cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Early Management and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele

A program for early selection and treatment of the infant with myelomeningocele was developed at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in 1977. Over a 5-year period, 69 babies were evaluated, 36 babies were recommended for early vigorous treatment. Of the 33 babies for whom only supportive care was recommended, five were initially treated at the parents' request, two underwent delayed vigorous treatment, one was subsequently treated by "crisis management," one moved and did not return for follow-up, and 24 received only supportive care. All 24 babies died between 1 to 189 days of age (mean 37 days). The involvement of several physicians and paramedical support personnel is considered essential for this approach of early selection and treatment. Continued support and regular follow-up is necessary for any baby who receives only supportive care. Parents retain legal custody. Although ethical concerns make any approach difficult, the method presented is considered to be the best alternative available at this time.
Generating High-Quality and Informative Conversation Responses with Sequence-to-Sequence Models

Sequence-to-sequence models have been applied to the conversation response generation problem where the source sequence is the conversation history and the target sequence is the response. Unlike translation, conversation responding is inherently creative. The generation of long, informative, coherent, and diverse responses remains a hard task. In this work, we focus on the single turn setting. We add self-attention to the decoder to maintain coherence in longer responses, and we propose a practical approach, called the glimpse-model, for scaling to large datasets. We introduce a stochastic beam-search algorithm with segment-by-segment reranking which lets us inject diversity earlier in the generation process. We trained on a combined data set of over 2.3B conversation messages mined from the web. In human evaluation studies, our method produces longer responses overall, with a higher proportion rated as acceptable and excellent as length increases, compared to baseline sequence-to-sequence models with explicit length-promotion. A back-off strategy produces better responses overall, in the full spectrum of lengths.
Reducing SNV defect rates and wafer TAT in high volume semiconductor manufacturing

In the semiconductor industry, fabrication facilities constantly work towards maximizing the productivity of their capital equipment as they ramp manufacturing. IC fabs want inspection and review systems to reliably and quickly recognize defect excursions, facilitate root-cause defect analysis, and function faster and more efficiently. [1]
A Backstepping Approach for Airship Autonomous Robust Control

In this paper, we present the robust control of a dirigible airship. In the first part of this paper, kinematics and dynamics modeling of autonomous airships is presented. Euler angles and parameters are used in the formulation of this model and the technique of Backstepping control is introduced. In the second part of the paper, we develop a methodology of control that allows the dirigible to accomplish a prospecting mission of an environment, as the follow-up of a trajectory by the simulation who results show that Backstepping control method is suitable for airships.
Customer–employee substitution: Evidence from gasoline stations

We document the adoption of self-service pumps in U.S. gasoline stations from 1977 to 1992. Using establishment-level data from the Census of Retail Trade over this period, we show that self-service stations employ approximately one quarter fewer attendants per pump, all else equal. The work done by these attendants has shifted to customers, biasing upward conventional measures of productivity growth.
Shorter Exciton Lifetimes via an External Heavy-Atom Effect: Alleviating the Effects of Bimolecular Processes in Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

Multiexcited-state phenomena are believed to be the root cause of two exigent challenges in organic light-emitting diodes; namely, efficiency roll-off and degradation. The development of novel strategies to reduce exciton densities under heavy load is therefore highly desirable. Here, it is shown that triplet exciton lifetimes of thermally activated delayed-fluorescence-emitter molecules can be manipulated in the solid state by exploiting intermolecular interactions. The external heavy-atom effect of brominated host molecules leads to increased spin–orbit coupling, which in turn enhances intersystem crossing rates in the guest molecule. Wave function overlap between the host and the guest is confirmed by combined molecular dynamics and density functional theory calculations. Shorter triplet exciton lifetimes are observed, while high photoluminescence quantum yields and essentially unaltered emission spectra are maintained. A change in the intersystem crossing rate ratio due to increased dielectric constants leads to almost 50% lower triplet exciton densities in the emissive layer in the steady state and results in an improved onset of the photoluminescence quantum yield roll-off at high excitation densities. Efficient organic light-emitting diodes with better roll-off behavior based on these novel hosts are fabricated, demonstrating the suitability of this concept for real-world applications.
Sexually transmitted diseases

This chapter discusses the incidence, causes, transmission, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of some common and less common Sexually Transmitted diseases (STDs). It is also called Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), those that are transmitted from one person to another during coitus or other genital contact. Some of them are chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital warts, herpes, syphilis, and AIDS. Although each disease is discussed separately, a person frequently has more than one STD at the same time. The present yearly incidence of several sexually transmitted diseases in the United States and worldwide is also summarized. Organisms causing STDs usually do not live and reproduce on dry skin surfaces—they require the moist environments of membranes in the transitional zones of the body such as vulva, vagina, penis, urethra, or mouth. These zones usually are where the STDs first gain a foothold; from there they can invade other body tissues. Although the body forms antibodies to many of the STD organisms, immunities are slow to develop or may never occur. Advanced stages of some afflictions, such as syphilis are dangerous and can kill. Many of these diseases that involve bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics. Precautions against STDs include proper hygiene, limiting sexual activity, and use of barrier contraceptives.
Designing Low-Complexity Heavy-Traffic Delay-Optimal Load Balancing Schemes: Theory to Algorithms

