cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Viral-based therapies for liver cancer

Background Worldwide, the liver is the commonest site of primary and secondary cancer, yet the large majority of these tumours have hitherto been incurable. Recombinant viral gene therapy provides a novel method of attacking liver tumours, either by delivering noxious agents directly to the target or by replicating inside the tumour to destroy it from within. Methods This review discusses the different types of viral strategy, the viral agents that are employed and the specific methods of gene therapy directed against liver tumours. Results The most promising viral strategies are as follows: (1) suicide gene therapy, in which a prodrug is converted into a toxic form by cancer cells that have been transduced by a gene that encodes for an activating enzyme; (2) replacement of deleted or mutated p 53 gene; (3) immunomodulation of the tumour by cytokines that have been introduced by a viral vector; (4) oncolytic therapy using viruses that have been attenuated by strategic gene mutation but retain their antitumour activity. Three main types of virus have been used in this therapy: retroviruses, which integrate their genome into the chromosomes of dividing cells, adenoviruses, which have high transduction efficiency and are very immunogenic, and herpes simplex viruses, which selectively replicate within the tumour cell and cause death by cell lysis. Suicide gene therapy using either an adenoviral or a retroviral vector has shown promising results against experimental tumours in vivo . The same two vectors have been used to replace mutated p 53 in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer metastases in Phase I clinical studies. Both adenovirus and retrovirus can deliver interleukin-2 to liver cancer cells, with effective reduction in tumour burden and lasting immunity; interleukin-12 has also been investigated in this regard. Viruses are naturally cytolytic, and there is growing interest in engineering them to express differential toxicity to tumour and natural tissue. Herpes simplex virus mutations (hrR3, G207) demonstrate powerful oncolytic activity against colorectal cancer cell lines, and likewise the adenovirus mutant ONYX-015 . Early trials are under way in patients with liver metastases. Conclusions These several strategies offer a new and exciting method of treating liver tumours that are unsuitable for surgical resection or are resistant to other conventional therapies. This is a rapidly developing field, and a great deal of work is required to determine the safest and most effective means of treating liver cancer by means of viral agents.
Stability of the Syndesmosis After Posterior Malleolar Fracture Fixation.

Background:We sought to define the rate of syndesmotic instability after anatomic reduction of the posterior malleolus when posterior stabilization of a trimalleolar or trimalleolar equivalent ankl...
Standards and Assessment: Coherence from the Teacher's Perspective.

We sought to understand how teachers’ perspectives on standards-based instructional practices, classroom assessment, and external testing do or do not show coherence and alignment. Based on survey methods (n = 155) and interviews with a sample of secondary school teachers (n = 9) in a large urban district in the USA, we explored general trends and individual teachers’ viewpoints. Our results suggest that the teachers’ instructional use of standards, classroom assessment preferences, and beliefs about the test-driven system are moderately correlated. Interview data provide insight into reasons teachers hold beliefs that do or do not fit well into a coherent assessment system.
Hip and Knee Kinematics and Kinetics During Landing Tasks After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Objective: To evaluate the current evidence concerning kinematic and kinetic strategies adopted during dynamic landing tasks by patients with anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR). Data Sources: PubMed, Web of Science. Study Selection: Original research articles that evaluated kinematics or kinetics (or both) during a landing task in those with a history of ACLR were included. Data Extraction: Methodologic quality was assessed using the modified Downs and Black checklist. Means and standard deviations for knee or hip (or both) kinematics and kinetics were used to calculate Cohen d effect sizes and corresponding 95% confidence intervals between the injured limb of ACLR participants and contralateral or healthy matched limbs. Data were further stratified by landing tasks, either double- or single-limb landing. A random-effects–model meta-analysis was used to calculate pooled effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals. Data Synthesis: The involved limbs of ACLR patients demonstrated clinically...
Ruptured Mycotic Aneurysm of the Distal Circulation in a Patient with Mucormycosis Without Direct Skull Base Extension: Case Report.

BACKGROUND AND IMPORTANCE Infectious intracranial aneurysms are a rare subset of intracranial aneurysms caused by bacterial, fungal, or viral sources. Intracranial aneurysms of fungal etiology carry a high mortality risk and typically occur in immunocompromised patients via direct extension of skull base infections, or more rarely, after intracranial surgery. CLINICAL PRESENTATION We present the case of a 27-yr-old female with systemic lupus erythematous and primary pulmonary mucormycosis, who suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage from a ruptured fusiform distal middle cerebral artery aneurysm. Despite undergoing a successful extracranial-to-intracranial bypass and aneurysm excision, the patient ultimately died following progressive disseminated infection and a secondary intracranial hemorrhage of unknown etiology. Pathological examination of the excised artery confirmed Mucor infection. CONCLUSION To the best of our knowledge, this case represents one of the first mycotic cerebral aneurysms from mucormycosis in a patient without an underlying skull base infection or previous intracranial surgery. Despite optimal surgical management, clinical outcomes for mycotic cerebral aneurysms are largely dependent on the success of medical therapies at controlling systemic disease.
Embedding User Behavioral Aspect in TF-IDF Like Representation

Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) computes weight for each word in a document which increases proportionally to the number of times the word appears in a specific document but is counterbalanced by the number of times it occurs in the collection of documents. TF-IDF is the state-of-the-art for computing relevancy scores between documents. However, it is based on statistical learning alone and doesn’t directly capture the conceptual contents of the text or the behavioral aspects of the writer. Hence, in this work we show how relatively low dimensional user behavioral vectors extracted from the same text, from which TF-IDF vectors are extracted, can be used to enrich the performance of TF-IDF. We extract User-Concerns embedded in user reviews and append them to TF-IDF vectors to train a deep rating prediction model. Our experiments show that adding such conceptual knowledge to TF-IDF vectors can significantly enhance the performance of TF-IDF vectors by only adding very little complexity.
Other Change Point Models

Many investigations of change point models consider an abrupt change point or multiple abrupt change points in the parameters of various distributions such as the ones discussed in previous chapters of this monograph. One of the reasons for such consideration is that an abrupt change or multiple abrupt change points are commonly occurring changes in many models across from different disciplines.
Utility of Lamb Waves for Near Surface Crack Detection

Ultrasonic waves have a long history in detection of surface breaking cracks. Attempts are being made to use guided waves as a defect detection tool in aging skin structures in aircrafts and in the power generation industries as these waves offer a great advantage over conventional bulks waves. Guided waves can be excited at one position and allowed to propagate considerable distances before attenuating. Depending on the configuration employed for defect detection, reflected or received waveforms give information regarding the integrity of the structure along the line of sight. This description makes the technique look rather simple. Particularly, NDT utilizing Lamb waves is more complex due to the existence of two or more modes at any given frequency. Success was reported by several authors on defect detection using Lamb waves. Brief or no explanation was given on the reasons behind the choice of specific excitation frequencies and incident angles. The emphasis was solely on the defect detection aspects.
The λ-designs with multiplicative duals

Abstract A λ-design is a square (0, 1)-matrix in which the inner product of any two distinct columns is constantly λ, and in which the columns do not all have the same sum. Certain other conditions exclude degeneracies. K. N. Majumdar proved that, if a λ-design has a λ′-design as its dual (transpose), then λ = 1. We prove that the conclusion λ = 1 holds when the dual is a multiplicative design, a design more general than a λ′-design.
Root response to rates of banded nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) fertilisers were applied to early planted, short season (Zea mays L.) on a Grundy silty clay loam to determine the effects of starter fertiliser on plant and root growth and yield. Bray-1 P was 26 kg ha-1. Nitrogen and phosphorus were banded 5 cm beside and below the seed. A factorial arrangement included rates of 0, 22.5, or 45 kg of N and 0, 10, or 20 kg P ha-1. Nitrogen was balanced at 112 kg ha-1 with surface application. Also included were 10 or 20 kg P ha-1 surface broadcast or surface banded (15 cm) over the plant row. The fertiliser mix also contained 1.1 kg zinc (Zn) ha-1,19 kg potassium (K) ha-1, and 5.6 kg sulphur (S) ha-1. One treatment of 22.5 kg N ha-1 and 10 kg P ha-1 was banded without Zn, K, and S. Plant samples and soil cross-section cores were taken for root growth analysis at V6. Ear leaf samples were taken at silking. Banding only N fertiliser at the highest rate increased root growth in the fertiliser band but did not affect total root growth. Banding the highest N and P rates together reduced root growth in the fertiliser band area and throughout the sampled profile. Banding 22.5 kg N ha-1 with 10 or 20 kg P ha-1 had the most positive effect on root growth in the fertiliser band. Ear leaf N and P concentrations were not significantly different with any fertiliser combination or placement. The addition of Zn, K, and S increased root growth 70% in the band area and 24% throughout the sampled root zone. Banding 20 kg P ha-1 increased root growth in the area of application compared to surface application. Total root growth throughout the sampled root zone decreased as P application area increased. Phosphorus uptake was well correlated to root length in 1992 when the soil was in a drying cycle, but not in 1991 when rainfall before sampling was plentiful. In general, the increased root growth in the fertiliser band did not significantly increase the total root length, because the zone of fertiliser application was a very small portion of the total soil volmne explored by roots. However, some individual treatment comparisons did show an increase in root growth throughout the profile. The proper placement of fertiliser at appropriate rates and combinations enhances root growth, improves root uptake efficiency, and increases yield potential
Visual System: Invertebrates

