cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Sex differences in self-report anxiety and sleep quality during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.

COVID-19 and home isolation has impacted quality of life, but the perceived impact on anxiety and sleep remains equivocal. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders on self-report anxiety and sleep quality, with a focus on sex differences. We hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic would be associated with increased anxiety and decreased sleep quality, with stronger associations in women. One hundred three participants (61 female, 38 ± 1 years) reported perceived changes in anxiety and sleep quality due to stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic and were administered the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Insomnia Severity Index (ISI). Chi-square and T test analyses were utilized to assess sex differences in reported anxiety and sleep. Analysis of covariance was used to compare the associations between reported impact of COVID-19 and anxiety/sleep parameters. Women (80.3%) reported higher prevalence of increased general anxiety due to COVID-19 when compared to men (50%; p = 0.001) and elevated STAI state anxiety compared to men (43 ± 1 vs. 38 ± 1 a.u., p = 0.007). Despite these differences in anxiety, the perceived impact of COVID-19 on PSQI was not different between sexes. However, when stratified by perceived changes in anxiety due to COVID-19, participants with higher anxiety responses to COVID-19 had higher ISI compared to those with no perceived changes in anxiety (9 ± 1 vs. 5 ± 1 a.u., p = 0.003). Additionally, participants who reported reduced sleep quality due to COVID-19 reported higher state anxiety (45 ± 1 a.u.) compared to those that perceived no change (36 ± 2 a.u., p = 0.002) or increased (36 ± 2 a.u., p < 0.001) sleep quality. COVID-19 and state-ordered home isolation was associated with higher anxiety and reduced sleep quality, with a stronger association in women with respect to anxiety.
Reduced engagement of visual attention in children with autism spectrum disorder.

A common example of social differences in autism spectrum disorder is poor modulation of reciprocal gaze, including reduced duration of eye contact and difficulty detecting the aim of another’s gaz...
Transistor reliability variation correlation to threshold voltage

MOSFET reliability data are often represented as a function of gate overdrive (V G –V T ) with the implicit assumption that overdrive is the appropriate normalizing parameter. While this can be true for some specific sources of variation, reliability does not necessarily track gate overdrive. This paper explores systematic and random sources of variation in TDDB, BTI, and hot carrier degradation data in Intel's tri-gate technologies. We find that random variation captured within a baseline of reliability data does not, in general, trend with overdrive. However, some sources of systematic variation are correlated or, interestingly, anti-correlated with overdrive.
The Valuation of Fixed Income Total Return Swaps

A total return swap is a swap in which one party makes periodic floating rate payments to a counterparty in exchange for the total return realized on a reference asset (or underlying asset). The reference asset could be a credit-risky bond, a loan, a reference portfolio consisting of bonds or loans, an index representing a sector of the bond market, or an equity index. A total return swap can be used by asset managers for leveraging purposes and/or a transactionally efficient means for implementing a portfolio strategy. Bank managers use a total return swap as an efficient vehicle for transferring credit risk and as a means for reducing credit risk exposures. The Duffie-Singleton model can be used to value total return swaps. Keywords: total return swap; Duffie-Singleton model; forward measure
The demand/withdraw pattern of communication as a predictor of marital satisfaction over time unresolved issues and future directions

There is ample evidence that marital dissatisfaction is associated concurrently with demand/withdraw, the marital pattern of communication in which one spouse nags or criticizes while the other avoids. However, the connection between demand/withdraw and changes in satisfaction is less clear. Some studies suggest that demand/withdraw is associated with low but steady marital satisfaction; other studies imply that demand/withdraw predicts declines in satisfaction; and still others indicate that demand/withdraw foreshadows increases in marital satisfaction. The current longitudinal study of married couples (N = 46) examined the connection between demand/withdraw and changes in satisfaction. The results suggest that the correlation between demand/withdraw and dissatisfaction endures to some extent, but also that demand/withdraw predicts increases in wives' satisfaction. Comparisons of the current study to previous studies of demand/withdraw imply that the association between demand/withdraw and marital satisfaction may be more complex than heretofore assumed, suggesting that future research ought to consider whether different ways of enacting demand/withdraw vary in their impact on marriage.
Economic and social upgrading in apparel global value chains: public governance and trade policy

The Capturing the Gains research network assesses the relationship between economic and social upgrading in global production networks in four sectors; apparel, agro-foods, mobile phones, and tourism. This paper details the findings of the apparel sector research team, with a focus on public governance, specifically trade policy. The research network was funded by the Trade Department of the UK Department for International Development and is coordinated by the University of Manchester.
The ecological evolutionary interplay: density-dependent sexual selection in a migratory songbird

