cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Neonatal phenobarbital exposure disrupts GABAergic synaptic maturation in rat CA1 neurons.

OBJECTIVE Phenobarbital is the most commonly utilized drug for the treatment of neonatal seizures. The use of phenobarbital continues despite growing evidence that it exerts suboptimal seizure control and is associated with long-term alterations in brain structure, function, and behavior. Alterations following neonatal phenobarbital exposure include acute induction of neuronal apoptosis, disruption of synaptic development in the striatum, and a host of behavioral deficits. These behavioral deficits include those in learning and memory mediated by the hippocampus. However, the synaptic changes caused by acute exposure to phenobarbital that lead to lasting effects on brain function and behavior remain understudied. METHODS Postnatal day (P)7 rat pups were treated with phenobarbital (75 mg/kg) or saline. On P13-14 or P29-37, acute slices were prepared and whole-cell patch-clamp recordings were made from CA1 pyramidal neurons. RESULTS At P14 we found an increase in miniature inhibitory postsynaptic current (mIPSC) frequency in the phenobarbital-exposed as compared to the saline-exposed group. In addition to this change in mIPSC frequency, the phenobarbital group displayed larger bicuculline-sensitive tonic currents, decreased capacitance and membrane time constant, and a surprising persistence of giant depolarizing potentials. At P29+, the frequency of mIPSCs in the saline-exposed group had increased significantly from the frequency at P14, typical of normal synaptic development; at this age the phenobarbital-exposed group displayed a lower mIPSC frequency than did the control group. Spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic current (sIPSC) frequency was unaffected at either P14 or P29+. SIGNIFICANCE These neurophysiological alterations following phenobarbital exposure provide a potential mechanism by which acute phenobarbital exposure can have a long-lasting impact on brain development and behavior.
The Victorian ‘Change of Air’ as medical and social construction

The ‘Change of Air’ was a nineteenth-century tourism form premised on the restoration of health. Although widely accepted as a precursor to the modern pleasure holiday, the Change of Air has receiv...
Right heart catheterization using metallic guidewires and low SAR cardiovascular magnetic resonance fluoroscopy at 1.5 Tesla: first in human experience

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) fluoroscopy allows for simultaneous measurement of cardiac function, flow and chamber pressure during diagnostic heart catheterization. To date, commercial metallic guidewires were considered contraindicated during CMR fluoroscopy due to concerns over radiofrequency (RF)-induced heating. The inability to use metallic guidewires hampers catheter navigation in patients with challenging anatomy. Here we use low specific absorption rate (SAR) imaging from gradient echo spiral acquisitions and a commercial nitinol guidewire for CMR fluoroscopy right heart catheterization in patients. The low-SAR imaging protocol used a reduced flip angle gradient echo acquisition (10° vs 45°) and a longer repetition time (TR) spiral readout (10 ms vs 2.98 ms). Temperature was measured in vitro in the ASTM 2182 gel phantom and post-mortem animal experiments to ensure freedom from heating with the selected guidewire (150 cm × 0.035″ angled-tip nitinol Terumo Glidewire). Seven patients underwent CMR fluoroscopy catheterization. Time to enter each chamber (superior vena cava, main pulmonary artery, and each branch pulmonary artery) was recorded and device visibility and confidence in catheter and guidewire position were scored on a Likert-type scale. Negligible heating (< 0.07°C) was observed under all in vitro conditions using this guidewire and imaging approach. In patients, chamber entry was successful in 100% of attempts with a guidewire compared to 94% without a guidewire, with failures to reach the branch pulmonary arteries. Time-to-enter each chamber was similar (p=NS) for the two approaches. The guidewire imparted useful catheter shaft conspicuity and enabled interactive modification of catheter shaft stiffness, however, the guidewire tip visibility was poor. Under specific conditions, trained operators can apply low-SAR imaging and using a specific fully-insulated metallic nitinol guidewire (150 cm × 0.035” Terumo Glidewire) to augment clinical CMR fluoroscopy right heart catheterization. Clinicaltrials.gov NCT03152773 , registered May 15, 2017.
Mössbauer Spectroscopy of 237Np Organometallic Compounds

Mossbauer Effect (ME) spectra are an important tool in the investigation of the properties of solids. The electron charge density, electric field gradient and magnetic hyperfine field at the actinide nucleus are influenced by covalent contributions to bonding, site symmetry of the actinide ion, and magnetic interactions between the ion and the nucleus, respectively.
William F. Church: A Historian’s Historian

