cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Low And Moderate Resolution Spectroscopy With An Rca Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)

An RCA buried channel thinned 320 x 512 CCD has recently been put into operation as the detector on the blue side of a new double spectrograph used at the Cassegrain focus of the Hale 5.08 m telescope. The chip is used in a vacuum dewer at a temperature of -132 C. The readout noise over most of the chip is 46 electrons per pixel, but on one side of the device there are columns with readout noise three times as high as this. When used in a spectroscopic mode with an f/1.5 beam, the CCD shows interference pattterns with an amplitude of 5 to 20%. This pattern occurs most clearly above 5000 A. It appears to be stable and can be removed by using standard flat-field exposures. At signal levels of a few hundred electrons there are some charge transfer problems. The quantum efficiency between 4000 and 6500 is very high, and the efficiency at 3260 A is about 20% of that at 4200 A. Above 6500 A the sensitivity begins to drop steadily.
Haem‐regulated eIF2α kinase is necessary for adaptive gene expression in erythroid precursors under the stress of iron deficiency

Haem-regulated eIF2alpha kinase (HRI) is essential for the regulation of globin gene translation and the survival of erythroid precursors in iron/haem deficiency. This study found that that in iron deficiency, fetal definitive erythropoiesis is inhibited at the basophilic erythroblast stage with increased proliferation and elevated apoptosis. This hallmark of ineffective erythropoiesis is more severe in HRI deficiency. Microarray gene profiling analysis showed that HRI was required for adaptive gene expression in erythroid precursors during chronic iron deficiency. The number of genes with expression affected more than twofold increased, from 213 in iron deficiency and 73 in HRI deficiency, to 3135 in combined iron and HRI deficiencies. Many of these genes are regulated by Gata1 and Fog1. We demonstrate for the first time that Gata1 expression in developing erythroid precursors is decreased in iron deficiency, and is decreased further in combined iron and HRI deficiencies. Additionally, Fog1 expression is decreased in combined deficiencies, but not in iron or HRI deficiency alone. Our results indicate that HRI confers adaptive gene expression in developing erythroblasts during iron deficiency through maintaining Gata1/Fog1 expression.
Simulating sigma-delta modulators in AWEswit

The paper describes the modeling and simulation of switched capacitor sigma-delta modulators in AWEswit. AWEswit is a mixed signal simulator for switched capacitor circuits that merges electrical circuit simulation with event driven logic simulation. It employs asymptotic waveform evaluation (AWE) as its core simulation engine. Mixed level modeling of the circuit components is facilitated by AWEswit's ability to combine formulations in the current voltage and charge voltage regimes. AWEswit naturally handles the linear bandwidth limitations associated with switched capacitor circuits. Here, AWEswit's approach to modeling the clock feedthrough and signal dependent charge dump that characterize MOSfet switches is described. In addition, a postprocessing technique to superimpose the effect of component nonlinearity on the linear AWEswit solution is presented.
VR on a budget: developing a flight simulator in a small institution with off-the-shelf hardware and open source software

One of the advantages of large, research-oriented institutions is the availability of leading-edge projects in which faculty may involve students. Faculty at smaller colleges and universities face significant challenges in finding meaningful research projects. Some of the difficulties may include a shortage of graduate students, a lack of hardware and software resources, and limited funding. An innovative applied research project in flight simulation at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga involved the development of a virtual reality Space Shuttle landing simulation to help educate elementary and middle school students about space flight. This project addressed the above concerns by involving undergraduate as well as master's students in the project, by tapping private foundation funding, and by using off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software as a basis for the project. By adopting this approach we were able to develop an interesting and technically challenging project with benefits for the simulation users as well as the faculty and students involved, thus taking advantage of a type of educational opportunity which might not otherwise be available at a small institution.
Six-year experience using 1,000-centistoke silicone oil in 916 patients for soft-tissue augmentation in a private practice setting.

BACKGROUND There are no previously published reports focusing exclusively on the use of 1,000-centistoke purified polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS-1000) for cosmetic soft-tissue augmentation. OBJECTIVE To provide clinical experience with its cosmetic use, solely and in conjunction with other nonpermanent fillers, in a private practice setting. METHODS AND MATERIALS A retrospective chart review was conducted for patients treated by the author over 6 years, beginning in 2003. Treatments were tabulated according to facial region and arbitrarily designated as rhytides, acne scars, lips, infraorbital, nasolabial, and general contour. Therefore, up to six treatments were possible with any visit. Concomitant treatment with nonpermanent fillers, as well as any significant adverse events, was noted as well. RESULTS Nine hundred sixteen patients were treated (816 (89%) female, 100 (11%) male). There were 5,246 treatments over 3,307 visits, with an average of 3.5 visits per patient and 1.6 treatments per visit. Adverse events were limited to overcorrection in 11 patients (1%). Of the 916 patients, 257 (28%) were also treated with other (nonpermanent) fillers without incident. CONCLUSION Over the 6-year period, PDMS-1000 was found to be effective and safe in the cosmetic practice setting. Other (nonpermanent) fillers were also used without incident.
Fecal corticosterone assessment in the epaulette shark, Hemiscyllium ocellatum.

