cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Inhibition of Liver Ribonucleic Acid Synthesis by Ethionine

SUMMARY The administration of DL-ethionine to female rats inhibits liver ribonucleic acid synthesis up to 90 to 95%. The inhibition of RNA synthesis follows in time the decrease in adenosine triphosphate concentration and precedes the inhibition of protein synthesis. The degree of inhibition of RNA synthesis is a function of the dose of ethionine. The curve for this inhibition parallels closely the curves for the decrease in ATP concentration and for the inhibition of protein synthesis with varying dosages of ethionine. The simultaneous administration of methionine reverses to a considerable extent the inhibition of RNA synthesis by ethionine.
GENETIC VARIATION IN 14-DAY CHICK EMBRYO WEIGHT.

Abstract INVESTIGATIONS of the causes of variation in chick embryo weight have been numerous. Until recently, however, the effects of heredity on embryo weight have not been demonstrated. Blunn and Gregory (1935) and Krzanowska (1959) concluded that egg weight did not influence embryo weight. Byerly (1932), McNally and Byerly (1936), and Byerly et al. (1938), observed that egg weight did influence embryo weight while Bray and Iton (1962) and Coleman et al. (1964) found egg weight to significantly affect embryo weight. Henderson (1930) and Blunn and Gregory (1935) found neither breed nor strain differences to be shown by embryo weight. Byerly et al. (1938) concluded that embryos from two breeds and hybrid embryos in eggs from each breed grew at similar rates. Bray and Iton (1962), however, reported a significant strain effect on embryo weight. McNary (1960) in inbred lines and their crosses found significant differences in embryo weight at 7…
How to do RF-BiST with virtually no extra circuits for RF-SoC products?

This paper describes novel RF Built-in Self Test (RFBiST) and RF Built-in-Self-Calibration (RF-BiSC) techniques that can test the performance of RF SoC's using on-chip resources as both test stimuli and response analyzers. Our RFBiST approach is to fully utilize existing on-chip circuitry to prevent adding extra die area, while remaining capable of performing various RF-SoC self-tests. Successful RF-BiST examples include internally measuring RF oscillators with onchip digital signals from an All-Digital Phase Locked Loop (ADPLL). Other RF-BiST examples cover various contributors to Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) such as gain, linearity, and phase noise. Functional RF-BiSTs, such as loop-back methods, can be verified from GSM/EDGE to WLAN SoCs through good correlation with comparable external tests. Additionally, RFBiST/ BiSC with on-chip digital controllers and compensation networks can help drastically reduce the cost of phase and amplitude calibration and the deployment time with improved uniformity for phased-array RADARs, benefiting both future military and commercial RADAR systems considerably.
Joint frequency domain and reconstructed phase space features for speech recognition

A novel method for speech recognition is presented, utilizing nonlinear/chaotic signal processing techniques to extract time-domain based, reconstructed phase space features. This work examines the incorporation of trajectory information into this model as well as the combination of both MFCC and RPS feature sets into one joint feature vector. The results demonstrate that integration of trajectory information increases the recognition accuracy of the typical RPS feature set, and when MFCC and RPS feature sets are combined, improvement is made over the baseline. This result suggests that the features extracted using these nonlinear techniques contain different discriminatory information than the features extracted from linear approaches alone.
Issues in Rotational (Non-)invariance and Image Preprocessing

This paper addresses two problems that have been largely overlooked in the literature. First, many systems seek to use, and algorithms claim to provide, rotational in-variance, such as fingerprint minutiae or SIFT/SURF features. We introduce a statistical test for rotational independence, using lossless rotations to show the differences are statistically significant and cannot be attributed to image noise. We use this to experimentally show fingerprint feature extractors fail to be rotation independent. We show the popular "rotation invariant" SURF and SIFT feature extractors, used in both biometric and general vision, also fail the rotation independence test. We then introduce a match-twist-match (MTM) paradigm and experimentally demonstrate that, by reducing the effective angular difference between probe and gallery, we can improve system matching performance. Our analysis, using FVC2002 and FVC2004 datasets, further shows that differences in extracted features impact the overall system performance of fingerprint matching of both matchers tested. Using the MTM approach, we reduce our secure template system's errors by 10%-20% -- helping us to define the current state of the art in the FVC-OnGoing Secure template competition with an EER of 1.698%. We end by bringing to the forefront the growing danger of sensors over-preprocessing of images. We show examples of the problems that can arise with preprocessing. As our rotation experiments showed, the impact of even modest numbers of feature errors suggest these preprocessing issues are likely very significant. We suggest the need for policy guidelines that require disclosure of preprocessing steps used and the development of standards for testing the impact of preprocessing.
Interband optical pulse injection locking of a quantum dot mode-locked semiconductor laser

We experimentally demonstrate that the slave laser oscillating on the ground state (GS) or excited state (ES) transitions can be locked through the injection of optical pulses generated via the opposite transition bands, i.e. the ES or GS transition, respectively.
Perfect Storm Concurrent Stress and Depressive Symptoms Increase Risk of Myocardial Infarction or Death

