cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Young Event Services: Lifestyle Or Living? Teaching Case

“If I could only have about twelve more hours in a day, then I would be set. I wonder if the girls placed the orders for the baseball cubes for the golf outing on Thursday. Chris Smith said his wife was allergic to garlic. I have to look over his menu again before I kill his wife. I have the guys flying in on Wednesday. Ralph will be in by 2:00 p.m. and Ron will be picking him up. Then he will have to go back and get Timmy when he lands at 5:00 p.m. Thursday morning I have Don and Mark flying in at 9:00 a.m. just in time for tee-off. Oh! Note to self: Must call in payroll!! Jennifer Rock wanted to discuss theme ideas for her daughter‟s Bat Mitzvah. Now where did I put her folder? I am pretty sure it is in my brown bag I used on Monday. Nope. Not there. Oh, no, did I leave it in the car? Oh wait! I brought it inside the house on Monday and left it right on my stove. Always a safe place!
Global Social Policy and Governance, by Bob Deacon Sheffield

During a time when globalization is a topical issue, Bob Deacon's discussion of global social policy and the way social policies are formed at the national and supranational levels is very timely. ...
The Rapid Separation of He 3 from He 4 by the "Heat Flush" Method

A practical method is decribed for separating the ${\mathrm{He}}^{3}$ which occurs in well helium from the liquefied mixture using the "heat flush" technique. Approximately 2 liters/hr of liquid can be processed, a rate considerably in excess of any previous separations. When the separated isotope is finally withdrawn at room temperature, the concentration of ${\mathrm{He}}^{3}$ is approximately 0.5 percent. This concentration corresponds to an enrichment factor of 3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{4}$, which is an order of magnitude greater than enrichment factors reported previously in the literature.
Renal amino acid transport: cellular and molecular events from clearance studies to frog eggs

This article reviews recent advances in the mechanisms of renal amino acid transport. Renal amino acid transport is necessary to efficiently reclaim approximately 450 mmol amino acids from the glomerular ultrafiltrate each day in man. In general, individual amino acids are transported across the epithelial membrane of the proximal tubule by a sodium (Na+) dependent mechanism. This cotransport process utilizes the energy of the Na+ gradient to enter the cell. The amino acid then exits the basolateral surface and Na+ is pumped out by the Na+−K+-ATPase located in the basolateral membrane. In addition to the cellular accumulation of amino acids across the luminal membrane, these compounds may be taken up by the cell from the basolateral surface. Most amino acids are transported both individually and in a series of seven group specific processes. Human disorders of amino acid transport have been described for six to the seven transport systems. The process of ontogeny of amino acid accumulation by the proximal tubule is a complex one and will be further discussed in this review. A number of factors including pH, ion dependency, electrogenicity of transport process, as well as a variety of hormonal factors, may contribute to the regulation of amino acid transport. Gene expression of several amino acid transporters has been successfully performed using the oocyte of the frogXenopus laevis. Using this system, a number of transporters have been cloned. Such a strategy will permit the cloning of virtually all transporter molecules, and thus we can anticipate the elucidation of the structure of the transporters. However, for a comprehensive understanding of cytoskeletal interactions protein phosphorylation and phospholipid domains and their linkage to the primary structure of the transporter need to be studied. The future for research in this area is indeed a bright one.
Optical Properties of Chiral Plasmonic Tetramers: Circular Dichroism and Multipole Effects

Chiral metal nanoparticle assemblies exhibit plasmonic circular dichroism (CD) in the visible spectral interval. It was found previously that the circular dichroism signals can be induced by dipola...
Response inhibition impairments predict alcohol-induced sedation.

Aims: The aim of this study was to probe the relationship between the subjective effects of alcohol and impulsive behavior in social drinkers. Methods: Fifty social drinkers performed a response-inhibition task before consuming alcohol. A 0.8-g/kg dose of alcohol was administered in a binge-like fashion (0.2 g/kg every 30 min) to the participants over a 2-h time period. Participants then completed questionnaires measuring stimulation, sedation and mood following consumption of alcohol. Linear regression analyses were performed by examining the relationship between performance on the response inhibition impulsivity task and subjective responses to alcohol (i.e. stimulation, sedation and arousal). Results: There was a significant positive relationship found between impulsive responding and self-reported sedation following alcohol consumption. Additionally, there was a significant negative relationship between behavioral impulsivity and self-reported stimulation and arousal following alcohol consumption. Conclusion: These results suggest that higher levels of impulsivity are associated with experiencing greater sedating than stimulating effects of alcohol. Individuals with high levels of impulsivity may be less sensitive to the stimulating effects of a specified dose of alcohol, which could lead to these individuals consuming more alcohol to experience the stimulating effects of alcohol.
Foreign Aid and Social Reform in Political Development: A Philippine Case Study*

