cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Factors associated with surface iridescence in fresh beef

The objective of this study was to investigate factors associated with surface iridescence in fresh beef. Eight muscles were evaluated for occurrence of surface iridescence: Biceps femoris (BF), Gluteus medius (GM), Longissimus lumborum (LD), Psoas major (PM), Rectus femoris (RF), Semimembranosus (SM), Semitendinosus (ST), and Tensor fasciae latae (TF). Incidence of surface iridescence was 91% for ST, 34% for SM, 27% for LD, 20% for GM, 12% for RF, 9% for BF, 8% for TF, and 6% for PM (P <0.05). Factors associated with surface iridescence in the ST were further examined because iridescence was observed to a much higher degree in the ST as compared with other muscles evaluated. Greater ST surface iridescence was associated with larger ribeye areas, more youthful lean maturity scores, higher L*, a* and b* colorimeter values, lower ultimate pH values, and faster cooking (P <0.05). # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Synchronous diagnosis of a hodgkin lymphoma and a papillary carcinoma of the thyroid

The increased incidence of thyroid cancer is probably the result of the increased detection of subclinical disease. We present the case of a 24-year-old male patient, with no pre-existing personal or family history of thyroid disease or past irradiation exposure, who was concomitantly diagnosed with a Hodgkin lymphoma and a papillary carcinoma of the thyroid in the context of B signs and the absence of thyroid disease symptoms. This case illustrates a unique and previously unreported example of two synchronous cancers of which one was fortuitously discovered. We also report the treatment approach we adopted.
A new class of biorthogonal wavelet systems for image transform coding

We construct general biorthogonal Coifman wavelet systems, a new class of compactly supported biorthogonal wavelet systems with vanishing moments equally distributed for a scaling function and wavelet pair. A time-domain design method is employed and closed-form expressions for the impulse responses and the frequency responses of the corresponding dual filters are derived. The resulting filter coefficients are all dyadic fractions, which is an attractive feature in the realization of multiplication-free discrete wavelet transform. Even-ordered systems in this family are symmetric, which correspond to linear-phase dual filters. In particular, three filterbanks (FBs) in this family are systematically verified to have competitive compression potential to the 9-7 tap biorthogonal wavelet FB by Cohen et al. (1992), which is currently the most widely used one in the field of wavelet transform coding. In addition, the proposed FB's have much smaller computational complexity in terms of floating-point operations required in transformation, and therefore indicate a better tradeoff between compression performance and computational complexity.
Did Edgar Degas have an inherited retinal degeneration

Objective: Retrospective analysis of the famous painter Edgar Degas' eye disease. Design: A historical review and analysis based on Degas' paintings and letters exchanged between the painter and his friends and family members, as well as on the chronicles of his associates. DeGas-Musson family papers at the Howard-Tilton Library of Tulane University are also reviewed. Results: Degas had an eye disease that was first noticed in 1870 and that progressed throughout his life. He suffered from progressive bilateral central visual loss and light sensitivity which was most acutely recognized while he was visiting his mother's side of the family in New Orleans where he could not paint outside because of the bright sun. Edgar's maternal first cousin, Estelle Musson, also suffered gradual bilateral visual loss, and was also known to have light sensitivity early in her life. Estelle became totally blind in her early 30s. Both Edgar and Estelle were otherwise healthy and lived long lives. Conclusion: It is likely tha...
Composite memory variable velocity-stress viscoelastic modelling

SUMMARY The full 3-D viscoelastic wave equations have been reformulated,using the velocity–stress formulation for a curved grid, to include a set of memory variables for each particle velocity component. The earlier standard formulation includes a set of memory variables for each stress component. In 3-D this reduces the number of memory variables by three for each extra relaxation parameter above 1. This reformulation requires transforming the usual first order differential equation for velocity–stress modelling to a second order differential equation which again requires storage of two consecutive time step values of the particle velocities. No memory saving therefore is achieved using just one relaxation mechanism. However, the memory saved by the new formulation increases with increasing number of included relaxation mechanisms, and is around 30 per cent for 5–7 relaxation mechanisms, which is often required for accurate Q modelling. Incidentally, for media of heterogeneous Q, the new formulation is two to three times slower in simulations than the old formulation, so the new formulation should be used in memory critical applications and/or for heterogeneous media with layers/blocks of homogeneous Q, for which also CPU will be saved.
Lymphangioleiomyomatosis and SZ α1-Antitrypsin Disease*: A Unique Combination?

We describe a case of a 37-year-old female ex-smoker with lymphangioleiomyomatosis and SZ α 1 -antitrypsin disease who underwent successful bilateral sequential lung transplantation. While this disease combination has not been described previously, we recommend vigilance for the possibility of such combinations in patients with chronic lung disease. The possible mechanisms of interaction resulting from both disease processes are discussed.
Coordinated production and utilization of FADH2 by NAD(P)H-flavin oxidoreductase and 4-hydroxyphenylacetate 3-monooxygenase.

