cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Ceftolozane/tazobactam and ceftazidime/avibactam for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections

Complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAI) represent a large proportion of all hospital admissions and are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the intensive care unit. Rising rates of multidrug resistant organisms (MDRO), including extended-spectrum β-lactamase producing Enterobacteriaceae and carbapenem-nonsusceptible Pseudomonas spp., for which there are few remaining active antimicrobial agents, pose an increased challenge to clinicians. Patients with frequent exposures to the health care system or multiple recurrent IAIs are at increased risk for MDRO; however, treatment options have traditionally been limited, in some cases necessitating the utilization of last-line agents with unfavorable side-effect profiles. Ceftolozane/tazobactam and ceftazidime/avibactam are two new cephalosporin and β-lactamase inhibitor combinations with recent US Food and Drug Administration approvals for the treatment of cIAI in combination with metronidazole. Ceftolozane/tazobactam has demonstrated excellent in vitro activity against MDR and extensively drug-resistant Pseudomonas spp., including carbapenem-nonsusceptible strains, while ceftazidime/avibactam effectively inhibits a broad range of β-lactamases, making it an excellent option for the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. Both agents were shown to be noninferior to meropenem for treatment of cIAI in Phase III trials; however, reduced responses in patients with renal impairment at baseline highlight the importance of routine serum creatinine monitoring and ongoing dose adjustments. This review highlights in vitro and in vivo data of these two agents and suggests their proper place in cIAI treatment to ensure adequate therapy in our most at-risk patients while sparing unnecessary use in patients without MDRO risk factors.
Determination of buildup and dilution of wastewater effluent in shellfish growing waters through a modified application of super-position

Since 1925, dilution analysis has been used to minimize pathogenic impacts to bivalve molluscan shellfish growing areas from treated wastewater effluent in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program (NSSP). For over twenty five years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended a minimum of 1000:1 dilution of effluent within prohibited closure zones established around wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) discharges. During May 2010, using recent technologies, a hydrographic dye study was conducted in conjunction with a pathogen bioaccumulation study in shellfish adjacent to a WWTP discharge in Yarmouth, ME. For the first time an improved method of the super-position principle was used to determine the buildup of dye tagged sewage effluent and steady state dilution in tidal waters. Results of the improved method of dilution analysis illustrate an economical, reliable and more accurate and manageable approach for estimating the buildup and steady state pollutant conditions in coastal and estuarine waters.
The development of a lexicon for cashew nuts

A lexicon of flavor and texture terms was developed to describe the sensory characteristics of cashew nuts. A highly trained and experienced descriptive analysis panel (n = 10, ages 22–58 each with at least 60 hr of descriptive work in nuts) was used to create the lexicon for cashews. After initial identification and discussion of terms, 22 flavor terms, 4 texture terms, and 3 feeling factors to describe the sensory attributes of cashews were identified. The lexicon was validated by demonstrating that the panel could detect differences among 18 different cashew samples, including raw, oil-roasted, dry-roasted, skin-on, store-brand, national-brand, and rancid types when using the identified lexicon. The differences in products were analyzed using analysis of variance and principal component analysis. Differences in flavor and texture were observed across all product categories and the lexicon was validated. Practical applications The lexicon is intended for use in cashew research and by the cashew industry as a way for communicating differences in cashew flavor and texture in a common language.
Automatic identification of successful memory encoding in stereo-eeg of refractory, mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

Surgical resection of portions of the temporal lobe is the standard of care for patients with refractory mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. While this reduces seizures, it often results in an inability to form new memories, which leads to difficulties in social situations, learning, and suboptimal quality of life. Learning about the success or failure to form new memory in such patients is critical if we are to generate neuromodulation-based therapies. To this end, we tackle the many challenges in analyzing memory formation when their brains are recorded using stereoencephalography (sEEG) in a Free Recall task. Our contributions are threefold. First, we compute a rich measure of brain connectivity by computing the phase locking value statistic (synchrony) between pairs of regions, over hundreds of word memorization trials. Second, we leverage the rich information (over 400 values per pair of probed brain regions) to form consistent length feature vectors for classifier training. Third, we train and evaluate seven different types of classifier models and identify which ones achieve the highest accuracy and which brain features are most important for high accuracy. We assess our approach on data from 37 patients pre-resection surgery. We achieve up to 73% accuracy distinguishing successful from unsuccessful memory formation in the human brain from just 1.6 sec epochs of sEEG data.
On the use of Cox regression to examine the temporal clustering of flooding and heavy precipitation across the central United States

