cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Theory of continuous storage with Markov additive inputs and a general release rule

Abstract : A continuous storage model is introduced where the release rate is given by an arbitrary continuous increasing function r and the input process Y has conditionally independent (in general non-stationary) increments given the paths of a Markov process X. Then the content process Z is defined by a stochastic integral equation. Its solution is obtained and shown to be a conditional Markov process defined on the Markov process X, and the two-dimensional process (X,Z) is almost a standard Markov process. Ergodic properties of Z are discussed in terms of the paramerers defining the input Y and necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the existence of proper limiting distributions in a special case of particular interest. (Author)
More on history houses at Çatalhöyük: A response to Carleton et al.

Abstract In a recent article in this journal, Carleton et al. (2013) cast doubt on a hypothesis about the social organization of the Neolithic tell site of Catalhoyuk in central Turkey. The hypothesis concerns ‘history houses’ that were continually built in the same place and in which many interments occurred. Carleton et al. argue that the history house hypothesis ‘contends that the corporate kin-group was the main form of socioeconomic organization at Catalhoyuk during the PPNB, and that the corporate kin-groups would have been maintained by the repeated rebuilding of houses in the same place and by the burial of important members under the floors of the houses’ (Carleton et al., 2013, 1821). They test the history house hypothesis by examining the relationship between continuity of houses and the percentage of houses that contain burial. The purpose of this response is to (a) clarify the hypothesis, (b) show that the claimed test does not test the hypothesis, and (c) demonstrate that poor and out-of-date data were used. Data are presented that go some way to confirm a link between ‘history houses’ and burial at Catalhoyuk and reinforce wider scholarly discussion of Neolithic history and memory making.
EXPERT SYSTEMS AND RIVER BASIN MANAGEMENT

Expert systems are an emerging technology that may have significant implications for river basin management. Expert systems incorporate in a computerized environment the heuristics, judgments, experience and knowledge of one or more experts in a particular domain. The expert system is then available for consultation by the non-expert to gain advice and guidance on new problems in the domain. There has been a radical improvement in expert systems technology in the past decade, resulting in order of magnitude improvements in the quality of applications and in the development time for applications. There have been successful applications of expert systems that relate to river basin management problems and there are additional applications currently under development. The potential for successful application of expert systems and the potential for significant improvements in river basin management are great.
Role of Radiation Therapy in Carcinoma of the Hypopharynx

In a series of 199 patients with hypopharyngeal carcinoma treated with irradiation, the primary tumor was controlled in 63 per cent, 54 per cent, 44 per cent and 14 per cent of T1-T4 lesions, respectively. The five-year actuarial survival for stages I, II, III and IV patients was 60 per cent, 66 per cent, 49 per cent and 18 per cent. It was significantly better in patients with tumors located at the upper hypopharynx (p = 0.024). Early lesions yielded satisfactory results with irradiation alone. Advanced tumors had poor prognosis and other treatment modalities along with irradiation should be tried.
Comparative Government TextsProblems and Performance

Students in political science can probably conjure up a fairly precise impression of what most of the conventional subdivisions of the field are "about." The boundaries of American politics are well defined. Similarly, with the aid of a few adjectives (empirical, analytic, normative), what political theory intends to accomplish is fairly clear and distinct. Finally, even international relations, although there is some ambiguity in the case of comparative foreign policy, is likely to be widely perceived as the study of external state interaction. What remains vague is a determination of the field of comparative government. On the one hand, comparative government can be viewed as coterminous with the politics of man. Everything that man does anywhere in the world that has a bearing on political life falls under its purview. Thus the potential imperialism of the field: all conventional divisions of political science can be incorporated. On the other hand, comparative government can be an umbrella sheltering a host of unique enterprises. Students whose only interest is Chinese politics can devote their education solely to its study without feeling at all intellectually deprived, and they can still label themselves as students of comparative government. In between are more traditional formulations, many of which, as I shall describe later, rest on rather shaky
Heterogeneity of KCl-solubilized Antigens of Chemically Induced Sarcomas

SummarySolubilized antigens of murine methylcholanthrene-induced fibrosarcomas prepared by treatment of tumor tissue with hypertonic KCl were separated into fractions depending upon exclusion by molecular weight by selected ultra-filters. These studies showed that material of both high molecular weight (>300,000) and low molecular weight ( 100,000 daltons).
Network management for all-optical networks

We have developed a network-management subsystem for a wavelength-division-multiplexed all-optical network (AON) test bed being developed by AT&T Bell Laboratory, Digital Equipment Corporation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under a grant from ARPA. Network management is required in national- or global-scale networks, where the number of network entities combines with geographic and administrative considerations to increase the difficulty of performing functions such as network configuration, initialization, resource scheduling, fault detection, and performance estimation.
Real-Time Classification of Exercise Exertion Levels Using Discriminant Analysis of HRV Data

