cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Constant crunch coordinates for black hole simulations

We reinvestigate the utility of time-independent constant mean curvature foliations for the numerical simulation of a single spherically symmetric black hole. Each spacelike hypersurface of such a foliation is endowed with the same constant value of the trace of the extrinsic curvature tensor K. Of the three families of K-constant surfaces possible (classified according to their asymptotic behaviors), we single out a subfamily of singularity-avoiding surfaces that may be particularly useful, and provide an analytic expression for the closest approach such surfaces make to the singularity. We then utilize a nonzero shift to yield families of K-constant surfaces which (1) avoid the black hole singularity, and thus the need to excise the singularity, (2) are asymptotically null, aiding in gravity wave extraction, (3) cover the physically relevant part of the spacetime, (4) are well behaved (regular) across the horizon, and (5) are static under evolution, and therefore have no ``grid stretching/ sucking'' pathologies. Preliminary numerical runs demonstrate that we can stably evolve a single spherically symmetric static black hole using this foliation. We wish to emphasize that this coordinatization produces K-constant surfaces for a single black hole spacetime that are regular, static, and stable throughout their evolution.
Long-Term Monitoring of Bacteria Undergoing Programmed Population Control in a Microchemostat

Using an active approach to preventing biofilm formation, we implemented a microfluidic bioreactor that enables long-term culture and monitoring of extremely small populations of bacteria with single-cell resolution. We used this device to observe the dynamics of Escherichia coli carrying a synthetic “population control” circuit that regulates cell density through a feedback mechanism based on quorum sensing. The microfluidic bioreactor enabled long-term monitoring of unnatural behavior programmed by the synthetic circuit, which included sustained oscillations in cell density and associated morphological changes, over hundreds of hours.
Extension of state-vector splitting to the Navier-Stokes equations

A multi-dimensional upwind scheme for solving the Euler equations has been extended to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. These methods share the property of not requiring body-fitted computational grids. A time advance scheme which is second-order accurate in time and space has been developed for use in conjunction with state-vector splitting to accurately resolve regions with significant gradients in flow quantities. The scheme has been tested on several simple viscous flow problems for which analytic solutions are known; the agreement of computation with theory is excellent.
Is intraoperative touch imprint cytology of sentinel lymph nodes in patients with breast cancer cost effective

BACKGROUND. Sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) are generally evaluated postoperatively, requiring 5–7 days for assessment. SLNs can also be evaluated intraoperatively by using touch imprint cytology (TIC), thus providing the surgeon immediate feedback and allowing for concurrent completion node dissection (CND) for positive SLNs. The authors hypothesized that TIC, when compared with standard postoperative SLN assessment alone, would permit a cost-effective evaluation of SLNs in patients with clinically node-negative breast cancer. METHODS. A decision-analysis model was created to compare TIC with standard postoperative SLN assessment alone. Sensitivity and specificity of TIC were determined prospectively from 342 patients who underwent SLN biopsy assessed by both techniques. Short-term health states associated with surgical staging were defined, and utilities were estimated using EuroQol-5D. Base-case analysis was performed to estimate quality-adjusted life years and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. Sensitivity analyses were performed to examine stability of model parameters. RESULTS. For each tumor stage, TIC was cost effective, and for patients with larger tumors (T3 and T4), TIC was the dominant strategy. The analysis was robust to changes in sensitivity and specificity of TIC, prevalence of metastasis, probability of complications, and cost. However, when utility associated with standard SLN assessment was 0.9 or greater, this became the preferred strategy. CONCLUSIONS. TIC is cost effective for assessing SLN metastasis intraoperatively. For patients with larger tumors, it is not only more effective, but also less costly than standard SLN assessment alone. TIC may be particularly useful for patients who experience significant anxiety while awaiting results of standard SLN assessment. Cancer 2006. © 2006 American Cancer Society.
Functional Adaptation in Female Rats: The Role of Estrogen Signaling

Background Sex steroids have direct effects on the skeleton. Estrogen acts on the skeleton via the classical genomic estrogen receptors alpha and beta (ERα and ERβ), a membrane ER, and the non-genomic G-protein coupled estrogen receptor (GPER). GPER is distributed throughout the nervous system, but little is known about its effects on bone. In male rats, adaptation to loading is neuronally regulated, but this has not been studied in females. Methodology/principal findings We used the rat ulna end-loading model to induce an adaptive modeling response in ovariectomized (OVX) female Sprague-Dawley rats. Rats were treated with a placebo, estrogen (17β-estradiol), or G-1, a GPER-specific agonist. Fourteen days after OVX, rats underwent unilateral cyclic loading of the right ulna; half of the rats in each group had brachial plexus anesthesia (BPA) of the loaded limb before loading. Ten days after loading, serum estrogen concentrations, dorsal root ganglion (DRG) gene expression of ERα, ERβ, GPER, CGRPα, TRPV1, TRPV4 and TRPA1, and load-induced skeletal responses were quantified. We hypothesized that estrogen and G-1 treatment would influence skeletal responses to cyclic loading through a neuronal mechanism. We found that estrogen suppresses periosteal bone formation in female rats. This physiological effect is not GPER-mediated. We also found that absolute mechanosensitivity in female rats was decreased, when compared with male rats. Blocking of adaptive bone formation by BPA in Placebo OVX females was reduced. Conclusions Estrogen acts to decrease periosteal bone formation in female rats in vivo. This effect is not GPER-mediated. Gender differences in absolute bone mechanosensitivity exist in young Sprague-Dawley rats with reduced mechanosensitivity in females, although underlying bone formation rate associated with growth likely influences this observation. In contrast to female and male rats, central neuronal signals had a diminished effect on adaptive bone formation in estrogen-deficient female rats.
Locus- and Population-Specific Selection and Differentiation between Incipient Species of Anopheles gambiae

