cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A Particle Filter without Dynamics for Robust 3D Face Tracking

Particle filtering is a very popular technique for sequential state estimation problem. However its convergence greatly depends on the balance between the number of particles/hypotheses and the fitness of the dynamic model. In particular, in cases where the dynamics are complex or poorly modeled, thousands of particles are usually required for real applications. This paper presents a hybrid sampling solution that combines the sampling in the image feature space and in the state space via RANSAC and particle filtering, respectively. We show that the number of particles can be reduced to dozens for a full 3D tracking problem which contains considerable noise of different types. For unexpected motions, a specific set of dynamics may not exist, but it is avoided in our algorithm. The theoretical convergence proof [1, 3] for particle filtering when integrating RANSAC is difficult, but we address this problem by analyzing the likelihood distribution of particles from a real tracking example. The sampling efficiency (on the more likely areas) is much higher by the use of RANSAC. We also discuss the tracking quality measurement in the sense of entropy or statistical testing. The algorithm has been applied to the problem of 3D face pose tracking with changing moderate or intense expressions. We demonstrate the validity of our approach with several video sequences acquired in an unstructured environment.
Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura

Platelet thrombus formation in small vessels is triggered by certain stimuli, including vascular injury, primary platelet agglutination, or both. The formation and dissolution of platelet thrombi is modulated by proteolysis, plasma factors, PGI2 synthesis and stability, and immune mechanisms. Some recent evidence now suggests that there is a subset of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) patients possessing a specific platelet agglutinating factor that triggers the intravascular platelet agglutination. Identification and classification of TTP patients into subgroups with common triggering agents, and further clarification of the role of modifying factors will enable us to understand the disease better and to improve therapy.
A Review of “Creating the Academic Commons: Guidelines for Learning, Teaching, and Research”

Thomas H. P. Gould is not a librarian, but he understands well the world of academic libraries. A professor of mass communications at Kansas State University, he has written Creating the Academic C...
Continuum Modeling of Stress-Driven Surface Diffusion in Strained Elastic Materials

The free energy of a deformable crystal is assumed to consist of elastic strain energy and surface energy, and the chemical potential for surface diffusion at constant temperature is obtained under this assumption. The result is applied in considering the phenomena of instability of a flat surface in a stressed material under fluctuations in surface shape, and the development of surface roughness due to the proximity of misfit dislocations to the free surface of the material.
DPD Simulation of Protein Conformations: From α‑Helices to β‑Structures

We suggest a coarse-grained model for DPD simulations of polypeptides in solutions. The model mimics hydrogen bonding that stabilizes α-helical and β-structures using dissociable Morse bonds between quasiparticles representing the peptide groups amenable to hydrogen bonding. We demonstrate the capabilities of the model by simulating transitions between coil-like, globular, α-helical, and β-hairpin configurations of model peptides, varying Morse potential parameters, the hydrophobicities of residue side chains, and pH, which determines the charges of residue side chains. We construct a model triblock polypeptide mimicking the sequence of residues α-synuclein at two different pHs. The conformations of this model polypeptide depend on pH similarly to the behavior observed experimentally. The suggested approach to accounting for hydrogen bond formation within the general DPD framework may make the DPD method a competitive alternative to CGMD for modeling equilibrium and dynamic properties of proteins and polypeptides, especially during their transport in confined environments.
Dissecting Exciton Dynamics Pathways in Electronic Multidimensional Spectroscopy by Pulse Polarizations

A simulation study shows how coherent exciton dynamics in photosynthetic complexes may be revealed in two-dimensional photon-echo signals by specific laser pulse polarization configurations.Dynamics of single-exciton density matrix cohenrences shows strong signatures of excitonic coherences prior to energy relaxation
A Model for Thunderstorm Activity: Use of the Compound Negative Binomial- Positive Binomial Distribution

SUMMARY A probability model for the number of thunderstorms occurring within a thunderstorm event (one or more thunderstorms) is presented. The model is applied to data gathered during the summer months at Cape Kennedy.
Significant Cooperativity Between Ruthenium and Silicon in Catalytic Transformations of an Isocyanide

Complexes [PhBP3]RuH(η3-H2SiRR′) (RR′ = Me,Ph, 1a; RR′ = Ph2, 1b; RR′ = Et2, 1c) react with XylNC to form carbene complexes [PhBP3]Ru(H)═[C(H)(N(Xyl)(η2-H–SiRR′))] (2a–c; previously reported for 2a,b). Reactions of 1a–c with XylNC were further investigated to assess how metal complexes with multiple M–H–Si bonds can mediate transformations of unsaturated substrates. Complex 2a eliminates an N-methylsilacycloindoline product (3a) that results from hydrosilylation, hydrogenation, and benzylic C–H activation of XylNC. Turnover was achieved in a pseudocatalytic manner by careful control of the reaction conditions. Complex 1c mediates a catalytic isocyanide reductive coupling to furnish an alkene product (4) in a transformation that has precedent only in stoichiometric processes. The formations of 3a and 4 were investigated with deuterium labeling experiments, KIE and other kinetic studies, and by examining the reactivity of XylNC with an η3-H2SiMeMes complex (1d) to form a C–H activated complex (6). Complex 6...
Endoscopic resection of inverted papilloma: University of Miami experience.

