cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Sigmund Freud: más allá del principio de modernidad

La propuesta de este texto es seguir la linea de pensamiento del filosofo frances Jacques Ranciere al abordar el trabajo teorico freudiano como dislocado de su tiempo historico, es decir de las formulaciones teoricas absortas en el positivismo que hacian de las humanidades una practica cientifica. Ranciere observa que el trabajo interpretativo y teorico de Freud se ubica en una logica estetica que rompe con la definicion clasica de esta e inaugura un pensamiento mas alla de la logica moderna. Consecuentemente este trabajo abordara una conceptualizacion de modernidad, la desarrollada por Michel Foucault en el texto The Politics of Truth (1997), para pasar luego a los Cinicos griegos como via hacia la propuesta de Jacques Ranciere en El inconsciente estetico (2005) donde plantea a Freud como pensador estetico. Palabras clave Sigmund Freud; Humanidades; Modernidad; Cinicos; Pensamiento estetico Abstract This paper proposes to follow the french philosopher Jacques Ranciere’s thougth when tackling Freud’s theoretical work as dislocated from its historical time, that is from the theoretical formulations captivated in the positivism that would make humanities a scientific practice. In others words this work understands Freudian’s texts beyond the very extended positivism in the humanities at those times. Jacques Ranciere points out that Freudian’s interpretative and theoretical work breaks a classic aesthetic logic creating a new way of thinking beyond modern logic. Consequently, this paper will focus on the conceptualization of modernity developed by Michel Foucault in his work The Politics of Truth (1997). Later on, it will approach the Greek Cynics as a path towards understanding Jacques Ranciere’s proposal in El inconsciente estetico (2005), in which Freud is presented as an aesthetic thinker. Keywords Sigmund Freud; Humanities; Modernity; Cynics; Aesthetic thought
Teaching international environmental law -- Tools of the trade: A survey of materials

This survey evaluates the available books, websites, and other material available to teach a graduate-level law course on International Environmental Law. It includes a 2-page flowchart created by the author to map the environmental treaty-making process.
Creep behavior in interlaminar shear of a Hi-NicalonTM/ SiC-B4C composite at 1200∘C in air and in steam

Creep behavior in interlaminar shear of a non-oxide ceramic composite with a multilayered matrix was investigated at 1200 ∘ C in laboratory air and in steam environment. The composite was produced via chemical vapor infiltration (CVI). The composite had an oxidation inhibited matrix, which consisted of alternating layers of silicon carbide and boron carbide and was reinforced with laminated Hi-Nicalon TM fibers woven in a five-harness-satin weave. Fiber preforms had pyrolytic carbon fiber coating with boron carbon overlay applied. The interlaminar shear properties were measured. The creep behavior was examined for interlaminar shear stresses in the 16–22 MPa range. Primary and secondary creep regimes were observed in all tests conducted in air and in steam. In air and in steam, creep run-out defined as 100 h at creep stress was achieved at 16 MPa. Similar creep strains were accumulated in air and in steam. Furthermore, creep strain rates and creep lifetimes were only moderately affected by the presence of steam. The retained properties of all specimens that achieved run-out were characterized. Composite microstructure, as well as damage and failure mechanisms were investigated. The tested specimens were also examined using electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) with wavelength dispersive spectroscopy (WDS). Analysis of the fracture surfaces revealed significant surface oxidation, but only trace amounts of boron and carbon. Cross sectional analysis showed increasing boron concentration in the specimen interior.
Globally Asymptotically Stable Attitude Observer on SO(3)

This paper presents a deterministic hybrid observer for the attitude dynamics of a rigid body that guarantees global asymptotical stability. Any smooth attitude observer suffers from the inherent topological restriction that it is impossible to achieve global attractivity. It is illustrated that such attitude observers may yield very slow initial convergence rates, and motivated by this, we propose a hybrid attitude observer that guarantees global asymptotic stability on the special orthogonal group. This is shown to exhibit substantially improved convergence rate uniformly via numerical examples.
A Call to Action: The Privacy Dangers Adolescents Face through Use of Facebook.com

AbstractAdolescents today will spend the equivalent of 23 years of their lifetime on the Internet; 10 years of that span will be spent on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Research has been conducted that suggests teens are largely unaware and unconcerned about protecting their privacy online. They are also unaware of the future implications of creating a digital footprint in today’s online legal environment. In fact, industry reports suggest teens openly divulge risky behavior on their social networking web pages. Currently in the U.S., adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 are treated as adults in terms of information privacy law. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) law currently restricts data collection from children under the age of 13, but does not restrict data collection from teens 13 or older. Conventional wisdom suggests businesses, policy makers, educators, and parents should be informed of social networking uses that will have a negative future impact on a...
Effect of the Core/Shell Interface on Auger Recombination Evaluated by Single-Quantum-Dot Spectroscopy