The present study examined the feasibility of measuring the steroid hormone corticosterone in fecal extracts of epaulette sharks, Hemiscyllium ocellatum. Six immature, captive- raised epaulette sharks (four females and two males) were obtained from two different zoos and were maintained in a closed-system, 530-liter aquarium. After a one-month adaptation, fecal samples were collected daily from each animal for 33 days. Five-day sets of samples were pooled within animals to insure sufficient material for analysis. Fecal hormone extraction was achieved using repeated cycles of dichloromethane and aqueous washes. The levels of corticosterone were measured by reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Corticosterone presence in HPLC eluent peaks from fecal extracts was determined by comparison of the elution pattern of corticosterone standard with the elution patterns of fecal extracts with and without the addition of tritiated corticosterone or exogenous, unlabeled corticosterone. Exclusive presence of corticosterone in HPLC eluent peaks presumed to be corticosterone was determined by nuclear magnetic resonance mass spectrometry. Corticosterone levels, calculated from a 10-point standard curve, ranged from 1.2 to 20.9 ng/g feces across all sharks, with 92.3% of values being r13.5 ng/g. Within individuals, the lowest average for corticosterone levels across 33 days was 2.670.4 ng/g feces, and the highest average was 8.472.2 ng/g feces. This study demonstrated that corticosterone was extractable from and reliably measurable in fecal extracts of epaulette sharks. This is the first evidence of this hormone in epaulette sharks and the first report of fecal corticosterone in elasmobranchs. J. Exp.
Physical Module Networks

Motivation: Deciphering the complex mechanisms by which regulatory networks control gene expression remains a major challenge. While some studies infer regulation from dependencies between the expression levels of putative regulators and their targets, others focus on measured physical interactions. Results: Here, we present Physical Module Networks, a unified framework that combines a Bayesian model describing modules of co-expressed genes and their shared regulation programs, and a physical interaction graph, describing the protein–protein interactions and protein-DNA binding events that coherently underlie this regulation. Using synthetic data, we demonstrate that a Physical Module Network model has similar recall and improved precision compared to a simple Module Network, as it omits many false positive regulators. Finally, we show the power of Physical Module Networks to reconstruct meaningful regulatory pathways in the genetically perturbed yeast and during the yeast cell cycle, as well as during the response of primary epithelial human cells to infection with H1N1 influenza. Availability: The PMN software is available, free for academic use at http://www.compbio.cs.huji.ac.il/PMN/. Contact:aregev@broad.mit.edu; nirf@cs.huji.ac.il
The formation of biogeochemical laminations in Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana, and their usefulness as indicators of past environmental changes

The sediments from Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana contain a unique record of fine-scale (mm to sub-mm) laminations, which will provide a valuable annual chronometer for reconstructing paleoenvironmental changes in West Africa covering much of the last 1 Ma. Comparisons of laminae counts to independent 210Pb dates and the rise in anthropogenic “bomb” radiocarbon support the interpretation of the laminations in the uppermost sediments as registering annual events. Radiocarbon dates on in-situ fish-bone collagen are in agreement with varve counts, further supporting the annual nature of our varve chronology. Over the instrumental period (1925–1999), dark-varve thickness measurements are correlated with local rainfall (r = 0.54) and appear able to resolve decadal-scale changes in precipitation. The relationship between varve thickness and rainfall provides support for our interpretation that dark-colored varve thickness records catchment runoff during the rainy season rather than dust flux during the dry season. Dark laminae alternate with organic and carbonate-rich light laminae formed during the fall period of enhanced productivity. Downcore, varves undergo significant microstratigraphic and geochemical variations, but retain the same pattern of alternating clastic and organic-rich laminae, providing support that the laminae may represent annual time markers for reconstructions of the deeper part of the record.
Quasi-Lagrangian Large Eddy Simulations of Cross-Equatorial Flow in the East Pacific Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Using a large eddy simulation (LES), the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) is numerically modeled along 958W from 88 St o 48N during boreal autumn, and compared to observations from the East Pacific Investigation of Climate Processes in the Coupled Ocean‐Atmosphere System (EPIC) 2001. Since the local ABL winds are predominantly southerly in this season, a ‘‘quasi-Lagrangian’’ forcing is used in which the ABL air column is forced as if it were advecting northward with the mean September‐October 2001 meridional wind across the equatorial cold tongue and the rapidly warming SSTs to the north. Pressure gradients and large-scale zonal advective tendencies are prescribed as a function of latitude. Where possible, observations from the EPIC 2001 experiment are used for forcing and for comparison with model results. The ABL’s modeled vertical structure accords with the conceptual model of Wallace et al. and agrees well with observations. Surface stability accounts for the minimum in surface wind over the equatorial cold tongue and the maximum over the warm water to the north. Stability of the lower ABL over the cold tongue allows a jet to accelerate at about 500-m height, relatively uncoupled to the frictional surface layer. Vertical mixing over the warm water to the north distributes this momentum to the surface. Additional simulations were performed to explore the modeled ABL’s sensitivity to pressure gradients, zonal advection, free-tropospheric humidity, and initial conditions. The model ABL was robust: changing the forcings resulted in little change in the modeled structure. The strongest sensitivity was of stratocumulus clouds over the cold tongue to cloud-top radiative cooling. Once formed at the southern edge of the cold tongue, modeled stratocumulus clouds demonstrate a remarkable ability to maintain themselves over the cold tongue in the absence of surface fluxes by radiative cooling at their tops. The persistence of thin stratocumulus clouds in this Lagrangian model suggests that horizontal advection of condensate might be an important process in determining cloudiness over the cold tongue.
Propaganda for empire: Barbary captivity literature in the US