Quality visual systems are so valuable to animals that their early evolution is closely connected to the first appearances of animals with complex body plans. Today’s invertebrates have eyes built on many fundamentally different optical designs; in many species, these eyes outperform those of vertebrates. Compound eyes are the most common and optically diverse and are the most highly developed in their color sense. Lens eyes reach their greatest development in cephalopods, in which they also provide excellent polarization vision. Invertebrate eyes are usually based on rhabdomeric photoreceptors, one of the two major evolutionary lineages of photoreceptor cells. Visual systems of invertebrates have been intensively studied not only for their biological properties but also as models for artificial visual systems.
Experimental drought reduces genetic diversity in the grassland foundation species Bouteloua eriopoda.

Understanding the resistance and resilience of foundation plant species to climate change is a critical issue because the loss of these species would fundamentally reshape communities and ecosystem processes. High levels of population genetic diversity may buffer foundation species against climate disruptions, but the strong selective pressures associated with climatic shifts may also rapidly reduce such diversity. We characterized genetic diversity and its responsiveness to experimental drought in the foundation plant, black grama grass (Bouteloua eriopoda), which dominates many western North American grasslands and shrublands. Previous studies suggested that in arid ecosystems, black grama reproduces largely asexually via stolons, and thus is likely to have low genetic variability, which might limit its potential to respond to climate disruptions. Using genotyping-by-sequencing, we demonstrated unexpectedly high genetic variability among black grama plants in a 1 ha site within the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico, suggesting some level of sexual reproduction. Three years of experimental, growing season drought reduced black grama survival and biomass (the latter by 96%), with clear genetic differentiation (higher FST) between plants succumbing to drought and those remaining alive. Reduced genetic variability in the surviving plants in drought plots indicated that the experimental drought had forced black grama populations through selection bottlenecks. These results suggest that foundation grass species, such as black grama, may experience rapid evolutionary change if future climates include more severe droughts.
A Review of Grassroots Global Governance

In his book Grassroots global governance: Local watershed management experiments and the evolution of sustainable development, Craig Kauffman asks a straightforward question: how did Ecuador’s “Bue...
On multicolor Ramsey numbers of triple system paths of length 3

Let $\mathcal{H}$ be a 3-uniform hypergraph. The multicolor Ramsey number $ r_k(\mathcal{H})$ is the smallest integer $n$ such that every coloring of $ \binom{[n]}{3}$ with $k$ colors has a monochromatic copy of $\mathcal{H}$. Let $ \mathcal{L}$ be the loose 3-uniform path with 3 edges and $ \mathcal{M}$ denote the messy 3-uniform path with 3 edges; that is, let $\mathcal{L} = \{abc, cde, efg\}$ and $\mathcal{M} = \{ abc, bcd, def\}$. In this note we prove $ r_k(\mathcal{L}) < 1.55k$ and $ r_k(\mathcal{M}) < 1.6k$ for $k$ sufficiently large. The former result improves on the bound $ r_k( \mathcal{L}) < 1.975k + 7\sqrt{k}$, which was recently established by {\L}uczak and Polcyn.
Occurrence of vermiform plant-parasitic nematodes in North Dakota corn fields and impact of environmental and soil factors

Plant-parasitic nematodes (PPN) can negatively affect corn production. In this study, incidence and abundance of PPN were assessed in 300 corn fields across 20 counties in North Dakota during 2015 ...
Characteristics of Investment Companies

Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of five types of investment companies: open-end funds, closed-end funds, unit investment trusts, exchange-traded funds, and hedge funds. The primary topics introduced are how investment companies are formed, how they are operated, and how their shares are bought and sold. The chapter also includes a brief treatment of the legal environment in which they operate.
Structure-based discovery of the endocrine disrupting effects of hydraulic fracturing chemicals as novel androgen receptor antagonists

Abstract Hydraulic fracturing (HF) technology is increasingly utilized for oil and gas extraction operations. The widespread use of HF has led to concerns of negative impacts on both the environment and human health. Indeed, the potential endocrine disrupting impacts of HF chemicals is one such knowledge gap. Herein, we used structure-based molecular docking to assess the binding affinities of 60 HF chemicals to the human androgen receptor (AR). Five HF chemicals had relatively high predicted AR binding affinity, suggesting the potential for endocrine disruption. We next assessed androgenic and antiandrogenic activities of these chemicals in vitro. Of the five candidate AR ligands, only Genapol®X–100 significantly modified AR transactivation. To better understand the structural effect of Genapol®X–100 on the potency of AR inhibition, we compared the antiandrogenic activity of Genapol®X–100 with that of its structurally similar chemical, Genapol®X–080. Interestingly, both Genapol®X–100 and Genapol®X–080 elicited an antagonistic effect at AR with 20% relative inhibitory concentrations of 0.43 and 0.89 μM, respectively. Furthermore, we investigated the mechanism of AR inhibition of these two chemicals in vitro, and found that both Genapol®X–100 and Genapol®X–080 inhibited AR through a noncompetitive mechanism. The effect of these two chemicals on the expression of AR responsive genes, e.g. PSA, KLK2, and AR, was also investigated. Genapol®X–100 and Genapol®X–080 altered the expression of these genes. Our findings heighten awareness of endocrine disruption by HF chemicals and provide evidence that noncompetitive antiandrogenic Genapol®X–100 could cause adverse endocrine health effects.
The contribution of orthographic input, phonological skills, and rise time discrimination to the learning of non-native phonemic contrasts

