cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Chronic infusion of interleukin-17 promotes hypertension, activation of cytolytic natural killer cells, and vascular dysfunction in pregnant rats.

Previous studies by our lab have established that placental-ischemia stimulated T-helper 17 cells (TH 17s) cause increased cytolytic natural killer (cNK) cell proliferation and activation during pregnancy; however, the exact mechanism is unknown. The objective of this study was to investigate the role of interlukin 17 (IL-17) in inducing cNK cell activation in pregnancy. We infused 150 pg/day of recombinant IL-17 into a subset of normal pregnant (NP) Sprague Dawley rats from gestation day (GD) 12-19 (NP+IL-17). On GD 19, mean arterial pressure (MAP), fetal and placental weights, cytokines, cNK cell activation, cytotoxic enzymes, and vascular reactivity were assessed. MAP significantly increased from 99 ± 3 mmHg in NP to 120 ± 1 mmHg in NP+IL-17 (P < 0.05). Fetal weight significantly decreased from 2.52 ± 0.04 g in NP to 2.32 ± 0.03 g in NP+IL-17 as did placental weight (NP: 0.65 ± 0.03 g; NP+IL-17: 0.54 ± 0.01 g, P < 0.05). Plasma levels of TNF-α increased to 281.4 ± 55.07 pg/mL in NP+IL-17 from 145.3 ± 16.03 pg/mL in NP (P < 0.05) while placental levels of VEGF decreased from 74.2 ± 6.48 pg/mg in NP to 54.2 ± 3.19 pg/mg in NP+IL-17. Total NK cells were increased in the placenta (NP: 14.3 ± 3.49%; NP+IL-17: 29.33 ± 2.76%, P < 0.05) as were cytolytic NK cells (NP: 3.31 ± 1.25%; NP+IL-17: 13.41 ± 1.81%, P < 0.05). A similar trend was observed in circulating NK cells. Plasma granzyme K increased from 3.55 ± 2.29 pg/mL in NP to 20.9 ± 7.76 pg/mL in NP+IL-17 (P < 0.05), and plasma granzyme B increased from 10.95 ± 0.64 pg/mL in NP to 14.9 ± 0.98 pg/mL in NP+IL-17(P < 0.05). In the placenta, both granzyme A (NP: 246.1 ± 16.7 pg/mg; NP+IL-17: 324.3 ± 15.07 pg/mg, P < 0.05) and granzyme B (NP: 15.18 ± 3.79 pg/mg; NP+IL-17: 27.25 ± 2.34 pg/mg, P < 0.05) increased in response to IL-17 infusion. Finally, vascular reactivity of uterine arteries was significantly impaired in response to IL-17 infusion. The results of this study suggest that IL-17 plays a significant role in the activation of cNK cells during pregnancy.
Das Keimen ölhaltiger Samen und die „natürliche” Parthenogenese

Wir haben zwei Reihen von Tatsachen, welche beide zeigen, das der Prozes der Entwicklungserregung in allen tierischen Eiern in letzter Instanz der gleiche sein mus: Einmal die Tatsachen der heterogenen Hybridisation, welche beweisen, das eine beliebige Eizelle (die des Seeigels) durch den Samen beliebiger Formen — Seesterne, Holothurien, Ophiuriden, Krinoide und sogar Mollusken — zur Entwicklung angeregt werden kann; zweitens die Tatsachen der kunstlichen Parthenogenese, welche dartun, das bei den Eiern der verschiedensten Tiere dieselben oder ahnliche Methoden die Entwicklung anregen.
Clinical Aspects of Immune Damage in Cryptococcosis

To perform an extensive review of recent literature and provide an update on the current epidemiology, clinical features, and management of cryptococcal disease with a focus on the differences between patients depending on their immune status. Emerging literature has highlighted the inflammatory pathophysiology and varied manifestations of cryptococcal infections in patients who are apparently healthy but paradoxically have a more critical clinical course compared with their immunosuppressed counterparts. Non-HIV cryptococcal meningitis has greater mortality compared with that seen in HIV patients. Basic science experiments closely analyzing the underlying pathophysiological response to this infection have demonstrated the predominant role of T cell–mediated inflammatory injury in causing worse clinical outcomes. Further studies are needed to define the need for immunosuppressive agents in the treatment of this illness.
Minocycline fails to improve neurologic and histologic outcome after ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest in rats

Minocycline fails to improve neurologic and histologic outcome after ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest in rats
Decreasing Resident Physician Burnout Requires a Multifaceted Approach

