cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Complex epigenetic regulation of Engrailed-2 ( EN-2 ) homeobox gene in the autism cerebellum

The elucidation of epigenetic alterations in the autism brain has potential to provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying abnormal gene expression in this disorder. Given strong evidence that engrailed-2 (EN-2) is a developmentally expressed gene relevant to cerebellar abnormalities and autism, the epigenetic evaluation of this candidate gene was undertaken in 26 case and control post-mortem cerebellar samples. Assessments included global DNA methylation, EN-2 promoter methylation, EN-2 gene expression and EN-2 protein levels. Chromatin immunoprecipitation was used to evaluate trimethylation status of histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27) associated with gene downregulation and histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4) associated with gene activation. The results revealed an unusual pattern of global and EN-2 promoter region DNA hypermethylation accompanied by significant increases in EN-2 gene expression and protein levels. Consistent with EN-2 overexpression, histone H3K27 trimethylation mark in the EN-2 promoter was significantly decreased in the autism samples relative to matched controls. Supporting a link between reduced histone H3K27 trimethylation and increased EN-2 gene expression, the mean level of histone H3K4 trimethylation was elevated in the autism cerebellar samples. Together, these results suggest that the normal EN-2 downregulation that signals Purkinje cell maturation during late prenatal and early-postnatal development may not have occurred in some individuals with autism and that the postnatal persistence of EN-2 overexpression may contribute to autism cerebellar abnormalities.
The "social case": Illness, psychiatry, and deinstitutionalization in postsocialist Romania.

In this article, I examine the use of an ad hoc medical category—the “social case”—by psychiatrists in contemporary Romania. “Social cases” receive intensive psychiatric care, usually through long institutional stays, remaining hospitalized because psychiatrists perceive them as too poor and, thus, “unfit” to survive without the welfare assistance provided by institutionalization. The “social case” label emerges at the intersection of (1) plans by the state to deinstitutionalize public mental health care, (2) the rise of a new class of downwardly mobile and increasingly poor formerly working-class people, and (3) the desire of psychiatrists to protect their patients in the face of neoliberal assaults on Romanian welfare state support for publicly funded mental health care. Disability status, illness categories, and everyday medical practices have become battlegrounds for struggles over medical understandings of the psychological distress and illnesses that grip what I call the “New Poor” in postsocialist Romania.
Why Have Robberies Become Less Frequent but More Violent

Although the incidence of robbery has declined sharply since the early 1990s, the proportion of robberies resulting in victim injury has increased and the rate of victim resistance has remained relatively stable. We provide a theoretical explanation for these trends. Deterrence policies that make robbery more costly for offenders result in a decline in the incidence of robbery through the exit of those with the best outside options. The group of robbers who exit consists disproportionately of those who would have fled in the face of victim resistance, and hence, the pool of remaining robbers is more likely to respond violently to noncompliance by victims. This effect is reinforced by what we call victim hardening: a change in the distribution of attributes in the victim pool that makes resistance more likely. This can arise, for instance, through an increase in crime avoidance by the most compliant victims. Deterrence and victim hardening both result in lower robbery rates and greater violence conditional on resistance but have opposing effects on the rate of resistance, thus accounting for its relative stability over time. (JEL K42, K14) The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
Replies to Professor Weeks

The issue between Professor Weeks and myself is basically one of degree. My article maintainedthat “to a considerable degree” the Chilean military has “returned to their earlier tradition ofprofessionalism, legalism and constitutionalism ” (Sigmund, 2003: 249). It criticized Brian Loveman ’sdescription of Chile as a “protected democracy” (Sigmund, 2003: 246), and Professor Weeks’claim that if the Chilean military ’s “salient interests ” are threatened, “intervention will be considerednot just necessary but patriotic” (Sigmund, 2003: 248).I agree that much remains to be done to give legal and constitutional recognition to civilian supremacy.My article, however, described how much progress had already taken place in this area- progressthat I would not describe, as does Professor Weeks in the title of his 2003 paper, as “InchingToward Democracy. “As for specifics, the National Security Council is now practically defunct, therenegotiation of the copper law which before the 1973 coup was not even discussed is nowdefinitely on the political agenda, the appointed senators are on their way out, and Michelle Bachelet,a victim along with her family of repression by the military, is Minister of Defense and a likelypresidential candidate.Is it or is it not true in Chile today that “the army can no longer exert the threat of a coup to extractconcessions from the civilian government.” (Sigmund, 2003: 249). As it did in the 1990’s? ForProfessor Weeks the glass of the transition to civilian rule is 2/3 empty: for me it is 2/3 full.
A Compound Nose: Functional Organization and Development of Aesthetasc Sensilla

