cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Baroclinic instability of axially symmetric flow over sloping bathymetry

Observations and models of deep ocean boundary currents show that they exhibit complex variability, instabilities and eddy shedding, particularly over continental slopes that curve horizontally, for example around coastal peninsulas. In this article the authors investigate the source of this variability by characterizing the properties of baroclinic instability in mean flows over horizontally curved bottom slopes. The classical two-layer quasi-geostrophic solution for linear baroclinic instability over sloping bottom topography is extended to the case of azimuthal mean flow in an annular channel. To facilitate comparison with the classical straight channel instability problem of uniform mean flow, the authors focus on comparatively simple flows in an annulus, namely uniform azimuthal velocity and solid-body rotation. Baroclinic instability in solid-body rotation flow is analytically analogous to the instability in uniform straight channel flow due to several identical properties of the mean flow, including vanishing strain rate and vorticity gradient. The instability of uniform azimuthal flow is numerically similar to straight channel flow instability as long as the mean barotropic azimuthal velocity is zero. Non-zero barotropic flow generally suppresses the instability via horizontal curvature-induced strain and Reynolds stress work. An exception occurs when the ratio of the bathymetric to isopycnal slopes is close to (positive) one, as is often observed in the ocean, in which case the instability is enhanced. A non-vanishing mean barotropic flow component also results in a larger number of growing eigenmodes and in increased non-normal growth. The implications of these findings for variability in deep western boundary currents are discussed.
Vulnerability severity scoring and bounties: why the disconnect?

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is the de facto standard for vulnerability severity measurement today and is crucial in the analytics driving software fortification. Required by the U.S. National Vulnerability Database, over 75,000 vulnerabilities have been scored using CVSS. We compare how the CVSS correlates with another, closely-related measure of security impact: bounties. Recent economic studies of vulnerability disclosure processes show a clear relationship between black market value and bounty payments. We analyzed the CVSS scores and bounty awarded for 703 vulnerabilities across 24 products. We found a weak (Spearman's ρ = 0.34) correlation between CVSS scores and bounties, with CVSS being more likely to underestimate bounty. We believe such a negative result is a cause for concern. We investigated why these measurements were so discordant by (a) analyzing the individual questions of CVSS with respect to bounties and (b) conducting a qualitative study to find the similarities and differences between CVSS and the publicly-available criteria for awarding bounties. Among our findings were that the bounty criteria were more explicit about code execution and privilege escalation whereas CVSS makes no explicit mention of those. We also found that bounty valuations are evaluated solely by project maintainers, whereas CVSS has little provenance in practice.
Numerical simulation of Maxwell's equation in 3D (NMM3D) applied to active and passive remote sensing of terrestrial snow and snow on sea ice

The partially coherent approach of dense media radiative transfer (DMRT) has been extensively applied to study the wave propagation and scattering inside dense media such as terrestrial snow [1–5]. In the DMRT partially coherent approach, the coherent part is obtained by solving Maxwell's equations over several cubic wavelengths of statistically homogeneous snow volume to compute the phase matrix, the extinction coefficient, the effective propagation constants and the effective permittivity. Solving Maxwell's equations accounts for the coherent near field and intermediate field interactions within several cubic wavelengths. The phase matrix is then substituted into the radiative transfer equation which constitutes the incoherent part of DMRT. The DMRT equation is then solved to include incoherent interactions and volume/surface interactions. This approach is appropriate when the snow layers are electrically thick such that the coherent far field interaction cancels out over statistical average. This is true for many applications in terrestrial snow remote sensing where the wavelength is 1 ∼ 3 cm and the snow depth can be several decimeters to meters.
Distributed genetic algorithm to big data clustering

Clustering algorithms have emerged as a powerful learning tool to accurately analyze the massive amount of data generated by current applications and smart technologies. Precisely, their main objective is to categorize data into clusters such that objects are grouped in the same cluster when they are similar according to specific metrics. There is a wide and diverse body of knowledge in the area of clustering and there has been attempts apply these algorithms and scale it to adopt todays data. However, one major challenge in using clustering algorithms is scalability of such algorithms in a way that faces the challenges and computational cost of clustering big data. In this paper, we are describing a mapping between graph clustering problem and data clustering. Using genetic algorithms and multi-objective optimization as well as distributed graph stores, the proposed algorithm (1) transform big data into Distributed RDF graphs. With (2) a novel distributed encoding techniques. The algorithm (3) scales to deal with big RDF graphs to (4) produce clusters by maximizing graph modularity as a main objective. The results on LUBM generated big data shows the (5) ability to deal with the challenges provided such data and (6) produce comparative results compared to other peers of clustering algorithms
Learning-based stochastic object models for use in optimizing imaging systems