Hydroxyphenylacetate (4HPA) 3-monooxygenase (HpaB) is a reduced flavin adenine dinucleotide (FADH2) utilizing monooxygenase. Its cosubstrate, FADH2, is supplied by HpaC, an NAD(P)H-flavin oxidoreductase. Because HpaB is the first enzyme for 4HPA metabolism, FADH2 production and utilization become a major metabolic event when Escherichia coli W grows on 4HPA. An important question is how FADH2 is produced and used, as FADH2 is unstable in the presence of free O2. One solution is metabolic channeling by forming a transitory HpaB-HpaC complex. However, our in vivo and in vitro data failed to support the interaction. Further investigation pointed to an alternative scheme for HpaB to sequester FADH2. The intracellular HpaB concentration was about 122 IM in 4HPA- growing cells, much higher than the total intracellular FAD concentration, and HpaB had a high affinity for FADH2 (Kd of 70 nM), suggesting that most FADH2 is bound to HpaB in vivo. The HpaB-bound FADH2 was either used to rapidly oxidize 4HPA or slowly oxidized by O2 to FAD and H2O2 in the absence of 4HPA. Thus, HpaB's high intracellular concentration, its high affinity for FADH 2, its property of protecting bound FADH2 in the absence of 4HPA, and its ability to rapidly use FADH2 to oxidize 4HPA when 4HPA is available can coordinate FADH2 production and utilization by HpaB and HpaC in vivo. This type of coordination, in responding to demand, for production and utilization of labile metabolites has not been reported to date.
Alternative Feeding Regimen of Calcium Source and Phosphorus Level for Better Eggshell Quality in Commercial Layers

SUMMARY Eggshell quality, due to its economical impact on commercial egg production, has always been a matter of great concern. Numerous studies have been conducted to address separately various parameters influencing shell quality including calcium, vitamin D3 levels, and blood chemistry. There has been little research conducted to deal with these issues collectively. In this project, eggshell quality, egg production, and egg weight were evaluated as affected by a combination of different calcium sources, phosphorus levels, and time of feeding. Results suggest that there is a potential to improve eggshell quality with reduced economic losses by changing the feeding patterns of commercial layers using alternative calcium sources and phosphorus levels in the morning and evening feedings.
50 years of publication in the field of medical education

Background: The advent of new medical education (ME) journals makes evident the growth of the field of ME. However, the nature and context of growth is undefined.Aim: To analyze the evolution of publication in ME.Methods: MEDLINE retrieval using medical subject headings was used to analyze patterns of ME publications from 1960–2010: changes in number of ME publications; number of journals publishing ME articles; co-topics occurring frequently in ME articles; differences among journals’ publication of co-topics.Results: Annual publication of ME articles increased from 279 in 1960 to 3760 in 2010. 81 531 articles were published in 4208 different journals. 104 journals published ME articles in 1960, 855 in 2010. Despite an increase in journals in all fields, ME journals now account for a larger proportion of all journals indexed in MEDLINE than in 1960. One-quarter of all ME articles were indexed as internship/residency; 16% as graduate ME; 15% as undergraduate ME; and 14% as continuing ME. The five journals...
Validation of the deuterium oxide method for measuring average daily milk intake in infants

The deuterium oxide elimination method for measuring average daily milk intake was validated against measured formula intake in 16 studies of 11 infants in a metabolic ward. Deuterium oxide (approximately 0.10 g/kg body wt) was given orally. Deuterium enrichment was measured in urine samples collected predose, as available for 6-h postdose for TBW determination, and at 24 h and 5-10 d postdose for HDO elimination calculated according to the two-point method. Urine samples were vacuum distilled, water was reduced to hydrogen gas, and deuterium enrichment was measured by isotope-ratio mass spectrometry. Milk intake was measured throughout the elimination period from prefeeding and postfeeding bottle weights (n = 12) or volumes (n = 4). Without corrections for atmospheric water influx, milk intake was overestimated by 76 g/d (6%). With corrections for estimated metabolic water production, isotopic fractionation, and atmospheric water influx, deuterium measured 98% +/- 3% or 1300 g milk intake/d compared with actual milk intake of 1329 +/- 206 g/d.
Cytoplasmic acidification and the benzoate transcriptome in Bacillus subtilis.

