cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Nutrient density of diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977-1978: II. Adequacy of nutrient density consumption practices

Educating the public to plan and consume diets using reasonable and adequate nutrient density standards designed for all ages would enable al most everyone to obtain an adequate supply of nutrients while consuming energy according to individual needs. Traditionally in the United States, food consumption research has focused upon determining the average daily or weekly amounts of various foods and nutrients consumed by individuals, households, or population groups. An important objective has been to determine the adequacy of energy and nutrient consumption by comparing
Otis Internal Urethrotomy in the Treatment of Urethral Stricture Disease

AbstractInternal urethrotomy was done on 216 urethral strictures in 192 patients at our medical centers from 1969 to 1978. Of these cases 71 per cent were treated successfully, with a 12 per cent complication rate. Results were analyzed separately for different characteristics of the strictures and for several methods of internal urethrotomy. It is concluded that nearly all types of strictures can be treated by internal urethrotomy, with a reasonable rate of success and a minimum of morbidity.
“Mimi ni Mtanzania ”: An Analysis of Post-Colonial Nation Building and the Emergence of National Identity in Contemporary Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania, an East African nation of about 45 million people [1] , has been overwhelmingly successful in establishing a strong and conscious national identity amongst its citizens. When asked whether they identify more with nation or ethnic group, 88% of Tanzanian respondents chose ‘nation.’ On the other hand, 50% respondents from Senegal, 31% of respondents from Uganda and a mere 17% of respondents from Nigeria chose ‘nation’ (Afrobarometer, 2009; Robinson, 2009). This paper explores the role of colonialism and post-colonial nation building in the establishment of nationalism in contemporary Tanzania. Overall, I argue that while colonization played a role in nationalism in Tanzania, strong national identity is majorly a result of deliberate post-colonial nation building. The paper maintains that the presence of Swahili as a native national language in Tanzania is both a positive by-product of colonization and a reward of persistent post-independence nation building. Post-colonial nationalist efforts such as the 1960s ‘Swahilization’; the 1970s socialist politics, policies and rhetoric; and the cessation of all forms of ethnic politics were all salient factors that critically and emphatically established the Tanzanian [2] national identity. [1] 2012 Population and Housing Census. Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics (Ministry of Finance). Exact figure provided: 44,928,923. [2] For the purposes of this paper, I use “Tanzania” and the context of nationalism in reference majorly to the mainland (formerly Tanganyika). In the course of the paper, I explain the reason for so doing. However, Zanzibar is often referred to, and discussed.
The Constellation of Social Ontology: Walter Benjamin, Eduard Fuchs, and the Body of History

“The Constellation of Social Ontology” says that Walter Benjamin, best known among scholars for his work on “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility,” in which he argues that all visual art, including its modern emanations like film, has always been constituted through modes not just of production, but also of reproduction. Relatively unknown, however, is that these claims about art and reproduction took shape as part of a larger set of arguments about the nature of historical knowledge and the ways that knowledge emerges and derives from embodied, corporeal practices. Benjamin made these arguments in his essay on “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian” (1937). This essay and its history further show that Benjamin’s thought belongs at the center of the Frankfurt School’s emergent Critical Theory in the mid-1930s, and reveals significant institutional and methodological links between Fuchs, Benjamin, and the major figures of the Frankfurt School like Max Horkheimer. More broadly, Benjamin’s work on Fuchs can be seen as a methodological attempt to demonstrate how critical methods that do justice to the material of history by attending successfully to the forgotten remnants of social, political, and economic life can create the possibility of concrete social ontology in the present.
Varieties of Fame in Psychology

Fame in psychology, as in all arenas, is a local phenomenon. Psychologists (and probably academics in all fields) often first become well known for studying a subfield of an area (say, the study of attention in cognitive psychology, or even certain tasks used to study attention). Later, the researcher may become famous within cognitive psychology. In a few cases, researchers break out of a discipline to become famous across psychology and (more rarely still) even outside the confines of academe. The progression is slow and uneven. Fame is also temporally constricted. The most famous psychologists today will be forgotten in less than a century, just as the greats from the era of World War I are rarely read or remembered today. Freud and a few others represent exceptions to the rule, but generally fame is fleeting and each generation seems to dispense with the lessons learned by previous ones to claim their place in the sun.
An empirical machine learning method for predicting potential fire control locations for pre-fire planning and operational fire management

During active fire incidents, decisions regarding where and how to safely and effectively deploy resources to meet management objectives are often made under rapidly evolving conditions, with limited time to assess management strategies or for development of backup plans if initial efforts prove unsuccessful. Under all but the most extreme fire weather conditions, topography and fuels are significant factors affecting potential fire spread and burn severity. We leverage these relationships to quantify the effects of topography, fuel characteristics, road networks and fire suppression effort on the perimeter locations of 238 large fires, and develop a predictive model of potential fire control locations spanning a range of fuel types, topographic features and natural and anthropogenic barriers to fire spread, on a 34000km2 landscape in southern Idaho and northern Nevada. The boosted logistic regression model correctly classified final fire perimeter locations on an independent dataset with 69% accuracy without consideration of weather conditions on individual fires. The resulting fire control probability surface has potential for reducing unnecessary exposure for fire responders, coordinating pre-fire planning for operational fire response, and as a network of locations to incorporate into spatial fire planning to better align fire operations with land management objectives.
Promotion of tobacco use cessation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people: a systematic review.

