cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Comparison of SAR techniques for luminescence dating of sediments derived from volcanic tuff

Abstract In this investigation we evaluate several proposed optically stimulated luminescence single-aliquot regeneration (OSL SAR) procedures to determine which technique has the greatest potential to yield accurate ages for samples collected from tuff-derived alluvial sediments within the narrow, sharply incised canyon systems of the Pajarito Plateau of northern New Mexico. The SAR data collection methods evaluated are: infrared-stimulated luminescence (IRSL), post-IR blue-OSL, IRSL with TL annealing cycles on polymineral fine-grains, and blue-OSL on quartz fine sand. A single-grain laser luminescence (SGLL) procedure for quartz sand is also evaluated. Age estimates obtained from these methods are compared with radiocarbon, soil PDI (profile development index), and IRSL multi-aliquot additive dose (MAAD) age constraints. Our results indicate that the modal D e of quartz sand SGLL dose distributions yield ages that are consistent with radiocarbon and PDI age constraints for the tuff derived sediments in this investigation and appears to be the most promising method for studies in this area. Additionally, two fine-grained polymineral methods, IRSL SAR and traditional IRSL MAAD, produced ages that were generally in agreement with the SGLL ages and with available 14 C and PDI age constraints. At the present stage of research, we advocate using quartz sand SGLL in conjunction with IRSL SAR or even IRSL MAAD for polymineral fine-grains to provide the most robust and reliable luminescence age data sets for tuff-derived sediments.
SEROTOXIN : STUDIES ON FERMENT ACTION. XIV.

1. Sera from which the protective lipoids (unsaturated fatty acids) have been removed are toxic for the homologous animal. 2. The toxicity is due to three factors: (a) an alteration in the mechanism of coagulation, with resulting intravascular coagulation; (b) the exposure of the native serum proteins; (c) the formation of toxic split products (primary proteoses) by autolysis. 3. A definite maximum of toxicity can be determined, with a final stage of atoxicity due to continued autolysis. 4. Hirudin and sodium citrate do not protect animals. 5. Heating to 70 degrees C. destroys, or greatly lessens, the toxicity of the serotoxin, although the isolated proteoses are toxic after boiling. 6. The return of the extracted lipoids (saponified) neutralizes the toxicity. 7. Unsaturated soaps also neutralize the toxicity. 8. Sublethal doses produce extreme prostration, marked fall in body temperature, no eosinophilia, and an increase of antitrypsin. 9. Sublethal doses of rapidly prepared chloroform sera cause a decrease in coagulation time; sublethal doses of autolyzed sera cause an increase in coagulation time. 10. Previously injected animals are more resistant (increased antiferments). 11. Iodized animals are less resistant (decreased antiferments).
Cytoimmunofluorescent localization of severin in Dictyostelium amoebae.

Severin is a 40-kDa Ca2+-activated protein from Dictyostelium that rapidly fragments and disassembles actin filaments in vitro (S.S. Brown, K. Yamamoto, and J.A. Spudich, J. Cell Biol. 93, 205-210, 1982; and K. Yamamoto, J.D. Pardee, J. Reidler, L. Stryer, and J.A. Spudich. J. Cell Biol. 95, 711-719, 1982). To determine if severin is colocalized with actin filaments in vivo, we have used the agar-overlay technique of S. Yumura, H. Mori, and Y. Fukui (J. Cell Biol. 99, 894-899, 1984) to examine the intracellular locations of severin and F-actin in vegetative Dictyostelium amoebae. In rounded cells taken from suspension culture severin colocalized with F-actin at cortical edges while maintaining an endoplasmic presence. Both severin and F-actin were present throughout nascent pseudopods of motile cells, while severin appeared concentrated at the leading edge of fully developed pseudopods. Amoebae feeding on a bacterial lawn formed large phagocytic vesicles that were surrounded by an extensive cell cortex rich in severin. Streaming cells entering aggregates during the Dictyostelium developmental cycle showed severin staining throughout the cytoplasm with F-actin at the cortex. The preferential localization of severin in cytoplasmic regions of vegetative cells undergoing extensive actin cytoskeletal rearrangement prompts consideration of a role for severin-mediated disruption of actin filament networks during pseudopod extension and phagocytosis.
A 19-Year-Old Woman with Fever, Rash, and a Pulmonary Infiltrate

A 19-year-old woman without a significant medical history presented to the hospital with painful skin lesions and fever. Three months prior to admission, she had seen her primary care physician, reporting productive cough, hemoptysis, and shortness of breath. A chest radiograph revealed a right middlelobe infiltrate. She was treated with antibiotics for communityacquired pneumonia. Her symptoms improved somewhat, but the cough did not completely resolve. She did not report for a follow-up chest radiograph. Two weeks before admission, the patient developed pruritic skin lesions that became painful, which consisted initially of nodules; these progressed to fungating papules of ~1 cm in diameter with sharp but irregular borders and superficial ulcerations (figure 1). The lesions first appeared on her left hand and fingers; they subsequently involved her arms, legs, and face. Folliculitis was diagnosed at an urgent care center, and the patient was treated with cephalexin, which did not relieve her symptoms. She developed nausea and vomiting and was admitted to the hospital for dehydration. She also reported a persistent productive cough, weight loss of 6.75 kg (15 lb),
Nonlinear integration of multispectral information: Human colour vision analogues to sensory integration in rattlesnake