Crustaceans show complex chemosensory behaviors, including orientating in complex spatio-temporal odor plumes, discriminating between highly similar odor mixtures, and associative learning. Yet how the functional organization of their olfactory systems is related to these abilities is not well understood. The olfactory organ (antennule) has a diversity of sensilla whose neurons comprise at least two parallel pathways that project to different neuropils in the CNS. Our initial attempts to understand this relationship in spiny lobsters are described here. An added complexity is that in spiny lobsters and other species with indeterminate growth, the organization of their olfactory systems changes throughout their lives. We show that turnover of olfactory neurons in the antennules occurs continuously, with proliferation, maturation, and death of these neurons occurring in spatially segregated zones.
Diagnosis of the Downstream Ridging Associated with Extratropical Transition Using Short-Term Ensemble Forecasts

Abstract The dynamical mechanisms that led to downstream ridging during the extratropical transition (ET) of Typhoons Tokage and Nabi are evaluated using data drawn from a cycling ensemble Kalman filter coupled with the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). During both transitions, the ensemble covariances indicate that the 350-K potential vorticity (PV) at the apex of the ridge, which is used to define the ridge structure, is proportional to the amount of precipitation along the baroclinic zone to the northeast of the tropical cyclone (TC), and at some times to the upper-tropospheric divergence above the tropical cyclone. Multivariate regression calculations indicate that the frontal precipitation has the largest impact on the ridge amplitude and area during Tokage’s transition, while the TC divergence has roughly equal impact during some times of Nabi’s transition. The amount of precipitation along the baroclinic zone is modulated by the lower-tropospheric frontogenesis and moisture flux on the ...
Survey Mode as a Source of Instability in Responses across Surveys

Changes in survey mode for conducting panel surveys may contribute significantly to survey error. This article explores the causes and consequences of such changes in survey mode. The authors describe how and why the choice of survey mode often causes changes to be made to the wording of questions, as well as the reasons that identically worded questions often produce different answers when administered through different modes. The authors provide evidence that answers may changeas a result of different visual layouts for otherwise identical questions and suggest ways to keep measurement the same despite changes in survey mode.
Turning the Tables: Slaves and the Criminal Law

Twice Condemned, as the title suggests, is a study of the criminal law of slavery in Virginia. The book breaks new ground in legal history. Virginia was the most important slave state, and had been the most important slave colony. The literature on slavery, to be sure, is immense; but the criminal law of slavery-the intersection between criminal justice and the "peculiar institution"-has never quite gotten its due. It would be an exaggeration, of course, to say that no scholars have explored this particular intersection. There is not much in the way of book-length treatments of the subject, but slavery figures in a number of important monographs on criminal justice; and there is a sizable periodical literature on the criminal law of slavery.' For obvious reasons, scholars have tended to concentrate on those slave offenses which were taken seriously enough to be brought to the courtroom. Day-by-day social control, on the plantation, has been much more difficult to deal with systematically. Court records do not show us the whole picture; but they are important in their own right. The periodical literature has mostly paid attention
Transcriptional impact of dietary methionine restriction on systemic inflammation: Relevance to biomarkers of metabolic disease during aging

Calorie restriction (CR) without malnutrition increases lifespan and produces significant improvements in biomarkers of metabolic health. The improvements are attributable in part to effects of CR on energy balance, which limit fat accumulation by restricting energy intake. Normal age-associated increases in adiposity and insulin resistance are associated with development of a systemic proinflammatory state, while chronic CR limits fat deposition and expression of inflammatory markers. Dietary methionine restriction (MR) has emerged as an effective CR mimetic because it produces a comparable extension in lifespan. MR also reduces adiposity through a compensatory increase in energy expenditure that effectively limits fat accumulation, but essentially nothing is known about the effects of MR on systemic inflammation. Here, we review the relationships between these two interventions and discuss their transcriptional impact. In addition, using tissues from rats after long-term consumption of CR or MR diets, transcriptional profiling was used to examine retrospectively the systems biology of 59 networks of molecules annotated to inflammation. Transcriptional effects of both diets occurred primarily in white adipose tissue and liver, and the responses to MR were far more robust than those to CR. The primary transcriptional targets of MR in both liver and white adipose tissue were phagocytes and macrophages, where expression of genes associated with immune cell infiltration and quantity was reduced. These findings support the conclusion that anti-inflammatory responses produced by CR and MR are not strictly dependent upon reduced adiposity but are significantly influenced by the metabolic mechanisms through which energy balance is altered.
Reappraisal of ocular pneumoplethysmography after carotid endarterectomy