The origins of American demonisation of Islam and the Arabic World has roots in seventeenth century Puritanism and the nascent imperialist attitude of the new settlers. The objectivisation of the Muslim Arab in what the Europeans called ‘Barbary’, and the Native American occurred in tandem and underscored the supposed superiority of English and Puritan values and culture. This article explains how racial and religious biases in the New World worked in tandem with politics and expressed themselves in literature which was used for propagandistic purposes.
Dynamically weighted clustering with noise set

Motivation: Various clustering methods have been applied to microarray gene expression data for identifying genes with similar expression profiles. As the biological annotation data accumulated, more and more genes have been organized into functional categories. Functionally related genes may be regulated by common cellular signals, thus likely to be co-expressed. Consequently, utilizing the rapidly increasing functional annotation resources such as Gene Ontology (GO) to improve the performance of clustering methods is of great interest. On the opposite side of clustering, there are genes that have distinct expression profiles and do not co-express with other genes. Identification of these scattered genes could enhance the performance of clustering methods. Results: We developed a new clustering algorithm, Dynamically Weighted Clustering with Noise set (DWCN), which makes use of gene annotation information and allows for a set of scattered genes, the noise set, to be left out of the main clusters. We tested the DWCN method and contrasted its results with those obtained using several common clustering techniques on a simulated dataset as well as on two public datasets: the Stanford yeast cell-cycle gene expression data, and a gene expression dataset for a group of genetically different yeast segregants. Conclusion: Our method produces clusters with more consistent functional annotations and more coherent expression patterns than existing clustering techniques. Contact: yshen@stat.ucla.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Directional migration: a prototypical cellular control system

Chemotaxis, the ability to move directionally in response to external chemical gradients, is a process found in many cell types. Individual bacteria and amoebae rely on chemotaxis to hunt for food. In mammalian cells, chemotaxis is crucial during development and as part of the immune system. In this paper we show how control theory can be instrumental towards the understanding of chemotaxis.
The Comparative Effects of Famciclovir and Valacyclovir on Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Infection, Latency, and Reactivation in Mice

Infections by herpes simplex virus (HSV) cannot yet be eliminated, but the severity of the disease can be reduced. Two newer drugs with established efficacy for such infections, famciclovir and valacyclovir, were tested in a mouse eye model of HSV infection. Both drugs significantly reduced mortality and titers of virus shed from the eyes of mice infected with an otherwise lethal dose of HSV type 1 (HSV-1). Similar titers of HSV-1 were found in the eyes, ganglia, and brains of treated animals. Although valacyclovir reduced the latent viral DNA load better in these studies than did famciclovir, rates of reactivation by explantation and UV exposure were the same. Thus, in this study, famciclovir and valacyclovir were equally effective in limiting the virulence and spread of HSV-1, despite their biochemical and pharmacologic differences.
Roles of IL-1 and TNF-alpha in endotoxin-induced activation of nitric oxide synthase in cultured rat brain cells

