cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Effects of Burial Depth and Substrate on the Emergence of Bromus rubens and Brassica tournefortii

Abstract The germination of seed is critical in deserts where annual plants are abundant and rely on seed buried in the soil for sustaining populations. The exotic annuals Bromus rubens and Brassica tournefortii threaten arid indigenous ecosystems such as the Mojave Desert, but little is known about the potential effects on seed emergence of different burial depths and substrates that could enhance or reduce emergence. Using seed from Mojave Desert populations, we conducted a three-factor greenhouse experiment testing the effects of species (Bromus or Brassica), burial depth (0, 2, 5, or 10 cm), and substrate (none, gravel, or litter) on seed emergence. Species and substrate interacted significantly with burial depth. Both species displayed the greatest emergence when seeds were sown on the soil surface (70% emergence for Bromus and 52% for Brassica), but Bromus emergence declined less at a 2-cm depth than Brassica. Emergence of surface-sown seed did not differ significantly among substrate types, but eme...
Seasonality of Class I Price Differential Estimates for the Southeastern United States

This study provides insight into the seasonality of Club5 I price differentials in the southeastern dairy industry. This is accomplished by iinalyring rnonthly estimates of Class I price differentials obtained from the i~np~~ted price solution or dual solution of a generalized capacitated lninirnum cost network flo~v model of the dairy industry. A smooth seasonal pattern emerges through the monthly sequence with the lowest and highest estimated Class I price differentials occurring in April and September respectively. Miami and Jacksonville areus reach $ 5.40 and $ 4.36 per hundredweight in April and $ 6.79 and $ 5.53 per hundredweight in September. Several factors. including \easonal production, seasonal consumption. and the geographic isolation of the Florida peninsula, affect the marketing of milk in the southeastern United States. Milk production peaks in the spring and early summer due to breeding patterns and weather conditions; moreover, consumer preference results in the lowest milk demand in the summer. These inversely seasonal factors 710n. drive deficit and surplus patterns in the reg' Because of milk's perishability. potential disease carrier characteristics. and past disorderly marketing conditions, the dairy industry is one of the most regulated agricultural industries by federal and state programs in the United States. The Federal Milk Marketing
The necessity of combined therapy in the treatment of shame: a case report.

In some situations, combined psychotherapy may not be merely a choice, but a necessity for successful treatment. I present a case report of a hospitalized Vietnam veteran who had sexually abused one of his daughters. In individual therapy, the patient learned to speak about himself, his significant guilt, and his shame, in a trusting environment. After a year of outpatient individual work, I felt that the addition of group psychotherapy would help this withdrawn man to connect to a social milieu. Although anxious about self-disclosure and confidentiality, he joined a heterogeneous veterans’ group, and came to reveal his secrets there. While he continued to use the individual sessions to broach painful issues, the group served to uncover material that had not emerged otherwise. The acceptance he experienced in the group expanded and cemented gains made in the dyad, which in turn made the ongoing group experience tolerable. His self-exposure and efforts at bonding and reparation catalyzed therapeutic movement for other members as well. The two modalities served to reinforce and make more powerful the effects of each. Therapeutic progress depended on the combined treatment--both were necessary, neither was sufficient.
A tool for understanding multi-language program dependencies

This paper describes a prototype tool that facilitates the process of understanding and managing multi-language program dependencies. More specifically, the software tool maintains a repository of host-to-foreign language dependencies between C/C++ and Java code. We describe some program comprehension features of the tool and we discuss a preliminary case study performed in order to verify its functionality and validate its usefulness. Based on the results of this study, we continue improving the tool.
Mixed-Mode Adaptation in Distributed Systems: A Case Study

An adaptation in a distributed system involves changes to multiple processes. Since the adaptation cannot happen atomically (instantaneously), the changes to multiple processes need to be synchronized to ensure correctness of adaptation. The service interruption time and communication overhead during adaptation depend on the synchronization required when changing multiple processes. In this paper we consider mixed-mode adaptation that helps in reducing the synchronization requirements during adaptation, thereby improving the service interruption time and communication overhead. However, there are challenges in mixed-mode adaptation due to overlapping of behavior during adaptation. In this paper, we identify various challenges in mixed-mode adaptation and discuss how we address some of them using a case study.
Adaptive linear detection for DS-CDMA communications in impulsive channels

There has been much work done on deriving adaptive linear detectors for DS-CDMA systems corrupted by additive Gaussian noise. However, such communication systems are often interfered with by noises other than the classical white Gaussian noise; the present author considers DS-CDMA systems corrupted by natural impulsive noise sources, such as those found in low-frequency atmospheric channels, and for channels corrupted by man-made impulsive sources such as those occurring in urban or military radio networks. He develops an adaptive linear detector, for such impulsive noise channels, which directly minimizes the average probability of bit-error, using an infinitesimal perturbation analysis (IPA) based stochastic gradient algorithm. The implementation allows a very simple recursive structure, and the conditions for convergence of this algorithm are presented. The performance of the detector is uniformly better than that of the linear correlator even under the extreme cases when either the multiple access interference or the impulsive noise is dominant.
Predicting Social Interactions for Visual Tracking.