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of endoscopically resecting paranasal sinus inverted papillomas at a tertiary medical center.MethodsOver a 9-year period, 51 ...
EMT Reversal in human cancer cells after IR knockdown in hyperinsulinemic mice

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is associated with increased cancer risk and cancer-related mortality. Data herein show that we generated an immunodeficient hyperinsulinemic mouse by crossing the Rag1(-/-) mice, which have no mature B or T lymphocytes, with the MKR mouse model of T2D to generate the Rag1(-/-) (Rag/WT) and Rag1(-/-)/MKR(+/+) (Rag/MKR) mice. The female Rag/MKR mice are insulin resistant and have significantly higher nonfasting plasma insulin levels compared with the Rag/WT controls. Therefore, we used these Rag/MKR mice to investigate the role of endogenous hyperinsulinemia on human cancer progression. In this study, we show that hyperinsulinemia in the Rag/MKR mice increases the expression of mesenchymal transcription factors, TWIST1 and ZEB1, and increases the expression of the angiogenesis marker, vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA). We also show that silencing the insulin receptor (IR) in the human LCC6 cancer cells leads to decreased tumor growth and metastases, suppression of mesenchymal markers vimentin, SLUG, TWIST1 and ZEB1, suppression of angiogenesis markers, VEGFA and VEGFD, and re-expression of the epithelial marker, E-cadherin. The data in this paper demonstrate that IR knockdown in primary tumors partially reverses the growth-promoting effects of hyperinsulinemia as well as highlighting the importance of the insulin receptor signaling pathway in cancer progression, and more specifically in epithelial-mesenchymal transition.
‘The Uttermost Parts of Their Maps’: Frontiers of Gender

According to Plutarch, some historiographers of his time dismissed ‘the uttermost parts of their maps,’ saying that these remote foreign regions were ‘unnavigable, rude, full of venomous beasts, Scythian ice, and frozen seas’ and therefore unworthy of scholarly attention; but by doing so, adds Plutarch, the historiographers were merely trying to hide either the limits of their knowledge or their utter ignorance.1 Plutarch believed that it is preferable to rely on doubtful and spurious material than to ignore it altogether.2 Therefore, mythology provides information for his biographies because such material sheds light on the Greek and Roman character. Likewise, I propose that Amazons provide a worthwhile point of departure for a study of cross-cultural encounters in Shakespeare. Through these figures, Shakespeare takes us to the frontiers of culture and gender and introduces cultural difference as a form of gender difference.
Habermas and the Prospects of Critical Theory

The account of Habermas’s communication theory developed in Chapters 3 and 4 follows the various stages of his attempt to answer the two fundamental problems faced by the critical theory of society: the problem of normative foundations and the problem of the relation of theory to practice. These two problems arose in the context of what I have called the problematic of rationality outlined in Chapter 2. This problematic centres on the relationship between the concept of reason and the actual socially and historically embodied rationality characteristic of capitalist society. Habermas addresses this relationship directly in The Theory of Communicative Action. The basic strategy Habermas adopts in the name of a reconstruction of critical social theory is to move the problematic of rationality from the context of Marx’s paradigm of production to the context of the paradigm of communication. Harbermas argues that the development of the problematic of rationality from Marx through Lukacs to the Frankfurt School, which I discussed in Chapter 2, remains within the confines of what he calls ‘the philosophy of consciousness’. He attempts to show how each of the above theorists relies, either implicitly or explicitly, on a philosophical concept of substantive reason, which includes the ideas of autonomy and freedom, for the norms in terms of which they are able to criticise the actual losses of autonomy and freedom entailed by the empirical and historical processes of capitalist rationalisation.
Blending Education and Polymer Science: Semiautomated Creation of a Thermodynamic Property Database

Structured databases of chemical and physical properties play a central role in the everyday research activities of scientists and engineers. In materials science, researchers and engineers turn to these databases to quickly query, compare, and aggregate various properties, thereby allowing for the development or application of new materials. The vast majority of these databases have been generated manually, through decades of labor-intensive harvesting of information from the literature, yet while there are many examples of commonly used databases, a significant number of important properties remain locked within the tables, figures, and text of publications. The question addressed in our work is whether and to what extent the process of data collection can be automated. Students of the physical sciences and engineering are often confronted with the challenge of finding and applying property data from the literature, and a central aspect of their education is to develop the critical skills needed to iden...
Regulation of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment: The USA