We establish a unified analytical framework for designing load balancing algorithms that can simultaneously achieve low latency, low complexity, and low communication overhead. We first propose a general class ¶ of load balancing policies and prove that they are both throughput optimal and heavy-traffic delay optimal. This class ¶ includes popular policies such as join-shortest-queue (JSQ) and power-of- d as special cases, but not the recently proposed join-idle-queue (JIQ) policy. In fact, we show that JIQ is not heavy-traffic delay optimal even for homogeneous servers. By exploiting the flexibility offered by the class ¶, we design a new load balancing policy called join-below-threshold (JBT-d), in which the arrival jobs are preferentially assigned to queues that are no greater than a threshold, and the threshold is updated infrequently. JBT-d has several benefits: (i) JBT-d belongs to the class ¶i and hence is throughput optimal and heavy-traffic delay optimal. (ii) JBT-d has zero dispatching delay, like JIQ and other pull-based policies, and low message overhead due to infrequent threshold updates. (iii) Extensive simulations show that JBT-d has good delay performance, comparable to the JSQ policy in various system settings.
Fiscal Rules, Bailouts, and Reputation in Federal Governments

Expectations of transfers by central governments incentivize overborrowing by local governments. In this paper, we ask if fiscal rules can reduce overborrowing if central governments cannot commit to enforce penalties when rules are violated. We study a model in which the central government's type is unknown and show that fiscal rules increase overborrowing if the central government's reputation is low. In contrast, fiscal rules are effective in lowering debt if the central government's reputation is high. Even when the central government's reputation is low, binding fiscal rules will arise in the equilibrium of a signaling game.
Black-Box Identity Testing of Depth-4 Multilinear Circuits

We study the problem of identity testing for multilinear ΣΠΣΠ(k) circuits, i.e., multilinear depth-4 circuits with fan-in k at the top + gate. We give the first polynomial-time deterministic identity testing algorithm for such circuits when k=O(1). Our results also hold in the black-box setting. The running time of our algorithm is $${\left( {ns} \right)^{{\text{O}}\left( {{k^3}} \right)}}$$ , where n is the number of variables, s is the size of the circuit and k is the fan-in of the top gate. The importance of this model arises from [11], where it was shown that derandomizing black-box polynomial identity testing for general depth-4 circuits implies a derandomization of polynomial identity testing (PIT) for general arithmetic circuits. Prior to our work, the best PIT algorithm for multilinear ΣΠΣΠ(k) circuits [31] ran in quasi-polynomial-time, with the running time being $${n^{{\rm O}\left( {{k^6}\log \left( k \right){{\log }^2}s} \right)}}$$ . We obtain our results by showing a strong structural result for multilinear ΣΠΣΠ(k) circuits that compute the zero polynomial. We show that under some mild technical conditions, any gate of such a circuit must compute a sparse polynomial. We then show how to combine the structure theorem with a result by Klivans and Spielman [33], on the identity testing for sparse polynomials, to yield the full result.
Private Information Retrieval from MDS Coded Data With Colluding Servers: Settling a Conjecture by Freij-Hollanti et al .

A $(K, N, T, K_{c})$ instance of private information retrieval from MDS coded data with colluding servers (in short, MDS-TPIR), is comprised of $K$ messages and $N$ distributed servers. Each message is separately encoded through a $(K_{c}, N)$ MDS storage code. A user wishes to retrieve one message, as efficiently as possible, while revealing no information about the desired message index to any colluding set of up to $T$ servers. The fundamental limit on the efficiency of retrieval, i.e., the capacity of MDS-TPIR is known only at the extremes where either $T$ or $K_{c}$ belongs to $\{1,N\}$ . The focus of this work is a recent conjecture by Freij-Hollanti, Gnilke, Hollanti, and Karpuk which offers a general capacity expression for MDS-TPIR. We prove that the conjecture is false by presenting as a counterexample a PIR scheme for the setting $(K, N, T, K_{c}) = (2,4,2,2)$ , which achieves the rate 3/5, exceeding the conjectured capacity, 4/7. Insights from the counterexample lead us to capacity characterizations for various instances of MDS-TPIR, including all cases with $(K, N, T, K_{c}) = (2,N,T,N-1)$ , where $N$ and $T$ can be arbitrary.
Osterix functions downstream of anti-Müllerian hormone signaling to regulate Müllerian duct regression