Human interaction dynamics are known to play an important role in the development of robust pedestrian trackers that are applicable to a variety of applications in video surveillance. Traditional approaches to pedestrian tracking assume that each pedestrian walks independently and the tracker predicts the location based on an underlying motion model, such as a constant velocity or autoregressive model. Recent approaches have begun to leverage interaction, especially by modeling the repulsion force, among pedestrians to improve motion predictions. However, human interaction is more complex and is influenced by both repulsion and attraction effects. This motivates the use of a more complex human interaction model for pedestrian tracking. In this paper, we propose a novel visual tracking method by leveraging complex social interactions. We present an algorithm that decomposes social interactions into multiple potential interaction modes. We integrate these multiple social interaction modes into an interactive Markov Chain Monte Carlo tracker. We demonstrate how the developed method translates into a more informed motion prediction, resulting in a robust tracking performance. We test our method on videos from unconstrained outdoor environments and compare it against popular multi-object trackers.
Three-dimensional integral imaging with improved visualization using subpixel optical ray sensing

In this Letter, we propose an improved three-dimensional (3D) image reconstruction method for integral imaging. We use subpixel sensing of the optical rays of the 3D scene projected onto the image sensor. When reconstructing the 3D image, we use a calculated minimum subpixel distance for each sensor pixel instead of the average pixel value of integrated pixels from elemental images. The minimum subpixel distance is defined by measuring the distance between the center of the sensor pixel and the physical position of the imaging lens point spread function onto the sensor, which is projected from each reconstruction point for all elemental images. To show the usefulness of the proposed method, preliminary 3D imaging experiments are presented. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method may improve 3D imaging visualization because of the superior sensing and reconstruction of optical ray direction and intensity information for 3D objects.
SF-1: a critical mediator of steroidogenesis

Studies in knockout mice have established that the orphan nuclear receptor steroidogenic factor 1 (SF-1) plays essential roles in the development and function of the primary steroidogenic organs. These SF-1 knockout mice lacked adrenal glands and gonads, causing adrenocortical insufficiency and sex reversal of their internal and external genitalia. They also had impaired expression of pituitary gonadotropins and agenesis of the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMH), confirming roles of SF-1 at all three levels of the hypothalamic-pituitary-steroidogenic organ axis. Ongoing experiments are directed at developing methods to inactivate SF-1 in a tissue-specific manner.
Transverse and longitudinal resistivities in NbTi multifilamentary strands with Cu and CuMn matrices

Transverse and longitudinal resistivities have been measured for a pair of multifilamentary strands with filament diameters of 2 mu m, interfilamentary spacing to filament diameter ratio of 0.19, and about 5000 filaments. One of these strands has a Cu matrix and the other has a CuMn matrix. 4.2-K transverse resistivities were extracted from the per cycle eddy current loss and also the magnetization of samples of various twist pitches. Longitudinal resistivities were measured with a four-terminal method at T=12 K. These results are interpreted in terms of size, proximity, and current-path effects. It is found that size effects significantly enhance both the transverse and longitudinal resistivities of the Cu matrix material, and that current-path effects significantly decrease the transverse resistivity of the CuMn material. Additionally, the proximity effect causes the resistivity of the Cu matrix to vary with magnetic field. Resistivity for the Cu matrix at high fields is about 0.6-0.8 that of the CuMn. >
A Dynamic Interface Activation Scheme for Vertical Handoffs

This paper presents a dynamic interface activation scheme for making vertical handoff decisions. Interface activating interval is intelligently adjusted according to the actually varying network conditions. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposal succeeds in trading off between interfacespsila activating interval against deciding timeliness.
Hierarchical, Generic to Specific Multi-class Object Recognition

Early vision systems could perform specific object recognition reasonably well but did not fare as well on identifying natural object classes. Recent advances have led to systems that can learn a representation for different object classes and achieve good generic object class recognition. However, these systems are generally unable to perform the fine distinctions required for specific object identification. It seems that the two approaches are in contrast with each other. We propose a system that addresses the problems of generic class recognition as well as specific object recognition in the same framework. Our system also possesses the property of graceful degradation, i.e., if it is unable to recognize an object as a dog, it recognizes it at least as a quadruped and so on. We automatically learn a hierarchy of the classes from the training data, progressing from the most generic class labels to the most specific object labels. This hierarchy is used during recognition. One important benefit of the hierarchical organization of the classes is that the number of comparisons performed for every input does not increase linearly with the number of classes added.
Production and purification of a chimeric monoclonal antibody against botulinum neurotoxin serotype A.