Little is understood about how environmental heterogeneity influences the spatial dynamics of sexual selection. Within human-dominated systems, habitat modification creates environmental heterogeneity that could influence the adaptive value of individual phenotypes. Here, we used the gray catbird to examine if the ecological conditions experienced in the suburban matrix (SM) and embedded suburban parks (SP) influence reproductive strategies and the strength of sexual selection. Our results show that these habitats varied in a key ecological factor, breeding density. Moreover, this ecological factor was closely tied to reproductive strategies such that local breeding density predicted the probability that a nest would contain extra-pair offspring. Partitioning reproductive variance showed that while within-pair success was more important in both habitats, extra-pair success increased the opportunity for sexual selection by 39% at higher breeding densities. Body size was a strong predictor of relative reproductive success and was under directional selection in both habitats. Importantly, our results show that the strength of sexual selection did not differ among habitats at the landscape scale but rather that fine-scale variation in an ecological factor, breeding density, influenced sexual selection on male phenotypes. Here, we document density-dependent sexual selection in a migratory bird and hypothesize that coarse-scale environmental heterogeneity, in this case generated by anthropogenic habitat modification, changed the fine-scale ecological conditions that drove the spatial dynamics of sexual selection.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Nef Inhibits Autophagy through Transcription Factor EB Sequestration

HIV Nef acts as an anti-autophagic maturation factor through interaction with beclin-1 (BECN1). We report that exposure of macrophages to infectious or non-infectious purified HIV induces toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8) and BECN1 dependent dephosphorylation and nuclear translocation of TFEB and that this correlates with an increase in autophagy markers. RNA interference for ATG13, TFEB, TLR8, or BECN1 inhibits this HIV-induced autophagy. However, once HIV establishes a productive infection, TFEB phosphorylation and cytoplasmic sequestration are increased resulting in decreased autophagy markers. Moreover, by 7 d post-infection, autophagy levels are similar to mock infected controls. Conversely, although Nef deleted HIV similarly induces TFEB dephosphorylation and nuclear localization, and increases autophagy, these levels remain elevated during continued productive infection. Thus, the interaction between HIV and TLR8 serves as a signal for autophagy induction that is dependent upon the dephosphorylation and nuclear translocation of TFEB. During permissive infection, Nef binds BECN1 resulting in mammalian target of rapamycin (MTOR) activation, TFEB phosphorylation and cytosolic sequestration, and the inhibition of autophagy. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a virus modulating TFEB localization and helps to explain how HIV modulates autophagy to promote its own replication and cell survival.
Robust morphological scale-space trees

This paper derives a new tree representation of an image and shows how the tree may be derived from graph morphology and connected-set, alternating sequential, filters. The resulting scale tree forms a pyramid of increasing size objects where the nodes correspond to features of a particular scale. The tree structure itself may be made fairly insensitive to geometrical changes in the image. By parsing the tree and using attributes associated with the nodes, image processing operations such as filtering, segmentation and detection can be performed.
Chaotic solute advection by unsteady groundwater flow

[1] Solute mixing in fluids is enhanced significantly by chaotic advection, the phenomenon in which fluid pathlines completely fill the spatial domain explored by a laminar flow. Steady groundwater flows are, in general, not well conditioned for this phenomenon because Darcy's law confines them spatially to nonintersecting stream surfaces. Unsteady groundwater flows, however, may, in principle, induce chaotic solute advection if their time dependence is periodic and produces frequent reorientation of pathlines, an effect connected closely to the development of high solute mixing efficiencies. In this paper, a simple, two-dimensional model groundwater system is studied theoretically to evaluate the possibility of inducing chaotic solute advection in the flow field near a recirculation well whose pumping behavior is time periodic. In the vernacular of dynamical systems theory the model studied is an example of a Hamiltonian system, thus allowing a mathematical formulation that facilitates consideration of whether chaotic advection can occur. When the model system is driven time periodically by alternate operation of the production and injection components of the recirculation well, numerical simulations of the fluid pathlines indicate that regions of chaotic solute advection will, indeed, develop in the flow field near the well, with expected major improvement in plume spreading.
Simulating the effect of the Sgr A* accretion flow on the appearance of G2 after pericentre

We study the dynamical interaction of the G2 cloud with the accretion flow around Sgr A by means of three-dimensional, hydrodynamic simulations. We show the e ects of the rotating accretion flow on the evolution of G2 by projecting the cloud density onto the plane of the sky, and extracting position-velocity diagrams. We study a number of possible orientations of the cloud orbit with respect to the disk. We find that once the center of mass of the cloud has crossed the pericenter, the di erences between models becomes significant. Models with the cloud counter-rotating with respect to the disk are expected to reach higher blue-shifted line of sight velocities. The spatial extent of the emission depends strongly on the cloud-to-disk inclination angle. Future imaging and spectroscopy of G2 emission will shed light both on the structure of the Sgr A disk and on the properties of the cloud.
In vivo comparison of a composite resin and its radiopaque counterpart.