Background— Depression and stress have each been found to be associated with poor prognosis in patients with coronary heart disease. A recently offered psychosocial perfect storm conceptual model hypothesizes amplified risk will occur in those with concurrent stress and depressive symptoms. We tested this hypothesis in a large sample of US adults with coronary heart disease. Methods and Results— Participants included 4487 adults with coronary heart disease from the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke study, a prospective cohort study of 30 239 black and white adults. We conducted Cox proportional hazards regression with the composite outcome of myocardial infarction or death and adjustment for demographic, clinical, and behavioral factors. Overall, 6.1% reported concurrent high stress and high depressive symptoms at baseline. During a median 5.95 years of follow-up, 1337 events occurred. In the first 2.5 years of follow-up, participants with concurrent high stress and high depressive symptoms had increased risk for myocardial infarction or death (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.48 [95% confidence interval, 1.08–2.02]) relative to those with low stress and low depressive symptoms. Those with low stress and high depressive symptoms (hazard ratio, 0.92 [95% confidence interval, 0.66–1.28]) or high stress and low depressive symptoms (hazard ratio, 0.86 [95% confidence interval, 0.57–1.29]) were not at increased risk. The association on myocardial infarction or death was not significant after the initial 2.5 years of follow-up (hazard ratio, 0.89 [95% confidence interval, 0.65–1.22]). Conclusions— Our results provide initial support for a psychosocial perfect storm conceptual model; the confluence of depressive symptoms and stress on medical prognosis in adults with coronary heart disease may be particularly destructive in the shorter term.
CloudScale: elastic resource scaling for multi-tenant cloud systems

Elastic resource scaling lets cloud systems meet application service level objectives (SLOs) with minimum resource provisioning costs. In this paper, we present CloudScale, a system that automates fine-grained elastic resource scaling for multi-tenant cloud computing infrastructures. CloudScale employs online resource demand prediction and prediction error handling to achieve adaptive resource allocation without assuming any prior knowledge about the applications running inside the cloud. CloudScale can resolve scaling conflicts between applications using migration, and integrates dynamic CPU voltage/frequency scaling to achieve energy savings with minimal effect on application SLOs. We have implemented CloudScale on top of Xen and conducted extensive experiments using a set of CPU and memory intensive applications (RUBiS, Hadoop, IBM System S). The results show that CloudScale can achieve significantly higher SLO conformance than other alternatives with low resource and energy cost. CloudScale is non-intrusive and light-weight, and imposes negligible overhead (
Fast algorithm for electromagnetic scattering by buried 3-D dielectric objects of large size

A fast algorithm for electromagnetic scattering by buried three dimensional (3-D) dielectric objects of large size is presented by using the conjugate gradient (CG) method and fast Fourier transform (FFT). In this algorithm, the Galerkin method is utilized to discretize the electric field integral equations, where rooftop functions are chosen as both basis and testing functions. Different from the 3-D objects in homogeneous space, the resulting matrix equation for the buried objects contains both cyclic convolution and correlation terms, either of which can be solved rapidly by the CG-FFT method. The near-scattered field on the observation plane in the upper space has been expressed by two-dimensional (2-D) discrete Fourier transforms (DFTs), which also can be rapidly computed. Because of the use of FFTs to handle the Toeplitz matrix, the Sommerfeld integrals' evaluation which is time consuming yet essential for the buried object problem, has been reduced to a minimum. The memory required in this algorithm is of order N (the number of unknowns), and the computational complexity is of order N/sub iter/N log N, in which N/sub iter/ is the iteration number, and N/sub iter//spl Lt/N is usually true for a large problem.
Respiratory tract trichomoniasis in breeder squab candidates in Northern California

Breeder squab candidates between the ages of 6 and 16 wk were submitted to the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory, Turlock branch, as a result of respiratory distress and increased mortality. These cases were submitted from one Northern California commercial squab operation on three separate occasions occurring between December 2007 and March 2008. Severe trichomoniasis was identified, primarily in the tracheal epithelium and lung of squabs, with few or no lesions in the oral cavity, crop, esophagus, and livers, where the organism commonly infiltrates. Infiltration of the trachea and lung sections with trichomonads was associated with a severe inflammatory response in the surrounding tissue. Diagnosis was confirmed with the use of histopathology and an immunoperoxidase special stain. Oxytetracycline supportive antibiotic therapy to prevent secondary bacterial infections was administered to remaining squabs on the farm, but no specific treatment regimen was instituted. This novel respiratory presentation of trichomoniasis continued over a period of 3 mo, until mortality gradually returned to normal.
Implications of an invertebrate predator's ( Bythotrephes cederstroemi ) atypical effects on a pelagic zooplankton community

