cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Chelsea’s journey of becoming a teacher: A narrative of then and now

In this study I explored, with Chelsea, her journey of becoming a music teacher. At the time of the study, Chelsea had completed her second year of teaching. Together, we revisited the artifacts of her undergraduate coursework and practicum experiences (journals, online forum posts, videotapes of her own teaching, written reflections of her teaching). We engaged in a narrative exploration of her journey of becoming a teacher as Chelsea provided written and verbal narratives of “then and now”— a process of ethnographic hindsight in which Chelsea was able to provide both emic and etic lenses of the experiences revisited via the data. A thread of connection and detachment is pervasive throughout the data and the interpretation of themes as Chelsea’s path toward becoming a teacher is positioned in the juxtaposition of these stances.
An Analytical History of Terrorism, 1945–2000

This paper traces the history of modern terrorism from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the twenty-first century. It divides that history into three stylized waves: terrorism in the service of national liberation and ethnic separatism, left-wing terrorism, and Islamist terrorism. Adopting a constitutional political economy perspective, the paper argues that terrorism is rooted in the artificial nation-states created during the interwar period and suggests solutions grounded in liberal federalist constitutions and, perhaps, new political maps for the Middle East, Central Asia and other contemporary terrorist homelands.
"There is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many sons": A qualitative study of son preference and fetal sex selection among Indian immigrants in the United States

In response to concerns from feminists, demographers, bioethicists, journalists, and health care professionals, the Indian government passed legislation in 1994 and 2003 prohibiting the use of sex selection technology and sex-selective abortion. In contrast, South Asian families immigrating to the United States find themselves in an environment where reproductive choice is protected by law and technologies enabling sex selection are readily available. Yet there has been little research exploring immigrant Indian women’s narratives about the pressure they face to have sons, the process of deciding to utilize sex selection technologies, and the physical and emotional health implications of both son preference and sex selection. We undertook semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 65 immigrant Indian women in the United States who had pursued fetal sex selection on the East and West coasts of the United States between September 2004 and December 2009. Women spoke of son preference and sex selection as separate though intimately related phenomena, and the major themes that arose during interviews included the sociocultural roots of son preference; women’s early socialization around the importance of sons; the different forms of pressure to have sons that women experienced from female in-laws and husbands; the spectrum of verbal and physical abuse that women faced when they did not have male children and/or when they found out they were carrying a female fetus; and the ambivalence with which women regarded their own experience of reproductive “choice.” We found that 40% of the women interviewed had terminated prior pregnancies with female fetuses and that 89% of women carrying female fetuses in their current pregnancy pursued an abortion. These narratives highlight the interaction between medical technology and the perpetuation of this specific form of violence against women in an immigrant context where women are both the assumed beneficiaries of reproductive choice while remaining highly vulnerable to family violence and reproductive coercion.
Is the Web as good as the lab? Comparable performance from Web and lab in cognitive/perceptual experiments

With the increasing sophistication and ubiquity of the Internet, behavioral research is on the cusp of a revolution that will do for population sampling what the computer did for stimulus control and measurement. It remains a common assumption, however, that data from self-selected Web samples must involve a trade-off between participant numbers and data quality. Concerns about data quality are heightened for performance-based cognitive and perceptual measures, particularly those that are timed or that involve complex stimuli. In experiments run with uncompensated, anonymous participants whose motivation for participation is unknown, reduced conscientiousness or lack of focus could produce results that would be difficult to interpret due to decreased overall performance, increased variability of performance, or increased measurement noise. Here, we addressed the question of data quality across a range of cognitive and perceptual tests. For three key performance metrics—mean performance, performance variance, and internal reliability—the results from self-selected Web samples did not differ systematically from those obtained from traditionally recruited and/or lab-tested samples. These findings demonstrate that collecting data from uncompensated, anonymous, unsupervised, self-selected participants need not reduce data quality, even for demanding cognitive and perceptual experiments.
Properties of Circulation in Stratified Lakes

An approximate method is presented to display some features of wind-driven circulation in a stratified lake. Rotation of the earth is included, but the effects of bottom topography and shoreline configuration are ignored. The results indicate that the free surface slopes upward in the downwind direction and upward to the right of the wind (in the northern hemisphere) whereas the thermocline has the opposite slope. The free surface slope is of the order Δ ρ / ρ times the thermocline slope. The crosswind slope is of the order of one-fifth the downwind slope for lakes at about the latitude of the Great Lakes. These slopes decrease with increasing epilimnion thickness. The assumption of higher eddy viscosities also increases slopes, but decreases the velocities in the epilimnion. Decreased epilimnion velocities result from a smaller epilimnion thickness.
Global Routing Using Zero-one Integer Linear Programming