Information integration occurs at every sensory scale and although distinctions are made for integration between and within senses, integration at intermediate scales may exploit familiar mechanisms. Here, we explore this idea by applying a sensory integration mechanism to some poorly understood multispectral integration problems in human colour vision. Billock and Tsou (IMRF, 2011) used a binding-like neural synchronization mechanism to model intensity-dependent (inverse) enhancement of visual responses by auditory stimulation in cat. The same model also applies to mutual enhancement of visual and infrared responses in rattlesnake, suggesting that a similar mechanism could model integration of spectral information in human colour vision. For example, chromatic brightness is thought to be a vector-like nonlinear combination of luminance and chromatic channels; its neural correlate is unknown. We model its spectral sensitivity by pairwise excitatory synchronization between luminance (broadband) neurons and cortically rectified L+M- and S+M-L- LGN neurons. Similarly, the yellow lobe of the yellow-blue opponent channel is known to be a nonlinearly enhanced combination of long- and medium-wavelength-sensitive inputs, but no sensible neural model for this interaction has been advanced. We model the spectral sensitivity of ‘yellowness’ using excitatory synchronization between cortically rectified L+M+S- and M+L- LGN units. The inputs for both simulations were macaque neural firing rate data (DeValois et al., 1966). Fascinatingly, in both cases, multispectral integration in human colour vision was well modeled using the rattlesnake/cat neural synchronization equations without any use of fitting parameters. This is the first application of sensory integration concepts to human colour vision transformations.
Learning tree-structured approximations for conditional random fields

Exact probabilistic inference is computationally intractable in general probabilistic graph-based models, such as Markov Random Fields and Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). We investigate spanning tree approximations for the discriminative CRF model. We decompose the original computationally intractable grid-structured CRF model containing many cycles into a set of tractable sub-models using a set of spanning trees. The structure of spanning trees is generated uniformly at random among all spanning trees of the original graph. These trees are learned independently to address the classification problem and Maximum Posterior Marginal estimation is performed on each individual tree. Classification labels are produced via voting strategy over the marginals obtained on the sampled spanning trees. The learning is computationally efficient because the inference on trees is exact and efficient. Our objective is to investigate the capability of approximation of the original loopy graph model with loopy belief propagation inference via learning a pool of randomly sampled acyclic graphs. We focus on the impact of memorizing the structure of sampled trees. We compare two approaches to create an ensemble of spanning trees, whose parameters are optimized during learning: (1) memorizing the structure of the sampled spanning trees used during learning and, (2) not storing the structure of the sampled spanning trees after learning and regenerating trees anew. Experiments are done on two image datasets consisting of synthetic and real-world images. These datasets were designed for the tasks of binary image denoising and man-made structure recognition.
Complicated life, complicated VEGF-B

No other member of the VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) family has been as mysterious as VEGF-B. Notwithstanding its name, VEGF-B can hardly be regarded as a growth factor because growth occurs fairly normally in Vegf-b deficient mice. Moreover, VEGF-B is barely angiogenic under most conditions, although it was expected to be an angiogenic factor for a long time. Under certain conditions, VEGF-B has been shown to be involved in blood vessel growth. Under other conditions, however, VEGF-B can act to inhibit tumor growth and angiogenesis. Given these contradictory findings, the biological function of VEGF-B appears enigmatic. In this review, we summarize recent advances in VEGF-B biology and discuss its multifaceted roles, the underlying mechanisms, and the potential therapeutic implications.
Atomic Layer Deposition of Uniform Metal Coatings on Highly Porous Aerogel Substrates

In this communication, we use atomic layer deposition (ALD) as a means for depositing tungsten metal coatings on the skeletal network of highly porous aerogel substrates. The approach presented her...
Cumulative Structural Disadvantage and Racial Health Disparities: The Pathways of Childhood Socioeconomic Influence

Cumulative structural disadvantage theory posits two major sources of endogenous selection in shaping racial health disparities: a race-based version of the theory anticipates a racially distinct selection process, whereas a social class-based version anticipates a racially similar process. To operationalize cumulative structural disadvantage, this study uses data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in a Latent Class Analysis that demographically profiles health impairment trajectories. This analysis is used to examine the nature of selection as it relates to racial differences in the development of health impairments that are significant enough to hinder one's ability to work. The results provide no direct support for the race-based version of cumulative structural disadvantage theory. Instead, two key findings support the social class-based version of cumulative disadvantage theory. First, the functional form of the different health trajectories are invariant for whites and blacks, suggesting more racial similarly in the developmental process than anticipated by the race-based version of the theory. The extent of the racial disparity in the prevalences across the health impairment trajectories is, however, significant and noteworthy: nearly one-third of blacks (28 %) in the United States experience some form of impairment during their prime working years compared with 18.8 % of whites. Second, racial differences in childhood background mediate this racial health disparity through the indirect pathway of occupational attainment and through the direct pathway of early-life exposure to health-adverse environments. Thus, the selection of individuals into different health trajectories, based largely on childhood socioeconomic background, helps explain racial disparities in the development of health impairments.
Exchangeability and its economic applications

