cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice: Policy Process Theory of Racial Tracking

Presently, the dominant theories put forth to explain the persistence of racial disproportionalness in American justice are offered in the fields of law, criminology, sociology, psychology, and economics. The available politics-centered accounts tend to emphasize racial bias or indifference – conscious and unconscious, institutional and noninstitutional. At the risk of oversimplifying, the politics-centered accounts may be summed up as attributing key racial justice outcomes mostly to actors within the criminal justice system, to racial conservatism, to rulings of the Burger-Rehnquist Courts, and/or to the Republican Party. In connection with the latter, Richard M. Nixon’s “law and order” agenda and Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs each receive considerable attention. Empirical analyses of systemic political forces and their role in enabling racial tracking are in short supply. In fact, within the political science discipline generally, research studies explicitly purposed to provide an in-depth, systematic account of the perpetual interplay between race, crime, and criminal justice politics are rare. Yet, precisely because racial tracking is a major public policy concern, the policy process literature would seem an excellent starting place for any effort to explicate its causal roots more fully. In turn, racial tracking is an excellent case study for gauging the overall utility of existing theories of the public policy process and, particularly, their capacity to explain the lack of racial justice reform.
Modulation of Locomotion and Reproduction by FLP Neuropeptides in the Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans

Neuropeptides function in animals to modulate most, if not all, complex behaviors. In invertebrates, neuropeptides can function as the primary neurotransmitter of a neuron, but more generally they co-localize with a small molecule neurotransmitter, as is commonly seen in vertebrates. Because a single neuron can express multiple neuropeptides and because neuropeptides can bind to multiple G protein-coupled receptors, neuropeptide actions increase the complexity by which the neural connectome can be activated or inhibited. Humans are estimated to have 90 plus neuropeptide genes; by contrast, nematodes, a relatively simple organism, have a slightly larger complement of neuropeptide genes. For instance, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has over 100 neuropeptide-encoding genes, of which at least 31 genes encode peptides of the FMRFamide family. To understand the function of this large FMRFamide peptide family, we isolated knockouts of different FMRFamide-encoding genes and generated transgenic animals in which the peptides are overexpressed. We assayed these animals on two basic behaviors: locomotion and reproduction. Modulating levels of different neuropeptides have strong as well as subtle effects on these behaviors. These data suggest that neuropeptides play critical roles in C. elegans to fine tune neural circuits controlling locomotion and reproduction.
Talking 'Bout My Antitrust Generation

The past generation of antitrust has witnessed much intellectual competition among economists and competition-minded jurists as to what that body of law is supposed to do. The current antitrust generation has seen a pronounced shift in favor of the economic view of antitrust's role, to the diminution of any political or social objectives once thought to be important antitrust goals. Nonetheless, three developments over the past generation deleteriously separate antitrust law from economics. Antitrust suits sometimes interfere with private attempts to manage the commons. States' insistence on being involved in antitrust enforcement frequently results in harmful suits that make no economic sense. So does European enforcement of its own antitrust rules. The desires of both foreign enforcers and state attorneys general to assume larger roles on the global antitrust stage are particularly worth watching. How those issues are resolved in the next antitrust generation will extremely important.
Source Code Analysis of a Connection-Oriented File Reader Server Socket Program in Java and Removal of the Security Vulnerabilities

This paper presents the source code analysis of a file reader server socket program (connection-oriented sockets) developed in Java, to illustrate the identification, impact analysis and solutions to remove important software security vulnerabilities, which if left unattended could severely impact the server running the software and also the network hosting the server. The vulnerabilities studied are: (1) Resource Injection, (2) Path Manipulation, (3) System Information Leak, and (4) Denial of Service vulnerabilities. We analyze the reason for these vulnerabilities to occur in the program, discuss the impact of leaving them unattended, and propose solutions to remove each of these vulnerabilities from the program. We also analyze any potential performance tradeoffs (such as increase in code size and loss of features) that could arise while incorporating the proposed solutions on the server program. The proposed solutions are very generic in nature, and can be suitably modified to correct any such vulnerabilities in software developed in any other programming language.
A Concept Selection Method Developed from a Probabilistic Multi-Criteria Decision Making Technique Using Utility Theory

In today's aircraft design, more and more attention is paid to the conceptual and preliminary design stages in order to increase the capability of choosing a design that will be successful. Therefore, the decisions made during these design phases play a central role in determining the success of a design. Decision making techniques at these stages, must manage multiple, conflicting criteria and capture associated uncertainties. The method presented in this study was developed from Joint Probability Decision Making (JPDM), a probabilistic multiple criteria decision making technique. The proposed method eliminated the limitations that JPDM has by utilizing Utility Functions to represent the decision maker's preference. An advanced rotorcraft concept selection problem is performed in order to demonstrate the improvements, and the results obtained from the proposed method and the JPDM technique are compared with each other.
Morphology and Histology of the Poison Glands and Sting of the Imported Fire Ant (Solenopsis Saevissima V. Richteri Forel)

