Heterogeneity

Introduction There is a large statistical and econometric literature concerning the topic of unobserved heterogeneity. Observed heterogeneity refers to interindividual differences that are measured by regressors, and unobserved heterogeneity refers to all other differences. Both factors affect survival times. In the presence of unobserved heterogeneity even individuals with the same values of all covariates may have different hazards out of a given state. When unobserved heterogeneity is ignored, its impact is confounded with that of the baseline hazard. To motivate further study consider a well-known empirical example. The aggregate hazard rate out of unemployment is known to be a declining function of the length of unemployment spell. If all individuals were identical then this would imply negative duration dependence, that is, a falling probability of escaping unemployment the longer an individual has remained unemployed. However, suppose that there are two types of individuals in the unemployed population, type F (fast), who have a constant hazard rate of 0.4, and type S (slow), whose constant hazard rate is 0.1. The population is a 50/50 mixture of the two types. Then for 100 type F people we observe 40 transitions in the first period, 24 transitions in the second period, and 14.4 in the third. For the type S, we observe 10, 9, and 8.1 transitions in the first, second, and third periods, respectively. Hence the aggregate proportion of transitions will be (40 + 10)/200 = 0.25, (24 + 9)/150 = 0.22, and (14.4 + 8.1)/117 = 0.192.
Successful fertilization and pregnancy outcome in in-vitro fertilization using cryopreserved/thawed spermatozoa from patients with malignant diseases

Cryopreservation of spermatozoa before treatment is the only proven effective method available to circumvent the sterilizing effect of therapy in some patients with malignant diseases. Because of impaired sperm quality after freezing and thawing in-vitro fertilization/embryo transfer (IVF/ET) was indicated in 10 patients (12 cycles) during 1986-1990. The patient's mean age was 33.4 +/- 1.6 years. The following diagnoses were made: seminoma (1), testicular carcinoma (3), leiomyosarcoma of the prostate (1), Wegener's granulomatosis (1), non-Hodgkin's (1) and Hodgkin's lymphoma (3). When motile spermatozoa could be recovered after thawing, the total fraction of motile spermatozoa after swim-up separation ranged from 0.2 to 4.2 x 10(6) spermatozoa/ml (eight patients, nine cycles). In all these cases, insemination was performed with multiple oocytes per dish. Fertilization was achieved when swim-up recovered a mean of 1.8 +/- 0.5 x 10(6) spermatozoa/ml and when insemination was performed with at least a calculated concentration of motile spermatozoa of 1 x 10(5) spermatozoa/oocyte. The fertilization rate of preovulatory oocytes was 60%. Four patients achieved a pregnancy: two of them delivered a single healthy baby, one delivered triplet healthy babies and one had a preclinical abortion. In two patients (three cycles), no motile spermatozoa were recovered after thawing, and micromanipulation of oocytes for assisted fertilization was performed. Although fertilized oocytes were transferred, those couples did not achieve a pregnancy. Patients with lymphopathies had the best results, whilst those with testicular neoplasms had the poorest outcome, thus suggesting a poor gametogenic function in the non-affected testis. These results give hope to some patients with malignant diseases to maintain their reproductive capacity through sperm banking and IVF/ET.
Metabolism and Adhesion : Report of Workshop Discussion

Numerous investigations have demonstrated that the activity of microorganisms on surfaces often differs from that of freely suspended cells. However, the physicochemical, environmental, or physiological bases for such observations have rarely been demonstrated. The purpose of this workshop discussion was to explore possible explanations for some of these observations and speculate about mechanisms for altered activity.
Combined Biparametric Prostate Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Prostate-specific Antigen in the Detection of Prostate Cancer: A Validation Study in a Biopsy-naive Patient Population.