Writers on foreign aid policy today generally agree that technical and capital assistance from the United States government can contribute effectively to economic growth in underdeveloped areas. There is much less agreement among them, however, on the ability of the foreign aid program to contribute positively to democratic processes of political and social change. There is still less agreement on the proposal that the United States should, wherever necessary and possible, intentionally attempt to stimulate social change within the context of an aid program. Nevertheless, some general considerations not heretofore presented in juxtaposition, and a case history to illustrate them, tend to support this proposal.
Technology and academic lives

Considering the need to create new modes of interaction and approaches to assessment given a rapidly evolving academic realm.
A user's view of dataflow architectures

A personal perspective on new parallel environments and, specifically, on dataflow systems is given. The goal of the dataflow effort is to achieve general-purpose parallel computing without subjecting the user to the explicit partitioning of the problem or exposing the user to architectural inadequacies. One aspect is the development of a language that has parallel semantics implicitly built into it. The language, called Id, is layered. At its core is a single-assignment functional language supplemented by an outer layer that allows more general and efficient access to arrays. There are two characteristics of this language that make it desirable. The first is that it is determinate, that is, it guarantees the repeatability of results. The same program with the same input will always produce the same answer. The second is that the language design allows the compiler to find parallelism implicitly in the user's program. Another aspect of the dataflow research considered is the development of a shared-memory architecture that can scale to a large number of processors without degrading the performance of an individual processor. Research results dealing with the issue of resource management are briefly discussed. >
Properties of plutonium(iv) polymer of environmental importance

The stability of Pu(IV) polymer suspensions, the solubility of the polymer, and the nature of the soluble plutonium species were studied from pH 3 to 7 in dilute chloride and in dilute nitrate solutions. Previous work on the polymer did not address such environmentally important properties as the concentration of soluble plutonium present along with the polymer, the nature of the solute species, and the stability of polymer suspensions at near-neutral pH values. This study was undertaken to answer these questions. 15 refs.
African Americans Are Less Likely to Be Adherent to Statins After Ischemic Stroke: An Analysis of Medicare Beneficiaries Following Hospital Discharge (S4.003)

Objective: To determine statin adherence among older adults following ischemic stroke Background: Statins have been shown to decrease cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. Although statins have proven efficacious in reducing the risk of recurrent stroke, little is known about adherence among older adults following ischemic stroke. Methods: We compiled a retrospective cohort of Caucasian and African-American Medicare beneficiaries in the 5[percnt] sample to estimate statin adherence among older adults initiating therapy following hospitalization for ischemic stroke in 2007 - 2011. To be included, beneficiaries were required to have 365 days of Medicare fee-for-service coverage with no claims for stroke-related events or statins prior to the index stroke event. The cohort was limited to beneficiaries with an initial Part D claim for a statin within 30 days plus at least 1 additional claim during follow-up. Adherence was determined by percent of days covered (PDC) for the 365 days following discharge home (time spent in rehabilitation or skilled nursing was excluded); non-adherence was defined as a PDC <80[percnt]. Relative risk of statin non-adherence was determined using modified Poisson regression. Results: Among 6,251 statin-naive beneficiaries with stroke, 2,070 (33.1[percnt]) initiated statin therapy and were included in the analysis. Among them, 13.1[percnt] (n=271) were African American. African Americans were more likely than Caucasians to have a PDC <80[percnt], 15.4[percnt] vs. 11.7[percnt], respectively (crude RR 1.21, 95[percnt] CI 1.04-1.40). The racial disparity remained after adjusting for demographics, dual Medicare-Medicaid eligibility, and baseline comorbidities (adjusted RR 1.17, 95[percnt] CI 0.99-1.37). Conclusions: African Americans may not be obtaining the recurrent stroke prevention therapy provided by statins, possibly contributing to the higher rate of recurrent stroke in this population. Disclosure: Dr. Albright has nothing to disclose. Dr. Blackburn has nothing to disclose. Dr. Zhao has nothing to disclose. Dr. Beasley has nothing to disclose. Dr. Limdi has nothing to disclose. Dr. Howard has nothing to disclose. Dr. Muntner has nothing to disclose.
Integrating Collaborative and Live Coding for Distance Education

What does an online programming course need to engage students and improve their skills? To answer this question, the authors designed and tested a feature-rich collaborative environment for an online class and found that it enhanced learning through methods such as remote pair programming, live coding, and a tight code-to-artifact feedback loop.
Use of Laser Raman Techniques in the Study of Polymers

The laser Raman technique employs a laser beam as an activating source rather than the mercury light used in the conventional Raman method. This has the advantage of a much higher light intensity so that measurements can be made on a time-scale of minutes rather than hours or days. The laser beam is also very concentrated and localized which allows the use of very small samples, such as milligrams of liquid in a capillary tube, or inspection of a very localized area of a surface. Although the Raman technique is closely related to the infrared method, the Raman technique makes possible the observation of very low-frequency modes which are beyond the range of the usual infrared spectrometers. This feature has recently made possible the observation of hydrogen- bonding modes in ice, near 4 cm -1 . The intensity of the laser beam also allows the observation of Raman spectra by reflection from an opaque surface. Another advantage of the laser is that it is possible to use different incident frequencies and tunable dye lasers to selectively observe and emphasize certain regions of the Raman spectrum. Applications and potential applications of the laser Raman technique to polymers are reviewed and discussed.
Full-information item bi-factor analysis