Abstract Production of recombinant antibodies against botulinum neurotoxin is necessary for the development of a post-exposure treatment. CHO-DG44 cells were transfected with a plasmid encoding the light and heavy chains of a chimeric monoclonal antibody (S25) against botulism neurotoxin serotype A. Stable cell lines were obtained by dilution cloning and clones were shown to produce nearly equivalent levels of light and heavy chain antibody by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In suspension culture, cells produced 35 μg/ml of chimeric antibody after 6 days, corresponding to a specific antibody productivity of 3.1 pg/cell/day. A method for the harvest and recovery of an antibody against botulism neurotoxin serotype A was investigated utilizing ethylenediamine- N , N ′-tetra(methylphosphonic) acid (EDTPA) modified zirconia and MEP-hypercel, a hydrophobic charge interaction chromatography resin. Purification of the S25 antibody was compared to that achieved using rProtein A–Sepharose Fast Flow resin. After the direct load of culture supernatant, analysis by ELISA and gel electrophoresis showed that S25 antibody could be recovered at purities of 41 and 44%, from the EDTPA modified zirconia and MEP-hypercel columns, respectively. Although the purity obtained from each of these columns was low, the ability to withstand high column pressures and nearly 90% recovery of the antibody makes EDTPA modified zirconia well suited as an initial capture step. Combining the EDTPA modified zirconia and HCIC columns in series resulted in both purity and final product yield of 72%.
Fearing Future Terrorism: Development, Validation, and Psychometric Testing of the Terrorism Catastrophizing Scale (TCS)

The purpose of this study was to develop a new tool, the Terrorism Catastrophizing Scale (TCS), rooted in terror management theory (TMT) and cognitive-behavioral theory (CBT). Participants were adults sampled from the general U.S. population (N = 503) using internet-based methods. Psychometric analysis indicates a 13-item version of the TCS, measuring three constructs (Rumination, Magnification, and Helplessness), met all tests of scaling assumptions and generally fit a 3-factor model using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; CFI = 0.96; TLI = 0.98), where CFI is the comparative fit index and TLI is the Tucker-Lewis index. Results also indicate that self-esteem and social connected-ness are negatively associated (P < .0001) with terrorism catastrophizing, as TMT would assume. Finally, terrorism catastrophizing is a significant predictor (P < .0001) of behavioral change and of symptoms of anxiety, depression, and physiological stress, as CBT would maintain. The implications and limitations of this study are...
Forensic nursing in secure environments.

There are few well-designed studies of corrections or prison nursing roles. This study seeks to describe the corrections or prison role of forensic nurses in the United States who provide care in secure environments. National data detailing the scope of practice in secure environments are limited. This pencil and paper survey describes the roles of 180 forensic nurses from 14 states who work in secure environments. Descriptive statistics are utilized. A repeated measures ANOVA with post hoc analyses was implemented. These nurses were older than average in age, but had 10 years or less experience in forensic nursing practice. Two significant roles emerged to “promote and implement principles that underpin effective quality and practice” and to “assess, develop, implement, and improve programs of care for individuals.” Significant roles varied based upon the security classification of the unit or institution in which the nurses were employed. Access to information about these nurses and their nursing practice was difficult in these closed systems. Minimal data are available nationally, indicating a need for collection of additional data over time to examine changes in role. It is through such developments that forensic nursing provided in secure environments will define its specialization and attract the attention it deserves.
Subtype-Specific Conformational Differences within the V3 Region of Subtype B and Subtype C Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Env Proteins

The V3 region of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 gp120 Env protein is a key domain in Env due to its role in interacting with the coreceptors CCR5 and CXCR4. We examined potential subtype-specific V3 region differences by comparing patterns of amino acid variability and probing for subtype-specific structures using 11 anti-V3 monoclonal antibodies (V3 MAbs). Differences between the subtypes in patterns of variability were most evident in the stem and turn regions of V3 (positions 9 to 24), with the two subtypes being very similar in the base region. The characteristics of the binding of V3 MAbs to Env proteins of the subtype B virus JR-FL and the subtype C virus BR025 suggested three patterns, as each group of MAbs recognized a specific conformation- or sequence-based epitope. Viruses pseudotyped with Env from JR-FL and BR025 were resistant to neutralization by the V3 MAbs, although the replacement of the Env V3 region of the SF162 virus with the JR-FL V3 created a pseudotyped virus that was hypersensitive to neutralization. A single mutation in V3 (H13R) made this chimeric Env selectively resistant to one group of V3 MAbs, consistent with the mAb binding properties. We hypothesize that there are intrinsic differences in V3 conformation between subtype B and subtype C that are localized to the stem and turn regions and that these differences have two important biological consequences: first, subtype B and subtype C V3 regions can have subtype-specific epitopes that will inherently limit antibody cross-reactivity, and second, V3 conformational differences may potentiate the frequent evolution of R5- into X4-tropic variants of subtype B but limit subtype C virus from using the same mechanism to evolve X4-tropic variants as efficiently.
Finite rational self-deceivers

I raise three puzzles concerning self-deception: (i) a conceptual paradox, (ii) a dilemma about how to understand human cognitive evolution, and (iii) a tension between the fact of self-deception and Davidson’s interpretive view. I advance solutions to the first two and lay a groundwork for addressing the third. The capacity for self-deception, I argue, is a spandrel, in Gould’s and Lewontin’s sense, of other mental traits, i.e., a structural byproduct. The irony is that the mental traits of which self-deception is a spandrel/byproduct are themselves rational.
A cell-specific nuclear receptor plays essential roles in adrenal and gonadal development.