The main poison gland consists of four principal areas: the poison sac, the poison filter, a convoluted, granular area of polygonal cells, and a free glandular area of cuboidal cells. A second gland, termed Dufour's gland, consists of a single layer of cuboidal cells lining a thin intima. The skeletomuscular apparatus of the sting is described. A pair of fulcral arms support the bulb and stylet, holding the sting bulb in its horizontal, retracted position and acting as pivots for ventral deflection of the sting. Supporting rami muscles present in the honey bee are absent here; instead, the rami bear sensory pegs at the point of origin of these muscles. Both the main poison sac and Dufour's gland open into the posion bulb (ninth venter). This is also true in the honey bee, where the accessory gland does not open into the sting chamber (seventh venter) as has been reported. A pair of muscles control the flow of venom from the main poison sac. The gonostyli are believed to be sensory in function. The relation of the glands to the two-phase analysis of the venom, the “trail-following substance,” and the crop fluid is discussed.
Aerial Observation of Feeding Behavior in Four Baleen Whales: Eubalaena glacialis, Balaenoptera borealis, Megaptera novaeangliae, and Balaenoptera physalus

Distinct behavioral differences were noted from aerial observations of four species of baleen whales ( Eubalaena glacialis , right whale; Balaenoptera borealis , sei whale; Megaptera novaeangliae , humpback whale; Balaenoptera physalus , finback whale) feeding together on 30 April and 1 May 1975. The right and sei whales fed together on patches of plankton. Right whales fed steadily with mouths open in the densest areas, while the sei whale followed a faster but more erratic path through the patches, alternately opening and slowly closing its mouth with slight throat distension at each closing. Humpback and finback whales fed together on dense schools of fish associated with the patches of plankton. The humpback fed by rushing, generally from below the schools of fish, while finback feeding was by more horizontal passes sometimes characterized by sharp turns and rolls within the fish schools and often with enormous throat distension.
New Inconsistencies in the Quantization of Spin- 3 2 Fields

The possibility of consistently quantizing a spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ field in the presence of a coupling to a scalar and a spinor field is considered. It is found that, contrary to a recent assertion, the anticommutators of the various Fermi-Dirac fields are not positive definite. Inasmuch as this inconsistency is found to be present for the case in which the $\frac{3}{2}$ field participates only linearly in the interaction, such a result demonstrates that the difficulties discovered by Johnson and Sudarshan for an electromagnetic coupling can be expected to occur for a considerably more general class of interactions.
Justification Defenses and Just Convictions: Self-defense and Battered Women

Chapter 2 advances an account of the general category of justification defenses as addressing conduct that fulfills all material elements of an offense definition but does not warrant condemnation by the standards of the fully articulated conventional public morality. Chapter 3 completes the normative framework by providing substantive moral principles, and it interprets self-defense as a justification defense in a legal system representing liberal principles of political morality. Chapter 4 applies this analysis to a set of cases that have been particularly troubling to accommodate in a satisfactory manner through the application of ordinary self-defense doctrine. These cases address claims of self-defense by battered women who have exercised deadly force against their mates who have battered them. Although these cases raise a variety of complex issues, the emphasis on expert testimony regarding the battered woman syndrome calls particular attention to the significance of the defendants' mental states for the distinction between justification and excuse. Despite the focus of justification defenses on categories of conduct that are exempted from general prohibitory norms, many justification provisions require reasonable belief regarding the justificatory conditions rather than their actual occurrence. These battered women's cases often emphasize the putative relevance of the battered woman's syndrome to the reasonableness of the defendants' beliefs regarding the necessity of defensive force. By virtue of this emphasis on the defendants' psychological processes, these cases deviate from the standard form of self-defense in a manner that requires clarification of the parameters of and the justification for contemporary self-defense provisions as specific justification defenses.
Acute problems of the diabetic foot.

(2004). Acute Problems of the Diabetic Foot. Acta Chirurgica Belgica: Vol. 104, No. 2, pp. 140-147.
Advance in CO_(2) and pH Fiber Optic Chemical Sensors

This paper reviews the recent progress in the development of CO_(2) and pH fiber optic chemical sensors with a focus on the pH-sensitive reagent-based optical chemical sensors.
Research of color image watermarking algorithm based on biorthogonal lifting wavelet and singular value decomposition