The traditional view of predaceous zooplankton is that they prefer small-bodied prey, are hindered by morphological anti-predator defenses, and have a minor influence on zooplankton communities when fish are present. We performed a series of experiments with the large-bodied onychopod (cladoceran) Bythotrephes cederstroemi, in which we incubated this predator with known prey to determine prey preference and predation rates. We also performed an allozyme analysis of prey tissue in the gut of B. cederstroemi collected from several stations around Lake Michigan to determine what prey types are chosen in the field. We found that B. cederstroemi does not fit the standard invertebrate predator mold: adult B. cederstroemi prefer large (>2.0 mm) Daphnia pulicaria over smaller individuals; the elongated tailspine and helmet of Daphnia galeata mendotaeare not effective deterrents to B. cederstroemi predation; and B. cederstroemi is a generalist predator with the potential to consume a significant portion of cladoceran production in Lake Michigan.
Disruption of N-Linked Glycosylation of Bovine Luteinizing Hormone β-Subunit by Site-Directed Mutagenesis Dramatically Increases Its Intracellular Stability But Does Not Affect Biological Activity of the Secreted Heterodimer

The single site for N-linked glycosylation of the beta-subunit of bovine LH (LH beta) was disrupted by oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis to assess its potential roles in the biosynthesis, transport, and hormonal activity of the LH alpha/beta heterodimer. Pulsechase studies performed with stably transfected Chinese hamster ovary cells that expressed both alpha-subunit (fully glycosylated) and nonglycosylated LH beta revealed that turnover, transport, and secretion of newly synthesized, nonglycosylated LH beta were effectively blocked over a 22-h span. Free nonglycosylated LH beta, like free wild-type LH beta, was sequestered inside the cell; therefore, the intracellular retention of uncombined LH beta-subunit is not due to a signal located within the N-glycan moiety. Nevertheless, an older pool of unlabeled, nonglycosylated LH beta-subunit was available for combination with newly synthesized alpha-subunit, as verified by immunoprecipitation of radiolabeled alpha-subunit from cell lysates and culture medium with anti-LH beta-antiserum. This heterodimer displayed normal kinetics of secretion (t 1/2 = 2.4 h) as compared to fully glycosylated LH (t 1/2 = 2.1 h). The wild-type and mutant forms of LH were also purified from culture supernatants of the two cell lines, and were compared for their relative abilities to stimulate progesterone secretion in cultured rat Leydig cells. Both proteins displayed similar potency (ED50 = 32 vs. 41 ng/ml, respectively) and maximal stimulation of progesterone release Pmax = 2.7 vs 2.5 micrograms/ml), indicating that N-linked glycosylation of the LH beta-subunit does not play a significant role in LH signal transduction. Collectively, these results indicate that N-linked glycosylation is important for intracellular degradation of free LH beta, but is not essential for either its assembly with alpha-subunit or the transport and secretion of biologically active heterodimer.
Calcium fluoride containing granules produced in vitro in rat bones

Femurs and tibias of normal rats were fixed in 4% unbuffered solutions of glutaraldehyde or formaldehyde containing 1% NaF. Following washing, radiographically controlled demineralization was performed in 3.25% HNO3. Light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence of so-called fluoride granules in bone trabeculae, cartilage, cartilage remnants, bone cells, chondrocytes and in the bone marrow. Selected area diffraction indicated that the fluoride granules contained CaF2. X-ray diffraction analysis of non-demineralized NaF-fixed bones were negative for CaF2. The results are discussed and related to precipitation artifacts reported in demineralized hard tissues and to similar CaF2-containing granules observed in demineralized bones and incisors of rats given high doses of NaF in diet or drinking water.
Descartes's Eternal Truths and Laws of Motion

Etude de la relation entre les verites eternelles et les lois du mouvement chez Descartes. Soulignant la similitude des proprietes modales et des proprietes epistemiques de chacunes, ainsi que la similitude de leur necessite et de leur connaissabilite a priori respectives, l'A. montre que les unes ne peuvent etres identiques aux autres parce que les verites eternelles concernent les essences et la nature immuable de Dieu et les lois du mouvement concernent les relations etablies entre les choses creees
New Onset Bloody Diarrhea in a Liver Transplant Recipient

A 54-year-old Caucasian male presented with new onset abdominal pain and diarrhea over the past 2 weeks. Two years ago, he underwent an uncomplicated liver transplant (LT) for hepatocellular carcinoma and HCV cirrhosis. He had received standard oral valganciclovir prophylaxis against opportunistic viral infections for 90 days postLT while on tacrolimus, prednisone and mycophenolate and was tapered to tacrolimus monotherapy by month 6 postLT. He completed a 12 week course of sofosbuvir, daclatasvir, and ribavirin for his recurrent hepatitis C genotype 1 infection without any adverse effects. Two days after completing treatment, he developed diffuse abdominal cramping and 10-12 watery bowel movements daily with occasional streaks of bright red blood and fecal urgency. His medications included tacrolimus, metoprolol, omeprazole, and aspirin. There was no family history of gastrointestinal or autoimmune diseases nor recent travel or sick contacts. The patient was afebrile with mild diffuse tenderness on abdominal palpation. His liver biochemistries and electrolytes were normal, HCV RNA was undetectable and his hemoglobin had decreased from 13.0 to 11.2 g/ dL with a normal WBC and differential. Stool culture, ova and parasites, and C difficile antigen and toxin EIA were negative. His cytomegalovirus (CMV) IgG serology was positive but CMV-DNA by PCR was negative. A flexible sigmoidoscopy revealed patchy erythema, and ulcerated, friable mucosae (Figure A); mucosal biopsies showed active, chronic colitis (Figure B). New Onset Bloody Diarrhea in a Liver Transplant Recipient
Intraoperative opioids use for laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma surgery and recurrence: a retrospective study ☆