In mammals, the developing reproductive tract primordium of male and female fetuses consists of the Wolffian duct and the Mullerian duct (MD), two epithelial tube pairs surrounded by mesenchyme. During male development, mesenchyme-epithelia interactions mediate MD regression to prevent its development into a uterus, oviduct, and upper vagina. It is well established that transforming growth factor-β family member anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) secreted from the fetal testis and its type 1 and 2 receptors expressed in MD mesenchyme regulate MD regression. However, little is known about the molecular network regulating downstream actions of AMH signaling. To identify potential AMH-induced genes and regulatory networks controlling MD regression in a global nonbiased manner, we examined transcriptome differences in MD mesenchyme between males (AMH signaling on) and females (AMH signaling off) by RNA-seq analysis of purified fetal MD mesenchymal cells. This analysis found 82 genes up-regulated in males during MD regression and identified Osterix (Osx)/Sp7, a key transcriptional regulator of osteoblast differentiation and bone formation, as a downstream effector of AMH signaling during MD regression. Osx/OSX was expressed in a male-specific pattern in MD mesenchyme during MD regression. OSX expression was lost in mutant males without AMH signaling. In addition, transgenic mice ectopically expressing human AMH in females induced a male pattern of Osx expression. Together, these results indicate that AMH signaling is necessary and sufficient for Osx expression in the MD mesenchyme. In addition, MD regression was delayed in Osx-null males, identifying Osx as a factor that regulates MD regression.
Identification and Estimation of Dynamic Causal Effects in Macroeconomics Using External Instruments

An exciting development in empirical macroeconometrics is the increasing use of external sources of as-if randomness to identify the dynamic causal effects of macroeconomic shocks. This approach – the use of external instruments – is the time series counterpart of the highly successful strategy in microeconometrics of using external as-if randomness to provide instruments that identify causal effects. This lecture exposits this approach and provides conditions on instruments and control variables under which external instrument methods produce valid inference on dynamic causal effects, that is, structural impulse response functions. These conditions can help guide the search for valid instruments in applications. We consider two methods, a one-step instrumental variables regression and a two-step method that entails estimation of a vector autoregression. Under a restrictive instrument validity condition, the onestep method is valid even if the vector autoregression is not invertible, so comparing the two estimates provides a test of invertibility. Under a less restrictive condition, where multiple lagged endogenous variables are needed as control variables in the one-step method, the conditions for validity of the two methods are the same.
From Cashews to Nudges: The Evolution of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler delivered his Prize Lecture on 8 December 20167 at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University.
Characteristics of LGBT caregivers of older adults: Results from the national Caregiving in the U.S. 2015 survey

Using data from the Caregiving in the U.S. 2015 national survey, we compared characteristics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and non-LGBT caregivers of older adults and explored p...
Deconvolution and phylogeny inference of structural variations in tumor genomic samples

Motivation Phylogenetic reconstruction of tumor evolution has emerged as a crucial tool for making sense of the complexity of emerging cancer genomic datasets. Despite the growing use of phylogenetics in cancer studies, though, the field has only slowly adapted to many ways that tumor evolution differs from classic species evolution. One crucial question in that regard is how to handle inference of structural variations (SVs), which are a major mechanism of evolution in cancers but have been largely neglected in tumor phylogenetics to date, in part due to the challenges of reliably detecting and typing SVs and interpreting them phylogenetically. Results We present a novel method for reconstructing evolutionary trajectories of SVs from bulk whole-genome sequence data via joint deconvolution and phylogenetics, to infer clonal sub-populations and reconstruct their ancestry. We establish a novel likelihood model for joint deconvolution and phylogenetic inference on bulk SV data and formulate an associated optimization algorithm. We demonstrate the approach to be efficient and accurate for realistic scenarios of SV mutation on simulated data. Application to breast cancer genomic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas shows it to be practical and effective at reconstructing features of SV-driven evolution in single tumors. Availability and implementation Python source code and associated documentation are available at https://github.com/jaebird123/tusv.
Electromagnetic simulation of non-invasive approach for the diagnosis of diabetic foot ulcers