* Abbreviation: PRB-RSC — : Pediatric Resident Burnout-Resilience Study Consortium The alarming rate of physician burnout is a call to action on behalf of current trainees and future generations of doctors. Although this concern was identified more than a decade ago, little progress has been made. Symptoms of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficiency are widespread in this work environment. In addition, physicians also face high levels of individual stress, anxiety, and depression. The Pediatric Resident Burnout-Resilience Study Consortium (PRB-RSC) surveyed a cross-section of pediatric residents from 49 programs across the United States. The survey revealed a >50% burnout rate among pediatric residents.1 Importantly, this study also identified protective and risk factors that impact burnout. As medical educators, it is our responsibility to take an evidence-based approach and evaluate these factors. Afterward, a comprehensive plan to modify trainee burnout and improve overall wellness can be further developed. Resident burnout in pediatrics is not unique; it is present in all specialties. Chaukos … Address correspondence to Jeanine C. Ronan, MD, MS, MSEd, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 3401 Civic Center Blvd, 9th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: ronan{at}email.chop.edu
Exterior Dirichlet Problem

The exterior Dirichlet problem consists in finding u such that $$\displaystyle \begin {array}{rl} &Au(x)=0,\quad x\in S^-,\\ &u(x)=\mathscr {D}(x),\quad x\in {\partial S},\\ &u\in \mathscr {A}^*, \end {array} $$ where the vector function \(\mathscr {D}\in C^{(1,\alpha )}({\partial S})\), α ∈ (0, 1), is prescribed.
Accelerating the pace of ecotoxicological assessment using artificial intelligence.

Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) is a key metric for understanding the potential ecotoxicological impacts of chemicals. However, SSDs have been developed to estimate for only handful of chemicals due to the scarcity of experimental toxicity data. Here we present a novel approach to expand the chemical coverage of SSDs using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). We collected over 2000 experimental toxicity data in Lethal Concentration 50 (LC50) for 8 aquatic species and trained an ANN model for each of the 8 aquatic species based on molecular structure. The R2 values of resulting ANN models range from 0.54 to 0.75 (median R2 = 0.69). We applied the predicted LC50 values to fit SSD curves using bootstrapping method, generating SSDs for 8424 chemicals in the ToX21 database. The dataset is expected to serve as a screening-level reference SSD database for understanding potential ecotoxicological impacts of chemicals.
Sedatives and hypnotics

Abstract Sedative hypnotics are medications that cause suppression of the central nervous system by primarily working through GABA agonism. The classes of medications that constitute this category are benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepine receptor agonists. These medications are utilized for their potential treatments for a variety of conditions including anxiety, fear, insomnia, panic attacks, seizures, restless leg syndrome, sedation and alcohol withdrawal. These classes of medications have considerable side effects that need to be taken into account upon administration and require careful monitoring, specifically in regard to diverse patient characteristics such as baseline renal and hepatic function and also when used concomitantly with other medications that produce sedation through similar and synergistic mechanisms. This adverse event (AE) profile is generally well understood but continued use offers further insights for careful administration. A review of the 2020 publications provides further insight to contribute to the currently available literature. Additional review can be found in previous SEDA publications ( Haghparast et al., 2020 ) [R].
Invariance Properties of OWA Operators

OWA and ordinal OWA operators are studied from the standpoint of representational measurement theory. Meaningfulness of a relation among variables is formalized in measurement theory as the invariance property of the relation under consideration with respect to a particular group of admissible transformations. In the paper, we treat OWA and more general WOSA operators as functions representing meaningful statements in ratio scales. Similarly, ordinal OWA operators are treated as measurements in ordinal scales. In addition to invariance properties, we use regularity properties to establish complete characterizations of these classes of aggregation functions.
A Study of Consumer Perception of the Service/Producer Unity Concept

This paper considers consumer behavior relative to the service characteristics of inseparability between the services and its producer.
How Should Mathematical Models of Geomorphic Processes be Judged

Mathematical models of geomorphic processes can have value as both predictive tools and precise conceptual frameworks. Well-posed mechanistic models have great conceptual value because they link geomorphic processes to universal scientific principles, such as conservation of energy, momentum, and mass. Models without this linkage (e.g., models based exclusively on cellular rules or empirical correlations) have less conceptual value but offer logical methodology for making practical predictions in some circumstances. Clear tests of the predictive power of mechanistic models can be achieved in controlled experiments, whereas natural landscapes typically have uncontrolled initial and boundary conditions and unresolved geological heterogeneities that preclude decisive tests. The best mechanistic models have a simplicity that results from minimizing assumptions and postulates, rather than minimizing mathematics, and this simplicity promotes conclusive tests. Optimal models also employ only parameters that are defined and measured outside the model context. Common weaknesses in geomorphic models result from use of freely coined equations without clear links to conservation laws or compelling data, use of fitted rather than measured values of parameters, lack of clear distinction between assumptions and approximations, and neglect of the four-dimensional (space + time) nature of most geomorphic processes. Models for predicting landslide runout illustrate principles and pitfalls that are common to all geomorphic modeling.
Online Appendix for 'Encroachment as an Enhancement or a Hindrance to Nonlinear Pricing'

In section E.C.1, we show that the optimal separating solution always dominates the optimal pooling solution in our model. In section E.C.2, we present two extensions of our base model. In EC.2.1, we extend our model to a setting with a continuously distributed market size. We allow for the possibility that the development of encroachment capability allows the supplier to receive demand information through her direct channel in EC.2.2.The paper "Supplier Encroachment as an Enhancement or a Hindrance to Nonlinear Pricing" to which these Appendices apply is available at the following URL:http://ssrn.com/abstract=2118161
IBM AS/400 processor architecture and design methodology

