cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Constrained test generation for embedded synchronous sequential circuits with serial-input access

We describe a constrained test-generation procedure for synchronous sequential circuits embedded in a large design where scan is used to provide access to the inputs of the individual circuits. The constrained test-generation procedure generates test sequences, where each vector is obtained from the previous one by shifting the scan chain a limited number of positions. Such constrained sequences can be applied through a scan chain with minimal test-application time overhead due to scan. When a shift by a single position is used to obtain each vector from the previous one, the constrained test sequences can allow functional (at-speed) testing of the circuit. Although constrained test sequences cannot achieve complete fault coverage, they reduce the overall test-application time required to achieve complete fault coverage when used together with unconstrained test sequences. We demonstrate these features through experimental results.
Changes in urinary MHPG during treatment of depression with imipramine

Two previous studies exanqned the e~fect of imipramine on urinary MHPG (3-methoxy-4.hydroxyphenylglycol) in depressed patients. These studies involved small numbers of patients and produced conflicting results. Maas et al (1972) in a study of 13 depressed patients reported urinary MHPG increased in imipramine responders and decreased in nonresponders. Beckmann and Goodwin (1975) found urinary MHPG decreased in all seven depressed patients treated with imipramine irrespective of therapeutic outcome. If the change in urinary MHPG during imipramine treatment is different between responders and nonresponders, it may provide some impetus for further research that could lead to useful insights into possible mechanisms of action of this antidepressant, or potentially useful information relating to the pathophysiology of some depressions. This study was undertaken to explore the change in urinary MHPG during imipramine treatment and to examine whether there is a relationship between the direction of this change and treatment response, Besides examining a larger sample of patients than has been evaluated in previous studies, patients were followed for a longer time, Patients collected two consecutive 24-hour urines at baseline, and/after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment. There was a 2-week drugfree washout period before the baseline collection (Chantey et al 1982; Javaid et al 1983; Bowden et al 1985; Koslow et al 1986). A vanillylmandelic acid exclusionary diet was followed for the collections. Twenty-four-hour collections were judged complete if total urinary creatinine was ~> 1,000 mg for men and 2750 mg for women. If only one of the two collections was complete, then it alone was used for data analyses. MHPG was assayed using a modification of the method of Dekirmenjian and Maas (1970). lmipramine was increased during the first week of treatment to 150 rag/day and to 200 mg/day by the end of the second week, Nonresponding patients were placed on dosages of 250 mg to 300 mg/day by the end of week three. Patients who had bothersome side effects remained on lower doses of imipramine. Other psychotropic medications were not permitted. A 17-item HRSD was administered after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment. Response was defined as a decrease of the baseline Hamilton score ~ 50%. The treating physicians and the clinical raters were blind to the MHPG values.
Outcomes of a Social and Vocational Skills Support Group for Adolescents and Young Adults on the Autism Spectrum

Adolescents and young adults With autism spectrum disorders (ASD) frequently experience social isolation and vocational failure. Although social skills groups are vital, relatively feW model programs have been developed for this age group. This article revieWs the model and evaluation of the Aspirations program, an 8-Week social and vocational skills support group for adolescents and young adults With ASD. Self-report measures, including appraisal of peer relations and empathy, Were completed pre- and post-Aspirations. Data from structured observations Were also examined for changes in frequency of contributions made by group members over the course of the program. In addition, notes taken during staff meetings and feedback sessions With group members, and separately With their parents, Were revieWed for further evidence of the program's success. The results from these measures support the efficacy of the Aspirations program and provide insight into implementing a successful model for this population.
Comparing subject strategies at a process control task

Operators develop habitual responses for controlling complex systems which may be neither apparent nor verbalized. Identifying consistent patterns in their behavior can reveal these implicit strategies. Logs from a simulated process plant were used to identify production rules characterizing operators' behavior. Similarity among strategies was determined by finding the intersections and unions among the preconditions of these rules. Clusters of subjects using similar strategies were identified and compared on performance measures. This characterization of strategies provided a good account of differences in performance which were readily interpretable in terms of the task. The approach appears promising as a technique for diagnosing performance in simulator training. >
Generating classes of locally orthogonal Gough-Stewart platforms

This paper develops methods for generating classes of orthogonal Gough-Stewart platforms (OGSPs). First, a new, two-parameter class of six-strut OGSPs which leads to isotropic manipulators are found. Next, this class is extended to include redundant Gough-Stewart platforms (GSPs). For an even number of struts, the same algorithm used to generate the six-strut case can be employed. For an odd number of struts, similar essential concepts are used to derive seven-strut and nine-strut OGSPs. Maximization of fault tolerance is implemented for a nine-strut isotropic OGSP. By exploiting invariant properties of the inverse Jacobian, new methods for favorably altering the center of gravity, strut attachment surface, and strut spatial distribution are developed.
Relaxor based fine grain piezoelectric materials