Abstract Diabetic foot ulcers are systemic diseases that affect all blood vessels within the human body. From major blood vessels to microvasculature, hardening, thickening, and narrowing of blood vessels ultimately results to diminished blood flow to end organs. The detrimental effects of peripheral vascular disease are well recognized across medicine, particularly with regards to diabetic foot ulcers. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) are common across all fields of medicine, including but not limited to: orthopedics, vascular surgery, podiatry, general internal medicine, and infectious disease. As the population of the United States continues to grow in age and obesity, diabetes and DFU are becoming more and more prevalent in our medical society. Current approaches to diagnosing peripheral vascular disease ultimately result in some degree of invasiveness for the patient. Preliminary lab studies, such as the ankle-brachial index and Doppler ultrasound of peripheral arteries, provide efficient safe screening methods. However, these studies lack quantification of the degree of vascular stenosis and are unable to accurately assess the location of narrowing. In current practice, radiologists are called upon to for angiography of the blood vessels using contrast dye. This provides an additional risk for diabetic patients: a population inherently at risk for renal disease. In this study, we proposed utilizing electromagnetic simulation with boundary conditions set at various layers of human tissues. More specifically, the human foot was analyzed using COMSOL multi-physics software in attempt to visualize, analyze, and quantify the degree of peripheral vascular disease, which plays a pivotal role in the development of diabetic foot ulcers. The simulation was conducted for a patient’s foot, with bone, blood vessels, and surrounding fat layers to emulate the anatomy of a diabetic foot. A 2-D scan was obtained to assess and visualize the blood vessel’s narrowing, widening, vascular turbulence, or occlusion. The analysis was conducted at two frequencies, 2 GHz and 5 GHz, and compared to one another to assess the accuracy of clinical diagnosis. An electric field was generated throughout the 2D model at 20, 50, and 100 Joules, respectively. The simulation was able to adequately predict and stratify varying degrees of occlusion within peripheral vasculature. This study, though a simulation in nature, shows promise for being able to accurately diagnose the peripheral vasculature using electromagnetic parameters. This feasibility study proved successful for possible future implementation using MEMS/NEMS device systems to be designed to detect EM parameters to serve as a diagnostic tool for the early detection of peripheral vascular disease, and ultimately, diabetic foot ulcers.
Spatial and spin symmetry breaking in semidefinite-programming-based Hartree-Fock theory

The Hartree–Fock problem was recently recast as a semidefinite optimization over the space of rank-constrained two-body reduced-density matrices (RDMs) [ Phys. Rev. A 2014, 89, 010502(R)]. This formulation of the problem transfers the nonconvexity of the Hartree–Fock energy functional to the rank constraint on the two-body RDM. We consider an equivalent optimization over the space of positive semidefinite one-electron RDMs (1-RDMs) that retains the nonconvexity of the Hartree–Fock energy expression. The optimized 1-RDM satisfies ensemble N-representability conditions, and ensemble spin-state conditions may be imposed as well. The spin-state conditions place additional linear and nonlinear constraints on the 1-RDM. We apply this RDM-based approach to several molecular systems and explore its spatial (point group) and spin (Ŝ2 and Ŝ3) symmetry breaking properties. When imposing Ŝ2 and Ŝ3 symmetry but relaxing point group symmetry, the procedure often locates spatial-symmetry-broken solutions that are diffic...
The Affective Eye

Scholars have debated whether the ancient Israelites believed in the evil eye. Biblical passages that mention a “bad eye” (Prov. 23:6; 28:22) or “to do bad with the eye” (Deut. 15:9; 28:54, 56) seem to suggest that such a belief existed in ancient Israel; however, some scholars have argued that such passages are simply idioms for greed or stinginess. This paper reexamines this issue. Drawing upon recent insights from cognitive linguistics, I argue that perception was commonly understood in ancient Israel as a means of positively and negatively affecting the environment and that it was this affective dimension of Israelite thought that prompted biblical writers to describe the character of an individual by his or her physical qualities.
Signal processing for improving field cross-correlation function in optical coherence tomography

Signal processing is used to enhance the field cross-correlation function in optical coherence tomography (OCT). This paper shows how the spurious signal resulting from an imperfect spectrum of broadband emitters can be cleaned up. It also demonstrates that, using a fairly simple deconvolution procedure, a factor of two enhancement in depth resolution can be achieved. An example of the enhanced resolution is shown using the signal from two microscope cover slides.
It's Not my Fault! Insights into Subordinate Auditors' Attributions and Emotions Following Audit Review

SUMMARY This study utilizes attribution theory to guide an exploration of how subordinate auditors understand, rationalize, and internalize recollections of their actual experiences (both worst and...
A Theory of Business Eunomics: The Means–Ends Relation in Business Ethics

This article indicates a new direction for business ethics, which Lon Fuller pioneered with his work on social architecture. “Eunomics”, as Fuller called it, is “the theory or study of good order and workable arrangements”. How should we appraise the effects of the various ways of organizing and running a corporation, for example, with regard to the different structures and basic plans it can espouse? We should reject the “doctrine of the infinite pliability of social arrangements”, as some forms of organization are unsound. They cannot be implemented in a proper fashion given the boundaries and the rules of the market established. A theory of business eunomics explains why each kind of legal process, including managerial direction, is better suited for the pursuit of a limited number of ends, and thus why we should not force a single institution to solve all ethical problems.
Gain-of-Function Analysis Reveals Important Virulence Roles for the Yersinia pestis Type III Secretion System Effectors YopJ, YopT, and YpkA.