The historian’s guild is not an overwhelmingly introspective one. Our attention is directed to the subjects we study and not to ourselves who study them. Now and again we worry a bit about the ways in which we study the past, but we are not usually given, like our friends in some of the social sciences, to beginning our books with long discourses on theoretical models and formal methodologies. It is only rarely that we turn to the study of past historians, and then they are always great historians. But greatness in historians is a paradoxical thing. Not only do we find it almost always only in the founding fathers of our profession, but it seems to be bound up with a power of personal vision and expression that overwhelms the subject. Furthermore, those historians whom we read as literary masters or major thinkers have long since ceased to be part of the present, still active tradition; we do not consult and cite their works as we write our own. We seldom look at our contemporaries as a whole, even as we use them. Most of us contribute our mite to the store of historical knowledge and understanding, and although our students and our friends look at us and later remember us with-we hope-affection and respect, they do not characteristically undertake to see us as a whole in our professional capacity. And quite properly, for we matter to the wide world really in what we do and not for what we are. Only occasionally do we seek to grasp a historian of our own time in and for himself, rather than for his work. I was called up to do this for Pieter Geyl by the editor of the Journal of Modern History some fifteen years ago, and by good fortune my article appeared in time for Geyl to be able to read it not long before he died. Jack Hexter, who sits here this evening with us, had the sadder task of summing up the mind of Garrett Mattingly in a memorial volume after he died, and he paid him the tribute of writing candid and probing evaluation, the kind in which Mattingly himself engaged, rather than pious and innocuous laudation. It is this example that I take for myself tonight, and for the same reason. Bill Church, although he wrote for historians and history students, not, like Mattingly, for them and for the broad public, held to the same standards of professional conscience. Indeed, I think I may say with pride that he was most candid with those whom he prized as friends.
A Visit with the ∞-Laplace Equation

(0.1) F∞(u, U) := ‖|Du|‖L∞(U) among all such functions. Here |Du| is the Euclidean length of the gradient Du of u. We will also be interested in the “Lipschitz constant” functional as well. If K is any subset of IR and u : K → IR, its least Lipschitz constant is denoted by (0.2) Lip(u,K) := inf {L ∈ IR : |u(x)− u(y)| ≤ L|x− y| ∀ x, y ∈ K} . Of course, inf ∅ = +∞. Likewise, if any definition such as (0.1) is applied to a function for which it does not clearly make sense, then we take the right-hand side to be +∞. One has F∞(u, U) = Lip(u, U) if U is convex, but equality does not hold in general. Example 2.1 and Exercise 2 below show that there may be many minimizers of F∞(·, U) or Lip(·, U) in the class of functions agreeing with a given boundary function b on ∂U. While this sort of nonuniqueness can only take place if the functional involved is not strictly convex, it is more significant here that the functionals are “not local.” Let us explain what we mean in contrast with the Dirichlet functional
Theoretical Modeling of Oxide-Photocatalysts for PEC Water Splitting

For the last few decades, oxide materials have been one of the primary focuses for studies of photocatalysts for hydrogen production by splitting water. So far, under visible-light illumination, this approach has not been very successful; only under ultraviolet radiation oxides have shown some limited success. Despite the fact that oxides are in general stable, they suffer from wide bandgap, high resistivity, and sometimes poor optical absorption at the fundamental gap. Therefore, to improve the performance, it is important to understand the fundamental problems of photo-conduction properties in oxides at the electronic level. Density functional theory and its various extensions can provide useful insights regarding these problems. In addition, theory/computational studies can guide as well as predict novel oxides materials. In this chapter we will discuss some of the challenging aspects of the oxide photocatalysts from the theoretical perspective.
L’humour noir comme instrument de jeu-à-la-mort dans des films récents

Dans cet article, il est question du mecanisme ludique d’humour noir dans des films d’Anders Thomas Jensen, Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Ethan et Joel Coen et Olias Barco. Nous partons de la conception de l’humour donnee par Freud comme strategie d’economie d’affects, et cherchons a l’enrichir en proposant une analyse des caracteristiques formelles du jeu entre realisateur et public. Les films en question offrent des morts violentes traitees avec desinvolture. Meme si une telle violence produit visuellement un choc, le plaisir ludique est present qui inscrit le jeu humoristique dans une positivite d’ethos. Notre approche range la mort dans le tragique plus que dans la tristesse, a savoir dans le domaine d’une tension insoluble. Les films etudies traitent de la mort necessaire et cruelle sur le mode de simulacre qui permet a une multiplicite subjective de s’exprimer comme source de recomposition de sens et de joie.
Amplifier Album Review: “Late Bloom”: Amy Ray, Stag (Daemon Records, 2001)

Amy Ray released Stag , her first solo record, on 6 March 2001. At the time, I was a senior at R.J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, NC. Looking back through the sands of time, I can recall counting down the days until the Tuesday release date, checking for updates on turn-of-the-century fan
Fast Image Dehazing Methods for Real-Time Video Processing