In astrocytes and microglia, bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulates production and release of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), and nitric oxide (NO). Although IL-1 beta and TNF-alpha are themselves capable of inducing NO synthase (NOS) in glia, the specific factors mediating LPS induction of NOS in brain have not been identified. To determine whether LPS induction of NOS in brain cells is mediated by IL-1 or TNF-alpha, acting alone or in concert, the effects of IL-1-receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) and of TNF-soluble receptor (TNFsRp55), presented individually and in combination, on LPS-induced NOS activity were tested. In glial-enriched mixed primary cultures of neonatal rat telencephalic cells, LPS (0.1-100 ng/ml), IL-1 beta (0.01-10 nM), and TNF-alpha (0.1-100 nM) each concentration dependently stimulated accumulation of nitrite, an indicator of NO production. Induction of nitrite accumulation by LPS and by IL-1 was blocked by N omega-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester and N omega-monomethyl-L-arginine, indicating that it was mediated by NOS. TNF-alpha alone induced NO production weakly as compared with IL-1, but combined submaximal concentrations of IL-1 beta (1 nM) and TNF-alpha (10 nM) induced NOS synergistically. Furthermore, TNFsRp55 and IL-1Ra each produced a dose-dependent partial inhibition of the NO response to LPS, and the effect of TNFsRp55 was equal to or greater than that of IL-1Ra. TNFsRp55 and IL-1Ra in combination were not significantly more effective than TNF-sRp55 alone. The results indicate that LPS induction of NOS activity in brain cells is mediated in part by both IL-1 beta and TNF-alpha.
The Macro Impact of Short-Termism

There is a long concern in economics that investor pressure can induce managerial short-termism, which I examine through the lens of analyst earnings targets. Managers face a tradeoff between short-run profits and long-run investment. This paper starts empirically by showing that firms that just meet earnings targets lower their investment in R&D and intangibles. Firms that just miss their earnings targets cut CEO pay and face drops in stock-market valuation. The paper then builds and structurally estimates a quantitative general equilibrium endogenous growth model with heterogeneous firms, R&D and accounting manipulation choices, and endogenous earnings forecasts. In the model, the short-run pressure to meet earnings forecasts cuts growth because R&D is misallocated across firms, responding too much to short-run profit shocks. This effect cuts growth rates by almost 0.1%, costing the US economy around 6% of output each century. Extending the model to include managerial shirking and empire-building reveals that earnings targets can improve firm value but may still reduce long-run growth and consumer welfare.
UPDATE ON VASCULAR ACCESS FOR HEMODIALYSIS

Dialysis as a therapy has become nearly universally available and the ability to provide dialysis and dialysis access over long periods of time has become well established. Unfortunately, technology has yet to provide the perfect dialysis access conduit, one which will not stenose, thrombose, or be prone to infection. Native cephalic vein remains the superior dialysis conduit even 30 years after it was first described. At present, the emphasis in constructing dialysis access must be to attempt to reserve native vein, both in the arm and centrally. The most important decisions remain the ones made at the initiation of dialysis: avoiding subclavian catheters that may lead to subclavian vein stenosis and loss of that extremity for later access; nephrologists making every effort to shelter one extremity for later access formation in the patient who presents with signs of eventual need for dialysis; and if at all possible constructing a native fistula, either forearm or upper arm, which will serve the patient better in the long term, rather than the simpler course of placing a prosthetic graft. Dialysis access planning may need to look 15 to 20 years into the future for the patient who, if not a potential transplant candidate, may remain on dialysis for a very long time. The ability to keep dialysis access functional has improved markedly with the evolution of radiologic methods for thrombolysis and intervention. However, as in other areas of surgery performing the best operation first and avoiding complications is the path that best serves the patient.
Photoelectron energy spectra from elastic rescattering in ultrastrong laser fields: A relativistic extension of the three-step model

Using a relativistic adaptation of a three-step recollision model we calculate photoelectron energy spectra for ionization with elastic scattering in ultrastrong laser fields up to 24 a.u. $(2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{19}$ ${\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{cm}}^{2})$. Hydrogenlike and noble gas species with Hartree-Fock scattering potentials show a reduction in elastic rescattering beyond $6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{16}$ ${\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$ when the laser Lorentz deflection of the photoelectron exceeds its wave-function spread. A relativistic rescattering enhancement occurs at $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{18}$ ${\mathrm{W}/\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, commensurate with the relativistic motion of a classical electron in a single field cycle. The noble gas results are compared with available experiments. The theory approach is well suited to modeling scattering in the ultrastrong intensity regime that lies between traditional strong fields and extreme relativistic interactions.
Summary of Conference on Religion

Dr. Malagon and I have put our heads together and have tried to bring some system out of the discussions of this Conference. Our summary is based not only upon the papers that were presented here but also upon the critiques and comments that were sent in by mail. It is also based upon conversations and informal suggestions made outside of the room or away from the table; so if you find something here that you had not heard about, you must just attribute it to one of these extraneous sources.
Anesthesia in the Office and Small Hospital

Most physicians can safely administer certain general and local anesthetics if they are willing to acquaint themselves with the principles involved. Knowledge of resuscitation is also essential. Instruction in the preparation of the patient is offered, and the three common anesthetic technics (inhalation, regional, intravenous) are considered here.
Electrocardiographic evidences of nitrate activity in man.