ABSTRACT Virulence of Yersinia pestis in mammals requires the type III secretion system, which delivers seven effector proteins into the cytoplasm of host cells to undermine immune responses. All seven of these effectors are conserved across Y. pestis strains, but three, YopJ, YopT, and YpkA, are apparently dispensable for virulence. Some degree of functional redundancy between effector proteins would explain both observations. Here, we use a combinatorial genetic approach to define the minimal subset of effectors required for full virulence in mice following subcutaneous infection. We found that a Y. pestis strain lacking YopJ, YopT, and YpkA is attenuated for virulence in mice and that addition of any one of these effectors to this strain increases lethality significantly. YopJ, YopT, and YpkA likely contribute to virulence via distinct mechanisms. YopJ is uniquely able to cause macrophage cell death in vitro and to suppress accumulation of inflammatory cells to foci of bacterial growth in deep tissue, whereas YopT and YpkA cannot. The synthetic phenotypes that emerge when YopJ, YopT, and YpkA are removed in combination provide evidence that each effector enhances Y. pestis virulence and that YopT and YpkA act through a mechanism distinct from that of YopJ.
The Return of the Single-Country Study

This article reviews the changing status of single-country research in comparative politics, a field defined by the concept of comparison. An analysis of single-country research published in top ge...
Insertion of a Nontrigonal Phosphorus Ligand into a Transition Metal-Hydride: Direct Access to a Metallohydrophosphorane.

The synthesis and reactivity of an NPN-chelating ligand containing a nontrigonal phosphorous triamide center (L1 = P(N(o-N(2-pyridyl)C6H4)2) is reported. Metalation of L1 with RuCl2(PPh3)3 gives RuCl2(PPh3)(L1) (2). By contrast, metalation of L1 with RuHCl(CO)(PPh3)3 yields RuCl(CO)(PPh3)(L1H) (3), a chelated 10-P-5 ruthenahydridophosphorane, via net insertion into the Ru–H bond. Hydride abstraction from 3 with Ph3CPF6 gives [RuCl(CO)(PPh3)(L1)]PF6 (4); reaction of 4 with NaBH4 returns 3.
Deep Learning Classification of 3.5-GHz Band Spectrograms With Applications to Spectrum Sensing

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has adopted rules permitting commercial wireless networks to share spectrum with federal incumbents in the 3.5-GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service band. These rules require commercial systems to vacate the band when sensors detect radars operated by the U.S. military; a key example being the SPN-43 air traffic control radar. Such sensors require highly accurate detection algorithms to meet their operating requirements. In this paper, using a library of over 14 000 3.5-GHz band spectrograms collected by a recent measurement campaign, we investigate the performance of 13 methods for SPN-43 radar detection. Namely, we compare classical methods from signal detection theory and machine learning to several deep learning architectures. We demonstrate that machine learning algorithms appreciably outperform classical signal detection methods. Specifically, we find that a three-layer convolutional neural network offers a superior tradeoff between accuracy and computational complexity. Last, we apply this three-layer network to generate descriptive statistics for the full 3.5-GHz spectrogram library. Our findings highlight potential weaknesses of classical methods and strengths of modern machine learning algorithms for radar detection in the 3.5-GHz band.
Estimating the monetary benefits of medicare eligibility for reducing the symptoms of dementia.

We adopt a three-component method based on the idea of cost-saving for estimating the monetary benefits of Medicare eligibility for reducing dementia symptoms. The method involves Medicare eligibil...
Bayesian analysis of retinotopic maps

Human visual cortex is organized into multiple retinotopic maps. Characterizing the arrangement of these maps on the cortical surface is essential to many visual neuroscience studies. Typically, maps are obtained by voxel-wise analysis of fMRI data. This method, while useful, maps only a portion of the visual field and is limited by measurement noise and subjective assessment of boundaries. We developed a novel Bayesian mapping approach which combines observation-a subject's retinotopic measurements from small amounts of fMRI time-with a prior-a learned retinotopic atlas. This process automatically draws areal boundaries, corrects discontinuities in the measured maps, and predicts validation data more accurately than an atlas alone or independent datasets alone. This new method can be used to improve the accuracy of retinotopic mapping, to analyze large fMRI datasets automatically, and to quantify differences in map properties as a function of health, development and natural variation between individuals.
Force detection, center of pressure tracking, and energy harvesting from a piezoelectric knee implant

Recent developments in the field of orthopedic materials and procedures have made the total knee replacement (TKR) an option for people who suffer from knee diseases and injuries. One of the ongoing debates in this area involves the correlation of postoperative joint functionality to intraoperative alignment. Due to a lack of in vivo data from the knee joint after surgery, the establishment of a well-quantified alignment method is hindered. In order to obtain information about knee function after the operation, the design of a self-powered instrumented knee implant is proposed in this study. The design consists of a total knee replacement bearing equipped with four piezoelectric transducers distributed in the medial and lateral compartments. The piezoelectric transducers are utilized to measure the total axial force applied on the tibial bearing through the femoral component of the joint, as well as to track the movement in the center of pressure (CoP). In addition, the generated voltage from the piezoelectrics can be harvested and stored to power embedded electronics for further signal conditioning and data transmission purposes. Initially, finite element (FE) analysis is performed on the knee bearing to select the best location of the transducers with regards to sensing the total force and location of the CoP. A series of experimental tests are then performed on a fabricated prototype which aim to investigate the sensing and energy harvesting performance of the device. Piezoelectric force and center of pressure measurements are compared to actual experimental quantities for twelve different relative positions of the femoral component and bearing of the knee implant in order to evaluate the performance of the sensing system. The output voltage of the piezoelectric transducers is measured across a load resistance to determine the optimum extractable power, and then rectified and stored in a capacitor to evaluate the realistic energy harvesting ability of the system. The results show only a small level of error in sensing the force and the location of the CoP. Additionally, a maximum power of 269.1 μW is achieved with a 175 kΩ optimal resistive load, and a 4.9 V constant voltage is stored in a 3.3 mF capacitor after 3333 loading cycles. The sensing and energy harvesting results present the promising potential of this system to be used as an integrated self-powered instrumented knee implant.
Security of GPS/INS Based On-road Location Tracking Systems