Abstract The central United States is plagued by frequent catastrophic flooding, such as the flood events of 1993, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2016. The goal of this study is to examine whether it is possible to describe the occurrence of flood and heavy precipitation events at the sub-seasonal scale in terms of variations in the climate system. Daily streamflow and precipitation time series over the central United States (defined here to include North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan) are used in this study. We model the occurrence/non-occurrence of a flood and heavy precipitation event over time using regression models based on Cox processes, which can be viewed as a generalization of Poisson processes. Rather than assuming that an event (i.e., flooding or precipitation) occurs independently of the occurrence of the previous one (as in Poisson processes), Cox processes allow us to account for the potential presence of temporal clustering, which manifests itself in an alternation of quiet and active periods. Here we model the occurrence/non-occurrence of flood and heavy precipitation events using two climate indices as time-varying covariates: the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the Pacific-North American pattern (PNA). We find that AO and/or PNA are important predictors in explaining the temporal clustering in flood occurrences in over 78% of the stream gages we considered. Similar results are obtained when working with heavy precipitation events. Analyses of the sensitivity of the results to different thresholds used to identify events lead to the same conclusions. The findings of this work highlight that variations in the climate system play a critical role in explaining the occurrence of flood and heavy precipitation events at the sub-seasonal scale over the central United States.
Miniature electric vehicle laboratory for introductory and advanced coursework

Despite the explosion of electric vehicles in the U.S. road-going vehicle fleet, bringing electric vehicles content into the classroom has been a challenge. While studies show that tasking students with “real-world” problems and connecting to current trends is helpful for retention and engagement, practical considerations, particularly the cost and size of these vehicles, has kept them on highways and in dealerships and parking lots. Therefore, the only access available to interested engineering students is through enthusiast publications and salespeople. This work, which presents a framework for engaging undergraduate engineering students in the field, includes a low-cost kit of hardware that supports concepts introduced in classroom sessions. While designed for a first-year engineering course, this kit allows for instructors to employ different experiments over a range of student disciplines and class years.
Xanthoma of Bone

The authors report on 21 cases of "primary" xanthoma of bone. Twenty of the patients were older than 20 years old. The male-female ratio was 2:1. The presenting symptom was pain in 13 patients and neurologic symptoms in 2; in 6 patients, the lesion was an incidental finding. All but one of the lesions in this series were solitary, and the flat bones (pelvis, rib, skull) were the most frequently involved sites. Radiographically, a well-defined, sometimes expansile lytic lesion, with either a small area of surrounding reactive bone or a distinct sclerotic margin, was seen. Microscopically, foam cells, giant cells, cholesterol clefts, and fibrosis were present in varying degrees. In none of these cases was there an identifiable underlying lesion. The differential diagnosis includes Erdheim-Chester disease (a multisystemic granulomatosis) and bone involvement in sinus histiocytosis with massive lymphadenopathy (Rosai-Dorfman disease). More important is the differential diagnosis with metastatic clear cell carcinoma. Xanthoma of bone is a benign lesion, and complete or even partial removal is effective. Xanthomas may represent a "burnt-out" benign condition such as fibrous dysplasia or histiocytosis X.
Azithromycin, with or without rifabutin, prevented M. avium complex infection

Source Citation Havlir DV, Dube MP, Sattler FR, et al., for the California Collaborative Treatment Group. Prophylaxis against disseminated Mycobacterium avium complex with weekly azithromycin, dail...
Cardiovascular Conditioning: Neural Substrates

Learned cardiovascular responses, particularly changes in heart rate during Pavlovian learning, have been used as model responses to identify brain circuits where structural changes which represent the substrate for mammalian learning and memory occur. The use of these responses is advantageous because the locations of the motor neurons that produce them are known. This permits an identification of the components of brain circuits that contribute to learning and memory using anatomical and physiological methodology. As an example of this type of research, this article focuses on research directed at an identification of the components of a brain circuit that contributes to learned heart rate responses in the rabbit. Several central brain structures, and in particular the amygdala, have been identified as candidates for the location where memories are formed and/or stored. This research approach sets the stage for determining the specific nature of the structural changes that form the substrate for certain types of memory.
The effect of seasonal groundwater saturation on the effectiveness of large scale borehole heat exchangers in a karstic aquifer

Abstract A study was completed comparing the effectiveness of the borehole heat exchanger (BHE) of a large scale, closed-loop geothermal system to seasonal fluctuations in the saturation of the surrounding bedrock. The BHE consisted of 144 production wells drilled to a depth of 122 m into karstic bedrock. Water levels in a nearby groundwater monitoring well were used to characterize the changes in the saturation of the bedrock. The study showed a significant increase in the effectiveness of the BHE as the saturation of the aquifer increased. The effectiveness of the BHE was typically near 0.8 when saturation was highest. The effectiveness decreased to 0.4 when saturation lowered past a threshold, but tended to remain stable as saturation continued to decrease. Our study assembled evidence that a single borehole thermal response tests in karstic environments may not capture the seasonal changes in the saturation of the surrounding bedrock. Complete characterization of the site’s subsurface geology, hydrology, and use of multiple borehole thermal response tests during periods of high, low, and median saturation of the surrounding bedrock will better help stakeholders plan and design large scale geothermal systems in karstic environments.
Morphine Accelerates the Progression of Sepsis in an Experimental Sepsis Model

