cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Memory complaint, memory performance, and psychiatric diagnosis: a community study

This study examined the prevalence of memory complaint and poor memory performance on brief screening measures within a community sample of 810 adults. All individuals received an extensive household interview and a clinical psychiatric evaluation. Overall, 22% indicated that they currently had trouble with their memory. This percentage increased with age, rising to 43% for those 65 to 74 years old, 51% for those 75 to 84 years old, and 88% for those 85 years of age and older; the percentage indicating memory problems decreased with educational attainment. The prevalence of poor memory performance was 11%, also increasing with less education and increased age, rising to 26% for those 65 to 74 years old and to 40% for those older then 75. Those who complained of memory trouble were twice as likely to show poor memory performance (29%) compared with those who did not complain (15%). Multivariate analysis found age, emotional distress, and physical illness to be independent predictors of memory complaint; age, functional disability, education, and physical illnesses proved to be independently associated with poor memory performance. A higher prevalence of complaints of memory trouble was found not only for those with affective disorders, as might be expected, but also among those with schizophrenic, cognitive, anxiety, and adjustment disorders. However, only individuals with cognitive disorders showed a higher prevalence of poor memory performance.
Empirical studies on the speed of convergence of neural network training using genetic algorithms

This paper reports several experimental results on the speed of convergence of neural network training using genetic algorithms and back propagation. Recent excitement regarding genetic search lead some researchers to apply it to training neural networks. There are reports on both successful and faulty results, and, unfortunately, no systematic evaluation has been made. This paper reports results of systematic experiments designed to judge whether use of genetic algorithms provides any gain in neural network training over existing methods. Experimental results indicate that genetic search is, at best, equally efficient to faster variants of back propagation in very small scale networks, but far less efficient in larger networks.
Death and dying: what the patient wants

A good death and a death with dignity may be achieved when death is congruent with the personal values of the patient. It behooves the practitioner to recognize these values and to cater to them. This paper describes effective communication with the dying person, and the partnership of treatment team, patient and family in face of the patient death. To identify and define the patient wishes it is necessary to learn how to interpret the patient's non verbal as often patients are unable to formulate the questions they wish to ask concerning their passing. These difficulties stem from several cultural factors including concern about disturbing the practitioner. It is the treatment team's responsibility to facilitate this discussion. A good death is achieved when symptoms are controlled and when patients and family recognize death as a unique living experience to be treasured as any other living experience. A death with dignity brings healing, that is always possible even when cure is out of reach. Patient's and practitioner's values may be at odd in face of controversial issues including euthanasia, assisted suicide and terminal sedation. Though he/she should not be compelled to execute these requests, the practitioner should be able to entertain an open discussion with the patient concerning these issues. Open communication and reflective listening even in presence of disagreements are the venue of healing. The study of death and dying requires novel approaches including personal narrative and qualitative research to complement traditional research instrument, such as questionnaire that cannot embrace the whole human dimension.
Effects of speech signal content and speaker gender on acceptance of noise in listeners with normal hearing

AbstractObjective: The purpose of this research was to determine if the content and/or speaker gender of a running speech sample affected the acceptance of background noise within a participant. Design: A male and a female recording of the Arizona Travelogue (Cosmos Inc.) and the ipsilateral competing message (ICM) from the synthetic sentence identification with ICM were created and used as the experimental speech signals. Two acceptable noise level measurements were obtained and averaged for each condition. Twenty-one participants rated interest level in the speech sample for each condition. Study Sample: Forty-three listeners with normal hearing participated. Results: Interest level was significantly greater for the ICM than the Arizona Travelogue speech samples, and was significantly greater for female samples. Neither the content of the sample nor the gender of the speaker significantly affected the most comfortable level or the acceptable noise level. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the acceptable...
Effects of lung volume reduction surgery on sleep quality and nocturnal gas exchange in patients with severe emphysema.