Two electrocardiographic methods have been devised to test the effectiveness of nitrate compounds—the stress-related electrocardiographic index and the orthostatic electrocardiographic index. A comparison of the data derived by the two procedures reveals similar findings with respect to the onset and duration of action of glyceryl trinitrate, isosorbide dinitrate and erythrityl tetranitrate. Reasons are suggested for the disparate results obtained for a fourth nitrate compound, pentaerythritol tetranitrate.
Measurements on Cuprum Iron Magnesium Content in Electrochemistry Impregnating Solution of Ethyl Alcohol

The application of Air-Ethane flame atomic absorbing spectral method to measure the content of cuprum, iron, magnesium in electrochemistry impregnating solution of ethyl alcohol is studied. Introduces the optimum measuring conditions for Cuprum, iron, magnesium and density in which a fine liner range is presents . Makes a synthetic consideration to interference factors. The method has the advantages of high sensitivity. And this method is proved to be simple operation, easy master, short analyzing cycle, Less interference and good in selectivity and reappearance. The relative standard deviations are all less than 1.0% in ten sample measures, and the standard adding recovery is in the range of 97%-102% in six sample measures.
Effect of Hatha yoga on anxiety: a meta-analysis

Objective Some evidence suggests that Hatha yoga might be an effective practice to reduce anxiety. To examine the effect of Hatha yoga on anxiety, we conducted a meta-analysis of relevant studies extracted from PubMed, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Library, and manual searches. Method The search identified 17 studies (11 waitlist controlled trials) totaling 501 participants who received Hatha yoga and who reported their levels of anxiety before and after the practice. We estimated the controlled and within-group random effects of the practice on anxiety. Results The pre–post within-group and controlled effect sizes were, Hedges’ g = 0.44 and Hedges’ g = 0.61, respectively. Treatment efficacy was positively associated with the total number of hours practiced. People with elevated levels of anxiety benefitted the most. Effect sizes were not moderated by study year, gender, presence of a medical disorder, or age. Although the quality of the studies was relatively low, the risk of study bias did not moderate the effect. Conclusion Hatha yoga is a promising method for treating anxiety. However, more well-controlled studies are needed to compare the efficacy of Hatha yoga with other more established treatments and to understand its mechanism.
Why Groups Matter to Sociocultural Evolution

Evolutionary concepts have a rich history in sociological theory, from Spencer to Durkheim, Marx to Weber. Recently, a neo-evolutionary revival has occurred in the social sciences, (1) bringing neuroscience into dialogue with age old sociological questions of origins; (2) considering the gene-culture relationship; and (3) constructing sweeping general theories of sociocultural evolution. Generally, the role collective actors play in the evolutionary process is taken for granted, as is the contingent, multi-directional, and multi-linear paths evolution takes when we focus on specific cases. The paper below examines the evolution of the ancient Israelites from the 8th–6th centuries BCE , teasing out a theory that supplements these other important areas. Specifically, it is argued that (a) institutional entrepreneurs are the collectives that drive sociocultural selection processes by innovating organizationally, normatively, and symbolically; (b) their cultural assemblages are sources of variation upon which sociocultural forms of selection, like Spencerian or Marxian , can work; and, (c) institutional spheres evolve and become “survivor machines” for the entrepreneur’s assemblage, imposing it on a significant proportion of the population and reproducing it across time and space.
Antibiotics That Inhibit Protein Synthesis

Antibiotics that inhibit protein synthesis are discussed. Background biochemistry information on translation is provided. Antibiotics presented include puromycin, aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, chloramphenicol, macrolides, lincosamides, streptogramins oxazolidinones, mupirocins, and peptide deformylase inhibitors. Mechanisms of action of the antibiotics and resistance development against the antibiotics are discussed.
Education, Trade Reform and Investment Returns

This paper explores whether education and openness together can improve the development impact of investment projects - based on what we know of the World Bank's lending experience in the past twenty years. A framework is then proposed for the link between education, openness and investment returns. Our empirical results show that formal education, coupled with openness to trade and investment, has a strong positive correlation with investment returns and project performance. Fiscal discipline and good governance raise investment project returns, and corruption hampers project performance.
Editorial Board Thoughts: Requiring and Demonstrating Technical Skills for Library Employment

Editorial Board Thoughts: Requiring and Demonstrating Technical Skills for Library Employment
Predicting the Mortality Benefit of CT Screening for Second Lung Cancer in a High-Risk Population

Patients who survive an index lung cancer (ILC) after surgical resection continue to be at significant risk for a metachronous lung cancer (MLC). Indeed, this risk is much higher than the risk of developing an ILC in heavy smokers. There is currently little evidence upon which to base guidelines for screening at-risk patients for MLC, and the risk-reward tradeoffs for screening this patient population are unknown. The goal of this investigation was to estimate the maximum mortality benefit of CT screening for MLC. We developed a computational model to estimate the maximum rates of CT detection of MLC and surgical resection to be expected in a given population as a function of time after resection of an ILC. Applying the model to a hypothetical high-risk population suggests that screening for MLC within 5 years after resection of an ILC may identify only a very small number of treatable cancers. The risk of death from a potentially resectable MLC increases dramatically past this point, however, suggesting that screening after 5 years is imperative. The model also predicts a substantial detection gap for MLC that demonstrates the benefit to be gained as more sensitive screening methods are developed.
Broad-Spectrum Mountain Waves