Anopheles gambiae, the primary mosquito vector of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, is divided into 2 sympatric incipient species known as M form and S form. Recent genomic analysis of each form revealed that differentiation between forms is clustered into 3 unlinked regions of the genome. Here, we expand the investigation of these "genomic islands of speciation" to multiple populations, including all of the genes across one of the islands. Differentiation between the M and S forms in 2 of the islands is complete across all individuals in all populations, confirming that the M and S forms are reproductively isolated taxa. Differentiation at the third island (on chromosome 2R) is limited to Cameroon populations. There is reduced variation in the M form in Cameroon at this location and increased divergence to the outgroup Anopheles arabiensis, supporting an association of adaptation with reproductive isolation.
Vaccinia virus DNA topoisomerase: a model eukaryotic type IB enzyme

Vaccinia topoisomerase has proven to be an instructive model system for mechanistic studies of the type IB family of DNA topoisomerases. The catalytically relevant functional groups at the active site and the circumferential topoisomerase-DNA interface were correctly surmised by mutational and footprint analysis of vaccinia topoisomerase in advance of structure determinations by X-ray crystallography. It is now evident from multiple crystal structures that the catalytic domains of type IB topoisomerases and site specific recombinases derive from a common ancestral strand transferase capable of forming a DNA-(3'-phosphotyrosyl)-enzyme intermediate. A constellation of conserved amino acids catalyzes attack of the tyrosine nucleophile on the scissile phosphate. Domain dynamics and DNA-induced conformational changes within the catalytic domain are likely to play a role in triggering strand scission and coordinating the strand exchange or strand passage steps.
Van der Waals interaction and its effects on the hyperfine pressure shift in the system He 2 ( 3 Σ

Long-range interaction studies of the system ${\mathrm{He}}_{2}(^{3}\ensuremath{\Sigma}^{+})$ based on the multiconfiguration self-consistent-field formalism are reported. In this formalism the long-range contribution to the hyperfine pressure shift of metastable $\mathrm{He}(2^{3}S)$ in buffer gas of ground-state He is discussed. It is found by actual computation to be an order of magnitude smaller than that predicted by the many-body perturbation theoretic approach. Possible explanations of the discrepancy are discussed.
Osteopontin Promoter Polymorphism is Associated with Increased Carotid Intima-Media Thickness

Background Osteopontin (OPN)-transgenic mice exhibit increased carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT), smooth muscle cell proliferation, and atheroma formation. Methods An association of the human T-66G promoter variant with CIMT was examined in Caucasian adults grouped according to metabolic syndrome criteria: present (+MetS; n=70) or absent (−MetS; n=70). Results The G-allele frequency was 22%. For the entire cohort, the G group (TG and GG) was associated with significantly lower age-adjusted and gender-adjusted CIMT compared with the TT group ( P = .008); similar analysis by metabolic syndrome group found a significant difference only in the −MetS group ( P = .018). Stepwise multivariate regression showed that after age and waist circumference, the T-66G variant was the next most predictive of CIMT ( P = .007). These data suggest that in a normoglycemic environment, human vascular OPN gene expression contributes to arterial structure, an effect diminished in dysmetabolic states. Conclusion Humans with the OPN -66 TT genotype, particularly those without metabolic syndrome, exhibit thicker CIMT.
Genetic changes in a barley population analyzed in terms of some life cycle components of selection

A bulk-hybrid population of barley (CC-XXI) was investigated for changes over a period of six generations, in (1) generation means and variances for three quantitative characters (2) phenotypic and genotypic frequencies at several marker loci and (3) the components of selection at several life cycle stages (germination and seedling survival, fertility, fecundity) for the dominant-recessive phenotypic classes at three of the above loci. The changes in mean and variance for the quantitative characters appeared to be due to both directional and stabilizing types of selection. The estimates of selective values from frequency data suggested heterozygote advantage along with unequal homozygote fitnesses at locuss and heterozygote disadvantage at locibl, r andv, from computations based on higher outcrossing rates in the presence of male-steriles.
Differential rearing experience, gender, and radial maze performance