C o m p o s i t e resin has become the most popular material for use as an esthetic anterior restorative. This popularity can be attributed to factors such as improved physical properties and superior handling characteristics, as compared' to the older unfilled acrylic resins and silicate cement. However, one of the disadvantages of most of the currently available composite resins is their radiolucency. As pointed out by Drinnan a and Chandler and associates,-" not only could a radiopaque material be detected if aspirated by the patient, but a radiographic examination by the dentist also could (I) distinguish between the restoration and primary caries, (2) perm!t better evaluation of contour and overhangs, and (3) assist in the identification of secondary caries or incomplete filling of the cavity preparation. Approximately 1~,4 years ago such a radiopaque composite resin was made available for evaluation. The purpose of this investigation was to compare clinically the performance of such a radiopaque material with that of a conventional composite resin system.
Charter Schools: A Viable Public School Choice Option?

Abstract The charter school movement gained considerable momentum during the early 1990s in the United States. This paper provides an overview of the charter school phenomenon and begins with a consideration of the basic design of these schools. The government's role in education is discussed and various school choice options are identified. The paper then focuses on the degree of overall autonomy granted to charter schools by examining the basic features of various state legislative provisions that permit charter schools. The limited empirical work available is reviewed to present a clearer picture of charter schools with regard to school autonomy and innovation, teacher and student characteristics, and parental contracts and involvement. Several concerns are presented about charter schools relating to autonomy and regulation, market accountability, and at-risk students.
Standoff iris recognition using non-iterative polar based segmentation

Recently, the iris of the human eye has been used as a biometric indicator for identification. We have witnessed wide-scale deployment of iris technology across many product categories. However, these iris recognition solutions do not reflect the full potential of the technology. The robustness of the standoff iris segmentation approach relies heavily on accurate iris segmentation techniques. Computing iris features requires a high quality segmentation process that focuses on the subject's iris and properly extracts its boundaries. Because iris segmentation is sensitive to the acquisition conditions, it is a very challenging problem. In this paper, we describe a standoff iris recognition system to identify non-cooperative subjects. We introduce a novel iris segmentation approach that takes the analysis of edges into the polar domain at an earlier stage and uses non-iterative polar differential operator to locate the inner and outer borders of the iris. The approach is proven to be very effective for non-ideal gazed and obscured irises while providing comparable results to top performing algorithms on frontal iris images.
Industry's response to fungicide resistance

Abstract Industry's response to reports of fungicide resistance has varied from denial to a leadership role in defining the problem and implementing solutions. Individual isolated company activities now find co-operative support in an emerging inter-industry organization called the Fungicide Resistance Action Committee. Working Groups, composed of scientists from companies with related fungicides, are working together to prolong the effectiveness of fungicides.
Palliative and End-of-Life Care in Correctional Settings

The prison population in the United States has grown fivefold in the last 27 years. Like the general population, the inmate population is aging. With age comes infirmity, disability, and chronic conditions that may, over the course of years or decades, lead to death. Inmates enter the prison system in poorer health than their age-matched free counterparts. A growing number of inmates will die in prison. A few will receive medical or compassionate release in order to die “outside the walls.” Whether inside or outside, these dying men and women are entitled to receive high quality health care, including palliative care. Dying inmates face many of the same issues as the terminally ill in free society. However, death behind bars also poses some unique challenges to the dying, their prison family, their biological family, their caregivers and health care providers, custody staff, prison administration, and society as a whole. Social workers can play an important role in the care of these individuals and the pe...
Generalization performance of neural nets in the presence of noisy data

An outstanding problem in the study of adaptive learning is overspecialization of the learning system, and its consequent inability to handle new data correctly. A means of addressing this difficulty is described here. When used in conjunction with standard processes such as backpropagation, it identifies the level of corruption of the training sample, and thus provides a `best fit' to the entire domain of interest, rather than to the training sample alone. This is accomplished by a combination of simulated annealing, bootstrap estimation, and analysis methods derived from statistical mechanics. Its advantage is that data need not be reserved for an independent test set, and thus all available samples are used. A modified generalization error, defined through a thermalization parameter on the training set, provides a measure of the sample space consistent with the network function. A criterion for optimal match between network and sample set is obtained from the requirement that generalization error and training error be consistent. Numerical results are presented for examples which illustrate several distinct forms of data corruption. A quantity analogous to the specific heat in thermodynamic systems is found to exhibit anomalies at values of training error near the onset of overtraining.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Taking Stock of Unrealistic Optimism

Researchers have used terms such as unrealistic optimism and optimistic bias to refer to concepts that are similar but not synonymous. Drawing from 3 decades of research, we discuss critically how researchers define unrealistic optimism, and we identify four types that reflect different measurement approaches: unrealistic absolute optimism at the individual and group levels and unrealistic comparative optimism at the individual and group levels. In addition, we discuss methodological criticisms leveled against research on unrealistic optimism and note that the criticisms are primarily relevant to only one type: the group form of unrealistic comparative optimism. We further clarify how the criticisms are not nearly as problematic as they might seem, even for unrealistic comparative optimism. Finally, we note boundary conditions on the different types of unrealistic optimism and reflect on five broad questions that deserve further attention.
Advances in echocardiography.