Study objectives: We hypothesized that associated with improvements in respiratory mechanics, lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) would result in an improvement in both sleep quality and nocturnal oxygenation in patients with severe emphysema. Design: Prospective randomized controlled trial. Setting: University hospital. Patients: Sixteen patients (10 men, 63 ± 6 years [± SD]) with severe airflow limitation (FEV 1 , 28 ± 10% predicted) and hyperinflation (total lung capacity, 123 ± 14% predicted) who were part of the National Emphysema Treatment Trial. Interventions and measurements: Patients completed 6 to 10 weeks of outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation. Spirometry, measurement of lung volumes, arterial blood gas analysis, and polysomnography were performed prior to randomization and again 6 months after therapy. Ten patients underwent LVRS and optimal medical therapy, while 6 patients received optimal medical therapy only. Results: Total sleep time and sleep efficiency improved following LVRS (from 184 ± 111 to 272 ± 126 min [p = 0.007], and from 45 ± 26 to 61 ± 26% [p = 0.01], respectively), while there was no change with medical therapy alone (236 ± 75 to 211 ± 125 min [p = 0.8], and from 60 ± 18 to 52 ± 17% [p = 0.5], respectively). The mean and lowest oxygen saturation during the night improved with LVRS (from 90 ± 7 to 93 ± 4% [p = 0.05], and from 83 ± 10 to 86 ± 10% [p = 0.03], respectively), while no change was noted in the medical therapy group (from 91 ± 5 to 91 ± 5 [p = 1.0], and from 84 ± 5 to 82 ± 6% [p = 0.3], respectively). There was a correlation between the change in FEV 1 and change in the lowest oxygen saturation during the night ( r = 0.6, p = 0.02). In addition, there was an inverse correlation between the change in the lowest oxygen saturation during the night and the change in residual volume (- r = 0.5, p = 0.04) and functional residual capacity (- r = 0.6, p = 0.03). Conclusion: In patients with severe emphysema, LVRS, but not continued optimal medical therapy, results in improved sleep quality and nocturnal oxygenation. Improvements in nocturnal oxygenation correlate with improved airflow and a decrease in hyperinflation and air trapping.
QBox: guaranteeing I/O performance on black box storage systems

Many storage systems are shared by multiple clients with different types of workloads and performance targets. To achieve performance targets without over-provisioning, a system must provide isolation between clients. Throughput-based reservations are challenging due to the mix of workloads and the stateful nature of disk drives, leading to low reservable throughput, while existing utilization-based solutions require specialized I/O scheduling for each device in the storage system.Qbox is a new utilization-based approach for generic black box storage systems that enforces utilization (and, indirectly, throughput) requirements and provides isolation between clients, without specializedlow-level I/O scheduling. Our experimental results show that Qbox provides good isolation and achieves the target utilizations of its clients.
The Epidemiology of Fluoroquinolone-Resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Hawaii, 2001

Increases in the number of infections with fluoroquinolone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Asia and the United States threaten the efficacy of fluoroquinolones as inexpensive, single-dose, orally administered treatments for gonorrhea. This report describes the findings of a field investigation of an increase in the number of infections with ciprofloxacin-resistant N. gonorrhoeae (CipRGC) in Hawaii in 2001. We conducted a case review of 53 patients with CipRGC, who constituted 20% of the 267 patients with cultures positive for N. gonorrhoeae during this period. Nearly one-half of patients with CipRGC were seen by clinicians in private practice, one-third were seen by clinicians at a sexually transmitted diseases (STD) clinic, and only 2% were seen by clinicians in the military. Among the 117 patients with culture-confirmed gonorrhea who attended the public STD clinic, we found a prevalence of infection with CipRGC of 17%. The demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with CipRGC were similar to those of patients with gonorrhea that was not resistant to ciprofloxacin, suggesting that fluoroquinolone-resistant gonorrhea has become endemic in Hawaii.
Is a Competent Federal Government Attainable or Oxymoronic

This is a review of two books on public policymaking performance and civil service reform at the federal level: A GOVERNMENT ILL EXECUTED: THE DECLINE OF THE FEDERAL SERVICE AND HOW TO REVERSE IT by Paul C. Light (Harvard U. Press 2008) and PROMOTING THE GENERAL WELFARE: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE, edited by Alan S. Gerber & Eric M. Patashnik (Brookings Institution Press, 2006).
Hierarchical Image Geo-location on a World-Wide Scale

There are increasingly large amounts of imagery and video collected from a variety of sensor modalities. Considering that each individual image may contain considerable amounts of information, the ability to interpret, understand and extract scene information is highly beneficial for many communities such as online social networking sites, intelligence agencies and companies dealing with large-scale data mining. In order to enable automated scene understanding, there is a need for an organizing principle to store, visualize and exploit the data. Three-dimensional geometry provides such an organizing principle as imagery and video have inherent 3D structure and can be associated with geographic coordinates. Imagery with geo-spatial information can be used to develop a common 3D world model representation that integrates data across a wide variety of sensor modalities. In this paper, we leverage multiple large geo-spatial databases to create a 3D world model and develop a hierarchical image geo-location framework using a coarse-to-fine approach to geo-locate a query image. Starting at the coarsest level, we developed a novel method to geo-locate images to regions of the world through a process of terrain classification. Next, we developed novel medium-scale and fine-scale localization steps to rule out most of the coarsely geo-located regions and determine candidate geo-locations with geo-positioning accuracy at a city level. Our method was demonstrated on a 6.5 million image database and shown to improve on current state of the art in the areas of both terrain classification and image geo-location.
New Light on the Old Side: Irish Influences on Colonial Presbyterianism