AbstractRecent airborne mountain-wave measurements over New Zealand in the lower stratosphere during the Deep Propagating Gravity Wave Experiment (DEEPWAVE) campaign allow for improved spectral analysis of velocities u, υ, and w, pressure p, and temperature T fluctuations. Striking characteristics of these data are the spectral breadth and the different spectral shapes of the different physical quantities. Using idealized complex terrain as a guide, the spectra are divided into the long-wave “volume mode” arising from airflow over the whole massif and the short-wave “roughness mode” arising from flow into and out of valleys. The roughness mode is evident in the aircraft data as an intense band of w power from horizontal wavelength λ = 8–40 km. The shorter part of this band (i.e., λ = 8–15 km) falls near the nonhydrostatic buoyancy cutoff (λ = 2πU/N). It penetrates easily into the lower stratosphere but carries little u power or momentum flux. The longer part of this roughness mode (i.e., λ = 15–40 km) car...
miR-15a/16 inhibits TGF-beta3/VEGF signaling and increases retinal endothelial cell barrier proteins

Hyperglycemia is a significant risk factor for diabetic retinopathy and induces multiple biochemical changes, including inflammation and endothelial dysfunction in the retina. Alterations in microRNA expression have been implicated in the pathological responses of diabetic retinopathy and the manipulation of microRNA may provide powerful strategy for therapeutics. Among the predicted targets of miR-15a and -16 are TGF-beta3, SMAD2/3, and VEGF, all of which are known to play a role in vascular endothelial functions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that miR-15a/16 inhibits TGF-beta3/VEGF signaling to maintain retinal endothelial cell barrier protein levels. Human primary retinal endothelial cells (REC) were maintained in normal (5mM) glucose or transferred to high glucose medium (25mM) for 3days. REC were transfected with miRNA mimics (hsa-miR-15a-5p and -16-5p). Retinal lysates from miR-15a-transgenic mice were also analyzed. We demonstrated that overexpression of miR-15a/16 resulted in decreased TGF-beta3 signaling and VEGF levels in cultured REC grown in high glucose conditions. In addition, the levels of tight junction proteins, zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) and occludin, were elevated in REC following overexpression of miR-15a and -16. Overexpression of miR-15a and -16 played a role in reducing cellular permeability through inhibition of VEGF signaling in REC cultured under high glucose conditions. Using miR-15a-transgenic mice, we demonstrated the regulatory role of miR-15a on TGF-beta3 signaling and tight junction proteins in vivo. Our outcomes suggest that miR-15a/16 maintain the retinal endothelial cell barrier by reducing TGFbeta3/VEGF signaling and increasing levels of key tight junction proteins.
Parameter Shrinkage for Joint Age-Period-Cohort Modeling of Related Datasets

Actuaries use age-period-cohort (APC) models for mortality modeling and general insurance loss reserving. Several recent papers have addressed simultaneously modeling related datasets, such as loss triangles for subsets of a class of business or mortality data across regions. This paper does joint modeling by shrinking the differences among the same parameters for different datasets. This could loosely be described as credibility weighting for triangles, but it comes more directly from statistical approaches such as ridge regression and lasso. Like credibility, these seek to reduce estimation and prediction error by various forms of shrinkage. The models discussed here already incorporate parameter reduction by smoothing linear spline slope changes. This is extended to also shrink the differences between the same slope changes for different datasets. Doing so can reduce prediction error, measured using penalized log-likelihood, by increasing model parsimony. Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation is used in an example to illustrate the method. A related classical approach based on random effects is introduced as an alternative. The example is a joint model of historical female mortality data for Spain and Japan -- two of the world's longest lived populations.
Benign Brain Tumors: Meningiomas, Pituitary Tumors, and Acoustic Neuromas

Meningiomas, pituitary adenomas, and vestibular schwannomas are the most common benign brain tumors in adults. Together they account for 30% to 40% of primary brain tumors. Surgery remains the treatment of choice for most of these tumors. Recent advances in surgical techniques and intraoperative monitoring have decreased significantly the morbidity associated with surgery. For patients with inoperable or recurrent tumors, there is increasing evidence that standard external beam radiotherapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, and stereotactic radiotherapy all have a therapeutic role. These advances have been complemented by progress in medical therapies for pituitary adenomas and meningiomas.
Practice to Research: Rapport as Key to Creating an Effective Learning Environment:

Rapport is an instructional variable that is “tricky to understand,” which is perhaps the reason why it is understudied in the extant literature. Certainly, essays, tip lists, and effective teachin...
The Evolving Role of Neck Dissection in the Era of Organ Preservation Therapy for Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Chemotherapy in combination with radiation therapy has evolved over the last several decades as an important modality in the treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Because of the effectiveness of chemoradiation therapy at controlling disease at the primary site, ablative surgery is generally reserved for surgical salvage if chemoradiation fails to control primary site disease. However, the role of surgery in the treatment of regional neck metastases remains controversial. At the core of this controversy is whether chemoradiation alone is adequate to control neck metastases or whether adjunctive neck dissection should be added for effective control.
Advanced Transgenic and Gene-Targeting Approaches

Over the past two decades the techniques associated with the manipulation of the mouse genome have provided a powerful approach toward the better understanding of gene function. Conventional transgenic and gene targeting approaches have been used extensively, and these techniques have been particularly rewarding for neuroscientists. Nevertheless, the traditional approaches toward genome manipulation have certain limitations that diminish their usefulness for studying more sophisticated biological processes. Therefore, variations to these techniques have recently been developed. The improvements are focused on two areas: one provides regulated control of transgene expression using an inducible expression system; and the other provides the opportunity to inactivate genes in specific cells and at predetermined developmental stages with a conditional gene targeting system. This review summarizes the advantages as well as some of the technical difficulties of these new approaches. The application of these advanced approaches in biomedical research, particularly neuroscience, are also discussed.
The Thirteenth Amendment and Pro-Equality Speech

The Thirteenth Amendment’s Framers envisioned the Amendment as providing federal authority to eliminate the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The freemen and their descendants are the most likely to be burdened with the effects of stigma, stereotypes, and structural discrimination arising from the slave system. Because African Americans are therefore the most obvious beneficiaries of the Amendment’s promise to eliminate the legacy of slavery, it is often mistakenly assumed that federal power to eradicate the badges and incidents of slavery only permits remedies aimed at redressing the subordination of African Americans. While African Americans were the primary victims of slavery and are the most likely to feel the effects of its legacy, however, the debates leading to the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification reveal that its architects understood the Slave Power to have inflicted grave harm upon the country itself by undermining the founding ideals in service of slavery. One incident of slavery felt keenly by non-blacks and of immediate interest to the Amendment’s Framers was the public and private suppression of abolitionists’ and Unionists’ freedom of speech. Prior to and following the Civil War, slaveowners and their allies routinely retaliated against the advocates of freedom with impunity. This Essay argues that contemporary antiretaliation law provides inadequate protection of those who engage in pro-equality speech, and that the Thirteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to expand such protection.
Affinity Labeling and Related Approaches to Targeting Specific Enzyme Sites

Identification and mapping of the active and allosteric sites of enzymes is important to the enzymologist who seeks understanding of the structural basis of catalysis and regulation, to the medicinal chemist who aims at designing rationally new drugs based on their ability to inhibit or inactivate particular enzymes, and to protein engineers who propose the construction of improved enzymes or novel proteins that can catalyze desirable new reactions. One approach to locating the active site of an enzyme is to chemically modify an amino acid residue and then to correlate the extent of modification of that amino acid with the degree of inactivation of the enzyme. However, limitation of chemical modification of a protein to one or a few residues is difficult to accomplish. The strategy of affinity labeling restricts the extent of chemical modification to the region of the catalytic site by exploiting the specificity of the enzyme for its natural substrate: a reagent is designed that is related structurally to the normal substrate or regulatory compound of the enzyme but that also features a functional group capable of reacting covalently with various types of amino acid. Such a compound is intended to mimic the substrate in forming a reversible enzyme-reagent complex analogous to the enzyme-substrate complex and, once bound at the specific ligand site, to react irreversibly with an amino acid residue within that site.
Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) of the flow dynamics for a viscoelastic fluid in a four-roll mill geometry at the Stokes limit

Abstract Numerical simulations of viscoelastic fluids in the Stokes limit with a four-roll mill background force were performed at a range of Weissenberg number (non-dimensional relaxation time). For small Weissenberg number the flow is steady and symmetric but upon increasing the Weissenberg number (corresponding to increased elasticity or flow memory time), the flow becomes unstable leading to a variety of temporal evolutions to different periodic and aperiodic solutions. These dynamics were analyzed using a Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) that extracted elastic modes in terms of their contribution to the energy of the system. The temporal behavior of the system, captured by the decomposition, indicates that the motion of the stagnation points drives the different flow transitions. In particular, a transition to an asymmetric state occurs when the extensional stagnation points lose their pinning to the background forcing. A further transition to higher frequency modal dynamics occurs when the stagnation points that were initially tied by the forcing to the centers of the rolls, begin to move. The relative frequencies of the motion of these stagnation points is a critical factor in determining the complexity of the flow, measured by the number of modes needed to capture most of the energy in the system. Even when the flows are more complex a small number of modes is sufficient to capture the time evolution of these flows, demonstrating the usefulness of the POD applied to viscoelastic fluids at zero Reynolds number.
The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China: History Word by Word