Recent analyses of the cytochrome P450 steroid hydroxylases have established a key role for an orphan nuclear receptor, designated steroidogenic factor 1 (SF-1), in their coordinate, cell-selective expression. SF-1 was proposed to regulate the steroid hydroxylases by interacting with shared promoter elements in their 5′-flanking regions. During mouse embryonic development, SF-1 was expressed from the earliest stages of organogenesis of the steroidogenic tissues, suggesting a key role in steroidogenic cell differentiation. Finally, disruption of the gene encoding SF-1 revealed its essential function in the development of the adrenal glands and gonads and in pituitary gonadotrope function. These studies suggest that SF-1 acts at multiple levels of the reproductive axis to maintain reproductive competence.
453: Placental arginase II is increased with preeclampsia but not with intrauterine growth restriction at term

INTRAUTERINE GROWTH RESTRICTION AT TERM ARUNDHATHI JEYABALAN, AUGUSTINE RAJAKUMAR, STACY MCGONIGAL, NINA MARKOVIC, CARL HUBEL, SIDNEY MORRIS, University of Pittsburgh, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Epidemiology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania OBJECTIVE: Inadequate trophoblast invasion and spiral artery remodeling leading to poor placental perfusion are believed to underlie preeclampsia (PE) and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Arginase competes for L-arginine, a substrate for both arginase(s) and nitric oxide synthase(s), thereby reducing nitric oxide bioavailability. This may limit nitric oxide-dependent vasodilation (contributing to reduced placental perfusion) and increase peroxynitrite (contributing to oxidative stress in the placenta). The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that placental arginase II is increased in pregnancies complicated by PE or IUGR. STUDY DESIGN: We utilized 10 placentas each from normal pregnant (NP), PE, and IUGR subjects. Diagnosis of PE was based on the Working Group Report (2000) and hyperuricemia of 1 standard deviation above normal levels for gestational age. IUGR (without PE) was defined as infant birth weight less than the 10th percentile and asymmetrical fetal growth profile in normotensive women. Arginase II protein expression was measured by Western analysis. Densitometric ratios for matched pairs of PE/NP and IUGR/NP are presented as mean SE and analyzed by two-sided sign test. RESULTS: Baseline demographic characteristics were similar in all groups. Arginase II protein was detectable in all placental samples. Placental arginase II expression was 50% higher in women with PE compared to controls (PE/NP ratio of 1.51 0.25, p 0.02). In contrast, arginase II levels were similar in NP and IUGR placentas (ratio 1.06 0.24, p 0.75). CONCLUSION: Placental arginase II protein mass is higher with preeclampsia compared to uncomplicated pregnancies, but not with normotensive women delivering small, asymmetrically grown infants. This suggests that placentas from women with IUGR at term may be fundamentally different from PE women with respect to arginase II. The increased placental arginase II may reduce nitric oxide bioavailability leading to deficient spiral artery remodeling, poor placental perfusion, and increased oxidative stress in preeclampsia.
Electron cryotomography of ESCRT assemblies and dividing Sulfolobus cells suggests that spiraling filaments are involved in membrane scission

The endosomal-sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) is evolutionarily conserved from Archaea to eukaryotes. The complex drives membrane scission events in a range of processes, including cytokinesis in Metazoa and some Archaea. CdvA is the protein in Archaea that recruits ESCRT-III to the membrane. Using electron cryotomography (ECT), we find that CdvA polymerizes into helical filaments wrapped around liposomes. ESCRT-III proteins are responsible for the cinching of membranes and have been shown to assemble into helical tubes in vitro, but here we show that they also can form nested tubes and nested cones, which reveal surprisingly numerous and versatile contacts. To observe the ESCRT–CdvA complex in a physiological context, we used ECT to image the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius and observed a distinct protein belt at the leading edge of constriction furrows in dividing cells. The known dimensions of ESCRT-III proteins constrain their possible orientations within each of these structures and point to the involvement of spiraling filaments in membrane scission.
Thermal and rare gas evolution of the mantle