Images of outdoor scenes are usually degraded by atmospheric particles, such as haze, fog and smoke, which fade the color and reduce the contrast of objects in the scene. This reduces image quality for manual or automated analysis in a variety of outdoor video surveillance applications, for example threat or anomaly detection. Current dehazing techniques, based on atmospheric models and frame-by-frame approaches, perform reasonably well, but are slow and unsuitable for real-time processing. This paper addresses the need for an online robust and fast dehazing algorithm that can improve video quality for a variety of surveillance applications. We build upon and expand state of the art dehazing techniques to develop a robust real-time dehazing algorithm with the following key characteristics and advantages: (1) We leverage temporal correlations and exploit special haze models to achieve 4× speed-up over the baseline algorithm [1] with no loss in detection performance, (2) We develop a pixel-by-pixel approach that allows us to retain sharp detail near object boundaries, which is essential for both manual and automated object detection and recognition applications, (3) We introduce a method for estimating global atmospheric lighting which makes it very robust for a variety of outdoor applications, and (4) We introduce a simple and effective sky segmentation method for improving the global atmospheric light estimation which has the effect of mitigating color distortion. We evaluate our approach on video data from multiple test locations, demonstrate both qualitative and quantitative improvements in image quality, and object detection accuracy.
IMU-Based Robust Human Activity Recognition using Feature Analysis, Extraction, and Reduction

In recent years, research investigations on recognizing human activities to assess the physical and cognitive capability of humans have gained importance. This paper presents the development of a robust recognition system for Human Activity Recognition under real-world conditions. The activities considered are walking, walking upstairs (walk-up), walking downstairs (walk-dn), sitting, standing and sleeping. The proposed system consists of 3 main elements - a feature extraction from an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) based on the spectral and temporal analysis; a feature dimensionality reduction techniques to reduce the high dimensional feature representation, and; various model training algorithms to recognize the human activities. Different methods for feature extraction based on time and frequency domain signal properties are evaluated. The high dimensionality of extracted features results in complex model training and suffers from the curse of dimensionality. Therefore, we evaluated feature selection and transformation algorithms to improve robustness without decreasing the prediction accuracy. Our results finding shows that Random forest feature selection method, when used with Ensemble bagged classifier, provides an accuracy of 96.9% with 15 features compared to the current benchmark system that employs 561 features. We further obtained a less complex activity recognition system via Neighborhood component analysis along with Ensemble bagged classifier that yields a classification accuracy of 96.3% with only 9 features.
Abstract WP311: Early Lessons Learned in the Stroke Bundled Payment Experience

Introduction: The Bundled Payments for Care improvement (BPCI) initiative was launched by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2014. Our organization contracted for Model 2, maki...
Left Behind? School Choice in Rural Communities

School choice in rural areas is a subject that has been largely overlooked by researchers. This gap in the rural education knowledge base may be due to the perception that geographic isolation prec...
Billing for Living Kidney Donor Care: Balancing Cost Recovery, Regulatory Compliance, and Minimized Donor Burden

To provide standardized guidance for transplant programs to maximize financial reimbursement related to living donor care and to minimize financial consequences of evaluation, surgical, and follow-up care to living donor candidates and donors. In 2014, the American Society for Transplantation (AST) Live Donor Community of Practice (LDCOP) “Consensus Conference on Best Practices in Live Kidney Donation” identified inconsistencies in billing practices as a barrier to living donor financial neutrality and issued a strong recommendation that the transplant community actively pursue strategies and policies to make living donation a financially neutral act, within the framework of federal law. The LDCOP convened a multidisciplinary group of experts to review and synthesize current Medicare regulations and commercial payer practices related to billing for living donor care and the implications for transplant programs and patients. We developed guidance for transplant program staff related to strategies to: consistently and appropriately obtain reimbursement via the Medicare Cost Report by utilizing organ acquisition; coordinate available coverage for donor pretesting, evaluation, hospitalization, follow-up care, and complications; coordinate charges in kidney paired donation; and maximize coverage through private insurance contracting. We also offer recommendations to protect donor confidentiality in the context of billing and to educate and prepare donor candidates and donors about any remaining gaps in coverage related to donation. Best practices in billing for living donation-related care should focus on balancing cost recovery, regulatory compliance, and minimized donor burden. Herein, we offer nine recommendations for best practice. We also offer a platform of seven recommendations for research and advocacy efforts to better understand the climate of living donor medical costs and to optimize billing practices that support provision of living donor transplant services to all patients who can benefit and to achieve financial neutrality for living donors.
Intraoperative Awareness With Recall: A Descriptive, Survey-Based, Cohort Study.

Background Unintended intraoperative awareness with recall (AWR) is a potential complication of general anesthesia. Patients typically report recollections of (1) hearing sounds or conversations, (2) being unable to breathe or move, (3), feeling pain, and/or (4) experiencing emotional distress. The purpose of the current study was to identify and further characterize AWR experiences identified through postoperative surveys of a large unselected adult surgical cohort. Methods This is a substudy of a prospective registry study, which surveys patients on their health and well-being after surgery. Responses to 4 questions focusing on AWR were analyzed. Patients who reported AWR with pain, paralysis, and/or distress were contacted by telephone to obtain more information about their AWR experience. The interview results for patients who received general anesthesia were sent to 3 anesthesiologists, who adjudicated the reported AWR episodes. Results Of 48,151 surveys sent, 17,875 patient responses were received. Of these respondents, 622 reported a specific memory from the period between going to sleep and waking up from perceived general anesthesia and 282 of these reported related pain, paralysis, and/or distress. An attempt was made to contact these 282 patients, and 149 participated in a telephone survey. Among the 149 participants, 87 endorsed their prior report of AWR. However, only 22 of these patients had received general anesthesia, while 51 received only sedation and 14 received regional anesthesia. Three anesthesiologists independently adjudicated the survey results of the 22 general anesthesia cases and assigned 6 as definite AWR, 8 as possible AWR, and 8 as not AWR episodes. Of the 65 patients who confirmed their report of AWR after regional or sedation anesthesia, 37 (31 with sedation and 6 with regional anesthesia) had not expected to be conscious during surgery. Conclusions The complication of AWR continues to occur during intended general anesthesia. Many reports of AWR episodes occur in patients receiving sedation or regional anesthesia and relate to incorrect expectations regarding anesthetic techniques and conscious experiences, representing a potential target for intervention.
A Summary Report of Cost-Effectiveness: Recognizing the Value of Family Therapy in Health Care