Abstract An initial report documented a 3-year experience (1978 through 1980) with ocular pneumoplethysmography (OPG-Gee) done in the recovery room after carotid endarterectomy. The present report analyzes a similar 4-year experience (1981 through 1984) on 864 carotid endarterectomies performed by 20 surgeons in which the results of OPG tests done in the recovery room suggested carotid endarterectomy thromboses in 33 of the 864 patients (3.8%). All patients underwent immediate reoperation, and thromboses were confirmed in 26 of the 33 patients (79%). In the seven patients without thromboses, findings at reoperation accounted for the abnormal physiology in six of the seven patients. Overall, in 32 of the 33 patients (97%) the recovery room OPG tests accurately reflected a source of hemodynamic compromise. The application of the special OPG-Gee criteria in this report will minimize needless reoperation after carotid endarterectomy. (J VASC SURG 1986;4:517-21.)
Rock magnetic signature of the Cretaceous‐Tertiary boundary

Black magnetic microspherules, commonly found in Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary sediments and believed to be of an impact melt origin, were found to be responsible for a strong magnetic anomaly at the K-T boundary in Petriccio, Italy, and in almost all Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) sediment cores investigated in which the K-T boundary was present. The enriched concentrations of magnetic minerals have been detected by measurements of the magnetic susceptibility which is in a good approximation proportional to the magnetic microspherule content. A rock magnetic characterization of extracted microspherules by hysteresis, Isothermal Remanent Magnetization acquisition, demagnetization and thermomagnetic measurements describes the magnetic minerals in the microspherules as ferrites with a near magnetite composition and ‘soft’, i.e. multidomain, magnetic behavior, in agreement with earlier nonmagnetic studies. On the contrary, volcanic ash from Hawaii has distinctively ‘harder’ magnetic properties, an important finding with regard to the proposed alternative, a volcanic origin of the well-known Ir-anomaly at the K-T boundary. It is suggested here that from magnetic susceptibility scanning of numerous cross-sections of the K-T boundary a distinct worldwide pattern might evolve that can potentially reveal the impact/volcano site because of a presumed higher microspherule concentration near the source. The advantage of mapping the microspherule distribution over the previous unsuccessful attempt using Ir-concentrations lies in the large size (hundreds of microns) of the microspherules with relatively short airborn life times while the iridium might have adhered to small dust particles that circled the globe several times before settling.
Jungian Personality Types as a Predictor of Attendance at the Black College Day March

This study examined whether Jungian personality types, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, would be related to college students' reported behavior regarding attendance at a sociopolitical event, the Black College Day March. There were two attendance variables: (1) whether subjects planned to attend or not and (2) consistency or inconsistency between subjects' attendance plans and actual attendance, e.g., planned to attend and did vs planned not to attend but did. The personality types compared were extra-verts vs introverts, judgers vs perceivers, sensing judgers vs intuitive perceivers, and intuiting judgers vs sensing perceivers. The results supported each of the hypothesized differences among the personality types with respect to the attendance variables. These data provide further evidence of the construct validity of the Jungian personality types.
Robust, Portable I/O Scheduling with the Disk Mimic

We propose a new approach for I/O scheduling that performs on-line simulation of the underlying disk. When simulation is integrated within a system, three key challenges must be addressed: first, the simulator must be portable across the full range of devices; second, all configuration must be automatic; third, the computation and memory overheads must be low. Our simulator, the Disk Mimic, achieves these goals by building a table-based model of the disk as it observes the times for previous requests. We show that a shortest-mimicked-time-first (SMTF) scheduler performs nearlyas well as an approach with perfect knowledge of the underlying device and that it is superior to traditional scheduling algorithms such as C-LOOK and SSTF; our results hold as the seek and rotational characteristics of the disk are varied.
Urban/suburban out-of-sight propagation modeling

A model for the calculation of the path loss characteristics of a direct sequence (DS) spread spectrum signal which occurs when a mobile user is out-of-sight of the base station due to building blockage is presented. The environments studied are common throughout the world. Results for the experiments in which a base station antenna was set at heights of 6.6 m or 3.3 m, while the mobile antenna was fixed at a height of 1.5 m are presented. The goal of the experiments was to demonstrate the use of broadband DS spread spectrum code-division multiple-access (CDMA) as an efficient means of communication. >
Improved documentation of wound care with a structured encounter form in the pediatric emergency department.

Objective.—Accurate and complete documentation may enhance reimbursement and compliance with financial intermediary regulations, protect against litigation, and improve patient care. We measured the effect of introduction of a structured encounter form on the completeness of documentation of pediatric wound management in a teaching hospital. Methods.—The Children's Hospital Emergency Department introduced a structured encounter form for use in the documentation of wound care in place of the existing free-text dictation method. Attending physicians and trainees, all unaware of the study, had the option of using the form in place of free-text dictation for patients with lacerations requiring closure. We abstracted 100 consecutive free-text dictations from patients treated before the form's introduction. Following a 3-month run-in period, we abstracted 100 consecutive structured wound records. We compared the 2 chart types for completeness of documentation based on 20 predetermined criteria relevant to pediatric wound care. Results.—Overall completeness of documentation improved with structured forms (80% vs 68% for free text, P Discussion.—In an academic pediatric emergency department, the use of a structured complaint-specific form improved overall completeness of wound-care documentation. Structured encounter forms may provide for more standardized documentation for a variety of pediatric chief complaints, thereby facilitating communication and ultimately transition to template-driven systems in anticipation of an electronic medical record.
Resistance to brittle fracture of glass reinforced polymer composites used in composite (nonceramic) insulators