Background Bacillus subtilis encounters a wide range of environmental pH. The bacteria maintain cytoplasmic pH within a narrow range. Response to acid stress is a poorly understood function of external pH and of permeant acids that conduct protons into the cytoplasm.
Tracking control of non-linear systems using sliding surfaces with application to robot manipulators

A methodology is presented of feedback control to achieve accurate tracking for a class of nonlinear time-varying systems in the presence of disturbances and parameter variations. The methodology uses in its idealized form piecewise continuous feedback control laws, resulting in the state trajectory `sliding' along a discontinuity surface in the state space. The idealized form of the methodology results in perfect tracking of the required signals; however certain non-idealities associated with its implementation cause the trajectory to 'chatter' along the sliding surface resulting in the generation of an undesirable high-frequency component which may excite high-frequency unmodelled dynamics of the control systems. To rectify this situation, it is shown how continuous control laws which approximate the discontinuous control law may be used to obtain disturbance and parameter variation insensitive tracking. At the same time, the continuous control laws decrease the extent of unwanted high-frequency signals.
System-on-chip surface plasmon resonance sensors using pulse-based interface circuits

A pulse-based interface circuit for surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing systems has been designed and fabricated to transform SPR sensing information into a single voltage directly correlated to refractive index by computing weighted sums of SPR spectral components. The interface circuit has the ability to perform parametric regression on SPR spectral components through pulse-based multiplication. This technique provides an advantage over previous designs; the interface circuit computes a weighted sum of spectral components rather than sum alone. Results for the optimizing pulse-based interface circuit indicate a significant increase in correlation coefficient between the actual refractive index and the predicted
Comparative genome-wide association studies of a depressive symptom phenotype in a repeated measures setting by race/ethnicity in the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis

Time-varying phenotypes have been studied less frequently in the context of genome-wide analyses across ethnicities, particularly for mood disorders. This study uses genome-wide association studies of depressive symptoms in a longitudinal framework and across multiple ethnicities to find common variants for depressive symptoms. Ethnicity-specific GWAS for depressive symptoms were conducted using three approaches: a baseline measure, longitudinal measures averaged over time, and a repeated measures analysis. We then used meta-analysis to jointly analyze the results across ethnicities within the Multi-ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA, n = 6,335), and then within ethnicity, across MESA and a sample from the Health and Retirement Study African- and European-Americans (HRS, n = 10,163). This study uses genome-wide association studies of depressive symptoms in a longitudinal framework and across multiple ethnicities to find common variants for depressive symptoms. Ethnicity-specific GWAS for depressive symptoms were conducted using three approaches: a baseline measure, longitudinal measures averaged over time, and a repeated measures analysis. We then used meta-analysis to jointly analyze the results across ethnicities within the Multi-ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA, n = 6,335), and then within ethnicity, across MESA and a sample from the Health and Retirement Study African- and European-Americans (HRS, n = 10,163). Several novel variants were identified at the genome-wide suggestive level (5×10−8 < p-value ≤ 5×10−6) in each ethnicity for each approach to analyzing depressive symptoms. The repeated measures analyses resulted in typically smaller p-values and an increase in the number of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) reaching genome-wide suggestive level. For phenotypes that vary over time, the detection of genetic predictors may be enhanced by repeated measures analyses.
Cooperative tourism planning in a developing destination.

This paper presents a normative modelof tourism planning which requires cooperation between government agencies, between various administrative levels of government, between same-level autonomous polities, and between the public and private sectors. These cooperative planning principles are examined in the context of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where it was found that they are not a part of the planning practices already in place. Sociopolitical factors are considered the most important reasons for the lack of cooperative tourism planning in the study area and it is believed that other developing destinations with similar human environmental conditions would also be lacking in the use of cooperative planning principles.
Hydrodynamics of macromolecular complexes. II. Rotation

We have used the modified Oseen hydrodynamic interaction tensor along with iterative numerical solution of the coupled hydrodynamic interaction equations to calculate the rotational diffusion coefficients of macromolecular complexes composed of nonidentical spherical subunits. For the one structure, a prolate ellipsoid of revolution, for which exact solutions are available, a subunit model with the same length and volume gives asymptotic agreement with the Perrin equations. Other structures considered include plane polygonal rings, lollipops, and dumbbells.
The Sympathoadrenal System

In considering the role of catecholamines in the regulation of physiological processes, it is important to remember that the sympathetic nerve endings and the adrenal medulla are extensions of the CNS. The sympathetic nerves function as neurochemical transducers, converting electrical impulses in the nervous system to a chemical messenger that is decoded locally in the innervated tissue by specialized receptors that mediate the physiological response characteristic of the innervated tissue. The chemical messenger of the sympathetic nerves is, of course, norepinephrine (NE), the prototypie neurotransmitter. The adrenal medulla is entirely analogous; it converts neural impulses into a circulating messenger or hormone, epinephrine (E), the message of which is decoded in tissues throughout the body. The diverse physiological manifestations that result depend on the characteristics of the particular tissue that is stimulated by E. As an extension of the nervous system, the physiological effects of the sympathoadrenal system are induced rapidly and dissipated quickly, in distinction to the slower, more prolonged effects of other hormones. In common with that of the other major divisions of the nervous system, sympathoadrenal outflow represents the integrated response of central neurons to a vast array of afferent neural inputs as well as the intrinsic activity of many central nervous structures.
The Mechanism of Electrolocation