A plausibles-factor solution for many types of psychological and educational tests is one that exhibits a general factor ands − 1 group or method related factors. The bi-factor solution results from the constraint that each item has a nonzero loading on the primary dimension and at most one of thes − 1 group factors. This paper derives a bi-factor item-response model for binary response data. In marginal maximum likelihood estimation of item parameters, the bi-factor restriction leads to a major simplification of likelihood equations and (a) permits analysis of models with large numbers of group factors; (b) permits conditional dependence within identified subsets of items; and (c) provides more parsimonious factor solutions than an unrestricted full-information item factor analysis in some cases.
Introduction: “I Wish I Was a Bird”

This chapter follows the debates surrounding transnational family communication, with questions regarding the degree to which the ICTs bond families from afar. Two women’s stories represent the struggles all of the participants experienced in communicating with their families through ICTs. Each woman’s experience reflects the new female migration to the U.S.; one which is diverse rather than homogenous. They use ICTs in accordance with their gender but also their affordances to communicate. It becomes clear that their families’ sense of place and intimacy are destabilized. They reconstruct the family through their communication, which is embedded in ICTs and this has consequences for their relations, emotions, and identities. Terms are defined and problematized and the chapter ends with a summary of chapters.
Adherence to Mediterranean diet and subjective cognitive function in men

Benefits of a Mediterranean diet for cognition have been suggested, but epidemiologic studies have been relatively small and of limited duration. To prospectively assess the association between long-term adherence to a Mediterranean dietary pattern and self-reported subjective cognitive function (SCF). Prospective observational study. The Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study, a prospective cohort of 51,529 men, 40–75 years of age when enrolled in 1986, of whom 27,842 were included in the primary analysis. Mediterranean diet (MD) score, computed from the mean of five food frequency questionnaires, assessed every 4 years from 1986 to 2002. Self-reported SCF assessed by a 6-item questionnaire in 2008 and 2012, and validated by association with genetic variants in apolipoprotein-4. Using the average of 2008 and 2012 SCF scores, 38.0% of men were considered to have moderate memory scores and 7.3% were considered to have poor scores. In a multivariate model, compared with men having a MD score in the lowest quintile, those in the highest quintile had a 36% lower odds of a poor SCF score (odds ratio 0.64, 95% CI 0.55–0.75; P, trend < 0.001) and a 24% lower odds of a moderate SCF score (OR 0.76, 95% CI 0.70–0.83; P, trend < 0.001). Both remote and more recent diet contributed to this relation. Associations were only slightly weaker using baseline dietary data and a lag of 22 years. Long-term adherence to the Mediterranean diet pattern was strongly related to lower subjective cognitive function. These findings provide further evidence that a healthy dietary pattern may prevent or delay cognitive decline.
An All Too Radical Solution to the Problem of Evil: a Reply to Harrison

Gerald Harrison has recently argued the evidential problem of evil can be resolved if we assume the moral facts are identical to God’s commands or favorings. On a theistic metaethics, the moral facts are identical to what God commands or favors. Our moral intuitions reflect what God commands or favors for us to do, but not what God favors for Herself to do. Thus, on Harrison’s view, while we can know the moral facts as they pertain to humans, we cannot know the moral facts as they pertain to God. Therefore, Harrison argues, the evidential problem of evil inappropriately assumes God to be intuitively moral, when we have no reason to suppose a perfectly good being would match the expectations provided by our moral intuitions. Harrison calls his view a new form of skeptical theism. In response, I show Harrison’s attempt to dissolve the problem of evil exacerbates well-known skeptical consequences of skeptical theism. Harrison’s new skeptical theism leaves us with problems motivating a substantive religious life, the inability to provide a variety of theological explanations, and, despite Harrison’s comments to the contrary, worsens problems having to do with the possibility of divine deception.
Multi-zone Temperature Modeling and Control

In this chapter, we now address modeling and control for multi-zone and building-level temperature regulation. Many commercial and residential buildings have multiple independent zones requiring space conditioning. These zones may be uniform in size or may have a significant size distribution. Moreover, the space conditioning requirements may be quite disparate depending on the zone usage. This chapter provides an overview of multi-zone temperature control within buildings. We review modeling approaches for building zones and their interconnections. The primary modeling framework is a resistor–capacitor framework where thermal energy is stored in a zone in a capacitive sense and transferred between zones of different temperature through a thermally resistive path. The zones are fed by a cooling or heating system that could be liquid or air. Subsequently, we focus attention on control of multi-zone systems starting with an appropriate architecture for their representation. We present particular structures for energy flow that naturally decompose the dynamic properties of the building into hierarchical structures. These structures can then be used to create controllers or either a centralized or distributed variety. Simulations serve to illustrate the concepts and represent the results for both the modeling and dynamic control.
AB Initio SCF Calculations of the Carbazole and 2,4,7 Trinitro-9-Fluorenone (TNF) Molecules