Previous single-particle spectroscopic studies of colloidal quantum dots have indicated a significant spread in biexciton lifetimes across an ensemble of nominally identical nanocrystals. It has been speculated that in addition to dot-to-dot variation in physical dimensions, this spread is contributed to by variations in the structure of the quantum dot interface, which controls the shape of the confinement potential. Here, we directly evaluate the effect of the composition of the core–shell interface on single- and multiexciton dynamics via side-by-side measurements of individual core–shell CdSe/CdS nanocrystals with a sharp versus smooth (graded) interface. To realize the latter type of structures we incorporate a CdSexS1–x alloy layer of controlled composition and thickness between the CdSe core and the CdS shell. We observe that while having essentially no effect on single-exciton decay, the interfacial alloy layer leads to a systematic increase in biexciton lifetimes, which correlates with the increa...
Development of Damage-Resistant Metal Mirrors for Laser-IFE

A grazing-incidence metal mirror has been developed and tested as a candidate design option that has the potential to survive acceptably high laser fluence as well as the harsh environment of a laser-driven inertial fusion reactor chamber. We have developed fabrication techniques for high damage threshold metal mirrors and performed laser-induced damage studies using prototypical short-pulse lasers. Our results indicate that grazing-incidence metal mirrors have the ability to survive high-cycle laser irradiation while satisfying the requirements on beam quality necessary for successful target implosions.
Six Decades of Tropical Meteorology Research—A Retrospective on Michio Yanai’s Life and Career

AbstractThis monograph on convection-coupled systems in the tropics was inspired by the life and career of Professor Michio Yanai, whose major contributions to the subject spanned more than five decades. From a distant perspective, Professor Yanai’s career can be understood in the context of Japanese scientists who immigrated to the United States in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, enriching the meteorological research community in the United States as well as abroad (Lewis 1993). A closer look reminds us that the tapestry of scientific progress is created by the contributions of individual scientists with their unique backgrounds, motivations, and talents, and the serendipity of events that shape their lives.
A retrospective cross-sectional study of patients treated in US EDs and ambulatory care clinics with sexually transmitted infections from 2001 to 2010.

Abstract Introduction Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are commonly seen in the ambulatory health care settings such as emergency departments (EDs) and outpatient clinics. Our objective was to assess trends over time in the incidence and demographics of STIs seen in the ED and outpatient clinics compared with office-based clinics using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Methods This study was conducted using 10 years of National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey data (2001-2010). We compared data from 2001-2005 to data from 2006-2010. Patients were included in analyses if they were 15 years and older and had an International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision code consistent with cervicitis, urethritis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, or trichomonas. Results We analyzed 82.4 million visits for STIs, with 16.5% seen in hospital-based EDs and 83.5% seen in office-based clinics between 2001 and 2010. Compared with patients seen in office-based clinics, ED patients were younger ( P P P P P P Conclusion Although patients with STI are most commonly seen in office-based clinics, EDs represent an important site of care. In particular, ED patients are relatively younger, male, and nonwhite, and less likely to be private insured.
Fatty Acid Metabolism

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the fatty acid metabolism. Fatty acids are present in cells throughout nature and are encountered most commonly in ester linkage to a variety of complex lipids. Fatty acids occur in a spectrum of chain lengths from acetic acid to lignoceric acid and in various isomerie or substituted forms such as saturated, unsaturated, hydroxy, or branched-chain acids. Unsaturated fatty acids are thought to have a particularly important role in the structure and function of cellular lipids. The eis configuration of the double bond appears to be ubiquitous for unsaturated fatty acids. In the polyunsaturated acids, the olefinic bonds are present in a polyallyl configuration separated from one another by a methylene group. The unsaturated fatty acids occurring in nature are characterized by several common structural features. The double bonds are generally found to be in the eis configuration and the olefinic bonds of polyenoic acids are separated by one methylene group. A convenient method of classification of unsaturated fatty acids is by the position of the double bond from the ω -CH 3 carbon of the hydrocarbon chain.
The Doctrine of Double Effect

9.1 Consider the cases of the terror bomber and the tactical bomber.1 The terror bomber kills innocent civilians because he believes that this is a causally necessary and sufficient condition of demoralizing the civilian population and, hence, shortening a just war. The tactical bomber, who drops bombs on a factory which produces materials which are important to the enemy’s war effort, does so with the same end in view: namely, shortening a just war. He may, furthermore, firmly believe that his bombing of the factory will result in the deaths of some nearby, innocent civilians.
Anesthesia for Postpartum Complications