The electric organ of gymnotoid and mormyriform fishes consists of columns of electrocytes. These columns are surrounded by insulating tissues and are longitudinally packed into the animal’s tail section. Depending upon the species, they may reach into the anterior body section as far as the pectoral fin region (Fig. 6, top). During an EOD, a voltage gradient builds up along the animal’s longitudinal axis and the field emanating from its body resembles a dipole field.
Case Study of Ship Squat in Sulina Channel Using NTPRO 5000 Navigational Simulator

paper presents a case study of ships passing through shallow and narrow waters in Sulina Channel. The method used in this research was simulation using NTPRO 5000 navigational simulator and it was studied the variation of ship squat, draft and under keel clearance for several military ships similar to Romanian Navy vessels, sailing with different speeds. The purpose of this research was to find out which ship types could navigate through Sulina Channel and what is the maximum speed they could pass without grounding due to ship squat. The integration of the trials results showed what the safe speed for each vessel was and it was concluded that the maximum speeds were 8, 12, and 16 knots. Also, a difference between desired and real speed was observed, caused by the restrictive navigation condition. Numerous researches are being done in ship squat domain and Sulina Channel is one of the canals where this phenomenon is studied, but squat simulation on military ships has never been done before in this canal.
Electric quadrupole strength in 16O from the 15N(p

Angular distributions of the relative cross sections and analyzing powers have been measured for the $^{15}\mathrm{N}$(p\ensuremath{\rightarrow},${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{0}$${)}^{16}$O reaction in \ensuremath{\approxeq}500 keV steps for excitation energies in $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ between 17.8 and 24.9 MeV. All E1 and E2 transition matrix elements were determined using a partial-wave analysis. Below 22 MeV, little quadrupole strength was found in excess of that predicted in direct capture calculations. A clear enhancement of the E2 cross section was observed at energies above 22 MeV. Our data indicate that about 10% of the isoscalar E2 sum rule for $^{16}\mathrm{O}$ is exhausted in the ${\mathrm{p}}_{0}$ decay channel between 18 and 25 MeV, with approximately (3/4 of this integrated strength concentrated between 22 and 25 MeV. The E2 strength seen in (\ensuremath{\gamma},${\mathrm{p}}_{0}$) is strikingly different from that observed in (\ensuremath{\alpha},\ensuremath{\alpha}') or (\ensuremath{\alpha},\ensuremath{\alpha}'p). The effect of the M1 state at ${E}_{x}$=18.8 MeV previously found in (p,\ensuremath{\gamma}) studies is clearly observed.
Examining automobile manufacturer participation in regulatory processes

Despite the fact that government regulation is one of the primary external sources of pressure on firms, the antecedents of firm participation in regulatory processes remain relatively unexplored i...
ADHD Symptomatology and Criminal Behavior During Adolescence Exploring the Mediating Role of School Factors

Prior research has shown that attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) relates to various negative outcomes in adolescence, including academic failure, behavioral problems at school, and criminal behavior. However, this line of research has generally failed to explore whether ADHD connects to criminal behavior through its effects on school factors. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), this study finds that a retrospective account of ADHD symptomatology during childhood and early adolescence predicts weakened school attachment, lower grades, and higher risks for both out-of-school suspension and crime. School attachment, grades, and out-of-school suspension have the expected effects on crime among females and males. Among females, these school factors mediate the effects of ADHD symptomatology on crime. The effect of ADHD symptomatology on crime among males remains significant when controlling for school factors. Implications of the findings for policy and theory are discussed.
The Evolution of Large-Horizontal-Scale Disturbances in Marginally Stable, Inviscid, Shear Flows. II. Solutions of the Boussinesq Equation

In part I the Boussinesq equation was found to describe large-horizontal-scale disturbances in certain marginally stable flows. In this paper the properties of the solutions of this equation are explored. Solutions that are bounded for all time and those that blow up in finite time are observed analytically and numerically. Sufficient conditions for both boundedness and blowup are given.
The Environmental Legacy of Thomas Jefferson: Cultivating the Rooted Citizen

There are three components that demonstrate Jefferson’s absorption in the topic of Nature and comprise his legacy to contemporary radical environmentalism. First is his belief in the primacy of ethics over economics and his assertion that ethics require an active exercise of citizenship. The second is his conviction that healthy, ethical communities must be based in rural settings where individuals are rooted in and committed to the protection of the Earth and the nurturing of human relationships. The third element is the persistent strength of American Populism. The political thought of Thomas Jefferson is not without flaws. Jefferson is important because he symbolizes both the power of American ideals, and his waffling, dodging, and eventual reactionary intransigence on slavery exemplifies our failure to live up to the high standards of our moral values.
PREDICTORS OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AMONG HIGHLY INVOLVED YOUNG ADULTS: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AGENCY AND SYSTEMS WORLDVIEW

