cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of commercial enzymes in diets containing various concentrations and sources of dried distillers grains with solubles for nursery pigs.

In 2 experiments, 530 pigs were used to evaluate the effects of adding commercial enzymes to diets containing dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) on pig growth performance. In the first ex- periment, 180 pigs (9.0 kg initial BW) were fed a corn- soybean meal-based control diet, a diet containing 30% corn DDGS, or the 30% DDGS diet with 0.05% of en- zyme A, B, or C. There were 6 pigs per pen and 6 pens per treatment. Overall (d 0 to 27), neither DDGS nor enzyme addition increased ADG and G:F. Pigs fed en- zyme B had decreased (P 0.10) enzyme × DDGS source interactions observed. Corn DDGS did not influence (P > 0.10) ADG, ADFI, or G:F. Sorghum DDGS reduced (P = 0.003) G:F, with no difference (P > 0.10) between sorghum DDGS sources. Adding the commercial enzyme to the 30% DDGS diets did not improve performance. In summary, feeding diets with sorghum DDGS resulted in poorer G:F with no change in ADG compared with feeding the control diet or diets containing corn DDGS. Adding the enzymes used in this study to corn-soybean meal-based diets containing 30% DDGS did not improve growth performance.
Dipeptidyl Peptidase IV Inhibition Alters the Hemodynamic Response to Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibition in Humans With the Metabolic Syndrome

Inhibitors of dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-4; an ecto-enzyme also called CD26) represent a novel, effective, and useful class of antidiabetic drugs for treatment of type 2 diabetes. Drugs in this class (eg, sitagliptin [Januvia], saxagliptin [Onglyza], and vildagliptin [Galvus]) afford significant and sustained reductions in hemoglobin A1c with a low risk of hypoglycemia and little effect on body weight.1 Because of this desirable pharmacological profile, and because of the emerging uncertainty regarding the safety of rosiglitazone2 and the inability of most antidiabetic agents to reduce macrovascular events,2 it is likely that DPP-4 inhibitors will be used extensively to manage the worldwide pandemic of type 2 diabetes. Indeed, sitagliptin is already the second leading branded oral antidiabetic agent in the United States.3 In the near future, tens of millions of patients will be taking DPP-4 inhibitors, many for the rest of their lives; thus, we should strive to fully understand the benefits and risks, both short-term and long-term, associated with DPP-4 inhibition. Because a high percentage of type 2 diabetics have the metabolic syndrome, the effects of DPP-4 inhibition in such patients are of particular importance. Moreover, because metabolic syndrome patients are nearly always subjected to multidrug regimens, clarifying the interactions of DPP-4 inhibitors with other medications prescribed for these patients (eg, antihypertensive drugs) is also a worthwhile investment. Based on their biochemical mechanism, it is reasonable to anticipate that DPP-4 inhibitors, in addition to their beneficial effects, will likely express adverse actions and interactions with other drugs. DPP-4 metabolizes incretin hormones (eg, glucagon-like peptide-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide), and consequently, DPP-4 inhibitors raise circulating levels of incretins and thereby exert antidiabetic actions by increasing insulin release, inhibiting glucagon secretion, and retarding gastric emptying.4 However, incretin hormones are not the only endogenous substrates for DPP-4. …
How to Communicate With Vaccine-Hesitant Parents

Development of safe and effective vaccines is one the greatest medical triumphs. However, despite high immunization rates in the United States, 85% of health care providers (HCPs) will have a parent refuse a vaccine for his or her child each year. HCPs have the greatest influence on a parent's decision to vaccinate his or her child. To effectively communicate with vaccine-hesitant parents, HCPs must first understand the concerns of parents regarding immunization and understand influences that can lead to misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. HCPs should establish an open, nonconfrontational dialogue with vaccine-hesitant parents at an early stage and provide unambiguous, easily comprehensible answers about known vaccine adverse events and provide accurate information about vaccination. Personal stories and visual images of patients and parents affected by vaccine-preventable diseases and reports of disease outbreaks serve as useful reminders of the need to maintain high immunization rates. Ongoing dialogue including provider recommendations may successfully reassure vaccine-hesitant parents that immunization is the best and safest option for their child.
Tensile fracture of cancellous bone

Excised specimens of cancellous bone from human femora were subjected to compressive or tensile testing, and the resulting force-displacement curves were recorded. The relationships between bone strength and apparent density were similar for specimens tested in these two loading modes. The modulus of elasticity was also comparable for the tensile and compressive specimens. Specimens loaded in compression absorbed considerable energy after the initial fracture because of progressive impaction of the trabeculae. In the specimens loaded in tension, the fractured bone fragments separated and therefore absorbed little additional energy after the initial failure. The energy absorption capacity was thus significantly lower for the tensile specimens. The results of this study show that the primary difference in mechanical properties of cancellous bone tested in tension and compression is the energy absorption capacity. This finding suggests that tensile and avulsion fractures of cancellous bone observed clinically are associated with minimal energy absorption and therefore may be precipitated by relatively minor trauma.
Visualizing the modern catholic university: the original intention of “touchdown jesus” at the university of notre dame