Summary Postpartum hemorrhage results from trauma to the birth canal, or from a failure of the mechanical occlusion of the spiral arterioles normally effected by the contracting myometrium. The anesthesiologist must be prepared to provide massive transfusion if necessary, as well as analgesia and anesthesia for examination of the birth canal, exploration and curettage of the uterus, surgical or angiographic occlusion of the hypogastric arteries, or hysterectomy. Communication between anesthesiologist and obstetrician is essential; depending on the obstetric intervention, uterine relaxation by anesthetic vapors may be absolutely necessary or contraindicated.
Marketing the Physician: From Antitrust to Distrust

A pediatric dermatologist, who specializes in the treatment of vascular anomalies, takes a position as an employee of a large hospital-based group practice. One evening, he views a television advertisement, sponsored by the hospital, that describes the group practice as having the best and most experienced doctors in the state.
Doing Gender as Self-Improvement: An Exploration of How Incarcerated Men and Women Interpret the Advice From Prison Employees:

In this article, we use interview data (n = 383) to evaluate how male and female inmates perceive the help they receive from prison staff members. Men were more likely to claim that staff members h...
Perceptions of extended concurrent speech in Mandarin

In this paper, we adopt Kadar and Haugh’s (2013) discursive-interactional approach to argue that extended concurrent speech for floor taking or topic switching can be perceived as normal and qiadang (appropriate). Spontaneous mundane conversations and interviews in Mandarin were collected and transcribed by means of interactional sociolinguistic methods. A close analysis was conducted on participants’ responses to the extended concurrent speech for floor taking or topic switching and their retrospective thoughts. Results show that the participants did not view the speech as inappropriate. They produced the speech to achieve relational goals, clarify things, collaborate on a topic, claim participatory rights or display high involvement. They enjoyed conversing around a trivial topic in informal settings. This challenges the argument of long overlapping, floor taking or topic switching as problematic in the literature. The findings indicate the importance of embracing different perspectives from varying sources to understand perceptions of turn-taking mechanisms in Mandarin conversation. This study can contribute to our understanding of interpersonal pragmatics and the conventional views/norms that might cause communication misunderstanding in cross-cultural contact.
Biochemical and Histological Differences Between Costal and Articular Cartilages

Biologically, costal cartilage is an understudied tissue type and much is yet to be learned regarding underlying mechanisms related to form and function, and how these relate to disease states, specifically chest wall deformity. Chest wall deformities have a component of inheritance, implying underlying genetic causes; however the complexity of inheritance suggests multiple genetic components. At our Centre investigations were performed on gene expression of key select genes from costal cartilage removed at surgery of patients with chest wall deformity to show high expression of decorin, a key player in collagen fiber formation and growth. Also, the degree of tissue differentiation was investigated that was different to that of articular cartilage as measured by gene ratio. Ultrastructural aspects of costal cartilage were determined by scanning and atomic force microscopy to show the presence of ‘nanostraws’ and preliminary data of nanostraw strength by measuring Young’s modulus of individual nanostraws. Protein deposition of collagen type II, decorin, and biglycan suggest orchestration of fiber formation in the interterritorial matrix. Although no specific biological markers related to chest wall deformity have currently been identified, work from our Centre has identified potential areas of interest.
Making a Game Out of It: Using Web-Based Competitive Quizzes for Quantitative Analysis Content Review

Online student-response systems provide instructors with an easy-to-use tool to instantly evaluate student comprehension. For comprehensive content review, turning this evaluation into a competitive game where students can compete against each other was found to be helpful and enjoyable for participating students. One specific online resource, Kahoot!, provides the opportunity for crowd-sourced content quizzes to be generated, potentially enabling the creation of an open-source repository of review questions for the comprehensive ACS Analytical Chemistry exam.
Antipredator Behavior of Adult and Nestling Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus)

ABSTRACT Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) experience high rates of nest predation and are therefore expected to exhibit adaptations to reduce the risk of eavesdropping by predators. We used a simulated predator and observations of adult and nestling behavior to test predictions of the predator eavesdropping hypothesis. Females (n = 42) delayed their feeding visits significantly longer and took significantly longer to complete their round trips when a plastic American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) was 20 m from their nests than when a black wood block was at the same location, but time spent off territory foraging did not differ significantly. Nestlings (n = 35 broods) begged appropriately (in response to a female at the nest) significantly less and at significantly lower intensity when the plastic crow was 20 m from their nests than when the wood block was at the same location, but the crow had no significant effect on the amount or intensity of inappropriate (no female present) begging. These a...
Metastatic prostate cancer mimicking a subdural hematoma: A case report and literature review