Location information is critical to a wide variety of navigation and tracking applications. GPS, today's de-facto outdoor localization system has been shown to be vulnerable to signal spoofing attacks. Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) are emerging as a popular complementary system, especially in road transportation systems as they enable improved navigation and tracking as well as offer resilience to wireless signals spoofing and jamming attacks. In this paper, we evaluate the security guarantees of INS-aided GPS tracking and navigation for road transportation systems. We consider an adversary required to travel from a source location to a destination and monitored by an INS-aided GPS system. The goal of the adversary is to travel to alternate locations without being detected. We develop and evaluate algorithms that achieve this goal, providing the adversary significant latitude. Our algorithms build a graph model for a given road network and enable us to derive potential destinations an attacker can reach without raising alarms even with the INS-aided GPS tracking and navigation system. The algorithms render the gyroscope and accelerometer sensors useless as they generate road trajectories indistinguishable from plausible paths (both in terms of turn angles and roads curvature). We also design, build and demonstrate that the magnetometer can be actively spoofed using a combination of carefully controlled coils. To experimentally demonstrate and evaluate the feasibility of the attack in real-world, we implement a first real-time integrated GPS/INS spoofer that accounts for traffic fluidity, congestion, lights, and dynamically generates corresponding spoofing signals. Furthermore, we evaluate our attack on ten different cities using driving traces and publicly available city plans. Our evaluations show that it is possible for an attacker to reach destinations that are as far as 30 km away from the actual destination without being detected. We also show that it is possible for the adversary to reach almost 60--80% of possible points within the target region in some cities. Such results are only a lower-bound, as an adversary can adjust our parameters to spend more resources (e.g., time) on the target source/destination than we did for our performance evaluations of thousands of paths. We propose countermeasures that limit an attacker's ability, without the need for any hardware modifications. Our system can be used as the foundation for countering such attacks, both detecting and recommending paths that are difficult to spoof.
Where are the dangerous intersections for pedestrians and cyclists: A colocation-based approach

Abstract Pedestrians and cyclists are vulnerable road users. They are at greater risk for being killed in a crash than other road users. The percentage of fatal crashes that involve a pedestrian or cyclist is higher than the overall percentage of total trips taken by both modes. Because of this risk, finding ways to minimize problematic street environments is critical. Understanding traffic safety spatial patterns and identifying dangerous locations with significantly high crash risks for pedestrians and cyclists is essential in order to design possible countermeasures to improve road safety. This research develops two indicators for examining spatial correlation patterns between elements of the built environment (intersections) and crashes (pedestrian- or cyclist-involved). The global colocation quotient detects the overall connection in an area while the local colocation quotient identifies the locations of high-risk intersections. To illustrate our approach, we applied the methods to inspect the colocation patterns between pedestrian- or cyclist-vehicle crashes and intersections in Houston, Texas and we identified among many intersections the ones that significantly attract crashes. We also scrutinized those intersections, discussed possible attributes leading to high colocation of crashes, and proposed corresponding countermeasures.
Optimized Quantum F-Divergences

The quantum relative entropy is a measure of the distinguishability of two quantum states, and it is a unifying concept in quantum information theory: many information measures such as entropy, conditional entropy, mutual information, and entanglement measures can be realized from it. As such, there has been broad interest in generalizing the notion to further understand its most basic properties, one of which is the data processing inequality. The quantum $f$ -divergence of Petz is one generalization of the quantum relative entropy, and it also leads to other relative entropies, such as the Petz-Renyi relative entropies. In this contribution, I introduce the optimized quantum $f$ -divergence as a related generalization of quantum relative entropy. I prove that it satisfies the data processing inequality, and the method of proof relies upon the operator Jensen inequality, similar to Petz's original approach. Interestingly, the sandwiched Renyi relative entropies are particular examples of the optimized $f$ -divergence. Thus, one benefit of this approach is that there is now a single, unified approach for establishing the data processing inequality for both the Petz-Renyi and sandwiched Renyi relative entropies, for the full range of parameters for which it is known to hold. Full version of this paper is accessible at arXiv:1710.10252
Quantitative chest computerized tomography and FEV1 equally identify pulmonary exacerbation risk in children with cystic fibrosis.