The Great Awakening that swept through mid-eighteenth-century America has recently been singled out as the seminal factor in the birth of a new society. ' In their efforts to attribute meaning and continuity to colonial development, however, many historians have homogenized the variety of responses elicited by the revivals among the many diverse groups within different denominations in the individual colonies. Thus, they have lumped all supporters of the revivals under a New Light or New Side label and gathered all opponents into an Old Light or Old Side party and proceeded to assign each group those characteristics and positions which will sustain a consistent and comprehensive interpretation. Some have even projected the divisions of the 1740s onto the periods preceding and following the Great Awakening, assuming for the purpose of their argument that these parties remained unchanged throughout the eighteenth century. The result has been a series of generalizations that neglect the diversity of colonial society in general and the complexity of the Great Awakening in particular. In the current revival of interest in the Great Awakening, "religious" and "secular" historians agree that the accepted generalizations no longer suffice. Martin E. Marty describes this phenomenon, which he thinks cannot be explained by any single theory, as an enigma. What seems to be called for is a series of local and particular studies of the participants from which a new constellation of generalizations can be generated.2 Some of these studies are
Expanding Diversity: Modification of Linear and Cyclic Peptides by C-Glycosylation and N-Methylation

The stereochemical versatility of carbohydrates provides much structural diversity and has made them useful also as peptidomimetic scaffolds [1], Just as peptides can be rendered more stable by backbone modifications including N-methylation and amide bond replacements [2], carbohydrates can likewise be stabilized by replacement of their vulnerable hemiacetal linkages. C-sugars are derivatives of carbohydrates in which the anomeric carbon is replaced by a methylene unit [3,4]. Carbohydrates are known to be involved in numerous biological processes such as cell-cell recognition [5]. Some glycoconjugate vaccines are being tested for prostate cancer [6]. C-sugars appear as very attractive substrates because of their increased stability especially against hydrolysis, but at the same time their structural and chemical properties are similar to O-glycosides [3,4]. This explains the increase of interest for C-glycosides [7]. Accordingly, we have initiated the synthesis of different pseudoglycopeptides.
Application of Time-Shifted Boundary Conditions to a 3D Euler/Navier-Stokes Aeroelastic Code

In the present work the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of harmonically oscillating fan blades are investigated by applying a time-shifted boundary condition at the periodic boundaries. The direct-store method is used to implement the time-shifted boundary condition in a time-marching Euler/Navier-Stokes solver. Inviscid flow calculations for a flat plate helical fan, in a single-blade passage domain, are used to verify the analysis. The results obtained show good correlation with other published results as well as with the same solver using multiple blade passages stacked together. Significant savings in computer time is realized, especially for smaller phase angles.Copyright © 1998 by ASME
Trace Analysis of Potentially Carcinogenic Metabolites of an Azo Dye and Pigment in Hamster And Human Urine as Determined by Two Chromatographic Procedures

Analytical chemical procedures are described for determining traces of possible metabolites of two azo compounds. Direct Black 38 and Pigment Yellow 12, in hamster urine and to monitor the urine from workers who may be occupationally exposed during the manufacture or use of the dye and pigment. These methods were required for metabolism studies designed to assess the hazards that may occur if the two compounds are converted by in vivo mechanisms to potential carcinogens. Salient elements of the procedure are: extraction of the free aromatic amines and neutral compounds; alkaline hydrolysis of the aqueous phase and extraction of any hydrolyzed conjugates as free amines, and the analysis of the free amines and acetylated metabolites directly by high pressure liquid chromatography or by electron capture gas chromatography after conversion of the amines to heptafluorobutyryl derivatives. Residues of metabolites in hamster and human urine were determined at levels as low as 1 ppb. Ancillary data concerning hydrolysis of diacetylated metabolites and partition values for possible metabolites in various solvent systems are also presented.
Serotonergic antidepressants and their efficacy in obsessive compulsive disorder

Since 1985, major advances have been made in the pharmacologic treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder. Clomipramine is undoubtedly effective. Other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as fluvoxamine and sertraline, seem effective as well. Fluoxetine's efficacy has been principally based on convincing open-label studies and clinical practice. No large controlled studies have been published. A preliminary analysis of a double-blind trial in which 51 obsessive compulsive disorder patients were randomly assigned to either placebo or three fixed doses of fluoxetine reveals that the drug is decisively helpful. Unexpectedly, the 20-mg/day dose was as effective as the 40- or 60-mg/day dose. Although these findings further advance our understanding of short-term pharmacologic treatments, few data are available regarding maintenance doses, relapse, and efficacy of adjunctive treatments.
Clinical and economic impact of pharmacy services in a low-income family practice clinic within a community Hospital setting