Although learning second language phonology is a difficult task, orthographic input may support the learning of difficult sound contrasts through a process known as orthographic facilitation. We extended this research by examining the effects of orthographic input together with individual differences in three different phonological learning processes, namely, the production of, perception of, and memorization of words containing three Marathi phonemic contrasts (i.e., [k-kh], [], and []) by native English speakers. Moreover, because the [] and [] contrasts were particularly challenging in previous auditory training studies (e.g., Polka, 1991), we used cross-modal training in order to enhance learning by pairing auditory perception tasks with visual orthographic information, the amplification of relevant acoustic cues, and proprioceptive descriptions to the articulation of target phonemes. Results showed significant learning from the pre- to the posttest across tasks and contrasts, supporting the effectiveness of cross-modal training. Furthermore, incongruent orthographic input could inhibit perception, and orthographic input generally supported memory for word pronunciations. Moreover, individual differences regarding phonological skills and nonspeech auditory discrimination predicted participants’ success in different phonological learning processes. These results provide a detailed picture of the complexity between different aspects of second language phonological learning and cross-modal training.
Comparative effectiveness of direct admission and admission through emergency departments for children: a randomized stepped wedge study protocol.

Approximately 2 million children are hospitalized each year in the United States, with more than three-quarters of non-elective hospitalizations admitted through emergency departments (EDs). Direct admission, defined as admission to hospital without first receiving care in the hospital’s ED, may offer benefits for patients and healthcare systems in quality, timeliness, and experience of care. While ED utilization patterns are well studied, there is a paucity of research comparing the effectiveness of direct and ED admissions. The overall aim of this project is to compare the effectiveness of a standardized direct admission approach to admission beginning in the ED for hospitalized children. We will conduct a stepped wedge cluster randomized controlled trial at 3 structurally and geographically diverse hospitals. A total of 70 primary and urgent care practice sites in the hospitals’ catchment areas will be randomized to a time point when they will begin participation in the multi-stakeholder informed direct admission program. This crossover will be unidirectional and occur at 4 time points, 6 months apart, over a 24-month implementation period. Our primary outcome will be the timeliness of clinical care provision. Secondary outcomes include (i) parent-reported experience of care, (ii) unanticipated transfer to the intensive care unit within 6 h of hospital admission, and (iii) rapid response calls within 6 h of hospital admission. We anticipate that 190 children and adolescents will be directly admitted, with 1506 admitted through EDs. Analyses will compare the effectiveness of direct admission to admission through the ED and will evaluate the causal effect of implementing a direct admission program using linear regression with random effects for referring practice clusters and time period fixed effects. We will further examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects based on hypotheses specified a priori. In addition, we will conduct a mixed-methods process evaluation to assess reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of our direct admission intervention. Our study represents the first randomized controlled trial to compare the effectiveness of direct admission to admission through the ED for pediatric patients. Our scientific approach, pairing a stepped wedge design with a multi-level assessment of barriers to and facilitators of implementation, will generate valuable data about how positive findings can be reproduced across other healthcare systems. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04192799 . Registered on December 10, 2019).
Neuroimaging for Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension Turned on Its Side

Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is a leading identifiable cause of a new daily persistent headache, typically either orthostatic or developing in the latter half of the day. Many other symptoms may be present, and the marked variability in phenotype between patients often leads to a delay in diagnosis. For many patients, initial diagnostic imaging includes spinal imaging with highly T2-weighted MRI or magnetic resonance (MR) myelography based on early small case series suggesting that spinal MRI correlated well with findings on conventional CT myelogram.1,2 However, even in the most sophisticated and experienced centers, the rate of finding a leak on spinal MRI among patients clinically suspected of having a CSF leak is relatively low when prospectively collected and evaluated.3
Patient-Reported and End-of-Life Outcomes Among Adults With Lung Cancer Receiving Targeted Therapy in a Clinical Trial of Early Integrated Palliative Care: A Secondary Analysis.