It is widely known that the optimization of imaging systems based on objective, or task-based, measures of image quality via computer-simulation requires use of a stochastic object model (SOM). However, the development of computationally tractable SOMs that can accurately model the statistical variations in anatomy within a specified ensemble of patients remains a challenging task. Because they are established by use of image data corresponding a single patient, previously reported numerical anatomical models lack of the ability to accurately model inter- patient variations in anatomy. In certain applications, however, databases of high-quality volumetric images are available that can facilitate this task. In this work, a novel and tractable methodology for learning a SOM from a set of volumetric training images is developed. The proposed method is based upon geometric attribute distribution (GAD) models, which characterize the inter-structural centroid variations and the intra-structural shape variations of each individual anatomical structure. The GAD models are scalable and deformable, and constrained by their respective principal attribute variations learned from training data. By use of the GAD models, random organ shapes and positions can be generated and integrated to form an anatomical phantom. The randomness in organ shape and position will reflect the variability of anatomy present in the training data. To demonstrate the methodology, a SOM corresponding to the pelvis of an adult male was computed and a corresponding ensemble of phantoms was created. Additionally, computer-simulated X-ray projection images corresponding to the phantoms were computed, from which tomographic images were reconstructed.
Tissue-resident memory T cells live off the fat of the land

The consumption of exogenous free fatty acids by tissue-resident memory T (Trm) cells is critical for their long-term survival and antiviral function, and appears to be a conserved feature of Trm cells in both mouse and man, a recent paper published in Nature demonstrates.
Bunyaviridae—Natural History

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the remarkable natural histories of viruses in the family Bunyaviridae. This is not a trivial undertaking; there are more than 250 viruses in the family, including such significant human and veterinary pathogens as: Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Rift Valley fever, La Crosse, Hantaan, Oropouche, Akabane, and Nairobi sheep disease viruses (Karabatsos 1985). To describe the natural history of each virus in the family is beyond the scope of this chapter. Each has a unique cycle in nature, many have sylvatic and epidemic cycles, and, for most, little is known about their natural history. Even to describe in detail those cycles that are well defined would be impractical in the space allotted. Excellent reviews of the natural histories of viruses in the family Bunyaviridae or specific groups of viruses in the family have been published. Notable are the series of in depth review chapters on specific groups of the family Bunyaviridae in The Arboviruses: Epidemiology and Ecology (Monath 1988) and the books The Arthropod-borne Viruses of Vertebrates (Theiler and Downs 1973) and California Serogroup Viruses (Calisher and Thompson 1983). More general reviews include those by Gonzalez-Scarano and Nathanson (1990), Shope (1985), and Bishop and Shope (1979). Many monographs and papers describing in detail the natural history of specific viruses are also referenced in this chapter.
Pressure-Driven Hardware Managed Thread Concurrency for Irregular Applications

Given the increasing importance of efficient data intensive computing, we find that modern processor designs are not well suited to the irregular memory access patterns found in these algorithms. This research focuses on mapping the compiler's instruction cost scheduling logic to hardware managed concurrency controls in order to minimize pipeline stalls. In this manner, the hardware modules managing the low-latency thread concurrency can be directly understood by modern compilers. We introduce a thread context switching method that is managed directly via a set of hardware-based mechanisms that are coupled to the compiler instruction scheduler. As individual instructions from a thread execute, their respective cost is accumulated into a control register. Once the register reaches a pre-determined saturation point, the thread is forced to context switch. We evaluate the performance benefits of our approach using a series of 24 benchmarks that exhibit performance acceleration of up to 14.6X.
A linear quadratic tracking based voltage controller for VSI; MVDC shipboard power system application

In this paper, an optimal voltage control structure for Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) in series with LC filter for Medium Voltage DC Shipboard Power System (MVDC SPS) applications is proposed. The objective of the proposed method is to design a closed loop controller that makes the output of the system optimally track a given desired signal and reject a given disturbance. Therefore, it is called Linear Quadratic Tracking (LQT) which is considered as a modified form of the Linear Quadratic Regulation (LQR). Computer simulation is used to validate the performance of the proposed control scheme under different scenarios.
Efficient Test-Time Predictor Learning With Group-Based Budget

Learning a test-time efficient predictor is becoming important for many real-world applications for which accessing the necessary features of a test data is costly. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to learn a linear predictor by introducing binary indicator variables for selecting feature groups and imposing an explicit budget constraint to up-bound the total cost of selected groups. We solve the convex relaxation of the resulting problem, with the optimal solution proved to be integers for most of the elements at the optima and independent of the specific forms of loss functions used. We propose a general and efficient algorithm to solve the relaxation problem by leveraging the existing SVM solvers with various loss functions. For certain loss functions, the proposed algorithm can further take the advantage of SVM solver in the primal to tackle large-scale and high-dimensional data. Experiments on various datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method by comparing with various baselines.
Oxidative Degradation of Multi-Carbon Substrates by an Oxidic Cobalt Phosphate Catalyst