This book provides a conceptual history of the emergence of civilizational consciousness in early China. Focusing on how words are used in pre-Qin (before 221 BCE) texts to construct identities and negotiate relationships between a 'civilised self' and 'uncivilised others', it provides a re-examination of the origins and development of these ideas. By adopting a novel approach to determining when civilizational consciousness emerged in pre-Qin China, this book analyzes this question in ways that establish a fresh hermeneutical dialogue between Chinese and modern European understandings of 'civilization.' Whereas previous studies have used archaeological data to place its origin somewhere between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE, this book explores changes in word meanings in texts from the pre-Qin period to reject this view. Instead, this book dates the emergence of civilizational consciousness in China to around 2,500 years ago. In the process, new chronologies of the coining of Old Chinese terms such as ‘customs,’ ‘barbarians,’ and ‘the Great ones,’ are proposed, which challenge anachronistic assumptions about these terms in earlier studies. Examining important Chinese classics, such as the Analects, the Mencius and the Mozi, as well as key historical periods and figures in the context of the concept of ‘civilization,’ this book will useful to students and scholars of Chinese and Asian history.
Integrated multidisciplinarity in the natural sciences

The integration of multiple perspectives in both the arts and natural sciences is tremendously powerful and arguably necessary for capturing relevant features of complex phenomena. Individual methods and models comprise abstractions from and idealizations of nature, and only the integration of multiple models, methods, and representations provides a means to reach more accurate results than relying on any single approach. In my Mildred Cohn Award Lecture at the 2019 ASBMB meeting, I illustrated the power of such multidisciplinary work by highlighting the successful integration of data and multiple views afforded by NMR spectroscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, cryo-electron tomography, X-ray crystallography, computation, and functional assays made possible through collaborative efforts by members of the Pittsburgh Center for HIV Protein Interactions. This approach permitted us to generate the first all-atom model of a native HIV-1 capsid core.
Representation of speech sounds in the auditory nerve

Speech signals entering the inner ear are translated from sound-pressure vibrations into electrical impulses on the nerve fibers that connect the cochlea to the central nervous system. Responses of these nerve fibers to consonant-vowel syllables, containing both stops and nasal sounds, may be characterized as a three-dimensional encoding of the acoustic stimulus (average rate, discharge synchrony and tonotopic place) which retains many of its temporal and spectral features. Although some phonetically significant features appear to be enhanced in the transformation, there is no evidence of “categorization” at the cochlear level.
Dietary Patterns and Progression of Knee Osteoarthritis: Data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative.

BACKGROUND While some individual foods and nutrients have been associated with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) progression, the association between dietary patterns and KOA progression has received little research attention. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to determine whether dietary patterns, derived by principal components analysis (PCA), are associated with KOA progression. METHODS In the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), a prospective cohort with clinical centers in Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, 2757 participants with existing KOA (mean age 62 y) and diet assessed at baseline were followed for ≤72 mo. Using PCA, Western and prudent dietary patterns were derived. Radiographic KOA progression was assessed using 2 separate measures, 1 full Kellgren-Lawrence (KL) grade increase and loss in joint space width (JSW). Symptomatic KOA progression was defined as an increase in or remaining in 1 of the 2 highest classification categories of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC). RESULTS Adherence to Western and prudent dietary patterns was significantly associated with radiographic and symptomatic progression of KOA. With increasing Western pattern score, there was increased KL-worsening risk (compared with quartile 1, HR for quartile 4: 1.30; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.61; P-trend < 0.01) and increased odds of progression to higher WOMAC score (compared with quartile 1, OR for quartile 4: 1.39; 95% CI: 1.18, 1.63; P-trend < 0.01) but no significant change in JSW loss. With increasing prudent pattern score there was decreased KL-worsening risk (compared with quartile 1, HR for quartile 4: 0.79; 95% CI: 0.64, 0.98; P-trend = 0.02), decreased JSW loss (quartile 1: 0.46 mm; quartile 4: 0.38 mm; P-trend < 0.01), and decreased odds of higher WOMAC progression (compared with quartile 1, OR for quartile 4 0.73; 95% CI: 0.62, 0.86; P-trend < 0.01) in multivariable adjusted models. CONCLUSIONS Adherence to a Western dietary pattern was associated with increased radiographic and symptomatic KOA progression, while following a prudent pattern was associated with reduced progression. In general, for people already diagnosed with KOA, eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, whole grains, and legumes may be related to decreased radiographic and symptomatic disease progression.