Heart rate variability (HRV) was shown to reflect activation of sympathetic nervous system however it is not clear which set of HRV parameters is optimal for real-time classification of exercise exertion levels. There is no studies that compared potential of two types of HRV parameters (time-domain and frequency-domain) in predicting exercise exertion level using discriminant analysis. The main goal of this study was to compare potential of HRV time-domain parameters versus HRV frequency-domain parameters in classifying exercise exertion level. Rest, exercise, and recovery categories were used in classification models. Overall 79.5% classification agreement by the time-domain parameters as compared to overall 52.8% classification agreement by frequency-domain parameters demonstrated that the time-domain parameters had higher potential in classifying exercise exertion levels.
Hernias and related problems in infants and children.

The most common hernias in infants and children are indirect inguinal hernias related to patency of the vaginal process of the peritoneum. Groin hernias in general should have early repair, with operation in a matter of hours if incarceration occurs. Umbilical hernias tend to close spontaneously or may be repaired by a simple operation if correction is indicated. The life-threatening hernias include posterolateral diaphragmatic hernia and omphalocele.
Contemporary wound infection surveillance issues

Contemporary wound infection surveillance is inexact. Tracking down suspicious incisions with maximal accuracy to isolate the subset of healing failures attributable to established tissue invasion by infecting pathogens has a solitary purpose: to learn how to improve one aspect of surgical practice. Wound infection is always the result of complex, probabilistic interplay of numerous concealed variables. A wound infection rate, whether determined for a hospital, a specialty, a risk class, an operation type, or a surgeon, only approximates a degree of failure to achieve one kind of surgical perfection. Interpretation of any rate will be flawed if issues of accuracy and meaning are suppressed. Gathering and revealing circumstances of individual infections may heuristically affect surgical teams. Interpretation of surveillance wound infection rates, infection rate comparisons to standards as a means of performance measurement, and particularly the meaning of rate changes over time in a hospital are matters of more than academic importance. Given current health care reform and a widespread fascination with industrial process-improvement philosophy, wound infection surveillance programs may be natural test platforms for probing surgical relevance of several quality-improvement methodologies. It is not a trivial fact that wound infection shares important prototypical features with most contemporary surgical care process flaws: rare, random, multifactorial in cause, costly, and impossible to uniformly preclude or predict.
Design, Control, and Experimentation of Internally-Actuated Rovers for the Exploration of Low-Gravity Planetary Bodies

In this paper we discuss the design, control, and experimentation of internally-actuated rovers for the exploration of low-gravity (micro-g to milli-g) planetary bodies, such as asteroids, comets, or small moons. The actuation of the rover relies on spinning three internal flywheels, which allows all subsystems to be packaged in one sealed enclosure and enables the platform to be minimalistic, thereby reducing its cost. By controlling the flywheels’ spin rates, the rover is capable of achieving large surface coverage by attitude-controlled hops, fine mobility by tumbling, and coarse instrument pointing by changing orientation relative to the ground. We discuss the dynamics of such rovers, their control, and key design features (e.g., flywheel design and orientation, geometry of external spikes, and system engineering aspects). The theoretical analysis is validated on a first-of-a-kind 6 degree-of-freedom (DoF) microgravity test bed, which consists of a 3 DoF gimbal attached to an actively controlled gantry crane.
Impact of Benson Relaxation Therapy To Reduce Stress Among Antenatal Mothers in A Selected Hopital, Bhubeneswar, Odisha, India

A quasi experimental study with pre and post test without control group design was undertaken on 50 antenatal mothers attending OPD at PHC,Pahal, Odisha and the sample were selected by purposive sampling technique. Data were collected by the use of Modified pregnant women’s specific stress scale and analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Highly significant difference was found out between pre and post test stress score. No significant association was found between post test knowledge with demographic variables. Statistical analysis of data revealed that video assisted teaching module on Benson relaxation therapy was effective for reducing the stress among the Antenatal mother.
The role of sleep in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness characterized by alternating periods of elevated and depressed mood. Sleep disturbances in bipolar disorder are present during all stages of the condition and exert a negative impact on overall course, quality of life, and treatment outcomes. We examine the partnership between circadian system (process C) functioning and sleep-wake homeostasis (process S) on optimal sleep functioning and explore the role of disruptions in both systems on sleep disturbances in bipolar disorder. A convergence of evidence suggests that sleep problems in bipolar disorder result from dysregulation across both process C and process S systems. Biomarkers of depressive episodes include heightened fragmentation of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, reduced REM latency, increased REM density, and a greater percentage of awakenings, while biomarkers of manic episodes include reduced REM latency, greater percentage of stage I sleep, increased REM density, discontinuous sleep patterns, shortened total sleep time, and a greater time awake in bed. These findings highlight the importance of targeting novel treatments for sleep disturbance in bipolar disorder.
Rivaroxaban Therapy, False-Positive Lupus Anticoagulant Screening Results, and Confirmatory Assay Results.