The IBM AS/400 is a family of general purpose mid-range computers specifically designed to run commercial business applications and transaction processing in batch and interactive environments. The April, 1991 announcement is the second generation of the system. It provides a 2.7 times performance improvement over its predecessor. Architectural support for multiprocessors is also part of the product. Achieving this performance improvement required significant changes to the processor architecture, chip technologies and operating system hardware. The architecture and design methodology used in the IBM AS/400 processor are briefly described. The processor chip designs made extensive use of high level hardware description languages and logic synthesis. Each design group was responsible for defining its design in VHDL and converting the design into logic using logic synthesis. The designer's experiences with these new methods are highlighted. >
The GPSS/360 random number generator

This study of yet another URNG has been designated with a particular user of URNG in mind: the General Purpose Simulation System/360 user. By eliminating from consideration such uses of the tested generator as large Monte Carlo calculations on nuclear energy problems, and considering only the typical uses of URNG by GPSS/360 problems, a more suitable testing procedure was devised.Appropriately enough, the URNG studied was the one included in GPSS/360.** (Actually, there are eight URNG in GPSS/360, but they use identical generation schemes.) Each of the eight GPSS/360 URNG has one parameter, a “multiplier”, which the user may alter, causing a new sequence of random numbers to be generated. The goal of this study was to locate multipliers whose sequences would meet a number of criteria desirable if the sequences are to be used in GPSS/360 simulations.
Changes in soil mineralogy due to nitrogen fertilization in an agroecosystem

Abstract Additions of nitrogen (N) fertilizer to surface soil can trigger a wide array of complex effects, including changes in soil chemical, physical, and microbial properties which impact both the nitrogen and carbon cycles. While abundant literature exists regarding the influence of N amendments on processes and properties influencing the soil carbon cycle, there is little recognition given to potential changes in soil mineralogy. We collected surface soil (Maury silt loam, Typic Paleudalf) from a long-term agroecosystem under no-tillage management which has received annual inorganic N additions (0, 168, 336 kg N ha − 1 ) for 34 years and characterized the soil mineralogy and other relevant properties. With recent liming, N fertilizer addition was associated with only slight changes in soil pH and the suite of exchangeable cations. Silt mineralogy was not influenced by N, but x-ray diffraction found changes in the clay fraction. The clay mineral assemblage in the control (0 kg N ha − 1 ) is complex, comprised of layers of pedogenic chlorite, vermiculite, hydroxy-interlayered vermiculite, mixed-layer chlorite–vermiculite, illite, kaolinite, and quartz. Fertilizer N additions resulted in a 3- and 3.3-fold decrease in the 1.4 nm/1.0 nm peak area ratios for Mg-clay slides in the 168 and 336 kg N ha − 1 treatments. This decrease is likely due in part to fixation of NH 4 + in vermiculite layers, corroborated by increases in the intensity of the infrared (IR) band at 1430 cm − 1 (assigned to the N H bending mode of NH 4 + ) with added N. The role of biota emerged as shown by a negative relationship between water-soluble oxalate concentrations and the 1.4 nm/1.0 nm peak area ratios (r = 0.56, P = 0.06). Past acidification due to nitrification of added NH 4 + which occurred prior to liming might have played a role in weathering of pH-sensitive minerals such as chlorite. Our findings raise questions about the capacity of reactive 2:1 mineral layers to fix NH 4 + and how this is moderated by biota in no-till agroecosystems.
Can Your Business Have One Million Friends?: Understanding and Using Blogs as One-to-One Mass Media

In this chapter, we develop a theoretical framework that explains how blogs can be categorized based on audiences’ perceptions and how bloggers use different strategies to shape or shift their audiences’ perceptions and increase the persuasiveness of their messages. We posit that bloggers use two distinguishable communication strategies: (a) developing and sustaining an illusion of relationship between the blogger and the reader in order to individualize the communication and (b) maintaining a level of ambiguity in their commercial interests in order to conceal the commercial nature of some blogs. We describe the tactics underlying the use of these strategies as well as the efficacy and ethics of these practices.
Product characteristics and quality of bovine blood-enriched dried vegetable paste.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to evaluate a preparation of vegetable paste with bovine blood in order to maximize the protein content using linear programming, and to analyze the product characteristics and quality of bovine blood-enriched vegetable paste dried in a spouted bed. The drying experiments were performed by evaluating the effects of inlet air temperature, paste flow rate and paste solids concentration on the dried product characteristics and quality (functional and nutritional properties). RESULTS The vegetable paste enriched with bovine blood was a good source of protein (∼0.20 g g−1, dry basis), and the linear programming was adequate to select the constituents (carrot, onion, potato, kale, tomato, soybean oil and bovine blood) and optimize their quantities. The drying conditions of bovine blood-enriched vegetable paste in the spouted bed that gave the best product characteristics were an air temperature of 110 °C and a paste flow rate of 600 mL h−1 with 0.07 g g−1 solids concentration. CONCLUSION The addition of bovine blood to vegetable paste by linear programming increased the protein content of the paste and improved its functional properties and digestibility. The powder obtained from the spouted bed drier showed suitable functional and nutritional properties and was also a good source of antioxidant compounds. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry
Studies of large TEC gradients associated with equatorial plasma bubbles in the South American sector