ABSTRACT“Touchdown Jesus,” the well-known moniker of the enormous mural of Christ on the University of Notre Dame's skyscraper library, defines the University of Notre Dame in the popular imagination, wittily uniting the university's famed football tradition with its Catholic identity. Yet the original intention of the 1964 mural, formally titled The Word of Life, and its library had little to do with football. Instead, the library and mural were part of President Theodore M. Hesburgh's program to raise Notre Dame's national reputation as a modern research university. The library and mural embodied reforms then underway at the Second Vatican Council, whose support of academic freedom allowed Catholic universities to strive toward the intellectual standards of their secular counterparts. This article argues that the library's modern architecture and its figurative, Christocentric mural visualized the University of Notre Dame's ambition to become a great American university without leaving its Catholic iden...
A complete system for recovery of 3D shapes from engineering drawings

Converting paper-based engineering drawings into CAD model files is a tedious process, and automating the conversion of such drawings represents tremendous time and labor savings. We present a complete system which interprets such 2D paper-based engineering drawings, constructs solid models, and outputs 3D CAD-like files. While most existing systems assume that the engineering drawings have already been preprocessed to remove the dimensioning lines, this system is truly complete: It performs the detection of dimension sets, the extraction of object lines, and the assembly of 3D objects from object fines. A knowledge-based method is used to extract dimension sets and text from ANSI engineering drawings, and a graphics recognition procedure is used to extract complete object lines. In addition, a general-purpose dashed line recognition algorithm is presented. The focus of this paper, however is on the 3D interpretation of the object lines, which is accomplished using a technique that can accommodate auxiliary views in addition to the standard orthogonal set, along with planar spherical, and cylindrical object surfaces. Drawings with misaligned views and missing lines can also be interpreted. Extensive experimental results are presented.
Diffusible, retinal factors stimulate the barrier properties of junctional complexes in the retinal pigment epithelium

The retinal pigment epithelium lies at the interface between the neural retina and the choriocapillaris where it forms a blood-retinal barrier. Barrier function requires a polarized distribution of plasma membrane proteins and ‘tight’ tight junctions. During chicken embryogenesis, these features develop gradually. Although terminal junctional complexes are established by embryonic day 4, the distribution of the Na + / K + ATPase is not polarized in all cells of the epithelium until embryonic day 11. Similarly, the tight junctions of early embryos are leaky, but become tight by hatching (embryonic day 21). We used primary cell culture to examine the molecular basis of this gradual induction of polarized function. Pigment epithelium harvested from embryonic day 7, and cultured on filters, formed monolayers coupled by junctional complexes. The distribution of the Na + / K + -ATPase was non-polarized and the tight junctions were leaky with a transepithelial electrical resistance of 20-30 c m 2 . To isolate diffusible factors that stimulate the transepithelial electrical resistance, neural retinas from embryonic day 7, 14 or 16 embryos were incubated at 37°C in base medium for 6 hours. The conditioned medium was added to the apical chamber of freshly cultured pigment epithelium. The distribution of the Na + / K + -ATPase became basolateral, and the electrical resistance gradually increased two to three times over 6 days. The increase in electrical resistance corresponded to a decrease in the rate of [ 3 H]inulin diffusion across the monolayer. The effectiveness of the conditioned medium increased steadily with increasing age of the neural retina. Rather than increased production of an active factor, apparently different active factors were produced at different ages. The embryonic day 14 retinal-derived factors were heat- and alkali-labile and smaller than 10 kDa. Additionally, they were acid-stable and insensitive to proteolysis by cathepsin D. These studies provide evidence that diffusible factors from the neural retina regulate the gradual development of barrier function in the retinal pigment epithelium. SUMMARY
RESPONSE OF RODENTS TO HABITAT FRAGMENTATION IN COASTAL SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

We employed an island biogeographic approach to determine whether small fragments of the shrub habitats coastal sage scrub and chaparral, isolated by urbanization, are capable of supporting viable populations of native rodent species. The distribution of native rodents in 25 urban habitat fragments was assessed by live-trapping. Over half of the fragments surveyed (13 of 25) did not support populations of native rodents. Fragments supported fewer species than equivalently sized plots in large expanses of unfragmented habitat, and older fragments (fragments that had been isolated for a longer period of time) supported fewer species. Both results implied that local extinctions occurred in the fragments following insularization. Stepwise multiple polychotomous logistic regression was used to determine which biogeographic variables were the best predictors of species number across fragments. The area of shrub habitat in each fragment was the most significant predictor of species diversity; age of a fragment was also significant and was negatively correlated with species number, but the isolation distance of a fragment had no relationship to species diversity. We found a negative relationship between extinction vulnerability of native rodent species and relative abundance: species that were more abundant in unfragmented habitat persisted in more habitat fragments. Random environmental and demographic fluctuations (island effects) and edge effects associated with fragmentation are proposed as causes of these local extinctions.
The vehicle scheduling problem with intermittent customer demands