The dielectric and piezoelectric properties of polycrystalline ceramics of relaxor ferroelectric lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate modified with La/sub 2/O/sub 3/ (1-x) (Pb/sub 0.985/La/sub 0.01/) Square Operator /sub 0.005/(Mg/sub 1/3/Nb/sub 2/3/)O/sub 3/-(x)PbTiO/sub 3/, were investigated. The compositional range of 0.2 >
Public Journalism is a Joke: The case for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to understanding and assessing the impact of faux news anchors Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert, host of The Daily Show spinoff The Colbert Report. While important work has been done to illustrate the impact of these shows on political participation and public discourse they are still placed within traditional notions of political knowledge and civic participation. Such characterizations remain incomplete for understanding the lasting role Stewart and Colbert may play in contemporary journalism. In this article I contend that Stewart and Colbert are performing underappreciated roles as public journalists as well as serving to re-envision a mass mediated public journalism for the 21st century. Ultimately, through the use of humor, Stewart and Colbert invite a heightened sense of participation in public life in the contemporary mass mediated landscape, adhering to the principles and promises of public journalism.
Extreme Conditions for Plasma-Facing Components in Tokamak Fusion Devices

Safe and reliable operation is still one of the major challenges in the development of fusion energy. In magnetic fusion devices, perfect plasma confinement is difficult to achieve. During transient loss of plasma confinement, high plasma power and particle beams (power densities up to hundreds of gigawatts per square meter in time duration on the order of milliseconds) strike the reactor walls, particularly the divertor plate, and can significantly damage the exposed surfaces and also indirectly damage nearby components. To predict the resulting damage of the direct plasma impact on the divertor plate, comprehensive multiphysics multiphase models are developed, integrated, and implemented in the High Energy Interaction with General Heterogeneous Target Systems computer simulation package. The evolution of the divertor material, resulting vaporization, heating and ionization of vapor plasma to higher temperatures, and, consequently, the resulting photon radiation, transport, and deposition around the divertor area are calculated for typical instability parameters of the edge-localized modes and disruption for an ITER-like geometry.
Calphostin C, a widely used protein kinase C inhibitor, directly and potently blocks L-type Ca channels

Calphostin C is a widely used inhibitor of protein kinase C; in the past 4 years at least 350 articles have been published using this drug as a selective inhibitor of protein kinase C. In this paper, we show that calphostin C also potently inhibits cardiac L-type Ca channels by a mechanism that does not involve changes in adenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate levels or dephosphorylation. The inhibition requires illumination by visible light during exposure to calphostin C. The Ca current (ICa) that remains after partial inhibition of ICa has the same voltage-dependent characteristics as the control current.
Development of a Scale to Assess Physician Advance Care Planning Self-Efficacy.

Background:Although patients prefer that physicians initiate advance care planning (ACP) conversations, few physicians regularly do so. Physicians may be reluctant to initiate ACP conversations bec...
A Review of the Ecological Safety of the Insect-Resistant Transgenic Rices to Non-Target Organisms

The breeding and use of insect-resistant transgenic rices (IRTRs) provide a useful and economic approach for the IPM of rice insect pests. However, the ecological safety is one of the decisive factors influencing the commercialization of IRTRs. Here, we review the development and types of IRTRs, the assessment methodology for ecological safety, and the ecological effects of IRTRs on different kinds of non-target organisms.
Analysis of Skewed Composite Girder Bridges

A finite-element method of analysis is presented for skewed composite beam bridges with diaphragms. The structure is divided into plate and eccentric stiffener elements for which stiffness matrices are derived. These stiffness matrices for the component elements are assembled into a total stiffness matrix for the structure. Solution of the resulting equilibrium equations gives nodal deformations of the structure which can be used to obtain internal forces. The method is compared with several existing methods of analysis for this type of structure. A typical bridge structure is analyzed to illustrate its behavior and the effects of adding diaphragms or skewing the structure.
Anatomy and connectivity of the reward circuit

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the anatomy and connectivity of the reward circuit. The reward circuit is a complex neural network that underlies the ability to effectively assess the likely outcomes from different choices. The cortico-basal ganglia network is at the center of the reward circuit that underlies the ability to make complex choices and accurately evaluate reward value, predictability, and risk. The key structures are the anterior cingulate cortex, the ventral striatum, the ventral pallidum, and the dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra, pars compacta. The amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, lateral habenular nucleus, and specific brainstem structures, such as the pedunculopontine nucleus and the raphe nucleus, are key components in regulating the reward circuit. While pathways from the cortex through the striatum, pallidum, thalamus, and back to the cortex are generally topographically organized, there are key areas of convergence of between different functional regions, which provides an important substrate for integration between functional domains. Through these integrative networks, the reward circuit impacts on cognition and motor control, allowing information about reward to be channeled through cognitive and motor control circuits to mediate the development of appropriate action plans.
Proton beam therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Radiation therapy is an effective treatment option for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. However, radiotherapy for HCC still has limited recognition as a standard treatment option in international consensus guidelines due to a paucity of randomized controlled trials and the risk of hepatotoxicity, which is primarily mediated by baseline liver function and dose delivered to non-tumor liver cells. Proton beam therapy (PBT) may offer advantages over photon-based radiation treatments through its dosimetric characteristic of sparing more liver volume at low to moderate doses. PBT has the potential to reduce radiation-related hepatotoxicity and allow for tumor dose escalation.Areas covered: This article reviews the clinical rationale for using PBT for HCC patients and clinical outcome and toxicity data from retrospective and prospective studies. PBT-specific technical challenges for these tumors and appropriate selection of patients to be treated with PBT are discussed.Expert commen...
Catholic social teaching and America’s suboptimal breastfeeding rate: Where faith and policy should meet to combat injustice