Ionospheric plasma distribution around the low-latitude region is well known to be highly inhomogeneous, marked especially by the characteristic equatorial anomaly pattern. In addition, the development of equatorial plasma bubbles in the post-sunset local time sector further complicates the overall ionospheric plasma distribution profile in these regions. The steep total electron content (TEC) gradients associated with these space/ionospheric phenomena might pose some serious challenges to the establishment and operation of augmentation system(s) for GNSS application, particularly in aviation. We report our recent observational study of such steep TEC gradients using instruments in the Low-latitude Ionospheric Sensor Network (LISN).
Demographic Relationships at the Macro Level

The focus herein is on macro-level relationships in mathematical demography and regression analysis. Notions of vector space calculus are used in discussing the impact of nuptiality and fertility on the net reproduction rate and log-ratio techniques in the analysis of regression relationships involving compositions. The latter is illustrated using occupational data from the U. S. population census. The methods described herein permit using all the available information while the commonly used method, which replaces a vector by a summary measure, lets much of the flavor in the data slip away.
Tunable Compact Low-Noise Amplifier With Permalloy Thin-Film Enabled Slow-Wave Transmission Lines

This paper provides a first tunable low-noise amplifier (LNA) design with Permalloy (Py) enabled inductors. Tunable inductor is an important passive device in adaptive radio frequency circuit design. In this paper, a new integrated tunable inductor is implemented utilizing novel slow-wave transmission lines that are built with coplanar waveguide having alternative high and low impedance signal sections, and the Py thin films are deposited and patterned on the signal line of narrow section to provide higher and tunable inductance density. The inductance per unit length has been increased from 877 to 949 nH/m with 100 nm Py thin film at 5 GHz. A tunable 5 GHz LNA utilizing SWLTs is developed, where the tunability of power reflection and power gain of LNA are demonstrated with variable inductors.
Portal and Sinusoidal Fibrosis are Common on Liver Biopsy After Fontan Surgery

Hepatic fibrosis is an important complication after Fontan surgery in patients with single-ventricle congenital heart disease. Few reports of hepatic histology in these patients exist, and sinusoidal fibrosis has been described. We aimed to characterize fibrosis at liver biopsy procedure in patients with previous Fontan surgery and to identify patient variables associated with the degree of fibrosis. All patients who had previous Fontan surgery and who subsequently underwent liver biopsy at our institution between January 1990 and July 2010 were identified. For each biopsy specimen, portal and sinusoidal fibrosis were graded and medical records reviewed. Biopsy specimens from 13 patients were examined; the median time from Fontan surgery to liver biopsy procedure was 16.9 years (range 6.9-25). At the most recent biopsy procedure, 12 patients (92 %) had evidence of portal fibrosis, including 1 patient with portal-based cirrhosis. Thirteen patients (100 %) had at least some degree of sinusoidal fibrosis, including 1 patient with centrilobular-based cirrhosis. Lower platelet count was associated with greater degree of portal fibrosis by ordinal regression (odds ratio 0.84, P = 0.04), and patients with no or mild portal fibrosis had significantly higher platelet counts compared with those with moderate or severe portal disease (278 ± 78 K vs. 160 ± 46 K, P = 0.005). Four patients underwent serial biopsy procedures; portal fibrosis was progressed in 3 patients, and sinusoidal fibrosis was progressed in 3 patients. After Fontan surgery, portal and sinusoidal fibrosis are common at liver biopsy and can progress over time. Lower platelet count may represent a marker of portal-based disease in these patients.
Kinetic analysis of manual lifting activities: Part II—Biomechanical analysis of task variables

This paper, the second of a series of two papers, presents the results of biomechanical analyses of task variables in manual lifting activities. The three-dimensional dynamic biomechanical model, presented in part I was used to analyze compressive and shear forces generated during symmetrical and asymmetrical lifting, lifting boxes with or without handles, and lifting loads in different size boxes (defined by the box dimension in the sagittal plane). The measured ground reaction forces were also analyzed for the effects of these task variables. The results indicated that even though low-weights are accepted for lifting when lifting loads asymmetrically or in bigger boxes or when handling boxes without handles, the spinal stresses generated are, in general, significantly higher than when lifting loads symmetrically or in compart boxes or when handling boxes with handles. At the maximum acceptable weights of lift, the compressive forces generated were observed to be at least 30% to 50% lower than the compressive failure limit of the spinal structure.
Budgeters' Views of State Performance-Budgeting Systems: Distinctions across Branches