Context Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are at increased risk for the adverse effects of tobacco use, given their high prevalence of use, especially smoking. Evidence regarding cessation is limited. To determine if efficacious interventions are available and to aid the development of interventions, a systematic review was conducted of grey and peer-reviewed literature describing clinical, community, and policy interventions, as well as knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding tobacco use cessation among LGBT people. Evidence acquisition Eight databases for articles from 1987 to April 23, 2014, were searched. In February−November 2013, authors and researchers were contacted to identify grey literature. Evidence synthesis The search identified 57 records, of which 51 were included and 22 were from the grey literature; these were abstracted into evidence tables, and a narrative synthesis was conducted in October 2013−May 2014. Group cessation curricula tailored for LGBT populations were found feasible to implement and show evidence of effectiveness. Community interventions have been implemented by and for LGBT communities, although these interventions showed feasibility, no rigorous outcome evaluations exist. Clinical interventions show little difference between LGBT and heterosexual people. Focus groups suggest that care is needed in selecting the messaging used in media campaigns. Conclusions LGBT-serving organizations should implement existing evidence-based tobacco-dependence treatment and clinical systems to support treatment of tobacco use. A clear commitment from government and funders is needed to investigate whether sexual orientation and gender identity moderate the impacts of policy interventions, media campaigns, and clinical interventions.
An Information-Theoretic-Cluster Visualization for Self-Organizing Maps

Improved data visualization will be a significant tool to enhance cluster analysis. In this paper, an information-theoretic-based method for cluster visualization using self-organizing maps (SOMs) is presented. The information-theoretic visualization (IT-vis) has the same structure as the unified distance matrix, but instead of depicting Euclidean distances between adjacent neurons, it displays the similarity between the distributions associated with adjacent neurons. Each SOM neuron has an associated subset of the data set whose cardinality controls the granularity of the IT-vis and with which the first- and second-order statistics are computed and used to estimate their probability density functions. These are used to calculate the similarity measure, based on Renyi’s quadratic cross entropy and cross information potential (CIP). The introduced visualizations combine the low computational cost and kernel estimation properties of the representative CIP and the data structure representation of a single-linkage-based grouping algorithm to generate an enhanced SOM-based visualization. The visual quality of the IT-vis is assessed by comparing it with other visualization methods for several real-world and synthetic benchmark data sets. Thus, this paper also contains a significant literature survey. The experiments demonstrate the IT-vis cluster revealing capabilities, in which cluster boundaries are sharply captured. Additionally, the information-theoretic visualizations are used to perform clustering of the SOM. Compared with other methods, IT-vis of large SOMs yielded the best results in this paper, for which the quality of the final partitions was evaluated using external validity indices.
Strategies for Improving and Evaluating Robot Registration Performance

The ability to calculate rigid-body transformations between arbitrary coordinate systems (i.e., registration) is an invaluable tool in robotics. This effort builds upon previous work by investigating strategies for improving the registration accuracy between a robotic arm and an extrinsic coordinate system with relatively inexpensive parts and minimal labor. The framework previously presented is expanded with a new test methodology to characterize the effects of strategies that improve registration performance. In addition, statistical analyses of physical trials reveal that leveraging more data and applying machine learning are two major components for significantly reducing registration error. One-shot peg-in-hole tests are conducted to show the application-level performance gains obtained by improving registration accuracy. Trends suggest that the maximum translation positioning error (postregistration) is a good, albeit not perfect, indicator for peg insertion performance. Note to Practitioners —In a dynamic robotic workcell environment where robots may be frequently relocated or may need to collaborate with other robots, it is simpler and more robust to program robots in an external or unifying reference frame. The process of robot registration involves finding the location of a robot with respect to another reference frame. For instance, if parts are in known locations on a table and a robot can locate itself with respect to the table (an external reference frame), then the robot will also know the location of the parts. Furthermore, if two or more robots can locate themselves with respect to the table, then each robot will not only know the location of the parts, but also the location of every other robot. This knowledge facilitates the coordination of robot motions and robot collaboration and eases the integration of additional robots into the workcell. Since robot registration is critically necessary and occurs frequently, its process needs to be inexpensive, fast, and accurate. This paper details the requirements for a relatively inexpensive and fast robot registration experience, along with detailing strategies that incur significant improvements to registered robot positioning accuracy with minimal overhead. A quantitative verification process is presented to evaluate the performance impacts of these strategies. Peg-in-hole experiments are conducted to validate the notion that more accurate robot registration translates to more reliable task-level performance.
Hydrogen-Mediated C−C Bond Formation: Stereo- and Site-Selective Chemical Synthesis Beyond Stoichiometric Organometallic Reagents