On the basis of the existing color image watermarking extraction technology,this paper proposed a color image watermark encryption algorithm which based on the 9 /7 biorthogonal lifting wavelet and singular value decomposition. Firstly,it divided the color original image and color watermarking image intoR,G,B separation. The image components conducted the lifting wavelet transform three level decomposition and get the low frequency part. The watermark algorithm disposed the low frequency information by singular value decomposition and treated watermark information as matrix disturbance adding to diagonal matrix with a certain content. The pre-treatment of watermark information adopted the algorithm of knight-tour transform and Arnold scrambling. The experimental results show that the algorithm in the basis to ensure the invisibility of watermark effectively enhances the strength and the robustness of the watermark. The algorithm realizes blind test.
The Attention Grabbing Salience of Viscerally Engaging Images

Banner ads remain a core component of the marketing mix for companies in both the analog and digital domains. Consumers spend much of their time on websites, whether through mobile or desktop devices, and marketers need to target them where they are. Unfortunately, inattention blindness is a serious impediment to the effectiveness of banner advertising; consumers have become proficient at ignoring banners when they appear in areas predictably associated with advertising. Research has uncovered some strategies to overcome banner blindness, but many of these require customer analytics and can evoke privacy concerns. Others degrade the user experience by interfering with the user’s task. One possible alternative is to use innately salient advertising content, but there is a dearth of research investigating the effectiveness of this approach. The current study fills this gap with an empirical investigation using established, innately salient images in banner ads and a primary task that involved reading text a...
Integrated finely tunable microring laser on silicon

Finely tunable microring laser exploits integrated capacitive structure. Large-scale computer installations are severely limited by network-bandwidth constraints and energy costs that arise from architectural designs originally based on copper interconnects1. Wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) photonic links can increase the network bandwidth but are sensitive to environmental perturbations and manufacturing imperfections that can affect the precise emission wavelength and output power of laser transmitters2,3. Here, we demonstrate a new design of a three-terminal hybrid III–V-on-silicon laser that integrates a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor into the laser cavity. The MOS capacitor makes it possible to introduce the plasma-dispersion effect4 and thus change the laser modal refractive index and free-carrier absorption (FCA) loss to tune the laser wavelength and output power, respectively. The approach enables a highly energy efficient method to tune the output power and wavelength of microring lasers, with future prospects for high-speed, chirp-free direct laser modulation. The concept is potentially applicable to other diode laser platforms.
An interview-based approach to assess sea turtle bycatch in Italian waters

The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta, Linnaeus, 1758) is the most abundant sea turtle species in the Mediterranean Sea, where commercial fishing appears to be the main driver of mortality. So far, information on sea turtle bycatch in Italy is limited both in space and time due to logistical problems in data collected through onboard observations and on a limited number of vessels involved. In the present study, sea turtle bycatch in Italian waters was examined by collecting fishermen's information on turtle bycatch through an interview-based approach. Their replies enabled the identification of bycatch hotspots in relation to area, season and to the main gear types. The most harmful fishing gears resulted to be trawl nets, showing the highest probabilities of turtle bycatch with a hotspot in the Adriatic Sea, followed by longlines in the Ionian Sea and in the Sicily Channel. Estimates obtained by the present results showed that more than 52,000 capture events and 10,000 deaths occurred in Italian waters in 2014, highlighting a more alarming scenario than earlier studies. The work shows that in case of poor data from other sources, direct questioning of fishermen and stakeholders could represent a useful and cost-effective approach capable of providing sufficient data to estimate annual bycatch rates and identify high-risk gear/location/season combinations.
Differences in postinjury auditory system pathophysiology after mild blast and nonblast acute acoustic trauma.

Blasts exposures often produce hearing difficulties. Although cochlear damage typically occurs, the downstream effects on central auditory processing are less clear. Moreover, outcomes were compare...
The Propositional Logic of Frege’s Grundgesetze: Semantics and Expressiveness

In this paper we compare the propositional logic of Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik to modern propositional systems, and show that Frege does not have a separable propositional logic, definable in terms of primitives of Grundgesetze , that corresponds to modern formulations of the logic of “not”, “and”, “or”, and “if…then…”. Along the way we prove a number of novel results about the system of propositional logic found in Grundgesetze , and the broader system obtained by including identity. In particular, we show that the propositional connectives that are definable in terms of Frege’s horizontal, negation, and conditional are exactly the connectives that fuse with the horizontal, and we show that the logical operators that are definable in terms of the horizontal, negation, the conditional, and identity are exactly the operators that are invariant with respect to permutations on the domain that leave the truth-values fixed. We conclude with some general observations regarding how Frege understood his logic, and how this understanding differs from modern views.
Pediatric Thyroid Cancer