Abstract The symmetry possessed by exchangeability is the key to its usefulness. The methods that are used to comprehend reality will edify insofar as they reflect this symmetry. This is true of theoretical models, empirical methods, and algorithms. Indeed, if the design of mechanisms is by rearrangement of natural matter, their survival value will depend on the degree to which they retain the symmetry of the original matter. This comment encompasses complex machinery and sophisticated political, social, and economic institutions. The paper simply embroiders this observation.
An Exploratory Study of Women as Dominant Aggressors of Physical Violence in Their Intimate Relationships

In the last 20 years, research has emerged that suggests that women may be violent in intimate relationships. This article describes a qualitative study focusing on women who were classified as dominant aggressors of violence in their intimate relationships. Ten subjects participated in a detailed clinical interview and completed five written measures to examine the factors that led to their later aggression, including sociocultural factors, history of trauma, gender role identification, and intergenerational transmission of violence. Seven major themes emerged, including a history of victimization and trauma, substance abuse, and a history of violence across relationships and situations. These results suggest that the violence committed by dominantly aggressive women may be explained by an integrated conceptual framework of domestic violence.
Assessment center construct-related validity: Stepping beyond the MTMM matrix

Abstract Recent Monte Carlo research has illustrated that the traditional method for assessing the construct-related validity of assessment center (AC) post-exercise dimension ratings (PEDRs), an application of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to a multitrait–multimethod matrix, produces inconsistent results [Lance, C. E., Woehr, D. J., & Meade, A. W. (2007). Case study: A Monte Carlo investigation of assessment center construct validity models. Organizational Research Methods, 10, 430–448]. To avoid this shortcoming, a variance partitioning procedure was applied to the examination of the PEDRs of 193 individuals. Overall, results indicated that the person, dimension, and person by dimension interaction effects together accounted for approximately 32% of the total variance in AC ratings. However, despite no apparent exercise effect, the person by exercise interaction accounted for approximately 28% of the total variance. Although these results are drawn from a single AC, they nevertheless provide general support for the overall functioning of ACs and encourage continued application of variance partitioning approaches to AC research. Implications for AC design and research are discussed.
A Dynamic Programming Algorithm for the Generalized Minimum Filter Placement Problem on Tree Structures

We consider a network where nodes communicate by exchanging information packets whose fields include the address of the sending node and that of the destination node. In the absence of some verification mechanism, an attacking node can send packets to another node using a forged origin address. In this study, we consider an optimization problem of identifying a minimum cardinality subset of verification nodes on a tree such that the number of attacks from any forged origin to any destination is limited to a prescribed level. For the case in which communication is permitted between every node in the tree, we develop an optimal polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm for this problem. We compare the performance of the dynamic programming algorithm against a mixed-integer programming model on randomly generated tree networks at varied levels of security.
Threshold values and Boolean retrieval systems

Several papers have appeared that have analyzed recent developments in the problem of processing, in a document retrieval system, queries expressed as Boolean expressions. The purpose of this paper is to continue that analysis. We shall show that the concept of threshold values resolves the problems inherent with relevance weights. Moreover, we shall explore possible evaluation mechanisms for retrieval of documents, based on fuzzy-set-theoretic considerations.
Selective Patterned Growth of Silicide Nanowires without the Use of Metal Catalysts

Chemical vapor deposition of trans-Fe(SiCl3)2(CO)4 onto substrates with lithographically defined regions of thick (100 nm) and thin (1−2 nm) silicon oxides affords selective iron silicide nanowire ...
Characterization of cloned rat ribosomal DNA fragments.

Two Charon 4A lambda bacteriophage clones were characterized which contain all and part of the 18S ribosomal DNA of the rat. One clone contained two Eco RI fragments which include the whole 18S ribosomal RNA region and part of 28S ribosomal RNA region. The other clone contained an Eco RI fragment which covers part of 18S ribosomal RNA region. There were differences between the two clones in the non-transcribed spacer regions suggesting that there is heterogeneity in the non-transcribed spacer regions of rat ribosomal genes. The restriction map of the cloned mouse ribosomal DNA. Eco RI, Hind III, Pst I, and Bam HI sites in 18S ribosomal RNA region were in the same places in mouse and rat DNA but the restriction sites in the 5′-spacer regions were different.
A prospective study of toddlers with ASD: short-term diagnostic and cognitive outcomes.