Stereo- and site-selective methods for the byproduct-free modification of unprotected organic compounds that occur through the addition or redistribution of hydrogen are natural endpoints in the advancement of methods for efficient chemical synthesis. Progress toward this goal requires a departure from reactants that embody non-native structural elements, including stoichiometric organometallic reagents, directing/protecting groups and chiral auxiliaries. In this perspective, we highlight how hydrogen-mediated C−C bond formations developed in our laboratory have enabled progress toward ideal chemical syntheses of this type.
Visualizing vehicle arrivals in coordinated arterials using a colored PCD concept

Arterial signal coordination performance is a major factor affecting regional travel times. Engineers manipulate offset of the coordination signal system to improve the system performance, but they need quantitative measures that can be applied to field data to better evaluate the current coordination system performance. This paper presents a visualization tool — Colored PCD — as an evolution of the Purdue Coordination Diagram (PCD) for visual assessment. We also introduce a quantitative metric, VT number, to evaluate and quantify the potential of improvement. The Colored PCD used an HSV color model to describe vehicle arrival and speed patterns. VT number is obtained using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) trained by the data from multiple simulation experiments. The results show that: 1) the Colored PCD can reveal more useful signal coordination information; 2) VT number can indicate the potential of improvement for the subject coordination system; and 3) the proposed VT number prediction approach can give a robust VT number.
Novel MRI Contrast from Magnetotactic Bacteria to Evaluate In Vivo Stem Cell Engraftment

Although human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and their derivatives have great potential for the treatment of heart failure. The therapeutic benefit is limited by translational challenges of stem cells such as cell engraftment. Thus, a robust in vivo imaging technology is indispensable to advance the clinical implementation of stem cell therapy. While no available imaging technology meets the requirement for in vivo stem cell tracking, MRI is a highly promising tool due to its high spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and tissue contrast; yet, this modality lacks sensitivity. Superparamagnetic iron oxide particles (SPIONs) addresses this critical imaging issue and have been used as an MRI contrast agent for stem cell tracking. However, their critical limitation is the inability to evaluate cell viability as SPIONs remain in the tissue long after the death of transplanted cells. To address this shortcoming of SPIONs, the novel magneto-endosymbiont-based (MEs) contrast agent was developed (Magnelle®, Bell Biosystems, Inc., South SF, CA). The MEs utilize the magnetosome biosynthesized by magnetotactic bacteria (MTB), a specific intracellular structure containing inorganic magnetic iron crystals (magnetite or greigite). Having superparamagnetic property like SPIONs, MEs can be detected on T2* weighted imaging. MEs have high safety profile and do not interfere with the functions of transfected cells. Unlike SPIONs, the antiginecity of the MEs are readily recognized and removed from macrophages quickly after the death of labeled cells, eliminating signals from dead cells. In the previous study from our group, iPSC derived cardiomyocytes were labeled with MEs and detected successfully on MRI after transplantation into the heart. In vivo ME signals corresponded with luciferase-based bioluminescence imaging (BLI) of the transplanted cell viability. In conclusion, ME is a novel MRI contrast agent for in vivo cellular tracking that allows accurate longitudinal visualization of the engrafted cells.
Gendering Climate Knowledge for Justice: Catalyzing a New Research Agenda

A key theme of feminist science studies theorists is the question of whose interests are served by the knowledge that mainstream science deems worthy of development, and whose interests are served by the knowledge projects that are overlooked or ignored. A central concern animating this analysis is thus whether we have the knowledge we need to ensure climate justice. The aim of this essay is to catalyze a new climate change research agenda designed to locate epistemic gaps and injustices, to reveal the circulations of power regarding what is known and what remains unknown, to render transparent the ways in which knowledge is framed, and to examine whose interests are served by our current knowledges and ignorances about anthropogenic climate change. My analysis includes not only scientific approaches to climate change, but also the gendering of knowledges and ignorances in the work of theorists studying the topic of gender and climate change.
Dkk1 blocks Wnt-induced osteoprotegerin production in osteoblast progenitors in multiple myeloma