Providing medical care to the underprivileged is a mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California. An outpatient family medical clinic was established to serve this population, a majority of whom do not have health insurance or access to government-sponsored prescription assistance programs. To provide medications to patients and to help reduce medication costs, the pharmacy department opened a medication room in the clinic and staffed it with a pharmacist and a pharmacy technician. This effort involved maximizing the use of pharmaceutical companies' patient assistance programs, which provide free medications to qualified indigent patients. The project also incorporated pharmacist-regulated involvement; the development of and compliance with a formulary; strict inventory controls on the purchase of medications; and identification of patients who qualify for government health service programs. A computer database program that simplified the tracking, reporting, and organizing of patient information and provided financial reports was implemented. Within three years of operation, medication costs decreased from$328,000 to $32,800. The presence of a pharmacist in this setting was advantageous in both the financial and clinical arenas. The pharmacist was intimately involved in medication provision by evaluating appropriate medication use in a cost-effective manner and providing education to health care providers and patients.
THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT REGULATORY AGENCIES ON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOCUSING ON NATIONAL DRUG LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY NDLEA

This study is designed to X-ray the activities and the impact of government regulatory agencies on National Development focusing on National Drug Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA. In the course of this research, the researcher adopted the survey method. 100 questionnaires were distributed to the staffs of the agency and 80 were returned. The questionnaires were distributed, analyzed by the aid of simple percentage. On the course of the research findings, the investigator discovered that the agency was in the business of elimination and preventing drug addition and safeguarding the health of the nation. Similarly, the activities of the agency are impeded by unexpected drug traffickers' activities, insecurity of staff, low level of education, betrayal or sabotage from the public an inability to report drug traffickers among others. In the light of the findings, the researcher recommends that laws on drug addiction and most importantly, the agencies and banks should partner with NDLEA to checkmate to drug traffickers. The agencies and its antecedents should embark on massive enlightenment campaign to forestall dry traffickers and quackery. In conclusion, all hands must be on desk, Nigerians should put a stop to drug trafficking and spread of sub-standard product in Nigeria market.
Bio-oil Stabilization by Hydrogenation over Reduced Metal Catalysts at Low Temperatures

The thermal and chemical instability of biomass fast pyrolysis oil (bio-oil) presents significant problems when it is being converted to hydrocarbon transportation fuels. Development of effective approaches for stabilizing bio-oils is critical to the success of the biomass fast pyrolysis and bio-oil upgrading technology. Catalytic hydrogenation to remove reactive species in bio-oil has been considered as one of the most efficient ways to stabilize bio-oil. This paper provides a fundamental understanding of hydrogenation of actual bio-oils over a Ru/TiO2 catalyst under conditions relevant to practical bio-oil hydrotreating processes. The results indicated hydrogenation of various components of the bio-oil, including sugars, aldehydes, ketones, alkenes, aromatics, and carboxylic acids, over the Ru/TiO2 catalyst and 120 to 160 °C. Hydrogenation of these species significantly changed the chemical and physical properties of the bio-oil and overall improved its thermal stability, especially by reducing the carb...
Lesion recovery and the bacterial microbiome in two Caribbean gorgonian corals

In the Caribbean, gorgonian corals dominate many coral reefs, while scleractinian coral cover has declined. Gorgonian corals deal with stressors such as lesions caused by wave action, predation, or human activities. In June 2012, artificial wounds were inflicted on branches of the gorgonians Eunicea flexuosa and Pseudoplexaura porosa found at 3–5 m depth on a patch reef (20°52′5.23″N, 86°51′58.92″W) near Puerto Morelos, Mexico. Following healing, injured and uninjured branches were collected to determine the effect of lesions on gorgonian biochemistry, symbiosis, microbiome, and immune response. Lesion recovery in E. flexuosa took twice as long as in P. porosa. In both species, tissues at and surrounding the lesions contained significantly higher sclerite content per dry weight but lower protein per surface area. In and around the lesion area, the density of symbiotic dinoflagellates, Symbiodinium spp., was lower than in uninjured branches, although Symbiodinium photochemical efficiency in tissues surrounding the lesion was not affected. The gorgonian species differed in their bacterial microbiome, but the overall bacterial community and dominant bacterial taxa did not differ between injured and uninjured branches, although the prevalence of some less common bacterial groups did vary. The two species exhibited distinct immune responses, whereby different components of the melanization cascade were activated, and exochitinase was mobilized only in E. flexuosa. While the gorgonian species differed in their lesion recovery response, both healed without signs of disease or colonization by fouling organisms. The capacity to recover successfully from injuries may partly explain why gorgonian corals dominate Caribbean coral reefs.
TCP-friendly SIMD congestion control and its convergence behavior