Abstract Study Objective To assess whether the use of intraoperative opioids is associated with poor recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) after lung cancer surgery. Design Retrospective study. Setting Academic hospital. Subjects Patients with laryngeal primary or recurrent laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma who had surgery. Interventions Intravenous opioids (remifentanil, fentanyl, sufentanil, and hydromorphone). Measurements Univariate and multicovariate Cox proportional hazards models were applied to assess the effects of covariates of interest on OS and RFS. Main Results A total of 195 patients were included. All received opioids intraoperatively. The multivariate analysis demonstrated that age (hazard ratio [HR], 1.03; P = .005), negative margin status (HR, 0.163; P = .001], postoperative chemotherapy (HR, 7.38; P P P = .02) were all predictor factors for 3- and 5-year RFS. The same variables were predictor factors for OS (age: HR, 1.03 [ P = .003]; negative margin status: HR, 0.14 [ P = .001]; postoperative chemotherapy: HR, 4 [ P P = .02]). Conclusions Our study demonstrates a very weak association between the use of intraoperative opioids and cancer recurrence after laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma surgery.
Intra- and inter-examiner Reliability of Direct Facial Soft Tissue Measurements Using Digital Calipers

Abstract Background The objective of this study is to determine if facial soft tissue measurements using digital calipers can be reliably taken by the same examiner and by a large group of examiners. Materials and Methods Ten examiners performed a set of 18 in-clinic measurements on 10 female and 10 male dental students using a digital caliper twice over a 3-week period. The intra-class correlation coefficient and the Shrout-Fleiss method were used for the statistical analysis. Results Anthropometric intra-examiner reliability was high for all measurements (none fell below R = 0.934). However, inter-examiner reliability exhibited a wide range of values, some reliable (nasal width at widest nostrils [ R = 0.922] and subnasale to upper lip [ R = 0.926]), and others unreliable [base of nose ( R = 0.590), mouth height ( R = 0.585), and soft tissue B point to gnathion ( R = 0.623)]. Conclusion Soft tissue measurements of clearly identifiable points measured by the same examiner produced highly consistent, accurate and reliable measurements. Soft tissue points with poor definition resulted in average-to-poor reliabilities measurements.
Scalable antiguided ribbon laser

A new scalable fiber laser approach to phase locking of multiple gain cores in an antiguided structure is described and modeled. In essence, the waveguide comprises a periodic sequence of gain-loaded and no-gain segments that has a uniform refractive index (referred to as the ribbon) encapsulated within a reduced-index cladding region. Our calculations reveal that the constant-index profile within the ribbon structure provides optimal mode discrimination; the refractive index must be constant within ±0.001 to ensure single-mode operation for a five-core design. One-dimensional and two-dimensional calculations are pursued to support the design criteria. Slight periodic variation in the refractive index of the ribbon laser leads to the emergence of a photonic bandgap, in analogy to so-called holey fibers. Our constant-index design, together with the periodic gain profile, may be described as a photonic metal.
MONGOOSE: MONitoring Global Online Opinions via Semantic Extraction

The ever increasing amount of content on the Internet has fostered many efforts seeking to leverage this potentially yottascale information source. Service systems using advanced data and text analytics techniques have been developed to perform knowledge gathering and information discovery over Web data. Information gathered from free and public sources on the Web is frequently integrated with enterprise and proprietary data to create sophisticated service systems able to provide insight in an increasing number of business critical areas. Unfortunately, for fixed and or limited resource projects, consistent and reliable ingestion and integration of content often dominates the effort, reducing the time available for developing core analytics and presentations that differentiate and define an information service. If this initial data extraction, translation and loading of information (known as ETL in the database world) can be abstracted for these web sources, it would provide an important core technology on which Web-based information services could be more rapidly and inexpensively developed and deployed. This paper presents such a system - MONGOOSE - an approach that seeks to reduce the time spent creating a reliable data ingest and integration system and thus reducing the time-to-impact of advanced analytics service solutions.
Part D Plan Switching Among Medicare Beneficiaries With Schizophrenia