Abstract The vehicle scheduling problem (VSP) is a problem of interest to many researchers and practitioners. The general VSP is concerned with minimizing the total distance associated with a fixed set of vehicle routes by determining which vehicles will satisfy the demands at various customer locations. The design of most general distribution systems usually involves the assignment of permanent customer routes even though customer demand patterns are often stochastic in nature. The traditional routing designs implicitly assume that each customer will be visited each period for each route. In reality, a certain number of customers may not require a delivery for a particular period. In this research, we consider three alternative approaches for modelling the VSP with uncertain customer demands. Our solution methodology is a simple but practical heuristic which captures the best of all three approaches in order to handle the dynamic nature of vehicle scheduling under uncertain demand. An experimental design was also implemented to show the sensitivity of the proposed solution methodology to various realistic scheduling situations.
Neural control of tuneable skin iridescence in squid

Fast dynamic control of skin coloration is rare in the animal kingdom, whether it be pigmentary or structural. Iridescent structural coloration results when nanoscale structures disrupt incident light and selectively reflect specific colours. Unlike animals with fixed iridescent coloration (e.g. butterflies), squid iridophores (i.e. aggregations of iridescent cells in the skin) produce dynamically tuneable structural coloration , as exogenous application of acetylcholine (ACh) changes the colour and brightness output. Previous efforts to stimulate iridophores neurally or to identify the source of endogenous ACh were unsuccessful, leaving researchers to question the activation mechanism. We developed a novel neurophysiological preparation in the squid Doryteuthis pealeii and demonstrated that electrical stimulation of neurons in the skin shifts the spectral peak of the reflected light to shorter wavelengths (greater than 145 nm) and increases the peak reflectance (greater than 245%) of innervated iridophores. We show ACh is released within the iridophore layer and that extensive nerve branching is seen within the iridophore. The dynamic colour shift is significantly faster (17 s) than the peak reflectance increase (32 s), revealing two distinct mechanisms. Responses from a structurally altered preparation indicate that the reflectin protein condensation mechanism explains peak reflectance change, while an undiscovered mechanism causes the fast colour shift.
Rosiglitazone treatment does not decrease amyloid deposition in transplanted islets from transgenic mice expressing human islet amyloid polypeptide.

In human islet transplantation, insulin independence decreases over time. We previously showed that amyloid deposition following transplantation of islets from human islet amyloid polypeptide (hIAPP) transgenic mice resulted in s-cell loss and that rosiglitazone treatment decreased islet amyloid deposition and preserved s-cell area in the endogenous pancreas of hIAPP transgenic mice. Thus, we sought to determine if rosiglitazone treatment decreases islet amyloid deposition and the associated s-cell loss after islet transplantation. Streptozocin-diabetic mice were transplanted with 100 islets from hIAPP transgenic (T) mice or nontransgenic (NT) littermates under the kidney capsule and received either rosiglitazone (R) in drinking water or plain drinking water (C). The resultant groups (NTC [n = 11], NTR [n = 9], TC [n = 14], and TR [n = 10]) were followed for 12 weeks after which the graft was removed and processed for histology. Amyloid was detected in nearly all T islet grafts (TC = 13/14, TR = 10/10) but not in NT grafts. Rosiglitazone did not alter amyloid deposition (% graft area occupied by amyloid; TC: 2.15 ± 0.7, TR: 1.72 ± 0.66; P = .86). % s-cell/graft area was decreased in the TC grafts compared to NTC (56.2 ± 3.1 vs 73.8 ± 1.4; P < .0001) but was not different between TC and TR groups (56.2 ± 3.1 vs 61.0 ± 2.9; P = .34). Plasma glucose levels before and after transplantation did not differ between NTC and TC groups and rosiglitazone did not affect plasma glucose levels post–islet transplantation. Rosiglitazone did not decrease amyloid deposition in hIAPP transgenic islet grafts. Therefore, rosiglitazone treatment of recipients of amyloid forming islets may not improve transplantation outcomes.
Horizontal Transfer of Bait in the German Cockroach: Indoxacarb Causes Secondary and Tertiary Mortality