Abstract Occurrences of metastatic prostate cancer imitating a subdural hematoma are limited to a small number of case reports, even though prostate cancer spreads to the dura more than other types of cancer. Here, we present the case of a 64 year-old male whose prostate carcinoma’s metastasis mimicked a subdural hematoma, and he suffered a middle cerebral artery stroke. Prostate cancer’s high rate of progression to the dura is disproportionate to its relatively low rate of brain metastasis. Furthermore, we explore the potential molecular implications of prostate cancer’s propensity to spread to the dura.
Toll-Like Receptors and Their Ligands

The Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are key molecules involved in the recognition of pathogens by the innate immune system. This family of germ line-encoded receptors has evolved to recognize conserved features of microbes. Currently, 10 TLR family members have been identified in mammals. The number of ligands for these receptors continues to grow, and it seems clear that multiple ligands exist for each receptor. Whether engagement of different TLRs leads to differences in gene expression and thereby differences in the immune response remains to be seen. However, recent work has demonstrated that activation of TLRs is required for initiation of only certain adaptive immune responses.
A Taxonomy of Polynomially Solvable Shop Problems with Limited Number of Machines or Jobs

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix CHAPTER
Interaction of Fractional Order Adaptive Law and Fractional Order PID Controller for The Ball and Beam Control System

This paper contributes to the current literature by designing a Fractional Order Adaptive Control (FO-AC) for a ball and beam control system via function approximation based on a non-integer version derivative. The Caputo derivative is used to approximate the controller’s parameters using universal function approximators such as fuzzy systems. The stability of using the fractional order adaptive law (FO-AL) is presented in this paper. The novelty of this paper lies in a rigorous stability proof of an IAC scheme for a Ball and Beam system, where an integer order stable manifold is used together with the FOAL. Furthermore, fractional order PID controller will be used in this experiment and interacts with the fractional order adaptive control.
Pain-Reducing Effects of Physical Therapist-Delivered Interventions: A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials among Older Adults with Dementia

Background and purpose Pain is common among older adults with dementia. There are nonpharmacological options for managing pain in this population. However, the effects of physical therapist-delivered interventions have not been summarized. The purpose of this systematic review was to summarize the literature on physical therapist-delivered interventions in randomized trials for reducing pain among older adults with dementia. Methods A systematic search of MEDLINE/PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Web of Science was conducted for randomized trials of pain management in individuals 60 years or older with medically diagnosed dementia of any severity. Included studies addressed the effects of nonpharmacological physical therapist-delivered interventions on pain outcomes. Pain outcomes included patient or caregiver self-report, observational or interactive measures. Independent reviewers extracted relevant data and assessed methodological quality using the PEDro scale. Results and discussion Three studies (total = 222 participants; mean age range = 82.2-84.0 years; 178 [80.2%] females) met inclusion criteria. PEDro scores ranged from 4 to 8/10. Interventions included passive movement and massage. Pain outcomes included the observational measures Pain Assessment Checklist for Seniors with Limited Ability to Communicate (PACSLAC), Pain in Advanced Dementia (PAINAD), and Doloplus-2 Scale. Passive movement did not show better results when compared with no treatment, while massage showed pain-reducing effects in 1 study compared with no treatment. Conclusions The evidence supporting pain-reducing physical therapy interventions for patients with dementia is limited. There is a clear gap in knowledge related to evidence-based physical therapy for managing pain in this population. Future studies should examine active physical therapist-delivered interventions and utilize interactive pain measures.
The Science of Habit and Its Implications for Student Learning and Well-Being.

Habits are critical for supporting (or hindering) long-term goal attainment, including outcomes related to student learning and well-being. Building good habits can make beneficial behaviors (studying, exercise, sleep, etc.) the default choice, bypassing the need for conscious deliberation or willpower and protecting against temptations. Yet educational research and practice tends to overlook the role of habits in student self-regulation, focusing instead on the role of motivation and metacognition in actively driving behavior. Habit theory may help explain ostensible failures of motivation or self-control in terms of contextual factors that perpetuate poor habits. Further, habit-based interventions may support durable changes in students’ recurring behaviors by disrupting cues that activate bad habits and creating supportive and stable contexts for beneficial ones. In turn, the unique features of educational settings provide a new area in which to test and adapt existing habit models.
18 – EARNINGS, SKILL ACQUISITION, AND THE JOB MARKET