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a summary of cost-effectiveness research on the work of marriage and family therapists in healthcare contexts. Twenty-one studies based on four sources of data were considered: (a) a western United States Health Maintenance Organization covering 180,000 subscribers; (b) the Kansas State Medicaid system with over 300,000 beneficiaries; (c) Cigna, a large United States health insurance benefits management company which provided data regarding more than six million claims for 500,000 unique persons across 6 years; and (d) a family therapy training clinic in the western United States serving approximately 700 individuals and families annually. All DSM diagnostic groups are available for analysis. Studies regarding schizophrenia, depression, sexual disorders, somatoform disorder, substance abuse, and relational diagnosis have been published and others are underway. Results support the potential for a medical offset effect after family therapy, with the largest reduction occurring for high utilizers of health care. The studies also show that family therapy as a treatment modality is a cost-effective form of treatment and trained family therapists are cost-effective providers. These outcomes are particularly important for medical family therapists (MedFT) who need to understand how medical offset, healthcare utilization, and cost-effective treatments are relevant to their work.
Medical students' reflections on surgical educators' professionalism: Contextual nuances in the hidden curriculum.

Abstract Introduction Surgical educators’ professional behavior constitutes a hidden curriculum and impacts trainee’s professional identity formation. This study explores the nuances of professional behaviors as observed in varying surgical settings. Methods 411 Transcripts originated from essays written by MS3 students during their surgical clerkship from 2010 to 2016 were collated. Employing a qualitative research methodology, we conducted a thematic analysis to uncover specific meaning emerging from medical student reflections’ on surgical professionalism. Results In clinics, taking time and protecting patient privacy; in the OR, control over emotion during difficult situations and attention to learners; and in the inpatient setting, showing accountability above normal expected behavior were noted as professional. Similarly, unprofessional behaviors in these contexts paralleled lack of these attributes. Conclusions Behaviors observed and the attributes of professionalism in the surgical learning environment have contextual nuances. These variations in professionalism can be utilized in deliberate development of professionalism in surgery.
Effect of Achilles Tendon Rupture on Player Performance and Longevity in Women’s National Basketball Association Players:

Background:National Basketball Association (NBA) players who return to sport (RTS) after Achilles tendon rupture have been reported to have poor outcomes.Purpose:To evaluate the effect of Achilles ...
Determination of Arsenic and Mercury Simultaneously with Hydride Generation Atomic Fluorescence Method

Objective The establishment of simultaneous determination of total mercury and arsenic in water samples by hydride generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry.Method At a certain acidity reaction of potassium bromate and potassium bromide bromine,so that the mercury in all digestion samples converted to inorganic mercury,and then potassium borohydride reduction of mercury into the atomic state.Arsenic in hydrochloric acid medium,potassium borohydride to arsenic into arsine achieved mercury in water,the simultaneous determination of arsenic,and various analytical conditions were optimized and discussed.Results The determination of mercury,arsenic recoveries were 98.1-104.9%,98.6%-107.0%,and the detection limit of arsenic was 0.09μg / L,mercury 0.005μg / L.Conclusions The determination of mercury in water samples,arsenic with satisfactory results.
Spatial and Temporal Organization of Composite Receptive Fields in the Songbird Auditory Forebrain

Abstract The mechanisms underlying how single auditory neurons and neuron populations encode natural and acoustically complex vocal signals, such as human speech or bird songs, are not well understood. Classical models focus on individual neurons, whose spike rates vary systematically as a function of change in a small number of simple acoustic dimensions. However, neurons in the caudal medial nidopallium (NCM), an auditory forebrain region in songbirds that is analogous to the secondary auditory cortex in mammals, have composite receptive fields (CRFs) that comprise multiple acoustic features tied to both increases and decreases in firing rates. Here, we investigated the anatomical organization and temporal activation patterns of auditory CRFs in European starlings exposed to natural vocal communication signals (songs). We recorded extracellular electrophysiological responses to various bird songs at auditory NCM sites, including both single and multiple neurons, and we then applied a quadratic model to extract large sets of CRF features that were tied to excitatory and suppressive responses at each measurement site. We found that the superset of CRF features yielded spatially and temporally distributed, generalizable representations of a conspecific song. Individual sites responded to acoustically diverse features, as there was no discernable organization of features across anatomically ordered sites. The CRF features at each site yielded broad, temporally distributed responses that spanned the entire duration of many starling songs, which can last for 50 s or more. Based on these results, we estimated that a nearly complete representation of any conspecific song, regardless of length, can be obtained by evaluating populations as small as 100 neurons. We conclude that natural acoustic communication signals drive a distributed yet highly redundant representation across the songbird auditory forebrain, in which adjacent neurons contribute to the encoding of multiple diverse and time-varying spectro-temporal features.
Neuroprotective Efficacy of Estrogen in Experimental Spinal Cord Injury in Rats