Despite the numerous health benefits of breastfeeding, few American women breastfeed for the optimal duration of time. Reasons given for not following national and global institutional breastfeedin...
Hypertension, aortic stenosis, and aortic regurgitation.

The prevalence of hypertension (1) and of valvular aortic stenosis (2) increase with age, and both hypertension (3,4) and valvular aortic stenosis (5) cause left ventricular hypertrophy. Both hypertension (1,3) and valvular aortic stenosis (2,6) are also associated with an increased incidence of cardiovascular events and mortality. Hypertension (either a systolic blood pressure of 140 mmHg and higher or a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mmHg and higher) was present in 132 of 180 persons (73%), mean age 82 years, with mild valvular aortic stenosis (7), in 1,238 of 1,720 persons (72%), mean age 67 years, with asymptomatic mild-to-moderate valvular aortic stenosis (8), and in 153 of 225 patients (68%), mean age 68 years, with severe valvular aortic stenosis (9). Hypertension is a risk factor for aortic stenosis (7,10,11) and is associated with progression of aortic stenosis (7). Hypertension is also associated with aortic valve calcification (10-13). In a study of 3.39 million hospital discharges in Ireland, hypertension was associated with aortic stenosis with an odds ratio of 4.0 (14). At 4.3-year follow-up of 1,656 patients, mean age 67 years, with asymptomatic mild-to-moderate valvular aortic stenosis, in Cox regression analyses, each 15 g/m higher baseline left ventricular mass index predicted increases of 12% for major cardiovascular events, of 28% for ischemic cardiovascular events, of 34% for cardiovascular mortality, and of 23% for combined total mortality and hospitalization for heart failure independent of confounders (15). A progressive increase in left ventricular mass index during follow-up of each 15 g/m increase was consistently associated with a 13% to 61% increase in cardiovascular events independent of other variables (15).
Flavor and flavor chemistry differences among milks processed by high-temperature, short-time pasteurization or ultra-pasteurization

ABSTRACT Typical high-temperature, short-time (HTST) pasteurization encompasses a lower heat treatment and shorter refrigerated shelf life compared with ultra-pasteurization (UP) achieved by direct steam injection (DSI-UP) or indirect heat (IND-UP). A greater understanding of the effect of different heat treatments on flavor and flavor chemistry of milk is required to characterize, understand, and identify the sources of flavors. The objective of this study was to determine the differences in the flavor and volatile compound profiles of milk subjected to HTST, DSI-UP, or IND-UP using sensory and instrumental techniques. Raw skim and raw standardized 2% fat milks (50 L each) were processed in triplicate and pasteurized at 78°C for 15 s (HTST) or 140°C for 2.3 s by DSI-UP or IND-UP. Milks were cooled and stored at 4°C, then analyzed at d 0, 3, 7, and 14. Sensory attributes were determined using a trained panel, and aroma active compounds were evaluated by solid-phase micro-extraction or stir bar sorptive extraction followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, gas chromatography-olfactometry, and gas chromatography-triple quad mass spectrometry. The UP milks had distinct cooked and sulfur flavors compared with HTST milks. The HTST milks had less diversity in aroma active compounds compared with UP milks. Flavor intensity of all milks decreased by d 14 of storage. Aroma active compound profiles were affected by heat treatment and storage time in both skim and 2% milk. High-impact aroma active compounds were hydrogen sulfide, dimethyl trisulfide, and methional in DSI-UP and 2 and 3-methylbutanal, furfural, 2-heptanone, 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, 2-aminoacetophenone, benzaldehyde, and dimethyl sulfide in IND-UP. These results provide a foundation knowledge of the effect of heat treatments on flavor development and differences in sensory quality of UP milks.
Coherent Hemodynamics Spectroscopy (CHS): A New Way to Look at Cerebral Hemodynamic Oscillations

We present initial clinical measurements of coherent hemodynamics spectroscopy (CHS), a frequency-resolved characterization of the amplitude and phase of coherent cerebral hemodynamics measured with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and analyzed with a dedicated CHS model.
ISWC 2017: Riding the Waves of Wearables