The fate of pharmaceuticals in the environment has been studied for more than 50 years, with the presence and potential effects acknowledged shortly thereafter [1–5]. It has gradually become apparent that risk assessments developed for the usual chemical contaminants cannot be applied carte blanche to pharmaceuticals, because they are developed to be highly active and specific in biological systems at low levels [6–9]. Therefore, when applying risk assessment models to the environmental assessment of pharmaceuticals, regulators must take into account not only the complexity of the entity to be protected (the ecosystem at large) but also the complexity of the regulated article (pharmaceuticals).
A Micromechanical Viscoelastic Constitutive Model for Native and Engineered Anterior Cruciate Ligaments

Ligaments and tendons are soft tissues that are largely composed of aligned collagen and elastin. Due to this microstructure, they have nonlinear viscoelastic responses. We have developed a micromechanical constitutive model to capture the inhomogeneous, nonlinear viscoelastic properties of native ACL and of a tissue engineered ligament graft upon explantation. This constitutive model incorporates a viscoelastic collagen network and a nonlinear elastic elastin network. The model captures the nonlinear viscoelastic responses of these tissues using a limited number of parameters that can be interpreted in terms of physical properties of the collagen fibers and elastin. The parameters used to model the tissue engineered ligament response are similar to those found for the native ACL, indicating that the microstructure of the tissue engineered ligament graft has developed in vivo to match that of the native ACL.
Stereotactic Radiosurgery for the Treatment of Chronic Intractable Pain: A Systematic Review.

Background Since the advent of neuromodulation, the role and efficacy of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for chronic pain has not been carefully scrutinized. Objective To perform a systematic review to evaluate the clinical efficacy, both short- and long-term, of SRS for the treatment of chronic intractable pain. Methods A systematic search in PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO was performed using keywords and controlled vocabulary. The search included peer-reviewed articles reporting clinical outcomes of SRS for chronic pain with a minimum 3-mo follow-up for nonmalignant and 1 mo for malignant pain. Results Six articles (113 patients) were evaluated on the basis of radiation target (thalamus vs pituitary) and pain etiology (malignant vs nonmalignant). Across studies, at least 35% of patients were reported to have lasting significant pain relief. By cohort, clinical success was achieved in 51% of pituitary SRS, at least 23% of thalamic SRS, 39% of nonmalignant, and at least 33% of malignant pain patients. Adverse events were noted in 21% of patients; the majority related to hormonal deficits from pituitary SRS. Conclusion Despite decreased utilization, SRS is effective for select patients with chronic pain and is associated with an acceptable complication rate. Pituitary SRS is superior in patients with cancer-related pain (87% success), while thalamic SRS is superior in patients with nonmalignant pain (65% success). Because reports of SRS for pain largely stem from a period before the common use of neuromodulatory and intrathecal therapies, the efficacy in patients who fail such therapies remains unclear and requires further characterization.
Widespread and targeted gene expression by systemic AAV vectors: Production, purification, and administration

We recently developed novel AAV capsids for efficient and noninvasive gene transfer across the central and peripheral nervous systems. In this protocol, we describe how to produce and systemically administer AAV-PHP viruses to label and/or genetically manipulate cells in the mouse nervous system and organs including the heart. The procedure comprises three separate stages: AAV production, intravenous delivery, and evaluation of transgene expression. The protocol spans eight days, excluding the time required to assess gene expression, and can be readily adopted by laboratories with standard molecular and cell culture capabilities. We provide guidelines for experimental design and choosing the capsid, cargo, and viral dose appropriate for the experimental aims. The procedures outlined here are adaptable to diverse biomedical applications, from anatomical and functional mapping to gene expression, silencing, and editing.
Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Pathway in Renal Fibrosis

Renal fibrosis is defined as the excessive deposition and modification of extracellular matrix (ECM) in the renal parenchyma in response to injury and inflammation, resulting in renal function loss...
The Class Action Awakens

For the past nine terms the Supreme Court has increased its focus on the law of class actions. In doing so, the Court has revised the law to better accord with a view of the class action as an exception to an idealized picture of litigation. This “exceptional” view of the class action has had a profound impact not only on class action law, but procedural and substantive law in general. However, in the October 2015 term the Court decided three class action cases which support an alternative, “functional” view of the class action, one that does not view the class action as exceptional, but as one of many equally permissible tools to serve the objectives of substantive law. This alternative view has the potential to have a similarly significant impact on the law, but it is not certain whether the Court will further develop this alternative, especially given its most recent class action decisions. This article discusses the development of the “exceptional” view of the class action, the awakening of a “functional” alternative view, and the uncertain path ahead.
Social Media and Advancement of Women Physicians