Objective: To examine the effects of patients taking the direct blood coagulation factor Xa inhibitor rivaroxaban on lupus anticoagulant testing results in a clinical setting. Methods: We reviewed the results of lupus anticoagulant testing performed over a 2-year period. Of 59 patients who met criteria for a lupus anticoagulant, 18 were taking rivaroxaban. We reviewed and compared the parameters of lupus anticoagulant testing. Results: The average dilute Russell viper venom time (DRVVT) and normal plasma-mix screening results to confirmation ratios in rivaroxaban-naive patients were 1.6 and 1.7, respectively. In the rivaroxaban group, the same parameters were 1.7 and 1.6, respectively ( P = – 0.28 and 0.46, respectively). For 15 of 18 patients taking rivaroxaban, results were corrected on the confirmation steps of both tests. Conclusions: Rivaroxaban confounds lupus anticoagulant testing because the DRVVT is prolonged in these patients but it also corrects with excess phospholipid, mimicking a lupus anticoagulant. Patient medication review is critical to avoid false-positive findings and inappropriate diagnosis of antiphospholipid syndrome. * Abbreviations : APS : antiphospholipid syndrome Ig : immunoglobulin SLE : systemic lupus erythematosus CLSI : Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute PT : prothrombin time INR : international normalized ratio PTT : partial thromboplastin time TT : thrombin time LA-PTT : lupus anticoagulant-sensitive partial thromboplastin time DRVVT : dilute Russell viper venom time S/C : screen to confirm ratio
Behaviorally anchored rating scales: An application for evaluating teaching practice

Abstract We developed Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) for measuring teaching practice, and compared them to the well-established Framework for Teaching (FfT; Danielson, 2013). BARS provide behavioral anchors delineating levels of performance via a set of behaviors. Our BARS focused on two dimensions of teaching, leading a classroom discussion and making content and practices explicit. We examined how a) rater agreement for BARS compares to rater agreement using the FfT, and b) how BARS and the FfT compare regarding perceived ease of use, perceived accuracy, and perceived advantages and disadvantages. Nineteen raters, who are users of the FfT and were trained to use BARS, independently evaluated video-taped teacher lessons using both methods. Rater agreement was higher for the FfT, which may, in part, be a factor of the raters' greater experience with that rating system. Nonetheless, raters reported that there are many aspects of BARS that are desirable.
The grass isn’t always greener: The effects of cannabis on embryological development

With the increasing publicity of marijuana due to recent legislation, it is pertinent that the effects of fetal exposure to the drug are assessed. While in utero cannabis exposure has been associated with early pregnancy failure, birth defects and developmental delay, the mechanisms of such outcomes are largely unexplained. Furthermore, the use of cannabinoids in cancer treatment via growth inhibition and apoptosis may indicate how cannabis exposure likely harms a growing fetus. Cannabinoid signaling is required for proper pre-implantation development, embryo transport to the uterus, and uterine receptivity during implantation. In post-implantation development, cannabinoid signaling functions in a multitude of pathways, including, but not limited to, folic acid, VEGF, PCNA, MAPK/ERK, and BDNF. Disrupting the normal activity of these pathways can significantly alter many vital in utero processes, including angiogenesis, cellular replication, tissue differentiation, and neural cognitive development. This paper aims to demonstrate the effects of cannabis exposure on a developing embryo in order to provide a molecular explanation for the adverse outcomes associated with cannabis use during pregnancy.
Hydrogen Treatment as a Detergent of Electronic Trap States in Lead Chalcogenide Nanoparticles

Lead chalcogenide (PbX) nanoparticles are promising materials for solar energy conversion. However, the presence of trap states in their electronic gap limits their usability, and developing a universal strategy to remove trap states is a persistent challenge. Using calculations based on density functional theory, we show that hydrogen acts as an amphoteric impurity on PbX nanoparticle surfaces; hydrogen atoms may passivate defects arising from ligand imbalance or off-stoichiometric surface terminations irrespective of whether they originate from cation or anion excess. In addition, we show, using constrained density functional theory calculations, that hydrogen treatment of defective nanoparticles is also beneficial for charge transport in films. We also find that hydrogen adsorption on stoichiometric nanoparticles leads to electronic doping, preferentially n-type. Our findings suggest that postsynthesis hydrogen treatment of lead chalcogenide nanoparticle films is a viable approach to reduce electronic ...
The Role of Accounting in the 21st Century Firm