The annual International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) is the flagship conference on all topics related to wearable computing and the ideal venue to present and learn about cutting-edge research in the field. The authors share their observations from the most recent gathering, held in September 2017 in Maui, Hawaii.
“Lucey’s Agnosticism: The Believer’s Reply” by Tomis Kapitan

Kapitan characterized Lucey’s paper as presenting “an apparent antinomy” concerning the truth-value of the proposition that God exists. Kapitan challenges Lucey’s conclusion that “one ought to refrain from believing that God exists and refrain from believing that God does not exist.” Kapitan’s claim is that the anti-agnostic can deflate Lucey’s antinomy by noting that the view of logical implication, drawn from C.I. Lewis, can be rejected, and replaced by the alternative provided by an Anderson & Belnap style relevance conditional. Building upon an assumption of the law of excluded middle, Kapitan concludes that clearly one of Lucey’s argument is unsound, although noting that Lucey can readily agree.
Safe: Restrictive Covenants and the Next Wave of Sex Offender Legislation

This Article examines the emerging phenomenon and implications of sex offender covenants, the latest wave of sex offender legislation, under common law property rules such as touch and concern and the doctrine prohibiting restraints against alienation. The paper theorizes that courts use common law property rules to strike down personal “who” covenants, such as those based on race, age, disability, and often permanently debilitating sex offender status, that run afoul of public policy norms – most particularly, the wide availability of safe and decent housing for all. The Article analogizes blanket sex offender covenants to their racially restrictive progenitors, arguing that both types of covenants are based on unsubstantiated fears that one population would sexually terrorize another. The modern-day fear is that convicted sex offenders will sexually prey upon children, whereas the underlying fear in the era of racial segregation was that black men, this country’s original sexual predators, would sexually prey upon infantilized white women. Finally, this Article looks to the sordid history of racial segregation for lessons and solutions to the modern-day problem of convicted sex offenders.
Implementation of single-cell genomics as a translational tool in patients with metastatic melanoma.

11503Background: Heterogeneity of malignant and non-malignant tumor components and their interactions pose tremendous clinical challenges and opportunities in clinical care. Due to technical constr...
RACER: A data visualization strategy for exploring multiple genetic associations

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified thousands of loci associated with risk of various diseases; however, the genes responsible for the majority of loci have not been identified. One means of uncovering potential causal genes is the identification of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) that colocalize with disease loci. Statistical methods have been developed to assess the likelihood that two associations (e.g. disease locus and eQTL) share a common causal variant, however, visualization of the two loci is often a crucial step in determining if a locus is pleiotropic. While the current convention is to plot two associations side-by-side, it is difficult to compare across two x-axes, even if they are identical. Thus, we have developed the Regional Association ComparER (RACER) package, which creates mirror plots, in which the two associations are plotted on a shared x-axis. Mirror plots provide an effective tool for the visual exploration and presentation of the relationship between two genetic associations.
Short-term metabolic adjustments in Plasmodium falciparum counter hypoxanthine deprivation at the expense of long-term viability

The malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum is an auxotroph for purines, which are required for nucleic acid synthesis during the intra-erythrocytic developmental cycle (IDC) of the parasite. The capabilities of the parasite and extent to which it can use compensatory mechanisms to adapt to purine deprivation were studied by examining changes in its metabolism under sub-optimal concentrations of hypoxanthine, the primary precursor utilized by the parasite for purine-based nucleic acid synthesis. The concentration of hypoxanthine that caused a moderate growth defect over the course of one IDC was determined. At this concentration of hypoxanthine (0.5 μM), transcriptomic and metabolomic data were collected during one IDC at multiple time points. These data were integrated with a metabolic network model of the parasite embedded in a red blood cell (RBC) to interpret the metabolic adaptation of P. falciparum to hypoxanthine deprivation. At a hypoxanthine concentration of 0.5 μM, vacuole-like structures in the cytosol of many P. falciparum parasites were observed after the 24-h midpoint of the IDC. Parasites grown under these conditions experienced a slowdown in the progression of the IDC. After 72 h of deprivation, the parasite growth could not be recovered despite supplementation with 90 µM hypoxanthine. Simulations of P. falciparum metabolism suggested that alterations in ubiquinone, isoprenoid, shikimate, and mitochondrial metabolism occurred before the appearance of these vacuole-like structures. Alterations were found in metabolic reactions associated with fatty acid synthesis, the pentose phosphate pathway, methionine metabolism, and coenzyme A synthesis in the latter half of the IDC. Furthermore, gene set enrichment analysis revealed that P. falciparum activated genes associated with rosette formation, Maurer’s cleft and protein export under two different nutrient-deprivation conditions (hypoxanthine and isoleucine). The metabolic network analysis presented here suggests that P. falciparum invokes specific purine-recycling pathways to compensate for hypoxanthine deprivation and maintains a hypoxanthine pool for purine-based nucleic acid synthesis. However, this compensatory mechanism is not sufficient to maintain long-term viability of the parasite. Although P. falciparum can complete a full IDC in low hypoxanthine conditions, subsequent cycles are disrupted.
Human Rights and the Digital Divide