Background: Despite recent increases in the number of toddlers referred for a differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), knowledge of short-term stability of the early diagnosis as well as cognitive outcomes in this cohort is still limited. Method: Cognitive, social, and communication skills of 89 clinic-referred toddlers were assessed at the average age of 21.5 (SD = 4.9) months, and reassessed at 46.9 (SD = 7.7) months. Groups with stable and unstable diagnostic presentation were identified and compared on their profile of cognitive and social-communicative skills obtained at the time of initial diagnosis. Results: Stability of the ASD diagnosis was 100%; diagnosis of autism was stable in 74% of cases as compared to 83% and 81% in PDD-NOS and Non-ASD groups, respectively. Worsening of social disability symptoms resulting in autism diagnosis was noted in 17% of toddlers initially diagnosed with PDD-NOS and in 19% of toddlers with initial diagnosis of non-ASD disorder. However, marked improvement was noted in approximately 1/4 of children initially presenting with autism, warranting diagnostic reassignment to PDD-NOS at follow-up. An analysis of developmental skills profiles suggests particular relevance of the assessment of verbal and nonverbal communication skills to diagnostic differentiation between subtypes within ASD in the second year of life. Conclusions: Stability of ASD diagnosis in toddlers is high, though marked changes in severity of symptoms is to be expected in a minority of cases. Simultaneous consideration of cognitive, social, and communication skills profiles enhances accuracy of diagnostic classification and prediction of outcome.
The epidemiology of intentional non-fatal self-harm poisoning in the United States: 2001-2004.

Introduction Suicide attempts through intentional poisoning are an important public health concern. This investigation sought to determine the different US incident rates of poisonings (with intent to do self-harm) by race, sex, and gender.
HMGA2 levels in CML: reflective of miRNA gene regulation in a hematopoietic tumor?

A universal model of carcinogenesis involves the step-wise accumulation of mutations in cellular oncogenes combined with the loss of function of tumor suppressor genes. New evidence suggests that d...
Methodology for computation and measurement of thermal conductivity for thin film composite substrates

Thermal management of electronics very often incorporates thermal analysis using commercially available CFD softwares, which can perform conjugate heat transfer and fluid flow analysis. One of the big challenges in thermal modeling is the unknown material properties of many of electronic components. The paper describes the approach adopted to measure the thermal conductivity of flexible laminated layers commonly used in electronic applications. The small thickness, coupled with low thermal conductivity of the base material involved, makes the measurement of in-plane thermal conductivity challenging. Standard procedures like "laser flash" technique are not suitable due to the large uncertainty involved. A methodology was developed to measure the thermal conductivity of a 100 microns thick flex structure. An experimental set up was created wherein a temperature gradient was established across the flex layer and measured. A numerical model simulating the experimental conditions was created. Radiation and convective boundary conditions estimated by analytical means were imposed upon the model. By adjusting the thermal conductivity in the numerical model, the experimental temperature profile was matched with the numerical profile. The adjusted thermal conductivity was taken to be the thermal conductivity of the flex. Finally, an uncertainty analysis was performed and uncertainty bands were obtained for the thermal conductivity.
Alpha smooth muscle actin expression in developing and adult human lung

Myofibroblast-like cells containing smooth muscle actin have been identified in lung injury and repair. These cells differ from typical smooth muscle cells by architectural configuration, location and lack of smooth muscle myosin. Their progenitors are unknown. We hypothesized that these cells might have a developmental analog critical to lung morphogenesis. Lung tissue from developing and adult human lungs was studied using a highly specific monoclonal antibody directed against alpha smooth muscle actin (ASMA). Cells immunoreactive for ASMA (ASMA cells) were identified prenatally in the form of smooth muscle investing the developing vasculature and airway structures. ASMA was not expressed in undifferentiated mesenchymal cells at any prenatal stage. Late in development, ASMA cells within the lung acinus increased proportionally to terminal airway and vascular complexity. In the early postnatal period, the specific distribution of ASMA cells within inflated lung became clearer, and three populations were identified: (1) typical smooth muscle investing the large airways and blood vessels; (2) small clusters of cells within the acinus distributed at the tips of septa protruding into the alveolar duct; (3) individual cells within the alveolar sac sparsely distributed near the junctions of individual alveoli, frequently in association with small blood vessels. We conclude that ASMA cells appear only in developing small and large airways and pulmonary vessels and that they may play a critical role in branching morphogenesis during development.
Modeling and analysis of compaction-induced traveltime shifts for multicomponent seismic data