Social Media and Advancement of Women Physicians As social media use by physicians increases, it may offer women physicians additional coping mechanisms, provide new avenues for sharing information, and perhaps reduce stigma associated with sexual harassment, burnout, and workplace culture.
A Multiobjective Optimization Approach For Analyzing The Interaction of Design and Control

Abstract This work presents a systematic procedure for analyzing the interaction of design and control. The mathematical programming framework of process synthesis is used to formulate and solve an optimization problem with multiple objectives involving open-loop controllability measures and economics. A multiobjective optimisation algorithm based on cutting planes is applied to determine the optimal trade-off using partial derivative information from the noninferior solution set. A binary distillation column example illustrates the proposed approach.
The AMCD Multicultural Counseling Competencies: A Critically Flawed Initiative

This article responds to four reactions to Weinrach and Thomas's (2002) critique of the AMCD Multicultural Counseling Competencies. Among the major points made in the present article are the following: Although racial discrimination exists, both within and outside of the counseling context, the Competencies do little to combat it. In fact, the Competencies actually promote viewing persons primarily as members of specific racial and ethnic groups. The Competencies exist at a symbolic and an applied level. Significant problems exist for mental health counselors at both of these levels.The Competencies' greatest flaw is their preoccupation with perceived deficits in clients, the counseling profession, and American society. It is virtually impossible to separate the content of the Competencies from the political process that has surrounded efforts to promote their universal adoption.
Controlling Hydrogen Bonding: From Molecular Recognition to Organogelation

Hydrogen bonding has been studied extensively in solution, in the solid state and using theoretical methods. These studies complement each other and contribute to the progress made in understanding the behavior of this intermolecular interaction and its implications in chemistry, biology and physics. Extensive progress has been made in employing hydrogen bonding in fields such as self-assembly, host-guest recognition and crystal engineering. Recently, various hydrogen-bonding groups have been used in the design of organogelators, molecules that gel various solvents. In this chapter, we will outline the important work that has laid the foundations for the use of different hydrogen-bonding motifs in small host recognition studies and how this can be exploited in the design of self-assembling and gelating structures.
Cyclosporine therapy for advanced Langerhans cell histiocytosis [see comments]

Prompted by evidence that Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a nonmalignant disorder of immune regulation, we used cyclosporine (12 mg/kg/d orally) to treat three young children with advanced multisystem LCH. All three patients had partial responses to cyclosporine within 2 months of therapy, as evidenced by complete resolution of organ dysfunction and regression of the majority of lesions. Complete responses were attained by adding relatively nontoxic chemotherapy (ie, prednisone and vinblastine). Toxicity from cyclosporine comprised mild and reversible elevations of the serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen. These results indicate that further evaluation of cyclosporine for the treatment of patients with advanced LCH is warranted.
Uzbekistan’s foreign policy: the struggle for recognition and self-reliance under Karimov

Uzbekistan’s foreign policy has galvanized sustained academic and political attention. But despite the wealth of analyses on the topic, until now Uzbekistan’s foreign relations have not been examin...
Motivational Advising Workshop: Utilizing Motivational Interviewing Theory to Facilitate and Engage Intrinsic Motivation to Change Learners' Behavior

Introduction Motivational interviewing (MI) is a counseling method that utilizes a patient's own motivation to effect personal change. MI has been applied routinely and successfully to managing med...
Competition Among Retail Formats

In this paper, I study how households allocate their budget for food and related items across different types of retailers. I construct a structural demand model that coherently characterizes both consumer expenditure and expenditure allocation among six retail formats. The model considers how price and assortments influence expen- diture allocations. To illustrate how my demand model can be applied in practice, I consider a situation faced by discount stores, during the Great Recession. In 2008, discount stores experienced a loss in share to other retail formats like warehouse clubs. I use my model to examine two different policies that discount stores could use to compete with other retail formats. First, I consider whether discount stores should compete by lowering prices. Second, I evaluate the effectiveness of introducing a new retail format that has smaller assortments. I find that introducing a small-size format is relatively more effective than competing with lower prices.
Robustness of Optical Steganographic Communication Under Coherent Detection Attack

In fiber-optic networks, optical steganographic communication hides the existence of stealth signals in public channels. The previous security analyses assumed threat models in which eavesdroppers rely only on the real-time key search in the optical domain for signal recovery. In this letter, we study a new threat model that uses coherent detection and offline digital signal processing (DSP) to recover the stealth signal, and we show the robustness of optical steganographic communication under this attack. We find that eavesdroppers equipped with the state-of-the-art coherent detectors and DSP technologies fail to estimate the secret key. In addition, even if the eavesdroppers are given the secret key, the stealth signal cannot be recovered from the signal using DSP. The histogram of the received signal after DSP displays a noise-like form which prevents eavesdroppers from detecting the existence of the stealth signal. We attribute the system robustness to the unique features of using amplified spontaneous emission noise as the signal carrier, including wide bandwidth, large phase variance, and fast phase fluctuation.
RANS and hybrid LES/RANS simulations of flow over a square cylinder