Civic engagement maintains the viability of democratic society and promotes positive outcomes for those who participate. Young adults' patterns of civic engagement differ according to the type of activity, yet little is known about the psychological mechanisms that lead to different types of participation. We tested the relationship between two types of sociopolitical beliefs (sense of agency and systems worldview) and two distinct forms of civic engagement: political involvement and community service. We hypothesized that agency would predict both forms of engagement and that systems worldview would moderate the relationship between agency and political involvement, but have little effect on community service. Using data from a racially diverse national sample of highly engaged young adults (n = 259), we conducted hierarchical linear multiple regression analyses and found that agency predicted both political involvement and community service. We found that systems worldview moderated the relationship between agency and both forms of civic engagement.
MTD-inspired state estimation based on random measurements selection

State estimation (SE) is critical to modern power system control center and is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. In this paper, a SE algorithm based on random measurements selection, which is inspired by the concept of moving target defense (MTD), is developed to prevent and mitigate stealthy cyber-attacks. With the proposed SE, a library of selected measurements scenarios is first generated offline given the available measurements and network topology. During online operation, multiple weighted least square (WLS) based SEs are processed in parallel with randomly picked scenarios from the library. The final solution is selected based on the largest normalized residuals with regard to individual scenarios. The effectiveness of the proposed SE is examined by attack-defense experiments on IEEE 14-bus, 39-bus, 57-bus, and 118-bus systems.
Refinements in martingale analysis

In order to obtain finer and specialized results from the basic theory of martingales, we introduce a new tool called the stopping time or optional transformation and investigate various properties of martingales under the effect of these mappings. A number of technical (measure theoretical) problems arise when such families are considered, and we present a detailed analysis of these processes together with their structure and limit theory. Both the directed and linearly ordered index sets of the (sub-) martingales are considered. A consequence here is the culmination of a proof of the existence of projective limits of certain systems and the associated class (D) martingales. The study leads to several decompositions of processes that are useful in applications.
Dynamic electromechanical behavior of single-crystal α-quartz

Abstract Electrical response from dynamic compression tests on x-cut single crystal α-quartz specimens at strain rates of 103 s − 1 reveal nonsimilar stress-charge behavior during damage evolution. Specifically, when quartz is undergoing extensive and irreversible dynamic brittle fracture under a compressive stress impulse of up to 1.8 GPa, the effective piezoelectric stress coefficient (d) exhibits approximately a 24% increase from loading to unloading. The experimental results are examined in the framework of the theory of linear piezoelectricity in order to understand the role of increasing crack density and crystal orientation on electroelastic properties.
Overview of the Compliance Offset Protocol for U.S. Forest Projects

The Forest Offset Protocol lays out the requirements and methods for quantifying the net GHG emission and removals resulting from voluntary project activities undertaken on forested land. The ARB’s compliance offset protocol was built off of the Climate Action Reserve’s Forest Project Protocol Version 3.2 (CAR 2010). The Forest Offset Protocol covers three types of project activities, the carbon pools included in each project type, and requirements for project eligibility, monitoring, and commitments.
Intranasal Antifungal Vaccination Using DNA-Transfected Dendritic Cells

Dendritic cells are the most potent antigen-presenting cells, and are critical for the generation of an antigen-specific immune response and protective immunity. These unique features have been applied to dendritic cell-based immunization in a number of disease conditions. Our published results have demonstrated that the immunity induced by intranasal immunization with DNA-transfected dendritic cells results in reduced fungal burden, and alleviated lung tissue damage in a mouse model of pulmonary fungal infection. In this article, approaches for the preparation and characterization of DNA-transfected dendritic cells and intranasal immunization in mice are described.
Pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea

A computerized Ovid search of MEDLINE from 1966 to September 2005 was performed. The term “obstructive sleep apnea” was searched and the resulting articles were cross-referenced with those obtained by exploding “tonsillectomy” or “adenoidectomy.” The results were cross-referenced with the phrases “sleep study or respiratory distress index,” or “polysomnogram” or “sleep study.” A manual search of the bibliographies yielded no additional articles. Articles were identified that met the following inclusion criteria: 1) children <18 years old with at least a clinical history of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), 2) treatment with a tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, or both, and 3) evaluation with both pre- and posttreatment nocturnal polysomnogram. Exclusion criteria were preexisting craniofacial abnormalities, history of Down syndrome, retrospective studies, and children who had other surgical procedures than adenotonsillectomy. Six studies that met these inclusion/exclusion criteria were included in the subsequent review [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
On our Knees: Christian Ritual in Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Christian ritual dominated the lives of Indigenous children sent to Canadian residential schools for the purpose of cultural assimilation. Drawing on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final R...
Neuromorphic event-driven multi-scale synaptic connectivity and plasticity

Neural computation and communication in the brain are partitioned into the grey matter of dense local synaptic connectivity in tightly knit neuronal networks, and the white matter of sparse long-range connectivity over axonal fiber bundles across distant brain regions. This exquisite distributed multiscale organization provides inspiration to the design of scalable neuromorphic systems for deep learning and inference, with hierarchical address event-routing of neural spike events and multiscale synaptic connectivity and plasticity, and their efficient implementation in low-power mixed-signal VLSI circuits.
TD-DFT and TD-DFTB Investigation of the Optical Properties and Electronic Structure of Silver Nanorods and Nanorod Dimers.