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to neurological deficits and motor dysfunction. Methylprednisolone, the only drug used for treating SCI, renders limited neuroprotection and remains controversial. Estrogen is one of the most potent multiactive neuroprotective agents and it is currently under investigation in our laboratory for its efficacy in SCI. The present review briefly summarizes our earlier findings on the therapeutic potential of pharmacological/supraphysiological levels of estrogen in SCI and outlines our ongoing research, highlighting the efficacy of physiological levels of estrogen against neuronal injury, axonal degeneration, and gliosis and also the molecular mechanisms of such neuroprotection in experimental SCI. Furthermore, our ongoing studies designed to explore the different translational potential of estrogen therapy suggest that this multiactive steroid may act as an adjunct therapy to promote angiogenesis, thus enhancing the functional recovery following chronic SCI. Taken together, these studies confirm that estrogen is a potential therapeutic agent for treating SCI.
The Contraband Incident: The strange case of Marion Zimmer Bradley

The late Marion Zimmer Bradley once said of her own most famous fictional world, "I didn't invent Darkover, I discovered it." Unlike most authors, who at best enjoy their admirers' activities, and at worst try to end them, Bradley and her sizable community of fans collaborated in the publication of a large body of work fairly harmoniously for over two decades. However, this collaboration came to an abrupt end in 1992 with an event that can be referred to as the Contraband Incident. As this overview will explain, it is a cautionary tale which illustrates how fan activity can do real emotional and monetary damage to the creator-author.
Qualitative Analysis of Mouse Specific-Locus Mutations: Information on Genetic Organization, Gene Expression, and the Chromosomal Nature of Induced Lesions

Mutations scored in specific-locus experiments can serve many purposes. Their primary function, of course, is to detect and measure mutagenicity of an agent [1]. This primary function is fulfilled rapidly and accurately, thanks to the well-defined phenotypes of mutations at the marked loci. However, when resources permit the setting up of stocks and the subsequent genetic analysis of the mutations, the information obtained can make major contributions to several other areas of knowledge. Such information can shed light on the nature of mutations induced by specific agents, and on the manner in which certain types of genetic lesions are expressed on the organismic level. These areas of information are needed, in combination with each other, for an assessment of risk. Thirdly, the findings shed light on the genetic organization in mammalian chromosomes. Finally, they serve to identify tools for further investigations in basic genetics and mutagenesis. This paper summarizes contributions to these areas from findings made on mutations induced in radiation experiments at Oak Ridge.
Winter Reference-Land (Blame It on the Lake-Effect)

[This column is a collection of stories of one reference librarian’s dialogues with a host of patrons, which occur over a variety of media, including Web chat, phone, face-to-face, and immersive environments. Some names, places, times, and events have been changed to preserve anonymity.]
Normative Models of Judgment and Decision Making

The study of judgment and decision making (JDM) is traditionally concerned with the comparison of judgments to standards, standards that allow evaluation of the judgments as better or worse. I use the term “judgments” to include decisions, which are judgments about what to do. The major standards come from probability theory, utility theory, and statistics. These are mathematical theories or “models” that allow us to evaluate a judgment. They are called normative because they
Structure of the canine pancreatic lipase gene.

Abstract Identification of three overlapping clones in a canine genomic lambda phage library allowed us to determine a detailed restriction enzyme map of the primary transcriptional unit of the pancreatic lipase gene (15.5 kilobase pairs) as well as 15 and 6 kilobase pairs of 5'- and 3'-flanking regions, respectively. DNA sequence analysis provided the primary structure of (a) 1,345 nucleotides (nt) of 5'-flanking sequence including CAAT and TATA boxes at positions -112 and -35, respectively, and a class 2 glucocorticoid receptor binding sequence at position -97, (b) 13,127 out of approximately 15,500 nt of the transcriptional unit which is organized into 13 exon sequences, and (c) 1,270 nt of 3'-flanking sequence. Exon 1 encodes the entire 5'-nontranslated mRNA sequence; exon 2, the ATG initiation codon and the hydrophobic portion of the signal peptide; and exon 6, Ser154 which shows homology to the active Ser152 in the porcine enzyme. Comparison of the amino acid sequences of human lipoprotein lipase, rat hepatic lipase, and Drosophila yolk proteins 1, 2, and 3 with canine pancreatic lipase shows that the central region of highest homology (encoded by exons 6-8 in the dog gene) contains four highly conserved subregions which may play a critical role in enzyme-substrate and protein-ligand binding for lipases and yolk proteins, respectively. Comparison of the sequences of 10 lipases from prokaryotes and eukaryotes identifies a 9-residue consensus sequence surrounding the active serine which includes the previously identified sequence Gly-X-Ser-X-Gly. The hydrophobic nature of this sequence in the 10 lipases contrasts with the hydrophilic nature of the corresponding sequences in serine proteases and thus defines an active site serine consensus sequence specific for lipases. An analysis of 5'- and 3'-flanking and intron 1-4 sequences in transient expression studies with AR4-2J and 266-6 cells was unable to reveal tissue-specific promoter or enhancer sequences.
Primary In Vivo Transcription of Vesicular Stomatitis Virus and Temperature-Sensitive Mutants of Five Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Complementation Groups