The idea that exogenous opiates can affect immune function is not entirely new. Historically as early as 1889 the effect of opium on leukocyte phagocytosis was described in a guinea pig model (1). More recently, evidence supporting the role of opiates in suppressing a variety of immunological end points in opiate addicts was reported by Louria et al. (2). The opioid induced modulation of immune function has been implicated in reduced host resistance against invading pathogens. Several key functions such as: lymphocyte prolifera- tive response to mitogens (3), T cell rosette formation (4) and the total number of circulating lymphocytes (5) have all been shown to be reduced in heroin addicts. In animal models morphine treatment has been found to increase mortality rates in experimentally infected mice (6, 7). Similarly, in animal models, lymphocyte proliferative responses (8), NK cell ytotoxicity activity (9, 10) antibody and serum hemolysin formation (11) and the phago- cytic and killing properties of peripheral blood mononuclear leukocytes (6) are all attenu- ated after in vivo chronic morphine exposure. While the mechanisms responsible for morphine induced changes in the immune system are not completely understood, they may be directly mediated through opiate receptors present on lymphocytes (12, 13), indirectly through opiate receptors present in the central nervous system, or by activating the hypotha- lamic—pituitary—adrenal axis (14) to release immunosuppressive glucocorticoids (15).
Patterns of interpersonal problems in irritable bowel syndrome patients: a circumplex analysis.

Objective: This study explored the nature of interpersonal problems in IBS patients using the interpersonal circumplex (Wiggins JS. Agency and communion as conceptual coordinates for the understanding and measurement of interpersonal behavior. In Ciccetti D, editors. Thinking clearly about psychology, Vol. 2. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. pp. 89–113) as an organizing framework. Based on conceptualizations of interpersonal behavior of IBS patients (Toner BB, Segal ZV, Emmott S, Myran D. Cognitive–behavioral treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. New York: Guilford Press, 2000), we predicted that their interpersonal problems would peak in the friendly submissive regions of the circumplex. Method: Fifty-nine healthy controls and 174 IBS patients completed the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Results: The interpersonal profile of IBS patients was characterized by difficulties with assertiveness and, to a lesser extent, social inhibition. Gender-controlled analyses did not attenuate between group differences on nonassertiveness and, in some cases, sharpened them. Patients with diarrhea-predominant subtype or longer symptom duration had more pronounced interpersonal problems than did their respective counterparts. Conclusion: The main finding that IBS patients have a distinctive interpersonal style characterized by aspects of submissiveness speaks to the potential value of the circumplex for increasing our understanding of IBS. D 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
TGF-β Control of Adaptive Immune Tolerance: A Break From Treg Cells

The vertebrate adaptive immune system has well defined functions in maintaining tolerance to self-tissues. Suppression of autoreactive T cells is dependent on the regulatory cytokine transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) and regulatory T (Treg) cells, a distinct T cell lineage specified by the transcription factor Foxp3. Although TGF-β promotes thymic Treg (tTreg) cell development by repressing T cell clonal deletion and peripheral Treg cell differentiation by inducing Foxp3 expression, a recent study shows that TGF-β suppresses autoreactive T cells independent of Foxp3+ Treg cells. These findings imply that as an ancestral growth factor family member, TGF-β may have been co-opted as a T cell-intrinsic mechanism of self-tolerance control to assist the evolutionary transition of vertebrate adaptive immunity. Later, perhaps in placental mammals upon their acquisition of a TGF-β regulatory element in the Foxp3 locus, the TGF-β pathway is further engaged to induce peripheral Treg cell differentiation and expand the scope of T cell tolerance control to innocuous foreign antigens.
Harnessing Numerical Flexibility for Deep Learning on FPGAs

Deep learning has become a key workload in the data centre and edge leading to an arms race for compute dominance in this space. FPGAs have shown they can compete by combining deterministic low-latency with high throughput and flexibility. In particular, due to FPGAs' bit-level programmability, FPGAs can efficiently implement arbitrary precisions and numeric data types which is critical to fast evolving fields like deep learning. In this work, we explore minifloat (floating point representations with non-standard exponent and mantissa sizes) implementations on the FPGA, and show how we use a block floating point implementation that shares the exponent across many numbers to reduce the required logic to perform floating point operations. We will show that using this technique we can significantly improve the performance of the FPGA with no impact to accuracy. Using this approach, we show how we can reduce logic utilization by 3x, and memory bandwidth and capacity required by more than 40%.
New histories of village life at Crystal River: by Thomas J. Pluckhahn and Victor D. Thompson, Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 2018, xvii + 276 pp., $79.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-68340-035-6