Abstract Context Targeted therapy has revolutionized lung cancer treatment and markedly increased survival, though data are lacking on patient-reported and end-of-life (EOL) outcomes among patients receiving targeted therapy. Objectives This study aimed to compare quality of life (QOL), symptoms, prognostic communication, and EOL care between patients receiving targeted therapy and patients with lung cancer without targetable mutations. Methods In this secondary analysis of a randomized trial of early palliative care in advanced lung cancer (n=154), we compared change in QOL and symptoms (per the Functional Assessment of Cancer Treatment [FACT]-Lung scale) over 24 weeks among patients with lung cancer receiving targeted therapy versus those without targetable mutations using linear mixed effects models, adjusted for receipt of palliative care, age and gender. We also compared prognostic communication and decedents’ EOL health care utilization using logistic regression, adjusted for palliative care. Results Compared to individuals without targetable mutations, patients receiving targeted therapy (n=35) reported greater improvements in QOL (FACT-General B=0.46; 95% CI=0.19, 0.73) and symptoms (FACT-Lung Cancer Subscale B=0.12; 95% CI=0.03, 0.20) over time, independent of palliative care. Patients receiving targeted therapy were also more likely to report they rarely discussed prognosis with their clinicians (OR=2.59, 95% CI=1.01, 6.63) and were more likely to receive cancer-directed therapy in their last 14 days of life (OR=14.98, 95% CI=4.08, 54.96). Conclusions Relative to patients without targetable mutations, patients with lung cancer who receive targeted therapy experience improved QOL and symptoms, are less likely to discuss prognosis early in their illness course, and more likely to continue treatment until death and die in the hospital.
U.S. COVID-19 State Government Public Dashboards: An Expert Review.

Background In the United States, all 50 state governments deployed publicly viewable dashboards regarding the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to track and respond to the pandemic. States dashboards, however, reflect idiosyncratic design practices based on their content, function, and visual design and platform. There has been little guidance for what state dashboards should look like or contain, leading to significant variation. Objectives The primary objective of our study was to catalog how information, system function, and user interface were deployed across the COVID-19 state dashboards. Our secondary objective was to group and characterize the dashboards based on the information we collected using clustering analysis. Methods For preliminary data collection, we developed a framework to first analyze two dashboards as a group and reach agreement on coding. We subsequently doubled coded the remaining 48 dashboards using the framework and reviewed the coding to reach total consensus. Results All state dashboards included maps and graphs, most frequently line charts, bar charts, and histograms. The most represented metrics were total deaths, total cases, new cases, laboratory tests, and hospitalization. Decisions on how metrics were aggregated and stratified greatly varied across dashboards. Overall, the dashboards were very interactive with 96% having at least some functionality including tooltips, zooming, or exporting capabilities. For visual design and platform, we noted that the software was dominated by a few major organizations. Our cluster analysis yielded a six-cluster solution, and each cluster provided additional insights about how groups of states engaged in specific practices in dashboard design. Conclusion Our study indicates that states engaged in dashboard practices that generally aligned with many of the goals set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Essential Public Health Services. We highlight areas where states fall short of these expectations and provide specific design recommendations to address these gaps.
Evaluation of Clinical Decision Support to Reduce Sedative-Hypnotic Prescribing in Older Adults.

Objective We sought to characterize the performance of inpatient and outpatient computerized clinical decision support (CDS) alerts aimed at reducing inappropriate benzodiazepine and nonbenzodiazepine sedative medication prescribing in older adults 18 months after implementation. Methods We reviewed the performance of two CDS alerts in the outpatient and inpatient settings in 2019. To examine the alerts' effectiveness, we analyzed metrics including overall alert adherence, provider-level adherence, and reasons for alert trigger and override. Results In 2019, we identified a total of 14,534 and 4,834 alerts triggered in the outpatient and inpatient settings, respectively. Providers followed only 1% of outpatient and 3% of inpatient alerts. Most alerts were ignored (68% outpatient and 60% inpatient), while providers selected to override the remaining alerts. In each setting, the top 2% of clinicians were responsible for approximately 25% of all ignored or overridden alerts. However, a small proportion of clinicians (2% outpatient and 4% inpatient) followed the alert at least half of the time and accounted for a disproportionally large fraction of the total followed alerts. Our analysis of the free-text comments revealed that many alerts were to continue outpatient prescriptions or for situational anxiety. Conclusion Our findings highlight the importance of evaluation of CDS performance after implementation. We found large variation in response to the inpatient and outpatient alerts, both with respect to follow and ignore rates. Reevaluating the alert design by providing decision support by indication may be more helpful and may reduce alert fatigue.
Finding the Spark.