Our interest in these calculations is based on our desire to understand the properties of a photosensitive polymer. The organic polymer film consisting of a 1:1 monomer molar ratio mixture of poly-n-vinylcarbazole (PVCZ) and 2,4,7-trinitrofluorenone (TNF) is a sensitive organic photoconductor currently being used in the IBM electrophotographic copier. In this laboratory we are presently investigating the electrical and optical properties of this and related materials. The carbazole monomer unit and the TNF molecule (see Figs. 1 and 2) are known to form charge transfer complexes about which relatively little is known. But these molecules are mainly responsible for the photosensitivity in the visible region. Our experimental results indicate that optical absorption, photo-generation efficiency of free carriers, and the very small charge carrier mobilities are all strongly field dependent. These results support the description of these materials as disordered molecular solids and we expect that the properties of the basic molecular constituents can be expected to have a relatively direct correlation to the properties of the solid as a whole.
Mycobacterium avium subsp. hominissuis effector MAVA5_06970 promotes rapid apoptosis in secondary-infected macrophages during cell-to-cell spread

Mycobacterium avium subsp. hominissuis is an opportunistic intracellular pathogen associated with disease in patients either immunosuppression or chronic lung pathology. Once in the host, M. avium preferentially infects and replicates within the phagocytic cells. The host driven macrophage apoptosis appears to be an essential aspect of innate immunity during bacterial infection; however, the existing evidence suggests that M. avium has evolved adaptive approaches to trigger the phagocyte apoptosis, exit apoptotic cells or via ingestion of infected apoptotic bodies subsequently infect neighboring macrophages. By evaluating 4,000 transposon mutants of M. avium in THP-1 cells, we identified clones that can trigger a new form of early host cell apoptosis, which is only observed upon entry into the "secondary-infected" macrophages. Inactivation of MAVA5_06970 gene lead to significant attenuation in intracellular growth within macrophages and mice, and impaired M. avium to induce rapid apoptosis in the "secondary-infected" cells as measured by Annexin V-FITC detection assay. Complementation of MAVA5_06970 gene corrected the attenuation as well as apoptotic phenotypes. The MAVA5_06970 gene encodes for a secreted protein. Using the pull-down assay and then confirmed with the yeast two-hybrid screen, we found that MAVA5_06970 effector interacts with the Secreted Phosphoprotein 1, the cytokine also known as Osteopontin. This interaction enhances the THP-1 cell apoptosis and, consequently, restricts the production of interleukin-12 that likely may limit the activation of the type I immunity pathway in vivo. This work identified a key virulence effector of M. avium that contributes to the cell-to-cell spread of the pathogen.
Environmental Finance: Sowing Intellectual Seeds to Cultivate a New Field/EcoCenter Chicago Board of Trade/Environmental Finance Program United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Chief Financial Officer/Financing Change: The Financial Community, Eco-Efficiency, and Sustainable Development Stephan Schmidheiny and Federico Zorraquin/Greening Financial Markets: Report of the UNEP Round-Table Meeting on Commercial Banks and the Environment Scott Vaughan, Editor

(2000). Environmental Finance: Sowing Intellectual Seeds to Cultivate a New Field/EcoCenter Chicago Board of Trade/Environmental Finance Program United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Chief Financial Officer/Financing Change: The Financial Community, Eco-Efficiency, and Sustainable Development Stephan Schmidheiny and Federico Zorraquin/Greening Financial Markets: Report of the UNEP Round-Table Meeting on Commercial Banks and the Environment Scott Vaughan, Editor. Journal of Public Affairs Education: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 123-128.
PGE2 Augments Inflammasome Activation and M1 Polarization in Macrophages Infected With Salmonella Typhimurium and Yersinia enterocolitica .