Unsteady RANS (URANS), hybrid LES/RANS and IDDES simulations were conducted to numerically investigate the velocity field around, and pressures distribution and forces over a square cylinder immersed in a uniform, steady oncoming flow with Reynolds number Re = 21,400. The vortex shedding responses in terms of Strouhal number, the pressure distribution, the velocity profile and the velocity fluctuations obtained by numerical simulations are compared with experimental data. Compared with 2D URANS simulation, 3D simulations using hybrid LES/RANS and IDDES models provide more accurate prediction on the responses in the wake, including mean streamwise velocity profile and rms velocity fluctuations. This also results in more accurate prediction of time-averaged surface pressure coefficient on the rear surface obtained by 3D hybrid LES/RANS and IDDES simulations than by URANS simulation. When a hybrid LES/RANS model or IDDES model is used, a more accurate prediction for either pressure coefficient or velocity profile (especially in the far wake region) is not guaranteed by increasing the mesh resolution along the spanwise direction of the square cylinder.
A Mini Review: Moving iPSC-Derived Retinal Subtypes Forward for Clinical Applications for Retinal Degenerative Diseases

Patient-derived human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have been critical in advancing our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of numerous retinal disorders. Many of these retinal disorders have no effective treatment and result in severe visual impairment and even blindness. Among the retinal degenerative diseases modeled by iPSCs are age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (adRP). In addition to studying retinal disease ontogenesis and pathology, hiPSCs have clinical and pharmacological applications, such as developing drug screening and gene therapy approaches and new cell-based clinical treatments. Recent studies have primarily focused on three retinal cell fates – retinal pigmented epithelium cells (RPE), retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), and photoreceptor cells – and have demonstrated that hiPSCs have great potential for increasing our knowledge of and developing treatments for retinal degenerative disorders.
A Comment on Effects of Economic Incentives in the American Film Industry: An Ecological Approach

O’Brien and Lane (2018) examines the popular use of film industry incentives by US states to promote economic growth. The authors claim that their findings indicate the presence of incentives is positively associated with filming, industry employment, and new industry establishments, which is inconsistent with other studies on the subject. This comment raises concerns regarding the data used to generate the estimates, which cast doubt on the veracity of the empirical findings.
Meddling Middlemen: Empirical Analysis of the Risks of Data-Saving Mobile Browsers

Mobile browsers have become one of the main mediators of our online activities. However, as web pages continue to increase in size and streaming media on-the-go has become commonplace, mobile data plan constraints remain a significant concern for users. As a result, data-saving features can be a differentiating factor when selecting a mobile browser. In this paper, we present a comprehensive exploration of the security and privacy threat that data-saving functionality presents to users. We conduct the first analysis of Android’s data-saving browser (DSB) ecosystem across multiple dimensions, including the characteristics of the various browsers’ infrastructure, their application and protocol-level behavior, and their effect on users’ browsing experience. Our research unequivocally demonstrates that enabling data-saving functionality in major browsers results in significant degradation of the user’s security posture by introducing severe vulnerabilities that are not otherwise present in the browser during normal operation. In summary, our experiments show that enabling data savings exposes users to (i) proxy servers running outdated software, (ii) man-in-the-middle attacks due to problematic validation of TLS certificates, (iii) weakened TLS cipher suite selection, (iv) lack of support of security headers like HSTS, and (v) a higher likelihood of being labelled as bots. While the discovered issues can be addressed, we argue that data-saving functionality presents inherent risks in an increasingly-encrypted Web, and users should be alerted of the critical savings-vs-security trade-off that they implicitly accept every time they enable such functionality.
To Write Code: The Cultural Fabrication of Programming Notation and Practice

Writing and its means have become detached. Unlike written and drawn practices developed prior to the 20th century, notation for programming computers developed in concert and conflict with discretizing infrastructure such as the shift-key typewriter and data processing pipelines. In this paper, I recall the emergence of high-level notation for representing computation. I show how the earliest inventors of programming notations borrowed from various written cultural practices, some of which came into conflict with the constraints of digitizing machines, most prominently the typewriter. As such, I trace how practices of "writing code" were fabricated along social, cultural, and material lines at the time of their emergence. By juxtaposing early visions with the modern status quo, I question long-standing terminology, dichotomies, and epistemological tendencies in the field of computer programming. Finally, I argue that translation work is a fundamental property of the practice of writing code by advancing an intercultural lens on programming practice rooted in history.
What reveals about depression level? The role of multimodal features at the level of interview questions