Purpose of review This study will outline recent advances in echocardiography and their impact in the understanding of cardiac morphology and ventricular function. Recent findings Evaluation of morphologic abnormalities in pediatric cardiology has benefited greatly from three-dimensional echocardiography, particularly with the introduction of high-frequency transducers. The size of cardiovascular structures is frequently affected by heart disease, and a systematic approach to adjust measurements for the effects of body size and age has helped to distinguish a normal structure from an abnormal one. Quantification of diastolic and systolic function continues to be a major focus in echocardiography. New modalities such as tissue Doppler imaging and speckle tracking echocardiography have provided new parameters to assess myocardial performance, and these parameters include myocardial velocities, ventricular twist and torsion, strain and strain rate, and mechanical dyssynchrony. Mechanical dyssynchrony analysis has been particularly useful in cardiac resynchronization therapy, a novel treatment for heart failure which shows great promise. Summary Improved delineation of cardiac morphology has greatly augmented the current understanding of congenital heart diseases, and management strategies have been modified based on three-dimensional echocardiographic findings. The introduction of new parameters to evaluate ventricular function has provided early markers for cardiovascular impairment in several disease states, thereby allowing clinicians to monitor these patients more closely.
Earth Tides and the Triggering of Eruptions from Mt Stromboli, Italy

EARTH tides with stress gradients exceeding 10−8 bar/m (ref. 1) and with predominant periods at approximately 12 h, 24 h and 14.7 day constitute the largest short period oscillatory stress in the Earth's crust2. The release of secular tectonic strain accumulation in the crust by tidal triggering has been suggested3–5, and many attempts2,3,5–8 have been made to correlate earthquake times with records of Earth tides. All these attempts have proved unable conclusively to relate tides to the occurrence of earthquakes, although microearthquakes may prove to be an exception9.
GENETICS OF GLOMERELLA. V. CROZIER AND ASCUS DEVELOPMENT

cies remains unknown, and the effects of age, composition of leaf, etc., were not investigated. The preservation of fragile leaf skeletons was attended with difficulties. Evans (1928) and Sharman (1942) obtained specimens of stems or roots which were mechanically strong and needed no mounting. However, the spiral character of the unsupported leaf vein tracheids and vessels made them susceptible to severe distortion during drying. Unlike most algae, they had no gelatinous coating which would make them adhere to herbarium mounting paper. Skeletons floated on to a glass plate and pressed with another plate shrank and fragmented as they dried. Coating them with glycerin or glycerin-jelly likewise gave poor results, although small pieces of the skeletons could be mounted satisfactorily in this medium (fig. 8). Methods of mounting which involved solvent dehydration and subsequent coating of the skeletons with various polymeric substances were inconvenient and only partially successful because the delicate veinlets curled and broke. However, they could be quickly and effectively mounted on a moistened gelatin surface (photographic plate or printing paper).
Flexibility of the zeolite RHO framework : effect of dehydration on the crystal structure of the beryllophosphate mineral, pahasapaite

Pahasapaite, a hydrated beryllophosphate mineral (Ca 5.5 Li 3.6 K 1.2 Na 0.2 □ 13.5 )Li 8 Be 24 P 24 O 96 ·38 H 2 O, has a distorted cubic, zeolite RHO-type structure with a = 13.781 A. On dehydration, the structure distorts further to give a cell with a = 13.100(3) A. As with the aluminosilicate RHO framework, Li + is associated with the 6-ring sites and Ca 2+ is sited in the double 8-ring sites, leading to severe distortion of the double 8-rings. The double 8-rings consist of elliptically distorted single 8-rings orthogonal to each other and the degree of their distortion can be described by the Δ/a parameter, where Δ is one-half the difference between the major and minor axes of these elliptical 8-rings and a is the cell edge. This parameter, Δ/a, varies from 0 to 0.178 for the aluminosilicate system, but is 0.201 for the dehydrated pahasapaite mineral. This is clearly the greatest distortion yet observed for this framework. This combination of new framework chemistries (Be/P/O vs. Si/Al/O) and the increased distortion is being examined by theory and experiment with respect to the effect on guest molecules.
Family unification, exotic states and light magnetic monopoles

Models with fermions in bifundamental representations can lead naturally to family unification as opposed to family replication. Such models typically predict (exotic) color singlet states with fractional electric charge, and magnetic monopoles with multiple Dirac charge. The exotics may be at the TeV scale, and relatively light magnetic monopoles (107?GeV) can be present in the galaxy with abundance near the Parker bound. We focus on three family SU(4) ? SU(3) ? SU(3) models.
Effect of Free Ends on the Vibration Frequencies of One-Dimensional Lattices