Eicosanoids are cellular metabolites, which shape the immune response, including inflammatory processes in macrophages. The effects of these lipid mediators on inflammation and bacterial pathogenesis are not clearly understood. Certain eicosanoids are suspected to act as molecular sensors for the recruitment of neutrophils, while others regulate bacterial uptake. In this study, gene expression analyses indicated that genes involved in eicosanoid biosynthesis including COX-1, COX-2, DAGL, and PLA-2 are differentially regulated in THP-1 human macrophages infected with Salmonella enterica Typhimurium or Yersinia enterocolitica. By using targeted metabolomics approach, we found that the eicosanoid precursor, arachidonic acid (AA) as well as its derivatives, including prostaglandins (PGs) PGF2α or PGE2/PGD2, and thromboxane TxB2, are rapidly secreted from macrophages infected with these Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria. The magnitude of eicosanoid biosynthesis in infected host cells depends on the presence of virulence factors of Y. enterocolitica and S. Typhimurium strains, albeit in an opposite way in Y. enterocolitica compared to S. Typhimurium infection. Trials with combinations of EP2/EP4 PGE2 receptor agonists and antagonists suggest that PGE2 signaling in these infection models works primarily through the EP4 receptor. Downstream of EP4 activation, PGE2 enhances inflammasome activation and represses M2 macrophage polarization while inducing key M1-type markers. PGE2 also led to a decreased numbers of Y. enterocolitica within macrophages. To summarize, PGE2 is a potent autocrine/paracrine activator of inflammation during infection in Gram-negative bacteria, and it affects macrophage polarization, likely controlling bacterial clearance by macrophages.
Deep Super Resolution for Recovering Physiological Information from Videos

Imaging photoplethysmography (iPPG) allows for remote measurement of vital signs from the human skin. In some applications the skin region of interest may only occupy a small number of pixels (e.g., if an individual is a large distance from the imager.) We present a novel pipeline for iPPG using an image super-resolution preprocessing step that can reduce the mean absolute error in heart rate prediction by over 30%. Furthermore, deep learning-based image super-resolution outperforms standard interpolation methods. Our method can be used in conjunction with any existing iPPG algorithm to estimate physiological parameters. It is particularly promising for analysis of low resolution and spatially compressed videos, where otherwise the pulse signal would be too weak.
A shape-driven spreading algorithm using linear programming for global placement

In this paper, we consider the problem of finding the global shape for placement of cells in a chip that results in minimum wirelength. Under certain assumptions, we theoretically prove that some shapes are better than others for purposes of minimizing wirelength, while ensuring that overlap-removal is a key constraint of the placer. We derive some conditions for the optimal shape and obtain a shape which is numerically close to the optimum. We also propose a linear-programming-based spreading algorithm with parameters to tune the resultant shape and derive a cost function that is better than total or maximum displacement objectives, that are traditionally used in many numerical global placers. Our new cost function also does not require explicit wirelength computation, and our spreading algorithm preserves to a large extent, the relative order among the cells placed after a numerical placer iteration. Our experimental results demonstrate that our shape-driven spreading algorithm improves wirelength, routing congestion and runtime compared to a bi-partitioning based spreading algorithm used in a state-of-the-art academic global placer for FPGAs.
Samuelson Hypothesis of the Maturity Effect and Carry Arbitrage: U. S. and China

A comparative study is conducted between U. S. and Chinese futures markets with a particular focus on the Samuelson hypothesis of the maturity effect. We examine 44 futures markets in the U.S. and 43 futures markets in China between April 1, 1987 and June 1, 2018. Here we examine 16 matched pairs and results for all 87 contracts are reported in an online appendix. Empirical evidence is provided of carry arbitrage activities in only a few U. S. futures markets but no Chinese futures markets. An effort is made to identify the salient structural factors driving the empirical differences identified here. The results are important as an improved understanding of these differences in futures price volatility provides numerous benefits to a host of constituencies.
The Politics of Regime Mainstreaming: Knowledge Production and the Institutionalization of Islamic Finance

Islamic finance has been surprisingly undertheorized in the international relations literature. In this paper, I fill this gap by investigating the dynamics of mainstreaming within the Islamic finance regime in global markets. Using the norm diffusion literature, I argue that the development and diffusion of Islamic economics, and the corresponding expertise, have followed three distinct steps. First, Islamic economics initially was a critique of capitalism and world markets; second, it was “nationalized” by the political leaders of major Muslim-majority countries; and third, it became an integral part of world markets. By tracing the development of Islamic finance as part of global politics, I situate it within a theoretical framework and show the wider implications of this economic framework for global politics.
The Gulf of Mexico Sedimentary Basin: Depositional Evolution and Petroleum Applications

The Gulf of Mexico Basin is one of the most prolific hydrocarbon-producing basins in the world, with an estimated endowment of 200 billion barrels of oil equivalent. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the basin, spanning the US, Mexico and Cuba. Topics covered include conventional and unconventional reservoirs, source rocks and associated tectonics, basin evolution from the Mesozoic to Cenozoic Era, and different regions of the basin from mature onshore fields to deep-water subsalt plays. Cores, well logs and seismic lines are all discussed providing local, regional and basin-scale insights. The scientific implications of seminal events in the basin's history are also covered, including sedimentary effects of the Chicxulub Impact. Containing over 200 color illustrations and 50 stratigraphic cross-sections and paleogeographic maps, this is an invaluable resource for petroleum industry professionals, as well as graduate students and researchers interested in basin analysis, sedimentology, stratigraphy, tectonics and petroleum geology.
Biguanides Induce Acute de novo Lipogenesis in Human Primary Sebocytes