Given that a majority of states have had some sort of performance-budgeting initiative on the books for several years, how has implementation of such reform progressed? To answer this question, we surveyed legislative and executive budgeters from the 50 states, asking them for their impressions of performance-budgeting implementation in their state. Specifically, we asked these budget officers about the reasons for introducing performance budgeting in their state; the types of activities required of their system; responsible oversight bodies; extent of application across state agencies and departments; and perceived levels of effectiveness and problems experienced with implementation of the budget reform. Our findings indicate that implementation of performance-based budgeting systems is proceeding slowly. While there are some benefits to highlight, results show that implementing performance budgeting is not without problems-perhaps the greatest being differing perceptions of use and success among budget players, particularly across branches of government.
Performance Evaluation of a Parallel Pipeline Computational Model for Space-Time Adaptive Processing

This paper presents further results on the design and implementation of various optimizations based on our earlier work of developing a parallel pipelined model for the computational intensive applications that have multiple processing tasks. Performance evaluation of this model was done by using a real-time airborne radar application that employs a Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) algorithm. This paper focuses on the following four issues: (1) The tradeoffs between increasing the throughput and reducing the latency are examined in more detail when allocating processors among different processing tasks. (2) A multi-threaded design is incorporated into the pipeline model and implemented on a massively parallel computer with symmetric multi-processor nodes, which shows enhanced performance. (3) The disk I/O is incorporated into the parallel pipeline to study its effect on performance in which two I/O task designs have been implemented: embedding I/O in the pipeline or having a separate I/O task. By using a double buffering approach together with the asynchronous I/O, the overall pipeline performance scales well as the number of processors increases. (4) From the comparison of the two I/O implementations, it is discovered that the latency may be improved when merging multiple tasks into a single task. The effect of reorganizing the task structure of the pipeline is discussed in detail. All the performance results shown in this work demonstrate the linear scalability the parallel pipeline model can achieve using a production radar application. Although this paper focuses on the implementation of the parallel pipeline model and uses the results from a STAP application to support the claims of the discovered properties for this pipeline, this model is also applicable to many other types of applications with similar computational characteristics.
A Comparative Study of Pesticide Exposures in Adults and Youth Migrant Field Workers

ABSTRACT To study possible differences between pesticide exposures received by youth (subjects 16 yr of age), human exposure samples (gloves and urine) were collected during the onion harvesting season of 1982. Environmental samples (soil, foliage, and field air) were also collected during the study period. All samples were analyzed for toxaphene, ethyl parathion, methyl parathion, and malathion. Environmental samples were found to have very low levels of these insecticides. The youth cohort had lower residue values than did the adults, and these differences were statistically significant (P < .05) for toxaphene residues on gloves on each sampling day, and for ethyl parathion residues on gloves on one sampling day only. Detectable levels of dialkyl phosphates were found in only 2 of 44 urine samples.
The rediscovery of Tapura haitiensis (Dichapetalaceae)

Tapura haitiensis was described in 1926 from sterile material from the Massif de la Hotte, Haiti. It was recollected in 1983 from the same area and its flowers and young fruit are described here for the first time together with habitat details. It is compared with three related species,T. orbicularis, T. panamensis, andT. cubensis.
Insights into pore-scale controls on mudstone permeability through resedimentation experiments

At a given porosity, mudstone permeability increases by an order of magnitude for clay contents ranging from 57% to 36% (<2 μm). This increase in vertical permeability results from a dual-porosity system that develops through three mechanisms: (1) silt bridging preserves large pore throats, (2) stress bridges inhibit clay particle alignment, and (3) local clay particle compression within stress bridges alters pore throat size distribution. Uniaxial consolidation experiments on resedimented clay-silt mixtures illuminate how permeability varies as a function of clay fraction during burial. Backscattered electron microscope images show that silty mixtures have larger pore throats and fewer aligned clay particles than do more clay-rich mixtures. We describe the permeability of clay-silt mixtures with a geometric mean model. Our method provides a promising framework for modeling of mudstone permeability as a function of clay fraction and porosity. How permeability and consolidation evolve during burial affects the ability of mudstones to seal CO2 and hydrocarbons in the subsurface, how mudstones behave as gas reservoirs, and under what conditions mudstones will be overpressured. Dual-porosity systems have fundamentally different transient flow and solute transport behaviors.
La, V, and Fe promotion of Rh/SiO2 for CO hydrogenation: Detailed analysis of kinetics and mechanism