It began, as with many good things, at a happy hour. Adam Cohen, a young assistant professor asked whether rhodopsins could be used to optically sense voltage. In the heady days of 2009, channel rh...
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Systems Engineering

The resurgence of artificial intelligence has been fueled by the availability of the present generation of high-performance computational tools and techniques. This book is designed to provide introductory guidance to artificial intelligence, particularly from the perspective of digital systems engineering. Artificial Intelligence and Digital Systems Engineering provides a general introduction to the origin of AI and covers the wide application areas and software and hardware interfaces. It will prove to be instrumental in helping new users expand their knowledge horizon to the growing market of AI tools, as well as showing how AI is applicable to the development of games, simulation, and consumer products, particularly using artificial neural networks. This book is for the general reader, university students, and instructors of industrial, production, civil, mechanical, and manufacturing engineering. It will also be of interest to managers of technology, projects, business, plants, and operations.
Application of the Technique of Brain Microdialysis in Determining the Mechanisms of Action of Neurotoxicants

Publisher Summary This chapter describes application of brain microdialysis technique in determining the mechanisms of action of neurotoxicants. Microdialysis is the technique of passing an artificial physiological buffer through a semipermeable membrane embedded within tissue to enable the fractional recovery of substances within the tissue and/or the administration of substances to that tissue. Other important uses for microdialysis in research involving methamphetamine (METH)/amphetamine (AMPH) neurotoxicity include: determining the role of neurotoxic substances, such as reactive oxidative species (ROS) or nitric oxide (NO) in the caudate/putamen (CPU), directly exposing CPU to compounds that may either protect against or potentiate neurotoxicity, determining the brain extracellular levels of AMPH during multiple administrations of AMPH, and continuously exposing either the CPU or substantia nigra/ventral tegmentum to neurotrophic factors or antisense RNA to neurotrophic factors during METH/AMPH exposure to determine the role of different growth factors in the neurotoxicity. This chapter describes in detail previous, present, and future applications of in vivo microdialysis for determining the mechanisms involved in the neurotoxicity produced by neurotoxicants. The use of microdialysis for investigating the mechanisms by which AMPH and METH produce neurotoxicity is also emphasized.
Pd(0)/PR3-Catalyzed Intermolecular Arylation of sp3 C−H Bonds

Pd(0)-catalyzed intermolecular arylation of sp3 C−H bonds has been achieved using PR3/ArI. This protocol can be used to arylate a variety of aliphatic carboxylic acid derivatives, including a number of bioactive drug molecules. The use of fluorinated aryl iodides also allows for the introduction of fluorine into a molecule of interest.
The effect of farming practices on reducing excess nitrogen fertilizer use

A nitrogen balance model is used to investigate the adoption of a crop rotation and the limitation on the application of nitrogen fertilizer to reduce excess nitrogen. For a farmer initially planting corn continuously, the adoption of a soybeans-corn rotation will have a smaller compliance cost but it will not eliminate the excess application of nitrogen fertilizer under a relatively low nitrogen fertilizer to corn price ratio. An explicit limitation on nitrogen fertilizer use would be needed to achieve this objective. Limiting nitrogen fertilizer use on cropland susceptible to a high potential for leaching will have a smaller compliance cost than on cropland with a moderate potential for leaching.
RADAR | Precipitation Radar

Precipitation radars scan their vicinity to determine the location, intensity, and structure of showers and storms. Several different radar variables are used to determine different aspects of the precipitation. Radar reflectivity measures the number and size of particles. In radars that transmit and receive horizontally as well as vertically polarized energy, differential reflectivity measures the shape of particles and specific differential phase measures the associated liquid water content. Information from the different variables is used to determine hydrometeor type and to estimate rain rate.
Sentence-level Rewriting Detection

Writers usually need iterations of revisions and edits during their writings. To better understand the process of rewriting, we need to know what has changed between the revisions. Prior work mainly focuses on detecting corrections within sentences, which is at the level of words or phrases. This paper proposes to detect revision changes at the sentence level. Looking at revisions at a higher level allows us to have a different understanding of the revision process. This paper also proposes an approach to automatically detect sentence revision changes. The proposed approach shows high accuracy in an evaluation using first and final draft essays from an undergraduate writing class.
Proximal Newton-type Methods for Minimizing Convex Objective Functions in Composite Form

We generalize Newton-type methods for minimizing smooth functions to handle a sum of two convex functions: a smooth function and a nonsmooth function with a simple proximal mapping. We show that the resulting proximal Newton-type methods inherit the desirable convergence behavior of Newton-type methods for minimizing smooth functions, even when search directions are computed inexactly. Many popular methods tailored to problems arising in bioinformatics, signal processing, and statistical learning are special cases of proximal Newton-type methods, and our analysis yields new convergence results for some of these methods.
Be Not Afraid of Change: Time to Eliminate the Corporate Practice of Medicine Doctrine