The Internet’s importance for freedom of expression and other rights comes in part from the ability it bestows on users to create and share information, rather than just receive it. Within the context of existing freedom of expression guarantees, this book critically evaluates the goal of bridging the 'digital divide' – the gap between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not. Central to this analysis is the examination of two questions: first, is there a right to access the Internet, and if so, what does that right look like and how far does it extend? Second, if there is a right to access the Internet, is there a legal obligation on States to overcome the digital divide?Through examination of this debate’s history, analysis of case law in the European Court of Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and a case study of one digital inclusion programme in Jalisco, Mexico, this book concludes that there is indeed currently a legal right to Internet access, but one that it is very limited in scope. The 2012 Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet is aspirational in nature, rather than a representative summary of current protections afforded by the international human rights legal framework. This book establishes a critical foundation from which some of these aspirations could be advanced in the future. The digital divide is not just a human rights challenge nor will it be overcome through human rights law alone. Nevertheless, human rights law could and should do more than it has thus far.
How Old Do You Think I Am? Speech-Language Predictors of Perceived Age and Communicative Competence.

Purpose Spoken language serves as a primary means of social interaction, but speech and language skills change with age, a potential source of age-related stereotyping. The goals of this study were...
Perioperative Outcomes and Predictors of Mortality After Surgery for Sigmoid Volvulus.

Abstract Background Data on outcomes after surgery for sigmoid volvulus is limited. The aim of this study was to develop a model to predict need for emergent surgery and mortality after resection for sigmoid volvulus. Methods The NSQIP database was queried from 2012 to 2016 to identify patients undergoing segmental resection for sigmoid volvulus. Pre-, intra-, and post-operative variables were compared. Primary and secondary outcomes were emergent surgery and risk of mortality, respectively. Chi-square and Fischer's test for categorical variables and the Mann–Whitney test for continuous variables were used. Significant variables for each outcome were entered into a logistic regression model to predict the outcomes. Results 2086 patients met inclusion criteria. Factors associated with emergency surgery included female gender, relative hematocrit elevation, relative leukocytosis, acute kidney injury, preoperative sepsis, prior functional independence, and bleeding disorders. Laparoscopic resection and mechanical bowel preparation were more commonly used in the nonemergent setting. Patients having emergent resection were more likely to suffer from postoperative superficial surgical site infection, pneumonia, cardiac arrest, septic shock, myocardial infarction, and receive perioperative transfusion. No difference was seen in ileus, readmission or reoperation rates in the emergent and nonemergent groups. Factors predictive of postoperative mortality included increased age, systemic sepsis, and emergent surgery. Independence before illness, higher albumin levels, and lower BMI were shown to be protective. Conclusions Emergent resection is independently associated with poor postoperative outcomes and mortality. Predictors of need for emergent resection and mortality identified in this study can be used to aid in shared decision-making for patients with sigmoid volvulus.
Meaningful Moments: How Mentors and Collaborators Helped Transform Career Challenges into Opportunities

AbstractAs a Black, female, feminist, intersectional psychologist whose scholarship defies traditional categorization, I have faced several challenges within academia including identifying my schol...
Predicting Missing Values in Medical Data via XGBoost Regression

The data in a patient’s laboratory test result is a notable resource to support clinical investigation and enhance medical research. However, for a variety of reasons, this type of data often contains a non-trivial number of missing values. For example, physicians may neglect to order tests or document the results. Such a phenomenon reduces the degree to which this data can be utilized to learn efficient and effective predictive models. To address this problem, various approaches have been developed to impute missing laboratory values; however, their performance has been limited. This is due, in part, to the fact no approaches effectively leverage the contextual information (1) in individual or (2) between laboratory test variables. We introduce an approach to combine an unsupervised prefilling strategy with a supervised machine learning approach, in the form of extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), to leverage both types of context for imputation purposes. We evaluated the methodology through a series of experiments on approximately 8200 patients’ records in the MIMIC-III dataset. The results demonstrate that the new model outperforms baseline and state-of-the-art models on 13 commonly collected laboratory test variables. In terms of the normalized root mean square derivation (nRMSD), our model exhibits an imputation improvement by over 20%, on average. Missing data imputation on the temporal variables can be largely improved via prefilling strategy and the supervised training technique, which leverages both the longitudinal and cross-sectional context simultaneously.
Capture-the-Flag: A Differential Game

A simplified version of the Capture the Flag game which has been extensively addressed in the literature is considered. This version allows us to model the problem as a differential game and obtain its complete closed-form solution. In this paper the Attacker's and Defender's optimal state-feedback strategies in each one of the players' winning regions are obtained and the analytical Barrier function that separates the state space into the winning regions of each player is constructed.
The virtual and the physical: two frames of mind.