Since both differential rearing and gender have been known to affect maze abilities, the present study examines the performance of male and female hooded rats raised from weaning in either a complex environment (EC) or isolated environment (IC) on the 17-arm radial maze. In two separate replications, EC rats learned the maze more quickly and accurately than IC rats, as assessed by total errors, the number of correct choices to the first error, and the number correct in the first 17 choices. However, EC rats were more likely than IC rats to employ an adjacent-arm strategy which may have contributed to their superior performance. There were no gender differences or environment by gender interaction effects on any measure of accuracy or adjacent arm strategy in either replication. It appears that the performance of both male and female rats on the 17-arm radial maze is similarly influenced by the rearing environment.
The immunogenicity in humans of a botulinum type F vaccine

A purified monovalent botulinum type F toxoid vaccine was administered to 35 healthy adult volunteers in a phase I clinical trial. Serum samples from the vaccinated volunteers were evaluated for an antibody response at various time intervals over 1 year by mouse bioassay and ELISA. The antibody response was measured for varying doses of vaccine (2, 5, or 10 microg), and after single or multiple (two or three doses @ 10 microg) vaccinations. Six out of 15 (40%) individuals developed antibody titers after receiving a single dose. After two and three vaccinations, there was a 90% (18/20) and 100% (10/10) seroconversion rate, respectively. Eight months after initial injection, 57 and 63% of individuals were antibody positive following two or three vaccinations, respectively. Single vaccinations, at any of the tested dosages, elicited lower, if any, antibody response than did multiple vaccinations. After the third vaccination, ELISA titers positively correlated with mouse neutralization bioassay titers (r(2)=0.86).
Cost of renal replacement therapy

The Institute of Medicine committee has defined cost-effectiveness research (CER) as ‘the generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care. The purpose of CER is to assist consumers, clinicians, purchasers and policy makers to make informed decisions that will improve health care at both the individual and population levels [1]’. Within this framework, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) is an economic measurement that is utilized to study therapeutic interventional alternatives, which have both separate costs and separate outcomes [2]. An ICER is the ratio of the change in costs to incremental benefits of a therapeutic intervention or treatment. The equation for ICER is:
Stopping power of matter for alpha particles at extreme relativistic energies

The stopping power of matter for alpha particles at extreme relativistic energies has been calculated by incorporating the charge form factor. A table is presented for aluminum, copper, and lead. It is found that at the highest energies considered here, inclusion of form factor reduces the mass stopping power by about 6--8 % in comparison with that predicted by Bethe's relativistic formula.
Comparison of automated versus traditional nerve conduction study methods for median nerve testing in a general worker population.

Objective To investigate the validity of automated nerve conduction studies compared to traditional electrodiagnostic studies (EDS) for testing median nerve abnormalities in a working population.
Clinical and pathological characterization of northern elephant seal skin disease.

From 1984 through 1992, staff at The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC, Sausalito, California, USA) examined 207 northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) with a condition of unknown etiology called northern elephant seal skin disease (NESSD). The skin lesions were characterized by patchy to extensive alopecia and hyperpigmentation, punctate or coalescing epidermal ulceration, and occasionally, massive skin necrosis. Microscopic lesions included ulcerative dermatitis with hyperkeratosis, squamous metaplasia and atrophy of sebaceous glands. All diseased seals were less than 2 years of age and suffered from emaciation, depression, and dehydration. Mortality from septicemia increased significantly with severity of skin ulceration. Compared to 14 apparently unaffected seals, diseased seals had depressed levels of circulating thyroxine, triiodothyronine, retinol, serum iron, albumin, calcium, and cholesterol. Levels of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase, gamma glutamyl...
Simulated Annealing Approach to Solve Nonogram Puzzles with Multiple Solutions

Abstract Nonogram, a popular Japanese puzzle game, is a well-known NP-complete problem. A number of approaches have been proposed and some algorithms are efficient in solving puzzles with one single solution. However, many puzzles are not limited to one ideal single solution. If there are multiple solutions to a puzzle, even the puzzle that is small in size may sometimes take a very long time to conquer. This type of problem is often observed to have sparse distribution of its colored cells. The existing efficient algorithms often gain no advantages, because the search space can stay huge and not reducible. For this reason, incorporating learning algorithms can be beneficial to support the deficiency. The objective of this study is to develop a heuristic means by the concept of simulated annealing (SA) to learn to explore different types of search spaces. Experiments are conducted to solve a number of multi-solution puzzles and the effectiveness of this approach is discussed.
A subroutine for counterbalanced assignment of stimuli to conditions

Description d'un sous programme capable d'ameliorer ces operations de contreequilibrage pour tout plan factoriel, multiniveau
A Rough Surface Contact Model for General Anisotropic Materials