The development of heterogeneous catalysts to affect the activation of recalcitrant biomolecules has applications for biomass processing, biomass fuel cells, and wastewater remediation. We demonstrate that a cobalt oxygen evolution catalyst (Co-OEC) can catalyze the oxidation of carbon feedstocks completely to CO2. A quantitative analysis of the product distribution from the oxidative degradation of the C2 compound, ethylene glycol, is elaborated and a reaction sequence is proposed. The Co-OEC is also found to be competent for oxidatively degrading C2+ compounds, including glucose and lignin, to carbon dioxide at consequential Faradaic efficiencies.
Particle Physics in the Nineties

Whereas allegedly elementary particles were known to show a great variety of rather complicated properties, the properties of quarks and leptons are extremely simple; in fact they can be compared in their simplicity to geometrical points. Also, instead of a large number of seemingly elementary hadrons, we are left today with only six essentially different quarks. And in spite of the greatest desire and effort to reduce everything to its simplest form, one cannot possibly reduce something to nothing. Thus, it seems that we have actually hit the bottom in our search for the basic elements from which matter is formed.
Blue Light and Stomatal Function

Stomata provide plants with a dominant means to adjust to environmental changes [2]. Through their control of pore apertures, stomata maximize plant homeostasis (biological organization) by modulating the extent of physical exchange between the plant and its milieu [32]. Typically, stomata are largely closed at night, when biological activity and exchange with the environment is minimal, and are wide open during most of the day, when the need for gaseous exchange is large. Because of the marked daily changes in light intensity, stomata are remarkably sensitive to photon fluxes and light quality.
Sensors, Nanoscience, Biomedical Engineering, and Instruments: Sensors Nanoscience Biomedical Engineering

Sensors, Materials, and Nanoscience Sensors . Introduction Rosemary L. Smith . Electrochemical Sensors Bryan Stewart Hobbs . The Stannic Oxide Semiconductor Gas Sensor J. Watson An Introduction to Multi-Sensor Data Fusion David L. Hall and James Llinas Magnetooptics David Young and Yuan Pu Materials and Nanoscience . Carbon Nanotubes M. Meyyappan . Modeling MEMS and NEMS John Pelesko . Micromechatronics Victor Giurgiutiu and Sergey Edward Lyshevski . Nanocomputers, Nanoarchitectronics, and NanoICs Sergey Edward Lyshevski . Semiconductor Nano-electronics and Nano-Optoelectronics Nelson Tansu, Ronald Arif, and Zhian Jin Instruments and Measurements . Explosion-Proof Instruments Sam S. Khalilieh, P.E. . Portable Instruments and Systems Halit Eren . G (LabVIEW(TM)) Software Engineering Christopher G. Relf Reliability Engineering B.S. Dhillon Biomedical Systems Introduction Joseph D. Bronzino Bioelectricity . Neuroelectric Principles John A. White and Alan D. Dorval II . Bioelectric Events L.A. Geddes (revised by R.C. Barr) . Biological Effects and Electromagnetic Fields Bonnie Keillor Slaten and Dr. Frank Barnes . Embedded Signal Processing David R. Martinez, Robert A. Bond, and M. Michael Vai Biomedical Sensors Michael R. Neuman Bioelectronics and Instruments . The Electroencephalogram Joseph D. Bronzino . The Electrocardiograph Edward J. Berbari Tomography M.D. Fox Mathematics, Symbols, and Physical Constants Introduction Ronald J. Tallarida . Greek Alphabet . International System of Units (SI) . Conversion Constants and Multipliers . Physical Constants . Symbols and Terminology for Physical and Chemical Quantities . Credits . Probability for Electrical and Computer Engineers Charlie Therrien Index
From the Margins to the Center: Debunking Claims about Southeast Asian American Masculinity

This study reviews empirical data from the U.S. Census, American Community Survey (ACS) and academic journals to explore K-12 and higher educational outcomes pertaining to Southeast Asian American ...
Promoting the flash sintering of ZnO in reduced atmospheres to achieve nearly full densities at furnace temperatures of <120 °C

Using ZnO as a model system, a strong dependence of the onset flash sintering temperature on the atmosphere has been discovered. In the best cases, ZnO specimens have been sintered to >97% relative densities (with fine grain sizes of ∼1 μm) in ∼30 s at furnace temperatures of 2 . The enhanced conductivities of ZnO powder specimens in reduced atmospheres are responsible for the substantial decreases of the onset flash sintering temperatures.
Relationship of Motor Ability and Athletic Participation in Certain Standardized Personality Measures