In recent years, the Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) market has been dominated by gate arrays and their improved form — the sea-of-gates (SOG) arrays [DD89]. The latter provides the advantages of quick turnaround times, high packing density and high performance circuits. With the introduction of large, channelless SOG arrays, conventional routers may no longer be able to handle the ever-increasing complexity of the VLSI interconnection problem. In this chapter, a new global router using Zero-one Integer Linear Programming (0–1 ILP) is presented for the case of sea-of-gates arrays. This global router can be used efficiently in high-performance custom layouts, as will be shown in Sections 5.5 and 6.4.
Using Networks to Combine “Big Data” and Traditional Surveillance to Improve Influenza Predictions

Seasonal influenza infects approximately 5-20% of the U.S. population every year, resulting in over 200,000 hospitalizations. The ability to more accurately assess infection levels and predict which regions have higher infection risk in future time periods can instruct targeted prevention and treatment efforts, especially during epidemics. Google Flu Trends (GFT) has generated significant hope that "big data" can be an effective tool for estimating disease burden and spread. The estimates generated by GFT come in real-time--two weeks earlier than traditional surveillance data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, GFT had some infamous errors and is significantly less accurate at tracking laboratory-confirmed cases than syndromic influenza-like illness (ILI) cases. We construct an empirical network using CDC data and combine this with GFT to substantially improve its performance. This improved model predicts infections one week into the future as well as GFT predicts the present and does particularly well in regions that are most likely to facilitate influenza spread and during epidemics.
A technique for specific removal of factor IX alloantibodies from human plasma: partial characterization of the alloantibodies

A method for specific removal of large amounts of factor IX:C alloantibodies by a resin to which highly purified factor IX was linked (factor IX CH-Sepharose) is described. Factor IX was isolated from human plasma by a three-step procedure, including barium citrate adsorption and elution, DEAE-Sepharose CL-6B chromatography, and dextran sulfate agarose chromatography. Approximately 100 mg factor IX was obtained from 60 liters of plasma. The preparation was about 95% pure as judged by SDS-PAA gel electrophoresis. Its specific coagulant activity was 160 U/mg (IX) and its factor IX clotting antigen (IX:Ag) 500-600 U/mg. Essentially quantitative coupling of the factor IX preparation to activated CH-Sepharose 4B was obtained (4 mg factor IX/ml gel; 2300-3000 U/IX:Ag/ml). This resin bound 1500-2000 U factor IX inhibitor/ml gel and could be re-used at least 5 times without any loss in binding capacity. The binding capacity was dependent on the flow rate. No signs of activation of the coagulation, fibrinolytic, or complement system were observed in vitro. Using this factor IX resin, factor IX alloantibodies were isolated and found to consist of two portions, one minor bound to the resin only in the presence of Ca2+ and another major portion Ca2+ independent. The specific inhibitory activity/milligram IgG of the Ca2+-dependent alloantibodies was about 5 times higher in the presence of Ca2+. It is concluded that 25 ml of the factor IX resin described can remove about 40,000 factor IX inhibitor units (comparable to 120,000 Bethesda U) in one run, provided the flow rate does not exceed 20 ml/hr. By using such a technique for removal of antibodies it seems feasible to convert hemophilia-B patients complicated with inhibitors against factor IX into ordinary hemophilia-B patients for treatment at an emergency or in association with major surgery.
Sex-Related Differences in the Seasonality of Agonistic Behavior in Mule Deer

Social behavior and organization of mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus californicus ) were investigated over a 1-year period in northwestern Los Angeles Co., California. I analyzed 2,161 agonistic interactions by sex of participants. The frequency of male-female agonistic encounters remained low all year. Aggressive behavior between bucks occurred most frequently just before the breeding season. During the parturition season, a marked increase in both the frequency and intensity of agonistic interactions occurred between does. Maternal does rose in social status, but previous dominance relationships were re-established following fawn mortality. High social status and the seasonal pattern of agonistic behavior in both male and female mule deer serve ultimately to maximize reproductive fitness, but the means by which this is attained differ in the two sexes.
EXAFS Study of the Speciation of Protactinium(V) in Aqueous Hydrofluoric Acid Solutions