A method for solving the two-dimensional (2-D) isothermal rough surface contact problem of general anisotropic materials with friction is presented. By using Stroh's formalism, the surface displacements of an elastic half-space due to uniform distributions of traction over a strip are derived from the surface Green's function. The surface displacement and subsurface stresses of the anisotropic half-space due to the distributed contact pressure may then be calculated by superposition. The real contact area and the contact pressure are determined via an iteration scheme using the conjugate gradient method.
Ice technology for hazardous waste management

Abstract Cryogenic methods have been proposed for the containment and immobilization of leaching beds of hazardous radioactive, chemical, and biological materials. A possible design for the installation of barriers of frozen ground is outlined and its physical and thermal characteristics are analyzed. The barriers are judged to be stable against chemical corrosion and radiation damage. They are mechanically stable and are repairable in situ if damaged by earthquake Calculated leakage by diffusion is estimated to be many orders of magnitude slower than detectable limits. Cryogenic barriers are suitable methods for many types of waste sites, and are economically advantageous for intermediate term and long term containment.
Gastrointestinal stromal tumors respond to tyrosine kinase-targeted therapy

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are rare tumors of the wall of the stomach and small bowel, and also occasionally arise in the mesentery, omentum, or retroperitoneum. The incidence of GIST in the United States is approximately 500 to 750 patients per 100,000 people. GISTs often present late in their clinical course unless they are the cause of gastrointestinal bleeding or perforation. Surgical resection is the standard of care for primary GIST. However, there is a high risk of recurrence in the peritoneum and liver. For metastatic GIST, imatinib mesylate is the standard of care. Two phase III studies presented in 2003 in abstract form show slightly different results. In the US study, 400 mg/d was found to be equivalent to 800 mg/d with respect to response, progression-free survival, and overall survival at 12 months. In the European/Australasian study, the response rate was the same with either dosage, but progression-free survival was better with 800 mg/d compared with 400 mg/d. Overall survival data for the latter study were too immature for analysis as of May 2003. Adjuvant or neoadjuvant therapy with imatinib is the topic of at least three studies through the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group and Radiation Therapy Oncology Group and the American College of Radiology Imaging Network. Every effort to enroll eligible patients on these studies should be made. New treatments for metastatic disease under investigation include a tyrosine kinase inhibitor with an expanded panel of targets compared with imatinib (SU011248), and the addition of a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor and the rapamycin derivative RAD001 to imatinib. Given the finding of a specific molecular defect to exploit, GISTs have gone from an orphan disease to a proving ground for tyrosine kinase-targeted therapy.
Nicotine–antipsychotic drug interactions and attentional performance in female rats

Abstract Schizophrenia is marked by pronounced cognitive impairments in addition to the hallmark psychotic symptoms like hallucinations. Antipsychotic drugs can effectively reduce these hallucinations; however, the drugs have not resolved the cognitive impairment. Interestingly, nicotine, a drug commonly self-administered by people with schizophrenia, has been shown to significantly improve cognitive function of people with schizophrenia. The current study was conducted to determine the effect of typical (haloperidol) and atypical (clozapine and risperidone) antipsychotic drug treatment on sustained attention in rats performing a visual signal detection task. In addition, the interaction of haloperidol with chronic nicotine administration was assessed. Female Sprague–Dawley rats were injected subcutaneously with clozapine (0, 0.6, 1.25 and 2.5 mg/kg), risperidone (0, 0.025, 0.05 and 0.1 mg/kg) or haloperidol (0, 0.01, 0.02 and 0.04 mg/kg). In the second part of the study, the interaction of acute haloperidol (0, 0.005, 0.01 and 0.02 mg/kg) and chronic nicotine (5 mg/kg/day, for 4 weeks via osmotic minipump) was characterized. Clozapine, risperidone and haloperidol all caused dose-related impairments in percent hit performance. There was a significant linear dose-related impairment in percent hit caused by risperidone. All the doses of clozapine caused a significant impairment in percent hit at the higher luminance intensities in the visual signal detection task. The 0.01 and 0.02 mg/kg haloperidol doses caused significant decreases in percent hit. The 0.04 mg/kg haloperidol dose impaired performance of the task to the point that reliable choice accuracy measurements could not be made. Chronic nicotine infusion significantly diminished the impairing effects of haloperidol on performance during weeks 1–2. In summary, both typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs significantly impaired sustained attention in rats. Haloperidol was more detrimental than clozapine and risperidone. Chronic nicotine diminished the adverse effects of haloperidol on performance. This study establishes a paradigm to reliably determine the attentional impairment caused by antipsychotic drugs.
GARD: a Generally Applicable Replacement for RMSD.