ABSTRACTModeling of time shifts associated with time-lapse (4D) seismic surveys is helpful in evaluating reservoir depressurization and inverting for subsurface stress. Using coupled geomechanical and full-waveform seismic modeling, we study the influence of compaction-induced stress and strain around a simplified reservoir on compressional (P), shear (S), and mode-converted (PS) waves. We estimate compaction-induced time shifts and analyze their dependence on reflector depth and pressure drop inside the reservoir. Time shifts between synthetic baseline and monitor surveys are obtained by processing techniques that are potentially applicable to field data. Although P-wave time-shift lags for reflectors in the overburden are indicative of induced anisotropy, they are two to three times smaller than S-wave time-shift leads for reflectors beneath the reservoir. We also investigate the contributions of the deviatoric and volumetric stains to the time shifts for all three modes. Time shifts for S- and PS-waves...
Incumbent responses to low-cost airline entry and exit: A spatial autoregressive panel data analysis

Abstract While the US airline industry has been substantially transformed in recent years by the growth of low-cost airlines, the cost-saving benefits of lower airfares are difficult to gauge empirically. There are two important ways in which this paper contributes to the existing literature on the impact of the low-cost carriers (LCCs). First, the availability of route-level panel data allows us to examine the role of the LCCs in the long-run adjustment of airfares as well as the responses of the incumbent carriers to LCC entry and exit in a dynamic setting. Second, we capitalize on recent developments in spatial econometrics and explicitly model the spatial dependence among adjacent airline routes, an issue often ignored by previous studies. Although most of the pro-competitive effects of LCC entry take place after entry, we find evidence that the incumbent carriers also cut airfares in anticipation of entry by the LCCs. Moreover fares remain lower even after Southwest Airlines exits. Our empirical analysis confirms the spatial dependence among airfares in adjacent routes, provides estimates of the consumer benefits from lower airfares in routes affected by LCCs, and shows that there are substantial indirect benefits, i.e. lower fares in spatially-linked, nearby routes.
Hematologic Recovery after Pretransplant Chemotherapy Does Not Influence Survival after Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Abstract Pretransplant remission status in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is 1 of the most important factors determining their outcomes after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT). Most patients are in complete remission with full hematologic recovery (CR) before undergoing allo-HCT. However, some patients achieve CR without recovery of platelet count (CRp) or a morphologic leukemia-free state (MLFS), defined as meeting all CR criteria without recovery of both neutrophil and platelet counts. Currently, there is a paucity of data regarding transplant outcomes in AML patients achieving MLFS after chemotherapy. To address this question, we evaluated transplant outcomes in 270 AML patients who received 6/6 HLA-matched sibling or 10/10 HLA-matched unrelated donor transplantation at a single institution between 2006 and 2013. Of our 270 patients, 206 were in CR, 45 were in CRp, and 19 were in MLFS before allo-HCT. Patients in CR, CRp, or MLFS had similar 3-year overall survival rates (49%, 46%, and 47%, respectively; P = .88) and 3-year event-free survival rates (45%, 36%, and 40%, respectively; P = .53). However, the cumulative incidence of nonrelapse mortality was significantly higher in patients in MLFS compared with those in CR (58% versus 22%, P = .0004), whereas the cumulative incidence of relapse in patients in MLFS was significantly lower compared with those in CR (11% versus 36%, P = .03). Our results suggest that survival outcomes in AML patients are not influenced by degree of hematologic recovery before allo-HCT.
Beyond bacteria: a study of the enteric microbial consortium in extremely low birth weight infants.

Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants have high morbidity and mortality, frequently due to invasive infections from bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The microbial communities present in the gastrointestinal tracts of preterm infants may serve as a reservoir for invasive organisms and remain poorly characterized. We used deep pyrosequencing to examine the gut-associated microbiome of 11 ELBW infants in the first postnatal month, with a first time determination of the eukaryote microbiota such as fungi and nematodes, including bacteria and viruses that have not been previously described. Among the fungi observed, Candida sp. and Clavispora sp. dominated the sequences, but a range of environmental molds were also observed. Surprisingly, seventy-one percent of the infant fecal samples tested contained ribosomal sequences corresponding to the parasitic organism Trichinella. Ribosomal DNA sequences for the roundworm symbiont Xenorhabdus accompanied these sequences in the infant with the greatest proportion of Trichinella sequences. When examining ribosomal DNA sequences in aggregate, Enterobacteriales, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, and Enterococcus were the most abundant bacterial taxa in a low diversity bacterial community (mean Shannon-Weaver Index of 1.02±0.69), with relatively little change within individual infants through time. To supplement the ribosomal sequence data, shotgun sequencing was performed on DNA from multiple displacement amplification (MDA) of total fecal genomic DNA from two infants. In addition to the organisms mentioned previously, the metagenome also revealed sequences for gram positive and gram negative bacteriophages, as well as human adenovirus C. Together, these data reveal surprising eukaryotic and viral microbial diversity in ELBW enteric microbiota dominated bytypes of bacteria known to cause invasive disease in these infants.
Evaluation of Item-Based Top-N Recommendation Algorithms