The speciation of protactinium(V) in hydrofluoric acid (HF) solutions was studied using X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure measurements were performed on an aqueous solution of 0.05 M protactinium(V) with various HF concentrations ranging from 0.5 to 27 M in order to probe the protactinium coordination sphere with respect to the identity and number of coordinating ligands. The resulting fits to the spectra suggest the presence of an eight-coordinate homoleptic fluoro complex in highly concentrated fluoride solutions (27 M), with equilibrium between seven- and eight-coordinate fluoro complexes at moderate acidities, and in more dilute solutions, results indicate that one water molecule is likely to replace a fluoride in the first coordination sphere, at a distance of 2.54-2.57 A. Comparisons of this chemistry with group V metals, niobium and tantalum, are presented, and the potential implications for these results on the hydrolytic behavior of protactinium in aqueous systems are discussed.
“The Good Old R01”: Challenging Downward Funding Success Trends at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) remains the largest source of funding for biomedical research in the United States. However, the current tight fiscal climate is creating concerns related to the success in obtaining NIH funding. In this report, we focused on analyzing the trend of new and renewal competing R01 applications, as a measure of the most prevalent NIH funding mechanism that supports many US laboratories, and the new science being proposed in the field. We analyzed data on R01 applications submitted to the NIH, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, and the Vascular Biology and Hypertension Branch for fiscal years 2010 through 2014. This comparative analysis at multiple levels allowed us to position the situation of cardiovascular research R01s, from within the big picture of NIH funding to looking at specific trends at the level of particular areas of investigation within Vascular Biology and Hypertension Branch. We found that the success rates of competing R01s decreased at all levels: NIH, NHLBI, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, and Vascular Biology and Hypertension Branch. Interestingly, we found that competitive renewal R01 applications remained more successful (≈2×) than new R01 applications at all levels during this period. By identifying and analyzing some variances to the general trends, we found that some successes may be attributed to effectively using the specific R01 structure that supports team science (ie, Multiple Principal Investigator awards), which enables the active collaborations among investigators with different expertise to pursue together a novel scientific hypothesis. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest funding source for biomedical research and development in the world1 and supports research projects, resources, facilities, and personnel costs via various funding mechanisms. NIH investments in extramural research contribute to the overall economy in many ways, through creation …
The New Pattern of Adult Education

In order to keep up with the development of modern society, reform of adult education is necessary. Firstly, set up a new pattern of "broad major, multiple derection, recruit and cultivate students through general classification"; Secondly, credit system, as a new management system in teaching derived from traditional education to quality education, will definitely play a critical role.
Transepithelial transport of cholyltaurine by Caco-2 cell monolayers is sodium dependent

Bile acids are efficiently recovered from the intestinal lumen by a Na(+)-dependent transport process that is localized in the ileal enterocyte brush-border membrane. To establish a cell culture model for this process, we examined the Na+ dependence of cholyltaurine (C-tau; taurocholate) transport across monolayers of differentiated Caco-2 cells grown on permeable filter inserts. Transport of [3H]C-tau was Na+ dependent (> 20-fold stimulation), saturable, and time linear for at least 60 min. The apparent Michaelis constant of [3H]C-tau transport was approximately 65 microM, and the maximal transport rate was approximately 800 pmol.min-1.mg protein-1. Transport of [3H]C-tau in the apical-to-basolateral direction was 17-fold greater than transport in the reverse direction. Lowered incubation temperature, various metabolic inhibitors, and various unlabeled bile acids inhibited [3H]C-tau transport. Caco-2 cells thus transport bile acids in a manner similar to that described for ileal brush-border membrane vesicles and isolated ileal enterocytes and are therefore an appropriate model for studying the molecular basis of ileal bile acid transport.
Mixed Cellularity Hodgkin Lymphoma

Mixed cellularity (MC) Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a type of classical HL with a diffuse growth pattern containing scattered Reed–Sternberg and Hodgkin (RS + H) cells in a mixed inflammatory background. HLs share a number of clinical and pathologic features that distinguish them from non-HLs (NHLs). HLs tend to occur in children and younger adults, and mainly involve lymph nodes. MC is the second most common type of HL, representing approximately 25 % of cases in developed nations, but MC has a higher frequency in undeveloped countries and in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.
Recurrence quantification analysis for surgical motions in minimally invasive surgery