Abstract It has been reported widely that Rh-based catalysts can exhibit high selectivity to C 2+ oxygenates during CO hydrogenation, with promoters playing an important role in this behavior. In this study, the effects of the addition of La, V, and/or Fe promoters on the kinetics of the formation of various products were determined and the mechanistic pathways were delineated using a Langmuir–Hinshelwood approach. Nonpromoted and promoted Rh supported on SiO 2 were prepared using the incipient wetness impregnation method and were reduced in H 2 at 500 °C before reaction. The kinetic study was carried out using a fixed-bed differential reactor. It was found that, in general, increasing H 2 pressure resulted in increased activities, while increasing CO partial pressure had an opposite effect. However, the specific influence of H 2 or CO partial pressure on the activity and selectivities differed greatly with different promoters. There was a more significant change in the activity of the La–V doubly promoted Rh catalyst with H 2 or CO partial pressure than for other catalysts, which may be due to a synergistic effect between La and V. The Fe singly promoted catalyst showed different trends in both rate and selectivity from other catalysts, suggesting a different promoting mechanism than La or V. Based on the fact that hydrogen-assisted CO dissociation has been reported to best describe the mechanism for Rh catalysts, Langmuir–Hinshelwood rate expressions for the formation of methane and of ethanol were derived and compared to the experimentally derived power-law parameters. It was found that the addition of different promoters appeared to result in different rate-limiting steps.
Prostate biopsy clinical and pathological variables that predict significant grading changes in patients with intermediate and high grade prostate cancer.

OBJECTIVE To identify the clinical and pathological variables that predict pathological changes in the significant proportion of men with prostate cancer who have an intermediate- or high-grade biopsy Gleason score (GS) of ≥7 and who are upgraded or downgraded on interpretation of radical prostatectomy (RP) pathological specimens, as GS is critical in treatment decisions. PATIENTS AND METHODS We retrospectively evaluated 1129 patients who had RP after a biopsy showing a GS of ≥7, at our institution, from 2000 to 2007. Complete relevant clinical information was available for all patients. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to identify predictors of pathological grading changes. RESULTS The overall mean age was 61 years, with median prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level of 6 ng/mL. Of the 1129 patients, the surgical GS was upgraded in 296 (26.2%), downgraded in 210 (18.6%), and remained the same in 623 (55.2%). Factors predicting a surgical GS upgrade were a higher PSA level (P = 0.005), presence of perineural invasion (P = 0.043), absence of inflammation (P < 0.001), and absence of associated high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (P = 0.02). In an analysis of pathological variables the number of positive cores (P = 0.033) was predictor of upgrading. Large prostate volume (P = 0.004) and low maximum percentage cancer in any core (P = 0.001) were predictors of downgrading. CONCLUSION Men with a higher PSA level, perineural invasion and high-volume cancer at biopsy are most likely to be upgraded, while men with a large prostate volume and low-volume cancer at biopsy are more likely to be downgraded. These findings have implications for men with prostate cancer managed without confirmation by RP of their true GS.
Running The Constitution: Framing Public Administration

As public administration develops in the twenty-first century, we continue to grapple with century-old questions that are fundamental to the field of study and practice of public management. How does the administrative function relate to the political function? How does a public administrator satisfy conflicting managerial and legal imperatives? In this short essay, I argue that Wilson's 1887 essay holds an unrealized vision for public administration. The unrest over some of public administration's fundamental questions can be partly remedied by framing public administration in its functional home: the execution of public law. I use an institutional framework to illustrate my argument and underscore the conceptual arrangement of politics, law, and management that I read in Wilson's vision.
Analysis of indirect effects within ecosystem models using pathway-based methodology

Abstract The role of indirect relations within an ecosystem is crucial to its function. Emergent properties such as adaptability, plasticity, and robustness are hard to explain without understanding the system-wide effects of direct and indirect interactions. In this paper, we take advantage of a different representation of ecosystem models to provide a better understanding of indirect effects. We focus on pathways of individual particles that flow through systems. Particles represent small units of flow material, such as a single carbon atom, 1 g of biomass, or 1 cal of energy. The view of an entire system from an individual particle perspective provides a more practical and intuitive basis to study indirect relations than earlier input–output based algebraic methods. Our findings show that the current two algebraic formulations for indirect and direct effect ratio ( I / D ) do not exactly compute their intended meaning. We come up with a new throughflow based I / D ratio, which revises the current definition, and accurately compares direct and indirect flows. The two different perspectives (algebraic and pathway-based) enable an insightful analysis and conceptual clarification as to what exactly each formulation measures. We compare all three measures on twenty real-life ecosystem models. Finally, we rescale the I / D ratio to I /( I + D ) and define the later one as indirect effect index (IEI), which is better suited to compare indirect effects among different models.
Divide and Adhere

The idea that cellular membrane components are mixed in a nonrandom (i.e., spatially heterogeneous) fashion (1) and that the function of these membranes is coupled to their heterogeneity has fascinated membrane biologists and biophysicists alike for at least the past 40 years.
A Simple Treatment of Truth Functions

In this note we present an axiomatization of the classical two-valued propositional calculus, for which proofs of decidability, consistency, completeness, and independence, are almost trivial (given an understanding of truth tables).
Signal processing methods for pulse oximetry