I explore the evolving role of accounting information in allocating capital. Accounting arose to control conflicts of interest in organizations (stewardship role). The industrial revolution spawned capital-intensive firms and public capital markets with dispersed shareholders to finance these firms. The regulation of these public capital markets shifted the role of accounting towards providing investors information for making informed investment decisions (valuation role). With the advent of the semiconductor and global competition, emerging and public firms today differ from their predecessors in fundamental ways. Exploiting the information technologies created by the semiconductor, 21st century firms are now more knowledge based, have more intangible assets, are more reliant on their employees’ human capital, confront increased competition, and face diverse conflicts of interests and hence different challenges accessing capital than their forerunners. Responding to the demands of 21st century firms, private-equity markets provide a bundled service – capital and governance. To supply this bundle, private equity firms require accounting information to control the conflicts of interest both within the private-equity firm (between the general and limited partners) and within their investees. Controlling these conflicts shifts the role of accounting back towards its original stewardship roots. The valuation role remains important, but there is little to value unless the conflicts of interest are first mitigated.
Electromigration Failure Time Model of General Circuit-Like Interconnects

The majority of interconnects in an integrated circuit is composed of via-terminated segments that are connected to atomic sinks or reservoirs. In this paper, we investigate electromigration failure of Cu/low-k conductors with active (current carrying) sinks and reservoirs, as well as configurations where currents flow into or out of a common via. We show that when steady-state stress profiles are combined with current densities, an accurate picture of electromigration failure for circuit-like interconnects emerges. Voiding locations are in general dependent on length and current ratios between active and sink/reservoir segments, leading to a rich variety of voiding behavior. A modeling methodology is developed to predict both voiding locations and failure time distributions in the presence of arbitrary configurations of active sinks, reservoirs, and common vias.
Delivery room continuous positive airway pressure and early pneumothorax in term newborn infants.

OBJECTIVE To assess the association between delivery room (DR) continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and pneumothorax (PT) in term newborns. METHODS Two studies performed in community hospitals used data extracted from computerized records of term newborns. Infants receiving positive pressure ventilation in the DR were excluded. Tabulated data included receipt of DR CPAP, PT on the day of birth, and gestational age (GA). In a case-control study from 2001-2013, infants with PT were compared to controls without PT but with respiratory distress or hypoxia persisting from birth for receipt of DR CPAP. In a cohort study from 2014-2016, infants receiving and not receiving DR CPAP were compared for the incidence of PT. RESULTS In the case-control study, data were obtained for 169 cases and 850 controls. Compared to controls, PT infants were more likely to have received DR CPAP (16.8% vs. 40.2%, respectively, P < 0.001). Logistic regression revealed DR CPAP (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AOR] = 3.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.31, 4.72, P < 0.001) and GA (AOR = 1.21, 95% CI = 1.05, 1.39, P = 0.009) to be independent predictors of early PT.In the cohort study, PT was observed in 0.1% of 9255 control infants not receiving DR CPAP and 4.8% of 228 infants receiving DR CPAP (P < 0.001). In logistic regression analyses, DR CPAP significantly predicted PT (OR = 59.59, 95% CI = 23.34, 147.12, P < 0.001) and remained a significant predictor of PT after controlling for gestational age. CONCLUSION Respiratory conditions treated with CPAP in delivery rooms are associated with increased risk of PT. A cause-and-effect relationship between CPAP and PT cannot be claimed in this study. Further research is needed to better understand this relationship.
Against Postmodernism and the “New” Philosophy of Science: Nietzsche’s Image of Science in the Light of Art

In what follows I offer a polemical - and inevitably elliptical - review of the current state of the philosophy of science and argue for a radically hermeneutic philosophy of science, following Nietzsche’s recognition that although science represents the fulfilment of the modern project of a self-grounding ground, the problem of science as such cannot be posed on its own ground. Yet I am aware that some readers will find the following closer to a sociology of science and knowledge as an argument for the recognition of historical factors (though I focus on no specifically social categories and employ no sociological concepts) than to a critique of the philosophy of science. I have neither the competence for nor the intention of offering either such a sociology of knowledge or a history of science. What I will do is to challenge the kind of conceptualizing fetishism - an Aristotelian legacy -that would make such distinctions to the detriment of the critical scope proper to philosophic thought.
Synaptophysin is a β-Amyloid Target that Regulates Synaptic Plasticity and Seizure Susceptibility in an Alzhiemer’s Model