Abstract In an attempt to differentiate more adequately between the terms motor ability and athletic participation in their relationship to some measurable aspects of personality, a group of 167 Pomona College junior and senior male students were classified both as to level of motor ability and participation in athletics and were administered the CPI. Utilizing a total test response derived from the sum of ranks of median scores, low and middle motor ability groups ranked higher in the main effects and within the nonathlete and intramural participation groups, but athletic participation did not appear to have any effect upon the measures studied. The pattern of results suggested an expectation hypothesis wherein higher ratings in the personality inventory might be achieved by groups of subjects who participated at a level which would be “expected” in relation to their motor ability.
Recognizing Digital Multimedia’s Potential as a Teaching Tool to Improve Family-centered Care in Our Technology-centered Society in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Background: In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), healthcare providers value family-centered care for pediatric patients. To involve families, a large focus is on education so parents can feel empowered about their necessary role as advocates and caregivers despite the stressful and potentially isolating environment of the NICU. Current teaching practices need to be updated to enhance understanding and reflect today’s digital society. Studies have shown parents …
Pediatric Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Clinical Characteristics in the United States from a Large Global Health Research Network

Background Few reports have been published on the clinical presentation of pediatric patients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We aim to shed more light on the clinical presentation of pediatric patients infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and also potential risk factors for more severe clinical case presentation. Methods We used a large global health research network to gather clinical data extracted from the electronic medical records of pediatric patients aged < 18 years with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 from January 1, 2020 to May 7, 2020. Clinical symptoms at presentation, hospitalization status, associated co-morbidities, and treatments received were reviewed. Results A total of 627 patients with COVID-19 diagnosis (334 were outpatient, 293 were inpatient) were included from a total of 20 organizations across the United States. The mean age of patients was seven years, 48% were females. Inpatients were younger than outpatients (mean age of 5.6 years vs 8.2 years, p<0.001). Sixty-one percent of patients in the inpatient group were < 5 years of age vs. 44% in the outpatient group. Amongst 293 inpatients, 90% (n=265) were non-severe and 10% (n=28) were classified as severe. The percentage of patients <5 years was higher in severe inpatients vs. non-severe (71% vs 60%.) Significantly more patients with a severe illness vs. non-severe illness had a history of co-morbidity including non-congenital heart disease (50% vs 11%, p<0.001) and disease of the respiratory system (86% vs 53%, p< 0.001). Conclusion Clinicians should closely monitor young children with underlying conditions and COVID-19, as they may be more likely to be hospitalized and have a higher severity of the disease.
Circulating Osteocrin Levels Do Not Track with Myocardial Function in Chronic Systolic Heart Failure

Background Osteocrin was originally classified as a muscular and bone secretory protein with the ability to modulate bone growth through osteoblast activity, yet it shares a similar sequence to the family of natriuretic peptides (NPs). Despite their sequence homology, it is yet unknown whether osteocrin exhibits similar properties to NPs. However, recent work has shown that osteocrin can limit C-type NPs and more definitively, that a transgenic osteocrin mouse strain exhibited improved outcomes and alleviated echocardiographic parameters, after myocardial infarction (MI). Hypothesis With previous evidence showing improved prognosis and cardiac function in osteocrin-overexpressing mice post-MI, we hypothesize that circulating osteocrin levels in chronic heart failure patients could track with echocardiographic indices and other heart failure (HF) biomarkers of interest. Method Eighty-seven symptomatic chronic HF subjects with LVEF ≤35% underwent detailed echocardiographic evaluation and measurements of plasma NPs and osteocrin by ELISA assay, with long-term follow-up for all-cause mortality, transplantation, or mechanical circulatory support. Results In our study cohort (mean age 57 years, 72% male, 44% ischemic), median plasma osteocrin level was 198.3 (IQR 131.5, 386.3) ng/L. Plasma osteocrin levels did not track with demographics, comorbidities, medications, or laboratory values including ANP and BNP. Furthermore, osteocrin did not correlate to major echocardiographic indices (Table) or long-term adverse clinical outcomes. Conclusions Although osteocrin shows similarity to NPs and has been shown to exert cardioprotective effects in mice after cardiac insult, we did not observe any relationship between circulating osteocrin levels and clinical or echocardiographic parameters in chronic HFrEF patients.
Carbon Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Vitrimer: Robust Mechanical Performance and Facile Hydrothermal Decomposition in Pure Water

Conventional carbon fiber reinforced thermosetting polymers (CFRPs) are neither recyclable nor repairable due to their crosslinked network. The rapid growing CFRP market raises a serious concern of the waste management. In this work, a viable method to develop a readily recyclable CFRP based on epoxy vitrimer is introduced. First, a self-catalytic epoxy prepolymer with built-in hydroxy and tertiary amine groups is designed, which upon reaction with an anhydride formed a catalyst-free epoxy vitrimer. The epoxy prepolymer is synthesized from a diamine and an excess of bisphenol A epoxy resin. The hydroxyls and tertiary amines of the epoxy prepolymer efficiently catalyze both curing and the dynamic transesterification of the crosslinked polymer without the need of a catalyst. Then, the epoxy vitrimer is used as the matrix resin to prepare CFRP. The resulting CFRP exhibited a tensile strength as high as 356 MPa. More interestingly, the matrix of the CFRP is efficiently degraded in pure water at above 160 °C. This is because the built-in tertiary amines catalyze the hydrolysis of the ester bonds of the crosslinked network. The simple method developed in this work provides a framework for the development of recyclable CFRP.
Deep learning pipeline for brain MRI acquisition type classification