The increased diversity of Internet application requirements has spurred interest in flexible congestion control mechanisms. Window-based congestion control schemes use increase rules to probe available bandwidth, and decrease rules to back off when congestion is detected. The control rules are parameterized so as to ensure that the resulting protocol is TCP-friendly in terms of the relationship between throughput and packet loss rate. We propose a novel window-based congestion control algorithm called SIMD (Square-Increase/Multiplicative-Decrease). Contrary to previous memoryless controls, SIMD utilizes history information in its control rules. It uses multiplicative decrease but the increase in window size is in proportion to the square of the time elapsed since the detection of the last loss event. Thus, SIMD can efficiently probe available bandwidth. Nevertheless, SIMD is TCP-friendly as well as TCP-compatible through RED routers. Furthermore, SIMD has much better convergence behavior than TCP-friendly AIMD and binomial algorithms proposed previously.
Overall response rate (ORR) as a potential surrogate for progression-free survival (PFS): A meta-analysis of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

8012 Background: Targeted therapies (TT) administered as single agents in molecularly defined mNSCLC subsets are yielding high ORR. Improvements in PFS of large magnitude with favorable benefit-ris...
Biological soil crust cover is negatively related to vascular plant richness in Ozark sandstone glades

Abstract Sandstone glades in the Ozark highlands contain unique communities of vascular plants, including several species of conservation concern, as well as abundant communities of terricolous cryptogams—collectively termed biological soil crusts. Biological soil crusts have important ecological roles in grassland systems, such as preventing erosion and retaining soil moisture. Despite the conservation importance of sandstone glades, this ecosystem has received little scientific attention, and the drivers of plant diversity and soil crust prevalence in sandstone glades are poorly understood. In this study, we assessed relationships between soil crust cover and vascular plant species richness and tested whether dominance shifts from soil crusts to vascular plants along a soil gradient. Soil crust cover was negatively related to vascular plant species richness, and vascular plant richness increased (and crust cover decreased) with increasing soil organic matter. As soil organic matter increased, the propor...
Uptake and Metabolism of Phenolic Compounds by the Water Hyacinth (Eichhorniacrassipes)

The water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) (Fig. 1) is a free-floating, subtropical, freshwater macrophyte. It is considered to be one of the world’s worst aquatic weeds. This is in no small part due to its phenomenal growth rate. It has been estimated that 10 adult plants can multiply to about 650,000 in only eight months.1 Large mats of water hyacinth restrict navigation for transportation and recreation, impede drainage, greatly hasten eutrophication, and increase water loss by evapo-transpiration.
Treatment Orientation and Program Implications

The advent of the first day hospital treatment program in North America at the Allen Memorial Hospital in Montreal (Cameron, 1947) marked the beginning of a new era in the treatment of psychiatric patients and in the way psychiatric illness is viewed. Prior to this innovation, the majority of psychiatric patients were treated on inpatient units at private and general hospitals or in state facilities that were usually placed in isolated areas away from the general population. When socially abhorrent symptoms were reduced (e.g., suicidal ideation, hallucinations, delusions) the patient was returned to his family and the community, where he was then treated on an outpatient basis, usually no more than once per week. Partial hospitalization programs or day hospitals proposed that patients be treated on a partial or day basis, eliminating the need for 24-hour care and keeping the patient in the community. Several years following the opening of Cameron’s unit, day hospitals began to spring up in other areas of North America including the United States. Eventually evening programs were also made available for those individuals who were functioning well enough to participate in various activities (E.G., vocational Training programs, attending school, working, actively job seeking, household responsibilities) but who were nevertheless in need of more intense treatment than is usually provided in outpatient theraphy.
Mandatory labels can improve attitudes toward genetically engineered food.

The prospect of state and federal laws mandating labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food has prompted vigorous debate about the consequences of the policy on consumer attitudes toward these technologies. There has been substantial debate over whether mandated labels might increase or decrease consumer aversion toward genetic engineering. This research aims to help resolve this issue using a data set containing more than 7800 observations that measures levels of opposition in a national control group compared to levels in Vermont, the only U.S. state to have implemented mandatory labeling of GE foods. Difference-in-difference estimates of opposition to GE food before and after mandatory labeling show that the labeling policy led to a 19% reduction in opposition to GE food. The findings help provide insights into the psychology of consumers’ risk perceptions that can be used in communicating the benefits and risks of genetic engineering technology to the public.
What do types mean?: from intrinsic to extrinsic semantics

A definition of a typed language is said to be "intrinsic" if it assigns meanings to typings rather than arbitrary phrases, so that ill-typed phrases are meaningless. In contrast, a definition is said to be "extrinsic" if all phrases have meanings that are independent of their typings, while typings represent properties of these meanings.For a simply typed lambda calculus, extended with integers, recursion, and conditional expressions, we give an intrinsic denotational semantics and a denotational semantics of the underlying untyped language. We then establish a logical relations theorem between these two semantics, and show that the logical relations can be "bracketed" by retractions between the domains of the two semantics. From these results, we derive an extrinsic semantics that uses partial equivalence relations.
Epilogue as Prologue