In this paper, the most important results are presented and discussed from a multiyear interdisciplinary study directed toward the identification of the most suitable glass/polymer composite systems with the highest resistance to brittle fracture for high voltage composite insulator applications. Several unidirectional glass/polymer composite systems, commonly used in composite insulators, based either on E-glass or ECR-glass fibers embedded in either polyester, epoxy, or vinyl ester resins have been investigated for their resistance to stress corrosion cracking in nitric acid. The most important factors (fiber and resin types, surface fiber exposure, polymer fracture toughness, moisture absorption, interfacial properties, sandblasting) affecting the resistance of the composites to brittle fracture have been identified and thoroughly analyzed. It has been shown that the brittle fracture process of composite (nonceramic) insulators can be successfully eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced, by the proper chemical optimization of composite rod materials for their resistance to stress corrosion cracking.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's rhetorical presidency

Preface Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Rhetorical President Roosevelt's Persuasive Delivery FDR and the Media: Newsreels, and Press Four Campaigns to the People Inaugurating the Presidency Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court A War of Words and Words of War: The Purge and the Isolationists Writing the Rhetoric Appendix: Chronology of Fireside Chats Endnotes Bibliography Speech Index Index
The Physical Principles of a Negative-Mass Amplifier

By providing in a crystal, carriers of such an energy and such a momentum that at least one of their three main effective masses is negative, it should be possible to obtain wave amplification in such a crystal. The amplifier should work up to about 1000 kmc (0.3 mm wavelength), with a large bandwidth. To obtain carriers of sufficient energy and proper momentum, acceleration by a high field seems most feasible at present. Negative effective masses for relatively low energies may be obtained if the energy contours are re-entrant near the band edge, as is the case for the heavy holes in germanium and, as may be the case for other semiconductors with degenerate band edges. The optical-phonon collision cross-section should also be high in order to obtain sufficient concentration in k-space. If the latter is the case for germanium a verifiable microwave amplifier using the principle would consist of a wafer of p-type germanium with a strong bias field applied in a crystallographic (100) direction, and inserted into a waveguide or a cavity such that the electric vector of the microwave field is perpendicular to the bias field. Such a bulk amplifier has no critical dimensions, receives its power from a dc battery, and has essentially no frequency dependence over the entire radio spectrum. The principle is not restricted to germanium, but should also work with certain other semiconductors. Low-frequency amplifiers and bistable devices are also possible. Some design problems are discussed.
Protein backbone chemical shifts predicted from searching a database for torsion angle and sequence homology

Chemical shifts of nuclei in or attached to a protein backbone are exquisitely sensitive to their local environment. A computer program, SPARTA, is described that uses this correlation with local structure to predict protein backbone chemical shifts, given an input three-dimensional structure, by searching a newly generated database for triplets of adjacent residues that provide the best match in phi/psi/chi(1 )torsion angles and sequence similarity to the query triplet of interest. The database contains (15)N, (1)H(N), (1)H(alpha), (13)C(alpha), (13)C(beta) and (13)C' chemical shifts for 200 proteins for which a high resolution X-ray (< or =2.4 A) structure is available. The relative importance of the weighting factors for the phi/psi/chi(1) angles and sequence similarity was optimized empirically. The weighted, average secondary shifts of the central residues in the 20 best-matching triplets, after inclusion of nearest neighbor, ring current, and hydrogen bonding effects, are used to predict chemical shifts for the protein of known structure. Validation shows good agreement between the SPARTA-predicted and experimental shifts, with standard deviations of 2.52, 0.51, 0.27, 0.98, 1.07 and 1.08 ppm for (15)N, (1)H(N), (1)H(alpha), (13)C(alpha), (13)C(beta) and (13)C', respectively, including outliers.
Uncertainty, Symptoms, and Quality of Life in Persons With Chronic Hepatitis C

Background Chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is the most common blood-borne infection in the United States, but little is known about illness uncertainty in these patients. Objective The authors examined the constructs of illness uncertainty. Method In this cross-sectional study, Mishel's Uncertainty in Illness Scale was used to examine these constructs (ambiguity, complexity, inconsistency, unpredictability) and their relationships with fatigue, pain, depressive symptoms, comorbidity, and quality of life (QOL) in 126 CHC patients undergoing a watchful-waiting protocol. Results The Ambiguity subscale had the strongest relationships with depressive symptoms, QOL, and fatigue, and three of the four subscales were significantly correlated with pain. Conclusion The results suggest targets for patient self-management interventions.
Modeling Input Space for Testing Scientific Computational Software: A Case Study