Objective:Most Medicare schizophrenia patients were randomly assigned in 2006 to one of 409 benchmark plans. This study examined plan switching and factors affecting switching among beneficiaries with schizophrenia.Methods:The data were 2006 Medicare pharmacy data for three groups of schizophrenia patients: those with Medicaid coverage (“dual eligibles”; N=93,705), Medicare beneficiaries with a low-income subsidy (N=56,148), and Medicare beneficiaries without the subsidy (N=36,107). Switching frequency and how patient and plan characteristics affected switching were examined.Results:Beneficiaries who switched their Part D plan at least once included 10.7% of the dual eligibles, 9.8% of those with a subsidy, and 5.5% of those without. Several factors affected likelihood of switching, including age, geographic region, and proportion of prescriptions filled by beneficiaries who were covered or whose prescriptions required utilization review in the original plan.Conclusions:Plan switching among Medicare benef...
PRESENTATION OF THE HARRELL L. STRIMPLE AWARD OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY TO THOMAS E. WHITELEY

It is a great pleasure to introduce Dr. Thomas Whiteley, the 2004 recipient of the Harrell Strimple Award for outstanding amateur paleontologist. Although not a professional paleontologist, Tom was always a scientist: as a chemist he had a highly successful career with Eastman Kodak in Rochester. Born in California, he worked his way eastward: after receiving a BA from the University of Colorado and a master's at the University of South Carolina he joined Eastman Kodak Research labs, in 1956. Following a brief stint in the US Army, he returned to school and received a PhD for his work on carbohydrate chemistry from The Ohio State University in 1960. Inevitably, Tom's interests led him back to Rochester and Eastman Kodak, where he eventually became associate director of the research labs. But already, by the early 1960s, Tom was being lured out on weekends into the fabulous outcrops of western New York, pursuing his avocation of paleontology and especially collecting and studying trilobites. During my early years at the University of Rochester I developed a great deal of respect and admiration for Tom Whiteley and quickly realized that he was a cut above most amateurs with his approach to field study, his meticulous documentation and cataloguing of fossils, and his outstanding photography. I clearly remember my first meeting with Tom when I was a beginning instructor at Rochester, in 1978. He invited me out to his lovely home to present a talk to the local mineral and fossil club; I drove out to Tom's house in a blinding snowstorm and nearly went off the road, arriving over an hour late. But he was very gracious, showed keen interest in my talk on obrution deposits, and suggested that he wanted to work on this topic himself. He showed me some of his …
LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS ON SPECIATION: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN 40 YEARS?

We integrate experimental studies attempting to duplicate all or part of the speciation process under controlled laboratory conditions and ask what general conclusions can be made concerning the major models of speciation. Strong support is found for the evolution of reproductive isolation via pleiotropy and/or genetic hitchhiking with or without allopatry. Little or no support is found for the bottleneck and reinforcement models of speciation. We conclude that the role of geographical separation in generating allopatry (i.e., zero gene flow induced by spatial isolation) has been overemphasized in the past, whereas its role in generating diminished gene flow in combination with strong, discontinuous, and multifarious divergent selection, has been largely unappreciated.
Race and Minority Riots—A Study in the Typology of Violence

tion, a village economy, and hereditary occupation, all of which Cox requires in addition to those attributes we quoted from him above. It would be possible so to confine our concept of a republic to the details of the political organization of the United States that "republican" government could exist in no other nation. It is possible, but not necessary, to confine caste forever to India by a parallel procedure in definition.
The Use of Geophysical Methods to Discriminate between Brine Layers and Freshwater Taliks in Permafrost Regions

Direct current resistivity and ground penetrating radar surveys were employed to obtain the value of the resistivity and dielectric constant in the brine near the Barrow, Alaska. The geophysical surveys were undertaken together with the permafrost drilling program for the measuring of the ground temperature regime and for the core sampling. The sampled cores were measured for their physical and chemical properties in the laboratory under different temperature conditions ((-60) to (20) ℃). Laboratory results support field observations and led to the development of a technique for distinguishing freshwater taliks and brine layers in permafrost. These methods were also employed in freshwater taliks near Council, Alaska. The electrical resistivity is a powerful and sensitive parameter for brine detection. However, the resistivity is a less sensitive indicator of the soil type or water content under highly saline conditions. High frequency dielectric constant is an ideal second parameter for the indication of the soil type, liquid water content and other physical properties. The imaginary part of the dielectric constant and resistivity have a significant dependence upon salinity, i.e. upon freezing temperature. The ground temperature regime and the freezing point of the brine layer are important parameters for studying the electric properties of permafrost terrain.
The process of infection with bacteriophage φX174. XVIII. Intracellular Antiserum-precipitable Components

Components precipitable by antiserum to bacteriophage φX174 can be derived from φX-infected cells. Antiserum-precipitable ^(35)S is found in three peaks after zone sedimentation in sucrose gradients. The fastest sedimenting peak is infective virus; the intermediate peak is the non-infective 70 s component. The slowest component was studied in greater detail and has the following properties. It has a sedimentation coefficient of about 6; in a thymine-requiring host, the material accumulates in the absence of thymidine; the accumulated material is subsequently incorporated into virus when thymidine is restored. The 6 s material is, therefore, considered to be a subunit of the virus structure. The φX double mutant am3tsγ, which does not make whole virus under restrictive conditions, forms a subunit which appears to have similar sedimentation properties to that of the wild type.
Implications of intracolonial variation in a Paleozoic bryozoan