Throughout this volume, emphasis has been placed on reporting empirical findings and on the extension of these findings to clinical and counseling intervention. In addition, trait procrastination has been discussed from a wide variety of perspectives, and promising directions for research have been presented. Thus, as one of the few books on procrastination, the work in this volume represents a systematic effort to present and integrate often disparate psychological areas.
New approaches to diagnose and treat alzheimer's disease: A glimpse of the future

An explosion of scientific and clinical knowledge about Alzheimer's disease now provides a basis for selecting targets for treatment aimed at slowing progression of dementia or delaying the onset of or preventing Alzheimer's disease. The rationale that underlies several promising approaches to treatment are reviewed. Novel forms of treatment are most effective when combined with sensitive clinical methods to diagnose Alzheimer's disease as early as possible and to track its progression over time. Therefore, this article highlights findings concerning biological markers for Alzheimer's disease and the mild cognitive impairment syndrome and attempts to define a prodromal stage of Alzheimer's disease.
One Step Forward: A Novel “Step-Conjugated” Biphosphole

New structural scaffolds for use in organic electronic materials are in high demand, especially if they possess unique optoelectronic or morphological properties. In this issue of Chem, Dobrovetsky, Baumgartner, and coworkers describe the synthesis of a new "step-conjugated" bi(dithienophosphole) and demonstrate its unique structural and electronic features.
Intraoperative Molecular Imaging with Second Window Indocyanine Green Facilitates Confirmation of Contrast-Enhancing Tissue During Intracranial Stereotactic Needle Biopsy: A Case Series.

Background Stereotactic needle biopsy provides a minimally invasive option for the diagnosis of intracranial lesions but is limited by inconclusive diagnoses on frozen pathology. For rapid pathology, 5-aminovelunic acid and sodium fluorescein have previously demonstrated potential as diagnostic adjuvants. Stereotactic biopsy with near-infrared (NIR) fluorophores has not been reported. We identified 5 representative cases using NIR fluorescent dye indocyanine green (ICG) administered in a high dose, delayed manner. Methods Five patients underwent second window indocyanine green (SWIG)-guided stereotactic biopsy for diagnosis of suspected glioma or tumor recurrence. Up to 5 mg/kg ICG was administered approximately 24 hours prior to surgery. Biopsies were conducted in the standard fashion, targeting regions of suspected tumor using intraoperative frameless navigation. Samples were examined intraoperatively under standard visible light and for fluorescence using conventional NIR imaging platforms. Findings were correlated with frozen and final tumor pathology for all cases. Results A total of 10 biopsy specimens were obtained. Three did not fluoresce and did not demonstrate tumor on preliminary or final pathology, including a non-gadolinium-enhancing sample taken proximal to the final target. The remaining 7 fluoresced, of which 6 contained tumor and 1 contained necrosis. Fluorescence was also noted in a patient with radiation treatment effect. Overall fluorescence characteristics were highly concordant with preliminary and final diagnoses. Conclusions SWIG provides rapid intraoperative confirmation of pathologic brain tissue by permeating neoplastic or inflammatory brain tissue via a mechanism similar to that of gadolinium enhancement. SWIG-guided stereotactic biopsy can improve surgical efficiency by enhancing confidence in acquisition of target tissue.
Predictors of Postoperative Urinary Retention in Outpatient Minimally Invasive Hysterectomy.

STUDY OBJECTIVE To identify risk factors associated with postoperative urinary retention in patients undergoing outpatient minimally invasive hysterectomy. DESIGN A retrospective cohort study. SETTING An academic medical center. PATIENTS All patients undergoing outpatient minimally invasive hysterectomy between January 2013 and July 2018 were considered for inclusion in the study. INTERVENTIONS Outpatient laparoscopic, vaginal, or robotically assisted laparoscopic hysterectomy. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Four hundred forty-four patients met the inclusion criteria. Postoperative urinary retention occurred in 94 patients, and 347 patients successfully passed their voiding trial in the postanesthesia care unit for a pass rate of 79%. Demographic characteristics were similar, except patients who experienced postoperative urinary retention were less likely to be menopausal (23.4% vs 34.7%, p = .038). Those with urinary retention received more perioperative opioids (morphine milligram equivalent of 14.4 mg vs11.2 mg, p = .012), had longer operative times (122.9 ± 55.6 vs 95.7 ± 42.3 minutes, p < .01), and experienced more blood loss (105.3 ± 134.4 vs 78.5 ± 86.8 mL, p = .025). The rate of urinary tract infections was similar. Logistic regression analysis showed that the route of hysterectomy and age were not associated with an increased risk for urinary retention, whereas a longer operative time and higher doses of perioperative opioid use were. CONCLUSION In patients undergoing minimally invasive outpatient hysterectomy, a longer operative time and increased perioperative narcotic use increases the risk of postoperative urinary retention.
Oversight and legislative activity concerning Pacific Island territories of the United States: a balancing of partisanship and autonomy

Five territories of the United States, plus the District of Columbia, send six non-voting delegates to the United States House of Representatives. While these delegates lack a vote to pass bills, t...
Reforming the veteran: propaganda and agency in the First World War Reconstruction hospitals.