This article argues that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine is a physician-centric, guild type doctrine that is misplaced in the present incarnation of the American healthcare system and that does nothing to improve quality, efficiency, or accountability. The paper focuses on three key reasons that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine should be laid to rest. First, the motives for creating the corporate practice of medicine doctrine are long gone, as physicians have not been able to operate as a guild of autonomous providers of healthcare for quite some time. Second, it is disingenuous to pretend that physicians are not influenced by financial gain, which is evidenced by the federal and state prohibitions against physician self-referral and by the exodus from Medicare and Medicaid that is the result of decreasing reimbursement. Third, the corporate practice of medicine doctrine does nothing to advance error-free, high quality healthcare and may stand in the way of improving the quality of healthcare. Recent reports by the Institute of Medicine demonstrate and emphasize this point. In order to overcome the many manifestations of the state-based corporate practice of medicine doctrine, this article proposes federal legislation to effectuate alignment.
Using measures of semantic relatedness for word sense disambiguation

This paper generalizes the Adapted Lesk Algorithm of Banerjee and Pedersen (2002) to a method of word sense disambiguation based on semantic relatedness. This is possible since Lesk's original algorithm (1986) is based on gloss overlaps which can be viewed as a measure of semantic relatedness. We evaluate a variety of measures of semantic relatedness when applied to word sense disambiguation by carrying out experiments using the English lexical sample data of SENSEVAL-2. We find that the gloss overlaps of Adapted Lesk and the semantic distance measure of Jiang and Conrath (1997) result in the highest accuracy.
Efficient support for pipelining in software distributed shared memory systems

Though more difficult to program, distributed-memory parallel machines provide greater scalability than their shared-memory counterparts. Software Distributed Shared Memory (SDSM) systems provide the abstraction of shared memory on a distributed machine. While SDSMs provide an attractive programming model, they currently can not efficiently support all classes of scientific applications. One such class are those with recurrences that cause dependencies across processors or nodes. A popular solution to such problems is to use pipelining, which breaks the computation into blocks; each processor performs the computation of a block, which enables the next processor in the pipeline to compute its corresponding block. Once the pipeline is filled, the computation of blocks proceeds in parallel. While pipelining is useful, it is not efficiently supported by current SDSM systems.This paper presents an approach to integrating pipelining into SDSM systems. We describe our design and implementation of one-way pipelining in a SDSM. The key idea is to retain the shared-memory model, but design the extensions such that the execution will mimic what would be done in an explicit message-passing program. We show that one-way pipelining is superior to the two most common ways to program pipelined applications, which are distributed locks and explicit matrix transposition. Finally, we show that one-way pipelining is competitive with a hand-coded, explicit message-passing program.
An experimental and analytical investigation of the rail shear-test method as applied to composite materials

This report presents the results from an experimental and analytical investigation of the stress distributions occurring in a rail shear test. The effects of nonuniform stresses induced by differential thermal expansion, rail flexibility and specimen aspect ratio on measured shear modulus and ultimate strength of composite laminates are shown. A two-dimensional linearly elastic finite-element model was used to analytically determine how various geometric parameters influenced the magnitude and distribution of inplane normal and shear stresses in a tensile-rail-shear specimen. Rail shear tests were conducted at room temperature and 589 K (600°F) on selected graphite-polyimide composite laminates using two titanium rail configurations. The analysis and test methods are discussed, and the results of the effects of the various parameters on shear modulus and ultimate strength are presented.
Regulation Of Ethylene Synthesis In Maize Root Responses To Stress

The role and regulation of ethylene synthesis was investigated in maize roots subjected to stresses that inhibit elongation, promote radial swelling and promote formation of aerenchyma. Physical impedance was imposed by compression of the growing medium around unemerged seedlings at controlled pressures, and ethylene production rates by intact seedlings were assayed with the aid of a continuous flow system. Ethylene production increased before effects on growth were observed, and AVG plus STS restored root extension to 90% of control values. One hour after application of 100 kPa pressure to the medium, ACC and conjugated ACC levels and ACC synthase and ACC oxygenase activities all had increased sharply. Transient -N treatment increased sensitivity to ethylene and initiated formation of aerenchyma. Effects of both -N and hypoxia treatments were blocked with Ag+. Both treatments induced synthesis of cellulase which was prevented by AVG. Perception of impedance stress and effects of -N on ethylene binding capacity and affinity are being studied.
The Evolution of the California Blueberry Industry: A Social Network Analysis Approach

In this paper, I estimate local and industry peer eects related to the adoption of blueberries as a crop among California growers. I employ publicly available data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation for the years 2001 through 2011. Geographic and inter-industry network analyses complement the econometric estimation and provide greater insight into the patterns of peer eects. Industry peer eects (i.e. those connections to other growers through growing crops
Women's Rights and Religion--The Missing Element in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human RIghts