Relative differences between environmentally controlled variation and genetically controlled variation are important when investigating morphologic variation in general, especially when establishing species concepts. The colonial nature of bryozoans provides a means for distinguishing between the two sources; variation can be partitioned into within-colony (microenvironmental) and among-colony (environmental + genetic) components. For the Paleozoic order Cryptostomata, biologically and taxonomically significant morphologic characters are well defined and methods for recognizing morphotaxa are well established. The importance of within-colony variation to the morphometric treatment of fenestrate species was assessed after the discovery of a large specimen of Hemitrypa sp. Variation within the colony was compared to variation among and within two congeneric species. The distribution of study segments across the colony allowed assessment of variation both along the growth axis and laterally between segments of approximately equivalent generational age. Repeatability of methods was assessed using data measured independently from identical segments by three workers. Variation within the large colony is less than variation among congeneric species, indicating that genetic differences among species exceed variation resulting from combined phenotypic and genotypic sources within species. Neither astogenetic nor ontogenetic morphologic gradients are recognized. Variation between data collected from identical segments by pairs of workers falls within the range of variation for the entire colony. Thus, multiple workers can reproduce data to the finest level of meaningful resolution. Cryptostome morphospecies concepts are validated. The potential for partitioning genotypic versus environmental variation in reduced, multidimensional morphospace is reinforced. Studies of microevolution and speciation may be designed that account for these factors.
Pulling it Together

The measurement of economic performance is a wide ranging topic that can be approached from various angles and perspectives. In this text we have focused primarily on the measurement of productivity growth and its determinants. This has led us to consider in detail indicators of production structure and performance such as utilization and investment levels for inputs, profitability and scale economies, as well as technical change.
Evaluation of a buffered time-wavelength cross-connect with sparse wavelength converters

In traditional optical wavelength routed networks, the entire bandwidth of a channel is not exploited. To achieve finer granularity in the wavelength domain and avoid the bottle-neck of electrical processing, optical time division multiplexing can be used on each wavelength. In such a Time-Wavelength-Switched Network, an optical cross-connect (OXC) would switch time-wavelength slots. Fiber delay lines (FDLs) and wavelength converters can be further utilized to improve the connection slot scheduling and decrease the connection blocking probability. In this paper, we consider an OXC equipped with FDLs and sparse wavelength converters (limited number of full range converters), under two different scenarios: shared per link and shared per cross-connect. We propose several cross-connect architectures and develop model formulations that can be used to solve the scheduling problem. We also incorporate FDL feedback provision in these architectures. Results show that using sparse converters along with FDLs could provide significant benefits.
Resource Review: Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

“Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics” (Hill, C., Corbett, C., Rose, A., 2010) reports on an extensive study of women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professions. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project was conducted by American Association of University Women. The resource includes findings from eight research studies which examined social and environmental factors which contribute to women’s underrepresentation in STEM fields as well as helpful tables, charts and bibliography resources. The 110 page resource will be particularly helpful for scholars working in program design to advance STEM opportunities for women.
Ethically Competent Radiology Nurses

Abstract Radiology nursing is becoming more ethically challenging in today's rapidly changing health care environment. This article illustrates the practical guidance the 2015 Code of Ethics for Nurses offers to address everyday ethical challenges in radiology nursing. The article defines ethics and moral agency, highlights key elements of the revised code of ethics, and uses scenarios to analyze common ethical challenges for radiology nurses, including pediatric scenarios. The article concludes with resources every nurse can access to address everyday challenges and a brief discussion of moral distress and resilience.
The Future of International Financial Law

The 2008 financial crisis serves as a reminder for both policymakers and the public of the fragility of the global financial system. It also unveiled with tragic clarity that the national and international regulations in place prior to the crisis to ensure global financial stability were far from adequate. In this book, we have examined the new institutional arrangements, standards, codes, and reports created to meet the challenges of global finance. We have also seen, however, the persistence of important gaps, sluggish and nationally oriented problem solving, and the high costs of regulatory error when international rules are flawed. For some commentators, these limitations reveal defects in the very institutional foundations on which international financial law is built, and indicate that more radical changes and reforms are required beyond the revamped Financial Stability Board and G-20. Specifically, some experts have called for a more formal “World Financial Organization,” akin to the WTO, that would act as the primary international standard setter for finance, free from the distortional effects of power politics. Under such a centralized, treaty-based international organization, more official “hard law” models of global governance could be leveraged to more effectively supervise mobile market participants.
How to Make Analog-to-Information Converters Work in Dynamic Spectrum Environments With Changing Sparsity Conditions