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the various factors that determine the earning power of an individual. Earnings of paired individuals in the same occupation or with the same amount of education very often differ substantially. The earnings of persons with the same family background also vary widely. All workers are not the same. They differ in several important respects, which influence both the supply of and demand for their services. The demand for employees who are highly productive will be greater than the demand for those who are less productive. Because they are more productive, their services will command a higher wage from employers. Workers can increase their productivity by investment in human capital. Investment in human capital and development of specialized skills can protect high-wage workers from the competition of others willing to offer their services at a lower price. It is important to keep in mind that wages are determined by demand relative to supply. Other things constant, a skilled specialist will command a higher wage than one with less skill, but high skill will not guarantee high wages in the absence of demand. Discrimination on the basis of race or sex contributes to earnings differences among individuals. Employment discrimination may directly limit the earnings opportunities of minorities and women.
Medical cannabis for the reduction of opioid dosage in the treatment of non-cancer chronic pain: A systematic review

Medical cannabis (MC) is currently being used as an adjunct to opiates given its analgesic effects and potential to reduce opiate addiction. This review assessed if MC used in combination with opioids to treat non-cancer chronic pain would reduce opioid dosage. Four databases—Ovid (Medline), Psyc-INFO, PubMed, Web of Science, and grey literature—were searched to identify original research that assessed the effects of MC on non-cancer chronic pain in humans. Study eligibility included randomized controlled trials, controlled before-and-after studies, cohort studies, cross-sectional studies, and case reports. All databases were searched for articles published from inception to October 31, 2019. Cochrane’s ROBINS-I tool and the AXIS tool were used for risk of bias assessment. PRISMA guidelines were followed in reporting the systematic review. Nine studies involving 7222 participants were included. There was a 64–75% reduction in opioid dosage when used in combination with MC. Use of MC for opioid substitution was reported by 32–59.3% of patients with non-cancer chronic pain. One study reported a slight decrease in mean hospital admissions in the past calendar year (P = .53) and decreased mean emergency department visits in the past calendar year (P = .39) for patients who received MC as an adjunct to opioids in the treatment of non-cancer chronic pain compared to those who did not receive MC. All included studies had high risk of bias, which was mainly due to their methods. While this review indicated the likelihood of reducing opioid dosage when used in combination with MC, we cannot make a causal inference. Although medical cannabis’ recognized analgesic properties make it a viable option to achieve opioid dosage reduction, the evidence from this review cannot be relied upon to promote MC as an adjunct to opioids in treating non-cancer chronic pain. More so, the optimal MC dosage to achieve opioid dosage reduction remains unknown. Therefore, more research is needed to elucidate whether MC used in combination with opioids in the treatment of non-cancer chronic pain is associated with health consequences that are yet unknown. This systematic review was not registered.
Radionuclide resuspension across ecosystems and environmental disturbances.

Abstract Exposure assessment from radionuclides and other soil-bound contaminants often requires quantifying the amount of contaminant resuspended in the air. Rates and controlling factors of radionuclide resuspension and wind erosion of soil are clearly related but have largely been studied separately. Here, we review both and then integrate wind erosion measurements with the radiological resuspension paradigm to provide better estimates of resuspension factors across a broad range of ecosystems and environmental conditions. Radionuclide resuspension by wind was initially investigated during the era of aboveground nuclear weapons testing. Predictive dose models were developed from empirically-derived ratios of air and soil concentrations, otherwise called the resuspension factor. Resuspension factors were shown to generally predict radionuclide concentrations in air, but they were site-specific and largely derived from the arid and semi-arid environments surrounding nuclear weapons testing locations. In contrast, wind erosion studies from the agricultural and environmental sciences have produced more mechanistic models and a relatively robust data set of wind erosion rates and model parameters across a range of ecosystems. We sequentially show the mathematics linking measured sediment flux from wind erosion rate measurements to resuspension factors using the concept of transport capacity and its relationship to the deposition velocity. We also describe the conceptual framework describing how resuspension factors change through time and the mathematical models describing this decrease. We then show how vertical mass flux measurements across ecosystems were categorized and used to calculate ecosystem-based resuspension factors. These calculations allow generalized estimation of radionuclide resuspension factors across ecosystem types as a function of disturbance and as input for dose calculations.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is associated with alterations in evoked cortical activation during visual recognition of scenes.