Here, we perform theoretical investigation using time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) and time-dependent density functional tight binding (TD-DFTB) for the electronic structure and optical properties of silver nanorods. TD-DFTB generally performs well for the accurate description of optical properties with respect to the size and type of dimer assembly of silver nanorods compared to TD-DFT. However, the energies and intensities of the longitudinal and transverse peaks of the nanorods are somewhat underestimated with TD-DFTB compared to the values calculated at the TD-DFT level. By exploiting the computational efficiency of TD-DFTB, we also extend our investigation to longer nanorods and their dimers containing up to ∼2000 atoms. Our results show that the coupling between nanorods and the resulting optical properties of the dimer assemblies are quite dependent on the length of the monomers. In all cases, the energy shifts in dimers as a function of the gap distance deviate significantly from t...
Designing a college-level PL/SQL programming course

This paper describes how the authors developed a hands-on course for students to learn PL/SQL programming at community college level. It provides detailed information about curriculum development, including target students, delivery format, assignment objectives, equipment, and barriers. Future development that can possibly enhance the programs is also discussed.
Glial-derived growth factor and pleiotrophin synergistically promote axonal regeneration in critical nerve injuries.

Abstract The repair of nerve gap injuries longer than 3 cm is limited by the need to sacrifice donor tissue and the morbidity associated with the autograft gold standard, while decellularized grafts and biodegradable conduits are effective only in short nerve defects. The advantage of isogenic nerve implants seems to be the release of various growth factors by the denervated Schwann cells. We evaluated the effect of vascular endothelial growth factor, neurotrophins, and pleiotrophin (PTN) supplementation of multi-luminal conduits, in the repair of 3 and 4 cm nerve gaps in the rabbit peroneal nerve. In vitro screening revealed a synergistic regenerative effect of PTN with glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in promoting sensory axon density, and motor axonal growth from spinal cord explants. In vivo, pleiotrophins were able to support nerve regrowth across a 3 cm gap. In the 4 cm lesions, PTN-GDNF had a modest effect in the number of axons distal to the implant, while increasing the mean axon diameter (1 ± 0.4; p ≤ 0.001) over PTN or GDNF alone (0.80 ± 0.2, 0.84 ± 0.5; respectively). Some regenerated axons reinnervated muscle targets as indicated by neuromuscular junction staining. However, many were wrapped in Remak bundles, suggesting a delay in axonal sorting, explaining the limited electrophysiological function of the reinnervated muscle, and the modest recovery in toe spreading in the PTN-GDNF repaired animals. These results support the use of synergistic neurotrophic/pleiotrophic growth factors in long gap repair and underscore the need for re-myelination strategies distal to the injury site. Statement of Significance Nerve injuries due to trauma or tumor resection often result in long gaps that are challenging to repair. The best clinical option demands the use of autologous grafts that are associated with serious side effects. Bioengineered nerves are considered a good alternative, particularly if supplemented with growth factors, but current options do not match the regenerative capacity of autografts. This study revealed the synergistic effect of neurotrophins and pleiotrophins designed to achieve a broad cellular regenerative effect, and that GDNF-PTN are able to mediated axonal growth and partial functional recovery in a 4 cm nerve gap injury, albeit delays in remyelination. This report underscores the need for defining an optimal growth factor support for biosynthetic nerve implants.
Patient Selection Criteria for Diagnostic Imaging for Ischemic Heart Disease: Desperately in Need of Revision.