Introduction Acne arises during puberty, in part, due to elevated hormones and growth factors which stimulate de novo lipogenesis (DNL) in primary sebocytes to significantly increase sebum production. Oral isotretinoin is an effective acne therapy, reducing sebum production through inducing apoptosis in sebocytes. However, isotretinoin is teratogenic and has additional unwanted side effects, including an initial acne flare-up, which limits its utility. The biguanide, metformin has been found to alleviate severe acne in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) through normalization of their insulin and androgen hormone levels. Metformin's broader effectiveness to improve acne in non-PCOS populations lacks significant clinical support. In an effort to determine whether biguanides directly affect sebogenesis, we investigated their ability to alter DNL in cell-based assays in vitro. Methods De novo lipogenesis was measured in human primary sebocytes using [14C]-acetate labeling. Lipid species analysis was performed by extracting newly synthesized lipids and subjecting them to thin layer chromatography. Gene expression changes in sebocytes were identified through qPCR analysis of isolated RNA. Metabolic parameters including oxygen consumption rate, lactate production and activation of adenosine monophosphate-dependent protein kinase (AMPK) were assessed in human primary sebocytes. Results Using human primary sebocytes, we found that biguanides, isotretinoin and azithromycin induced an acute dose and time-dependent increase in [14C]-acetate labeling of neutral lipids, while AICAR, an AMPK activator, inhibited this DNL response. Biguanides did not activate AMPK in sebocytes, however, they significantly reduced oxygen consumption rate and increased lactate production. Treatment with biguanides, but not isotretinoin, significantly upregulated ACSS2 gene expression in primary sebocytes and showed synergism with lipogenic activators to induce DNL genes. Discussion These changes are consistent with an acute increase in sebocyte lipogenesis and support the potential of biguanides to cause an initial flare-up in patients suffering from severe acne.
Chapter 18 – Computers and the Handicapped

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the applications of computer in improving the lives of handicapped people. Applying technology to improve the lives of the handicapped is called rehabilitation engineering. The computer applications that aid the handicapped, although different in many ways, are alike in their goal: All of them are designed to help people integrate more fully and independently in society despite their physical disabilities. There are several ways by which computer technology is being used to improve the quality of life for the handicapped. The job site is brought to the home instead of having the handicapped individual travel to the job. Some of the physical burdens are removed that are faced by the handicapped. The handicapped are helped to make better use of their functioning senses. The handicapped are enabled to use their residual capabilities to replace lost capabilities. It is being made easier for the handicapped to use computers for the very same purposes that nonhandicapped people do.
Tension pneumocephalus from an occult frontal sinus fracture following pituitary macroadenoma resection

Abstract Background Tension pneumocephalus (TP), or the presence of intracranial air with additional neurologic decline, is a common complication after sinonasal surgery due to inadvertent iatrogenic damage to the dura and/or surrounding bony structures. Case description We present the case of a 69-year-old man who underwent routine trans-sphenoidal resection of a pituitary macroadenoma with an uncomplicated hospital and discharge course. The patient subsequently developed sepsis and meningitis, and a spontaneous unilateral TP developed amidst the treatment course. Intraoperatively, no active leaks or post-operative injuries were discovered. However, on post-operative imaging, an occult, bony defect was found located in the right posterior table of the frontal sinus. The patient progressively improved to stable CT Brain over 14 days with the use of short term 100% inspired oxygen and bedside subdural port placement. Conclusions This report highlights the impact of remote trauma in development of delayed tension pneumocephalus following endoscopic endonasal surgery. The clinical history, presentation, and management are reviewed.
Fashion Renting: An Exploratory Study of User and Non-User Behaviors

Fashion renting, a form of collaborative consumption, is an emerging sustainable business model that extends the product life cycle and minimizes waste garments. Fashion renting has been the topic of interest for multiple studies, and as a result, the current fashion discipline possesses a substantial understanding of the factors that encourage consumers to engage in fashion renting. However, a limitation is that relatively little attention has been placed on consumers who do not engage in fashion renting. This is an important gap in research, especially considering that understanding non-users of products or services often leads to valuable and distinct implications. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate both the user and non-user groups of fashion renting services to obtain a better understanding of the phenomenon. In this qualitative study, two focus group interviews were conducted for users and non-users of fashion renting services.
Privacy-Preserving Deep Speaker Separation for Smartphone-Based Passive Speech Assessment