Vibration frequencies have been calculated for finite one-dimensional lattices in which the point masses alternately have the values ${m}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ and ${m}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$, ${m}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}l{m}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$. Only nearest neighbor Hooke's law interactions are considered. The end atoms are assumed to interact only with their nearest neighbors on the interior of the lattice and are otherwise free. If the numbers of atoms having masses ${m}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ and ${m}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$ are equal, there exists a single mode whose frequency squared lies at the middle of the "forbidden" gap between the optical and acoustical branches. For this "surface" mode the displacements of the atoms from their equilibrium positions decrease roughly exponentially from the end having the lighter atom. For the case of $N$ atoms of mass ${m}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}$ and $N+1$ atoms of mass ${m}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ there exist two modes whose frequencies lie in the "forbidden" gap provided $(\frac{{m}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}{{m}_{\ensuremath{\beta}}})l\frac{N}{(N+1)}$. These modes correspond to symmetric and antisymmetric displacements. The displacements are largest for the end atoms and decrease roughly exponentially toward the center of the lattice.
Pharmacological properties of JDTic: a novel kappa-opioid receptor antagonist.

Abstract Biological studies were conducted on (3R)-7-Hydroxy-N-{(1S)-1-{[(3R,4R)-4-(3-hydroxyphenyl)-3,4-dimethyl-1-piperidinyl]methyl}-2-methylpropyl}-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-3-isoquinoline-carboxamide (JDTic), the first potent κ-selective opioid receptor antagonist not derived from an opiate class of compounds. In the mouse tail-flick test, JDTic, administered subcutaneously (s.c.), blocked anticociceptive activity for up to 2 weeks. When JDTic was administered either s.c. or p.o. 24 h before the selective KOP (κ)-opioid receptor agonist, enadoline, AD50s of 4.1 and 27.3, respectively, were obtained. A time-course study of JDTic versus enadoline indicated significant antagonist p.o. activity up to 28 days. In contrast, JDTic, s.c., failed to antagonize the analgesic effects of the selective MOP (μ)-opioid receptor agonist, sufentanil. In the squirrel monkey shock titration antinociception test, JDTic given intramuscularly (i.m.) shifted the trans-3,4-dichloro-N-methyl-N-(2-[1-pyrrolidinyl] cyclohexyl) benzeneacetamide (U50,488) dose–effect curve to the right. In the U50,488-induced diuresis rat test, JDTic, s.c., suppressed diuretic activity with a greater potency than that of nor-binaltorphimine (nor-BNI). Thus, JDTic is a potent long- and orally acting selective κ-opioid antagonist.
Relief of sleep apnea after intravascular stenting for superior vena cava syndrome

A rarely reported association of sleep apnea and superior vena cava stenosis from mediastinal fibrosis is described. A case is presented where substantial improvement in the sleep parameters and the symptoms of sleep apnea occurred subsequent to superior vena cava thrombolysis and stent angioplasty.
Nonlinear ponderomotive scattering of relativistic electrons by an intense laser field at focus

The relativistic dynamics of electrons subjected to the electromagnetic field of an intense, ultrashort laser pulse in vacuum is studied theoretically. The effects of both finite pulse duration and beam focusing are taken into account. It is found that when the quiver amplitude of the electrons driven by the laser field exceeds the focal spot radius of a Gaussian beam, the restoring force acting on the charge decays exponentially, and the electrons are scattered away from the focus. This physical process, known as ponderomotive scattering, effectively terminates the interaction within a laser wavelength, and the electrons can escape with very high energy, as the normalized laser field is of the order of or greater than unity. The relation between the scattering angle and the escape energy is derived analytically from the conservation of canonical momentum and energy in the photon field. For a linearly polarized laser field, the interaction produces two jets of high energy electrons. The theory is supplemented by detailed two-dimensional computer simulations.
The binding of diphenylhydantoin to brain and subcellular fractions.

Abstract The binding of 4- 14 C-diphenylhydantoin (DPH) to homogenates and subcellular fractions of rat brain was studied both in vitro and after in vivo administration. In vitro, small quantities of DPH were bound to brain particles. The binding was reversible. It was essentially independent of ionic strength and the osmolarity of the incubation medium. The binding was selective to only certain brain subcellular particles. Synaptosomes bound DPH, but myelin membranes did not bind detectable quantities of DPH. Extracted brain lipids exhibited less affinity for DPH than intact subcellular particles. In contrast lipids from other sources, such as purified phospholipids from soybean, bound about seventy times more DPH than an equivalent amount of brain lipid. After in vivo administration small quantities of DPH were also reversibly bound to subcellular fractions.
School climate and continuity of adolescent personality disorder symptoms.