Abstract We recorded magnetoencephalography data during a visual recognition task in participants with combat exposure (n = 40, age: 41.2 ± 7.2 years) to investigate the relationship between the evoked brain activity, behavioral performance, and the severity of their post-traumatic stress symptoms assessed using the PTSD Check List for DSM V version (PCL-5). In an initial study session, participants were presented with a series of images of outdoor scenes and were instructed to study the images for an upcoming recognition test. In a subsequent session, the original images were shown intermixed with novel images while participants performed the recognition task. PCL-5 scores were negatively correlated with discrimination performance and with the recognition accuracy for original images. During the recognition session, higher PCL-5 scores were associated with reduced relative power of the evoked response to original images from 100 ms to 300 ms following the image onset over a distributed brain network including the bilateral inferior frontal gyri, left middle frontal gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus, right precuneus and the bilateral superior temporal gyri. These findings indicate that the lower recognition performance in participants with higher PTSD symptom severity is associated with altered cortical activity in brain regions that are known to play a role in the elaboration on visual cues that supports recollection.
MicroRNA-371a-3p as a blood-based biomarker in testis cancer

Abstract MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs involved in the regulation of mRNA transcription and translation, and possess all desirable features of an ideal tumor marker. Of almost 31 different miRNA clusters identified in germ cell tumors (GCTs), miR-371a-3p has shown exceptionally high sensitivity and specificity for both seminomatous and nonseminomatous GCTs. It is easily obtainable and correlates well with tumor burden. Recent multi-institutional prospective studies have shown promising test characteristics for miR-371a-3p as a diagnostic blood-based biomarker for GCT prior to orchiectomy including 80%–100% sensitivity and 90%–100% specificity. This accuracy may address other unmet needs in the management of patients with GCT. Early studies have suggested the utility of miR-371a-3p in detecting occult nodal metastasis in high-risk clinical stage I and early stage II disease. Ongoing clinical trials including SWOG 1823 and AGCT1531 are specifically designed to confirm the utility of miR-371a-3p in clinical stage I GCT. Despite its strong association with viable GCT after treatment with chemotherapy, miR-371a-3p does not seem to accurately predict the presence of teratoma in residual lesions. Also, standardization of extraction and interpretation methods is a necessary step to assure uniform results across different institutions.
Incomplete Integration and Contagion of Debt Distress in Economic Unions

This paper compares different fiscal integration schemes on the basis of their ability to finance public investments and resilience to debt distress and contagion. Complete integration schemes, where a central authority chooses the level of public investments with productivity‐enhancing externalities across different jurisdictions, are shown to be superior to incomplete integration schemes, where member governments choose public investments unilaterally. As a result, equilibrium income is greater for citizens of both member states under a complete integration scheme. Moreover, complete integration schemes are shown to be more resilient to idiosyncratic shocks and more effective in limiting contagion of debt distress. This is mainly because the central authority can credibly borrow more without risking default than member states taken together can and it can “transfer resilience” across them if needed. These findings inform discussions on structural aspects of secular stagnation in Europe by emphasizing a potential challenge in the institutional design of fiscal responsibilities.
Hoffmann H-Reflex

H-reflexes are commonly elicited electrophysiological responses that are produced by submaximal stimulation of large afferent fibers and subsequent activation of motoneurons in the anterior horn of the spinal cord, possibly monosynaptically. In adults, H-reflexes are consistently elicited in calf muscles and the homologous forearm flexor muscles. H-reflexes are inhibited by increasing stimulus intensity primarily due to patterns of central inhibition. H-reflexes can be useful in the clinical and research evaluation of disorders of peripheral nerves, roots, and the central nervous system.
Can Cowboys Become Indians? Protecting Western Communities as Endangered Cultural Remnants

"Can Cowboys Become Indians? Protecting Western Communities as Endangered Cultural Remnants" examines and evaluates the claims being asserted by small, rural western communities stressed by rapid growth that they are entitled to some form of protection as an endangered remnant culture. It places the economic and cultural stresses faced by these communities in the context of the current western population boom and accompanying shifts in land use and water allocation. The pace of landscape change and the reallocation of water to urban and environmental uses causes considerable, but unquantified, social and economic disruption. There are some legal mechanisms in place to respond to these shifts in resource use, but they do not adequately address the non-Constitutional claims that these communities represent endangered cultures which should be preserved. Community cultural claims, therefore, receive little recognition in the laws that restrain changes in the use of natural resources and have been largely ignored in the on-going efforts to balance population growth and environmental conservation. In short, the social costs of economic "progress" have long been considered damnum absque injuria. The basic argument of this article is that at-risk communities have a legitimate basis to be protected from markets that threaten to destroy a unique culture. Although these communities are not conventional religious groups or aboriginals subject to a high risk of oppression by the dominant culture, recent developments in post-modern legal and cultural theory make these claims more plausible than one might initially suspect because they posit that culture is a contingent and evolving construct. Few communities would neither self-identify with the surrounding conventional minority cultures--Native American and Hispanic--which they once oppressed, nor assume the non-exclusive group rights which these minorities "enjoy." However, at-risk communities are both rhetorically and practically exploring ways to claim the perceived benefit of Native American Tribes--resource inalienability and the recognition of group cultural practices as a legitimate component of property rights. The initial effort often ranges from the comic to the ineffective, but as the convergence between the "preservation" efforts of at-risk communities and the efforts of environmentalists to define and maintain an ecological baseline in the non-urban West becomes clear, the cultural claims of at-risk communities will take on a greater legitimacy, especially in post-modern cultural theory. These communities must be factored into efforts to re-envision the western landscape and the legal institutions that will develop to manage and sustain this vision. Protection could take the form of greater recognition of group third-party interests in land and water allocation decisions, group property rights on the Native American model and voluntary efforts to recollectivize property rights.
Chemical manipulation of the vinyl groups in protoporphyrin-IX.