Abstract Early depression detection can enable timely intervention. Automatic depression detection has relied on features extracted from individual-level data, which may be too coarse to support effective detection. Existing detection models have largely overlooked interview questions commonly used in clinical depression assessment. This research proposes a two-layered multi-modal model for depression detection, which not only extracts features from responses at a level of individual interview questions, but also identifies semantic categories of those questions. The evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for depression detection. The research findings have broad and cross-disciplinary implications.
The Impact of the BAILAMOS™ Dance Program on Brain Functional Connectivity and Cognition in Older Latino Adults: a Pilot Study

Dance is a culturally salient form of physical activity (PA) for older Latinos. Resting-state functional connectivity (FC) is a putative biomarker for age-related cognitive decline. We aimed to investigate the impact of the BAILAMOS™ dance program on FC in three brain functional networks (Default Mode [DMN], Frontoparietal [FPN], and Salience [SAL] networks), and cognition. Ten cognitively healthy older Latinos participated in the four-month BAILAMOS™ dance program. We assessed PA levels (self-reported and device-assessed) and estimated cardiorespiratory fitness, cognition, and resting-state FC via functional magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and post-intervention. We performed paired t-tests and Pearson correlations. Given the pilot nature of the study, significance levels were set at p < 0.05 and effect sizes are reported. We observed a significant increase in self-reported moderate leisure-time PA from pre- to post-intervention (t(9) = 3.16, p = 0.011, d = 0.66). FC within-FPN regions of interest (ROIs) significantly increased pre- to post-intervention (t(9) = 2.35, p = 0.043, d = 0.70). DMN ROIs showed an increase, with a moderate effect size, in the integration with other networks' ROIs (t(9) = 1.96, p = 0.081, d = 0.64) post-intervention. Increases in moderate leisure-time PA at post-intervention were associated with increases in the FC within-FPN (R = 0.79, p = 0.006). Our results suggest that dance might be a promising approach for improving age-related disruption of FC within- and between-networks commonly associated with cognitive decline.
Automatic monitoring the technical condition of a ship hull during its operation

Дослідження присвячено експериментальному визначенню критичних зон максимальних значень механічних напружень в суднових корпусних конструкціях. За допомогою коерцитиметричного моніторингу визначені осередки підвищених значень механічних напружень корпусів досліджуваних суден. Встановлено, що впровадження на морських суднах автоматичного моніторингу технічного стану в процесі їх експлуатації дозволить збільшити надійність і безпеку роботи морського флоту.
The Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis in Africa

Globally, about 70.8 million people were forcibly displaced by the end of 2018 of which 25.9 million were refugees, the highest level ever reported. Within this period, there were about 6.34 million refugees in Africa. The refugee crisis in Africa is traceable to its colonial vestiges. Since gaining independence in the 1950s and 1960s, political violence arising from civil wars and ethnic conflicts alone has generated millions of refugees across many countries in the African continent. A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country due to factors, such as political and religious persecution, war, or other forms of ethnic or tribal violence or for fear of the same. Persecution can occur for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. In addition, there is a consensus that natural disasters, including drought, famine, and the outbreak of diseases among others, are other causes of refugees.
Information Theoretic Approach on Randomized Response Models in Surveys

Survey biases can appear in different forms, particularly as response or non-response biases. Such biases may occur when interviewees are asked questions on sensitive topics to which they may self-censor their response or hesitate to answer altogether to avoid social undesirability and feeling of self-embarrassment, or simply to preserve their privacy. Several studies suggest that misreporting is widespread when the survey includes sensitive topics including race, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, etc. A randomized response (RR) method has been proposed by Warner [1] to eliminate response and non-response biases by increasing cooperation and trust between interviewees and interviewers. In this paper, an information theoretic approach is taken on RR methods for surveys requiring YES or NO responses, and the tradeoff between randomization and survey accuracy is investigated.
Macaque Fertility Signals