Horizontal transfer of indoxacarb in the German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.), was examined under laboratory conditions. Results show that a single bait-fed adult cockroach (i.e., the donor) transferred indoxacarb to numerous primary recipients (secondary mortality), which then became secondary donors. These recipients subsequently became donors to other cockroaches and caused significant mortality in other members of the aggregation, resulting in tertiary kill. Indoxacarb was effectively transferred among adult cockroaches and resulted in significant secondary mortality. When adult males served as donors and vectored the insecticide to adult males, the donor:recipient ratio affected the mortality of the recipients and the rate of secondary mortality increased with increasing the ratio of donors to recipients. Furthermore, secondary mortality in the untreated cockroaches was significantly affected by the freshness of excretions from the donors, the presence of alternative food, and the duration of contact between the donors and the recipients. Ingested indoxacarb was most effectively translocated when the recipients interacted with freshly symptomatic donors in the absence of alternative food. The transfer of indoxacarb continued beyond secondary mortality and resulted in significant tertiary mortality. Excretions from a single bait-fed adult killed 38/50 (76%) nymphs within 72 h. The dead nymphs then vectored indoxacarb to 20 adult males and killed 16/20 (81%) recipients within 72 h. Behavioral mechanisms involved in the horizontal transfer of indoxacarb may include: contact with excretions, necrophagy, emetophagy, and ingestion of other excretions that originate from the donors.
Testing Contamination Source Identification Methods for Water Distribution Networks

AbstractIn the event of contamination in a water distribution network (WDN), source identification (SI) methods that analyze sensor data can be used to identify the source location(s). Knowledge of the source location and characteristics are important to inform contamination control and cleanup operations. Various SI strategies that have been developed by researchers differ in their underlying assumptions and solution techniques. The following manuscript presents a systematic procedure for testing and evaluating SI methods. The performance of these SI methods is affected by various factors including the size of WDN model, measurement error, modeling error, time and number of contaminant injections, and time and number of measurements. This paper includes test cases that vary these factors and evaluates three SI methods on the basis of accuracy and specificity. The tests are used to review and compare these different SI methods, highlighting their strengths in handling various identification scenarios. The...
Representativeness and Motivations of the Contemporary Donorate: Results from Merged Survey and Administrative Records

Only a small portion of Americans make campaign donations, yet because ambitious politicians need these resources, this group may be particularly important for shaping political outcomes. We investigate the characteristics and motivations of the donorate using a novel dataset that combines administrative records of two types of political participation, contributing and voting, with a rich set of survey variables. These merged observations allow us to examine differences in demographics, validated voting, and ideology across subgroups of the population and to evaluate the motivations of those who donate. We find that in both parties donors are consistently and notably divergent from non-donors to a larger degree than voters are divergent from non-voters. Of great interest, in both parties donors are more ideologically extreme than other partisans, including primary voters. With respect to why individuals contribute, we show that donors appear responsive to their perception of the stakes in the election. We also present evidence that inferences about donor ideology derived from the candidates donors give to may not closely reflect the within-party policy ideology of those donors. Overall, our results suggest that donations are a way for citizens motivated by the perceived stakes of elections to increase their participation beyond solely turning out.
Fluorescein transport in isolated proximal tubules in vitro: epifluorometric analysis

An epifluorometric method was used to quantify the bidirectional fluxes of fluorescein across the basolateral surfaces of nonperfused rabbit tubule segments in vitro. Proximal S2 segments, but not cortical collecting tubules or cortical thick ascending limbs, accumulated fluorescein to levels in cytoplasm over 100-fold greater than in the external medium. The rate of intracellular fluorescein accumulation was dependent on the concentration of the ligand in the external bath. The apparent Km was 10 microM and the Vmax was 623 x 10(-6) mol.min-1.l-1. Probenecid and ouabain inhibited fluorescein accumulation. We conclude that fluorescein is transported into the cytoplasm of proximal tubules by basolateral mechanisms that share features in common with the classical organic anion system. This fluorescent compound offers some unique advantages for the study of the organic anion transport system in intact cells.
Evaluation of Astroglide, a new vaginal lubricant: effects of length of exposure and concentration on sperm motility

Traditional vaginal lubricants have been shown to adversely affect sperm motility. Astroglide, a new vaginal lubricant, and K-Y Jelly were tested at varying concentrations to assess their suitability for infertility patients requiring a lubricant. The vaginal lubricants tested impaired sperm motility in a concentration-dependent but not time-dependent manner. We conclude that all traditional vaginal lubricants should be avoided in patients desiring conception. Future studies should attempt to mimic in vivo conditions and focus on concentration-dependent effects.
Shamanism in a Contemporary Medical System: The Okinawan Case

The island of Okinawa lies midway astride the Ryukyu Archipelago, halfway between the main islands of Japan and Taiwan (Formosa). Prior to 1879 when the King was removed and permanently exiled to Japan, the region had experienced a socio-political development quite different from that of Japan, with a distinct language and social institutions. The area is not well endowed in natural resources and is heavily populated. Since annexation the Japanese government has striven to modernize and assimilate Okinawa. These efforts have been handicapped, until quite recently by physical isolation from mainland Japan, by the Battle for Okinawa in World War II which devastated the island further impoverishing everyone, and by a lengthy period of U.S. Military Government extending from 1945 to 1972.
Availability Knob: Flexible User-Defined Availability in the Cloud