Pediatric differentiated thyroid cancer makes up approximately 10% of all thyroid malignancies and is the second most common cancer in adolescents aged 15–19. There should be a high index of suspicion of any thyroid nodule that present in childhood as malignancy rates can be as high as 25–50%. Most DTCs in children are well-differentiated tumors but present with a higher frequency of multifocality, nodal involvement, extrathyroidal extension, and distant metastases. Long-term survival is excellent but recurrence rates can approach 40–50% over 40–50 years. Treatment generally involves a total thyroidectomy; more extensive surgery and the use of radioiodine need to strike a balance between maintaining the low disease-specific mortality currently experienced by children with DTC and reducing potential complications from therapy that ensures a good quality of life during a very long survivorship. Risk stratification is similar to adults, but re-stratification based on response to therapy 1–2 years after treatment appears to be the most reliable at predicting future recurrence and dictating the level of surveillance. Future research should focus on long-term survivorship issues and validating risk stratification systems.
A new method to extract elastic modulus of brittle materials from Berkovich indentation

Abstract This work describes a method to reliably measure the elastic modulus of brittle materials from Berkovich indents under the continuous stiffness mode. It involves depositing a metallic film at the surface of the tested material to absorb the inelastic damage caused by the penetrating indenter. The Zhou-Prorok model was employed and rearranged to decouple the film and substrate contributions. This converted it into a hyperbolic form that approached an asymptote as the indenter approaches the film/substrate interface. This asymptote was described by a simple linear approximation whose slope directly revealed the substrate’s elastic modulus. The method enabled the elastic behavior of the brittle ceramic to be assessed without the indenter penetrating it. In fact, this method can assess properties of an unknown film/substrate composite as long as one has an estimate of the film thickness and the film can appreciably plastically deform.
Index of Suspicion in the Nursery

A Hispanic baby girl born at 42 weeks gestational age develops poor perfusion and respiratory distress at 28 hours after birth. She was born to a 17-year-old G1 P0 mother via cesarean section for failure to progress. The mother’s pregnancy was uncomplicated. Prenatal laboratory results were unremarkable; a vaginal culture for group B Streptococcus was negative. The mother had prolonged rupture of amniotic membranes for 19.5 hours. She developed a temperature of 100.3°F (38.0°C) during labor. No antibiotics were administered preoperatively. The amniotic fluid was stained with thick, “pea soup” meconium. The infant was vigorous at birth, with Apgar scores of 8 at 1 minute and 9 at 5 minutes, and a weight of 2.91 kg. Vital signs were initially stable. She fed and displayed normal newborn behavior during the first postnatal day. The next day, the baby appears dusky and experiences respiratory distress and periods of apnea. She also displays seizurelike activity. On physical examination, her temperature is 98.6°F (37°C), pulse is 165 beats/min, respiratory rate is 42 breaths/min, blood pressure is 56/32 mm Hg, and oxygen saturation is 38% on room air. The anterior fontanelle is open, soft, and flat. The heart has a regular rate and rhythm with no murmur. Lung examination reveals subcostal and suprasternal retractions with bilateral diffuse crackles. Extremities are cool, with a 3-second capillary refill. Laboratory analysis reveals a total peripheral white blood cell count of 8.7×103/mcL …
Variation and Developmental Biology: Prospects for the Future

Publisher Summary This chapter argues that many of the biggest questions for developmental biology still remain unanswered. Some of these questions explicitly concern variation. A new incorporation of population thinking into developmental biology will need to be achieved. The modern era of developmental biology has its roots in comparative morphology, the experimental embryology of Roux, and the genetics of Morgan, and as such represents a synthesis of several disparate disciplines. This chapter suggests that the synthesis of modern developmental biology has remained essentially typological in outlook, despite operating in parallel with the fundamentally populational neo-Darwinian synthesis. It also suggests several questions, each relating to variation, and how a populational viewpoint will need to be accommodated. A key factor underlying the last 50 years of progress in developmental biology has been the emergence of a few, key “model organisms.” Among these are the venerable fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (“the Fly”), the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (“the Worm”), the anuran amphibian Xenopus laevis (“the Frog”), the chicken Gallus gallus, the mouse Mus musculus, as well as more recent additions such as the mustard weed Arabidopsis thaliana and the zebrafish Danio rerio. The use of model organisms has greatly facilitated advances through the resulting concentration of resources. Perhaps the most dramatic of resources is the availability of sequence data for the complete or nearly complete genomes of each of these models.
Kinaara: Distributed Discovery and Allocation of Mobile Edge Resources

Edge computing is an increasingly popular paradigm, wherein computation comes closer to the sources of data. A key challenge for edge computing is discovering and utilizing the heterogeneous resources of the vast number of mobile devices at the network edge. Mobile edge devices hide behind private networks, they are mobile and their owners hesitate to share them due to privacy considerations. We propose Kinaara a framework for discovering and allocating collective resources for edge computing applications. First, Kinaara uses a multi-tier architecture to organize geographically proximal edge devices in clusters and provide their resources via trusted mediator entities. Second, it uses a novel resource representation to name and encode devices in terms of the resources advertised by their users. Third, it uses a novel distributed indexing scheme to organize devices in a proximal cluster on a ring logical structure based on their resource similarity. Our extensive experimental evaluation on a large Wi-Fi mobility dataset of 150K users and 345 APs show that compared to existing approaches Kinaara reduces resource discovery overhead by up to 70% and is robust to device mobility.
Just Do It: Fast and Easy Mobilization of Spot Tasks in Web-based Enterprise Applications