Alzheimer9s disease (AD), a condition characterized by cognitive deficits and progressive loss of memory, is causally linked to the short amyloid peptide Aβ42, which disrupts normal neurotransmission. Neurotransmitter (NT) release from synaptic vesicles (SV) requires coordinated binding of the conserved core secretory machinery comprised of the soluble NSF attachment protein receptor (vSNARE) synaptobrevin 2 (VAMP2) on the SV and the cognate tSNAREs on the plasma membrane. Synaptophysin (SYP) is the most abundant SV protein3 and the major pre-fusion binding partner of VAMP24. A major challenge in understanding the etiology and prevention of AD is determining the proteins directly targeted by Aβ42 and elucidating if these targets mediate disease phenotypes. Here we demonstrate that Aβ42 binds to SYP with picomolar affinity and disrupts the SYP/VAMP2 complex resulting in inhibition of both neurotransmitter release and synaptic plasticity. While functionally redundant paralogs of SYP have masked its critical activity in knockout studies, we now demonstrate a profound seizure susceptibility phenotype in SYP knockout mice that is recapitulated in an AD model. Our studies imply a subtle yet critical role for SYP in the synaptic vesicle cycle and the etiology of AD.
KAML: A Flexible, High-Performance Key-Value SSD

Modern solid state drives (SSDs) unnecessarily confine host programs to the conventional block I/O interface, leading to suboptimal performance and resource under-utilization. Recent attempts to replace or extend this interface with a key-value-oriented interface and/or built-in support for transactions offer some improvements, but the details of their implementations make them a poor match for many applications. This paper presents the key-addressable, multi-log SSD (KAML), an SSD with a key-value interface that uses a novel multi-log architecture and stores data as variable-sized records rather than fixed-sized sectors. Exposing a key-value interface allows applications to remove a layer of indirection between application-level keys (e.g., database record IDs or file inode numbers) and data stored in the SSD. KAML also provides native transaction support tuned to support fine-grained locking, achieving improved performance compared to previous designs that require page-level locking. Finally, KAML includes a caching layer analogous to a conventional page cache that leverages host DRAM to improve performance and provides additional transactional features. We have implemented a prototype of KAML on a commercial SSD prototyping platform, and our results show that compared with existing key-value stores, KAML improves the performance of online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads by 1.1X – 4.0X, and NoSQL key-value store applications by 1.1X – 3.0X.
An agent-based decision tool to explore urban climate & smart city possibilities

This paper investigates alternative ways to construct a decision tool intended to help the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) region to meet or exceed the goal of 80% reduction in the emission of Green House Gas (GHG) by 2050. The goal is to explore and build several pre-prototypes to evaluate the value of the role for ABM, alternative data sources (Census, energy reports, DVRPC surveys, etc.), GIS modeling, and various social science theories of human behavior (land value theory, economic disparity theory, cognitive learning theory, etc.). Section 2 presents a model of the business as usual scenario that uses trend extrapolation to project energy consumption and GHG production until 2050. Section 3 then explains initial research on an Agent Based Model (ABM) with which users can investigate the role of attitude, information awareness, and economic disparities upon consumer choice of residence location and transportation mode. Finally, we conclude with some lessons learned and challenges for scaling.
Reproductive Plasticity in the Nematode Gyrinicola batrachiensis: Does an Intermediate Reproductive Strategy Exist in Sexually Reproducing, Didelphic Pinworms?

Abstract Phenotypic plasticity is a process in which multiple phenotypes arise from 1 genotype because of environmental selection pressures. Gyrinicola batrachiensis has a heterogeneous reproductive strategy such that females reproduce either via parthogenesis with thick-shelled eggs in a single uterus or sexual reproduction with thick- and thin-shelled eggs in separate uterine horns. No evidence exists that strains of G. batrachiensis are able to switch between parthenogenetic and sexual reproduction. Thin-shelled eggs are autoinfective, and thick-shelled eggs act as transmission agents once shed into the aquatic environment. Our primary goal was to determine whether dioecious, didelphic pinworms that infect Rana sphenocephala, a slow-developing tadpole, and Osteopilus septentrionalis, a quick-developing tadpole, display reproductive plasticity with concern to thick- and thin-egg development. We performed experimental cross-infections in aquatic mesocosms to determine if dioecious, didelphic worms vary (...
Electrodynamics of dual superconducting chiral medium

Abstract We study the electrodynamics of the chiral medium with electric and magnetic charges using the effective Maxwell–Chern–Simons theory extended to include the magnetic current. The exchange of helicity between the chiral medium and the magnetic field, known as the inverse cascade, is controlled by the chiral anomaly equation. In the presence of the magnetic current, the magnetic helicity is dissipated, so that the inverse cascade stops when the magnetic helicity vanishes while the chiral conductivity reaches a non-vanishing stationary value satisfying σ χ 2 4 σ e σ m , where σ e , σ m and σ χ are the electric, magnetic and chiral conductivities respectively. We argue that this state is superconducting and exhibits the Meissner effect for both electric and magnetic fields. Moreover, this state is stable with respect to small magnetic helicity fluctuations; the magnetic helicity becomes unstable only when the inequality mentioned above is violated.
Benzoate esters and flavonoids from Desmos pedunculosus