The process of adsorption and RNA transcription by vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in cells has been followed by using highly labeled preparations of VSV virions. The initial transcription process (primary parental transcription) is rapid and takes about 4 min to develop complete transcripts of the input genome. The optimal cell temperature for in vivo transcription is between 36 and 39.5 C, although transcription can be detected at 18 C. No negative effect on primary parental transcription was obtained by the presence of actinomycin D, puromycin, or cycloheximide. Demonstrable primary transcription by selected temperature-sensitive mutants of all five complementation groups of VSV was obtained at either 31 and 34 C (permissive temperatures for virus production) or 39.5 C (nonpermissive temperature for virus development). VSV grown in hamster (BHK 21) or chicken embryo cells were more efficiently adsorbed and transcribed in BHK cells.
Amelioration of graft-versus-host disease by pretreatment of allogeneic cells with fab fragments.

We have previously reported the protective effect of pretreatment of semiallogeneic marrow and spleen cells with Fab fragments of horse anti-mouse thymocyte globulin against otherwise 100% fatal acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). We have now examined the effect of this pretreatment in three allogeneic strain combinations of mice, namely, A leads to C57, CBA leads to CAF1, and CBA leads to BALB/c. Acute GVHD mortality at 15 days postirradiation and transplantation of untreated marrow and spleen cells was 100% in all the strain combinations. However, pretreatment of cells with Fab reduced acute GVHD mortality to 6, 13, and 33% for the CBA leads to CAF1, CBA leads to BALB/c, and A leads to C57 strain combinations, respectively. The combined mortality from both acute and secondary GVHD and all other causes at 60 and 200 days postirradiation was 6 and 11%, 20 and 39%, 50 and 66% for each of these strain combinations, respectively. These results provide additional evidence for the effectiveness of Fab in ameliorating acute GVHD and establish its applicability to allogeneic strain combinations.
Topological multiple recurrence for polynomial configurations in nilpotent groups

Abstract We establish a general multiple recurrence theorem for an action of a nilpotent group by homeomorphisms of a compact space. This theorem can be viewed as a nilpotent version of our recent polynomial Hales–Jewett theorem (Ann. Math. 150 (1999) 33) and contains nilpotent extensions of many known “abelian” results as special cases.
Monitoring heart period variability changes during seizures. I. Methods

Abstract The analysis of heart period variability (HPV) is a sensitive tool for detecting alterations in cardiac activity, which has been used to quantify changes in autonomic influences on cardiac function. We have developed a technique that utilizes time-and frequency-domain analysis of HPV to detect and quantify seizure-related alterations of cardiac autonomic regulation. Electrocardiographic (EKG) data obtained from video/EEG or ambulatory EEG recordings are processed off-line to provide graphic and tabular data regarding seizure-related changes in HPV. Using the preictal period as a baseline, ictal and postictal periods are analyzed to determine statistically significant changes in HPV during the ictal and postictal periods. This technique can detect seizure-related alterations of cardiac activity that are not apparent on routine inspection of the EKG. Some of these changes are evident prior to any apparent behavioral or EEG changes indicative of seizure activity. HPV analysis appears to be an important adjunct to video/EEG monitoring. It can allow detection and quantification of the cardiac effects of seizures that are likely to be mediated by changes in cardiac autonomic inputs. The method has promise in revealing important information regarding the mechanisms by which seizures may influence cardiac activity. In addition, HPV monitoring may provide an earlier and more reliable indication of the time of seizure onset than is apparent from inspection of video or EEG data alone.
Developing robust, hydrogel-based, nanofiber-enabled encapsulation devices (NEEDs) for cell therapies