In this paper, we consider the problem of mobilizing Spot Tasks, a special category of workflows within web-based enterprise applications. Spot tasks are simple workflows that can be finished by interacting with only one page of the application. We present Taskr, a do-it-yourself mobilization solution that users, regardless of their skills, can rely on to mobilize their spot tasks in a robust fashion. Taskr uses remote computing with application refactoring to achieve code-less mobilization and allows for flexible mobile delivery wherein users can execute their spot tasks through Twitter, Email or a native mobile app. We implement a prototype of Taskr and show through user studies that it has the potential to reduce task burden significantly.
AntSM: Efficient Debugging for Shared Memory Parallel Programs

This paper describes AntSM, a system that uses the inherent parallelism of multi-threaded programs to reduce the overhead of statistical and invariant violations detection-based debugging tools. The runtime monitoring of these tools leads to high overheads. The key insight of the AntSM system is that this overhead can be reduced in parallel programs by performing sampled monitoring across parallel regions of the program that are performing similar actions. AntSM implements this sampling using a combination of static and dynamic analyses to determine similar parts of the program executing in parallel and the number of threads executing those parts of the program. Experimental results, performed using the C-DIDUCE (a variant of DIDUCE for C) debugging tool on eleven Pthreads benchmarks from the PARSEC suite, show monitoring overhead is reduced by up to 18.14 times (and on average 8.73 times) on an eight-core machine relative to a naive port that performs no sampling.
Socioeconomic Inequalities in the Non use of Facebook

Use and non-use of technology can occur in a variety of forms. This paper analyzes data from a probabilistic sample of 1000 US households to identify predictors for four different types of use and non-use of the social media site Facebook. The results make three important contributions. First, they demonstrate that many demographic and socioeconomic predictors of social media use and non-use identified in prior studies hold with a larger, more diverse sample. Second, they show how going beyond a binary distinction between use and non-use reveals inequalities in social media use and non-use not identified in prior work. Third, they contribute to ongoing discussions about the representativeness of social media data by showing which populations are, and are not, represented in samples drawn from social media.
Contingencies to the Value of Partnering - Startup Innovation and Corporate Venture Capital

Startups are increasingly turning to the incumbent firms in their industries for venture capital. Yet, our understanding of how corporate investors shape entrepreneurial innovation remains sketchy. Studies examining this question agree that incumbent firms control resources that could be of value to startups but differ on whether these relationships facilitate effective access to them. I add to this research in two ways. First, I examine whether these relationships could also constrain the technologies startups pursue to reveal a tension inherent to these relationships between resource access on the one hand and the transmission of limitations on the other. I examine the mechanisms underlying each of these effects to identify specific aspects of startups’ innovation outcomes affected by them. Second, I consider how each of these influences is moderated by the type of access startups’ can get to the incumbent organization. I find that these relationships help startups turn their technologies into products,...
Conservation, Behavior, Parasites and Invasive Species

Parasites can influence host behavior, and conversely, host behavior can affect encounters with parasites. These long-standing interactions are now further complicated by species movement around the globe. The list of introduced species that have become invasive includes parasites that have adapted to new hosts in areas of introduction, as well as invasive hosts that alter the association between existing parasite–host assemblages. Researchers have documented changed host behavior in the face of invading parasites. Behavior-altering parasites have been shown to mediate interactions between native and invasive hosts; sometimes, these parasites determine the outcome of invasions. The effects on native species can be severe, and to that end, conservation biology now takes into account the invasions, parasites, and behavior. The knowledge of the mechanisms driving invasions is incomplete, as is our understanding of parasitism and behavior. It follows that there are many questions remaining about how parasites and the behavior of animals influence the species population dynamics and community structure in the context of species invasions.
The Effects of Ageism Climates and Core Self-Evaluations on Nurses' Turnover Intentions, Organizational Commitment, and Work Engagement

It is estimated that by 2018, workers age 55 or older will compose nearly a quarter of the labor force (Tossi, 2009). The aging workforce is dramatically affecting the nursing workforce. Indeed, the nursing workforce is expected to face staffing shortages of epidemic proportions because of the impending retirement of nurses who are Baby Boomers (Buerhaus, et al., 2006). Moreover, the nursing shortage is exacerbated by younger nurses’ greater willingness to turn over (Aiken et al., 2001). Consequently, investigating how the workplace context affects retention of nurses is important. The present study sought to address the nursing shortage concern through examining how the workplace climate associated with age-related worker treatment and individual characteristics affect nurse retention. In this study, I developed and validated new ageism climate measures, which include younger worker, older worker, and general ageism climates. I examined how ageism climates affect people’s job withdrawal intentions, organizational commitment, and work engagement. Additionally, I investigated whether Core Self-Evaluation (CSE; Judge, Locke, Durham, 1998) moderates the ageism climates relationships with the outcome variables.
Integration of Signals in Complex Biophysical Systems