Background Chest computerized tomography (CT) scores are associated with the frequency of future pulmonary exacerbations in people with cystic fibrosis (CF). However, cut-off values to identify children with mild lung disease with different risks for frequent future pulmonary exacerbations have not been identified. Methods Chest CT scans were assessed using the Brody score for participants of the Pulmozyme Early Intervention Trial (PEIT) and Wisconsin Randomized Clinical Trial of CF Newborn Screening (WI RCT). We determined the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for Brody scores and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1 ) to compare with the frequency of pulmonary exacerbations up to 10 years later. Results There were 60 participants in the PEIT with mean (SD) age 10.6 (1.7) years at the time of the CT and 81 participants in the WI RCT with mean age 11.5 (3.0) years. The Brody score cut-off that best identified children at-risk for ≥0.3 annual pulmonary exacerbations was 3.6 in the PEIT and 2.1 in the WI RCT. There were no statistical differences between ROC curves for the Brody CT score and FEV1 % predicted in either study (P ≥ 0.4). Conclusions CT score cut-off values that identify children with CF with mild lung disease at different risks for frequent pulmonary exacerbations over an extended follow up period are similar in separate cohorts. Brody scores and FEV1 % predicted have similar abilities to identify these children, suggesting that FEV1 % predicted alone may be adequate for predicting future frequency of pulmonary exacerbations.
Title VII at Forty: A Brief Look at the Birth, Death, and Resurrection of the Disparate Impact Theory of Discrimination

The year 2004 witnessed the anniversaries of two major milestones in the ongoing effort to make equality a reality in this nation. First, the year 2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. In Brown, the Court, in rejecting the “separate but equal” theory of equality, held that segregated schools are inherently unequal. The “separate but equal” theory of equality had been the constitutional theory of equality since 1896, when the Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. The conventional wisdom is that Brown adopted a “color-blind” (and sex-blind) theory of equality. In a later case, Brown II, the Court ordered the desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed.”
The emergence of multiple retinal cell types through efficient coding of natural movies

One of the most striking aspects of early visual processing in the retina is the immediate parcellation of visual information into multiple parallel pathways, formed by different retinal ganglion cell types each tiling the entire visual field. Existing theories of efficient coding have been unable to account for the functional advantages of such cell-type diversity in encoding natural scenes. Here we go beyond previous theories to analyze how a simple linear retinal encoding model with different convolutional cell types efficiently encodes naturalistic spatiotemporal movies given a fixed firing rate budget. We find that optimizing the receptive fields and cell densities of two cell types makes them match the properties of the two main cell types in the primate retina, midget and parasol cells, in terms of spatial and temporal sensitivity, cell spacing, and their relative ratio. Moreover, our theory gives a precise account of how the ratio of midget to parasol cells decreases with retinal eccentricity. Also, we train a nonlinear encoding model with a rectifying nonlinearity to efficiently encode naturalistic movies, and again find emergent receptive fields resembling those of midget and parasol cells that are now further subdivided into ON and OFF types. Thus our work provides a theoretical justification, based on the efficient coding of natural movies, for the existence of the four most dominant cell types in the primate retina that together comprise 70% of all ganglion cells.
Model Colibactins Exhibit Human Cell Genotoxicity in the Absence of Host Bacteria.

Colibactins are genotoxic secondary metabolites produced in select Enterobacteriaceae, which induce downstream DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in human cell lines and are thought to promote the formation of colorectal tumors. Although key structural and functional features of colibactins have been elucidated, the full molecular mechanisms regulating these phenotypes remain unknown. Here, we demonstrate that free model colibactins induce DSBs in human cell cultures and do not require delivery by host bacteria. Through domain-targeted editing, we demonstrate that a subset of native colibactins generated from observed module skipping in the nonribosomal peptide synthetase–polyketide synthase (NRPS–PKS) biosynthetic assembly line share DNA alkylation phenotypes with the model colibactins in vitro. However, module skipping eliminates the strong DNA interstrand cross-links formed by the wild-type pathway in cell culture. This product diversification during the modular NRPS–PKS biosynthesis produces a family of ...
Reversible to irreversible transitions in periodically driven skyrmion systems

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the US Department of Energy through the LANL/LDRD program for this work. This work was carried out under the auspices of the NNSA of the US DoE at LANL under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 and through the LANL/LDRD program.
Diagnosis of red meat allergy with antigen-specific IgE tests in serum