Background: Schools are key social contexts for shaping development and behavior in youths; yet, little is known of their influence on adolescent personality disturbance. Method: A community-based sample of 592 adolescents was assessed for family and school experiences, Axis I psychiatric disorders, and Axis II personality disorder (PD) symptoms, and followed into young adulthood. Multiple regression analysis was used to estimate associations between adolescent-reported school climate and young adult PD symptoms independent of age, sex, family socioeconomic status; childhood maltreatment; Axis I disorder, PD symptoms, academic grades, and parental punishment in adolescence; and four dimensions of school climate. Results: Schools characterized as high in learning focus were related to cluster B (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic PD) symptom declines, whereas schools characterized as high in opportunities for student autonomy were related to cluster A (paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal PD) symptom declines. In contrast, schools characterized as conflictual or supporting interpersonal informality/familiarity among students and teachers were related to increases in cluster A symptoms and cluster C (avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive PD) symptoms. Conclusions: Schools may exert both positive and negative influences on continuity of adolescent personality disturbance. The role of the school in guiding young people toward more favorable developmental pathways and alleviating personality disturbance is discussed.
The scaffolding protein EBP50 promotes vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation and neointima formation by regulating Skp2 and p21(cip1)

Objective— The Ezrin-radixin–moesin–binding phosphoprotein 50 (EBP50) is a scaffolding protein known to regulate ion homeostasis in the kidney and intestine. Previous work showed that EBP50 expression increases after balloon injury in rat carotids. This study was designed to determine the role of EBP50 on vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) proliferation and the development of neointimal hyperplasia. Methods and Results— Wire injury was performed in wild type (WT) and EBP50 knockout (KO) mice. Two weeks after injury, neointima formation was 80% lower in KO than in WT mice. Proliferation of KO VSMC was significantly lower than WT cells and overexpression of EBP50 increased VSMC proliferation. Akt activity and expression of S-phase kinase protein2 decreased in KO cells resulting in the stabilization of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, p21 cip1 . Consequently, KO cells were arrested in G 0 /G 1 phase. Consistent with these observations, p21 cip1 was detected in injured femoral arteries of KO but not WT mice. No differences in apoptosis between WT and KO were observed. Conclusion— EBP50 is critical for neointima formation and induces VSMC proliferation by decreasing S-phase kinase protein2 stability, thereby accelerating the degradation of the cell cycle inhibitor p21 cip1 .
Cyberlearners and learning resources

The discovery of community structure in real world networks has transformed the way we explore large systems. We propose a visual method to extract communities of cyberlearners in a large interconnected network consisting of cyberlearners and learning resources. The method used is heuristic and is based on visual clustering and a modularity measure. Each cluster of users is considered as a subset of the community of learners sharing a similar domain of interest. Accordingly, a recommender system is proposed to predict and recommend learning resources to cyberlearners within the same community. Experiments on real, dynamic data reveal the structure of community in the network. Our approach used the optimal discovered structure based on the modularity value to design a recommender system.
Biological effects of surfactants, IV. Effects of non-ionics and amphoterics on HeLa cells

Surfactants, representing 3 non-ionic and 1 amphoteric series of homologs exhibited marked differences in their lethal and non-toxic effects on HeLa cells. Toxicity of non-ionics generally decreased inversely with increasing hydrophilic chain length and increased with increasing size of the lipophile. Lethal levels of the surfactants coincided with surface tension reduction of the media to 45 dynes cm-1 or below. Surface tensions of non-toxic concentrations were substantially higher than those for toxic levels. Non-toxic doses were, therefore, below the critical micelle concentration of the surfactants evaluated. The data suggest that physical properties are a principal cause of the toxic effects of these detergents on HeLa cells.
Wrinkling of Thin Membrane Under Thermal Loading

There has been an increasing interest in the applications of thin membrane in space application, flexible electronic display, manufacturing of glass displays and growth of film on materials at elevated temperatures. Because of the negligible bending stiffness of thin membranes, membranes are lack of resistance to compressive stress. For the applications at high temperatures, the thermal expansion coefficient mismatch between membrane and substrate materials may generate compressive stress that causes the membrane buckling. The study of thermal buckling of isotropic elastic plate in the context of the large - deflection theory was the subject of a series of papers[1-5]. However, it has been noted that none of these papers has considered the second buckling of the membrane resulting in membrane wrinkling. The presence of wrinkles may significantly change deflection and stress profile of membranes. So, it is important to develop an effective analysis method to investigate the wrinkle formation and evolution in membrane subjected the elevated temperature. This paper presents the experiment work to investigate wrinkle formation and evolution in membranes heated from room temperature up to 170 °C. The specimens consist of polymer and metal membranes with steel and silicon substrate respectively. A wide range of membrane shapes and aspect ratios are considered in this work. An experiment set up is developed to study the deflection profiles of membranes at discrete temperatures. The information gained from this experiment work is used to validate numerical modeling results. The Finite Element Analysis results using nonlinear post-buckling analysis are also included in this paper. The nonlinear post-buckling analysis provides a good understanding of the mechanism of wrinkle generation and evolution as temperature increased. It is shown that the first buckling of membrane significantly reduces bending stiffness thus to create localized buckling modes accounting for the wrinkle generation. The wrinkle pattern is stable until the temperature reaches the next critical value. After this critical temperature, the wrinkle pattern is changed until temperature reaches the next critical value. The new wrinkle pattern is keeping evolved until the final temperature is reached. The finite element analysis results are in good agreement with experimental observations.Copyright © 2006 by ASME
System formulation and APL shared variables