Cell encapsulation holds enormous potential to treat a number of hormone deficient diseases and endocrine disorders. We report a simple and universal approach to fabricate robust, hydrogel-based, nanofiber-enabled encapsulation devices (NEEDs) with macroscopic dimensions. In this design, we take advantage of the well-known capillary action that holds wetting liquid in porous media. By impregnating the highly porous electrospun nanofiber membranes of pre-made tubular or planar devices with hydrogel precursor solutions and subsequent crosslinking, we obtained various nanofiber-enabled hydrogel devices. This approach is broadly applicable and does not alter the water content or the intrinsic chemistry of the hydrogels. The devices retained the properties of both the hydrogel (e.g. the biocompatibility) and the nanofibers (e.g. the mechanical robustness). The facile mass transfer was confirmed by encapsulation and culture of different types of cells. Additional compartmentalization of the devices enabled paracrine cell co-cultures in single implantable devices. Lastly, we provided a proof-of-concept study on potential therapeutic applications of the devices by encapsulating and delivering rat pancreatic islets into chemically-induced diabetic mice. The diabetes was corrected for the duration of the experiment (8 weeks) before the implants were retrieved. The retrieved devices showed minimal fibrosis and as expected, live and functional islets were observed within the devices. This study suggests that the design concept of NEEDs may potentially help to overcome some of the challenges in the cell encapsulation field and therefore contribute to the development of cell therapies in future.
Differential cross sections for the electron-impact ionization of molecular hydrogen in the distorted-wave Born approximation

Differential cross sections for electron-impact ionization of molecular hydrogen are presented in the factorized first Born, fixed-nuclei, frozen-core Hartree-Fock approximation. The wave function of the ejected electron is described by a Coulomb wave distorted by the static-exchange potential of the frozen ionic core. Transition matrix elements are evaluated in both the length and velocity forms using Pad\'e-approximant corrections to initial estimates based on the Schwinger variational principle. For high-energy incident electrons, the length form is in excellent agreement with experimental Compton defects but the magnitude of the doubly differential cross section is too large. The magnitude of the doubly differential cross section in the velocity form is generally in good agreement with experiment; however, the maxima occur at energy losses which are too large, particularly for small linear-momentum transfers. Results of calculations of the triply differential cross section are also presented. The agreement with experiment is only fair for 250-eV incident electrons because of the breakdown of the first Born approximation.
Critical phenomena in a binary lattice gas. II. Series analysis

The critical behavior of a two-component lattice-gas model (the 1-2 model) in two and three dimensions is investigated by means of standard and nonstandard methods of series analysis on exact series expansions for the thermodynamic properties of the model. The model exhibits a critical line that passes from the Ising critical point at finite temperature to a critical point at zero temperature. In two dimensions the Ising values of the critical exponents found along the critical line and at zero temperature support the expectation that the model lies in the Ising universality class. In three dimensions Ising values of the critical exponents are found away from zero temperature, but near and at zero temperature the series analysis suggests a crossover to non-Ising values of the critical exponents. This would imply that the model belongs to the Ising universality class at nonzero temperatures and to a different universality class at zero temperature\char22{}a quite unexpected result. Various possible explanations for this unusual behavior of the series results are discussed.
Sequence Elements Required for Function of the MHC Class II AβGene Promoter in Murine Macrophages

Abstract We have studied the DNA sequence elements of the murine MHC class II A β gene involved in transcriptional regulation in macrophages. For this study, the A β promoter was fused to the human growth hormone gene and transfected into bone marrow-derived macrophages. These macrophages were stimulated by interferon-γ (IFN-γ), after which cellular RNA was assayed for the amount of human growth hormone transcripts. A −146 to +14 fragment of the A β promoter was found to be sufficient to confer positive regulation by IFN-γ. Induction was suppressed by bacterial lipopolysaccharide, tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α), or maleylated bovine serum albumin. Substitution mutations were made within each of the conserved sequence elements of the promoter as well as within the spacer regions between these elements. All four conserved sequences found in class II promoters, the H, X1, X2, and Y elements, were found to be essential for promoter activation in macrophages.
Luminous bacteria of a monocentrid fish (Monocentris japonicus) and two anomalopid fishes (Photoblepharon palpebratus and Kryptophanaron alfredi): population sizes and growth within the light organs, and rates of release into the seawater

The light organs of monocentrid and anomalopid fishes consist of bacteria-filled tubular invaginations of the epidermis which are connected to the surrounding seawater by ducts. We used the release of bacteria from the light organs to estimate bacterial rates of growth in the light organs. For one monocentrid fish (4 specimens of Monocentris japonicus collected at Jogashima, Japan in 1980) and for two anomalopid fishes (2 specimens each of Photoblepharon palpebratus collected at Sebu, Phillipines in 1981 and Grand Comore Island in 1975 and Kryptophanaron alfredi collected at Parguera, Puerto Rico in 1982) we measured rates of release of bacteria into the surrounding seawater and the bacterial population sizes in the light organs; from this information we calculated doubling times of bacteria in the light organs. In addition, we determined the luminescence of bacteria after their release into the seawater. For M. japonicus, two specimens released 1.1 to 6×106 and 2×107 bacteria h−1, respectively; the light organs contained about 1.5×108 bacteria. For P. palpebratus, one specimen released 2.2×108 bacteria h−1; a second specimen had light organs containing 5.2×109 bacteria. For K. alfredi, one specimen released 7×107 bacteria h−1 and had light organs containing 5.6×108 bacteria; a second specimen released 3.6×107 bacteria h−1 and had light organs containing 7.3×108 bacteria. Bacterial doubling times in the light organs of these three fishes were variable and ranged from 7.5 to 135 h in M. japonicus and 8 to 23 h in the anomalopids. Bacteria released from M. japonicus into the seawater remained viable, but bacteria from all of the fishes soon ceased to emit light.
Macrosolute Effects on Nucleic Acid Interactions