Minimally invasive surgical technique (MIS) is difficult to master due to its inherent complexity imposed by reduced work volume and limited flexibility in motions. In traditional MIS training, faculty surgeons evaluate junior surgeon's performance using subjective and resource-intensive methods lacking quantitative rigour. Although recent technological advancement in surgical education has enabled more objective and automated evaluation of surgical skill, most of measures are still task-specific and thus can be hardly generalised across different operations and platforms. Therefore, this research studies a novel framework for generalised performance measure based on the analysis of non-linear dynamics in surgical motions. Specifically, surgical motions are recorded using motion sensors attached on instruments during surgical exercises. Then, intensity of recurrences in the motion data is calculated and disorder index is computed using the intensity of recurrences. The test results have shown that disorder index values can be used to quantify surgical skill levels.
Dialectic and Satire

Satire, the limits of whose definition do not seem to have been fixed, is a broad enough term to include dialectical irony, wit and humour, and paradox, all of which are considered below. Readers of Swift, besides often agreeing that his satire has a logical basis,1 often agree also that no satisfactory definition of satire exists2 and leave an inviting door open to an explanation that logic in its aggressive and defensive forms is indeed the basis of satire, is indeed the sine qua non of satire which has so far escaped those who would find the DNA, as it were, of this elusive mode of literature.
Visualization of Defect-Induced Excitonic Properties of the Edges and Grain Boundaries in Synthesized Monolayer Molybdenum Disulfide

Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are attractive materials for next-generation nanoscale optoelectronic applications. Understanding the nanoscale optical behavior of the edges and grain boundaries of synthetically grown TMDCs is vital for optimizing their optoelectronic properties. Elucidating the nanoscale optical properties of 2D materials through far-field optical microscopy requires a diffraction-limited optical beam diameter that is submicrometer in size. Herein, we present our experimental work on the spatial photoluminescence (PL) scanning of large-size (≥50-μm) monolayer MoS2 grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using a diffraction-limited blue laser beam spot (wavelength = 405 nm) with a beam diameter as small as ∼200 nm, allowing nanoscale excitonic phenomena that had not observed before to be probed. We found several important features: (i) There exists a submicrometer-width strip (∼500 nm) along the edges that fluoresces ∼1000% brighter than the ...
Other Tools for Data Management

Comparing data frames and data tables leads to an interesting question. What if there were more types of data? Particularly, what if there were different ways to store data that are all, at their heart, tables of some sort? In addition to data frames or tables, there are many ways to store data, many of which are just tables. The idea behind dplyr (Wickham and Francois, 2015) is that regardless of what the data back end might be, our experience should be the same. To allow this, dplyr implements generic functions for common data management tasks. For each of these generic functions, specific methods are written that translate the generic operation into whatever code or language is required for a specific back end. Using a layer of abstraction ensures that users get a consistent experience, regardless of the specific data format, or back end, being used. It also makes dplyr extensible, in that support for a new format can be added by simply writing additional functions or methods. The user experience need not change. For this chapter, our checkpoint header needs to have both the tibble and the dplyr packages installed and added:
Generalized composite adaptive IMC: Design and analysis

Internal model control (IMC), which explicitly incorporates a plant model and a plant inverse as its components, has an intuitive control structure and simple tuning philosophy, making it appealing to industrial applications. Combining the IMC structure with adaptation through the certainty equivalence principle leads to adaptive IMC (AIMC), where the plant model is identified and the plant inverse is derived by inverting the estimated model. In [1], [2], we proposed the composite adaptive IMC (CAIMC) for a first-order plant and successfully applied it to the boost-pressure control problem of a turbocharged gasoline engine system. Within the IMC control structure, the plant model and the plant inverse are simultaneously identified to minimize modeling errors and further reduce the tracking error. Through theoretical analysis, simulations, and experimental validation, CAIMC was shown to demonstrate better performance compared to AIMC. In this paper the design procedure of CAIMC is generalized to a n-th order plant, and stability and asymptotic performance are established and analyzed under proper conditions.
The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing

Conventional wisdom assumes that the police are in control of their investigative tools. But with surveillance technologies, this is not always the case. Increasingly, police departments are consumers of surveillance technologies that are created, sold, and controlled by private companies. These surveillance technology companies exercise an undue influence over the police today in ways that aren’t widely acknowledged, but that have enormous consequences for civil liberties and police oversight. Three seemingly unrelated examples--stingray cellphone surveillance, body cameras, and big data software—demonstrate varieties of this undue influence. These companies act out of private self-interest, but their decisions have considerable public impact. The harms of this private influence include the distortion of Fourth Amendment law, the undermining of accountability by design, and the erosion of transparency norms. This Essay demonstrates the increasing degree to which surveillance technology vendors can guide, shape, and limit policing in ways that are not widely recognized. Any vision of increased police accountability today cannot be complete without consideration of the role surveillance technology companies play.
Life on the “Beer Frontier”: A Case Study of Craft Beer and Tourism in West Virginia