Females of many animal species exhibit signals of fertility, but few animal groups do so with such prevalence, diversity of signal types, and variability between closely related species, as anthropoid primates. An excellent group for studying the evolution of such signals is the macaques, a group of some 22 species of Old World monkey. The macaques exhibit the same general mating system, but a great amount of inter-specific variation in the type and number of different signals they display. In this article, we discuss the evolution of these traits, including the types of variation in fertility that they may indicate and the hormonal mechanisms that underlie them. We discuss the different signals that macaques exhibit, and review the distribution and abundance of these signals across species. Even closely related species differ in the type and number of signals displayed, as well as in their apparent accuracy in reflecting the timing of female ovulation. We offer some potential explanations for this variation, though much is still poorly understood. We finish by discussing future directions for research that are likely to prove fruitful. Key Concepts Females of many anthropoid primates, including macaques, exhibit signals of fertility. Macaque signals of fertility include swellings of the hindquarters, changes in facial colour, olfactory signals, and auditory oestrus and copulation calls. Three types of variation in fertility might potentially be communicated to others: intra-cycle variation in the probability of ovulation; inter-cycle, intra-female variation in the probability of conception in that cycle, and inter-female differences in overall fecundity. The expression of intra-cycle signals of the probability of ovulation is linked to the hormones oestrogen (positively) and progesterone (negatively). There is a great deal of inter-specific variation in the presence and type of fertility signals shown, as well as in their apparent accuracy in reflecting ovulatory function. Though we understand some of the evolutionary pressures that may have led to inter-specific variation, the sources of much of the variation remain unclear. Keywords: primate; macaque; reproduction; sexual behaviour; communication; signalling; colouration
Drug absorption through mucosal membranes: effect of mucosal route and penetrant hydrophilicity

The influence of mucosal route and penetrant hydrophilicity on the in vivo absorption of a model lipophilic compound, progesterone, was investigated in ovariectomized rabbits. The absorption rate and systemic bioavailability of progesterone and its monohydroxy, dihydroxy, and trihydroxy derivatives were evaluated and compared following oral, nasal, rectal, and vaginal administrations. Nasal delivery resulted in a significantly higher rate and extent of progesterone absorption than oral, rectal, or vaginal administration. The rate and extent of mucosal absorption decreased as penetrant hydrophilicity increased for the nasal, rectal, and vaginal routes. The results of this investigation indicate that the absorption characteristics of a lipophilic compound, such as progesterone, are influenced by the properties of both the mucosa and the drug.
Pressor response to angiotensin II in hypertension. Correlation with plasma renin activity and response to norepinephrine and metaraminol.

Abstract The pressor response to angiotensin II infused intravenously was studied in 8 normal subjects and 44 patients with primary and secondary hypertension. The mean dose of angiotensin II required to increase diastolic blood pressure by 20 mm. Hg was significantly lower in 24 patients with essential hypertension than in control subjects and 11 patients with renovascular hypertension. Mean plasma renin activity in peripheral venous blood was similar in control subjects and patients with essential hypertension and significantly higher in patients with renovascular hypertension. The pressor dose of angiotensin II was directly correlated with peripheral plasma renin activity. However, norrnotensive control subjects and patients with essential hypertension with similar values of plasma renin activity exhibited markedly different sensitivity to angiotensin II. Further, the pressor response to norepinephrine and metaraminol paralleled that to angiotensin both in patient groups and in individual cases. The results suggest that the pressor response to angiotensin II in hypertensive patients is related not only to the level of circulating endogenous angiotensin but also to nonspecific hyperreactivity in essential hypertension and nonspecific hyporeactivity in renovascular hypertension.
Goodbye to Law Reviews

T are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content. That, I think, about covers the ground. And though it is in the law reviews that the most highly regarded legal literature—and I by no means except those fancy rationalizations of legal action called judicial opinions—is regularly embalmed, it is in the law reviews that a pennyworth of content is most frequently concealed beneath a pound of so-called style. The average law review writer is peculiarly able to say nothing with an air of great importance. When I used to read law reviews, I used constantly to be reminded of an elephant trying to swat a fly. Now the antediluvian or mock-heroic style in which most law review material is written has, as I am well aware, been panned before. That panning has had no effect, just as this panning will have no effect. Remember that it is by request that I am bleating my private bleat about legal literature. To go into the question of style, it seems to be a cardinal principle of law review writing and editing that nothing may be said forcefully and nothing may be said amusingly. This, I take it, is in the interest of something called dignity. It does not matter that most people—and even lawyers come into this category—read either to be convinced or to be entertained. It does not matter that even in the comparatively rare instances when people read to be informed, they like a dash of pepper or a dash of salt along with their information. They won’t get any seasoning if the law reviews can help it. The law reviews would rather be dignified and ignored. Suppose a law review writer wants to criticize a court decision. Does he say “Justice Fussbudget, in a long-winded and vacuous opinion, managed to twist his logic and mangle his history so as to reach a result which is not only reactionary but ridiculous”? He may think exactly that but he does not say it. He does not even say “It was a thoroughly stupid decision.” What he says is—“It would seem that a contrary conclusion might perhaps have been better justified.” “It would seem—,” the matriarch of mollycoddle phrases, still revered by the law reviews in the dull name of dignity.
Amino Acids and Muscle Loss with Aging