An application of a method of test case generation for scientific computational software is presented. NEWTRNX, neutron transport software being developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is treated as a case study. A model of dependencies between input parameters of NEWTRNX is created. Results of NEWTRNX model analysis and test case generation are evaluated.
The Differential Salience of Family and Community Demands and Resources for Family-to-Work Conflict and Facilitation

This paper examines the differential salience of family and community demands and resources in relation to family-to-work conflict and facilitation. The study used interviews with 1567 employed, married, parents from the 1995 National Survey of Midlife Development (MIDUS). Family demands show relatively strong positive relationships to family-to-work conflict, whereas family resources are relatively impor- tant for family-to-work facilitation. Two community demands are positively related to family-to-work conflict and one community resource is positively associated with facili- tation. Community demands and resources generally do not moderate relationships between family demands and resources and family-to-work conflict and facilitation. The study suggests that processes associated with demands are relatively important for family-to-work conflict, whereas processes embedded in resources are relatively salient for family-to-work facilitation. Research over the past few decades has revealed that work and family are inter-connected domains. When the boundaries between the work and family domains are sufficiently permeable and flexible, processes occur through which characteristics associated with one domain influence the other domain. Work-family conflict and facili- tation are linking mechanisms in the processes through which work and family characteristics are related to individual, work, and family outcomes (Voydanoff, 2002). They are cognitive appraisals of the effects of one domain on the other domain. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) state that cognitive appraisal is the process of deciding whether an experience is positive, stressful, or irrelevant with regard to well- being. Stressful appraisals occur when individuals perceive that the demands of their environment exceed their resources and endanger
Comparison of GT3X accelerometer and YAMAX pedometer steps/day in a free-living sample of overweight and obese adults

Background: The purpose of this study was to compare steps/day detected by the YAMAX SW-200 pedometer versus the Actigraph GT3X accelerometer in free-living adults. Methods: Daily YAMAX and GT3X steps were collected from a sample of 23 overweight and obese participants (78% female; age = 52.6 ± 8.4 yr.; BMI = 31.0 ± 3.7 m·kg-2). Because a pedometer is more likely to be used in a community-based intervention program, it was used as the standard for comparison. Percent difference (PD) and absolute percent difference (APD) were calculated to examine between-instrument agreement. In addition, days were categorized based on PD: a) under-counting (> −10 PD), b) acceptable counting (−10 to 10 PD), and c) over-counting (> 10 PD). Results: The YAMAX and GT3X detected 8,025 ± 3,967 and 7131 ± 3066 steps/day, respectively, and the outputs were highly correlated (r = .87). Average PD was −3.1% ± 30.7% and average APD was 23.9% ± 19.4%. Relative to the YAMAX, 53% of the days detected by the GT3X were classified as und...
Analyzing Responses from Likert Surveys and Risk-adjusted Ranking: A Data Analytics Perspective

Abstract We broadly consider the topic of ranking entities from surveys/opinions. Often, numerous ranks from different respondents are available for the same entity, e.g., a candidate from a pool, and yet an averaging of those ranks may not serve the purpose of identifying a consensus candidate. We first consider a risk-adjusted paradigm for ranking, where the rank is defined as the average (mean) rank plus a scalar times the risk in the rank; we use standard deviation as a risk metric. In case of a candidate being ranked either on the basis of opinions of a selection committee's members or on social interactions in a social network such as Facebook, risk-adjusted ranking can result in selecting a consensus candidate who/which does not secure the best average rank, but is acceptable to a large number of the opinion providers. Second, we present an approach to develop the margin of error in Likert surveys, which are increasingly being used in data analytics, where the responses are on a five-point scale, but one is interested in a binary response, e.g., yes-no, agree-disagree. Computing the margin of error in Likert surveys is an open problem.
Interpretation of Arterial Blood Gases in the Emergency Patient

Arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis is a critical element in the modern diagnosis and management of pulmonary emergencies. There are no clinical findings that correlate specifically and well with pH, PaCO2 and PaO2 measurements. Knowledge of the abnormalities in pH, PaO2 and PacO2 allows the physician to direct early therapeutic and diagnostic efforts with the greatest lifesaving efficiency. Normal values are given in Appendix B.
Identifying Narrative Clause Types in Personal Stories

This paper describes work on automatically identifying categories of narrative clauses in personal stories written by ordinary people about their daily lives and experiences. We base our approach on Labov & Waletzky’s theory of oral narrative which categorizes narrative clauses into subtypes, such as ORIENTATION, ACTION and EVALUATION. We describe an experiment where we annotate 50 personal narratives from weblogs and experiment with methods for achieving higher annotation reliability. We use the resulting annotated corpus to train a classifier to automatically identify narrative categories, achieving a best average F-score of .658, which rises to an F-score of .767 on the cases with the highest annotator agreement. We believe the identified narrative structure will enable new types of computational analysis of narrative discourse.
Getting Back to the Earned Income Tax Credit: The Next EITC Reform