Abstract Present-day seismic evidence implies that the 660 km-deep seismic velocity jump is associated with neither an internal thermal boundary layer nor a strong internal barrier to flow between the upper and lower mantle. However, the generally preferred geochemical paradigm for mantle rare-gas evolution concludes that the lower mantle has remained an isolated and undegassed reservoir throughout at least the past 4.35 Ga of Earth history, as ∼50% of the 40 Ar produced by 40 K-decay appears to still reside within the mantle. Here we reexplore this problem assuming that present-day differentiation processes have operated throughout Earth history. Present mantle overturn rates are slow (∼5–10 Ga to pass a mantle volume through the mid-ocean ridge crucible). If slab subduction has been the mantle's primary heat-loss mechanism, then a simple boundary layer argument suggests that paleo-subduction and mantle overturn rates were proportional to the heat loss-squared, and thus more than twenty times faster in the Archean than at the present day. Nevertheless, simple models of Ar evolution within a convecting mantle demonstrate that whole-mantle convection can retain 25–60% of the 40 Ar produced during Earth evolution without the need for postulating an isolated and undegassed lower mantle. These models suggest that the 40 Ar constraint should be reinterpreted to be a constraint that ∼50% of the mantle (and crust?!) has been undegassed since the 40 Ar was produced within it.
The pivotal role of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases in metabolic flexibility

Metabolic flexibility is the capacity of a system to adjust fuel (primarily glucose and fatty acids) oxidation based on nutrient availability. The ability to alter substrate oxidation in response to nutritional state depends on the genetically influenced balance between oxidation and storage capacities. Competition between fatty acids and glucose for oxidation occurs at the level of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC). The PDC is normally active in most tissues in the fed state, and suppressing PDC activity by pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) kinase (PDK) is crucial to maintain energy homeostasis under some extreme nutritional conditions in mammals. Conversely, inappropriate suppression of PDC activity might promote the development of metabolic diseases. This review summarizes PDKs’ pivotal role in control of metabolic flexibility under various nutrient conditions and in different tissues, with emphasis on the best characterized PDK4. Understanding the regulation of PDC and PDKs and their roles in energy homeostasis could be beneficial to alleviate metabolic inflexibility and to provide possible therapies for metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes (T2D).
Management Considerations for Chronic Asthma

Asthma is a common chronic disease affecting millions of individuals in the United States. Appropriate management and prevention of asthma symptoms is essential in order to maintain quality of life and reduce healthcare costs. Published consensus guidelines provide recommendations for asthma management and emphasize pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic components for long-term management. Major components of asthma management include environmental control measures, patient education and self-management, pharmacotherapy and periodic assessment. Since publication of the guidelines in 1997, there has been additional research and advances in our knowledge and understanding of asthma. Ongoing research focuses on issues such as regular versus as needed use of short-acting bronchodilators, early initiation of inhaled corticosteroids, safety of inhaled corticosteroids in children with asthma, combination therapy with inhaled corticosteroids and other long-term control agents, and reduction of inhaled corticosteroid...
Eastern North Pacific Hurricane Season of 1995

Abstract The 1995 eastern North Pacific hurricane season is reviewed. The activity comprised 11 tropical cyclones, consisting of seven hurricanes, three tropical storms, and one tropical depression. Hurricane Ismael caused a large loss of life in the southern Gulf of California.
Engineers Make Their Own Context: Vision-Making in the Profession

Engineering is an inherently normative practice dependent on how engineers understand history. Social vision, however, when mentioned in an engineering context typically brings to mind extremist regimes such as Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. But all engineers practice with assumptions about how their interventions in the material world will change society. The historian of American engineering Edwin Layton called this set of socio-political beliefs the ideology of engineering. Engineers’ beliefs, however, have not been uniform across time and geography. Engineers have worked in specific national, international, corporate, and government contexts that have influenced how they see society’s past, present, and future. This essay surveys the historical literature on engineers’ social thought and presents a detailed case study of conflicting worldviews in 1960s American engineering to explore how engineers have acted upon differing normative visions. I argue that studying how engineers contextualize their world – particularly during moments of historical crisis – provides a source of inspiration and classroom instruction for those concerned with contemporary engineering in a global world.
Reverse Logistics of US Carpet Recycling

A high volume of post-consumer carpet (PCC) is discarded each year in the USA, placing significant pressure on landfills and leading to the loss of valuable materials contained in carpets. To explain factors that influence landfill diversion rates for different types of products, an overview of the reverse logistics framework in the literature is provided. The framework is used to analyze the current state of carpet recycling in the USA, and PCC recycling is shown to be a typical material recovery network. Therefore, because PCC recycling requires a high volume of carpet to be collected and transportation costs to be minimized for it to be economical, a well-organized reverse logistics network is critical. In this respect, a review of reverse network design studies for different products is provided and research conducted to design PCC collection and recycling networks is discussed in detail.
Effects of a microwave induced argon plasma jet on premixed and nonpremixed methane/air mixtures