The root-mean-squared deviation (rmsd) is a widely used measure of distance between two aligned objects − often chemical structures. However, rmsd has a number of known limitations including difficulty of interpretation, no limit on weighting for any portion of the alignment, and a lack of normalization. In this work, a Generally Applicable Replacement for rmsD (GARD) is proposed. In this implementation atomic contributions are weighted by their relative importance to binding, as determined statistically by Andrews et al.(1), and as such this method is ‘chemically aware’. This novel measure is normalized and does not have many of the failings of traditional rmsd. It is, thus, perfectly suited for a wide variety of uses, including the assessment of the quality of poses produced from molecular docking programs and the comparison of conformers. Rmsd and GARD are compared in their ability to assess docking software and multiple examples of the use of GARD to rescue essentially correct poses with a high rmsd a...
Approach to recurrent hepatitis C following liver transplantation

Hepatitis C-associated liver failure is the most common indication for liver transplantation. Histologic evidence of recurrence is apparent in approximately 50% of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected recipients in the first postoperative year. Approximately 10% of HCV-infected recipients will die or lose their allograft due to hepatitis C-associated allograft failure. HCV-infected recipients who undergo retransplantation have 5-year patient and graft survival rates that are broadly similar to those for transplant recipients who are not HCV infected. Although the choice of calcineurin inhibitor, mycophenolate mofetil, or both has not been clearly shown to affect histologic recurrence of hepatitis C, higher cumulative exposure to corticosteroids is associated with increased mortality and more severe histologic recurrence. In contrast to treatment of non-HCV-infected recipients, treatment of HCV-infected transplant recipients for acute cellular rejection is associated with attenuated patient survival. Steroid-resistant rejection with or without the use of T-cell-depleting therapies is associated with a greater than fivefold increased risk of mortality in HCV-infected liver transplant recipients. Pegylated interferon with or without ribavirin should be considered for treatment of recipients with histologically apparent recurrence of hepatitis C before total bilirubin exceeds 3 mg/dL. The role of hepatitis C immunoglobulin and new immunosuppressive agents in the management of hepatitis C after transplant continues to evolve.
Thymosin beta4 promotes human conjunctival epithelial cell migration.

Purpose. In this study the effects of thymosin s4 (Ts4) on migration and production of laminin-5 in the human conjunctival cell line HC0597 was analyzed. Methods. Boyden chamber assays assessed the ability of Ts4 to stimulate in vitro cell migration. Control or Ts4-treated cells were processed for immunofluorescence microscopy using antibodies to vinculin or laminin-5. Cell lysates were processed for Western blot and densitometric analysis using antibodies to laminin-5 a3 or ?2 chains. Results. Ts4 stimulated migration in a dose-dependent manner. Focal adhesions present in Ts4-treated cells were smaller and more rounded compared to the “streaks” characteristic of controls. Western blot analysis and densitometry revealed that Ts4-treated cells expressed more laminin-5 a3 and ?2 chain protein. Conclusions. Ts4 stimulates in vitro conjunctival epithelial cell migration, and results in altered focal adhesion formation and increased extracellular laminin-5 deposition. The increased migration may be correlated ...
Willis J. Nordlund, Silent Skies: The Air Traffic Controllers' Strike. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishing, 1998. ix + 205 p. $49.95 cloth.

When labor historians construct lists of the ten most important strikes in United States history, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers' (PATCO) strike of August 1981 is certain to claim a prominent spot. Many labor activists and scholars of the contemporary labor movement see Ronald Reagan's firing of more than eleven thousand striking air traffic controllers as a sort of fall from grace, the beginning of the decline of the labor movement. To be sure, there are others who would disagree with them, but all would concur that this strike was of major historic significance. Therefore, it is surprising that this is the first book-length scholarly treatment of the strike. The author, Willis Nordlund, is Dean of the School of Business at the College of West Virginia, a veteran United States Department of Labor staff person, and a multiengine, instrument-rated pilot. Silent Skies bears the imprint of his background.
Cache aware optimization of stream programs

Effective use of the memory hierarchy is critical for achieving high performance on embedded systems. We focus on the class of streaming applications, which is increasingly prevalent in the embedded domain. We exploit the widespread parallelism and regular communication patterns in stream programs to formulate a set of cache aware optimizations that automatically improve instruction and data locality. Our work is in the context of the Synchronous Dataflow model, in which a program is described as a graph of independent actors that communicate over channels. The communication rates between actors are known at compile time, allowing the compiler to statically model the caching behavior.We present three cache aware optimizations: 1) execution scaling, which judiciously repeats actor executions to improve instruction locality, 2) cache aware fusion, which combines adjacent actors while respecting instruction cache constraints, and 3) scalar replacement, which converts certain data buffers into a sequence of scalar variables that can be register allocated. The optimizations are founded upon a simple and intuitive model that quantifies the temporal locality for a sequence of actor executions. Our implementation of cache aware optimizations in the StreamIt compiler yields a 249% average speedup (over unoptimized code) for our streaming benchmark suite on a StrongARM 1110 processor. The optimizations also yield a 154% speedup on a Pentium 3 and a 152% speedup on an Itanium 2.
Empires of Law: Discipline and Resistance within the Transnational System