Summary Virtual and physical embodiments of interactive artificial agents utilize similar core technologies for perception, planning, and interaction and engage with people in similar ways. Thus, designers have typically considered these embodiments to be broadly interchangeable, and the choice of embodiment primarily depends on the practical demands of an application. This paper makes the case that virtual and physical embodiments elicit fundamentally different “frames of mind” in the users of the technology and follow different metaphors for interaction, resulting in diverging expectations, forms of engagement, and eventually interaction outcomes. It illustrates these differences through the lens of five key mechanisms: “situativity, interactivity, agency, proxemics, and believability”. It also outlines the design implications of the two frames of mind, arguing for different domains of interaction serving as appropriate context for virtual and physical embodiments.
Firearm Homicide and Assaults

Firearm injuries are the second leading cause of child and adolescent death in the United States, with homicides currently responsible for 1915, or nearly 60%, of all firearm deaths occurring in the pediatric population. Rates of pediatric firearm homicide have increased over 20% in the past 4 years, and significant disparities persist with regard to age, sex, race/ethnicity, and urbanicity. In the present chapter, we review the current state of our knowledge about the epidemiology of firearm homicide and non-fatal firearm assaults, trends in such injuries over time, global comparisons, contextual factors associated with firearm homicides, and what is known about risk and protective factors associated with interpersonal firearm violence. Finally, we outline a pathway forward for the prevention of interpersonal firearm violence among children and adolescents.
Automated Discovery of Denial-of-Service Vulnerabilities in Connected Vehicle Protocols

With the development of the emerging Connected Vehicle (CV) technology, vehicles can wirelessly communicate with traffic infrastructure and other vehicles to exchange safety and mobility information in real time. However, the integrated communication capability inevitably increases the attack surface of vehicles, which can be exploited to cause safety hazard on the road. Thus, it is highly desirable to systematically understand design-level flaws in the current CV network stack as well as in CV applications, and the corresponding security/safety consequences so that these flaws can be proactively discovered and addressed before large-scale deployment. In this paper, we design CVAnalyzer, a system for discovering design-level flaws for availability violations of the CV network stack, as well as quantifying the corresponding security/safety consequences. To achieve this, CVAnalyzer combines the attack discovery capability of a general model checker and the quantitative threat assessment capability of a probabilistic model checker. Using CVAnalyzer, we successfully uncovered 4 new DoS (Denial-of-Service) vulnerabilities of the latest CV network protocols and 14 new DoS vulnerabilities of two CV platoon management protocols. Our quantification results show that these attacks can have as high as 99% success rates, and in the worst case can at least double the delay in packet processing, violating the latency requirement in CV communication.We implemented and validated all attacks in a real-world testbed, and also analyzed the fundamental causes to propose potential solutions. We have reported our findings in the CV network protocols to the IEEE 1609 Working Group, and the group has acknowledged the discovered vulnerabilities and plans to adopt our solutions.
Grief in Medical Students: The Short and Long-Term Impacts on Health and Well-Being.

Context:Healthcare workers often experience grief stemming from the loss of patients under their care. The impact of personal grief on healthcare workers’ wellbeing is less well described, particul...
Patent Obscura: The Use of Obscure Patent Doctrine in Biomedical Science Cases

The vast majority of patent law doctrine has been established through judicial interpretation and establishment of precedents that serve to guide the decisions of future courts. Despite the fact that many of these doctrines have fallen out of consistent use by courts, obscure patent doctrine can yield tremendous benefits to attorneys with the foresight to assert them. Patent law and the biotechnology, biomedical engineering, and pharmaceutical sectors in particular represent fertile grounds for utilizing rare doctrines because these disciplines are continuously evolving and require new legal constructs to accommodate such rapid change. This paper analyzes four obscure patent doctrines; obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP), the Kessler doctrine, the printed matter doctrine, and the ensnaring the prior art defense; and discusses the impact that these doctrines have had in specific court cases involving biomedical sciences. The paper also advocates for use of obscure patent doctrine by attorneys and describes why such an approach is appealing.
Dosimetric Impact of Dose Rate Fall-Off in FLASH Proton Pencil Beam Scanning Treatment.