As one of only very few synthetic organic chemists at this meeting, I propose to discuss some old and some new aspects of the chemistry of “type-IX” derivatives of porphyrins. Much of our recent work has centered on total synthesis of porphyrins from acyclic precursors,1 but today I plan to focus on various manipulations of the substituents, particularly the vinyls, on intact commercially available porphyrins since I believe that this is the type of approach which will be more useful to the present audience. Most often, the commercial porphyrin used is hemin [the iron(III) chloride complex of protoporphyrin-IX]; this is inexpensive and can be converted into protoporphyrin-IX (1) by a simple demetalation procedure.2 Because of the constraints of the biosynthetic process leading to hemin, all porphyrins which will be discussed in this paper have the “type-IX” orientation. The type-IX orientation of substituents is that name given by Hans Fischer to the arrangement common to all natural heme and chlorophyll pigments;3 in the case of protoporphyrin-IX (1), for example, there are four methyl groups (one on each pyrrole subunit), two vinyls (one each on of rings A and B), and two propionic acid groups (one each on rings C and D). This arrangement of substituents renders the porphyrin completely asymmetric, and this is a characteristic of all the natural plant and blood pigments.
Corporate bond market microstructure and transparency - the US experience

Many countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim have rapidly developing domestic corporate bond markets. The long-run viability of these markets depends in part on whether the secondary markets facilitate efficient capital markets. The US corporate bond market has been allowed to set its own structure, but recently regulators have promoted post-trade transparency. This article presents the following lessons from the recent history of the microstructure of the US corporate bond market to help inform other regulators considering transparency:
Dick Gregory and Activist Style: Identifying Attributes of Humor Necessary for Activist Advocacy

Human rights advocacy is often austere, if not funereal. Nevertheless, humorists have long engaged human rights activism through their art. Against claims that humor weakens action or conservatively maintains the status quo, this essay argues for humor as necessary element in human rights activism. At its best, humor awakens communities by providing new perspectives on reality and sharpening understandings of injustice. It provokes dialogue and action and humanizes all parties in a struggle. This essay explores humor as a necessary, if not sufficient, component of an activist political style through a case study of comedian and activist Dick Gregory. Using evidence from Gregory's performances and speeches as well as public discourse about Gregory, this essay establishes humor as an integral characteristic of an activist political style.
Convolutional Color Constancy

Color constancy is the problem of inferring the color of the light that illuminated a scene, usually so that the illumination color can be removed. Because this problem is underconstrained, it is often solved by modeling the statistical regularities of the colors of natural objects and illumination. In contrast, in this paper we reformulate the problem of color constancy as a 2D spatial localization task in a log-chrominance space, thereby allowing us to apply techniques from object detection and structured prediction to the color constancy problem. By directly learning how to discriminate between correctly white-balanced images and poorly white-balanced images, our model is able to improve performance on standard benchmarks by nearly 40%.
Semantic Analysis for Monitoring Insider Threats

Malicious insiders’ difficult-to-detect activities pose serious threats to the intelligence community (IC) when these activities go undetected. A novel approach that integrates the results of social network analysis, role-based access monitoring, and semantic analysis of insiders’ communications as evidence for evaluation by a risk assessor is being tested on an IC simulation. A semantic analysis, by our proven Natural Language Processing (NLP) system, of the insider’s text-based communications produces conceptual representations that are clustered and compared on the expected vs. observed scope. The determined risk level produces an input to a risk analysis algorithm that is merged with outputs from the system’s social network analysis and role-based monitoring modules.
Exponential family hybrid semi-supervised learning