This article explores the idea that law has become newly constitutive in a postmodern transnational system in which modernity's classic polarities have become obscured, the discipline of late capitalism has become widely if partially internalized outside of institutional domains, liberalism's foot soldiers (rights, citizenship, nation statism, 'free' markets) have gained new forward momentum despite a period of supposed ideological hybridity described by that overheated but ill-theorized concept 'globalization', and, finally, most arguments for socialist/egalitarian revolution or system transformation must now be seen as anachronisms. The article locates these processes as essential features of a particular disciplinary regime in which the grandeur of liberal legality is used to create loyalty to the wider project of liberalism within the consolidation of late capitalism. These regimes are called 'empires of law', and the theoretical framework within which empires of law are rendered intelligible as actua...
A new paradigm for analysis of MPEG compressed videos

The increasing use of multimedia streams nowadays necessitates the development of efficient and effective methodologies for manipulating databases storing these streams. Moreover, content-based access to multimedia databases requires in its first stage to parse the video stream into separate shots then apply a method to summarize the huge amount of data involved in each shot. This work proposes a new paradigm capable of robustly and effectively analyzing the compressed MPEG video data. First, an abstract representation of the compressed MPEG video stream is extracted and used as input to a neural network module (NNM) that performs the shot detection task. Second, we propose two adaptive algorithms to effectively select key frames from segmented video shots produced by the segmentation stage. Both algorithms apply a two-level adaptation mechanism in which the first level is based on the dimension of the input video file while the second level is performed on a shot-by-shot basis in order to account for the fact that different shots have different levels of activity. Experimental results show the efficiency and robustness of the proposed system in detecting shot boundaries and flashlights occurring within shots and in selecting the near optimal set of key frames (KFs) required to represent each shot.
Milk-induced urticaria is associated with the expansion of T cells expressing cutaneous lymphocyte antigen

Abstract Background: Two forms of IgE-mediated skin reactions, atopic dermatitis (AD) and urticaria, have been associated with milk allergy. The reason for these distinct reactions is poorly understood. T cells expressing cutaneous lymphocyte antigen (CLA), a unique skin-homing receptor, are known to play an important role in AD. In contrast, the role of lymphocytes in patients with milk-induced urticaria is unclear. Objective: The expression of the skin-specific homing receptor CLA after in vitro milk protein—specific stimulation was investigated to determine whether T-lymphocyte homing to the skin plays a role in food-induced urticaria. Methods: Fourteen patients with milk-induced urticaria but no evidence of AD were included in the study and compared with 6 children with milk-induced AD, 6 children with milk-induced gastrointestinal diseases, and 6 nonatopic and 6 atopic individuals without milk allergy. PBMCs were cultured in the presence or absence of caseins or tetanus toxoid. T-cell proliferation was determined, and T-cell phenotyping was performed by means of flow cytometry with anti-CD4, anti-CD8, and anti-CLA mAbs. Results: After in vitro stimulation with caseins, PBMCs from patients with milk-induced urticaria and AD had a significantly greater percentage of CD4 + T cells expressing CLA than patients with milk-induced gastrointestinal symptoms and atopic or nonatopic control subjects. After tetanus stimulation in vitro, no significant difference between the groups was observed. T cells from both patients with milk-induced urticaria and control subjects proliferated well in response to caseins and tetanus. Conclusion: Lymphocytes expressing CLA are selectively activated in patients with milk-induced urticaria and may play an important role in the pathogenesis of this disease. Expression of CLA is not unique to milk-induced inflammation in the skin of patients with AD and milk allergy. (J Allergy Clin Immunol 2002;109:688-93.)
Preliminary Petrographic, Chemical, and Age Data on Some Intrusive and Associated Contact Metamorphic Rocks, Pioneer Mountains, Southwestern Montana

Petrographic and chemical data on five types of intrusive rocks of the so-called Pioneer batholith in the northeastern Pioneer Mountains of southwest Montana show that the rocks range from quartz diorite to granite. The volumetrically most important body is a coarse-grained biotite-hornblende “granite” that superficially resembles the Butte Quartz Monzonite of the Boulder batholith, some 60 km to the northeast. Their K 2 O content puts the rocks into Tilling9s “sodic series” of the Boulder batholith. K-Ar dating on biotite and hornblende shows that the date of intrusion of all but the quartz diorite is about 70 m.y. The hornblende age of the quartz diorite indicates that it was intruded 76.5 m.y. ago. Its biotite age of 70.5 m.y. agrees with those of the younger intrusions. High-grade contact metamorphic rocks of the Silver Hill Formation (Cambrian) at one locality yielded the same 70-m.y. age on biotite porphyroblasts. These ages compare closely with those of the Boulder and Philipsburg batholiths and show the same tendency for the less mafic rocks to be younger.
Targets, Messages, and Channels for Educational Interventions on Urinary Incontinence