Crystal River on the Gulf Coast of Florida is one of North America’s premiere archaeological sites. The accolade is deserved, but until the publication of this book, the premium status of Crystal R...
Equations of State

Equations of state suitable for modeling compression of solids under the hydrodynamic assumption are presented. Specifically derived are reductions of the Lagrangian, Eulerian, and logarithmic theories developed in the prior three chapters to cases wherein deviatoric stress can be ignored. In such cases, scalar equations of state are obtained that relate pressure, volume, and temperature or entropy. Model predictions are compared with planar shock data for finite compression of ductile metals, demonstrating suitability of the hydrodynamic approximation as well as superiority of the Eulerian equation of state, which is equivalent to that of Birch and Murnaghan. The logarithmic equation of state is found suitable for modeling hydrostatic compression of several less ductile polycrystalline minerals. This chapter concludes with an overall assessment of the three thermoelastic formulations, where the Eulerian model is deemed preferable for ductile solids with a relatively low ratio of shear to bulk modulus and the logarithmic model for brittle solids with a higher ratio of shear to bulk modulus.
Lessons learned implementing a complex and innovative patient safety learning laboratory project in a large academic medical center.

Objective The objective of this paper is to share challenges, recommendations, and lessons learned regarding the development and implementation of a Patient Safety Learning Laboratory (PSLL) project, an innovative and complex intervention comprised of a suite of Health Information Technology (HIT) tools integrated with a newly implemented Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendor system in the acute care setting at a large academic center. Materials and methods The PSLL Administrative Core engaged stakeholders and study personnel throughout all phases of the project: problem analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Implementation challenges and recommendations were derived from direct observations and the collective experience of PSLL study personnel. Results The PSLL intervention was implemented on 12 inpatient units during the 18-month study period, potentially impacting 12,628 patient admissions. Challenges to implementation included stakeholder engagement, project scope/complexity, technology/governance, and team structure. Recommendations to address each of these challenges were generated, some enacted during the trial, others as lessons learned for future iterative refinements of the intervention and its implementation. Conclusion Designing, implementing, and evaluating a suite of tools integrated within a vendor EHR to improve patient safety has a variety of challenges. Keys to success include continuous stakeholder engagement, involvement of systems and human factors engineers within a multidisciplinary team, an iterative approach to user-centered design, and a willingness to think outside of current workflows and processes to change health system culture around adverse event prevention.
Clinical outcome associated with neoadjuvant chemoradiation and orthotopic liver transplantation versus definitive chemoradiation in 49 patients with unresectable, hilar, or extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma.

494Background: Our aim was to compare survival between patients receiving neoadjuvant chemoradiation and orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT group) versus definitive chemoradiation (CRT group) fo...
Fatal Flaws in Financing Personal Bankruptcy: The Curious Case of Russia in Comparative Context

The first three years of operation of the new Russian personal bankruptcy procedure reveal a troubling flaw common to such new regimes: While the law on the books suggests a permissive and effective relief delivery procedure, the law in action has seen the vast majority of debtors barred from accessing that relief due to explicit and implicit financing burdens. Those few debtors admitted to the procedure in the first few years have proceeded relatively quickly to a discharge, which is good news, but the bad news of debtors being too cash-poor to seek bankruptcy relief is an ironic fatal flaw. Not only must debtors bear the substantial unofficial market costs of private professional guidance, as well as the official statutory costs of a trustee to administer the case, these trustees are privately regulated in Russia and have frequently simply refused to take on low-value cases, even for debtors able to pay the official fee. Comparative exploration of this problem reveals surprising parallels with system structure, trustee regulation, and debtor-access financing challenges in Europe and North America. Solutions to these problems implemented in Europe, the US, and particularly in Canada may well work for Russia and other countries launching new personal bankruptcy regimes, but these problems and potential solutions need to be carefully considered to avoid setting up such systems for failure.
Two Bankrobbers With “Antisocial” and “Schizoid/Avoidant” Personality Disorders, Comorbid With Partial Seizures: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Limbic Psychotic Trigger Reaction, Respectively