Failure is inevitable in cloud environments. Finding the root cause of a failure can be very complex or at times nearly impossible. Different cloud customers have varying availability demands as well as a diverse willingness to pay for availability. In contrast to existing solutions that try to provide higher and higher availability in the cloud, we propose the Availability Knob (AK). AK provides flexible, user-defined, availability in IaaS clouds, allowing the IaaS cloud customer to express their desire for availability to the cloud provider. Complementary to existing high-reliability solutions and not requiring hardware changes, AK enables more efficient markets. This leads to reduced provider costs, increased provider profit, and improved user satisfaction when compared to an IaaS cloud with no ability to convey availability needs. We leverage game theory to derive incentive compatible pricing, which not only enables AK to function with no knowledge of the root cause of failure but also function under adversarial situations where users deliberately cause downtime. We develop a high-level stochastic simulator to test AK in large-scale IaaS clouds over long time periods. We also prototype AK in OpenStack to explore availability-API tradeoffs and to provide a grounded, real-world, implementation. Our results show that deploying AK leads to more than 10% cost reduction for providers and improves user satisfaction. It also enables providers to set variable profit margins based on the risk of not meeting availability guarantees and the disparity in availability supply/demand. Variable profit margins enable cloud providers to improve their profit by as much as 20%.
Effect of Temperature on Germination Characteristics of Glyphosate-Resistant and Glyphosate-Susceptible Kochia (Kochia scoparia)

Glyphosate-resistant (GR) kochia is an increasing concern for growers across the U.S. Great Plains and Canadian prairies. Integrated strategies to mitigate resistance will require an improved understanding of the seed germination dynamics of GR kochia populations. Experiments were conducted to characterize the germination of GR vs. glyphosate-susceptible (GS) kochia populations under different constant (5 to 35 C) and alternating (5/10 to 30/35 C) temperatures. Seven GR and two GS populations were collected from wheat—fallow fields in northern Montana. Selected lines of GR and GS were obtained after three generations of recurrent group selection in the greenhouse. The GR-selected lines had 4.1 to 10.8 average EPSPS copies compared with a single EPSPS gene copy for the GS selected lines. Four out of seven GR selected lines had lower final germination (d parameter) and took more time to complete 50% cumulative germination (I50 values) under all constant and alternating temperatures, compared with the GS sel...
Species richness of multiple functional groups peaks in alpine tundra in subarctic Alaska

Climate warming has initiated changes to vegetation across subarctic North America with potential to dramatically alter the distribution of biodiversity of vascular plants, mosses, and macrolichens. However, landscape-scale studies of the patterns and drivers of species richness in this region are scarce, raising the possibility that dramatic changes to biodiversity could occur undetected over a wide area with serious consequences for ecosystem integrity and conservation. We used a hierarchical, systematic design to compile a uniquely large and comprehensive diversity dataset for our study area in subarctic North America. We utilized a unified sampling frame at the landscape scale to record diversity of vascular plants, mosses, and macrolichens as the three primary components of vegetation species richness. We applied Bayesian hierarchical modeling techniques to identify site attributes associated with richness of the three functional groups. We also examined whether richness of groups was positively or negatively inter-correlated across multiple spatial scales. Our goal was to quantify the fundamental relationships of species richness with site attributes across this landscape to better understand the possible responses of species richness to habitat changes forecast to occur in the subarctic as a result of a warming climate and other stressors. Moss, vascular plant, and terricolous macrolichen species richness were strongly inter-correlated, due to an underlying marked positive association of each with increasing elevation into the alpine zone across multiple spatial scales. Our results further reveal varying influences of factors such as soil pH, disturbance, and plant canopy cover on diversity in these physiologically different functional groups. Taken together, the patterns revealed by our work provide a new framework to consider how predicted habitat changes wrought by warming climates in interior Alaska may affect fundamental diversity patterns of primary producers in the future, with important implications for ecosystem function and conservation.
To the question of the role of consultation liaison psychiatry in diagnostics of psychosomatic disorders