We have developed an effective deep learning pipeline to classify brain magnetic resonance imaging scans automatically into 12 subcategories. The classification is performed by a meta classifier which receives level one predictions from Microsoft's Residual Networks (ResNet), Google’s Neural Architecture Search Network (NASNet) and a text-based classifier on DICOM header series description and combine them to get final classification. The overall classifier was trained, validated and tested on 2750 MRI images from multicenter projects. The classifier was packaged using Docker containerization technology and deployed on a local XNAT instance and tested on 3000 independent imaging sessions with 98.5% accuracy.
A food web including parasites for kelp forests of the Santa Barbara Channel, California.

We built a high-resolution topological food web for the kelp forests of the Santa Barbara Channel, California, USA that includes parasites and significantly improves resolution compared to previous webs. The 1,098 nodes and 21,956 links in the web describe an economically, socially, and ecologically vital system. Nodes are broken into life-stages, with 549 free-living life-stages (492 species from 21 Phyla) and 549 parasitic life-stages (450 species from 10 Phyla). Links represent three kinds of trophic interactions, with 9,352 predator-prey links, 2,733 parasite-host links and 9,871 predator-parasite links. All decisions for including nodes and links are documented, and extensive metadata in the node list allows users to filter the node list to suit their research questions. The kelp-forest food web is more species-rich than any other published food web with parasites, and it has the largest proportion of parasites. Our food web may be used to predict how kelp forests may respond to change, will advance our understanding of parasites in ecosystems, and fosters development of theory that incorporates large networks. Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13487178
Decoding Music Attention from “EEG Headphones”: A User-Friendly Auditory Brain-Computer Interface

People enjoy listening to music as part of their life. This makes music an excellent choice for designing a user-friendly brain-computer interface (BCI) for long-term use. We propose a novel BCI system using music stimuli that relies on brain signals collected via Smartfones, an EEG recording device integrated into a pair of headphones. In a user study of the proposed system, participants were asked to pay attention to one of three musical instruments playing simultaneously from separate spatial directions. We used a stimulus reconstruction method to decode attention from EEG signals. Results show that the proposed system can achieve good decoding accuracy (>70%) while providing superior user-friendliness compared to a traditional EEG setup.
Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation and Continuous Kidney Replacement Therapy: Technology and Outcomes - A Narrative Review

The number of patients using critical care is increasing as our populations live longer thanks to advances in medical therapies. This is reflected by an increase in both usage and number of critical care beds as compared with total hospital beds across the United States. As this aging population suffers more and more from multiorgan dysfunction, including but not limited to respiratory failure, cardiac failure, and acute kidney injury, technologies are used to facilitate recovery in those that would have assuredly passed away years ago. Some of these advancements include extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and continuous kidney replacement therapy. In this article, we review the literature regarding the history, technology, indications, and outcomes of synchronous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and kidney replacement therapy.
High-Throughput and Dosage-Controlled Intracellular Delivery of Large Cargos by an Acoustic-Electric Micro-Vortices Platform.

A high-throughput non-viral intracellular delivery platform is introduced for the transfection of large cargos with dosage-control. This platform, termed Acoustic-Electric Shear Orbiting Poration (AESOP), optimizes the delivery of intended cargo sizes with poration of the cell membranes via mechanical shear followed by the modulated expansion of these nanopores via electric field. Furthermore, AESOP utilizes acoustic microstreaming vortices wherein up to millions of cells are trapped and mixed uniformly with exogenous cargos, enabling the delivery of cargos into cells with targeted dosages. Intracellular delivery of a wide range of molecule sizes ( 90%), cell viability (>80%), and uniform dosages (<60% coefficient of variation (CV)) simultaneously into 1 million cells min-1 per single chip is demonstrated. AESOP is successfully applied to two gene editing applications that require the delivery of large plasmids: i) enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) plasmid (6.1 kbp) transfection, and ii) clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9-mediated gene knockout using a 9.3 kbp plasmid DNA encoding Cas9 protein and single guide RNA (sgRNA). Compared to alternative platforms, this platform offers dosage-controlled intracellular delivery of large plasmids simultaneously to large populations of cells while maintaining cell viability at comparable delivery efficiencies.
Multi-Source Data Fusion Outage Location in Distribution Systems via Probabilistic Graphical Models