Goal: Smartphones can be used to passively assess and monitor patients' speech impairments caused by ailments such as Parkinson's disease, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia. However, passive audio recordings in natural settings often capture the speech of non-target speakers (cross-talk). Consequently, speaker separation, which identifies the target speakers' speech in audio recordings with two or more speakers' voices, is a crucial pre-processing step in such scenarios. Prior speech separation methods analyzed raw audio. However, in order to preserve speaker privacy, passively recorded smartphone audio and machine learning-based speech assessment are often performed on derived speech features such as Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs). In this paper, we propose a novel Deep MFCC bAsed SpeaKer Separation (Deep-MASKS). Methods: Deep-MASKS uses an autoencoder to reconstruct MFCC components of an individual's speech from an i-vector, x-vector or d-vector representation of their speech learned during the enrollment period. Deep-MASKS utilizes a Deep Neural Network (DNN) for MFCC signal reconstructions, which yields a more accurate, higher-order function compared to prior work that utilized a mask. Unlike prior work that operates on utterances, Deep-MASKS operates on continuous audio recordings. Results: Deep-MASKS outperforms baselines, reducing the Mean Squared Error (MSE) of MFCC reconstruction by up to 44% and the number of additional bits required to represent clean speech entropy by 36%.
Pan-Cancer Analysis of Human Kinome Gene Expression and Promoter DNA Methylation Identifies Dark Kinase Biomarkers in Multiple Cancers

Kinases are a group of intracellular signaling molecules that play critical roles in various biological processes. Even though kinases comprise one of the most well-known therapeutic targets, many have been understudied and therefore warrant further investigation. DNA methylation is one of the key epigenetic regulators that modulate gene expression. In this study, the human kinome's DNA methylation and gene expression patterns were analyzed using the level-3 TCGA data for 32 cancers. Unsupervised clustering based on kinome data revealed the grouping of cancers based on their organ level and tissue type. We further observed significant differences in overall kinase methylation levels (hyper- and hypomethylation) between the tumor and adjacent normal samples from the same tissue. Methylation expression quantitative trait loci (meQTL) analysis using kinase gene expression with the corresponding methylated probes revealed a highly significant and mostly negative association (~92%) within 1.5 kb from the transcription start site (TSS). Several understudied (dark) kinases (PKMYT1, PNCK, BRSK2, ERN2, STK31, STK32A, and MAPK4) were also identified with a significant role in patient survival. This study leverages results from multi-omics data to identify potential kinase markers of prognostic and diagnostic importance and further our understanding of kinases in cancer.
Dynamics of Glutamatergic Drive Underlie Diverse Responses of Olfactory Bulb Outputs In Vivo.

Mitral/tufted (MT) cells of the olfactory bulb (OB) show diverse temporal responses to odorant stimulation that are thought to encode odor information. Much of this diversity is thought to arise from inhibitory OB circuits, but the dynamics of excitatory input to MT cells, which is driven in a feedforward manner by sensory afferents, may also be important. To examine the contribution of excitatory input dynamics to generating temporal diversity in MT cells, we imaged glutamate signaling onto mitral and tufted cell dendrites in anesthetized and awake mice. We found surprising diversity in the temporal dynamics of these signals. Inhalation-linked glutamate transients were variable in onset latency and duration, and in awake mice the degree of coupling to inhalation varied substantially with odorant identity and concentration. Successive inhalations of odorant produced nonlinear changes in glutamate signaling that included facilitating, adapting and suppressive responses and which varied with odorant identity and concentration. Dual-color imaging of glutamate and calcium signals from MT cells in the same glomerulus revealed highly correlated pre- and postsynaptic signals across these different response types. Suppressive calcium responses in MT cells were nearly always accompanied by suppression in the glutamate signal, providing little evidence for MT cell suppression by lateral or feedforward inhibition. These results indicate a high degree of diversity in the dynamics of excitatory input to MT cells, and suggest that these dynamics may account for much of the diversity in MT cell responses that underlies OB odor representations. Significance statement Temporal patterns of excitation and inhibition among olfactory bulb output neurons (mitral and tufted, or MT, cells) play important roles in coding olfactory information. Using the glutamate sensor iGluSnFR expressed on MT cells, we found surprising diversity in the dynamics of their excitatory input: odorant-evoked glutamate signals varied within a respiratory cycle and across repeated samples of odorant, and varied with both odorant identity and concentration. Simultaneous imaging of presynaptic glutamate and postsynaptic calcium from MT cells revealed high correspondence in the dynamics of glutamatergic input and MT cell output. These results suggest that the dynamics of excitatory input alone can account for much of the diversity of MT cell responses that underlie odor representations in vivo.
Spatial Distribution, Structure, Biomass, and Physiology of Microbial Assemblages across the Southern Ocean Frontal Zones during the Late Austral Winter