Background Relevance of consultation liaison psychiatry is conditioned by trend of steady rise of psychosomatic disorders and insufficient development of supplied forms and methods of medical care to patients with this pathology. Aim To study incidence rate of psychosomatic disorders in primary health care, to develop algorithm of medical care. Material and methods A total of 2010 patients of the primary health care unit were examined. Methods used: clinical-psychopathological, clinical-dynamic, questionnaire screening, statistical (factor analysis). Results Mental disorders, co-morbid with physical pathology, constituted 3.9% of the contingent with predominance of psychosomatic disorders–15.6 per 10,000 of the population. Respective from clinical-dynamic structure of psychosomatic disorders three groups of patients were distinguished: in need for consultation by a psychiatrist (22.9%); for course treatment by psychiatrist and subsequent observation by physicians (28%); and for systematic therapy and observation by psychiatrist (49.1%). Patients with psychosomatic disorders addressed general medicine network 1–2 years after onset of mental disorder and 6.4 ± 1.2 years after diagnostics of somatic pathology. Patients had predominantly cardiovascular (37.7%; P – evaluation of mental and physical status; – distinguishing the nosological groups; – choice of therapy; – formation of groups of observation (risk groups in need for course therapy, systematic therapy). Conclusion Consultation liaison psychiatry in general medical institution allows widening accessibility of psychiatric care and makes its provision more cost-effective.
A Touch of the Hand: Manual Intercourse in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Kimberly Cox, “A Touch of the Hand: Manual Intercourse in Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (pp. 161–191) Characters in the works of Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, and Bram Stoker communicated their passions, reciprocated desires, and negotiated the power dynamics of their social and romantic relationships through their hands. Despite the recent work on Victorian hand studies, little attention has been paid to such moments when characters’ hands touch. This essay introduces the term “manual intercourse” as a way of referring to all literary depictions of tactile encounters (whether handshakes, caresses, uninvited grasps, or other accidental manual interactions) while acknowledging the silent, embodied communication and exchange inherent in such moments of physical connection. Taking Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) as an example par excellence, this essay explores how reading a novel through characters’ manual intercourse opens new ways of understanding and interpreting intense moments of emotional intimacy that language fails to represent adequately. Since emotions can be communicated through the quality, pressure, duration, and circumstance of a touch, manual intercourse in such novels allows for the possibility of excess sentiment that cannot be simply expressed through speech. Further, though nineteenth-century etiquette books dedicated entire sections to delineating types of handshakes acceptable in certain social situations, this essay suggests that some Victorian novelists challenged traditional gender ideology and the power structures inherent in it through representations of manual intercourse that either adhere to or deviate from traditional handshake etiquette.
Response to Comment on Jaiswal et al. Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy in Youth With Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes: SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study. Diabetes Care 2017;40:1226-1232.

We thank Simoneau et al. (1) for their comment on our article (2). In the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth study, our primary aim was to evaluate the prevalence and risk factors for diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) in youth and adolescents with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. We used the validated Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument (MNSI) to assess the burden of DPN in this large cohort because it is a simple measure to assess peripheral neuropathy. As vibration …
Using Quality of Life in Public Policy

Every discussion of public policy could begin with a story, more illustrative than concrete, of a town plagued by rats. The rats, which had not been a problem at first, slowly evolved from nuisance to full vexation. The problem grew worse and worse as the rats broke into food stores and brought disease into the town. In an attempt to solve the problem, the city government offered a bounty for each rat tail brought to city hall. Soon people began bringing rat tails and walking out with their bounty. As the tails piled up, it seemed hard to doubt the program would soon solve the rat problem, but months went by with little improvement. The city’s council met again to consider additional solutions and to consider the flaws in their previous plan. At their meeting one member brought out a cage of rats, one mother and several younger specimens. The reason for the bounty’s failure, she explained, was simple. The reward had not prompted people to hunt rats, but to breed them instead.
Development of Communication in Infants: Implications for Stimulus Relations Research.

Early forms of stimulus–response relations are learned by infants to communicate with caregivers. The infant communication abilities begin with the learning of eye gazing, joint attention, social referencing, and naming, among others. Learning to engage in these early communication skills facilitates the development of more advanced phenomena seen in equivalence class formations and derived relational responding research. This article discusses evidence of early communication skills that are often required for the emergence of other, more complex forms of stimulus–stimulus relations. We emphasize the importance of establishing these types of operants early in infancy and their implications for developmental research on stimulus relations.
Benchmarking emergency department thoracotomy: Using trauma video review to generate procedural norms.

Abstract Introduction Emergency department thoracotomy (EDT) must be rapid and well-executed. Currently there are no defined benchmarks for EDT procedural milestones. We hypothesized that trauma video review (TVR) can be used to define the ‘normative EDT’ and generate procedural benchmarks. As a secondary aim, we hypothesized that data collected by TVR would have less missingness and bias than data collected by review of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). Methods We used continuously recording video to review all EDTs performed at our centre during the study period. Using skin incision as start time, we defined four procedural milestones for EDT: 1. Decompression of the right chest (tube thoracostomy, finger thoracostomy, or clamshell thoracotomy with transverse sternotomy performed in conjunction with left anterolateral thoracotomy) 2. Retractor deployment 3. Pericardiotomy 4. Aortic Cross-clamp. EDTs with any milestone time ≥ 75th percentile of time or during which a milestone was omitted were identified as outliers. We compared rates of missingness in data collected by TVR and EMR using McNemar’s test. Results 44 EDTs were included from the study period. Patients had a median age of 30 [IQR 25–44] and were predominantly African-American (95%) males (93%) with penetrating trauma (95%). From skin incision, median times in minutes to milestones were as follows: right chest decompression: 2.11 [IQR 0.68–2.83], retractor deployment 1.35 [IQR 0.96–1.85], pericardiotomy 2.35 [IQR 1.85–3.75], aortic cross-clamp 3.71 [IQR 2.83–5.77]. In total, 28/44 (64%) of EDTs were either high outliers for one or more benchmarks or had milestones that were omitted. For all milestones, rates of missingness for TVR data were lower than EMR data (p Conclusions Video review can be used to define normative times for the procedural milestones of EDT. Steps exceeding the 75th percentile of time were common, with over half of EDTs having at least one milestone as an outlier. Data quality is higher using TVR compared to EMR collection. Future work should seek to determine if minimizing procedural technical outliers improves patient outcomes.
Gastropod Secretory Glands and Adhesive Gels