Efficient outage location is critical to enhancing the resilience of power distribution systems. However, accurate outage location requires combining massive evidence received from diverse data sources, including smart meter (SM) last gasp signals, customer trouble calls, social media messages, weather data, vegetation information, and physical parameters of the network. This is a computationally complex task due to the high dimensionality of data in distribution grids. In this paper, we propose a multi-source data fusion approach to locate outage events in partially observable distribution systems using Bayesian networks (BNs). A novel aspect of the proposed approach is that it takes multi-source evidence and the complex structure of distribution systems into account using a probabilistic graphical method. Our method can radically reduce the computational complexity of outage location inference in high-dimensional spaces. The graphical structure of the proposed BN is established based on the network’s topology and the causal relationship between random variables, such as the states of branches/customers and evidence. Utilizing this graphical model, accurate outage locations are obtained by leveraging a Gibbs sampling (GS) method, to infer the probabilities of de-energization for all branches. Compared with commonly-used exact inference methods that have exponential complexity in the size of the BN, GS quantifies the target conditional probability distributions in a timely manner. A case study of several real-world distribution systems is presented to validate the proposed method.
Dispersion and kinematics of multi-layer non-hydrostatic models

Abstract Multi-layer non-hydrostatic models are gaining popularity in studies of coastal wave processes owing to the resolution of the flow kinematics, but the linear dispersion relation remains the primary criterion for assessment of model convergence. In this paper, we reformulate the linear governing equations of an N-layer model into Boussinesq form by writing the non-hydrostatic terms as high-order derivatives of the horizontal flow velocity. The equation structure allows implementation of Fourier analysis to provide a [2 N − 2, 2N] expansion of the velocity at each layer. A variable transformation converts the governing equations into separate flux- and dispersion-dominated systems, which explicitly give an equivalent Pad e ´ expansion of the wave celerity for examination of the convergence and asymptotic properties. Flow continuity equates the depth-integrated horizontal velocity to the celerity and verifies the analytical solution. The surface-layer velocity, which is driven by the kinematic free surface boundary condition, shows a positive error and converges monotonically to the solution of Airy wave theory. When the depth parameter kd > 2N, flow reversal occurs in the sub-surface layers to offset overestimation of the surface velocity and to better approximate the flux. This model internal mechanism facilitates convergence of the celerity at large kd and benefits applications on wave transformation. Such non-physical flow reversal, however, might complicate studies that require detailed wave kinematics.
Basismechanismen und Realisierungsgrundlagen

In geregelten arbeitsteiligen Anwendungssystemen werden rechnergestutzte Aktivitaten in eine durchgangige Umgebung integriert, um die Geregeltheit und Arbeitsteiligkeit einer Anwendung unterstutzen zu konnen. Wahrend im vorangegangenen Kapitel die Grundlagen des Entwurfs und der Modellierung geregelter arbeitsteiliger Anwendungssysteme aufgezeigt wurden, werden in diesem Kapitel die Basismechanismen und Realisierungsgrundlagen fur deren Betrieb eingefuhrt. Die Darstellung und Einordnung dieser Basismechanismen und Realisierungsgrundlagen erfolgt anhand eines Schichtenmodells fur die Implementierung geregelter arbeitsteiliger Anwendungssysteme. Im nachfolgenden Abschnitt 5.1 wird dieses Schichtenmodell beschrieben und damit gleichzeitig ein Uberblick uber das gesamte Kapitel 5 gegeben.
Extraction and Evaluation of Fibers from Sugar Cane

Sugar cane fiber bundles were extracted from the separated rind of cane stalks using alkaline treatments. The amount of lignin removed depended on alkaline concentration and time and pressure of treatment; agitation and vigorous boiling also affected the lignin removal. A severity factor R was calculated to compare the delignification conditions. Alkali concentration significantly affected the mechanical properties of the fiber bundles. Tenacity, toughness, and linear density were higher for the fibers extracted at the lower concentration, as were bending rigidity and hysteresis.
Hidden Costs? Malpractice Allegations and Defensive Medicine Among Cardiac Surgeons

This article evaluates the impact of private allegations of malpractice against cardiac surgeons on their patients’ outcomes and characteristics. While tort law may impact observable physician costs, malpractice allegations also impose hidden costs that could also affect physician behavior. We employ a large and multi-year panel dataset and patient-level analysis to ascertain whether malpractice allegations influence a surgeon’s practicing behavior. Using a generalized difference-in-difference model that controls for unobserved patient heterogeneity, clustering of patients within surgeon offices, contemporaneous expected risk, and other patient variables, we measure whether an allegation of malpractices affects a physician’s service intensity and use of healthcare resources. Our results find no evidence that physician behavior was sensitive to allegations, findings of or settlements of malpractice claims. This is consistent with either low levels of defensive medicine in this specialty or pervasive and persistent practices — including defensive medicine — that are not significantly impacted by actual claims filed.
Historical and Socio-political Perspectives of the Caribbean Region on Mental Health