Aging is associated with a progressive loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia), which increases the risks of injury and disability. Although the mechanisms of sarcopenia are not clearly elucidated, age-associated alterations in the muscle anabolic response to nutritional stimuli and a decline in protein intake may be significant contributing factors. The most recent findings regarding the role of nutritional intake on protein metabolism in the elderly will be reviewed. Specifically, aging is associated with changes in the muscle protein metabolism response to a meal, likely due to alterations in the response to endogenous hormones. Nonetheless, the older muscle is still able to respond to amino acids, mainly the essential and BCAAs, which have been shown to acutely stimulate muscle protein synthesis in older individuals. It is likely that this stimulatory effect of essential and BCAA is due to the direct effect of leucine on the initiation of mRNA translation, which is still present in older age, although it appears to be attenuated in aged animals. Recent data suggest that excess leucine may be able to overcome this age-related resistance of muscle proteins to leucine. For this reason, long-term essential amino acid supplementation may be a useful tool for the prevention and treatment of sarcopenia, particularly if excess leucine is provided in the supplement.
Recognition and segmentation of 3-d human action using HMM and multi-class adaboost

Our goal is to automatically segment and recognize basic human actions, such as stand, walk and wave hands, from a sequence of joint positions or pose angles. Such recognition is difficult due to high dimensionality of the data and large spatial and temporal variations in the same action. We decompose the high dimensional 3-D joint space into a set of feature spaces where each feature corresponds to the motion of a single joint or combination of related multiple joints. For each feature, the dynamics of each action class is learned with one HMM. Given a sequence, the observation probability is computed in each HMM and a weak classifier for that feature is formed based on those probabilities. The weak classifiers with strong discriminative power are then combined by the Multi-Class AdaBoost (AdaBoost.M2) algorithm. A dynamic programming algorithm is applied to segment and recognize actions simultaneously. Results of recognizing 22 actions on a large number of motion capture sequences as well as several annotated and automatically tracked sequences show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
Improving Performance in Sub-Block Caches with Optimized Replacement Policies

Recent advances in computer processor design have led to the introduction of sub-blocking to cache architectures. Sub-block caches reduce the tag area and power overhead in caches without reducing the effective cache size by using fewer tags to index the full data RAM array. In spite of achieving reduced area and power overhead, sub-block caches suffer performance degradation due to cache trashing. This occurs when a wider cache line (super-block), made up of multiple valid cache lines (sub-blocks), is replaced or evicted when only a sub-block is to be allocated into the wider super-block. To address this problem, we propose cache replacement policies as they relate specifically to sub-block caches. We propose new replacement policies that are tuned for sub-block caches by adding more intelligence based on the valid state of individual sub-blocks of a super-block. We also investigate the effect of using a few level-0 registers to bypass a few level-1 cache pipe stages on sub-block cache performance. To evaluate the performance improvement offered by our proposed replacement policies and the use of level-0 registers, we developed a sub-block cache simulator based on the Simplescalar toolset for single-core evaluations and the Sniper Simulator for multicore evaluations. We show that, with minimal architectural updates to existing conventional cache replacement policies, we are able to improve level-1 cache hit rates by up to 4.17p using our proposed policies alone on SPEC2006 benchmarks and up to 14p in shared level-2 caches using multicore benchmark suites: PARSEC and SPLASH2.
Estimating the linear analytic range.

Although many methods have been proposed to verify assay linearity, or to test for nonlinearity, there are few, if any, statistically sound methods to establish an assay’s linear range. In this article, we propose a simple and statistically sound method for initially establishing an assay’s linear range as a paradigm for standardization of manufacturers’ claims of assay linearity. Simulations verify that the method outperforms using (Pearson’s) coefficient of determination (r2) to estimate the linear range, consistently yielding estimates for the linear range which are more accurate. In addition, the method permits the addition of tolerance limits when a certain amount of nonlinearity is acceptable clinically.
Device integration of Ti-catalyzed Si nanowires grown using APCVD

The integration of nanowires in photonic and photovoltaic devices have been discussed and studied by researchers for some time. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth techniques has been one of the methods used for obtaining device quality nanowires that could potentially provide faster, and more efficient devices at smaller geometries. One dimensional metal catalyzed silicon nanowires grown using CVD techniques have been seen as a possible means to increasing electron transport and device speeds for silicon based electronics. In this experiment the possibility of integrating titanium catalyzed silicon nanowires grown using an atmospheric pressure based CVD method are investigated for possible use in silicon electronics. Growth experiments were conducted at various partial pressures of silicon tetrachloride, temperatures, and growth times to determine optimum growth rates and the window for oriented, straight silicon nanowires. Using linear regression analysis on a sample set of the grown nanowires we are left with the conclusion that nanowires grown using APCVD may possibly be growth limited due to diffusion through the solid catalyst interface and/or due to crystallization. Further experiments maybe needed to further validate titanium-catalyzed silicon nanowire growths and its optimum conditions. Overall, titanium-catalyzed silicon nanowires grown using an APCVD system provides a cost-effective method for growing silicon nanowires that could be used in future silicon based devices.