Gastropod molluscs are known for slime, yet the complexity and variety of their slimes is not always appreciated. These snails and slugs secrete visco-elastic mucous gels with functions that include feeding, protection, reproduction, locomotion, lubrication, defense, and adhesion (Denny, 1983). While the functional demands of such disparate tasks obviously vary widely, there has been little work on the biochemical variations and different secretory structures that give rise to these functional differences. The general structure and mechanics of Molluscan mucus have been reviewed (Denny, 1983; Smith, 2002), and the biochemical structure of some adhesive gels has been analyzed (Smith, 2006). Nevertheless, we still have a long way to go in characterizing the diversity of these gels and linking differences in structure to differences in their functional properties.
LACK OF ACTIVITY OF CONTRA-SUPPRESSOR T CELLS AS A MECHANISM OF TOLERANCE

Publisher Summary This chapter presents experiments to illustrate that B cells of adult CBA mice are made up of at least two sub-populations. One of these is thymus independent and it responds to sheep red blood cells without much T cell help and in addition can become tolerant to sheep cells without T cell help. After it is made tolerant to SRBC, T cell help does not break its unresponsive state. A second population fails to react to sheep cells without T cell help, either to become immune or tolerant. Induction of tolerance in the first population does not detectably alter the response of the second, indicating the two cells may come from separate lines. In addition, sheep red blood cell stimulated T cells can make, or cause to be made, factors that render other T cells specifically unresponsive to sheep cells. Whether this factor also acts on B cells is not clear. If it does, it does so at much higher thresholds. Antigen-stimulated T cells can also make, or cause to be made, factors that render other T cells refractory to, or at least increase the threshold requirements for, the suppressive signal. The latter factor has less antigen specificity than the former.
Negative Regulators of Inflammation as Endogenous Protective Mechanisms in Postinfarction Remodeling

Myocardial infarction triggers an intense inflammatory reaction that serves to clear the wound from dead cells and matrix debris while promoting cardiac repair and formation of a scar. Dysregulated inflammation following cardiac injury has adverse consequences on the reparative response enhancing dilative remodeling and causing contractile dysfunction. Inhibitory molecular signals and suppressive pathways that prevent excessive or uncontrolled inflammation are activated in the infarcted myocardium and may protect from the development of adverse remodeling. This chapter discusses the cellular effectors and molecular signals responsible for suppression and containment of the postinfarction inflammatory response. Neutrophils, monocytes/macrophage, and lymphocyte subpopulations with suppressive properties, dendritic cells, vascular cells, fibroblasts, and extracellular matrix proteins contribute to inhibition of the inflammatory signals by producing soluble suppressive mediators (such as transforming growth factor-β, interleukin-10, and lipid-derived mediators) and through activation of intracellular inhibitory signals. We propose that dilative remodeling in patients with myocardial infarction may reflect impairment of suppressive anti-inflammatory pathways. Selective inhibition of inflammatory mediators in patient subpopulations with overactive postinfarction inflammation may protect from the development of heart failure.
Lack of racial disparity in outcome of African American (AA) and Caucasian patients with symptomatic multiple myeloma (MM) at the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals.

8033Background: Recent studies have identified a significant and increasing disparity in survival amongst AA and Caucasian patients diagnosed with MM in the United States, and a concomitant dispari...
Assessment of older adult candidates for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation: updates and remaining questions.