The explosive growth of the world-wide-web and the emergence of e-commerce has led to the development of recommender systems---a personalized information filtering technology used to identify a set of N items that will be of interest to a certain user. User-based Collaborative filtering is the most successful technology for building recommender systems to date, and is extensively used in many commercial recommender systems. Unfortunately, the computational complexity of these methods grows linearly with the number of customers that in typical commercial applications can grow to be several millions. To address these scalability concerns item-based recommendation techniques have been developed that analyze the user-item matrix to identify relations between the different items, and use these relations to compute the list of recommendations.In this paper we present one such class of item-based recommendation algorithms that first determine the similarities between the various items and then used them to identify the set of items to be recommended. The key steps in this class of algorithms are (i) the method used to compute the similarity between the items, and (ii) the method used to combine these similarities in order to compute the similarity between a basket of items and a candidate recommender item. Our experimental evaluation on five different datasets show that the proposed item-based algorithms are up to 28 times faster than the traditional user-neighborhood based recommender systems and provide recommendations whose quality is up to 27% better.
PB2 Residue 271 Plays a Key Role in Enhanced Polymerase Activity of Influenza A Viruses in Mammalian Host Cells

The direct infection of humans with highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses has suggested viral mutation as one mechanism for the emergence of novel human influenza A viruses. Although the polymerase complex is known to be a key component in host adaptation, mutations that enhance the polymerase activity of avian viruses in mammalian hosts are not fully characterized. The genomic comparison of influenza A virus isolates has identified highly conserved residues in influenza proteins that are specific to either human or avian viruses, including 10 residues in PB2. We characterized the activity of avian polymerase complexes containing avian-to-human mutations at these conserved PB2 residues and found that, in addition to the E627K mutation, the PB2 mutation T271A enhances polymerase activity in human cells. We confirmed the effects of the T271A mutation using recombinant WSN viruses containing avian NP and polymerase genes with wild-type (WT) or mutant PB2. The 271A virus showed enhanced growth compared to that of the WT in mammalian cells in vitro. The 271A mutant did not increase viral pathogenicity significantly in mice compared to that of the 627K mutant, but it did enhance the lung virus titer. Also, cell infiltration was more evident in lungs of 271A-infected mice than in those of the WT. Interestingly, the avian-derived PB2 of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus has 271A. The characterization of the polymerase activity of A/California/04/2009 (H1N1) and corresponding PB2 mutants indicates that the high polymerase activity of the pandemic strain in mammalian cells is, in part, dependent on 271A. Our results clearly indicate the contribution of PB2 amino acid 271 to enhanced polymerase activity and viral growth in mammalian hosts.
Teaching introductory programming, problem solving and information technology with robots at West Point

As part of an ongoing initiative to continually revise and improve its introductory computer science courses, the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the United States Military Academy has added the use of LEGO Mindstorm robots as part of the active-learning environment used to teach Information Technology (IT) and programming basics. It is critical for the Army and the Nation that its future leaders understand and are capable of taking advantage of IT. All cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point are required to take a course on IT and problem solving using computer programming. This course is an important first, and sometimes only, opportunity to expose undergraduate students to technology and concepts that will be a part of their daily lives and future careers. The LEGO Mindstorm robots are used in the introductory computer science course to teach fundamental, computer programming concepts and introduce the concepts of autonomous vehicles, embedded computer systems and computer simulation. The positive short-term impact on the students taking the course has been substantial and while the long-term impact has yet to be measured, it also has the potential to be substantial. Members of the faculty at West Point developed a computer simulation of the robot environment as well as a Java programming language translator for the LEGO programmable brick, called the RCX. These two tools are combined into a unique programming and teaching environment that we named Jago. Jago enables the robots and robot simulator to be used to teach fundamental programming concepts visually, which some students can more easily grasp and all are clearly excited to use. Based on these results we have incorporated Jago into the core IT course taught at West Point.
Analysis of stand-alone differential GPS for precision approach

Recently, there has been wide-spread interest in the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) for precision approaches in a civil aviation environment. However, most of the work to date in Europe and North America has treated a GPS/inertial reference system (IRS) combination as the source of guidance for this phase of flight. Since the US has a very large general aviation population, the FAA is very interested in determining the role of a stand-alone implementation of differential GPS (DGPS) as a navigation sensor for precision approaches. This paper has two parts: a summary of the analysis of this application of DGPS; and a discussion of the navigation satellite test bed that is under development at the FAA's Technical Center. The first part contains proposed accuracy, integrity and availability operational requirements, and their air traffic implications. A stand-alone DGPS concept is developed, and analysed. The major results of the analysis indicate that stand-alone DGPS may not fully meet Category I (CAT I) accuracy requirements. The results of the analysis are then used to provide the rationale for the major recommendation: that FAA pursue an implementation of a wide-area DGPS (WADGPS) to achieve a Near CAT I precision approach capability. The second part of the paper discusses the three-phase navigation satellite experimental programme that is being developed to acquire the data to validate the enhancements to GPS, including a GPS Integrity Channel (GIC) and WADGPS. The objectives of each of the experimental phases are presented and discussed. Then the experiments of Phase I that address GIC/WADGPS are discussed.
Measuring Adherence to Behavioral and Medical Interventions