There is clear evidence of fusion processes exhibited by biophysical systems, such as the brain. One simple example is the way a human brain processes visual information. In fact, one of the consequences of normal integration of the visual information from two retinas in the visual cortex is ability for depth perception. In actuality, a primate brain is capable of integrating visual, auditory, cutaneous, and proprioceptive signals in order to extract crucial information that may not otherwise be fully present in any single type of signal.
Superior Capsular Reconstruction: Indications, Techniques, and Clinical Outcomes.

The rotator cuff itself acts as a dynamic stabilizer to the glenohumeral joint, resisting superior migration of the humeral head when the deltoid muscle contracts. In the coronal plane, the deltoid muscle and the supraspinatus tendon function as a coordinated couple, and in the transverse plane, the
Channel Modeling for Powerline Communications in Series-Connected PV Inverters

The authors have demonstrated an AC-stacked PV-inverter topology allowing each inverter to operate completely autonomously from all the others with the only required communications being a low-bandwidth synchronization signal communicated from the point-of-grid-connection. As in any series-connected PV architecture, communications must proceed through a series of power-electronic devices. This paper proposes an approach for modeling the series-connection as a communications channel. It describes the major noise sources and discusses how these noise sources impact the design of the communications system. It focuses specifically on the design challenges in the AC-stacked architecture, but the generalized model is applicable for any series-connected arrangement.
Tests of fundamental physics with optically levitated microspheres in high vacuum

Optically levitated masses can provide extremely sensitive force sensors that are decoupled both thermally and electrically from their environment. Due to these features, they provide ideal sensors for a number of searches for new fundamental interactions, which may appear as tiny deviations in the forces acting on massive or charged objects. These forces are motivated by a number of models of new physics beyond the Standard Model, allowing tests of certain models accounting for dark matter, dark energy, or the microscopic properties of gravity in a table-top scale experiment.
Endoplasmic reticulum stress enhances endocytosis in calreticulin deficient cells

Calreticulin an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) chaperone that is involved in the quality control process and plays an important role as a regulator of intracellular calcium homeostasis. Previously, we illustrated that loss of calreticulin (crt-/-) results in the activation of ubiquitin-proteasome pathway facilitating the increased resistance to apoptosis. Our preliminary data illustrated a significant increase in the endocytosis in the calreticulin knockout mouse embryonic fibroblast cells (crt-/-). Therefore, we hypothesized that the mechanism for this increased endocytosis in the crt-/- cells is due to onset of ER stress. To test this hypothesis, we measured endocytosis in the wild type (wt) and crt-/- cells using uptake of fluorescent dextran and showed a significant increase in the rate of its uptake in crt-/- cells as compared to wt cells. To determine the endocytic pathway involved we examined both clathrin and caveolin-1 dependent endocytosis. Our results illustrated no change in the expression of clathrin heavy chain while there was a significant increase in the expression of caveolin-1 in the crt-/- cells as compared to the wt cells. Furthermore, using shRNA we illustrated that knockdown of clathrin heavy chain had no effect on endocytosis in the crt-/- cells. While knock-down of caveolin-1 significantly reduced endocytosis in the crt-/- cells. Finally, we illustrated that a chemical chaperone, 4‑phenylbutyrate significantly reduced both the endoplasmic reticulum stress and endocytosis in the crt-/- cells. Our data shows for the first time, that ER stress led to enhanced caveolin-1 mediated endocytosis and reversal of ER stress reduces endocytosis.
Temperature Regulation in Colored Infrared-Transparent Polyethylene Textiles

Summary Effectively regulating heat flow between the human body and its environment not only increases thermal comfort but also presents a novel and potentially cost-effective approach to reducing building energy consumption. Infrared property-engineered textiles have been shown to passively regulate radiative heat dissipation for effective cooling and warming of the human body. However, a lack of dyes that can tune the textile color without compromising the infrared properties remains a major impediment to textile commercialization. Here, we report a new strategy utilizing inorganic nanoparticles as a coloring component for scalable brightly colored, infrared-transparent textiles. The as-fabricated composite textiles not only show a high infrared transparency of ∼80% and a passive cooling effect of ∼1.6°C–1.8°C but also exhibit intense visible colors with good stability against washing. This facile coloration approach will promote the commercialization of radiative cooling textiles in temperature-regulating wearable applications for effective energy savings.
A Confirmatory Factory Analysis of the Academic Rational Beliefs Scale for Students attending Minority-Serving Institutions