Microwave induced plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) has seen a lot of attention in the recent years due to the fact that low temperature, nonthermal microwave plasmas have a high power coupling efficiency, excellent flexibility for PAC system configurations, abundant free radicals and other reactive species and long-time operational stability. In this study we use a 2.45 GHz microwave plasma source to generate atmospheric pressure microwave argon plasma. Using a novel combustor configuration, the effects of the plasma on two different fuel injection configurations, premixed and nonpremixed are studied. The similarities and differences in both configurations are compared. The geometry of the flames in either case is different with the premixed having a forked uniform blue flame at a fuel equivalence ratio of 0.4 while the nonpremixed configuration had a flat planar flame shape at the same fuel equivalence ratio. In the premixed case, the power required for ignition varied nonlinearly with the fuel equivalence ratio, exhibiting a stretched U pattern with the lowest power occurring at a fuel equivalence ratio of 0.6. In the nonpremixed case, the power required for ignition varied linearly with the fuel equivalence ratio. Complete combustion was achieved in the premixed case while incomplete combustion was observed in the nonpremixed case with evidence coming from the deposition of soot and none in the premixed case. The enhancement effects observed for both configurations were the extension of the lean burn limit, flame stabilization and an increase in fuel efficiency for the premixed case. Three different reaction zones (the plasma zone, hybrid zone and flame zone) were observed in either configuration and their emission spectra fingerprints are discussed. The rotational temperatures in both configurations were compared and an overall higher rotational flame temperature was observed in the nonpremixed case as compared to the premixed case. Volumetric ignition and sequential ignition are proposed for the premixed and nonpremixed cases respectively.
Broad Tuning of Whispering-Gallery Modes in Microdisks

Silicon microdisks with dynamically-tunable resonance spectra are achieved with narrow, in-plane silicon electrical contacts in a single lithographic step. Electrical current is passed through the devices to enable thermal tuning via joule heating. A 14nm wavelength shift is demonstrated with 1.6mW power consumption in devices with >20nm free spectral ranges and quality factors exceeding 20,000. Spectral shifts of several modal linewidths can be achieved with tuning powers below 100µW.
Detection of H1N1 virus nucleic acid in throat swab samples from influenza-like patients in sentinel surveillance

Objective:To detect influenza virus nucleic acid and find different types influenza patients and provide the basis for clinic cure and prevention control.Methods:Influenza type A,H1,H3 and type B were detected from sentinel hospital throat swabs by RT-PCR,and then influenza type A(H1N1) RNA was detected by real-time RT-PCR.Results:By real-time RT-PCR,5 influenza type A(H1N1) RNA was detected from 14 influenza patients' throat swabs.Conclusion:Influenza A(H1N1) virus nucleic acid detection confirmed case of Influenza A(H1N1) influenza cases.We should increase monitoring efforts to prevent the spread of the epidemic.
Preoperative assessment of the patient with breast cancer

The clinical assessment of patients with stage I and II breast cancer is limited to a history and physical examination supplemented by a chest radiograph and serum alkaline phosphatase determination. In the absence of positive clinical findings or elevation of the alkaline phosphatase, routine scintigraphy of the skeletal system and liver is not indicated. In contrast, routine scintigraphy of the skeletal system and liver is indicated in patients with stage III disease, even in the absence of clinical evidence of systemic metastasis.
Clausius’ second paper

In his second major memoir CLAUSIUS took up again the problem of reconciling CARNOT and CLAPEYRON’s results, apart from the erroneous expressions for the specific heats, with the principle of conservation of energy. It was the expression for the latent heat that remained outstanding. CLAUSIUS had verified it for a perfect gas, with C(θ) = θ, but did it hold for an arbitrary equation of state?
Antioxidant Measurement in Seminal Plasma by TAC Assay

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced as a consequence of aerobic metabolism. Unstable free radical species attack cellular components and damage lipids, proteins, and DNA and are also implicated in the pathophysiology of a variety of diseases. Living organisms have developed complex antioxidant systems to counteract the effects of ROS and reduce damage. The antioxidant system includes enzymes such as superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase; macromolecules such as albumin, ceruloplasmin, and ferritin; and an array of small molecules, including ascorbic acid, α-tocopherol, β-carotene, reduced glutathione, uric acid, and bilirubin.
Comparison of certain Nylsvley soils using a bioassay technique

In terms of the growth of radish and tef seedlings, differences in soil properties identified in a previous pedological study are quantified on a number of levels or scales. Faster growth was generally obtained with plants grown in soil from microphyllous thorn savanna than from broad · leaf savanna. Similarly, faster growth was recorded for plants grown in soil from under-tree subhabitats than from inter-tree subhabitats. The concentrations of 16 mineral elements in the plant tissue are presented. It is not known whether the differences reported are due solely to differences in their availability or concentration in the soil.
Abstract A26: Cancer-associated mutations impair the functional association of ETO/MTG family members with E proteins.