Measuring adherence to medical and behavioral interventions is important to clinicians and researchers since inadequate adherence can reduce the effectiveness of an intervention. Unfortunately, there is no gold standard for measuring adherence across health behaviors. Adherence needs to be defined situationally with parameters of acceptable adherence carefully delineated and appropriate to the health behavior being studied. Additionally, measurement methods must be valid, reliable, and sensitive to change; this paper reviews these criteria. Methods used to measure adherence to dietary interventions include 24-hour recalls, food diaries, and food frequency questionnaires. Direct and indirect calorimetry, doubly labeled water, and a variety of self-report methods can be used to measure adherence in physical activity interventions. Adherence to pharmacological interventions is assessed using self-report methods, biochemical measures, medication counts, and the automated pharmacy database review strategy. The strengths and weaknesses of these methods for measuring adherence to dietary, physical activity, and pharmacological interventions are reviewed. Control Clin Trials 2000;21:188S-194S
A Functional Implementation of the Asynchronous Message Service

The Asynchronous Message Service (AMS) is a subscription based message passing framework for use in flight software applications. It is designed to allow multiple flight software applications to communicate without the need for a central message routing server. This paper describes an AMS client implementation written in a functional programming language. Functional programming languages are expressive and powerful and this paper illustrates how some of the powerful features can be leveraged to build domain relevant software.
Dietary Patterns Derived Using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis are Stable and Generalizable Across Race, Region, and Gender Subgroups in the REGARDS Study

Background: Examining diet as a whole using dietary patterns as exposures is a complementary method to using single food or nutrients in studies of diet and disease, but the generalizability of patterns across race, region, and gender in the United States has not been established. Objective: To employ rigorous statistical analysis to empirically derive dietary patterns in a large bi-racial, geographically diverse population and examine whether results are stable across population subgroups. Design: The present analysis utilized data from 21,636 participants in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study who completed the Block98 food frequency questionnaire. We employed exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses on 56 different food groups iteratively and examined differences by race, region, sex to determine the optimal factor solution in our sample. Results: Five dietary patterns emerged: the “Convenience” pattern was characterized by mixed dishes; the “Plant-based” pattern by fruits, vegetables, and fish; the “Sweets/Fats” pattern by sweet snacks, desserts, and fats and oils; the “Southern” pattern by fried foods, organ meat, and sweetened beverages; and the “Alcohol/Salads” pattern by beer, wine, liquor, and salads. Differences were most pronounced in the Southern pattern with black participants, those residing in the Southeast, and participants not completing high school having the highest scores. Conclusions: Five meaningful dietary patterns emerged in the REGARDS study and showed strong congruence across race, sex and region. Future research will examine associations between these patterns and health outcomes to better understand racial disparities in disease and inform prevention efforts.
Plate 391. Fritillaria pudica

The taxonomy, relationships, distribution and cultural requirements of the North American Fritillaria pudica (Pursh) Sprengel (Liliaceae), are discussed. An illustration is provided and a full description is given.
Sampling interstitial fluid from rat skeletal muscles by intermuscular wicks.

A modification of the implanted wick method (K. Aukland and H. O. Fadnes. Acta Physiol. Scand. 88: 350-358, 1973) was devised to sample interstitial fluid from rat muscles. Dry nylon wicks were ins...
Intrinsic blue-white luminescence, luminescence color tunability, synthesis, structure, and polymorphism of K3YSi2O7

Two polymorphs of K3YSi2O7, crystallizing in the space groups P63/mmc (1) and P63/mcm (2) can be synthesized by high temperature flux crystal growth. The flux growth conditions can be fine-tuned to yield a phase pure sample of polymorph (2), however, not of polymorph (1), which always co-crystallizes with polymorph (2). Polymorph (2) was found to exhibit intrinsic bluish-white light emission. Further studies determined that doping europium and dysprosium onto the yttrium site of this polymorph could readily tune the luminescence, with the purest white light emission found for the K3YSi2O7: 10% Dy, 0.1% Eu composition (K3Y0.899Dy0.1Eu0.001Si2O7) (2-Dy,Eu).
Continuum Modeling of the Gating Mechanisms of a Mechanosensitive (MS) Channel: Bacterial MS versus Mammalian MS Channels

Recently the molecular architecture of the mammalian mechanosensitive pizeol channel was shown to consist of three distal blades that can transduce normal force to tangential force to gate the central pore (Ge et al., Nature, 2015). Based on our previous model for the gating of a bacterial mechanosensitive (MS) channel by fluid shear stress (Pak et al., PNAS, 2015), in this work we present a physical model for the gating of mechanosensitive (MS) channels by normal force and tension in a lipid bilayer membrane, taking into account the molecular architecture of both bacterial and mammalian MS channels. In particular, we focus on the opening/closing of a MS channel upon external mechanical stimuli and the intracellular transport through a MS channel under various fluid flow conditions. The modeling and simulation results may be useful for understanding complicated cellular mechanotransudction and for designing drug delivery in medical therapy.
Some Early Scientific Contributions of American Beekeepers