This article documents a collaborative health agency-university community demonstration project on urinary incontinence in older women. The basic program-research division of respon sibility was blurred substantially in this collaboration. The article focuses on a telephone survey of 321 elderly women conducted as part of a needs assessment, which also served as baseline data in the evaluation of a public education initiative. The survey provided information for defin ing target populations, shaping educational messages, and selecting communication channels. The prevalence of involuntary urine loss was 34%, with 20% of all women reporting weekly in continence. There were few differences by continence status in health, sociodemographic char acteristics, orbeliefs about incontinence. Women used many communication channels for health information and had a preference for information from health professionals. Factors that con tributed to the collaborative relationship included technical expertise, diversity o...
Disorderly infrastructure and the role of government

The articles in this volume portray government investment in wireless as a creature of recent events. A case can be made for government, municipal, and community wireless today because digital convergence has combined with improvements in wireless technology, changes in federal spectrum regulation, slow private wireline broadband deployment, and the recent collapse of the capital markets. This is certainly accurate, but it overstates the degree to which the current historical moment is special. This comment steps back to ask: How do infrastructures usually come to exist? In addition, what role would we expect governments to play in infrastructure development? To choose one telling comparison, at the beginning of the 20th century, the exciting technology was the plain, old telephone system. Recalling the development of this infrastructure cements the importance of government efforts in wireless today. For the last hundred years, it has been a truism in telecommunications circles that a telephone network (or any wired infrastructure) is more expensive in rural areas than urban areas. In the United States, a provider might cross miles of dusty prairie with only the occasional farmer for a customer. If a telephone company did not particularly want to offer service to an isolated homestead a century ago, we cannot blame them. We do not blame them today, as rural telephone service is subsidized in many countries.
Shaping the organizational context for Black American inclusion.

Recent gains in black occupational status, importantly aided by such programs as affirmative action, have created new interracial job situations throughout American society. This paper reviews the problems that arise at the recruitment, entry, and promotional stages for black Americans. The problems arise from two interrelated sources: the structure of the situations themselves and the operation of antiblack prejudice in both its traditional and modern forms. A social psychological analysis is advanced that emphasizes the biases introduced by the “triple jeopardy” these new workers often endure: (1) negative racial stereotypes, (2) the solo role—when the worker is the only black in the work group, and (3) the token role—when new black workers are viewed by white co-workers as incompetent simply because they received their jobs through affirmative action. The barriers to black inclusion created by this triple jeopardy are discussed at several levels: biased and stressful recruitment practices; assumed dissimilarity and exaggerated expectations on entry; and later polarized, biased evaluations of performance. These processes often deny the new black employee needed realistic feedback and informal social support. The results, then, can involve not only biased evaluations but actual decrements in black job performance. The analysis is illustrated by several suggested micro-remedies. But these micro-remedies alone are unlikely to be sufficient unless administered in the larger context of structural, macro-remedies. Two illustrative macro-remedies are advanced, both of which aim to prevent solo situations and enlarge the black pool of qualified workers.
Gallium arsenide-on-silicon technology-an overview

A review of the progress achieved in the field of GaAs-on-Si technology is presented. This technology has extended rapidly from material research to circuit development. Growth techniques like metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE), molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), and migration enhanced epitaxy (MEE) have been used for such fabrication. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman scattering, and secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) are used for investigating the heterostructure. Such devices have extensive applications in the field of lasers and light-emitting devices. Research over the last few years has resulted in a considerable improvement in the quality of the heterostructure. Though qualities such as ultrafast speed, superior mechanical properties, low material cost, higher power dissipation levels, higher packing densities, and optoelectronic capability offer a number of advantages over pure GaAs substrates, problems resulting due to the 4.1% lattice mismatch, and the factor of three difference in thermal conductivity give rise to certain defects, and restrict the performance of GaAs-on-Si based devices. >
Effective and Equitable Dissemination of Seasonal-to-Interannual Climate Forecasts: policy implications from the Peruvian fishery during El Niño 1997-98

The development of seasonal-to-interannual climate predictions has spurred widespread claims that the dissemination of such forecasts will yield benefits for society. Based on the use as well as non-use of forecasts in the Peruvian fishery during the 1997–98 El Nino event, weidentify: (1) potential constraints on the realization of benefits, such aslimited access to and understanding of information, and unintended reactions; (2) theneed for an appropriately detailed definition of societal benefit, considering whose welfare counts as a benefit among groups such as labor, industry, consumers, citizens of different regions, and future generations.We argue that consideration of who benefits, and an understanding of potential socioeconomic constraints and how they might be addressed, should be brought to bear on forecast dissemination choices. We conclude with examples of relevant dissemination choices made using this process.
A replay mechanism for non-interference real-time software testing and debugging