2050 Multiple myeloma (MM), a fatal malignancy of plasma cells growing systemically in bone, causes osteolytic bone lesions. Bone turnover is regulated by the coupled activity of osteoblasts (OB) and osteoclasts (OC). OC differentiation is positively modulated by the receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL) and negatively regulated by the decoy receptor, osteoprotegerin (OPG). Although the RANKL/OPG axis appears to be deregulated in MM, little is known about how MM cells might promote this process. Wnt signaling promotes bone formation and OB differentiation and overexpression of an active form beta-catenin in OB leads to upregulation of OPG, indicating that Wnt signaling in OB regulates osteoclastogenesis. We have demonstrated that MM cells express Dkk1, a soluble antagonist of canonical Wnt signaling, and that increased levels of Dkk1 in serum from MM is linked to bone lesions and MM serum can inhibit OB differentiation in a Dkk1-specific manner. To better understand the molecular mechanisms of the osteolytic process in MM, we investigated the role of canonical Wnt signaling in regulating the RANKL/OPG axis in OB progenitors. By real time quantitative PCR (qPCR) and ELISA analysis, we demonstrate that Wnt3a significantly induced OPG in C2C12 cells, a pluripotential mesenchymal progenitor. This Wnt3a-induced increase in OPG was significantly inhibited by pretreatment of the cells with recombinant Dkk1 or conditioned medium from an MM cell line constitutively expressing Dkk1. Inhibition of canonical Wnt signaling by transfection with siRNA to Wnt co-receptors LRP5/6 and or a dominant negative beta-catenin abrogated both endogenous and Wnt3a-induced OPG relative to controls. Interestingly, Dkk2, which has been shown to promote OB differentiation, significantly blocked Wnt3a-induced increase in OPG. Finally, treatment of the cells with plasma from bone marrow of MM pateints with high concentrations (> 100 ng/ml) of Dkk1 inhibited both OPG mRNA and protein in C2C12 cells. While Wnt3a stimulated OPG, it had a negative effect on RANKL mRNA as accessed by qPCR. Constitutive expression of Dkk1 lead to increased production of RANKL. Our results suggest that canonical Wnt signaling plays an important role in regulating the RANKL/OPG axis and that Dkk1 secretion by MM cells directly inhibits osteoblast differentiation while indirectly promoting osteoclastogenesis. Restoring proper Wnt signaling in MM may prevent bone lesions and possibly disease progression.
Acoustic focusing via guided waves in bianisotropic fluid layers

Willis fluids display a complex, effective dynamic response stemming from microstructural asymmetry, long range order, and/or time-varying material properties. These materials are characterized by constitutive relations that couple the pressure and momentum density to both the particle velocity and the volume strain. This coupling has been shown to be analogous to electromagnetic bianisotropic media, which exhibit coupled electric and magnetic fields [Phys. Rev. B 96, 104303 (2017)]. In a recent study, an acoustic lens composed of an array of Willis fluid layers was demonstrated, where the pressure phase imparted by each array element was tuned by varying the direction of Willis polarization and was determined using finite element analysis. In this work, we report on analytical solutions for guided waves in layers of fluid displaying Willis coupling and derive dispersion relations for layers with rigid and pressure-release boundary conditions. Special cases highlighting the effect of Willis polarization direction are presented via numerical examples. The acoustic lens is revisited with array phases obtained from analytical solutions, eliminating the need for finite element methods. Lenses designed for focusing and steering incident pressure waves are demonstrated using fully analytical models. [Work supported by NSF, ONR, and ARL:UT.]
From smart cities to wise cities: ecological wisdom as a basis for sustainable urban development

Researchers and policy makers have proposed “smart cities” as one approach to an evolutionary transformation in urban infrastructure and management, focusing on optimizing planning and coordination...
Adolescents' Affective and Physiological Regulation Shape Negative Behavior During Challenging Equine Assisted Learning Activities.

This study examined associations between adolescents' (N = 59; Mage = 11.63) diurnal and momentary activity of the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis as marked by salivary cortisol, and affective and behavioral responses to their first, mounted equine assisted learning (EAL) activity. The introduction to riding occurred during the fifth week of an 11-week EAL program for at-risk and typically developing adolescents. Before the 11-week program began, participants collected 6 salivary cortisol samples at prescribed times (wakeup, 4 p.m., bedtime) over 2 days, from which indices of diurnal cortisol activity were derived. Six weeks later, on the day of their first mounted activity in week five, participants provided three salivary cortisol samples, reflecting their basal cortisol level at the end of their regular school day, and their cortisol levels linked to the beginning and end of their first ride. Participants reported on positive and negative emotion immediately before mounting the horse, and immediately after dismounting, using an 11-item survey. Using a 43-item checklist, three independent observers rated participants' behavior throughout the 90-min session. Regression analyses showed that adolescents with higher cortisol levels immediately before mounting reported higher levels of negative emotion (B = 0.350, p = 0.041) and lower levels of positive emotion (B = -0.697, p = 0.013), while basal levels and potential dysregulation of cortisol diurnal patterns were controlled. Greater cortisol reactivity in response to 10 min of riding was linked to higher negative (B = 2.95, p = 0.001), and lower positive emotion (B = -3.73, p = 0.007) after dismounting. Higher levels of pre-ride negative emotion (B = 5.50, p = 0.046), and lower levels of post-ride positive emotion (B = -5.17, p = 0.027), and an increase in cortisol reactivity in response to riding (B = 0.242, p = 0.049), predicted higher levels of negative behavior during the 90-min session that day. These findings show that participants' HPA axis activity informs their program experience and behavior. Results suggest that EAL facilitators need to employ strategies to down regulate adolescents' physiological and affective arousal during mounted sessions to prevent and redirect negative behavior.
Network Approaches to Analyze the Dynamics of Financial Markets