Many countries have recently experienced heated internal discussions over religion and state matters. These issues indeed tend to be exceptionally poignant, touching the very essence of peoples’ private beliefs and generally generating intense social and political arguments. One of the most controversial debates revolves around the tension between the protection of women’s equality and their religious freedoms. A rigorous expression of it takes place in the European context surrounding the wearing of veils, headscarves, and other modest garments by Muslim women (all of which are claimed to be protected as a manifestation of the right to freedom of religion). Several bans on the wearing of such religious attire have spawned a vast feminist literature laying out robust arguments of both opponents and proponents of the bans. Both sides make strong claims. On the one hand, some introduce sharp criticism of European courts' decisions to endorse the bans. The claim is that the rulings violate women’s religious rights as well as other rights (including the right to personal autonomy, the right of access to education and the right to employment). On the other hand, some assert that a secular approach - that would support and approve the bans - is vital for the protection of gender equality in our ever-growing multicultural democratic societies. It is in this context that this paper discusses how the European Court of Human Rights has handled the dilemma and dismissed the many claims of religious women. It critically analyzes the Court’s assessment in recent cases and argues against the questionable absence of a comprehensive legal analysis of the issues at stake in the Court’s judgments. The paper points to the Court's failure to fully engage with the complexity of the debate. Ultimately, it advances the argument that the Court’s approach stems from the current construction of religion as law’s “other”, i.e. as an extralegal field, incontestable in the conventional sense. In simple words, the law fails to properly handle religion and religious aspirations of women in the public sphere. As shown, unfortunately, not only religion is constructed as law’s other, but in the context of women's rights, the otherness is exacerbated. Legal demands involving women’s religious rights create a legal field so ‘sensitive’ and controversial, that the Court seems to be avoiding serious discussion and instead turns to make unfortunate generalizations. For the ECtHR, such course of rulings is troubling and even dangerous, particularly in light of the effect of its judgments on national courts, as well as on international human rights tribunals and institutions.
How to Take Into Account Model Inaccuracy When Estimating the Uncertainty of the Result of Data Processing

In engineering design, it is important to guarantee that the values of certain quantities such as stress level, noise level, vibration level, etc., stay below a certain threshold in all possible situations, i.e., for all possible combinations of the corresponding internal and external parameters. Usually, the number of possible combinations is so large that it is not possible to physically test the system for all these combinations. Instead, we form a computer model of the system, and test this model. In this testing, we need to take into account that the computer models are usually approximate. In this paper, we show that the existing techniques for taking model uncertainty into account overestimate the uncertainty of the results. We also show how we can get more accurate estimates.
Ethical Challenges for Mediators around the Globe: An Australian Perspective

Like much of the western world, in Australia, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is an integral aspect of the modern legal system, and mediation is used extensively to resolve civil disputes in courts and tribunals. However, what justice means in the mediation context is contested. The widespread use of mediation and the increase in the number of practitioners from various disciplines means there is a diversity of views on issues of justice, which are outlined in this Article. Equally, what constitutes ethical practice for mediators is a vexing question. There are no clear practical guidelines for mediators on the many questions about what ethical behavior and justice mean for mediators. While professional codes and standards are designed to assist mediators in resolving ethical issues, dilemmas still arise because codes do not cover all issues that occur; they sometimes contain competing/conflicting values, and they may also conflict with the mediators’ personal values. This Article explores the ethical challenges mediators face, including how they identify and respond to those challenges. Justice in mediation is examined through the lens of ethical considerations for mediators. In a research study, we asked experienced mediators to respond to case scenarios containing a range of ethical and practical issues. As expected, there was some uniformity in responses, but—more revealing—participants diverged significantly on a number of matters. The Australian mediators’ responses indicate that despite the agreed critical role of self-determination in mediation, mediators have individual moral compasses. These compasses lead mediators to a variety of responses to ethical and practical challenges, and to different views about what constitutes justice in mediation. Although the research is based in Australia, the findings have resonance for mediators globally, including in the United States. Overall, these research findings suggest the question of what constitutes ethical mediation practice warrants further research, reflection, and discussion.
Multiscale adaptive representation of signals: I. the basic framework

We introduce a framework for designing multi-scale, adaptive, shift-invariant frames and bi-frames for representing signals. The new framework, called AdaFrame, improves over dictionary learning-based techniques in terms of computational efficiency at inference time. It improves classical multi-scale basis such as wavelet frames in terms of coding efficiency. It provides an attractive alternative to dictionary learning-based techniques for low level signal processing tasks, such as compression and denoising, as well as high level tasks, such as feature extraction for object recognition. Connections with deep convolutional networks are also discussed. In particular, the proposed framework reveals a drawback in the commonly used approach for visualizing the activations of the intermediate layers in convolutional networks, and suggests a natural alternative.