Introduction: Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) has seen marked growth among older adults, where chronological age is no longer a barrier to transplant. As allo-HCT expands t...
Point of care testing for infectious diseases

Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms and can be transmitted between individuals and populations thus threatening the general public health and potentially the economy. Efficient diagnostic tools are needed to provide accurate and timely guidance for case identification, transmission disruption and appropriate treatment administration. Point of care (POC) tests provide actionable results near the patient and thereby serve as a personal "radar". In this review, we review clinical needs for POC testing for several major pathogens, including malaria parasites, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), human papillomavirus (HPV), dengue, Ebola and Zika viruses and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB). We compare different molecular approaches, including pathogen nucleic acid and protein, circulating microRNA and antibodies, used in the POC tests. Finally, we review recent advances in novel POC technologies focusing on microfluidic and plasmonic-based approaches.
Teen fertility and siblings’ outcomes: Evidence of family spillovers using matched samples

U.S. teen birth rates remain high relative to other industrialized countries. Despite extensive literature on teen mothers and their children, almost no research examines the effects of teen fertility on the rest of the mother's family. I address this gap, finding that teen birth negatively affects mothers' younger siblings. Using several matched control methods, I find that sisters of new teenage mothers experience a 3.8 percentage point decrease in test scores, a 7.6 percentage point increase in grade repetition, and a 9.3 percentage point increase high school dropout, while brothers experience a 9.2 percentage point increase in juvenile justice system exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
The First Line of Contact: How Course Syllabi Can Be Used to Gauge & Reform Learner-Centeredness in a College Classroom

While learner-centeredness is important to quantify, education researchers disagree on how best to measure it. The overall aim of this research was to measure the learner-centeredness of introductory biology classrooms with a valid and reliable instrument that offers a different perspective than self-reported faculty surveys or expert observation protocols – Palmer et al.'s (2014) syllabus scoring rubric. We investigated whether syllabus rubric scores aligned with both faculty self-reports and expert observations of learner-centeredness from the same classrooms, and whether these other metrics predict an instructor's total syllabus score better than instructor gender or years of teaching experience. Course syllabi from eight instructors who taught the same nonmajors biology course were scored independently using this syllabus scoring rubric. Our results suggest that syllabus learning objectives link to learner-centeredness and, interestingly, that other external metrics of learner-centeredness may predict syllabus rubric scores derived from Palmer et al.'s instrument.
Enhancing Random Search with Surrogate Models for Lipschitz Continuous Optimization

We propose a random search algorithm for solving Lipschitz continuous optimization problems. The algorithm samples candidate from a parameterized probability distribution over the solution space and uses the previously sampled data to fit a surrogate model of the objective function. The surrogate model is then used to modify the parameterized distribution in a way that concentrates the search on the set of high-quality solutions. We prove the global convergence of the algorithm and provide numerical examples to illustrate its performance.
Imperialistic reclamation of higher education diversity initiatives through semantic co-option and concession

Affirmative Action in higher education exemplifies interest convergence, and beyond this, interest divergence and imperialistic reclamation. Diversity initiatives, such as the Inclusive Excellence ...
Fractures of the Sustentaculum Tali

Sustentaculum tali fractures are rare injuries seen following a fall onto a varus-placed hindfoot or as part of a constellation of peritalar fracture/dislocations. In isolation, these fractures are often missed or diagnosed late. Frequently, an axial (Harris) X-ray view of the calcaneus and/or computed tomography (CT) scan is needed for diagnosis. Operative intervention is recommended as the sustentaculum plays a key role in maintaining medial column architecture. Additionally, sustentaculum fractures often involve the middle facet of the calcaneus. As such, a fracture of the sustentaculum can cause incongruity of the middle facet and should be treated as an intra-articular fracture. The preferred approach for operative fixation is a medial longitudinal incision centered over the course of the posterior tibial tendon. The outcomes of operative intervention are limited to case reports and case series but demonstrate a preservation of function.
Interventions Associated With Treatment of Low Cardiac Output After Stage 1 Norwood Palliation.

Background Mortality after stage 1 palliation of hypoplastic left heart syndrome remains significant. Both cardiac output (CO) and systemic vascular resistance (SVR) contribute to hemodynamic vulnerability. Simultaneous measures of mean arterial pressure and somatic regional near infrared spectroscopy saturation can classify complex hemodynamics into 4 distinct states, with a low-CO state of higher risk. We sought to identify interventions associated with low-CO state occupancy and transition. Methods Perioperative data were prospectively collected in an institutional review board–approved database. Hemodynamic state was classified as high CO, high SVR, low SVR, and low CO using bivariate analysis. Associations of static and dynamic support levels and state classifications over 48 postoperative hours were tested between states and across transitions using mixed regression methods in a quasi-experimental design. Results Data from 10,272 hours in 214 patients were analyzed. A low-CO state was observed in 142 patients for 1107 hours. Both low CO and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation had increased mortality risk. The low-CO state was characterized by lower milrinone but higher catecholamine dose. Successful transition out of low CO was associated with increased milrinone dose and hemoglobin concentration. Increasing milrinone and hemoglobin levels predicted reduced risk of low CO in future states. Conclusions Bivariate classification objectively defines hemodynamic states and transitions with distinct support profiles. Maintaining or increasing inodilator and hemoglobin levels were associated with improved hemodynamic conditions and were predictive of successful future transitions from the low-CO state.