Analyzing financial markets requires gathering large amounts of data and determining appropriate methods so that accurate and appropriate conclusions can be drawn. The purpose of this paper is to investigate network approaches to understand large amounts of financial data and the implications of different approaches. Creating a market graph has been used to analyze financial instruments, and prices fluctuations of stocks over a large time period. A market graph is constructed with nodes and edges; nodes represent the quantity of interest, or specific data points, such as stock prices at an instance of time. Edges represent a relationship between one node and another. Creating edges can be accomplished through many different approaches including correlation coefficients, power law, and minimum spanning tree. Pearson’s correlation coefficient can be used to relate a set of two data points and can be further filtered through a minimum threshold value. The power law graph is another unique way to relate data points to one another. The power law graph creates edges among nodes by considering a probability and the binomial distribution. The power law graph has powerful implications on network analysis because it concludes that the degree distribution, the number of connections a node has to other nodes, is represented as an exponential relationship. A minimum spanning tree is a hierarchical method used to analyze market graphs. A minimum spanning tree clusters data by partitioning data appropriately. Overall, many methods are defined to establish a market graph depending on the purpose of the analysis and the parameter of interest.
Anxiety sensitivity and your clinical practice

Abstract There may come a time when patients ask for treatment for anxiety sensitivity by name, given evidence that the concept of anxiety sensitivity is expanding into the more popular literature. In 2016, anxiety sensitivity appeared by name in both the Huffington Post and the Scientific American, with such titles as: “Anxiety sensitivity’ is real. Here's how to know if your’re caught in this spiral,” and “What is anxiety sensitivity, and do I have it?” These titles aptly underscore the importance of anxiety sensitivity to a striking range of psychiatric disorders, medical conditions, and maladaptive coping responses; and reflects the importance of targeting anxiety sensitivity as part of the treatment of anxiety and related disorders or the prevention of/early intervention for disorders with at-risk cohorts.
Preventing local extinctions of tidal marsh endemic Seaside Sparrows and Saltmarsh Sparrows in eastern North America

Globally limited to 45,000 km2, salt marshes and their endemic species are threatened by numerous anthropogenic influences, including sea-level rise and predator pressure on survival and nesting success. Along the Atlantic coast of North America, Seaside (Ammospiza maritima) and Saltmarsh (A. caudacuta) sparrows are endemic to salt marshes, with Saltmarsh Sparrows declining by 9% annually. Because vital rates and factors affecting population persistence vary for both species, local estimates are necessary to best predict population persistence in response to management actions. We used a metapopulation model to estimate the population viability of the breeding Seaside and Saltmarsh sparrow populations in coastal New Jersey over a 42-yr period. We incorporated empirical data on the vital rates and abundances of these populations and simulated the effect of low (0.35 m) and high (0.75 m) levels of sea-level rise. We found that the Seaside Sparrow population persisted under both sea-level rise scenarios; however, the Saltmarsh Sparrow population reached a quasi-extinction threshold within 20 yr. Using the same framework, we modeled potential management scenarios that could increase the persistence probability of Saltmarsh Sparrows and found that fecundity and juvenile survival rates will require at least a 15% concurrent increase for the local population to persist beyond 2050. Future field research should evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of management actions, such as predator control, for increasing Saltmarsh Sparrow vital rates in order to maintain the species in coastal New Jersey.
Use of a Droplet Platform To Optimize Pd-CatalyzedC–N Coupling Reactions Promoted by Organic Bases

Recent advances in Pd-catalyzed carbon–nitrogen cross-coupling have enabled the use of soluble organic bases instead of insoluble or strong inorganic bases that are traditionally employed. The sing...
Increasing Nephrologist Awareness of Symptom Burden in Older Hospitalized End-Stage Renal Disease Patients.