Compressed sensing (CS) analog to information converters (AICs) offer key benefits for signal reception or detection when the input signal is sparse. So far AICs have been demonstrated in environments with controlled input signal conditions and with fixed sparsity levels. This paper investigates how to make AICs effectively operate in dynamic environments with changing signal conditions and thus changing sparsity levels. We focus on RF spectrum scanning, where signals or interferers need to be detected across a wide dynamic RF spectrum, but the presented concepts are widely applicable for low-pass and band-pass CS AICs. The number of measurements and hence the number of branches required in a CS RF front end scales with the sparsity level, i.e. the number of signals that need to be detected. In practice this leads to excessively large silicon area for more than a few signals (e.g., six). We introduce the time-segmented quadrature analog-to-information converter (TS-QAIC), a scalable architecture for signal detection in dynamically changing spectrum environments. While our TS-QAIC prototype implements a fixed number of hardware branches, we experimentally demonstrate adaptive thresholding and adaptive time segmentation to adjust its signal detection capability to the sparsity level of the input signal.
Atomic-Scale Simulation for Pseudometallic Defect-Generation Kinetics and Effective NIEL in GaN

We have employed large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to study defect production, clustering, and its evolution in GaN for energies of a primary knock-on atom ranging from 500 eV to 40 keV. In the presence of proton radiation, a large number of atoms will be displaced during the collisional phase with a compacted cascade volume, but a great number of displaced atoms recombine significantly with vacancies at the same time, i.e., a pseudometallic behavior (PMB). This leads to the result that the majority of surviving defects are just single interstitials or vacancies for all recoil energies considered with only a small number of defects forming clusters. The total number of defects simulated in GaN can be very well predicted by the simplified Norgett, Robison, and Torrens (NRT) formula due to the PMB, in contrast to GaAs where the defect number becomes much larger than the NRT value. Moreover, the damage density within a cascade core is evaluated and applied to construct a model to calculate an energy-partition function for studying the nonionizing energy loss (NIEL) in GaN. The calculated NIEL in GaN is often found to be smaller than that predicted by a model based on the simple Kinchin–Pease formula. The comparisons of defect creation, density, and effective NIEL in GaN to those of GaAs suggest that GaN may be much more resistant to displacement damage than GaAs at low temperatures.
Deforestation intensifies hot days

Deforestation often increases land-surface and near-surface temperatures, but climate models struggle to simulate this effect. Research now shows that deforestation has increased the severity of extreme heat in temperate regions of North America and Europe. This points to opportunities to mitigate extreme heat.
Genetically Encoded Catalytic Hairpin Assembly for Sensitive RNA Imaging in Live Cells.

DNA and RNA nanotechnology has been used for the development of dynamic molecular devices. In particular, programmable enzyme-free nucleic acid circuits, such as catalytic hairpin assembly, have been demonstrated as useful tools for bioanalysis and to scale up system complexity to an extent beyond current cellular genetic circuits. However, the intracellular functions of most synthetic nucleic acid circuits have been hindered by challenges in the biological delivery and degradation. On the other hand, genetically encoded and transcribed RNA circuits emerge as alternative powerful tools for long-term embedded cellular analysis and regulation. Herein, we reported a genetically encoded RNA-based catalytic hairpin assembly circuit for sensitive RNA imaging inside living cells. The split version of Broccoli, a fluorogenic RNA aptamer, was used as the reporter. One target RNA can catalytically trigger the fluorescence from tens-to-hundreds of Broccoli. As a result, target RNAs can be sensitively detected. We ha...
In defense of the jurisdiction theory of rights

This essay critically examines three theories of moral rights, theBenefit, the Interest, and the Choice theories. The Interest andChoice theories attempt to explain how rights can be more robustthan seems possible on the Benefit theory. In particular, moralrights are supposed to be resistant to trade-offs to supportprincipled anti-paternalism, to constitute a distinct dimensionof morality, and to provide right holders with a range ofdiscretionary choice. I argue that these and other featuresare better yet provided by a fourth theory of moral rights, theJurisdiction theory.
Report of the U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee Panel on Burning Plasma Physics

This is the report of a panel set up by the U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) in response to a charge letter on October 5, 2000, from Dr. Mildred Dresselhaus, then Director of the DOE's Office of Science. In that letter, Dr. Dresselhaus asked the FESAC to investigate the subject of burning plasma science. The report addresses several topics, including the scientific issues to be addressed by a burning plasma experiment and its major supporting elements, identification of issues that are generic to toroidal confinement, and the role of the Next-Step Options (NSO) Program.
Wellness intervention with pregnant soldiers.