American writings on bees have not been prolific for much more than a hundred years, and the earliest of them post-dated many of the fundamental discoveries about bee behaviour. Perhaps for this reason, important observations reported in America are less widely quoted than those published in Europe—around 1600 by Luis Mendez de Torres, Nickel Jacob and Charles Butler, and two centuries later by Anton Janscha and Francois Huber.The period 1850–1900 has now become respectably historical, and it is hoped that this article will encourage other readers of Bee World to scrutinize the early beekeeping journals for treasure trove. Dr. and Mrs. T. S. K. Johansson have already shown how fruitful such searches can be. The historical importance of an early observation in no way depends on the language in which it happens to be published. The Editor would therefore add a plea to that of the authors, on page 104, for the involvement of linguists in searches through reference collections: no single language has a monopo...
The solution growth of copper nanowires and nanotubes is driven by screw dislocations.

Copper (Cu) nanowires (NWs) are inexpensive conducting nanomaterials intensively explored for transparent conducting electrodes and other applications. However, the mechanism for solution growth of Cu NWs remains elusive so far. Here we show that the one-dimensional anisotropic growth of Cu NWs and nanotubes (NTs) in solution is driven by axial screw dislocations. All three types of evidence for dislocation-driven growth have been conclusively observed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques: rigorous two-beam TEM analysis that conclusively characterizes the dislocations in the NWs to be pure screw dislocations along ⟨110⟩ direction, twist contour analysis that confirms the presence of Eshelby twist associated with the dislocation, and the observation of spontaneously formed hollow NTs. The reduction–oxidation (redox) electrochemical reaction forming the Cu NWs presents new chemistry for controlling supersaturation to promote dislocation-driven NW growth. Using this understanding to intent...
Parents’ Perspectives on How to Improve the Childhood Vaccination Process:

Few national studies have asked parents how to improve the childhood vaccination process. We surveyed a nationally representative online panel of parents on how to improve this process, rationales for nonstandard approaches, and alternatives to the standard schedule. Twelve percent of the 1222 respondents reported using nonstandard approaches: 3.2% used a specific schedule, 6.0% had no specific schedule, and 2.5% declined all vaccinations. The most common rationales were that too many vaccines are given at once, and discomfort with vaccine ingredients. Regarding how to improve the process, parents using the standard schedule most often said nothing could be improved (51%), or better vaccine information (22%). Those using nonstandard approaches most often would have liked more choice (40%) or better vaccine information (26%). Parents' experiences with the vaccination process could be improved by offering information prior to visits, giving more information about side effects, and allowing more flexibility about vaccine scheduling.
Study on the Relationship between Age, Health Education of Schistosomiasis Prevention and Snail-Searching Quality

Objective To study the effects of age and health education on snail-searching quality.Methods Snail sites were labeled and the rates of finding the labeled sites in groups at different ages and education levels were observed.Results Field observation from 2002 to 2004 showed the rate of finding the labeled site in the group with related knowledge (56.38%,10148/18000) was significantly higher than that in the control group (41.26%,7426/18000).The highest rates,68.95% and 48.67% respectively, were found in the population of the age below 15 in the two groups,whereas those over 51 shared the lowest rates, 36.67% and 29.45 respectively.Conclusion Education of schistosomiasis prevention and age factors play an important role in snail-searching quality.
Etiology of 146cases of infectious pleural effusion in children

Objective To investigate the etiology of infectious pleural effusion in children,and provide ideas and methods for the diagnosis and treatment of infectious pleural effusion.Methods 165 children diagnosed with pleural effusion by chest radiography and(or)ultrasound B were admitted to a hospital from January 2011 to December 2012,their clinical and laboratory data were analyzed retrospectively.Results Of 165 children,146(88.48%)were with infectious pleural effusion,including Mycoplasmainfection77 cases(52.74%),mixed infection of Mycoplasmaand other pathogens 24 cases(16.44%,mixed infection with bacteria,virus and tuberculosis were 17,6 and 1 respectively),bacterial infection 23 cases(15.75%)(12 cases were tuberculosis infection),viral infection 7 cases(4.79%),paragonimus infection 1 case(0.69%),and unidentified pathogens 14 cases(9.59%).The constituent ratio of Mycoplasma mixed infection in1-15 years old children was 13.46%-26.32%;tuberculosis infection was highest in7-15 years old children(19.23%);the ratio of bacterial and viral infection in children aged1 year was 37.50%and 18.75%respectively.Conclusion Mycoplasmainfection is the most common cause of infectious pleural effusion in children;especially in 1-15 years old children;bacterial infection is the major cause of pleural effusion in children aged1 year;tuberculosis infection is common in 7-15 years old children.