Background: End-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients have significant symptom burden. Reduced provider awareness of symptoms contributes to underutilization of symptom management resources. Method: We hypothesized that improved nephrologist awareness of symptoms leads to symptom improvement. In this prospective, multicenter interventional study, 53 (age >65) ESRD inpatients underwent symptom assessment using the modified Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS) at admission and 1-week post-discharge. Physicians caring for the enrollees were asked if they felt their patients would die within the year, and then sequentially randomized to receive the results of the baseline survey (group 1) or to not receive the results (group 2). Results: Fifty-two patients completed the study; 1 died. Baseline characteristics were compared. For 70% of the total cohort, physicians reported that they would not be surprised if their patient died within a year. There was no difference in baseline scores of the patients between the 2 physician groups. Severity ratings were compared between in-hospital and post discharge scores and between physicians who received the results versus those that did not. Total ESAS scores improved more in group 1 (12.9) than in group 2 (9.2; p = 0.04). Among individual symptoms, there was greater improvement in pain control (p = 0.02), and nominal improvement in itching (p = 0.03) in group 1 as compared to group 2. There were 3 palliative care consults. Conclusions: Our findings reinforce the high symptom burden prevalent in older ESRD patients. The improvement in total scores, and individual symptoms of pain and itching in group 1 indicates better symptom control when physician awareness is increased. Residual symptoms post hospitalization and low utilization of palliative care resources are suggestive of a missed opportunity by nephrologists to address the high symptom burden at the inpatient encounter, which is selective for sick patients and/or indication of inadequacy of dialysis to control these symptoms.
Effect of long- or short-term feeding of alpha-tocopheryl acetate to Holstein and crossbred beef steers on performance, carcass characteristics, and beef color stability.

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of vitamin E supplementation on feedlot cattle. Vitamin E supplementation did not affect feedlot performance or carcass characteristics of cattle fed a high-concentrate diet (P greater than .1). The major finding was the effectiveness of vitamin E in extending the color stability of displayed beef (P less than .01). Color stability during display of longissimus lumborum steaks from cattle supplemented with 300 IU/d for 266 d, 1,140 IU/d for 67 d, or 1,200 IU/d for 38 d was extended by 2.5 to 4.8 d. Gluteus medius steaks had an extended color display life of 1.6 to 3.8 d. The accumulation of lipid oxidation products, but not aerobic microbes, associated with displayed longissimus lumborum was suppressed for muscle from vitamin E-supplemented steers. Taste panelists detected no difference among longissimus lumborum steaks from control and vitamin E-supplemented steers but found (P less than .01) steaks aged for 21 d to be more tender than steaks aged for 7 d. Supplementing cattle with vitamin E should reduce economic losses associated with discolored beef during retail display.
Powerful Variance-Component TWAS method identifies novel and known risk genes for clinical and pathologic Alzheimer’s dementia phenotypes

Abstract Transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) have been widely used to integrate transcriptomic and genetic data to study complex human diseases. Within a test dataset lacking transcriptomic data, existing TWAS methods impute gene expression by creating a weighted sum that aggregates SNPs with their corresponding cis-eQTL effects on transcriptome estimated from reference datasets. Existing TWAS methods then apply a linear regression model to assess the association between imputed gene expression and test phenotype, thereby assuming the effect of a cis-eQTL SNP on test phenotype is a linear function of the eQTL’s estimated effect on reference transcriptome. Thus, existing TWAS methods make a strong assumption that cis-eQTL effect sizes on reference transcriptome are reflective of their corresponding SNP effect sizes on test phenotype. To increase TWAS robustness to this assumption, we propose a Variance-Component TWAS procedure (VC-TWAS) that assumes the effects of cis-eQTL SNPs on phenotype are random (with variance proportional to corresponding cis-eQTL effects in reference dataset) rather than fixed. By doing so, we show VC-TWAS is more powerful than traditional TWAS when cis-eQTL SNP effects on test phenotype truly differ from their eQTL effects within reference dataset. We further applied VC-TWAS using cis-eQTL effect sizes estimated by a nonparametric Bayesian method to study Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) related phenotypes and detected 13 genes significantly associated with AD, including 6 known GWAS risk loci. All significant loci are proximal to the major known risk loci APOE for AD. Further, we add this VC-TWAS function into our previously developed tool TIGAR for public use.
Basic Principles of Continuous Manufacturing

Continuous manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry is an emerging technology, although it is widely practiced in industries such as petrochemical, bulk chemical, foods, and mineral processing. This chapter briefly discusses the characteristics of continuous manufacturing at the conceptual level, first, in its generic form, viewing the process as a unitary system, and then as a system composed of multiple manufacturing unit operations. Key requirements for implementing an effective continuous process are reviewed, while aspects specific to pharmaceutical applications are highlighted. The advantages and limitations of continuous manufacturing are discussed and compared to the advantages and limitations of the batch operating mode, which has been the mainstay of the pharmaceutical industry. Perspectives on advancing pharmaceutical manufacturing in the Industry 4.0 era are discussed.
Automatic Breast Cancer Cohort Detection from Social Media for Studying Factors Affecting Patient-Centered Outcomes