“Diagnostic overshadowing” is illustrated by two cases of unplanned, motiveless bank robbery, initially merely attributed to “antisocoial” or “schizoid/avoidant” (loner) personality disorder, respectively. Both disorders, however, were comorbid with their potentially unobservable counterparts, with brief partial seizures, supported by both men's abnormal scalp-EEG's, their symptomatology with psychosis, and their histories of closed head injury in childhood. Such injuries are known to render particularly the temporo-limbic brain system susceptible to later partial seizure: Mr. A. had temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with stereotypic auditory command hallucinations and clouding of consciousness. (His past “antisocial” aggressive behavior might also have reflected TLE-related inter-ictal events.) Mr. B. had the symptomatology proposed as limbic psychotic trigger reaction (LPTR). Mr. B., a social loner, typically ruminated on past intermittent moderate stresses, a specific precondition of seizure kindling, ultimately elicited by a specific stimulus, resembling his past hurts. As is typical for LPTR, Mr. B. had no clouding of consciousness and no amnesia for his atavistically regressive acts, committed with flat affect, nausea, and fleeting delusions of grandeur (being gifted, like Rembrandt).
Folate pathways mediating the effects of ethanol in tumorigenesis

Folate and alcohol are dietary factors affecting the risk of cancer development in humans. The interaction between folate status and alcohol consumption in carcinogenesis involves multiple mechanisms. Alcoholism is typically associated with folate deficiency due to reduced dietary folate intake. Heavy alcohol consumption also decreases folate absorption, enhances urinary folate excretion and inhibits enzymes pivotal for one-carbon metabolism. While folate metabolism is involved in several key biochemical pathways, aberrant DNA methylation, due to the deficiency of methyl donors, is considered as a common downstream target of the folate-mediated effects of ethanol. The negative effects of low intakes of nutrients that provide dietary methyl groups, with high intakes of alcohol are additive in general. For example, low methionine, low-folate diets coupled with alcohol consumption could increase the risk for colorectal cancer in men. To counteract the negative effects of alcohol consumption, increased intake of nutrients, such as folate, providing dietary methyl groups is generally recommended. Here mechanisms involving dietary folate and folate metabolism in cancer disease, as well as links between these mechanisms and alcohol effects, are discussed. These mechanisms include direct effects on folate pathways and indirect mediation by oxidative stress, hypoxia, and microRNAs.
Metabolic strategies of marine subseafloor Chloroflexi inferred from genome reconstructions

Uncultured members of the Chloroflexi phylum are highly enriched in numerous subseafloor environments. Their metabolic potential was evaluated by reconstructing 31 Chloroflexi genomes from six different subseafloor habitats. The near ubiquitous presence of enzymes of the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, electron bifurcation, and ferredoxin-dependent transport-coupled phosphorylation indicated anaerobic acetogenesis was central to their catabolism. Most of the genomes simultaneously contained multiple degradation pathways for complex carbohydrates, detrital protein, aromatic compounds, and hydrogen, indicating the coupling of oxidation of chemically diverse organic substrates to ubiquitous CO2 reduction. Such pathway combinations may confer a fitness advantage in subseafloor environments by enabling these Chloroflexi to act as primary fermenters and acetogens in one microorganism without the need for syntrophic H2 consumption. While evidence for catabolic oxygen respiration was limited to two phylogenetic clusters, the presence of genes encoding putative reductive dehalogenases throughout the phylum expanded the phylogenetic boundary for potential organohalide respiration past the Dehalococcoidia class.
Attachment Styles and the Family Systems of Individuals Affected by Substance Abuse

This article focuses on the association between attachment styles within the family system and substance abuse. The authors describe attachment theory and the ways insecure attachments adversely af...
Menopause, the gut microbiome, and weight gain: correlation or causation?

ABSTRACT The gut microbiome is a key regulator of metabolism and influences the metabolism of estrogens, however, the microbiome's role in the changes in body composition and metabolic risk factors experienced by menopausal women remains largely unexplored. Menopause has been shown to alter the gut microbiome, and rodent studies suggest that microbiome changes postovariectomy are associated with increased adiposity, decreased metabolic rate, and insulin resistance, changes attenuated by estrogen administration. Given these data, a deeper understanding of the gut microbiome's relationship to menopause-induced changes in body composition and metabolism is warranted and may offer opportunity for novel therapeutic interventions.The microbiome is central to both systemic and estrogen metabolism, and is altered by the menopausal transition, suggesting an important role of the microbiome in the increased metabolic risk faced by menopausal women. Although additional research is needed to establish a causal link, the interrelationship between menopause and the gut microbiome may represent a new frontier to address menopause-related metabolic risk.
Gathering your 'sea legs': Extended durations in an offshore environment increases postural sway excursions.