Current signal processing technology has driven many advances in almost every aspect of life, including medical applications. It follows that applying signal processing techniques to pulse oximetry could also provide major improvements. This research was designed to identify and implement one or more techniques that could improve pulse oximetry oxygen saturation (SpO2) measurements. The hypothesis was that frequency domain analysis could more easily extract the cardiac rate and amplitude of interest from the time domain signal. The focus was on the digital signal processing algorithms that had potential to improve pulse oximetry readings, and then test those algorithms. This was accomplished using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The results indicate that the FFT and DCT computation of oxygen saturation were as accurate without averaging, as weighted moving average (WMA) algorithms currently being used, and directly indicate when erroneous calculations occur.
Biologically-driven cell-graphs for breast tissue grading

We present biologically-driven cell-graphs for the computer-aided grading of cancer in 3D breast tissue slides. Cell-graphs were previously proposed to capture structure-function relationships within tissues by representing the tissues with undirected and unweighted graphs wherein the cell nuclei constitute the graph nodes and the approximate adjacencies of the nuclei are represented with edges. Using advanced immunohistochemistry staining, levels of interactions between the cells can be captured via the expressions of particular proteins that yield more biological attributes for constructing the graph edges. With this motivation, we fluorescently labeled proteins that participate in cell-to-cell communications and analyze the structural organization of the cells in three grades of breast cancer using biologically-driven cell-graphs. Using the features extracted from the graphs in a supervised machine learning setting, computer-aided grading is achieved. Biologically-driven cell-graphs achieve 98.5% accuracy in grading the cancer into non-malignant, non-invasive, and invasive grades that significantly outperforms the conventional proximity-based cell-graphs and a Delaunay triangulation based method by 9.0% and 13.5%, respectively.
Urban Expansion and the Loss of Farmland in the United States: Implications for the Future

As our cities and towns grow and decentralize, farmland and other rural lands are converted to urban uses. The loss of agricultural land to urbanization in this country has evoked little concern in the past. Because of the recent period of food price inflation and agricultural shortages across the world, however, some observers have begun to worry that the continued loss of farmland to urban uses may interfere with the United States' long-run ability to produce food and fiber for itself and for the rest of the world. (See Brubaker, Crosson 1977, Pimentel et al. 1975, 1976, Schiff. For alternative views, see Heady and Timmons, Gardner, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture 1974.) This concern becomes even more serious if one expects that, in the future, energy and other nonland inputs to agricultural production may become very expensive (and/or be in short supply) and the country may be forced to return to a more land-based form of agriculture. Because of the high costs associated with "reconverting" land back from urban to agricultural uses, it is important to consider if the continued loss of farmland to urbanization could exacerbate a possible shortage of productive agricultural land in the future. The above concerns point out the need to relate systematically the urbanization of farmland to future farmland needs and to analyze whether or not a future conflict is probable. In this paper, we begin to explore this question. It should be noted that this paper considers only the most direct effect of urbanization on agricultural production-the conversion of agricultural land to urban uses. However, the negative externalities caused by nearby urban development can also have important indirect effects on agricultural production. These include: (a) the idling of farmland in areas under extreme urban pressures (Berry 1976, Plaut, pp. 176-82) and over a wider geographic area, (b) the switchover to less capitalintensive forms of farming (Berry 1978, 1979). Thus, even though agricultural land is not converted to urban uses, potential agricultural production is lost. The reason for not including this loss in our analysis is that, presumably, under high demand pressures much of this idled and less intensively farmed land could be brought back into intense farm production.
Getting Published: Reflections of an Old Editor:

David W. Stewart is Robert E. Brooker Professor of Marketing and Deputy Dean, Gordon Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. My time as editor has been a dynamic period for the marketing community. It has witnessed the maturing of information technology, the Internet boom and bust, and the collapse of some of the most widely recognized and trusted of brands, including Andersen, Sunbeam, Oldsmobile, and Firestone. Even such seemingly powerful brands as Disney, McDonald’s, AT&T, and CocaCola have struggled. At the same time, the attention of the popular business press and the public at large has become increasingly focused on markets and marketing practices. Issues of intellectual property, consumer privacy, and fair business practices have become part of the daily business headlines. The celebrity attorney has been replaced by the celebrity chief executive officer. The locus of economic growth and new organizational forms has increasingly shifted westward from Europe, the East Coast, and the Midwest to the West Coast and Asia. The only exception to these broad shifts appears to be Japan, once feared as an economic powerhouse and now reduced to a troubled economy. Change is evitable and is what sustains the need for research and scholarship. Paradigms, assumptions, and even “facts” that dominate thought and practice at one point give way to new facts and modes of thought. In my editorial statement at the beginning of my term as editor (Stewart 1999), I discussed the role of Journal of Marketing (JM) as a tangible artifact of an intellectual community. This intellectual community is very much alive and responsive to change. It is again time for a change in the stewardship of the Journal. This change will, no doubt, bring new energy, new perspectives, and new directions to the Journal. However, editors merely manage in a modest way the real changes that occur in the intellectual discipline. Most of the articles to be published by the new editor during her first year are already written and in the review process. The problems and topics on which scholars within marketing’s intellectual community are working and will work reflect the broader social and economic environment of which marketing is a part. An editor has little, if any, influence on this environment. However, an editor plays an especially important role in ensuring that the scholarship that derives from response to change is captured and published on a timely basis. I discuss three things in my last editorial as editor: First, I describe the changes that have occurred in the Journal over the past three years. These changes suggest a great deal about the nature of the changes in markets and marketing practices that have taken place. Second, I share my perspective as an editor on what is most likely to be valuable to the discipline and find its way into the pages of the Journal. This will be a brief treatise on how to get published. Third, I acknowledge the contributions of the many people who have contributed to the Journal’s success.
The Characteristics of Filter Pressed Kaolinite-Water Pastes