![Figure][1] ![Figure][1] Over the past decade, the field of noninvasive imaging for ischemic heart disease (IHD) has been transformed by an increasing amount of high-quality evidence to support newer imaging technology, such as coronary computed tomography (CT) angiography, and to
Experimental characterization and modeling of thermal resistance of electric machine lamination stacks

Abstract There is lack of information in the open literature on thermal properties of electric machine lamination stacks such as contact resistance and effective thermal conductivity, yet this information is critical for researchers and engineers in electric machine design and development. The thermal conductivity of electromagnetic steel lamination materials was measured, and the thermal contact resistance between laminations in a stack, as well as factors affecting contact resistance between laminations - such as the contact pressure and surface finish – were investigated. A model was also developed to estimate the through-stack thermal conductivity for materials beyond those that were directly tested in this work. Four lamination materials were investigated, including the commonly-used 26-gauge and 29-gauge M19 materials, the HF10, and Arnon 7 materials. Although this paper focuses on electric machines for automotive applications, the information is potentially applicable to any component utilizing electromagnetic steel laminations.
Operational Coordination Architecture: New Models and Approaches

The Growing use of distributed energy resource (DER) services from distributed generation, storage, flexible loads, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles is driving a need for increased coordination among transmission and distribution operators (DOs), customers, aggregators, and a variety of emerging participants. To ensure a reliable and resilient power grid today and into the future, it is essential to consider the architectural implications, particularly in regard to industry structural considerations. These include new transmission-distribution-customer (TDC) operational coordination frameworks to ensure reliable, resilient 21st century power systems.
Accessing highly electron-rich calix[n]arene (n = 4 and 8) derivatives from acid-catalyzed condensation of 1,3,5-tripropoxybenzene

Abstract Synthesizing novel electron-rich calix[n]arene derivatives to alter the electronic properties of calixarene-based materials has been one of the long-standing interests. Herein, two new electron-rich calix[n]arenes (n = 4 and 8) with different sizes were synthesized by acid-catalyzed condensation reaction of 1,3,5-tripropoxybenzene and paraformaldehyde. Both derivatives were fully characterized with 1H and 13C NMR, mass spectrometry and X-ray crystallography. Furthermore, their electrochemical properties and oxidized product (cation radicals) have also been investigated.
Molecular mechanisms of topoisomerase 2 DNA–protein crosslink resolution

The compaction of DNA and the continuous action of DNA transactions, including transcription and DNA replication, create complex DNA topologies that require Type IIA Topoisomerases, which resolve DNA topological strain and control genome dynamics. The human TOP2 enzymes catalyze their reactions via formation of a reversible covalent enzyme DNA-protein crosslink, the TOP2 cleavage complex (TOP2cc). Spurious interactions of TOP2 with DNA damage, environmental toxicants and chemotherapeutic "poisons" perturbs the TOP2 reaction cycle, leading to an accumulation of DNA-protein crosslinks, and ultimately, genomic instability and cell death. Emerging evidence shows that TOP2-DNA protein crosslink (DPC) repair entails multiple strand break repair activities, such as removal of the poisoned TOP2 protein and rejoining of the DNA ends through homologous recombination (HR) or non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). Herein, we discuss the molecular mechanisms of TOP2-DPC resolution, with specific emphasis on the recently uncovered ZATTZnf451-licensed TDP2-catalyzed TOP2-DPC reversal mechanism.
Economics in sociology? Original economic theories, concepts and approaches in classical sociologists

This paper explores the presence and consideration of economics in sociology, specifically its classical version. It identifies certain original and independent economic theories, concepts and appr...
Critical feature space for predicting the glass forming ability of metallic alloys revealed by machine learning

Abstract In this work we use the random forest model to predict the glass-forming ability (GFA) of metallic alloys by leveraging a previously published study and dataset. The new model with optimized hyperparameters successfully boosts the prediction accuracy by over 12%. The improvement is primarily attributed to the additional critical features (e.g. mixing entropy and total electronegativity) that has been identified. Although the improved model is still far away from being satisfactory (R2 = 0.64) due to the extremely unbalanced nature of the dataset, the new identified features will significantly facilitate the future model development with more and more emerging experimental data.
The Effect of the GDPR on Privacy Policies: Recent Progress and Future Promise

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is considered by some to be the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years. Effective May 2018, the European Union GDPR privacy law applies to any organization that collects and processes the personal information of EU citizens within or outside the EU. In this work, we seek to quantify the progress the GDPR has made in improving privacy policies around the globe. We leverage our data mining tool, PrivacyCheck, to automatically compare three corpora (totaling 550) of privacy policies, pre- and post-GDPR. In addition, to evaluate the current level of compliance with the GDPR around the globe, we manually studied the policies within two corpora (450 policies). We find that the GDPR has made progress in protecting user data, but more progress is necessary—particularly in the area of giving users the right to edit and delete their information—to entirely fulfill the GDPR’s promise. We also observe that the GDPR encourages sharing user data with law enforcement, and as a result, many policies have facilitated such sharing after the GDPR. Finally, we see that when there is non-compliance with the GDPR, it is often in the form of failing to explicitly indicate compliance, which in turn speaks to an organization’s lack of transparency and disclosure regarding their processing and protection of personal information. If Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is the “currency of the Internet,” these findings mark continued alarm regarding an individual’s agency to protect and secure their PII assets.
DICE: Deep Significance Clustering for Outcome-Driven Stratification