West Virginia’s tourism and craft brewing industries have experienced rapid growth within the last several years as a result of changing state policies and creative business models emphasizing immersion in and appreciation of the state’s rich rural heritage. The state’s craft breweries contribute to local and state tourism economies as pivotal creators of neolocal identity formation. Breweries construct and leverage identity and place attachment across tiers of space, from the community to the state level, yet form a coherent, commonly shared definition of the local. The industry offers a model of how rural tourism attractions and destination management organizations might showcase the state’s unique identity by capturing and sharing authentic senses of place through multiple levels of localism.
Metamodeling of Rotating Electric Machinery

This work sets forth an approach whereby a system designer can rapidly estimate the size versus loss characteristics of a class of electric machinery, and the impact of this tradeoff at the system level. In essence, the methodology provides the first physics-based multiobjective scaling law for a Pareto-optimal front capturing the tradeoff between size and loss as a function of speed and requirements (output power or torque). It is the first time such a representation has been achieved. This is accomplished through the metamodeling of a normalized optimization based machine design framework. The method is applied to a permanent magnet ac machine.
Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement

Review of: "Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement," by Steven K. Ashby and C. J. Hawking.
VISIBLE WOMEN: LOCATING WOMEN IN FINANCIAL FAILURE, BANKRUPTCY LAW, AND BANKRUPTCY REFORM

The secondary status assigned to women is the result of a culturally imposed system of meanings supporting a particular division of power and labor. Dividing the sexes and assigning distinct roles and statuses provides the basis of the social order. These structures of meaning are so deeply ingrained that they are barely recognized for the violence they impose on the financial experiences of single women.The impact of the economic inferiority and the principle of exclusion is invisible financial suffering. The applications of bankruptcy law and processes appear to be gender neutral. They appear to be rational and fair. However, their impact is uneven and skewed to a particular perception of a woman’s economic status. BAPCPA’s emphasis on women as support creditors tied to the absent and irresponsible male breadwinner, reinforces the dominant gendered economic roles. It obscures the fact that the majority of single bankruptcy petition filers in the United States are women.
Chapter 7 Pretest market forecasting

6. Summary Pretest-market models provide a low-cost and rapid method to test the combined product, advertising, price, promotion, selling and distribution plan. The ‘full proposition’ analyses are sufficiently accurate to identify most winners and eliminate most losers. They provide an effective way to control the risks of failure and supply actionable managerial diagnostics to improve the product. The output is a high-quality product that meets customer needs and reaches the market quickly. Pretest-market models are an accepted practice for most frequently purchased products, but are relatively new for consumer durables. They are now being developed and tested for really new industrial products and services. Since pretest markets are extremely valuable in reducing risk and increasing the expected benefit of new products, we expect that proven models will soon be available for all products and services. Research on premarket forecasting in these new industries should be the highest priority for future work.
[87-OR]: Hypertension in an animal model of HELLP syndrome proceeds via activation of the Endothelin-1 system

Objectives We have shown that infusion of sFlt-1 and sEndoglin into normal pregnant rats causes Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes and Low Platelets (HELLP). Additionally these animals have hypertension, elevated TNFα, IL-6 and increased CD4+ T cells, all of which have been shown to activate the endothelin-1 system (ET-1) and are elevated in women with HELLP. Objective: To test thehypothesis that hypertension in response to HELLP was associated with ET-1 activation. Methods sFlt-1 and sEndoglin (4.7; 7 μg/kg/day respectively) were infused via mini-osmotic pump into normal pregnant rats (NP) on gestational day (GD) 12 to create HELLP. On GD 18 arterial catheters were inserted and on GD 19, Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) was analyzed in HELLP and NP rats; serum, urine and tissues were collected for molecular analysis. Results When compared to NP, rats with HELLP had significantly increased lactate dehydrogenase (463 ± 48 vs. 630 ± 47.4 IU/L; P Conclusions These data support the hypothesis that hypertension in response to HELLP proceeds via activation of the ET-1 system. Disclosures R. Morris: None. S. Spencer: None. K. Chatman: None. P. Kyle: None. J. Moseley: None. K. Wallace: None.
The Role of the Course Website in Improving Access to Educational Materials for Nontraditional Aviation Students