The problem of providing communication with APL programs was approached by formulating systems as collections of autonomous processors communicating on interfaces consisting of shared variables. This paper discusses the formulation of a theoretical APL system and cites experience with a prototype APL shared variable system which both uses and provides shared variable interfaces.
Vegetation controls on soil moisture distribution in the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, during the North American monsoon

Soil moisture distributions are expected to be closely tied to ecosystem processes in water-limited environments of the southwest United States. Nevertheless, few studies have addressed how soil moisture varies across grassland to forest transitions frequently observed in semiarid mountain settings. In this study, we quantify the vegetation controls on surface soil moisture by sampling a range of different ecosystems present in the Valles Caldera, New Mexico. Soil and atmospheric variables were measured during a 2-week field campaign conducted in late July to early August 2005 during the North American monsoon. Field observations were supplemented by a network of continuous instruments used to assess conditions prior to and after the sampling campaign. Results reveal that soil moisture responds directly to summer precipitation events and is mediated by plant interception, which differs across the grassland–forest continuum. The nature of the spatial and temporal variations in soil moisture changes across the different sampled ecosystems: wetlands, riparian forests, grasslands, ponderosa, deciduous and mixed conifer forests. In particular, statistical analyses of soil moisture distributions indicate that distinct regimes (e.g. probability density functions) exist along the semiarid vegetation gradient, which may not be revealed through simple metrics such as the ecosystem average. Ecosystem differences are further elucidated through comparison of the spatial variations in each vegetation type, indicating higher variability in wetland and grassland sites. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Role of Rhythms in Facilitating Short-Term Memory

Working memory tasks have been associated with the appearance of elevated single unit activity (SUA) in primate studies, and oscillatory activity in the EEG or the local field potential (LFP) in humans. The study by Lee et al. in this issue of Neuron provides novel insights regarding the relationship between SUA and LFP rhythmicity in V4 during working memory tasks.
Isolation and Information Flow in Quantum Dynamics

From the structure of quantum dynamics for closed and open systems, we describe several general results about information flow between interacting systems, which can be expressed in diagrammatic form. Conditions on information flow (e.g., that no information is transferred from system A to system B) imply that the overall dynamical evolution has a particular structure. We also remark that one simple type of two-qubit interaction, the unitary CNOT gate, cannot be represented by local operations and a single simultaneous information exchange.
Coping, thinking, and mental health nursing: cognitions and their application to psychosocial intervention.

This article presents a cognitive perspective on coping. It is advanced that cognitions play a central role in coping since they reflect as well as influence how and with what people cope. Coping is seen as the aggregate of efforts aimed at modifying and regulating the impact and consequences of particular situations and events, the ultimate goal being the control of one's experiences. Three cognitive control efforts are discussed: making attributions, selecting attainable outcomes, and finding meaning in an experience. A review of strategies for psychosocial intervention based on these three cognitive processes concludes this article.
Detection of Escherichia coli rRNA using target amplification and time-resolved fluorescence detection.

The development of technology to increase the sensitivity and speed of detection of bacterial pathogens in samples is important for diagnosis and monitoring of illness. We have developed a sensitive and rapid method for the detection of bacteria, using Escherichia coli as a model, which combines transcription-based target amplification with a bead-based sandwich hybridization assay using rare earth metal chelate labelled probes and time-resolved fluorescence detection. Using these methods as little as 100 copies (0·00016 attomoles) of purified native Escherichia coli rRNA or just one bacterial cell in a spiked sample could be detected. These results demonstrate that amplification of rRNA by transcription-based amplification and detection by time-resolved fluorescence provide a sensitive technology for the direct detection of micro-organisms without the requirement for prior cultivation.
Lifetime Self-Reported Victimization Among Low-Income, Urban Women: The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Adult Violent Victimization