We present deep significance clustering (DICE), a framework for jointly performing representation learning and clustering for "outcome-driven" stratification. Motivated by practical needs in medicine to risk-stratify patients into subgroups, DICE brings self-supervision to unsupervised tasks to generate cluster membership that may be used to categorize unseen patients by risk levels. DICE is driven by a combined objective function and constraint which require a statistically significant association between the outcome and cluster membership of learned representations. DICE also performs a neural architecture search to optimize cluster membership and hyper-parameters for model likelihood and classification accuracy. The performance of DICE was evaluated using two datasets with different outcome ratios extracted from real-world electronic health records of patients who were treated for coronavirus disease 2019 and heart failure. Outcomes are defined as in-hospital mortality (15.9%) and discharge home (36.8%), respectively. Results show that DICE has superior performance as measured by the difference in outcome distribution across clusters, Silhouette score, Calinski-Harabasz index, and Davies-Bouldin index for clustering, and Area under the ROC Curve for outcome classification compared to baseline approaches.
Primary intraosseous meningioma of the calvarium: A systematic review

Abstract Background Primary intraosseous meningiomas (PIM) of calvarial origin are a small subset of meningiomas that arise from and occur within the calvarial bone. Its definition is often confused with other forms of non-dural based intracranial meningiomas, which has made previously published retrospective reviews heterogenous, non-specific and sometimes inaccurate. We present a systematic review of calvarial PIM. Methods Using a systematic search protocol that included databases such as PubMed, Web of Science and Embase, we extracted all human studies on PIM published from inception to December 2017. This systematic review includes case reports and retrospective reviews that specifically described PIM. Results On review of 166 articles identified with the systematic search protocol, 69 articles were analyzed. These comprised of 64 case reports, 1 case series and 4 retrospective reviews. 111 patients with PIM of calvarial origin were analyzed, 58 % of which were females and 42 % males. The mean patient age was 51 years and the frontal bone was the most common tumor location, occurring in 26.1 % of the cases. Surgical resection was the predominant modality of treatment in 97.2 % of the cases, and gross total resection was achieved in 84 % of cases that reported extent of resection. There were no recurrences for grade I meningiomas. However, all grade III meningiomas recurred and 33.3 % of grade II meningiomas showed recurrence with a mean postoperative follow-up interval of 20 months. Statistical analysis using Fisher’s exact test showed the recurrence rate to be strongly associated with WHO tumor grade (p-value Conclusion There is statistically significant increased recurrence rate for calvarial PIM of higher grades, and we recommend close follow-up in those cases. Surgical resection remains the overwhelming treatment of choice for calvarial PIM, and it has a high gross total resection rate and low risk of complications and mortality.
Agribusiness futurism and food atmospheres: Reimagining corn, pigs, and transnational negotiations on Khrushchev’s 1959 U.S. tour

Food and power are inseparable. This essay analyzes a significant moment in transnational food history. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s Cold War era 1959 visit to the United States has been reco...
Classification of periodic variable stars with novel cyclic-permutation invariant neural networks

Neural networks (NNs) have been shown to be competitive against state-of-the-art feature engineering and random forest (RF) classification of periodic variable stars. Although previous work utilising NNs has made use of periodicity by period folding multiple-cycle time-series into a single cycle -- from time-space to phase-space -- no approach to date has taken advantage of the fact that network predictions should be invariant to the initial phase of the period-folded sequence. Initial phase is exogenous to the physical origin of the variability and should thus be factored out. Here, we present cyclic-permutation invariant networks, a novel class of NNs for which invariance to phase shifts is guaranteed through polar coordinate convolutions, which we implement by means of "Symmetry Padding." Across three different datasets of variable star light curves, we show that two implementations of the cyclic-permutation invariant network: the iTCN and the iResNet, consistently outperform non-invariant baselines and reduce overall error rates by between 4% to 22%. Over a 10-class OGLE-III sample, the iTCN/iResNet achieves an average per-class accuracy of 93.4%/93.3%, compared to RNN/RF accuracies of 70.5%/89.5% in a recent study using the same data. Finding improvement on a non-astronomy benchmark, we suggest that the methodology introduced here should also be applicable to a wide range of science domains where periodic data abounds due to physical symmetries.
Fusion rules for Z/2Z permutation gauging

In this note, we examine the gauging of the Z/2Z permutation action on the tensor square of a modular tensor category C. When C is unpointed we provide formulas for the fusion rules of the gauged category, which nontrivially involves the modular data of C. Our technique highlights the use of generalized Frobenius-Schur indicators. We discuss several examples related to quantum groups at roots of unity.In this note, we examine the gauging of the Z/2Z permutation action on the tensor square of a modular tensor category C. When C is unpointed we provide formulas for the fusion rules of the gauged category, which nontrivially involves the modular data of C. Our technique highlights the use of generalized Frobenius-Schur indicators. We discuss several examples related to quantum groups at roots of unity.