Nontraditional students have become the rule rather than the exception in many collegiate aviation programs. These students are often constrained in terms of their ability to devote the same amount of time to their classroom efforts as do their traditional peers. Such constraints may result from scheduling conflicts with work or, to a lesser extent, scheduling conflicts due to the location of classes at multiple and physically-separated campuses. Provision of classroom materials such as course syllabi and lecture notes, through the use of a course website, can help alleviate some of the scheduling concerns that affect nontraditional students. It is instructive to determine the degree to which such a website helps students feel that the convenience of their learning experience has been improved. A study of the use of a course website for this author’s aviation classes over a period of two semesters in 2006 and 2007 indicates significant improvement over those courses not employing websites in perceived learning convenience as a result of easier student access to course materials.
Molecular exchange processes in mixed oil-in-water nanoemulsions: Impact on droplet size and composition

Abstract The impact of oil water-solubility on mass transfer processes - Ostwald ripening (OR) and compositional ripening (CR) - in mixed oil-in-water nanoemulsions was investigated. Changes in droplet size distribution and composition were measured using dynamic light scattering and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), respectively. Three nanoemulsions with similar droplet diameters (≈170 nm) were formed from oils with relatively low (octadecane), intermediate (hexadecane), or high (tetradecane) water-solubility. Mixed nanoemulsions were formed by blending these systems together (1:1). Complete oil exchange occurred within a few days for octadecane-hexadecane nanoemulsions and a few hours for tetradecane-hexadecane ones. For the latter system, rapid droplet growth (171–194 nm) occurred during the first 12 h due to CR, followed by slow droplet growth (194–204 nm) over the next 6.5 days due to OR. These results may be useful for optimizing the formulation of nanoemulsions containing multiple kinds of hydrophobic ingredient.
Adiposity does not modify the effect of the dietary inflammatory potential on type 2 diabetes incidence among a prospective cohort of men.

Abstract Purpose Inflammatory contributions from diet and adiposity may interact with respect to the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We investigated the degree to which adiposity modified the association between dietary inflammatory potential and incident T2DM. Methods Data from 6,016 US men in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study who completed a 3-day diet record were used. The inflammatory potential of diet was characterized by the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII®), and adiposity was assessed with body mass index, waist circumference, body fat percentage (BF) and waist-to-height ratio. Inverse probability weights were used in modified Poisson regression models to examine whether adiposity modifies the relationship between the DII and T2DM, while accounting for selection bias from participants who were lost to follow-up. Results There were 336 incident cases of T2DM after a mean follow-up of 6.5 years. DII scores were not significantly associated with T2DM incidence in multivariable models, but point estimates were consistently elevated across increasing DII quartiles compared to the most anti-inflammatory DII quartile. In the model that evaluated BF, the term for overall effect modification was significant (p = 0.02), but there was no evidence of effect modification on the multiplicative and additive scales when examined further. Effect modification was not present for any other adiposity measures. Conclusions We did not observe evidence that a pro-inflammatory diet, as measured by the DII, is associated with incidence of T2DM, nor evidence that adiposity modifies a potential relationship. Further investigation is needed in larger cohorts with longer follow-up.
In-feed bacitracin methylene disalicylate modulates the turkey microbiota and metabolome in a dose-dependent manner

Beginning in 2017, the subtherapeutic use of most antibiotic compounds for growth promotion in food producing animals in the US was prohibited, highlighting the need to discover alternative growth promotants. Identifying the mechanism of action of growth promoting antibiotics may aid in the discovery of antibiotic alternatives. We describe the effects of feeding a subtherapeutic (50 g/ton of feed) and therapeutic (200 g/ton) concentration of bacitracin methylene disalicylate (BMD) to commercial turkeys for 14 weeks, and its effect on turkey intestinal microbial communities and cecal metabolomes. Both BMD concentrations had an immediate and lasting impact on the microbiota structure, and reduced bacterial richness through the end of the study (12 weeks). Metabolomic analysis identified 712 biochemicals, and 69% of metabolites were differentially present in BMD treated turkeys for at least one time point (q < 0.1). Amino acids, carbohydrates, nucleotides, peptides, and lipids were decreased in the turkey ceca early after BMD administration. Long-term metabolome alterations continued even after withdrawal of BMD. The microbial composition, determined by 16S rRNA gene sequencing, was predictive of the metabolome, indicating a connection between the microbiome and metabolome. In-feed BMD may cause bacterial metabolic shifts, leading to beneficial traits that can be targeted to improve animal health and production.
Allosteric discrimination at the NADH/ADP regulatory site of glutamate dehydrogenase.

Glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) is a target for treating insulin-related disorders, such as hyperinsulinism hyperammonemia syndrome. Modeling native ligand binding has shown promise in designing GDH inhibitors and activators. Our computational investigation of the nicotinamide adenine diphosphate hydride (NADH)/adenosine diphosphate (ADP) site presented in this paper provides insight into the opposite allosteric effects induced at a single site of binding inhibitor NADH versus activator ADP to GDH. The computed binding free-energy difference between NADH and ADP using thermodynamic integration is -0.3 kcal/mol, which is within the -0.275 and -1.7 kcal/mol experimental binding free-energy difference range. Our simulations show an interesting model of ADP with dissimilar binding conformations at each NADH/ADP site in the GDH trimer, which explains the poorly understood strong binding but weak activation shown in experimental studies. In contrast, NADH showed similar inhibitory binding conformations at each NADH/ADP site. The structural analysis of the important residues in the NADH/ADP binding site presented in this paper may provide potential targets for mutation studies for allosteric drug design.
Application of decision-tree on wellness tourism visitors~ health behaviour changes

In the case of social science research, the link between observation and theory can cause difficulties for researchers. Direct observation and measurement are rarely possible. Because the processes are constantly changing, it is possible to observe the phenomena once. Some of the models of mathematical, statistical methods are made in uncertain circumstances, which take into account the more important factors, but also the probable variables can be expressed. The technique used to make such a model is the decision tree method, which is a graphical model used in decision making, in which several choices are available and their outputs are uncertain. The study illustrates the use of this model, focusing on the health behavior of individuals involved in health tourism travel.
Expansion of hospital-based blood collections in the face of COVID-19 associated national blood shortage.

Background When the coronavirus pandemic caused widespread school and business closures in March 2020, blood drives were canceled and the supply of blood decreased suddenly in the United States (US). In response, hospital-based transfusion medicine physicians instituted policies to conserve blood and decrease blood product usage. These efforts were aided by the US Surgeon General recommendation to cancel all elective procedures. Nevertheless, the duration, severity, and impact of the pandemic on the national blood supply was uncertain. Hospitals with in-house donor programs had the opportunity not only to control demand, but also increase supply. Study design and methods A hospital-based blood donor center was rapidly mobilized to increase the supply of in-house collected blood, in order to counteract a sudden but potentially long-term depletion of the national blood supply during a pandemic. Results Collections increased approximately five-fold above baseline for whole blood units, while apheresis platelet units were maintained at the historical average for the blood donor center. Cancellation of elective procedures showed a modest, but not yet statistically significant decrease in average blood product usage per day, nevertheless the in-house collection rate was sufficient to meet demand. Conclusion A hospital-based blood donor center can quickly increase collection volumes and capacity in the face of a national emergency or pandemic. The desire to collect units should be balanced with safety concerns, need for sustainability, and blood product demand.
Anisotropic magnetocaloric effect and critical behavior in CrSbSe 3

We report anisotropic magnetocaloric effect and critical behavior in a quasi-one-dimensional ferromagnetic ${\mathrm{CrSbSe}}_{3}$ single crystal. The maximum magnetic entropy change $\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{S}_{M}^{\mathrm{max}}$ is 2.16 J ${\mathrm{kg}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{K}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for the easy $a$ axis (2.03 J ${\mathrm{kg}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{K}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for the hard $b$ axis) and the relative cooling power RCP is 163.1 J ${\mathrm{kg}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for the easy $a$ axis (142.1 J ${\mathrm{kg}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for the hard $b$ axis) near ${T}_{c}$ with a magnetic field change of 50 kOe. The magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant ${K}_{u}$ is estimated to be 148.5 kJ ${\mathrm{m}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ at 10 K, decreasing to 39.4 kJ ${\mathrm{m}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ at 70 K. The rescaled $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{S}_{M}(T,H)$ curves along all three axes collapse onto a universal curve, respectively, confirming the second-order ferromagnetic transition. Further critical behavior analysis around ${T}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}70\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\mathrm{K}$ gives that the critical exponents $\ensuremath{\beta}=0.26(1)$, $\ensuremath{\gamma}=1.32(2)$, and $\ensuremath{\delta}=6.17(9)$ for $H\ensuremath{\parallel}a$, while $\ensuremath{\beta}=0.28(2)$, $\ensuremath{\gamma}=1.02(1)$, and $\ensuremath{\delta}=4.14(16)$ for $H\ensuremath{\parallel}b$. The determined critical exponents suggest that the anisotropic magnetic coupling in ${\mathrm{CrSbSe}}_{3}$ is strongly dependent on orientations of the applied magnetic field.
Root traits of cover crops and carbon inputs in an organic grain rotation