Breast cancer patients often discontinue their long-term treatments, such as hormone therapy, increasing the risk of cancer recurrence. These discontinuations may be caused by adverse patient-centered outcomes (PCOs) due to hormonal drug side effects or other factors. PCOs are not detectable through laboratory tests, and are sparsely documented in electronic health records. Thus, there is a need to explore complementary sources of information for PCOs associated with breast cancer treatments. Social media is a promising resource, but extracting true PCOs from it first requires the accurate detection of real breast cancer patients. We describe a natural language processing (NLP) pipeline for automatically detecting breast cancer patients from Twitter based on their self-reports. The pipeline uses breast cancer-related keywords to collect streaming data from Twitter, applies NLP patterns to filter out noisy posts, and then employs a machine learning classifier trained using manually-annotated data (n = 5,019) for distinguishing firsthand self-reports of breast cancer from other tweets. A classifier based on bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) showed human-like performance and achieved F\(_1\)-score of 0.857 (inter-annotator agreement: 0.845; Cohen’s kappa) for the positive class, considerably outperforming the next best classifier—a recurrent neural network with bidirectional long short-term memory (F\(_1\)-score: 0.670). Qualitative analyses of posts from automatically-detected users revealed discussions about side effects, non-adherence and mental health conditions, illustrating the feasibility of our social media-based approach for studying breast cancer related PCOs from a large population.
Use of Busulfan to Condition Mice for Bone Marrow Transplantation.

Summary Myeloablative gamma irradiation has traditionally been used to condition mice prior to bone marrow transplantation. However, irradiation induces high levels of inflammation that may alter patterns of reconstitution. In addition, gamma irradiators are being removed from many facilities for security reasons. Alternative conditioning regimens are thus needed. Here, we describe a protocol for the use of busulfan to condition mice for bone marrow transplantation and several of the variables to consider for effective implementation. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Montecino-Rodriguez et al. (2019) .
What Do We Know About Real Estate Brokerage

Many facets of real estate brokerage have been examined in studies appearing in the literature over the last several years. This review attempts to organize the research around six questions concer...
Constraint-induced intervention as an emergent phenomenon from synaptic competition in biological systems

The principle of constraint-induced therapy is widely practiced in rehabilitation. In hemiplegic cerebral palsy (CP) with impaired contralateral corticospinal projection due to unilateral injury, function improves after imposing a temporary constraint on limbs from the less affected hemisphere. This type of partially-reversible impairment in motor control by early brain injury bears a resemblance to the experience-dependent plastic acquisition and modification of neuronal response selectivity in the visual cortex. Previously, such mechanism was modeled within the framework of BCM (Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro) theory, a rate-based synaptic modification theory. Here, we demonstrate a minimally complex yet sufficient neural network model which provides a fundamental explanation for inter-hemispheric competition using a simplified spike-based model of information transmission and plasticity. We emulate the restoration of function in hemiplegic CP by simulating the competition between cells of the ipsilateral and contralateral corticospinal tracts. We use a high-speed hardware neural simulation to provide realistic numbers of spikes and realistic magnitudes of synaptic modification. We demonstrate that the phenomenon of constraint-induced partial reversal of hemiplegia can be modeled by simplified neural descending tracts with 2 layers of spiking neurons and synapses with spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). We further demonstrate that persistent hemiplegia following unilateral cortical inactivation or deprivation is predicted by the STDP-based model but is inconsistent with BCM model. Although our model is a highly simplified and limited representation of the corticospinal system, it offers an explanation of how constraint as an intervention can help the system to escape from a suboptimal solution. This is a display of an emergent phenomenon from the synaptic competition.
Leveraging Historic Cattle Exclosures to Detect Evidence of State Change in an Arid Rangeland

Abstract Grazing, a defining use of rangelands, can have immediate and legacy impacts in ecosystems with short evolutionary histories of grazing and where climatic conditions are marginal and variable. In arid rangelands of the Colorado Plateau, domesticated ungulates were introduced in the 1800s at high densities and grazing has been maintained in the region at variable stocking rates for approximately the past 150 yr. Historic grazing practices, combined with a marginal climate, may have caused an irreversible shift in the vegetation community leading to limited recovery with cessation of grazing. Using three exclosures ranging from 12 to 50 yr of age, we evaluated vegetation composition, diversity, and cover inside the exclosures and compared them with directly adjacent, actively grazed areas outside of the exclosures in the fall and spring of 2018 and 2019. We then asked 1) How do exclosures and their adjacent unexclosed sites differ in vegetation diversity, composition, and cover? and 2) Are there significant differences in cover of key forage species in exclosed versus unexclosed areas? Overall, there were significant differences in vegetation communities inside and outside of exclosures in both seasons. Composition, alpha, and beta diversity differed between grazed and exclosed sites, with higher alpha and beta diversity in the 50-yr exclosure in the fall. Composition was significantly different between exclosures and unexclosed sites at all sites and in all seasons. Cover of several important forage grasses (Achnatherum hymenoides, Hilaria jamesii, Elymus elymoides) was higher in exclosed areas, while cover of Scleropogon brevifolius and Bouteloua gracilis was higher in unexclosed areas. Taken together, these results indicate limited recovery of vegetation in the absence of grazing, with exclosures exhibiting higher plant diversity, as well as cover of some desirable forage species, suggesting this area has not undergone irreversible state change but recovery may require > 50 yr of grazing cessation.
Drip irrigation as a socio-technical configuration: policy design and technological choice in Western India

Through a case study of farmers in India we examine the relationship between drip irrigation subsidy policies, farmer adoption and technological choice. We examine changes in the subsidy design and...
Corticosteroid overuse in adults with immune thrombocytopenia: Cause for concern.