The intracellular environment contains a variety of solutes that cumulatively occupy a significant volume of the cell (20-30%). The high volume occupancy generates a system which is macromolecularly crowded. This crowding, also known as the excluded volume effect, can lead to an increase in the chemical activity of solutes and influence thermodynamic and kinetic values as compared to a dilute system. Using synthetic, inert cosolutes to provide a simplified mimic of the crowding in the intracellular environment, DNA structures were studied. We demonstrate that crowding can lead to the differential stabilization of a complementary DNA duplex over duplexes containing a single mismatched base pair, effectively increasing the specificity of the hybridization reaction. In systems with molecularities ranging from one to four we demonstrate that as the molecularity of a system increases the crowding effects also increase. An increase in Tm of up to 12°C was noted for a multi-branch DNA structure with four arms. Crowding mediated enhancement of the rate of hybridization was found to be independent of sequence but dependent upon structure.
Discovery of geranylgeranyltransferase-I inhibitors with novel scaffolds by the means of quantitative structure-activity relationship modeling, virtual screening, and experimental validation.

Geranylgeranylation is critical to the function of several proteins including Rho, Rap1, Rac, Cdc42, and G-protein γ subunits. Geranylgeranyltransferase type I (GGTase-I) inhibitors (GGTIs) have therapeutic potential to treat inflammation, multiple sclerosis, atherosclerosis, and many other diseases. Following our standard workflow, we have developed and rigorously validated quantitative structure−activity relationship (QSAR) models for 48 GGTIs using variable selection k nearest neighbor (kNN), automated lazy learning (ALL), and partial least squares (PLS) methods. The QSAR models were employed for virtual screening of 9.5 million commercially available chemicals, yielding 47 diverse computational hits. Seven of these compounds with novel scaffolds and high predicted GGTase-I inhibitory activities were tested in vitro, and all were found to be bona fide and selective micromolar inhibitors. Notably, these novel hits could not be identified using traditional similarity search. These data demonstrate that r...
Book Review: Oncoplastic Surgery of the Breast

Maurice Y. Nahabedian, MD, FACS, Editor. Oncoplastic Surgery of the Breast. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2009 ISBN: 070203181X Oncoplastic Surgery of the Breast consists of 13 chapters and 172 pages. It is edited by Maurice Nahabedian, one of the premier reconstructive breast surgeons in the United States. Several of the authors in the book are also leaders in the field of oncoplastic surgery. In the introductory chapter, Dr. Nahabedian discusses the development of oncoplastic surgery and provides an outline of the chapters to follow. These subsequent chapters guide the reader in a logical manner through the topics of oncological safety, patient selection, surgical techniques, and radiation therapy. In terms of strengths and weaknesses, the chapter entitled “Oncoplastic Breast Conservation Surgery” is perhaps the best in the book. It is authored by Melvin … Corresponding Author: Dr. Grant W. Carlson, 1365 Clifton Road Atlanta, GA 30322-1013 E-mail: gcarlso{at}emory.edu
Subacute Intranasal Administration of Tissue Plasminogen Activator Increases Functional Recovery and Axonal Remodeling after Stroke in Rats

As a thrombolytic agent, application of recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to ischemic stroke is limited by the narrow time window and side effects on brain edema and hemorrhage. This study examined whether tPA, administered by intranasal delivery directly targeting the brain and spinal cord, provides therapeutic benefit during the subacute phase after stroke. Adult male Wistar rats were subjected to permanent right middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo). Animals were treated intranasally with saline, 60 μg or 600 μg recombinant human tPA at 7 and 14 days after MCAo (n=8/group), respectively. An adhesive-removal test and a foot-fault test were used to monitor functional recovery. Biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) was injected into the left motor cortex to anterogradely label the corticorubral tract (CRT) and the corticospinal tract (CST). Naive rats (n=6) were employed as normal control. Animals were euthanized 8 weeks after stroke. Compared with saline treated animals, significant functional improvements were evident in rats treated with 600 μg tPA (p<0.05), but not in 60 μg tPA treated rats. Furthermore, 600 μg tPA treatment significantly enhanced both CRT and CST sprouting originating from the contralesional cortex sprouting into the denervated side of the red nucleus and cervical gray matter compared with control group (p<0.01), respectively. The behavioral outcomes were highly correlated with CRT and CST axonal remodeling. Our data suggest that delayed tPA intranasal treatment provides therapeutic benefits for neurological recovery after stroke by, at least in part, promoting neuronal remodeling in the brain and spinal cord.