Abstract Background Mal de debarquement (MdD), or often called ‘sea legs’, is the perception of self-motion after exposure to passive movement such as being on a boat at sea. Previous studies highlight sensory re-organization difficulties and postural control impairments after disembarking from sea travel in experienced crew members. However, the impact of MdD in individuals with minimal offshore experience, defined as participating in less than 2 offshore excursions per year, has not been investigated. Research question Does exposure to boat motion while at sea alter static postural control after disembarking in individuals with minimal offshore experience? Methods Healthy adults (n = 24) with minimal offshore experience had their static balance assessed on a force platform before (PRE) and after (POST) a 7-h deep sea fishing excursion. Static balance was tested in eyes open (EO), eyes closed (EC), eyes open on a foam surface (EOF), and eyes closed on a foam surface (ECF) conditions. Sway excursions, sway velocity and sway variability in the medial-lateral (ML) and anterior-posterior (AP) directions were computed and then compared PRE/POST using a paired t-test (p Results Significant increases in ML sway excursion (p = 0.004), ML sway range (p 0.05). Significance Increases in postural sway excursion and variability were observed in individuals with minimal offshore experience after disembarking. Our findings suggest sensory re-organization difficulties in order to maintain an upright posture in challenging sensory conditions are dependent on vestibular and somatosensory inputs following exposure to boat motion at sea.
A simulation-driven online scheduling algorithm for the maintenance and operation of wind farm systems:

Wind turbines experience stochastic loading due to seasonal variations in wind speed and direction. These harsh operational conditions lead to failures of wind turbines, which are difficult to pred...
Nanoflows induced by MEMS and NEMS: Limits of two-dimensional models

The mechanical oscillations of a miniaturized resonator generate viscous oscillatory nanoflows in the surrounding fluid. As a result, the fluid presents an effective added mass and damping to the resonator, which is commonly predicted by a two-dimensional flow model. Here, the limitations to the two-dimensional model are examined when a substrate and axial flow are present. Results from experiments and three-dimensional finite element models are presented to illustrate where and why the two-dimensional flow models break down.
Economics Is Not All of Life

Thirty years ago, I took up a task that many starting professors of economics have to fulfill: I was assigned to teach first-year economics. I had taught the course before as a graduate student, but now I had the opportunity to choose the textbook I would use. I chose the newly released text by Edmund Phelps (1985) titled Political Economy: An Introductory Text. My reason for this unusual choice was simple: Phelps’s book came close to addressing the questions about economics I was interested in; a fact that reflected my own unusual relationship to the discipline I had chosen. My background was not in economics, but in intellectual history, theology, philosophy, and even business. I entered the economics discipline as I was exiting the evangelicalism I had grown up in. Thus, my education as an economist shared time with my education in the rich tradition of the Anglican Communion that I entered then, and I have remained in since. Right from the start, Phelps informed the student that the questions to be addressed were bigger than ‘individual choice in the face of scarcity,’ the ‘ordinary business of life,’ or whatever other definition of economics one usually encounters in a textbook. “Political economy,” he wrote, “is ultimately the study of the effects of various mechanisms, and systems of mechanisms, used (or usable) by societies to operate their social economy” (1985, 27). Not only was our study to be about institutional design and choice, but the individuals in these societies were, Phelps told us, more than efficiency optimizers. They were also people who were in the process of choosing their own values; individuals who, as Frank Knight once said, had an interest not only in satisfying their existing wants or avoiding risks, but also seeking to find more and better wants (Knight 1999a/1923). Thus, not only did Phelps make social and political decisionmaking a focus of his disciplinary
Dissing Science: Selling Scientifically Based Educational Practices to a Nation that Distrusts Science

Publisher Summary This chapter emphasizes on empirically based educational practices and on the genuine need to teach the value of science to students at every level of education and to reinforce these messages throughout their life. A single vivid example can often outweigh a huge body of data collected from a random sample of a population; whereas anecdotes are self-selected, based on a sample size of 1, subject to all of the biases of memory, and likely to be atypical because they would not be told if they represented an expected outcome. One of the main reasons why educational research rarely provides data that actually are used in decision making is that teachers, the general public, funding agencies, state and federal legislators, and just about every other potential consumer of educational research believe that they already know the correct answers. If data were to contradict one's personal belief system, the uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance would result, and it is far easier to discount, disregard, and disrespect data than it is to restructure one's system of beliefs. The “dissing” of science occurs at all points on the political philosophy spectrum. Everyone can and probably should thank those dedicated teachers who worked long hours and really care about the success of the student. Most people can recall at least one teacher who believed in them and communicated this belief in a way that made a positive difference in their lives. The science community must assume the blame for the “dissing” of science.
Orthodoxy and heterodoxy in analyzing institutions: Original and new institutional economics reexamined

The rediscovery and analytical reconstitution are present tendencies in much of social science, especially economics and sociology. The emergence and expansion of the so‐called new institutional economics exemplify these tendencies as do attempts at revival and rehabilitation of the old institutional economics. Analogous tendencies have been manifested in sociology by the further development of economic sociology, especially by various reformulations of its classical premise of institutional structuration and embeddedness of economic behavior. Nevertheless, much of mainstream economics tends to neglect or play down certain salient divergences between the latter's neoclassical or orthodox institutionalism, and heterodox or critical institutionalism advanced by the old institutional economics as well as by economic sociology. Identifies and elaborates such divergences between these seemingly homologous varieties of institutionalism. Since institutionalist varieties and tendencies in both economics and sociology are considered, represents a contribution to an interdisciplinary treatment of social institutions, a treatment originally proposed by the old institutional economics of Veblen et al., the German historical school as well as by Weberian‐Durkheimian classical economic sociology.
New therapeutic targets for cancer bone metastasis