Abstract The story of the Caribbean region includes a legacy of eradication of indigenous populations, slave labor, and colonial hegemony that has shaped the economies, social structures, and cultures of each island/nation uniquely. This paper presents a brief historical and socio-political examination of the psychological impact of histories of subordination, in an effort to contextualize the experiences of the individuals in these islands, as they pertain to effectively addressing the region’s mental health needs. The field of psychology holds promise for addressing legacies of colonialism on identity and subjectivity, particularly as an emphasis is placed on internal knowledge production. The 2011 Caribbean Regional Conference of Psychology is one such example of a movement towards unification and ownership of Caribbean Psychology perspectives, leaders, and the next generation of scholars. Abstracto La historia de la region del Caribe incluye un legado de la erradicacion de las poblaciones indigenas, la escalvitud y la hegemonia colonial que ha formado la economia, las estructuras sociales y culturas de cada isla/nacion. Este articulo presenta un breve analisis historico y sociopolitico del impacto psicologico de la historia de subordinacion con el intento de contextualizar las experiencias de los individuos en estas islas, cubriendo las necesidades de salud mental de la region adecuadamente. El campo de la psicologia ofrece las esperanza de enfrentar el legado de colonialismo en la identidad y la subjetividad, especialmente en la produccion de conocimiento interno. La Conferencia Regional del Caribe 2011 de la Psicologia es un ejemplo del movimiento hacia la unificacion y la propiedad de las perspectivas de la psicologia del Caribe, lideres, y la proxima generacion de eruditos .
Multi-sensor joint kernel sparse representation for personnel detection

In this paper, we propose a novel nonlinear technique for multi-sensor classification, which relies on sparsely representing a test sample in terms of all the training samples in a feature space induced by a kernel function. Our approach simultaneously takes into account the correlations as well as the complementary information between the homogeneous/heterogeneous sensors, while also considering the joint sparsity within each sensor's multiple observations in the feature space. This approach can be seen as a generalized model for representing a multi-task and multivariate Lasso in the feature space, where the data from all the sensors representing the same physical events are jointly represented by a sparse linear combination of the training data. Extensive experiments are conducted on real data sets and the results are compared with the conventional discriminative classifiers to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in the application of automatic border patrol, where it is required to discriminate between human and animal footsteps.
Meiotic recombination hotspots: shaping the genome and insights into hypervariable minisatellite DNA change.

Meiotic homologous recombination serves three principal roles. First, recombination reas-sorts the linkages between newly-arising alleles to provide genetic diversity upon which natural selection can act. Second, recombination is used to repair certain types of DNA damage to provide a mechanism of genomic homeostasis. Third, with few exceptions homologous recombination is required for the appropriate segregation of homologous chromosomes during meiosis. Recombination rates are elevated near DNA sites called “recombination hotspots.” These sites influence the distribution of recombination along chromosomes and the timing of recombination during the life cycle. Recent advances have revealed biochemical steps of hotspot activation and have suggested that hotspots may regulate when and where recombination occurs. Two models for hotspot activation, one in which hotspots act early in the recombination pathway and one in which hotspots act late in the recombination pathway, are presented. The latter model can account for changes at hypervariable minisatellite DNA in metazoan genomes by invoking resolution of Holliday junctions at mini-satellite DNA repeats.
Referential adjustments and linguistic structure

Abstract § 1. 1 — Bloomfield's Jack and Jill 1 Leonard Bloomfield, Language, 22 ff. (New York, 1933). , in speaking, perform substitute stimuli and responses. Their counterparts in Karl Buhler's Sprachtheorie 2 (Jena, 1934). would instead be making use of a tool composed of a system of signs placed in the deictic and symbolic fields 3 Loc. cit. 79 ff., 149 ff. respectively. Gardiner again would make them into two factors of his speech event, the other two factors being the things they spoke about and the words they were using 4 Alan H. Gardiner, The Theory of Speech and Language, 62 ff. (Oxford, 1932). . Kantor would have Jack and Jill alternatingly engage in bistimulational (referential) adjustmental behavior and admit only things spoken about and the listener as the two stimuli for the speaker's linguistic response. This response would constitute a genuine adjustment to be distinguished from static word things 5 J. R. Kantor, An Objective Psychology of Language, 73 ff. (= Indiana University Publications...
Arthur Kornberg (1918-2007)

One of the greatest biochemists of the 20th century and a "lover of enzymes" is remembered.
Estimation of new ignited fires using particle filters in wildfire spread simulation

Assimilating real time data into wildfire spread simulations has the potential to improve simulation results of wildfires, which are complex and dynamic in nature. Our previous work developed a data assimilation method based on particle filters (PF) to estimate the state of a wildfire. This method, however, does not work effectively when there are significant events, such as new ignited fires, that change the fire spread behavior. This paper proposes a new method to estimate new ignited fires based on PF. The developed data assimilation method uses prior knowledge to design the proposal distribution of PF. Experiment results of this method, compared to those from several other proposal distributions, indicate that the developed method can effectively improve simulation results.
Socially intelligent robots: research, development, and applications