The purpose of this study was to measure the effects that wellness program intervention for pregnant soldiers, exercise and/or education, had on methods of delivery, pregnancy outcomes, rates of complications, Army Physical Fitness Test scores, and labor and delivery costs. The study consisted of a retrospective review and analysis of 823 active duty Army obstetric and newborn records, 181 Army Physical Fitness Test records, and 411 initial and 148 postpartum subjective questionnaires. Data were collected from records of soldiers who delivered at Madigan Army Medical Center (Tacoma, Washington) between January 1992 and December 1994. Group I (N = 211) included soldiers who received wellness intervention, group II (N = 147) included those who did not receive wellness intervention. Limited data from the records of soldiers who delivered before a wellness program was offered on post constituted group III, a historical control group (N = 413). Group IV included data from a high-risk population (N = 52) collected during the wellness program. Data were also divided into additional subgroups to ascertain if one aspect of the wellness program (i.e., exercise versus education) influenced any or all of the dependent variables. A soldier's data were excluded if a pregnancy was terminated before 20 weeks of gestation or if it was a multiple gestation. Demographic data and variables were compared using multivariate methods of analysis to evaluate the effect of the independent variable, wellness intervention. Results indicated that infants of the wellness group participants had proportionately increased gestational age and birth weight, with reduced incidence of the complications fetal bradycardia, hyperbilirubinemia, preeclampsia, and premature labor. Likewise, African-American female soldiers in this study, assessed in other studies as a high-risk group, had a lower incidence of premature delivery and low birth weight when they participated in wellness intervention. Of clinical interest, it appeared as though wellness intervention shortened labor duration and reduced the number of neonatal intensive care unit admissions and the number of neonatal intensive care unit days, which resulted in reduced health care costs.
A pseudo-spectral time domain method for light scattering computation

Atmospheric particles, for example ice crystals, dust, soot, or various chemical crystals, play a significant role in the atmosphere by scattering and absorbing radiation, principally in two bands: incident solar, with peak at about 0.5 μm, and terrestrial thermal emission, with peak at about 10 μm. Knowledge of aerosol scattering properties is a fundamental but challenging aspect of radiative transfer studies and remote sensing applications. In this chapter we consider only scattering by single homogeneous particles, but in the atmosphere particles occur both individually and as constituents of such aerosols as homogeneous or heterogeneous aggregates with other particles and sometimes coated with liquids. The pseudo-spectral time domain method (PSTD) for calculating scattering properties that we discuss, like a number of other methods currently in use, can be used to investigate scattering properties of a wide variety of aerosols, homogeneous or heterogeneous, singly or in aggregate.
14-3-3γ binds regulator of G protein signaling 14 (RGS14) at distinct sites to inhibit the RGS14:Gαi–AlF4− signaling complex and RGS14 nuclear localization

Regulator of G protein signaling 14 (RGS14) is a multifunctional brain scaffolding protein that integrates G protein and Ras/ERK signaling pathways. It is also a nucleocytoplasmic shuttling protein. RGS14 binds active Gαi/o via its RGS domain, Raf and active H-Ras–GTP via its R1 Ras-binding domain (RBD), and inactive Gαi1/3 via its G protein regulatory (GPR) domain. RGS14 suppresses long-term potentiation (LTP) in the CA2 region of the hippocampus, thereby regulating hippocampally based learning and memory. The 14-3-3 family of proteins is necessary for hippocampal LTP and associative learning and memory. Here, we show direct interaction between RGS14 and 14-3-3γ at two distinct sties, one phosphorylation-independent and the other phosphorylation-dependent at Ser-218 that is markedly potentiated by signaling downstream of active H-Ras. Using bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET), we show that the pSer-218–dependent RGS14/14-3-3γ interaction inhibits active Gαi1–AlF4− binding to the RGS domain of RGS14 but has no effect on active H-Ras and inactive Gαi1–GDP binding to RGS14. By contrast, the phosphorylation-independent binding of 14-3-3 has no effect on RGS14/Gαi interactions but, instead, inhibits (directly or indirectly) RGS14 nuclear import and nucleocytoplasmic shuttling. Together, our findings describe a novel mechanism of negative regulation of RGS14 functions, specifically interactions with active Gαi and nuclear import, while leaving the function of other RGS14 domains intact. Ongoing studies will further elucidate the physiological function of this interaction between RGS14 and 14-3-3γ, providing insight into the functions of both RGS14 and 14-3-3 in their roles in modulating synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus.
Ghosts in the Machine: Vitalism

Questions of organismal unity and purpose remained problematic under the mechanical paradigm. Alternative paradigms emerged. Though wildly different, they all attracted the label vitalism for rejecting aspects of the mechanical philosophy. Animists such as Stahl simply opted for a return to vegetable souls. Van Helmont and other iatrochemists sought life-specific material and efficient causes. Self-identified vitalists proposed vital spirits and forces, including archei, sensibilite, mesmerism, galvanism, elan vital, and entelechy. German Idealists, meanwhile, pushed for more subjectivity and spirituality within the non-human world. They have largely been rejected and labelled “vitalist” because their position do not fit with current ideas of mechanism, but many were important to the later development of biology. A critical distinction hangs on how we use the term “nature.”
For God, King, and People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia. By Alexander B. Haskell. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 400. $45.00.)

Scholars of the Atlantic world and the English empire will find a wealth of resources within Alexander Haskell's important and meticulously detailed study of the foundations of the Virginia colony,...