A Georgia kaolin was selected for investigation because of its large, euhedral, platelike particles and mineral composition consisting of 96 per cent kaolinite. The clay was prepared as a suspension and treated with various water-soluble compounds, with or without the addition of an organic colloid, to determine the role of the organic material in the flocculation and deflocculation characteristics of the clay as measured by the rate of filtration under pressure. Although the organic colloid acted as a strong deffocculant alone, 1 per cent of it actually increased the flocculation action of aluminum sulfate and yet increased the deflocculation action of sodium sulfate.
CSF SNAP-25 in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Illness A Pilot Study

Research efforts to identify and understand the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and bipolar illness are limited by the inability to study neuronal tissue of living patients. An alternative to sampling brain tissue from living patients is to measure neuronal proteins found in cerebral spinal fluid. One such candidate protein is synaptosomal-associated protein 25kDa. Our hypothesis is that the level of this protein in cerebral spinal fluid may be a marker of neuronal pathology. Cerebral spinal fluid from headache, schizophrenic, bipolar, and control subjects was used to measure the SNAP-25 level by quantitative dot blotting. Schizophrenic subjects had significantly elevated levels of SNAP-25 as compared to headache and control subjects. However, there was no significant difference between the bipolar group and schizophrenic or control groups. This study reports on a potentially useful clinical marker in schizophrenia, and the presence of elevated cerebral spinal fluid SNAP-25 may indicate alterations in neuronal functioning.
New Insights in the Clastic Binding Hypothesis for Opiate-Receptor Interactions II: Proton-Transfer Mechanism

Ab initio (4–31G) molecular orbital calculations were performed on model systems to investigate the proton-transfer version of the clastic binding hypothesis for opiate—receptor interactions. Ammonia was chosen as the model for the nitrogen-containing portion of the opiate molecule, while ammonia and water were chosen as models for the proton acceptor at the receptor. The equilibrium position of a proton situated between the two molecules is found to be determined primarily by the orientation of the proton-donor molecule with some influence also from the other molecule. Misalignments of the lone pairs can significantly alter equilibrium populations when the proton affinities of the two molecules are similar.
Numerical Algorithms for Acoustic Integrals - The Devil is in the Details

The accurate prediction of the aeroacoustic field generated by aerospace vehicles or nonaerospace machinery is necessary for designers to control and reduce source noise. Powerful computational aeroacoustic methods, based on various acoustic analogies (primarily the Lighthill acoustic analogy) and Kirchhoff methods, have been developed for prediction of noise from complicated sources, such as rotating blades. Both methods ultimately predict the noise through a numerical evaluation of an integral formulation. In this paper, we consider three generic acoustic formulations and several numerical algorithms that have been used to compute the solutions to these formulations. Algorithms for retarded-time formulations are the most efficient and robust, but they are difficult to implement for supersonic-source motion. Collapsing-sphere and emission-surface formulations are good alternatives when supersonic-source motion is present, but the numerical implementations of these formulations are more computationally demanding. New algorithms - which utilize solution adaptation to provide a specified error level - are needed.
Are effect sizes and confidence levels problems for or solutions to the null hypothesis test

Some have proposed that the null hypothesis significance test, as usually conducted using the t test of the difference between means, is an impediment to progress in psychology. To improve its prospects, using Neyman-Pearson confidence intervals and Cohen's standardized effect sizes, d, is recommended. The purpose of these approaches is to enable us to understand what can appropriately be said about the distances between the means and their reliability. Others have written extensively that these recommended strategies are highly interrelated and use identical information. This essay was written to remind us that the t test, based on the sample--not the true--standard deviation, does not apply solely to distance between means. The t test pertains to a much more ambiguous specification: the difference between samples, including sampling variations of the standard deviation.
Structure and stereochemistry of pseudolarolide J, a novel nortriterpene lactone from Pseudolarix kaempferi.

Pseudolarolide J (1), a novel nortriterpene lactone, has been isolated from the seeds of Pseudolarix kaempferi and structurally characterized from spectral data and X-ray crystallographic analysis.
Vasoconstriction in active skeletal muscles: a potential role for P2X purinergic receptors?

There is evidence that ATP acts as a neurotransmitter in vascular smooth muscle and is coreleased with norepinephrine from sympathetic nerves. We hypothesized that P2X-receptor stimulation with the...