Study aims were to examine the relations between multiple forms of childhood maltreatment (CM) and adult violent victimization (AVV) and to explore other significant covariates of the relations between CM and AVV. Data were collected from women (n = 477) who participated in two longitudinal studies in the Maternal Health Practices and Child Development Project. Women with a history of CM were more than twice as likely to experience AVV as women with no history of CM. Those who experienced one or two forms of CM were significantly more likely to report any AVV compared to women with no CM. The relationship between CM and AVV remained significant after controlling for illicit drug use at baseline. Among low-income women, a history of CM exposure increased the risk of AVV. Having had any CM exposure was more important that the specific form or combination of forms, of CM exposure (e.g., sexual abuse or physical abuse).
Diterpenoid Resin Acid Biosynthesis in Conifers: Characterization of Two Cytochrome P450-Dependent Monooxygenases and an Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Involved in Abietic Acid Biosynthesis

Abstract Abietic acid is a major component of the rosin fraction of oleoresin synthesized by grand fir (Abies grandis), lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), and many other conifer species as a defensive secretion against insect and pathogen attack. The diterpenoid resin acid is derived from geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate via abietadiene, with subsequent oxidation of the C18-methyl of this olefin to abietadienol, abietadienal, and abietic acid. The pathway was confirmed by administering [1,2-14C)acetic acid to grand fir stems which incorporated the radiolabel into abietadiene, the corresponding alcohol and aldehyde, as well as abietic acid. Three different enzymatic activities, catalyzing the sequential oxidation of the olefin to abietic acid, were demonstrated in cell-free stem extracts of both grand fir and lodgepole pine. The first two oxidation steps were catalyzed by the microsomal fraction and required both oxygen and a reduced pyridine nucleotide (NADPH preferred). Both activities were strongly inhibited by CO (blue light reversible) and were differentially sensitive to several substituted N-heterocyclic inhibitors, suggesting that these two enzymes are distinct, microsomal cytochrome P450-dependent monooxygenases. A third enzymatic activity, catalyzing the oxidation of abietadienal to abietic acid, was located in the soluble protein fraction. This oxidation reaction employed NAD+ as cofactor, but did not require oxygen and was not inhibited by CO, indicating that this last step of abietic acid biosynthesis is catalyzed by an operationally soluble aldehyde dehydrogenase.
AN INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMIC ISSUES IN BREAST IMAGING

Mammography facilities face significant economic challenges in today's health care market. In an era of decreasing reimbursement, increasing patient demands, and strict federal regulations, it is difficult for many breast imaging centers to provide high-quality services without accepting a financial loss. For radiologists and administrators, understanding breast imaging economic issues is critical. This article discusses some of the economic factors that shape the practice of mammography in the United States, including Medicare reimbursement, the role of new technology, the cost-effectiveness of screening mammography, and current economic challenges. A glossary of relevant economic terms is included at the end of this article.
Evaluation of Soybean Proteins as Replacements for Menhaden Fish Meal in Practical Diets for the Red Drum Sciaenops ocellatus

A series of growth trials was conducted to evaluate the use of soy protein as a replacement for fish protein in isonitrogenous practical diets for juvenile red drum Sciacnops ocellatus. Feeds were offered at or in excess of satiation to juvenile red drum maintained at 26–28 C and a salinity of 25–35 ppt. In the first growth trial, red drum were offered one of four diets containing graded levels of menhaden fish meal, replacing solvent-extracted soybean meal and soy-protein isolates. Differences in weight gain, survival and feed efficiency ratios of the fish corresponded to increases in fish meal content of the diets. Due to poor performance of the fish maintained on the low (15%) fish meal diet, a methionine supplement was introduced into this diet at the midpoint of the growth trial. A positive increase in growth indicated a dietary deficiency of methionine and/or total sulfur amino acids in the unsupplemented diet. A positive response to dietary fish meal also occurred in the second growth trial despite the supplementation of L-methionine in the test diets. In low fish meal diets the utilization of solvent extracted soybean meal or a soy-protein isolate resulted in similar growth responses. Hence, the presence of an antinutrient did not likely cause reduced growth rates. In the third feeding trial, weight gain also increased with increasing fish meal content of the diet despite the equalization of digestible protein and selected amino acids. There were no significant differences in whole-body compositions which indicated similar biological value of the diets (protein digestibility, amino acid balance and energy availability). The singular deletion of fish-solubles, glycine, lysine and methionine from the diet containing the lowest level of fish meal (10 g/100 g diet) did not result in significant changes in weight gain. This indicated that these components did not add to the nutritive value and/or palatability of this formulation. The final experiment was designed to evaluate the response of red drum to a control diet (high fish meal) as compared to a low fish meal diet with and without potential attractants/palatability enhancers. Weight gain and feed efficiency ratios of fish offered the low fish meal diet supplemented with seafood flavor or fish flavor #2 were not significantly different from the control (high fish meal diet). Based on the results of this study, with suitable formulation restrictions, soy protein is acceptable for inclusion in practical diet formulations for red drum. However, soy protein itself does not appear replete in sulfur-containing amino acids and does not have acceptable palatability properties. Consequently, feeds containing reduced levels of marine proteins could require suitable attractants and/or amino acid supplements.