The academic rational beliefs scale (ARBS) was developed to assess college students’ thoughts that impact educational success. This instrument has the potential to support students’ pursuits of academic achievement, but it should be normed on more diverse populations to support ethical and effective use of the instrument. As such, the researchers administered the ARBS to a diverse sample of students at a minority-serving institution (MSI) in the United States and conducted confirmatory factor analyses to verify the factor structure. The factor structure of the original ARBS did not adequately fit the sample of students, and a revised, two-factor ARBS is presented as a potential measure of academic rational beliefs for students of color attending an MSI. Practical implications and recommendations for future studies are provided.
A mobile energy harvesting autowinder – Build and test

Abstract Compared to mobile devices of the past decade, current devices provide desktop computer-level processing power in a palm-sized package. However, battery life of such devices has not made the same stride, forcing the user to rely on portable battery packs for backup power. Portable energy harvesting methods could provide a possible solution to reduce the user's dependence on the power grid. In this regard, a mobile energy harvester powered by human arm motion during walking or running activities is developed and tested. The device consists of a pendulum connected to a DC generator through a planetary gear train. An electronic module filters the output and supplies power to a load. A mathematical model of the human arm-harvester system is derived and simulated based on the triple pendulum system. The power output of the harvester for two output modes are recorded for a constant running pace by the user, and the results are compared with the simulation. The model predicted an energy output of 1.72 mJ and testing resulted in 1.39 mJ and 1.16 mJ for a period of 5 s of running activity. This successfully demonstrates the energy harvester's potential as a mobile power supply for charging portable consumer electronics.
Flusskostenmanagement: Ein neuer Ansatz zur systematischen Kostensenkung durch Umweltentlastung

Die Flusskostenrechnung wird gemeinsam mit der Umweltschutzkostenrechnung und der Monetarisierung der verursachten Umweltschaden zu den Ansatzen der Umweltkostenrechnung gezahlt. Die drei genannten Ansatze sind in der Praxis unterschiedlich verbreitet und erfullen verschiedene Funktionen. Die Monetarisierung, also die Abschatzung der Kosten, die aufgrund der verursachten Umweltbelastungen fur die Volkswirtschaft entstehen, wird in der Regel nur fur Infrastrukturprojekte verwendet. Fur die Anwendung der Monetarisierung im betrieblichen Rechnungswesen sind nur vereinzelte Unternehmensbeispiele bekannt.
A network analysis of culturally relevant anxiety sensitivity and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in Cambodians

The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) measures fears of anxiety-related symptoms based on respondent beliefs about their harmfulness. This is the first network analysis of anxiety sensitivity and PTSD, and the first to explore an addendum of culturally salient fears in such an analysis. The purpose of our study was to test whether relations among PTSD symptoms and facets of anxiety sensitivity, observed clinically, can be visualized by this approach. Using network analysis, we examined in a Cambodian population the relationship of PTSD symptoms to the standard Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) and to an ASI Cambodian Addendum (ASICA) that taps culturally salient fears of somatic symptoms among Cambodians not assessed in the standard ASI. Computing relative importance networks, we found that the ASI subscales, ASICA, and PTSD subscales were strongly interconnected, with the ASICA having the strongest outstrength centrality. In the network analysis of the ASI subscales, disaggregated ASICA, and PTSD subscales, several of the ASICA items had very high outstrength. The results show that fear of mental and physical symptoms of anxiety should be a key part of the evaluation of trauma-related disorder, and that those fears should be targeted. It also suggests the need for ASI addenda to assess concerns about anxiety symptoms salient for certain cultures that are not assessed by the standard ASI: among Cambodian populations, fear of cold hands and feet, "out of energy in the arms and legs," neck soreness, tinnitus, and dizziness on standing.
Association Between Topical Calcineurin Inhibitor Use and Keratinocyte Carcinoma Risk Among Adults With Atopic Dermatitis.