In this article, the authors argue that instead of focusing on the child tax credit that has received so much attention recently, reformers should shift their attention back to the earned income tax credit (EITC) and press for three simple changes that would support work and marriage: Reduce the maximum EITC phaseout rate (the implicit marginal tax rate); further increase EITC benefits for married couples relative to single individuals; and provide an additional EITC benefit for a third child. They contend that the EITC, which was originally conceived as a work bonus, should continue to be the key policy vehicle for assisting workers in low-income households, rather than the child tax credit, the minimum wage, or welfare.
Physician-assisted suicide from a patient's perspective.

I am a family physician and for the past 8 years I have been living with the debilitating terminal neurologic disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). I was an active 41-year-old when diagnosed with ALS. Now, 8 years later, I cannot move my arms and I can only extend my legs minimally. I cannot
Greater Biosynthetic Liver Dysfunction in Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis Suggests Co-existent or Impending Cholangiocarcinoma.

Background and Aim: Patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) who develop cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) have a median survival of less than 6 months. In half of cases, PSC and CCA will be diagnosed either concurrently or within a year of one another. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate that the degree of biochemical liver dysfunction is associated with concomitant or impending CCA. Methods: We did a chart review of patients diagnosed with PSC and CCA up to 18 months from presentation (“CCA” group) as well as patients with PSC that underwent transplantation with no sign of CCA in their explanted liver (“nCCA” group). Along with demographic data and follow-up length, we recorded their presenting liver function tests, including alanine and aspartate aminotransferases (ALT, AST), total bilirubin (TBil), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), international normalization ratio (INR), and serum Ca 19-9 levels. Differences between mean values of the two groups were analyzed with a student’s t-test. Results: Twenty-four patients were included. The “CCA” group consisted of eight patients, and the “non-CCA” group had 16 patients. There was no significant difference between the two groups in their presenting values of ALT, ALP, or serum Ca 19-9. However, the “CCA” group had significantly higher levels of AST, TBil, and INR. Conclusion: Patients with PSC and concurrent or impending CCA appear to exhibit significantly greater biochemical liver dysfunction than those who do not develop CCA. Therefore, newly-diagnosed PSC patients presenting with these findings may warrant more rigorous evaluation.
Large Eddy Simulations of Two-Phase Turbulent Flows"

A two-phase subgrid combustion model has been developed for large-eddy simulations (LES). This approach includes a more fundamental treatment of the effects of the final stages of droplet vaporization, molecular diffusion, chemical reactions and small scale turbulent mixing than other LES closure techniques. As a result, Reynolds, Schmidt and Damkohler number effects are explicitly included. This model has been implemented within an Eulerian-Lagrangian two-phase formulation. In this approach, the liquid droplets are tracked using the Lagrangian approach up to a prespecified cut-off size. The evaporation of the droplets larger than the cut-off size and the evaporation and mixing of droplets smaller than the cut-off size are modeled within the subgrid using an Eulerian twophase model. It is shown that droplets with order unity Stokes number disperse more than small droplets in agreement with earlier numerical and experimental studies. Conventional and the present approach agree very well when droplets do not fall below the cut-off. However, the present approach gives consistently better results when the cut-off is increased, thereby, demonstrating an important advantage of the new method. The limitations of the current methodology are also highlighted and possible solutions are discussed.
Lydia Maria Child and the Urbanity of Religious Cosmopolitanism in Antebellum New York City

Lydia Maria Child’s writing on the religious experience of urban life challenges scholarship that only considers the anti-urbanism of antebellum Protestantism. Child’s Letters from New-York conside...
Quality Assurance and Quality Control in Radiotherapy

Combining with the investigation of 24 radiotherapy organizations and practical work,this paper puts forward that establishing perfect QA and QC assurance system is important to QA and QC in radiotherapy.We should optimize the equipment allocation and improve the skill of engineers.
Limit Analysis of Plates under Concentrated Load

Limit analysis of plates under concentrated load has been considered by several authors. Herein, the limiting values of concentrated load on arbitrarily shaped clamped plates and simply supported circular plates will be determined for the plate materials. A straightforward application of the limit theorems will lead to general expressions for the limit load. The salient features of Zaid's result will also be explored and will be shown to apply to materials other than the Tresca.
Pump Saturation for the 2 μm Tm Laser

We have recently obtained a formula for the saturation of absorption on the 3H6-3H4 pump band of the 2μm Tm3+ laser taking into account upconversion loss from the 3F4 upper laser level. This formula was successfully applied to the analysis of saturation data taken on the Tm:YVO4 crystal.1 In this paper we discuss some general features of pump saturation for the 2μm Tm3+ laser. Additionally, we provide some numerically generated curves which are useful for estimating upconversion rate constants in such laser systems.
Rewriting Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard: Judith Cowper’s Abelard to Eloisa and Early Gothic Sensibility