MTG8 and MTG16 are disrupted by the t(8;21) and t(16;21) chromosomal translocations respectively, yielding a fusion protein containing the N-terminal DNA-binding domain of RUNX1 fused to almost all of the MTG8 or MTG16. The t(8;21) is responsible for up to 15% of de novo AML cases, however, t(16;21) is relatively rare and has been liked to therapy-related AML. MTG16 is also disrupted by the inv(16)(p13.3q24.3) in 27% of non-Downs syndrome acute megakaryocytic leukemia (AMKL). This translocation fuses the first 3/4th of MTG16 to GLIS2. That two different ETO/MTG family members are disrupted by frequent translocations highlights the key regulatory role of this gene family, but we are just beginning to understand how ETO/MTG8 and MTG16/ETO2 act in transcriptional control and tumorigenesis. Proteomic studies suggest that these proteins link DNA binding proteins such as the “E proteins” E2A and HEB to the transcriptional machinery that controls RNA polymerase II transcriptional initiation and elongation. E-proteins also play a critical role in B- and T-cell development. Here, we have tested mutations uncovered by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project in solid cancers that we predicted would affect the association between MTGs and E proteins. We found that the majority of these changes are silent in our assays but selected alterations impaired MTG-dependent interference with E2A-dependent transcriptional activation. This was also true in complementation assays in vivo. Furthermore, the mutations also affected E-protein-MTG interactions. These results suggest that inactivating mutations in MTG family members may contribute to solid cancers in specific instances, and also deregulate normal B- and T-cell development. Citation Format: Pankaj Acharya, Scott W. Hiebert. Cancer-associated mutations impair the functional association of ETO/MTG family members with E proteins. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Hematologic Malignancies: Translating Discoveries to Novel Therapies; Sep 20-23, 2014; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2015;21(17 Suppl):Abstract nr A26.
Neural Tube Defects. Spina Bifida

Investigators from the Greenwood Genetic Center, South Carolina and Department of Pediatrics, U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, studied 6 fetuses weighing < 1 kg with spinal defects detected through maternal serum-fetoprotein or ultrasound examination in the midtrimester.
DQS advisor: A visual interface to balance dose, quality and reconstruction speed in iterative CT

Low-dose CT has recently shown much progress in its mission to deliver clinically-useful results with reduced radiation imposed on patients. However, for many of the proposed reconstruction algorithms there is still no quantitative link between the settings of the various parameters and the corresponding reconstruction image quality and reconstruction time. As a solution, we propose to combine automatic optimization with human interaction. We developed an interactive visual parameter space navigation interface which assists users in the selection of data acquisition and iterative CT algorithm parameter settings and allows them to intuitively decide among trade-offs. The optimization component is based on our previous parameter optimization framework. We now focus on the visual interface and conduct a study across different data acquisition settings in terms of X-ray tube current and number of projections. The user interface presents the performance data as color-mapped 2D scatter plots and it also provides a gallery feature that allows a qualitative comparison of possible reconstruction results. Our system is embedded into a webpage and can be accessed via a web browser from anywhere and any common computer platform. Further efforts focus on the scalability of our approach, in order to make it applicable to realistic application scenarios.
De novo metatranscriptome assembly and coral gene expression profile of Montipora capitata with growth anomaly

Scleractinian corals are a vital component of coral reef ecosystems, and of significant cultural and economic value worldwide. As anthropogenic and natural stressors are contributing to a global decline of coral reefs, understanding coral health is critical to help preserve these ecosystems. Growth anomaly (GA) is a coral disease that has significant negative impacts on coral biology, yet our understanding of its etiology and pathology is lacking. In this study we used RNA-seq along with de novo metatranscriptome assembly and homology assignment to identify coral genes that are expressed in three distinct coral tissue types: tissue from healthy corals (“healthy”), GA lesion tissue from diseased corals (“GA-affected”) and apparently healthy tissue from diseased corals (“GA-unaffected”). We conducted pairwise comparisons of gene expression among these three tissue types to identify genes and pathways that help us to unravel the molecular pathology of this coral disease. The quality-filtered de novo-assembled metatranscriptome contained 76,063 genes, of which 13,643 were identified as putative coral genes. Overall gene expression profiles of coral genes revealed high similarity between healthy tissue samples, in contrast to high variance among diseased samples. This indicates GA has a variety of genetic effects at the colony level, including on seemingly healthy (GA-unaffected) tissue. A total of 105 unique coral genes were found differentially expressed among tissue types. Pairwise comparisons revealed the greatest number of differentially expressed genes between healthy and GA-affected tissue (93 genes), followed by healthy and GA-unaffected tissue (33 genes), and GA-affected and -unaffected tissue (7 genes). The putative function of these genes suggests GA is associated with changes in the activity of genes involved in developmental processes and activation of the immune system. This is one of the first transcriptome-level studies to investigate coral GA, and the first metatranscriptome assembly for the M. capitata holobiont. The gene expression data, metatranscriptome assembly and methodology developed through this study represent a significant addition to the molecular information available to further our understanding of this coral disease.
Structural Insights into a Thermostable Variant of Human Carbonic Anhydrase II