We examined the spatial distributions of picoplankton, nanoplankton, and microplankton biomass and physiological state relative to the hydrography of the Southern Ocean along 90 degrees W longitude and across the Drake Passage in the late austral winter. The eastern South Pacific Ocean showed some large-scale biogeographical differences and size class variability. Microbial ATP biomass was greatest in euphotic surface waters. The horizontal distributions of microbial biomass and physiological state (adenylate energy charge ratio) coincided with internal currents (fronts) of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. In the Drake Passage, the biological scales in the euphotic and aphotic zones were complex, and ATP, total adenylate, and adenylate energy charge ratio isopleths were compressed due to the extension of the sea ice from Antarctica and constriction of the Circumpolar Current through the narrow passage. The physiological state of microbial assemblages and biomass were much higher in the Drake Passage than in the eastern South Pacific Ocean. The temperature of Antarctic waters, not dissolved organic carbon, was the major variable controlling picoplankton growth. Estimates of picoplankton production based on ATP increments with time suggest that production under reduced predation pressure was 1 to 10 mug of carbon per liter per day. Our results demonstrate the influence of large-scale hydrographic processes on the distribution and structure of microplankton, nanoplankton, and picoplankton across the Southern Ocean.
Inigo of Rancho Posolmi: The Life and Times of a Mission Indian

Inigo of Rancho Posolmi: The Life and Times of. Mission Indian. Laurence H. Shoup and Randall T. Milliken. Novato: Ballena Press, 1999.182 pp.
Consistency of Sperm Morphology Classification Methods

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently suggested new morphometric dimensions for normal sperm heads and new sperm head classification rules. These specifications differ from previous WHO methods and from the Kruger method for strict morphology assessment. We analyzed the WHO and Kruger sperm classification rules to determine their appropriateness as predictive linear models. We reviewed the theoretical requirements for allometric modeling, a more traditional approach for specifying the size relationships between phenotypic characters, and developed valid allometric models based on the statistical properties of over 3,700 measurements of individual sperm head dimensions. We implemented the WHO, Kruger, and Allometric methods on the same set of digitized sperm heads to study the empirical consequences of different metric requirements and classification methods. Results show that the WHO and Kruger methods are internally consistent, but specify nonconstant variance. Hence, they are inappropriate linear models. The allometric models were internally consistent and specified constant variance. Hence, they are appropriate linear models. Significant differences were found in the percentage of normal sperm between the methods. On average, the Kruger method produced the lowest value and the Allometric methods produced significantly higher values than the WHO methods, but no average difference was found between WHO methods or between Allometric methods. Nevertheless, the percentage of normal sperm did change significantly for individual specimens. These results indicate that small differences in metric requirements and classification rules can dramatically change the percentage of normal sperm. Until more rigorous definitions of sperm features can be developed, and valid statistical models can be used to describe the population characteristics of fertile sperm, the prognostic value of sperm morphology is limited.
Simultaneous wide angle nulling for difference and sum beam patterns

A robust method of beam pattern nulling is discussed in this paper. The method achieves required nulls in a specified direction by perturbing the amplitudes and the phases of the aperture distribution coefficients of the sum and difference channels. The technique is flexible enough to handle a very wide variety of pattern nulling problems since it minimizes antenna sidelobe levels in specified directions. The theory can be employed to discrete-angle nulling for the sum beam pattern, the difference beam, simultaneous sum and difference beam, and wide-angle nulling.
Late Quaternary slip on the Santa Cruz Island fault, California

The style, timing, and pattern of slip on the Santa Cruz Island fault were investigated by trenching the fault and by analysis of offset late Quaternary landforms. A trench excavated across the fault at Christi Beach, on the western coast of the island, exposed deformation of latest Pleistocene to Holocene sediments and pre-Quaternary rocks, recording repeated large-magnitude rupture events. The most recent earthquake at this site occurred ca. 5 ka. Coastal terraces preserved on western Santa Cruz Island have been dated using the uranium-series technique and by extrapolation using terrace elevations and the eustatic record. Offset of terraces and other landforms indicates that the Santa Cruz Island fault is predominantly left lateral, having a horizontal slip rate of not more than 1.1 mm/yr and probably about 0.8 mm/yr. The fault also has a smaller reverse component, slipping at a rate of between 0.1 and 0.2 mm/yr. Combined with measurements of slip per event, this information suggests a long-term average recurrence interval of at least 2.7 k.y. and probably 4–5 k.y., and average earthquake magnitudes of Mw 7.2–7.5. Sense of slip, recurrence interval, and earthquake magnitudes calculated here for the Santa Cruz Island fault are very similar to recent results for other faults along the southern margin of the western Transverse Range, including the Malibu Coast fault, the Santa Monica fault, the Hollywood fault, and the Raymond fault, supporting the contention that these faults constitute a continuous and linked fault system, which is characterized by large but relatively infrequent earthquakes.
Formant frequency development: 15 to 36 months

Developmental characteristics of formant 1 (F1) and formant 2 (F2) are reported for spontaneous vocalizations produced by four young children. Each child was systematically sampled at between 15 and 36 months of age. Results indicated that both F1 and F2 remained relatively unchanged prior to 24 months of age. Significant decreases in average F1 and F2 occurred between 24 and 36 months. When F1 and F2 values were categorized according to tongue elevation and tongue advancement, the most significant changes were associated with high/back articulations. The pattern of formant frequencies noted in the present group of children appears to reflect developmental changes in vocal tract growth and reconfiguration.