One of the many poetical “responses” by eighteenth-century writers to Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard (1717) was Judith Cowper’s Abelard to Eloisa (written 1720, published 1728), a poem that ret...
The Limits of Diplomatic Ritual: The Polish Embassy of Giovanni Francesco Commendone (1572-1573) and Criticism of Papal Legates in Early Modern Europe

This essay proposes that much of the anti-papal sentiment and accusations of papal tyranny that characterized the Reformation grew out of experiences with papal legates a latere , the diplomatic representatives of the Roman see abroad. Because papal “possession” of authority was achieved only indirectly, through representatives, most Europeans’ experiences with, and responses to, the papacy centered on the activities of papal diplomats. After examining the ritual, rhetorical, and juridical framework that surrounded the figure of the legate, this essay examines the uniformly negative reactions to the embassy of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone (1524-1584) during the Polish interregnum of 1572-1573. It argues that criticism of Commendone’s actions in the royal election reveals a larger disjuncture in early modern political theory. While secular rulers believed they should be able to rule their states autonomously, for respective reasons of state, the papacy and its representatives maintained that the pope had both the right and the duty to intervene in temporal affairs when necessary. Thus, criticism of papal legates suggests a broader critique of papal authority: namely, that the Roman pontiff should not be able to interfere in political affairs, even through representatives.
Ethics Education in Public Relations: Differences Between Stand-Alone Ethics Courses and an Integrated Approach

ABSTRACTResearch has found that ethics are most likely to be integrated throughout the curriculum rather than taught as a stand-alone course in public relations. However, this study identified substantial differences in the types of content taught in the two formats on the basis of survey research with 96 educators. Some of the topics that are less likely to be taught outside of an ethics course included other codes of ethics beyond those of the Public Relations Society of America, classical theories by philosophers, decision-making models, the effect of organizational culture and values, and global perspectives on ethics. In addition, few educators reported that they discuss raising ethical concerns in their courses.
XDMoD Value Analytics: A Tool for Measuring the Financial and Intellectual ROI of Your Campus Cyberinfrastructure Facilities

Understanding the financial and intellectual value of campus-based cyberinfrastructure (CI) to the institutions that invest in such CI is intrinsically difficult. Given today's financial pressures, there is often administrative pressure questioning the value of campus-based and campus-funded CI resources. In this paper we describe new financial analytics capabilities being added to the widely used system analysis tool Open XDMoD (XSEDE Metrics on Demand) to create a new realm of metrics that will allow us to correlate usage of high performance computing with funding and publications. The capabilities to be added will eventually allow CI centers to view metrics relevant to both scientific output in terms of publications, and financial data in terms of awarded grants.The creation of Open XDMoD Value Analytics was funded by the National Science Foundation as a two year project. We are now nearing the end of the first year of this award, during which we focused on financial analytics. During the second year of this project we will focus on analytics of intellectual output. This module will allow the same sorts of analyses about systems and users as the financial analytics module, but in terms of intellectual outputs such as number of publications, citations to publications, and H indices. This module will also have capabilities to visualize such data, integrated with financial data. We plan to present these tools at PEARC '18.
What’s Old is New Again: Ancient Greek Theater Alive in the Spanish Caribbean

This chapter returns to the origins of theater from ancient Greece to understand how the myths created then continue to influence the creation of theater written and produced in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic dialoguing with the construction of identity within the sociohistorical moment. The influence of Greek theater is examined in the Cuban Virgilio Pinera’s Electra Garrigo (1941), La pasion segun Antigona Perez (1968) from Luis Rafael Sanchez of Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Franklin Dominguez’s Lisistrata odia a la politica: obra teatral en tres actos inspirada en un tema de Aristofanes (1981). The theatrical borrowing from three different plays of the ancient world provides these national canons legitimacy while the works also challenge the creation of the global canon.
Eclogites and the Eclogite Facies

The rock name eclogite was coined by Hauy, a founder of crystallography, in 1822. Since the original definition of the name was vague, its meaning was gradually settled through its usage in later years. According to the generally established usage in the first half of the twentieth century, it means a rock mainly composed of omphacite and almandine-pyrope-grossular garnet. Omphacite is a clinopyroxene containing diopside, hedenbergite and jadeite components, and quite frequently some acmite. However, no rigid limitations were given for the composition ranges of these minerals. Thus, some authors called diopside-almandine rocks eclogite. Small amounts of quartz, kyanite, olivine, orthopyroxene, amphibole and rutile may be present, but not plagioclase.
Overview of the Normal Development of the Human Embryo and Fetus