Purpose/Objective(s) The lifetime of hydroxyl radicals, which cause radiobiological damage, is estimated to be a few microseconds. This time is much shorter than the actual spot-to-spot scanning time in proton pencil beam scanning (PBS) delivery (> 10 milliseconds). This mismatch in timescales becomes problematic in the case of FLASH treatment using PBS. Given that the FLASH effect is a spatially local and temporally finite phenomenon, it will be more accurate to evaluate it based on the spatial dose rate in Gy/sec/ cm3. Thus, delivering high doses at FLASH dose rates using PBS could be harmful to healthy tissues irradiated by the non-FLASH dose rate. In this study, we evaluate the extent of the healthy tissues that can be exposed to non-FLASH dose as well as the quantification of the received non-FLASH doses. Materials/Methods The PBS dose rate was determined by the proton beam energy, the beamline transmission efficiency and the cyclotron beam current. Its spatial distribution is governed by pencil beam's Gaussian distribution. Our investigation was carried out using simulations and experimental measurements. Two independent but complementary measurement setups were used: (i) A radiographic film sandwiched in solid water, along the beam axis, was irradiated to 15 Gy with a FLASH proton beam of 245 MeV and the spatial dose distribution was evaluated. (ii) A volumetric plastic scintillator was irradiated by the same beam and a high-speed camera was used to record the spatial distributions of dose and dose rate at the imaging rate of 100,000 fps. The absolute dose was measured at 2cm water depth using a plane-parallel ionization chamber to calibrate the imaging data from (i) and (ii) which were used to validate the simulations. Results Based on our simulation which validated using the film and scintillator imaging data, the dose rate is highest at the cyclotron maximum beam energy (250 MeV, ∼100% transmission), can achieve a maximum of 480 Gy/sec/cm3 at the central region of the Bragg peak. Then, as result of limited beamline efficiency, it drops to about 10% (47 Gy/sec/cm3) for the next highest beam energy (249 MeV) and exponentially decreases to 0.5 Gy/sec/cm3 for 70MeV. The dose rate values shift from FLASH to non-FLASH magnitudes depending on the location within the spatial dose distribution. The proportion of volume irradiated by a non-FLASH dose rate can be up to 40% of the total irradiated volume. Therefore, for a treatment using PBS, considerable amount of healthy tissue could receive non-FLASH dose. The received non-FLASH dose could be up to full prescription dose if the treatment is delivered in beam transmission mode and up to 30% of the prescription dose if the treatment is delivered using Bragg peaks. Conclusion Our results show that the Gaussian distribution of the proton beam can limit the FLASH benefit. In order to fully utilize the proton pencil beam for FLASH treatment, a robust solution to FLASH dose rate fall-off is needed.
MRI-based thalamic volumetry in multiple sclerosis using FSL-FIRST: Systematic assessment of common error modes.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE FSL's FMRIB's Integrated Registration and Segmentation Tool (FSL-FIRST) is a widely used and well-validated tool. Automated thalamic segmentation is a common application and an important longitudinal measure for multiple sclerosis (MS). However, FSL-FIRST's algorithm is based on shape models derived from non-MS groups. As such, the present study sought to systematically assess common thalamic segmentation errors made by FSL-FIRST on MRIs from people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). METHODS FSL-FIRST was applied to generate thalamic segmentation masks for 890 MR images in PwMS. Images and masks were reviewed systematically to classify and quantify errors, as well as associated anatomical variations and MRI abnormalities. For cases with overt errors (n = 362), thalamic masks were corrected and quantitative volumetric differences were calculated. RESULTS In the entire quantitative volumetric group, the mean volumetric error of FSL-FIRST was 2.74% (0.360 ml): among only corrected cases, the mean volumetric error was 6.79% (0.894 ml). The average percent volumetric error associated with seven error types, two anatomical variants, and motions artifacts are reported. Additional analyses showed that the presence of motion artifacts or anatomical variations significantly increased the probability of error (χ2 = 18.14, p < .01 and χ2 = 64.89, p < .001, respectively). Finally, thalamus volume error was negatively associated with degree of atrophy, such that smaller thalami were systematically overestimated (r = -.28, p < .001). CONCLUSIONS In PwMS, FSL-FIRST thalamic segmentation miscalculates thalamic volumetry in a predictable fashion, and may be biased to overestimate highly atrophic thalami. As such, it is recommended that segmentations be reviewed and corrected manually when appropriate for specific studies.
Hemoglobin solutions: use in surgical patients

Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) are solutions that can match the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells (RBCs), and several HBOCs have reached advanced stages of development and clinical testing. One of the potential mechanisms by which HBOC solutions may be effective in reducing transfused blood may be a result of the fact that in hemorrhagic conditions, replenishing lost iron is difficult. Although the oxygen-carrying capacity of most HBOC solutions may be quite transient, they are rapidly metabolized, and free iron is potentially scavenged by multiple mechanisms to subsequently stimulate erythropoiesis and reticulocytosis. Unfortunately, diaspirin-linked HBOC solutions reported a higher mortality in trauma patients. Regrettably, the trauma patient population is a heterogeneous group of patients and, similar to therapeutic trials in sepsis, trauma patients represent a group with an extremely high morbidity and mortality incidence that can potentially complicate interpreting data. Bovine hemoglobin represents an interesting alternative because of its availability and large quantity. A 500-kg steer has approximately 35 l blood with 12 g/dl hemoglobin (total-body hemoglobin content 4.2 kg), and bovine blood is available as an unlimited supply. Hemopure, a bovine product, is approved for veterinarian use in the United States, and for humans in South Africa. Multicenter, randomized, phase III, controlled trials have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of HEMOPURE® (Biopure Corporation), also known as HBOC-201. The product is ultrapurified to remove any plasma proteins, RBC stroma, and potential pathogenic material. During the manufacturing process, cross-linking and polymerization stabilize the hemoglobin molecule, which increases its vascular persistence as well as the efficiency of oxygen transport to tissue. Results from clinical trials indicate that HBOC-201 can be used as an oxygen 'bridge' for patients experiencing anemia due to surgical blood loss until their own red blood cells are replenished. HBOC-201 is generally well tolerated and is approved for use in South Africa, where it is indicated for use in adult surgical patients who are acutely anemic and to eliminate, delay, or reduce the need for allogeneic RBCs. A Biologics License Application for HBOC-201 is currently under review by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Selected website http://Bleedingweb.com
Modeling mechanical properties of the chest during the cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedure

The first step in improving the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) procedure is to understand how the force applied on the chest relates to the resulting blood pressure. In order to capture the mechanical properties of the chest and abdomen accurately, in this paper we proposed a nonlinear mass spring and damper model which consists of nonlinear spring up to 5th order, a combination of viscous and hysteresis damper. We then nondimensionalized the proposed model in order to enhance parametric study of the model for future use. In the next step we used gradient decent optimization method to identify the model parameters for force-compression data of 10273 CPR cycles collected from different pigs at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). We used the mean square error (RMSE) between the estimated force and actual force for each cycle as an objective function to be minimized. Using the above method we were able to estimate the model parameters for each cycle seperately. In order to find a best set of estimated parameters we used K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) method. K-NN is an unsupervised learning technique which clusters the data into different groups based on the distance metric. The cluster center with lowest RMSE is selected as the estimated parameters for the entire cycles. The resulted MSE of testing entire cycles with the estimated parameters are 0.12 mean and 0.04 SD. Results show that the proposed model is the most accurate model of pig chest during the CPR.
Genetic regulation of mammalian glucuronidase.

Publisher Summary Glucuronidase is useful in dividing mutations into four categories: structural genes, regulatory genes, processing genes, and temporal genes. This chapter discusses regulatory genes that affect the synthesis of mouse kidney glucuronidase in response to androgens. A kinetic analysis of induction suggests that these properties would be accounted for if this gene determines the affinity of the chromosomal region for the androgen-receptor protein. Genetic analysis of these mutants should determine whether much regulatory information is present around the enzyme structural gene in mammals. The pearl mutation is a strikingly different type of regulatory mutant for it apparently increases glucuronidase synthesis by sending signals from a chromosomal site far removed from the glucuronidase structural gene. Further, it increases the activity of several lysosomal enzymes. The mutants are of interest in that they may affect the functions of several kinds of subcellular organelles. The beige mutation, for example, causes altered morphology or function of histamine storage granules, platelet storage granules, and lamellar bodies of alveolar cells. Although their gene products are still unknown, the pigment mutants should be useful in defining the biogenesis, processing, functions, and interrelationships of the subcellular organelles.
The rising prevalence of severe poverty in America: a growing threat to public health.

Background The U.S. poverty rate has increased since 2000, but the depth of poverty experienced by Americans has been inadequately studied. Of particular concern is whether severe poverty is increasing, a trend that would carry important public health implications. Methods Income-to-poverty (I/P) ratios and income deficits/surpluses were examined for the 1990–2004 period. The severely poor, moderately poor, and near-poor were classified as those with I/P ratios of less than 0.5, 0.5 to 1.0, or 1.0 to 2.0, respectively. Income deficits/surpluses were classified relative to the poverty threshold as Tier I (deficit $8000 or more), Tier II (deficit or surplus less than $8000), or Tier III (surplus more than $8000). Odds ratios for severe poverty and Tier I were also calculated. Results Severe poverty increased between 2000 and 2004—those with I/P ratios of less than 0.5 grew by 20%, and Tier I grew by 45% to 55%—while the prevalence of higher levels of income diminished. The population in severe poverty was over-represented by children (odds ratio [OR]=1.69, confidence interval [CI]=1.63–1.75), African Americans (OR=2.84, CI=2.74–2.95), and Hispanics (OR=1.64, CI=1.58–1.71). Conclusions From 2000 to 2004, the prevalence of severe poverty increased sharply while the proportion of Americans in higher income tiers diminished. These trends have broad societal implications. Likely health consequences include a higher prevalence of chronic illnesses, more frequent and severe disease complications, and increased demands and costs for healthcare services. Adverse effects on children warrant special concern. The growth in the number of Americans living in poverty calls for the re-examination of policies enacted in recent years to foster economic progress.