Bone metastases are dejected consequences of many types of tumors including breast, prostate, lung, kidney, and thyroid cancers. This complicated process begins with the successful tumor cell epithelial–mesenchymal transition, escape from the original site, and penetration into the circulation. The homing of tumor cells to the bone depends on both tumor-intrinsic traits and various molecules supplied by the bone metastatic niche. The colonization and growth of cancer cells in the osseous environment, which awaken their dormancy to form micro- and macro-metastasis, involve an intricate interaction between the circulating tumor cells and local bone cells including osteoclasts, osteoblasts, adipocytes, and macrophages. We discuss the most recent advances in the identification of new molecules and novel mechanisms during each step of bone metastasis that may serve as promising therapeutic targets.
Predicting protein contact map using evolutionary and physical constraints by integer programming

Motivation: Protein contact map describes the pairwise spatial and functional relationship of residues in a protein and contains key information for protein 3D structure prediction. Although studied extensively, it remains challenging to predict contact map using only sequence information. Most existing methods predict the contact map matrix element-by-element, ignoring correlation among contacts and physical feasibility of the whole-contact map. A couple of recent methods predict contact map by using mutual information, taking into consideration contact correlation and enforcing a sparsity restraint, but these methods demand for a very large number of sequence homologs for the protein under consideration and the resultant contact map may be still physically infeasible. Results: This article presents a novel method PhyCMAP for contact map prediction, integrating both evolutionary and physical restraints by machine learning and integer linear programming. The evolutionary restraints are much more informative than mutual information, and the physical restraints specify more concrete relationship among contacts than the sparsity restraint. As such, our method greatly reduces the solution space of the contact map matrix and, thus, significantly improves prediction accuracy. Experimental results confirm that PhyCMAP outperforms currently popular methods no matter how many sequence homologs are available for the protein under consideration. Availability: http://raptorx.uchicago.edu. Contact: moc.liamg@uxobnij
Consumer Decision-Making at an Internet Shopbot

Internet shopbots compare prices and service levels at competing retailers, creating a laboratory for analyzing consumer choice. We analyze 20,268 shopbot consumers who select various books from 33 retailers over 69 days for a total of 1,512,856 observed offers. Although each retailer offers a homogeneous product, we find that brand is an important determinant of consumer choice. Consumers use brand as a proxy for retailer credibility in non-contractible aspects of the product and service bundle, such as shipping reliability. Our results also suggest that consumers are sensitive to how total price is allocated between the item price, shipping price, and tax.
Shock drift acceleration

We review basic aspects of shock drift acceleration at fast‐mode collisionless shocks, and describe recent modeling efforts that incorporate such effects as shock structure, shock curvature, magnetic loops, rippled shocks, and magnetic turbulence.
Identities of the Function f(x,y) = x^2 + y^3

Harvey Friedman asked in 1986 whether the function f(x,y) = x^2 + y^3 on the real plane R^2 satisfies any identities; examples of identities are commutativity and associativity. To solve this problem of Friedman, we must either find a nontrivial identity involving expressions formed by recursively applying f to a set of variables {x_1,x_2, ..., x_n} that holds in the real numbers or to prove that no such identities hold. In this paper, we will solve certain special cases of Friedman's problem and explore the connection between this problem and certain Diophantine equations.
Assessment Practices of Child Clinicians: Results From a National Survey

Assessment is an integral component of treatment. However, prior surveys indicate clinicians may not use standardized assessment strategies. We surveyed 1,510 clinicians and used multivariate analysis of variance to explore group differences in specific measure use. Clinicians used unstandardized measures more frequently than standardized measures, although psychologists used standardized measures more frequently than nonpsychologists. We also used latent profile analysis to classify clinicians based on their overall approach to assessment and examined associations between clinician-level variables and assessment class or profile membership. A four-profile model best fit the data. The largest profile consisted of clinicians who primarily used unstandardized assessments (76.7%), followed by broad-spectrum assessors who regularly use both standardized and unstandardized assessment (11.9%), and two smaller profiles of minimal (6.0%) and selective assessors (5.5%). Compared with broad-spectrum assessors, unstandardized and minimal assessors were less likely to report having adequate standardized measures training. Implications for clinical practice and training are discussed.
Localization of intra-cerebral sources of electrical activity via linearly constrained minimum variance spatial filtering

Measurements of electrical field potentials at the scalp are used to localize sources of electrical activity within the brain. Neuronal sources are modeled as current dipoles. The medum (brain, skull scalp) is linear so that the potential at the scalp is the superposition of the potentials from many active neurons. These properties are used to develop a mathematical model relating neural activity to the spatial distribution of the scalp potential. Linearly constrained minimum variance spatial filters are based on this model to estimate power as a function of position within the brain. Simulations illustrate the effectiveness of this approach for localizing an unknown number of sources. >
The tumor suppressor p53 and the oncoprotein simian virus 40 T antigen bind to overlapping domains on the MDM2 protein.