I outline my approach for the design of a robot that can engage humans in a natural, intuitive, social manner. We have found that humans perceive and interpret the robot's actions as socially significant and possessing communicative value. This has led us to define a very different set of constraints and challenges for autonomous robot control that lie along a social dimension. The goal of this research program is to pioneer a path toward the creation of sociable robots. Our journey should be a responsible one, well-conceived and well intentioned. For this reason, it is important that this work raises some of the philosophical and ethical questions regarding how building such technologies shapes our self-understanding, and how these technologies might impact society.
Low voltage CMOS Schmitt trigger circuits

Two new low voltage Schmitt trigger circuits are presented which use a dynamic body-bias technique. The first circuit is designed for operation at 1 V. The second circuit, derived from the first circuit, is designed for operation at 0.4 V. Experimental results for the new Schmitt trigger circuits are presented.
Path-integral computation of the low-temperature properties of liquid 4He.

Discretized path-integral computations of the energy and radial distribution function of $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ in good accord with experiment are presented for temperatures down to 1 K at saturated vapor pressure. Results for the single-particle density matrix, momentum distribution, and condensate fraction agree at the lowest temperature with previous ground-state calculations.
On the zeros of complex Van Vleck polynomials

Polynomial solutions to the generalized Lame equation, the Stieltjes polynomials, and the associated Van Vleck polynomials, have been studied extensively in the case of real number parameters. In the complex case, relatively little is known. Numerical investigations of the location of the zeros of the Stieltjes and Van Vleck polynomials in special cases reveal intriguing patterns in the complex case, suggestive of a deeper structure. In this article we report on these investigations, with the main result being a proof of a theorem confirming that the zeros of the Van Vleck polynomials lie on special line segments in the case of the complex generalized Lame equation having three free parameters. Furthermore, as a result of this proposition, we are able to obtain in this case a strengthening of a classical result of Heine on the number of possible Van Vleck polynomials associated with a given Stieltjes polynomial.
Sensory-specific appetition: Postingestive detection of glucose rapidly promotes continued consumption of a recently encountered flavor.

Abstract It is generally thought that macronutrients stimulate intake when sensed in the mouth (e.g., sweet taste) but as food enters the GI tract its effects become inhibitory, triggering satiation processes leading to meal termination. Here we report experiments extending recent work (see Zukerman et al., 2011 [1] ) showing that under some circumstances nutrients sensed in the gut produce a positive feedback effect, immediately promoting continued intake. In one experiment, rats with intragastric (IG) catheters were accustomed to consuming novel flavors in saccharin daily while receiving water infused IG (5 ml/15 min). The very first time glucose (16% w/w) was infused IG instead of water, intake accelerated within 6 min of infusion onset and total intake increased 29% over baseline. Experiment 2 replicated this stimulatory effect with glucose infusion but not fructose nor maltodextrin. Experiment 3 showed that the immediate intake stimulation is specific to the flavor accompanying the glucose infusion. Rats were accustomed to flavored saccharin being removed and replaced with the same or a different flavor. When glucose infusion accompanied the first bottle, intake from the second bottle was stimulated only when it contained the same flavor, not when the flavor switched. Thus we confirm not only that glucose sensed postingestively can have a rapid, positive feedback effect (‘appetition’ as opposed to ‘satiation’) but that it is sensory-specific, promoting continued intake of a recently encountered flavor. This sensory-specific motivation may represent an additional psychobiological influence on meal size, and further, has implications for the mechanisms of learned flavor-nutrient associations.
Post-disturbance erosion impacts carbon fluxes and plant succession on recent tropical landslides

Tropical landslides are suitable locations to study short-term carbon (C) fluxes because of the rapid changes that occur for the first few years following initial disruption of the slope. Because of the high heterogeneity among landslide soils and plant re-colonization patterns, we measured C fluxes from 30 landslides in the Luquillo Experimental Forest in northeastern Puerto Rico from 8–13 months after landslide formation. Post-landslide erosion resulted in significantly higher soil output on dioritic than on volcaniclastic soils, with no temporal decline in soil output during the study. Much more C was found in landslide soils than in plant biomass, and we estimate that 6–24% of the soil C standing stock would erode from our plots within 1 year. Even the relatively small amount of C in plant matter was in flux, with four to five times plant C standing stock deposited into the plots as plant litter and two times standing stock leaving our plots in 1 year. This rapid turnover of C is indicative of highly unstable substrates that likely stabilize over successional time. We combined our short-term study with past chronosequence studies to project long-term carbon movement in landslides. We suggest that landslides in Puerto Rico represent a net down slope movement of C despite deposition from surrounding forest soils, litter from the surrounding landscape and in situ successional re-growth.
Noise properties of electrically gain-switched 1.5 µm DFB lasers after spectral filtering

The authors show that spectral filtering of short pulses from an electrically gain-switched 1.5 mu m DFB laser produces a substantial increase (12 dB) in the noise of the pulse train due to a mode partition effect. The implication of these results is considered for the situation where an erbium doped fibre amplifier is used to amplify gain-switched pulses. >