Corticosteroids remain a crucial component of first-line therapy for immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) due to low cost, high initial response rates, and acceptable short-term tolerability. However, extended and recurrent use of corticosteroids is associated with substantial toxicity. Survey studies indicate that >95% of patients with ITP treated with corticosteroids report adverse effects, more than one-third of whom require reduction or discontinuation of treatment. In light of the heavy treatment burden of prolonged corticosteroid exposure, clinical practice guidelines recommend limiting corticosteroid treatment to no more than 6 weeks in adults with ITP receiving initial therapy. For patients who require subsequent therapy, clinical practice guidelines recommend treatments more suitable for long-term disease control such as thrombopoietin receptor agonists, rituximab, other immune-modulating medications, or splenectomy, rather than repeated courses of corticosteroids. Despite these recommendations, real-world evidence suggests that corticosteroids remain the most frequently used treatment for adults with ITP, not only in the first line, but also in the second and third line. In this review, we summarize evidence on the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of corticosteroids; discuss the problem of overuse; and suggest strategies for curtailing the excessive use of corticosteroids in adults with ITP.
Prevalence and pattern of gluteus medius and minimus tendon pathology and muscle atrophy in older individuals using MRI

To evaluate gluteus medius and minimus tendon pathology and muscle atrophy in older individuals using MRI. A retrospective MRI study of 185 individuals was performed. The inclusion criterion was age ≥50. Exclusion criteria were hip surgery, fracture, infection, tumor, or inadequate image quality. Greater trochanteric bursitis was graded none, mild, moderate, or severe. Gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, and iliopsoas tendinopathy was graded normal, tendinosis, low-grade partial tear, high-grade partial tear, or full thickness tear. Gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, tensor fascia lata, and iliopsoas muscle atrophy was scored using a standard scale. Insertion site of tendinopathy and location of muscle atrophy were assessed. Descriptive and statistical analysis was performed. There was increasing greater trochanteric bursitis and gluteus medius and minimus tendinopathy and atrophy with advancing age with moderate to strong positive associations (p < 0.0001) for age and tendinopathy, age and atrophy, bursitis and tendinopathy, and tendinopathy and atrophy for the gluteus medius and minimus. There is a weak positive association (p < 0.0001) for age and tensor fascia lata atrophy, and no statistically significant association between age and tendinopathy or between age and atrophy for the iliopsoas. Fisher's exact tests were statistically significant (p < 0.0001) for insertion site of tendon pathology and location of muscle atrophy for the gluteus medius. Gluteus medius and minimus tendon pathology and muscle atrophy increase with advancing age with progression of tendinosis to low-grade tendon tears to high-grade tendon tears. There is an associated progression in atrophy of these muscles, which may be important in fall-related hip fractures.
Understanding User Interaction Patterns within Online Systems for Public-Participation Transportation Planning

Many research projects in public-participation geographic information systems focused on the development of software prototypes that were conceptualized to complement traditional forms of public participation. Given the challenges introduced by the heterogeneity of their user base, system design, and decision making process, empirical evaluations of such systems based on actual use have been scarce. This article reports on a rigorous empirical assessment of human-computer interaction of users of a web-based system for participatory transportation planning. We devised three groups of participants with below-average, average, and above-average interaction duration through hierarchical cluster analysis. Subsequently, the characteristics of the clusters were subjected to logistic regression analysis to determine the significance and strength of statistical associations between duration of interaction and a host of individual-level variables. Our results indicate a statistically significant reduction of the odds-ratio for participants with above-average duration of interaction in the case of no prior experience with online transportation discussions. No significant associations were found between overall duration of interaction and sociodemographic background, cognitive decision-making style, and travel behavior. We advocate for the development of adaptable participatory systems which accommodate flexibility in terms of both the user interface and pathways of the decision making process.
Probabilistic Map Building by Coordinated Mobile Sensors

In this paper, we develop an efficient algorithm for coordinating a group of mobile robotic sensors to collaboratively construct the probabilistic map (occupancy grid) of a random field. Each mobile sensor is responsible for exploring its online-computer dynamic Voronoi polygon with a tendency of moving toward the most uncertain area, thus avoiding energy and time waste from wandering around and surplus explorations. The performance is measured by the total entropy of the built probabilistic map. Simulation results show that our algorithm is both time and energy efficient.