Abstract The oncogene mdm2 has been found to be amplified in human sarcomas, and the gene product binds to the tumor suppressor p53. In this report, we describe the dissection of the MDM2-binding domain on p53 as well as the p53-binding domain on MDM2. We also demonstrate that the oncoprotein simian virus 40 T antigen binds to the product of cellular oncogene mdm2. We have constructed several N- and C-terminal deletion mutants of p53 and MDM2, expressed them in vitro, and assayed their in vitro association capability. The N-terminal boundary of the p53-binding domain on MDM2 is between amino acids 1 and 58, while the C-terminal boundary is between amino acids 221 and 155. T antigen binds to an overlapping domain on the MDM2 protein. On the other hand, the MDM2-binding domain of p53 is defined by amino acids 1 and 159 at the N terminus. At the C terminus, binding is progressively reduced as amino acids 327 to 145 are deleted. We determined the effect of human MDM2 on the transactivation ability of wild-type human p53 in the Saos-2 osteosarcoma cell line, which does not have any endogenous p53. Human MDM2 inhibited the ability of human p53 to transactivate the promoter with p53-binding sites. Thus, human MDM2 protein, like the murine protein, can inactivate the transactivation ability of human p53. Interestingly, both the transactivation domain and the MDM2-binding domain of p53 are situated near the N terminus. We further show that deletion of the N-terminal 58 amino acids of MDM2, which eliminates p53 binding, also abolishes the capability of inactivating p53-mediated transactivation. This finding suggests a correlation of in vitro p53-MDM2 binding with MDM2's ability in vivo to interfere with p53-mediated transactivation.
Electron microscopy of young Candida albicans chlamydospores.

One- to three-day-old cultures of Candida albicans bearing chlamydospores were grown and harvested by a special technique, free of agar, and prepared for ultramicrotomy and electron microscopy. These young chlamydospores exhibited a subcellular structure similar to that of the yeast phase, e.g., cytoplasmic membrane, ribosomes, and mitochondria. Other structural characteristics unique to chlamydospores were a very thick, layered cell wall, the outer layer of which was continuous with the outer layer of the suspensor cell wall and was covered by hair-like projections; membrane bound organelles; and large lipoid inclusions. Only young chlamydospores less than 3 to 4 days old exhibited these ultrastructural characteristics.
The PGPA gene of Leishmania major mediates antimony (SbIII) resistance by decreasing influx and not by increasing efflux.

Two types of proteins belonging to the P-glycoprotein family but differing greatly in sequence and function have been described in the trypanosomatid parasite Leishmania. One includes the MDR1 genes of L. donovani and L. enriettii [1-3]. Overexpression of MDR1 by either transfection or gene amplification confers resistance to hydrophobic drugs including vinblastine and puromycin. This phenotype is similar to that conferred by overexpression of mammalian MDR1 genes, where these P-glycoproteins mediate decreased drug accumulation by increasing ATP-dependent drug efflux [19,20]. Decreased puromycin accumulation was also found in Leishmania overexpressing MDR1, although the relative contribution of efflux and influx could not be determined [1]. Another class of P-glycoproteins does not confer resistance to hydrophobic drugs and is exemplified
Adsorption of Xenon on Purified HiPco Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes

We have measured adsorption of xenon on purified HiPco single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) for coverages in the first layer. We compare the results on this substrate to those our group obtained in earlier measurements on lower purity arc-discharge produced nanotubes. To obtain an estimate for the binding energy of Xe, we measured five low-coverage isotherms for temperatures between 220 and 260 K. We determined a value of 256 meV for the binding energy; this value is 9% lower than the value we found for arc discharge nanotubes and is 1.59 times the value found for this quantity on planar graphite. We have measured five full monolayer isotherms between 150 and 175 K. We have used these data to obtain the coverage dependence of the isosteric heat. The experimental values obtained are compared with previously published computer simulation results for this quantity.
X-Ray crystal and molecular structure of trimethyltin glycinate, a polymeric, trigonal bipyramidal tin compound

Trimethyltin glycinate is shown by X-ray crystallography to be a linear polymer with amino-bridged trigonal bipyramidal units.