Abstract The genus Desmos (Annonaceae) is comprised of about thirty-three species of trees and shrubs found in southern Asia, Indonesia, and northern Australia. The chemistry of many of these species is largely unreported. Phytochemical investigation of a methanol extract of the aerial parts of D. pedunculosus led to the isolation of two flavonoids and eight benzoate ester derivatives. Three of these benzoate esters are new compounds, while two others are known synthetic compounds reported here as natural products for the first time. The compounds were characterized by mass spectrometry and 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopy. Based on a comparison of extracts of D. chinensis and D. pedunculosus from Vietnam, several of the compounds we report may serve as marker compounds to chemically distinguish these similar species.
Simulation of Insolvency Proceedings Year II - Evidence of the Long Term Effect on Cognitive Learning

The aim of this paper is to draw some conclusions from a long-term project inspired by the so-called Mock trials experienced in the USA and applied into the Czech system of law education of students at the Faculty of Economics of the University of South Bohemia.The project involves a simulation of insolvency proceedings in case of a company bankruptcy. The students play roles of the various participants in the insolvency proceedings and learn very relevant but rather complicated process of insolvency. The results of the second academic year involve re-testing of students included in the SIP 1.0 (Simulation of Insolvency Proceedings 2015/2016) in order to assess if the learning experience has the long-term impact and comparison with the new group of students that undergone the SIP 2.0 (Simulation of Insolvency Proceedings 2016/2017).
Assessing public transit service equity using route-level accessibility measures and public data

Abstract The benefits and burdens of public transit service changes can be quantified using many different metrics. In the United States, the Federal Transit Administration requires transit agencies to assess the equity of proposed service changes using the demographic shares of affected riders. The purpose of the work presented here is to inform the development of more robust transit equity analyses than are currently conducted by integrating measures of accessibility – the ease with destinations can be reached – into FTA-required analyses. The measures are calculated using publicly available data, including the US Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics dataset and transit route and schedule information in the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format. The results demonstrate that relying on a single measure (e.g. population shares or accessibility) to associate a route with a particular demographic group is likely to be deficient. Previous academic work on accessibility has not translated well to practice in part because the calculation of accessibility relied upon regional travel demand model outputs that were difficult to obtain. This work thus fills an important gap in the literature and practice by tying advances in the academic literature to FTA-mandated analysis with publicly available data.
13.5 Grazing Influences on Geomorphic Systems

Grazing by wild, feral, and domesticated animals can have profound geomorphic impacts on the landscape. Wild grazers, such as native ungulates including mountain goats and elk, are increasingly restricted in their range to nature preserves where their concentrated numbers produce severe localized erosion. Feral animals, such as wild horses and burros, are grazers that produce erosional impacts in sensitive sites such as arid or semi-arid climates and on coastal dunes. Domesticated grazers, including especially cattle and sheep, impact widespread geographic areas and produce geomorphic impacts through trampling and compaction of soil leading to accelerated runoff and gullying, disruption of streambed vegetation, chiseling and sloughing of streambanks, disruption of protective soil crusts, and terracette formation.
Computational Design and Analysis of Nanoscale Logic Circuit Molecules

There is a practical limit to how much can be packed onto a silicon chip. Present silicon chip technology is quickly closing in on this limit. “Physics may soon impose barriers that could slow the chips industry’s blazing progress to a crawl.”1 There is a need for the development of other technologies that will allow further miniaturization of electronics. One way this can be achieved is by using molecules to construct electronic circuits. Recently there have been numerous examples in the literature of nanoscale molecules with electronic properties.2-8 The work that is presented here proposes using molecular components, which have electronic properties, to construct a nanoscale molecular electronic logic circuit.’ It is based on the concept of the molecular generator, which is one of the basic building blocks of this molecular circuit. The molecular nanomotor, from which we designed our molecular generator molecules, was first
Mold Temperature Measurement for Glass-Pressing Processes