Importance Topical calcineurin inhibitors (TCIs), primarily used to treat atopic dermatitis (AD), carry a black box label warning users about the potential for increased skin cancer risk. The risk associated with keratinocyte carcinoma (KC), the most common cancer, defined as basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), remains poorly defined because findings from large-scale postmarketing surveillance studies have not been reported. Objectives To examine KC risk overall and by subtype (BCC and SCC) among adults with AD exposed to TCIs compared with those exposed to topical corticosteroids (primary comparator group) and those unexposed to TCIs or topical corticosteroids (alternative comparator group) as well as alterations in risk with TCI dose, frequency, and duration of exposure. Design, Setting, and Participants A retrospective cohort study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, a large, integrated health care delivery system, of adults 40 years or older (n = 93 746) with a physician-rendered diagnosis of AD or dermatitis. Patients who were diagnosed from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2013, were included, with follow-up through December 31, 2017. Data analysis was conducted from June 1, 2016, to October 1, 2018. Exposures Time-varying pharmacy-dispensed TCI exposure (n = 7033) over the study period was compared with topical corticosteroids (n = 73 674) and no TCI or topical corticosteroid exposure (n = 46 141). Main Outcomes and Measures Electronic pathologic testing–validated incident KCs (n = 7744). Results Among a cohort of 93 746 members, the mean (SD) age was 58.5 (12.7) years, and 55 023 patients (58.7%) were women. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression revealed no association between TCI exposure and KC risk (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.02; 95% CI, 0.93-1.13) compared with topical corticosteroid exposure. Similarly, there were no significant differences in BCC risk (aHR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.90-1.14, TCI vs topical corticosteroids) or SCC risk (aHR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.82-1.08, TCI vs topical corticosteroids). Changing the comparator group to unexposed individuals yielded similar findings (aHR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.91-1.19, TCI vs unexposed for basal cell carcinoma). There were no associations between TCI dose, frequency, and duration of use and BCC, SCC, or overall KC risk. Conclusions and Relevance The results of this postmarketing surveillance study of adult health plan members with AD revealed no apparent association between TCI exposure and overall KC, BCC, or SCC risk. Secondary analyses examining dose, frequency, and duration of TCI exposure revealed no associations. These findings suggest that use of TCIs may be safe with respect to KC risk among adults with AD.
A Generalized Mixing Length Closure for Eddy-Diffusivity Mass-Flux Schemes of Turbulence and Convection

Because of their limited spatial resolution, numerical weather prediction and climate models have to rely on parameterizations to represent atmospheric turbulence and convection. Historically, largely independent approaches have been used to represent boundary layer turbulence and convection, neglecting important interactions at the subgrid scale. Here we build on an eddy‐diffusivity mass‐flux (EDMF) scheme that represents all subgrid‐scale mixing in a unified manner, partitioning subgrid‐scale fluctuations into contributions from local diffusive mixing and coherent advective structures and allowing them to interact within a single framework. The EDMF scheme requires closures for the interaction between the turbulent environment and the plumes and for local mixing. A second‐order equation for turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) provides one ingredient for the diffusive local mixing closure, leaving a mixing length to be parameterized. Here, we propose a new mixing length formulation, based on constraints derived from the TKE balance. It expresses local mixing in terms of the same physical processes in all regimes of boundary layer flow. The formulation is tested at a range of resolutions and across a wide range of boundary layer regimes, including a stably stratified boundary layer, a stratocumulus‐topped marine boundary layer, and dry convection. Comparison with large‐eddy simulations (LES) shows that the EDMF scheme with this diffusive mixing parameterization accurately captures the structure of the boundary layer and clouds in all cases considered.
The effect of course format on student learning in introductory biomechanics courses that utilise low-tech active learning exercises.

Low-tech active learning (AL) exercises in face-to-face (F2F) undergraduate biomechanics courses improve student learning vs. lecture alone. This study compared learning of biomechanics concepts wi...
117 Outside the classroom: An evaluation of equine internships

Internships give students the opportunity to work for an organization and gain real-world experience. They have been shown to be beneficial in other fields, but equine internships have been lightly researched. This study explored student perceptions of equine internships. We hypothesized that participants would report equine internships were valuable and relate that value with compensation, skill acquisition, networking, and job offers. An online survey widely distributed to equine and animal science programs included demographics and questions to determine respondents’ perceived value of their equine internship. Participation in an equine internship within 10 years and completion of 75% of questions were the criteria for inclusion. Of 228 respondents, 186 met criteria for inclusion. Data were examined using frequency counts, correlations, and chi-squared contingency tables (SAS 9.4). Internships categorized as breeding (29%) were most common with western training and performance (18%) the second highest. Participants reported 53% had an internship requirement for their undergraduate degree; this did not affect perceived internship value (P = 0.76). Most indicated their internship was paid (77%) and housing provided (70%). Housing and compensation did not affect whether respondents would recommend their internship (P = 0.61), but internship value tended to be rated higher when housing (P = 0.075) or compensation (P = 0.057) were included. Most (91%) believed what they learned during their internship added to their classroom experience and 71% felt academically prepared for their internship experience. Further, 81% gained new horse-related skills (e.g., grooming, horse handling) and 83% gained soft skills (e.g., communication, teamwork). Respondents gained skills in business management (51%), customer relations (63%), and administrative skills (33%). Over 2-thirds (67%) said they use the skills gained during their internship in their current job or career, and 83% stated they were able to network and make connections within the equine industry. When asked about career opportunities, 47% percent said their internship resulted in a job offer from that organization and 50% said their internship resulted in a different job offer in their area of interest. Overall, 91% of the respondents felt their internship was a valuable experience and 87% would recommend their internship to other students. The perceived value of the internship positively correlated with gaining new equine skills (R = 0.49; P