The United States’ entry into the First World War prompted progressives to reform veterans’ entitlements in the hopes of creating a system insulated from corruption and capable of rehabilitating disabled veterans into productive members of society. The replacement of pensions with medical care for wounded and disabled soldiers through the Reconstruction Hospital System was originally intended as a temporary measure but resulted in establishing the foundations of the modern veterans’ health care system. Yet, these reforms would not have been possible without the support from the community of war veterans to which these reforms applied. By examining the communal values expressed in publications produced by and for soldiers, this paper explores the ways in which the Great War’s veteran community expressed agency in the process of reforming the US veteran entitlements.
The MathIOmica Toolbox: General Analysis Utilities for Dynamic Omics Datasets.

MathIOmica is a package for bioinformatics, written in the Wolfram language, that provides multiple utilities to facilitate the analysis of longitudinal data generated from omics experiments, including transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics data, as well as any generalized time series. MathIOmica uses Mathematica's notebook interface, wherein users can import longitudinal datasets, carry out quality control and normalization, generate time series, and classify temporal trends. MathIOmica provides spectral methods based on periodograms and autocorrelations for automatically detecting classes of temporal behavior and allowing the user to visualize collective temporal behavior, and also assess biological significance through Gene Ontology and pathway enrichment analyses. MathIOmica's time-series classification methods address common issues including missing data and uneven sampling in measurements. As such, the software is ideally suited for the analysis of experimental data from individualized profiling of subjects, can facilitate analysis of data from the emerging field of individualized health monitoring, and can detect temporal trends that may be associated with adverse health events. In this article, we import a transcriptomics (RNA-sequencing) dataset collected over multiple timepoints and generate time series for each transcript represented in the data. We classify the time series to identify classes of significant temporal trends (using autocorrelations). We assess statistical significance cutoffs in the classification by generating null distributions using randomly resampled time series. We then visualize the significant trends in heatmaps and assess biological significance using enrichment analyses. Finally, we visualize pathway results for statistically significant pathways of interest. © 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Basic Protocol: Time series analysis of transcriptomics expression dataset.
A COMPARISON OF OUTCOMES OF PATIENTS WITH SEVERE TRICUSPID REGURGITATION UNDERGOING ISOLATED SURGICAL REPAIR VS. REPLACEMENT: A META-ANALYSIS AND META-REGRESSION

Isolated tricuspid valve regurgitation intervention is on the rise, particularly in patients with right heart dysfunction and dilation. However, the treatment of choice for patients with isolated tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is still controversial. Our objective was to perform a meta-analysis to
Building control virtual test bed and functional mock-up interface standard: comparison in the context of campus energy modelling and control

This paper compares Building Control Virtual Test Bed (BCVTB) and Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard to conduct coupled energy modelling and control for academic and research campuses. The...
Governments as Regulators

This chapter turns to the role that government plays in regulating activities that pose risks to public health and safety. How does government establish and implement prudent schemes of regulation of risky activities? Enforcement of regulations and policies faces many of the same obstacles considered in previous chapters: principal-agent problems within government, non-compliance by actors in civil society, and deliberate efforts at evasion of regulation by actors at every scale. To this list we can add the fact of regulatory capture: the ability of corporations and industries to influence legislators and agency officials in favor of less restrictive regulation and enforcement. How does government attempt to secure a sufficiently high level of compliance with rules and regulations in the economic sphere? How effective are private power-holders in influencing the regulatory process and in shaping the enforcement mechanisms considered by regulatory agencies? The chapter considers the system of “delegated regulation” as a government arrangement that is vulnerable to conflict of interest and regulatory capture. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taken as a case study.
Dipole Source Reconstruction By Convolutional Neural Networks

Equivalent dipole moments are widely used for noise source reconstruction in radio frequency interference (RFI) study. The equivalent dipole sources are usually extracted from measured near-field pattern. This paper introduces a machine learning based method to extract the dipole moments. A convolutional neural network is trained to perform a multi-label classification to determine the type of dipole moments. The locations of the dipole moments are obtained from the global averaging pooling layer. Then the magnitude and phase of the dipoles can be calculated from least square (LSQ) optimization. The proposed method is tested on simulated near-field patterns. The comparison between reconstructed field pattern and original field pattern is given.
Der Mensch beeinflusst seine Biologie – wie Weltbilder die Zukunft formen