Objective To validate the use of biparametric (T2- and diffusion-weighted) magnetic resonance imaging (B-MRI) and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) or PSA density (PSAD) in a biopsy-naive cohort at risk for prostate cancer (PCa). Methods All patients (n = 59) underwent PSA screening and digital rectal exam prior to a B-MRI followed by MRI or transrectal ultrasound fusion-guided targeted biopsy. Previously reported composite formulas incorporating screen positive lesions (SPL) on B-MRI and PSA or PSAD were developed to maximize PCa detection. For PSA, a patient was considered screen positive if PSA level + 6 × (the number of SPL) >14. For PSAD, screening was positive if PSAD × 14 + (the number of SPL) >4.25. These schemes were employed in this new test set to validate the initial formulas. Performance assessment of these formulas was determined for all cancer detection and for tumors with Gleason ≥3 + 4. Results Screen positive lesions on B-MRI had the highest sensitivity (95.5%) and negative predictive value of 71.4% compared with PSA and PSAD. B-MRI significantly improved sensitivity (43.2-72.7%, P = .0002) when combined with PSAD. The negative predictive value of PSA increased with B-MRI, achieving 91.7% for B-MRI and PSA for Gleason ≥3 + 4. Overall accuracies of the composite equations were 81.4% (B-MRI and PSA) and 78.0% (B-MRI and PSAD). Conclusion Validation with a biopsy-naive cohort demonstrates the parameter SPL performed better than PSA or PSAD alone in accurately detecting PCa. The combined use of B-MRI, PSA, and PSAD resulted in improved accuracy for detecting clinically significant PCa.
Sufficient Dimension Reduction and Variable Selection for Large-p-Small-n Data With Highly Correlated Predictors

ABSTRACTSufficient dimension reduction (SDR) is a paradigm for reducing the dimension of the predictors without losing regression information. Most SDR methods require inverting the covariance matrix of the predictors. This hinders their use in the analysis of contemporary datasets where the number of predictors exceeds the available sample size and the predictors are highly correlated. To this end, by incorporating the seeded SDR idea and the sequential dimension-reduction framework, we propose a SDR method for high-dimensional data with correlated predictors. The performance of the proposed method is studied via extensive simulations. To demonstrate its use, an application to microarray gene expression data where the response is the production rate of riboflavin (vitamin B2) is presented.
Anesthesiologist staffing considerations consequent to the temporal distribution of hypoxemic episodes in the postanesthesia care unit.

BACKGROUND:Hypoxemia, as measured by pulse oximetry (SpO2), is common in postanesthesia care unit (PACU) patients. The temporal distribution of desaturation has managerial implications because treatment may necessitate the presence of an anesthesiologist.METHODS:We retrieved SpO2 values recorded ele
Asymptomatic same-site recurrent disc herniation after lumbar discectomy: results of a prospective longitudinal study with 2-year serial imaging.

Study design This is a prospective cohort study with serial imaging. Objective We set out to determine the incidence of symptomatic and asymptomatic same-level recurrent disc herniation and assess their effect on 2-year outcome. Summary of background data The reported incidence of symptomatic same-level recurrent disc herniation after lumbar discectomy varies widely in retrospective studies. To date, the incidence of radiographic same-level recurrent disc herniation has not been studied prospectively with sequential imaging. Furthermore, the clinical relevance of recurrent disc herniation on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after discectomy remains unknown, particularly in patients with poorly specific pain after surgery. Methods One hundred eight patients undergoing lumbar discectomy for a single-level herniated disc at five institutions were prospectively observed for 2 years. Computed tomography (CT) and MRI of the lumbar spine were obtained every 3 months to assess reherniation and disc height loss. Leg and back pain visual analog scale (VAS), Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), and quality of life (SF-36 physical component) were assessed 3, 6, 12, and 24 months after surgery. Results No patients demonstrated residual disc on postoperative MRI. By 2 years after discectomy, 25 (23.1%) patients had demonstrated radiographic evidence of recurrent disc herniation at the level of prior discectomy on serial imaging (mean ± SD, 11.8 ± 8.3 months after surgery). Radiographic disc herniation was asymptomatic in 14 (13%) patients and symptomatic in 11 (10.2%) patients. The occurrence of symptomatic recurrent disc herniation was associated with worse 2-year leg pain (VAS-LP, P=0.002) and disability (ODI, P=0.036) but not quality of life (SF-36) or disc height loss. The occurrence of asymptomatic reherniation was not associated with disc height loss or any outcome measure (VAS, ODI, and SF-36) by 2 years. Conclusion Nearly one-fourth of patients undergoing lumbar discectomy demonstrated radiographic evidence of recurrent disc herniation at the level of prior surgery, the majority of which were asymptomatic. Asymptomatic disc herniation was not associated with clinical consequences by 2 years. Clinically silent recurrent disc herniation is common after lumbar discectomy. When obtaining MRI evaluation within the first 2 years of discectomy, providers should expect that radiographic evidence of reherniation may be encountered and that treatment should be considered only when correlating radicular symptoms exist.