A replay mechanism which uses the recorded execution history to control the replay of program behavior and guarantees the reproduction of program errors is presented. Based on this approach, a non-interference monitoring architecture has been developed to collect the program execution data of a target system without affecting its execution. The replay mechanism has been designed to control the reproduction of the program behavior as well as the examination of the states and behavior of the target system. >
Seeing the chemistry in biology with neutron crystallography

New developments in macromolecular neutron crystallography have led to an increasing number of structures published over the last decade. Hydrogen atoms, normally invisible in most X-ray crystal structures, become visible with neutrons. Using X-rays allows one to see structure, while neutrons allow one to reveal the chemistry inherent in these macromolecular structures. A number of surprising and sometimes controversial results have emerged; because it is difficult to see or predict hydrogen atoms in X-ray structures, when they are seen by neutrons they can be in unexpected locations with important chemical and biological consequences. Here we describe examples of chemistry seen with neutrons for the first time in biological macromolecules over the past few years.
A unified framework for optimizing communication in data-parallel programs

This paper presents a framework, based on global array data-flow analysis, to reduce communication costs in a program being compiled for a distributed memory machine. We introduce available section descriptor, a novel representation of communication involving array sections. This representation allows us to apply techniques for partial redundancy elimination to obtain powerful communication optimizations. With a single framework, we are able to capture optimizations like (1) vectorizing communication, (2) eliminating communication that is redundant on any control flow path, (3) reducing the amount of data being communicated, (4) reducing the number of processors to which data must be communicated, and (5) moving communication earlier to hide latency, and to subsume previous communication. We show that the bidirectional problem of eliminating partial redundancies can be decomposed into simpler unidirectional problems even in the context of an array section representation, which makes the analysis procedure more efficient. We present results from a preliminary implementation of this framework, which are extremely encouraging, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this analysis in improving the performance of programs.
Maximum-diversity transmissions over time-selective wireless channels

Carrier frequency-offsets and mobility-induced Doppler shifts introduce time-selectivity in wireless links. Doppler-RAKE receivers have been developed for collecting the resulting diversity gains only for spread-spectrum systems. Relying on a basis expansion model of time-selective channels, we find that the maximum achievable Doppler diversity is determined by the rank of the correlation matrix of the channel's expansion coefficients. We also prove that RAKE reception can not collect maximum diversity gains, unless the transmission is appropriately designed. Finally, we design such block precoded transmissions to ensure maximum diversity gains, and provide thorough simulations to corroborate our theoretical findings.
DNA secretion and gene-level selection in bacteria

Natural genetic transformation can facilitate gene transfer in many genera of bacteria and requires the presence of extracellular DNA. Although cell lysis can contribute to this extracellular DNA pool, several studies have suggested that the secretion of DNA from living bacteria may also provide genetic material for transformation. This paper reviews the evidence for specific secretion of DNA from intact bacteria into the extracellular environment and examines this behaviour from a population-genetics perspective. A mathematical model demonstrates that the joint action of DNA secretion and transformation creates a novel type of gene-level natural selection. This model demonstrates that gene-level selection could explain the existence of DNA secretion mechanisms that provide no benefit to individual cells or populations of bacteria. Additionally, the model predicts that any trait affecting DNA secretion will experience selection at the gene level in a transforming population. This analysis confirms that the secretion of DNA from intact bacterial cells is fully explicable with evolutionary theory, and reveals a novel mechanism for bacterial evolution.
Chaperone displacement from mutant cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator restores its function in human airway epithelia

Mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene cause cystic fibrosis (CF). The most common mutation, DeltaF508, omits the phenylalanine residue at position 508 in the first nucleotide binding domain (NBD1) of CFTR. The mutant protein is retained in the endoplasmic reticulum and degraded by the ubiquitin-proteasome system. We demonstrate that expression of NBD1 plus the regulatory domain (RD) of DeltaF508 CFTR (DeltaFRD) restores the biogenesis of mature DeltaF508 CFTR protein. In addition, DeltaFRD elicited a cAMP-stimulated anion conductance response in primary human bronchial epithelial (HBE) cells isolated from homozygous DeltaF508 CF patients. A protein transduction domain (PTD) could efficiently transduce (approximately 90%) airway epithelial cells. When fused to a PTD, direct addition of the DeltaFRD peptide conferred a dose-dependent, cAMP-stimulated anion efflux to DeltaF508 HBE cells. Hsp70 and Hsp90 associated equally with WT and DeltaF508 CFTR, whereas nearly twice as much of the Hsp90 cochaperone, Aha1, associated with DeltaF508 CFTR. Expression of DeltaFRD produced a dose-dependent removal of Aha1 from DeltaF508 CFTR that correlated with its functional rescue. These findings indicate that disruption of the excessive association of the cochaperone, Aha1, with DeltaF508 CFTR is associated with the correction of its maturation, trafficking and regulated anion channel activity in human airway epithelial cells. Thus, PTD-mediated DeltaFRD fragment delivery may provide a therapy for CF.