Human antenatal development is a very complex process that still is not fully understood. Continuous technological advancement provides new methods to achieve a better understanding of this process. Gestational development starts with the fertilization of the oocyte by the spermatozoon and ends at the moment of delivery. During this process, a myriad of cellular events occur, including cellular division, migration, differentiation, rearrangement, transportation, growth, and apoptosis. This process is divided in two important periods: The first period is called embryonic development, which starts with fertilization and ends on day 56. This period is characterized by formation of organs and systems. The second period is called fetal development, which begins on day 57 of fetal development and concludes at birth. This period is characterized by growth and differentiation. In this chapter, we review the most important events during the embryonic and fetal development periods, and emphasize important aspects of the formation of specific organs and systems.
Inwardly rectifying potassium channels in Drosophila

Inwardly rectifying potassium channels (Kir) are a special subset of potassium selective ion channels which pass potassium more easily into rather than out of the cell. These channels mediate a variety of cellular functions, including control of membrane resting potential, maintenance of potassium homeostasis and regulation of cellular metabolism. Given the existence of fifteen Kir genes in mammals, current genetic studies using mutant animals that lack a single channel may have missed many important physiological functions of these channels due to gene redundancy. This issue can be circumvented by using a simple model organism like Drosophila, whose genome encodes only 3 Kir proteins. The sophisticated genetic approaches of Drosophila may also provide powerful tools to identify additional regulation mechanisms of Kir channels. Here we provide an overview of the progress made in elucidating the function of Drosophila Kir channels. The knowledge of Drosophila Kir channels may lead us to uncover novel functions and regulation mechanisms of human Kir channels and help on pathological studies of related diseases.
Quit Methods Used by American Smokers, 2013-2014.

This report describes the quit methods used in the past 12 months by current and former smokers in the baseline Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study during 2013–2014. Descriptive statistics were used to report the use of single and two or more quit methods; survey weights were used to compute population estimates. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between past year former smokers and single quit method, including individual characteristics. Results: Of 11,402 current smokers and 4919 former smokers, 4541 had tried and 839 had quit in the past 12 months. Unaided quit attempts were the most common; the number was almost as high as all single methods combined (n = 1797 and n = 1831 respectively). The most frequently used single method was help from friends and family (n = 676) followed by e-cigarettes (n = 587). Use of e-cigarettes was the only method with higher odds of users being a former smoker than unaided attempts (OR = 1.42, 95% CI 1.12–1.81). Current use of e-cigarettes among current (34%) and former (54%) smokers was significantly higher than current use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Conclusions: In 2013–2014 e-cigarettes were used by American adult smokers as quit-smoking aids more frequently than NRT products or prescription drugs.
Impacts of anaerobic soil disinfestation and chemical fumigation on soil microbial communities in field tomato production system

Abstract Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD), a potential alternative to pre-plant chemical fumigation for controlling soilborne pathogens, has been demonstrated in several agricultural production systems. The effect of ASD on the soil microbial community is considered one of the major factors responsible for pathogen suppression. However, rather limited information is available regarding the response of the soil microbial community to ASD throughout the cropping season, particularly in sandy soils. A field experiment was conducted to optimize the ASD technique for tomato production in Florida, utilizing two rates of molasses and composted poultry litter (CPL), and a pre-emergent herbicide application. The pre-plant soil treatments included ASD with 6.9 m3 ha−1 of molasses and 11 Mg ha−1 of CPL (ASD0.5), ASD with 13.9 m3 ha−1 of molasses and 22 Mg ha−1 of CPL (ASD1.0), and chemical soil fumigation control (CSF). The herbicide treatments included with and without halosulfuron application. Soil microbial community composition was monitored using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis during the fall 2015 tomato production season. Halosulfuron application did not result in changes in the soil microbial community during the season. CSF led to significantly lower levels of bulk soil total microbial biomass, Gram negative bacteria, Gram positive bacteria and actinomycetes, compared to the ASD treatments. However, the rhizosphere effect of plants under CSF alleviated the microbial suppression and stimulated the growth of Gram negative bacteria and protozoa to reach similar levels to that of rhizosphere soils under the ASD treatments. Compared to 0 day after transplanting (DAT), Gram positive bacteria in bulk soils under the three pre-plant soil treatments significantly decreased while the fungi:bacteria ratio in bulk soils under CSF significantly increased at 36 DAT, and then remained stable throughout the season. Despite the similar microbial composition in bulk and rhizosphere soils between the two ASD treatments, the dynamic changes of some biomarker groups in bulk soils during 0–99 DAT showed distinct patterns particularly for total microbial biomass, Gram negative bacteria, actinomycetes, and fungi. Compared to 0 DAT, bulk soil microbial community composition shifted after 36 DAT under all soil treatments and remained stable until the end of the season. The changes in soil microbial community composition over time were related to changes in soil nutrient availability.