Red meat allergy is a tick-associated hypersensitivity reaction to galactose-α-1,3-galactose (α-gal) and is characterized by anaphylaxis, angioedema, urticaria and/or gastrointestinal symptoms occurring 3–6 hours after ingesting red meat such as beef, pork, or lamb. Diagnosis of red meat allergy is challenging due to the unusually long delay in symptom onset and poor sensitivity of skin prick tests with commercial meat extracts. The primary diagnostic tools available for this disease are quantification of α-gal-, beef-, pork-, and/or lamb-specific IgE in serum, however the diagnostic performance of these tests has not been reported. Using patient data for n=135 patients with red meat allergy and n=37 controls, we found that measurement of α-gal-specific IgE using the bovine thyroglobulin (bTG) ImmunoCAP method had the best overall sensitivity (100%) and specificity (92.3%) for diagnosis of red meat allergy. Measuring α-gal-specific IgE using the streptavidin (SA)-CAP technique or beef- or pork-specific IgE using ImmunoCAP were also effective tests with high sensitivities (89–92%) and variable specificities (65–82%). Lamb-specific IgE and total IgE had essentially no diagnostic value for red meat allergy. Positive and negative predictive values mirrored these trends. Taken together, these findings indicate that the α-gal-specific IgE test by bTG ImmunoCAP is the most useful for establishing a diagnosis of red meat allergy, although α-gal-specific IgE by SA-CAP and beef- and pork-specific IgE by ImmunoCAP are also effective tests.
The Short Term Impact of a Productive Asset Transfer in Families with Child Labor: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines

Abstract Productive asset grants have become an important tool in efforts to push the very poor out of poverty, but they require labor to convert the asset into income. Using a clustered randomized trial, we evaluate the impact of a key component of the Government of Philippines' child labor elimination program, a $518 productive asset grant directed at families with child laborers. We find that households rely upon family members for the labor to work the asset. Adolescent labor is the most available labor in the household, and we observe increases in employment among adolescents not engaged in child labor at baseline. Households with a family firm or business prior to treatment especially lack available adult labor to work with the asset, leading to increases in child labor, including hazardous work, amongst children who were not in child labor at baseline.
Semi-supervised Deep Representation Learning for Multi-View Problems

While neural networks for learning representation of multi-view data have been previously proposed as one of the state-of-the-art multi-view dimension reduction techniques, how to make the representation discriminative with only a small amount of labeled data is not well-studied. We introduce a semi-supervised neural network model, named Multi-view Discriminative Neural Network (MDNN), for multi-view problems. MDNN finds nonlinear view-specific mappings by projecting samples to a common feature space using multiple coupled deep networks. It is capable of leveraging both labeled and unlabeled data to project multi-view data so that samples from different classes are separated and those from the same class are clustered together. It also uses the inter-view correlation between views to exploit the available information in both the labeled and unlabeled data. Extensive experiments conducted on four datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for multi-view semi-supervised learning.
Freemium as an Optimal Strategy for Market Dominant Firms

We explain why dominant firms give away good-quality products for free when network externalities are present.
Cyclin-dependent kinase 9 (CDK9) is a novel prognostic marker and therapeutic target in osteosarcoma.

Abstract Background Cyclin-dependent protein kinase 9 (CDK9) has been shown to play an important role in the pathogenesis of malignant tumors. However, the expression and function of CDK9 remain unknown in osteosarcomas. The purpose of this study is to assess the expression, function and clinical prognostic relationship of CDK9 in osteosarcomas. Methods A tissue microarray of 70 patient specimens was analyzed by immunohistochemistry to measure CDK9 expression, which was further investigated for correlation with patient clinical characteristics. CDK9 expression in osteosarcoma cell lines and patient tissues was also evaluated by Western blotting. CDK9-specific siRNA and the CDK9 inhibitor were applied to determine the effect of CDK9 inhibition on osteosarcoma cell proliferation and anti-apoptotic activity. The clonogenicity and migration activity were also examined using clonogenic and wound healing assays. A 3D cell culture model was performed to mimic the in vivo osteosarcoma environment to further validate the effect of CDK9 inhibition on osteosarcoma cells. Findings We demonstrated that higher CDK9-expression is associated with significantly shortened patient survival by immunohistochemistry. Expression of CDK9 is inversely correlated to the percent of tumor necrosis post-neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which is the most important predictive factor of disease outcome for osteosarcoma patients. Knockdown of CDK9 with siRNA and inhibition of CDK9 activity with inhibitor decreased cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in osteosarcoma. Interpretation High expression of CDK9 is an independent predictor of poor prognosis in osteosarcoma patients. Our results suggest that CDK9 is a novel prognostic marker and a promising therapeutic target for osteosarcomas.
Corrosion Tests of Lwr Fuels – Nuclide Release

Two high burnup BWR fuels [64 and 71 (MWd)/kgU], one of which contained 2% Gd, and two low burnup PWR fuels [30 and 45 (MWd)/kgU], are tested by dripping groundwater on the fuel under oxidizing and hydrologically unsaturated conditions for 2.4 and 8.2 yr, respectively, at 90°C. The 99Tc, 129I, 137Cs, 97Mo, and90Sr releases are presented to show the effects of reaction time and of gadolinium (Gd) on nuclide release. For the PWR fuels, the five nuclides have similar fractional release rates at 8.2 yr. For the BWR fuels, the presence of 2% Gd reduced the 99Tc cumulative release fraction after 2.4 yr by about an order of magnitude from that of a fuel with a similar burnup but without added Gd.