The largest use of radiation thermometers within Coming Glass Works is for mold temperature measurement for the glass-pressing process. Pressing television panels at today's high quality would be very difficult without a mold temperature measurement system and the computer manipulation of the quality control data to supervise the mold temperature control loop. The most critical part of a television panel is the inside surface curvature. The ideal surface is usually defined as a spherical surface. The tolerance for a normal TV panel is ′0.30 mm (′0.012 in.). High resolution display panels are more critical, having a dimensional tolerance only one half as large as TV panels. Panel curvature is a direct (but negative) function of mold temperature. Every 1°C increase in mold temperature results in the panel center being 0.025 mm (0.001 in.) shorter (flatter). Random dimensional variations within a panel take up most of the dimensional tolerance. The result is that each mold is controlled to its own individual temperature set point. ′1°C. Hot panel and cold panel curvature measurements are correlated by a process computer and used to update the mold temperature set points. The same computer adjusts the mold cooling air to maintain the required mold temperatures. From the temperature measurement standpoint, the significant problem is the changing emissivity of the mold surface when the mold is new or reconditioned. The selection of a radiation thermometer with a short wavelength was an obvious choice to minimize the effect of emissivity variations. On the negative side, the potential interference from reflected ambient light would require careful shielding. A silicon cell thermometer was chosen for this system. The silicon cell thermometer is a very fast response instrument-that attribute is not required in this specific application but is used in high-speed pressing processes such as automotive headlights.
Disseminating Research Findings

To be of benefit to other scientists and practitioners, a researcher’s findings must be shared. Formal dissemination of findings culminates a research project and is accomplished through conference presentations and publications. This chapter considers what is involved in making a conference presentation and in publishing a journal article describing a research study. Although publications of other sorts (e.g., books, book chapters, review articles, research monographs) are important in integrating and interpreting research findings, they will not be considered here. Such writings require skills similar to those necessary to publish research articles, which are the foundation of the scientific literature.
Digitally Recorded Education: Effects on Anxiety and Knowledge Recall in Patients Receiving First-Time Chemotherapy

Background Prechemotherapy information is overwhelming, and retention of critical information can be challenging. Patients from a Southern California infusion clinic had varying degrees of retention when nurses used traditional one-on-one teaching with supplemental handouts. Objectives The intent of this article is to determine the effectiveness of standardized, digitally recorded education as an alternative teaching method for increasing knowledge recall and decreasing anxiety in English- and Spanish-speaking patients receiving first-time chemotherapy. Methods Baseline data were obtained from five patients who received traditional teaching. Using a pre-/post-test design, 92 patients receiving digitally recorded education completed a paper-and-pencil instrument that rated their anxiety and knowledge recall. Findings The digitally recorded education method produced significant decreases in anxiety and increases in knowledge recall.
“The forgotten boys” : Introduction to the special issue

Julie A. Washington, Lee Branum-Martin, Ryan Lee-James, and Congying Sun tackle an enormous set of issues in their landmark longitudinal study of language and reading skills among African American boys and girls from first to fifth grades. They find no gender differences in this large accelerated cohort design for language and cognition. The disparities in writing between girls and boys, and between African Americans and other children, are some of those facts that need to be examined and changed. Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris, and Keith Beard disaggregate data from previous interventions on writing and find that the use of evidence-based writing instruction that incorporated known strategies for planning, revising, sentence construction, spelling, handwriting, and self-regulation improved the writing performance of African American males who were having difficulties in writing.
2017 Update on Medical Overuse: A Systematic Review

Importance Overuse of medical care is a well-recognized problem. Objective To identify and highlight original research articles published in 2016 that are most relevant to understanding medical overuse or strategies to reduce it. Evidence Review A structured review of English-language articles on PubMed published in 2016 coupled with examination of tables of contents of high-impact journals to identify articles related to medical overuse in adults. These articles were appraised for their importance to medicine. Findings This study considered 2252 articles, 1224 of which addressed medical overuse. Of these, 122 were deemed most relevant based on originality, methodologic quality, and number of patients potentially affected. The 10 most influential articles were selected by author consensus. Select findings from the studies include the lack of benefit of transesophageal echocardiography in the workup of cryptogenic stroke, increasing use of computed tomography in the emergency department from 2.2% to 9.4% from 2001 to 2010, and carotid ultrasonography and revascularization being performed for uncertain or inappropriate indications with 95% frequency. Likewise, services for which harms are likely to outweigh benefits include treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, which provides no mortality benefit but increases absolute risk of erectile dysfunction by 10% to 30%, oxygen for patients with moderate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, surgery for meniscal tear with mechanical symptoms, and nutritional interventions for inpatients with malnutrition. This review highlights 2 methods for reducing overuse: clinician audit and feedback with peer comparison for antibiotic use (reduction in inappropriate antibiotic use from 20% to 4%) and a practical and sensible shared decision-making tool for low-risk chest pain (reduction in emergency department workup from 52% to 37%). Conclusions and Relevance The body of empirical work continues to expand related to medical services that are provided for inappropriate or uncertain indications. Engaging patients in conversations aimed at shared decision making and giving practitioners feedback about their performance relative to peers appear to be useful in reducing overuse.
AutoTap: synthesizing and repairing trigger-action programs using LTL properties