Carbonic anhydrase is an enzyme of interest for many biotechnological developments including carbon sequestration. These applications often require harsh conditions, so there is a need for the development of thermostable variants. One of the most thermostable human carbonic anhydrase II (HCAIIts) variants was patented in 2006. Here, we report the ultra-high resolution crystal structure of HCAIIts. The structural changes seen are consistent with each of the six mutations involved acting largely independently and variously resulting in increased H-bonding, improved packing, and reduced side chain entropy loss on folding to yield the increased stability. We further suggest that for four of the mutations, improvements in backbone conformational energetics is also a contributor and that considerations of such conformational propensities of individual amino acids are often overlooked.
Pituitary Tumors: Role of Pituitary Tumor-Transforming Gene-1 (PTTG1)

Human pituitary tumor transforming gene-1 (PTTG1) is a novel oncogene. Its overexpression occurs in a wide variety of human tumors including pituitary adenomas. Several factors and signalling pathways regulate pituitary PTTG1 expression, including estrogen, epidermal growth factor, octamer-binding transcription factor 1 and Rb/E2F1. PTTG1 is extensively involved in physiologic and oncogenic functions. Molecular and clinical studies implicate diverse roles of PTTG1 in cell cycle regulation, genetic instability, cell proliferation, pituitary tumor angiogenesis and senescence. Both transgenic and knockout mouse models support a causal role for PTTG1 in the development of pituitary tumors. Here, we review the current knowledge of the regulatory mechanisms and the biological and pathophysiological roles of PTTG1 in pituitary tumors.
New combinations in the Neotropical genus Miconia (Melastomataceae: Miconieae)

In our published monograph of the Octopleura clade of Miconia (Ruiz & Pavon 1794: 60), we proposed a number of new combinations and new names to reflect the nested position of this group of 33 species within the large and megadiverse neotropical genus Miconia based on morphological and molecular data sets (Gamba & Almeda 2014). At least three of the species names we proposed or accepted in that monograph present nomenclatural problems in need of correction. The name Miconia magnifolia Gamba & Almeda (2014: 91), which was illegitimate and nomenclaturally superfluous, has been rejected and replaced with Miconia solearis (Naudin 1851: 339) Gamba & Almeda (2015: 199). Two other names, Miconia spiciformis Gamba & Almeda (2014: 130) and Miconia neomicrantha Judd & Skean (1991: 62) must also be rejected and replaced. The former is superfluous and illegitimate and our acceptance of the latter species overlooked the epithet of a heterotypic synonym that was available and should have been adopted for a new combination. We here replace these latter two names with the following combinations and provide a summary of relevant synonymy.
Nonprofit graduate education: Who gets the degree and why?

ABSTRACTThe field of nonprofit education is rapidly growing, but the nonprofit literature has a noticeable gap about the impact of nonprofit education degree programs on their graduates, the organi...
An Epidemic of Dyssynchrony: But What Does It Mean?

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is used to treat a subset of heart failure patients with discoordinate wall motion. Defining appropriate patients is important, and, although electrical delay (wide QRS) is commonly used, recent data show that measures of mechanical dyssynchrony improve the sensitivity and specificity of predicting responders (including patients with narrow QRS complexes). This has stimulated studies of dyssynchrony per se, and the phenomenon now appears to be very common in virtually all forms of heart failure. However, what all this dyssynchrony means clinically, and how or whether it should be treated by CRT or other means, remains unclear.
The Vamping of Jonathan Harker: An Intimation of the Darkness in Bram Stoker’s DRACULA

One of the mainstays in Dracula criticism, Christopher Craft’s “’Kiss Me with Those Red Lips,’” insists that the homosexuality lurking in Stoker’s text is “[a]lways postponed, never directly enacte...
A Qualitative Analysis of Family Dynamics and Motivation in Sessions With 15 Women in Drug Treatment Court.

Women with substance use disorders (SUDs) often experience inadequate health care, mental and physical health problems, trauma, lack of social support, and undermining of support for psychological ...
A Digital PLL Based 2 nd -Order Δ∑ Bandpass Time-Interleaved ADC

This paper presents a time-interleaved (TI) VCObased band-pass ADC with a second-order bandstop noise transfer function. The proposed ADC uses a digital phase-locked loop (PLL) based architecture and employs current starved ring-oscillator as integrator which provides inherent multi-bit quantization. Thus, the proposed band-pass ADC does not need op-amps for integration and consumes low power and area. The proposed ADC is designed in 65nm CMOS and Matlab and Spectre simulations were performed to characterize the ADC. The proposed ADC achieves 61dB SNDR while consuming 0.44mW and has a Walden FoM of 63fJ/conv. step.