We present an approach to semi-supervised learning based on an exponential family characterization. Our approach generalizes previous work on coupled priors for hybrid generative/discriminative models. Our model is more flexible and natural than previous approaches. Experimental results on several data sets show that our approach also performs better in practice.
Estimation of portfolio-balance functions that are mean-variance optimizing: The mark and the dollar

Abstract This paper offers a way of efficiently estimating the parameters in demand functions for mark and dollar assets. The technique imposes the constraint that the parameters, rather than being determined arbitrarily, are based on investors' optimizing behavior regarding expected returns and variances. It dominates some previous empirical applications of finance theory in the respect that the expected returns are allowed to vary from period to period, which is a necessary feature of any macro model. The constraint that the parameters are based on mean-variance optimization is also tested, and not rejected.
Scalable Visual Hierarchy Exploration

Modern computer applications, from business decision support to scientific data analysis, utilize visualization techniques to support exploratory activities. However, most existing visual exploration tools do not scale well for large data sets, i.e., the level of cluttering on the screen is typically unacceptable and the performance is poor. To solve the cluttered interface problem, visualization tools have recently been extended to support hierarchical views of the data, with support for focusing and drilling-down using interactive brushes. To solve the scalability problem, we now investigate how best to couple such a near real-time responsive visualization tool with a database management system. This integration must be done carefully, since the direct implementation of the visual user interactions on hierarchical datasets corresponds to recursive query processing and thus is highly inefficient. For this problem, we have developed a tree labeling method, called MinMax tree, that allows the movement of the on-line recursive processing into an off-line precomputation step. Thus at run time, the recursive processing operations translate into linear cost range queries. Secondly, we employ a main memory access strategy to support incremental loading of data into the main memory. The techniques have been incorporated into XmdvTool, a visual exploration tool, to achieve scalability. Lastly, we report experimental results that illustrate the impact of the proposed techniques on the system's overall performance.
Efficient algorithms for constructing time decompositions of time stamped documents

Identifying temporal information of topics from a document set typically involves constructing a time decomposition of the time period associated with the document set. In an earlier work, we formulated several metrics on a time decomposition, such as size, information loss, and variability, and gave dynamic programming based algorithms to construct time decompositions that are optimal with respect to these metrics. Computing information loss values for all subintervals of the time period is central to the computation of optimal time decompositions. This paper proposes several algorithms to assist in more efficiently constructing an optimal time decomposition. More efficient, parallelizable algorithms for computing loss values are described. An efficient top-down greedy heuristic to construct an optimal time decomposition is also presented. Experiments to study the performance of this greedy heuristic were conducted. Although lossy time decompositions constructed by the greedy heuristic are suboptimal, they seem to be better than the widely used uniform length decompositions.
A perspective on process synthesis: Challenges and prospects

Abstract This paper gives the author's perspective on some of the open questions and opportunities in process synthesis focusing on separation systems as the application. Driven by energy and environmental concerns and challenged by introduction of new raw materials, this author anticipates significant advances in: (1) novel approaches that integrate experimental studies and process synthesis activities, and multi-scale and surrogate models for accurately capturing the behavior of these unconventional mixtures, (2) systematic generation of alternatives for processing these mixtures, and (3) global, robust, and stochastic optimization for identifying the optimum alternative. This paper is an extended version of a conference paper ( Cremaschi, 2014 ) presented at the 8th International Conference on Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design.
No, coreset, no cry

We show that coresets do not exist for the problem of 2-slabs in ${\mathbb R}^{3}$, thus demonstrating that the natural approach for solving approximately this problem efficiently is infeasible. On the positive side, for a point set P in ${\mathbb R}^{3}$, we describe a near linear time algorithm for computing a (1+e)-approximation to the minimum width 2-slab cover of P. This is a first step in providing an efficient approximation algorithm for the problem of covering a point set with k-slabs.
The Impact of Generic-Orange Juice Advertising

In this study, the impacts of Florida Department of Citrus (FDOC) orange juice (OJ) advertising on U.S., OJ demand and the price received by Florida growers are examined.
The effect of natural selection on phylogeny reconstruction algorithms

We study the effect of natural selection on the performance of phylogeny reconstruction algorithms using Avida, a software platform that maintains a population of digital organisms (self-replicating computer programs) that evolve subject to natural selection, mutation, and drift. We compare the performance of neighbor-joining and maximum parsimony algorithms on these Avida populations to the performance of the same algorithms on randomly generated data that evolve subject only to mutation and drift. Our results show that natural selection has several specific effects on the sequences of the resulting populations, and that these effects lead to improved performance for neighbor-joining and maximum parsimony in some settings. We then show that the effects of natural selection can be partially achieved by using a non-uniform probability distribution for the location of mutations in randomly generated genomes.