End-user programming, particularly trigger-action programming (TAP), is a popular method of letting users express their intent for how smart devices and cloud services interact. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be challenging for users to correctly express their desires through TAP. This paper presents AutoTap, a system that lets novice users easily specify desired properties for devices and services. AutoTap translates these properties to linear temporal logic (LTL) and both automatically synthesizes property-satisfying TAP rules from scratch and repairs existing TAP rules. We designed AutoTap based on a user study about properties users wish to express. Through a second user study, we show that novice users made significantly fewer mistakes when expressing desired behaviors using AutoTap than using TAP rules. Our experiments show that AutoTap is a simple and effective option for expressive end-user programming.
Where Do Our Problems Lie?: Comparing Rates of E-Access Problems Across Three Research Institutions

In order to build upon the research of Brett, the author categorized over three hundred e-resources troubleshooting tickets at The University of Alabama Libraries into a coding scheme originally cr...
Endothelial Sirtuin 3 Dictates Glucose Transport to Cardiomyocyte and Sensitizes Pressure Overload-Induced Heart Failure.

Background Alterations of energetic metabolism are suggested to be an important contributor to pressure overload (PO)‐induced heart failure. Our previous study reveals that knockout of endothelial ...
Role of platelets in neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis.

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is an inflammatory bowel necrosis of premature infants and is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in infants born between 23 and 28 weeks of gestation. Fifty to 95% of all infants with NEC develop thrombocytopenia (platelet counts <150 × 109/L) within 24-72 h of receiving this diagnosis. In many patients, thrombocytopenia is severe and is treated with one or more platelet transfusions. However, the underlying mechanism(s) and biological implications of NEC-related thrombocytopenia remain unclear. This review presents current evidence from human and animal studies on the clinical features and mechanisms of platelet depletion in NEC. Anecdotal clinical experience is combined with evidence from laboratory studies and from an extensive literature search in databases PubMed, EMBASE, and Scopus and the electronic archives of abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the Pediatric Academic Societies. To avoid bias in identification of existing studies, key words were short-listed prior to the actual search both from anecdotal experience and from PubMed's Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) thesaurus. IMPACT: Fifty to 95% of infants with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) develop idiopathic thrombocytopenia (platelet counts <150 × 109/L) within 24-72 h of disease onset. Early clinical trials suggest that moderate thrombocytopenia may be protective in human NEC, although further work is needed to fully understand this relationship. We have developed a neonatal murine model of NEC-related thrombocytopenia, where enteral administration of an immunological stimulant, trinitrobenzene sulfonate, on postnatal day 10 induces an acute necrotizing ileocolitis resembling human NEC. In this murine model, thrombocytopenia is seen at 15-18 h due to platelet consumption and mild-moderate thrombocytopenia is protective.
Mind-Dependence in Berkeley and the Problem of Perception

On the traditional picture, accidents must inhere in substances in order to exist. Berkeley famously argues that a particular class of accidents—the sensible qualities—are mere ideas—entities that ...
Predictors of Attendance Patterns in a Universal Family-Based Preventive Intervention Program

Achieving sustained engagement in family-based preventive intervention programs is a serious challenge faced by program implementers. Despite the evidence supporting the effectiveness and potential population-level impacts for these programs, their actual impact is limited by challenges around retention of participants. In order to inform efforts to better retain families, it is critical to understand the different patterns of attendance that emerge across the duration of program implementation and the factors that are associated with each attendance pattern. In this study, we identified latent classes of attendance patterns across the seven program sessions of the Strengthening Families Program: For Parents and Youth Ages 10-14 (SFP 10-14). Youth and their parents who attended at least one SFP 10-14 program session together were included in the analysis. Four distinct classes emerged: First-Session Attenders (7%), Early Attenders (9%), Declining-High Attenders (18%), and Consistent-High Attenders (66%). An examination of individual, family, and sociodemographic predictors of class membership revealed that adolescent school bonding predicted families having relatively high attendance, adolescent involvement with deviant peers predicted early dropout, and family low-income status predicted early dropout. Findings point to the need for potential targeted strategies for retaining these groups, such as involving school personnel, employing brief interventions to identify and address barriers at the outset, and leveraging the positive influence of Consistent-High Attenders. Findings also shed light on ways to reach those who may continue to drop out early, such as restructuring program content to address critical material early in the program. This study adds to the growing body of literature that seeks to understand for whom, when, and in which ways program dropout occurs.
Neurobiology: The power of pauses in electrocommunication

A new study of social communication behavior in weakly electric fish identifies neural mechanisms that may account for the significance of silent pauses in communication.