Die biomedizinische Forschung suggeriert in ihrer Grundhaltung, dass unsere korperliche und psychische Gesundheit und unsere Risiken, korperlich oder auch psychisch zu erkranken, durch unsere Biologie, und hier vor allem durch unsere Gene, determiniert sind. Was aber fur korperliche Erkrankungen nicht gilt, ist noch viel weniger richtig fur psychische Erkrankungen. Uber unsere psychische Gesundheit und unser Wohlbefinden entscheiden wir in weiten Teilen selbst, einmal durch unsere individuelle Lebensfuhrung, viel mehr jedoch durch die Gestaltung unserer Lebensumwelt. Wie stark wir biologisch determiniert sind und uns fuhlen, ist eine Frage der individuellen Haltung, des „Mindset“, aber auch eine Frage des Weltbildes unserer Gesellschaft.
Dementia, beauty, and play: A way of seeing and being with the wearisome patient:

We describe a case of an elderly patient suffering from advanced dementia (Mrs. M) whose chronic confusion has become a source of frustration for her caregivers. Mrs. M experiences a touching inter...
Mouse gastruloids take heart

Mouse embryonic organoids that model cardiac development ex vivo could be used as a high-throughput, experimentally tractable system to evaluate crucial cell populations and environmental factors that contribute to normal and abnormal cardiogenesis.
The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations: 2021 Update

In November 2012, Colorado and Washington approved ballot initiatives that legalized marijuana for recreational use under state law. Since then, nine additional states (Alaska, Oregon, California, Nevada, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Illinois) plus the District of Columbia have followed suit, either by ballot initiative or legislative action. Voters in four other states (New Jersey, South Dakota, Arizona, and Montana) approved state ballot measures legalizing marijuana for personal use in the November 2020 election. Supporters and critics make numerous claims about state‐​level marijuana legalizations. Advocates suggest that legalization reduces crime, raises tax revenue, lowers criminal justice expenditures, improves public health, increases traffic safety, and stimulates the economy. Critics argue that legalization spurs marijuana and other drug or alcohol use, increases crime, diminishes traffic safety, harms public health, and lowers teen educational achievement. In previous work, we found that the strong claims made by both advocates and critics are substantially overstated and in some cases entirely without support from existing legalizations; mainly, state legalizations have had minor effects. This paper updates previous work to account for additional years of data and the increase in the number of states with legalized marijuana. Our conclusions remain the same, but our assessments of legalization’s effects remain tentative because of limitations in the data. The existing data nevertheless provide a useful perspective on what other states should expect from legalization or related policies.
Chapter 18-1, Law, Administrative

This entry summarizes federal and state/territorial administrative law as it affects security management and emergency management (McKinney 2018) (see also infra Law: Specialized (REAL ID, OBIM, SAFETY Act, and more)).
Polyarteritis Nodosa from Hepatitis B Infection Presenting with Bilateral Basal Ganglia Strokes and Sensorimotor Neuropathy (P5.087)

Objective: We describe a three month course of biopsy proven PAN presenting with sensorimotor neuropathy and bilateral basal ganglia strokes secondary to acute hepatitis B Background: Polyarteritis Nodosa (PAN) is a systemic vasculitis of small and medium sized arteries. It can be idiopathic, however it commonly coincides with Hepatitis B infection. PAN can affect many organ systems and result in multi-organ failure. The most common neurologic manifestation of PAN is mononeuritis multiplex. Rarely strokes occur due to PAN but tend to occur years after onset. Design/Methods: NA Results: A 53 year-old Caucasian male presented with numbness and weakness of his legs and arms with acute hepatitis B infection and epididymitis. He had acquired hepatitis B from sexual contact three months prior. He was found to have bilateral basal ganglia strokes and bilateral infarctions of his spermatic cords and testicles. Pathology of the spermatic cord showed acute vasculitis. His physical exam was significant for bilateral foot drop, bilateral wrist drop, absent deep tendon reflexes throughout, severe distal muscle weakness with mild proximal muscle weakness, and significant distal sensory loss to all modalities. NCS/EMG showed a severe sensorimotor neuropathy. Intracranial CT angiography did not demonstrate any findings concerning for large vessel vasculitis. Labs demonstrated positive hepatitis B antigen, very positive hepatitis B PCR, and borderline positive cardiolipin antibodies. A diagnosis of polyarteritis nodosa was made from testicular artery biopsy and multi-system involvement. The patient was initially treated with high-dose IV solumedrol and transitioned to plasma exchange for the remainder of his stay. After treatment, patient did have improved proximal muscle strength but still required an inpatient rehabilitation stay due to persistent severity of his strength deficits Conclusions: We present a unique case of severe central and peripheral nervous system involvement of PAN. Ischemic strokes are documented in cases of PAN, but tend to occur years after onset. Disclosure: Dr. Arnone has nothing to disclose. Dr. Sultan has nothing to disclose.