Cover crops are widely used to increase the quantity of organic carbon (C) returned to the soil between cash crops. Roots play an important role in increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) levels, but the root traits that impact SOC likely vary widely among cover crop species and this variation has yet to be characterized. Recently, cover crop mixtures have expanded in popularity as a way to increase the diversity of cover crop benefits. We tested the quantity, quality and spatial distribution of roots in three monocultures and one mixture to increase our understanding of root trait variation among species, and how that variation impacts mixture design. Root cores were taken from in-row and between-row locations to a depth of 40 cm from cover crops planted after winter wheat during the 2016–2017 growing season. These samples were taken from a larger maize–soybean–winter wheat organic grain rotation experiment (2012–2018) located in central Pennsylvania, USA. Cover crop treatments included monocultures of triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack cv. ‘Trical 815’), canola (Brassica napus L. cv. ‘Wichita’), crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum L. cv. ‘Dixie’) and a five species mixture dominated by those three species. Additionally, cumulative carbon (C) inputs were assessed for the entire rotation to determine cover crop and cash crop root C contributions. Root biomass C vertical and horizontal distribution, root-to-shoot (R:S) ratio, and root carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio differed among cover crop treatments. Triticale produced more root biomass in the between-row space at all depth intervals compared to other cover crop treatments. The five species mixture had more total 0–5 cm and between-row 0–5 cm root biomass than crimson clover in spring 2017. Cover crop and cash crop roots increased cumulative C estimates by between 37% (crimson clover) and 46% (triticale) compared to shoot C alone. Cover crop root trait information can inform the belowground benefits from combining different species into cover crop mixtures. Crimson clover produced less root biomass, surface root biomass and between-row root biomass than other cover crop treatments. Therefore, combining crimson clover with grass and certain brassica species can improve total root biomass production, and root distribution compared to crimson clover monocultures, whereas reducing the C:N ratio of roots compared to grass species monocultures. The five species mixture led to greater cumulative carbon inputs compared to monoculture treatments, which was due to greater cover crop biomass C and its influence on the following corn crop's biomass C.
Make Multi-hop Broadcast in VANET Fast by Selecting a Better Route for Source Vehicle

Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) connects a vehicle to nearby vehicles and infrastructures through wireless networks. Over the last decades, various VANET unicast, multicast, and broadcast protocols have been proposed and studied extensively. In this paper, we dive into the study of VANET multihop broadcast from a new angle: How should the source vehicle select its route so that its message can be delivered to all vehicles (in a selected area) fastest? We will call this problem RAB (Route-Assisted Broadcasting). The use of “route selection” as a strategy to minimize broadcast latency has never been explored to the best of our knowledge. This study deepens our understanding of the intricate interplay between a vehicle's mobility and message-passing in VANET. In the past, we usually considered communication serves mobility, and too much mobility hurts communication (e.g., high mobility incurs volatile and unstable topology that disrupts communication performance). This study reveals how mobility could be used to help communication. Our contributions can be categorized into two main parts: 1) We show that RAB is NP-Hard to solve; 2) We build a highly configurable simulator that explores different routes in canonical mobility models.
Segmentation of Ultrasound Images based on Scatterer Density using U-Net

Quantitative ultrasound can provide an objective estimation of different tissue properties, which may be used for tissue characterization and detection of abnormal tissue. The effective number of scatterers in different parts of a tissue is one of the important tissue properties that can be estimated by quantitative ultrasound techniques. The envelope echo is the signal which is usually used to estimate the scatterer density. In this study, we proposed using deep learning to estimate the effective number of scatterers. We generated 2000 simulated phantom data containing randomly distributed inclusions with three different values for number of scatterers per resolution cell. We used U-Net to segment the envelope data and to distinguish three different values of scatterer densities. We show that U-Net can discriminate different scattering regimes, particularly, when the difference between the number of scatterers is substantial. The overall accuracy of the network is 83.9%, and the average sensitivity and specificity among the three classes are 83.1% and 92.3% respectively. This study confirms the potential of deep learning framework in quantitative ultrasound and estimation of tissue properties using ultrasound images.
Distributed Spatially Invariant Systems: An Input-Output Approach

In this paper, the Banach duality structure of the optimal H∞ -problem for distributed spatially invariant systems is provided. Under specific assumptions, it is shown that an optimal feedback spatially invariant H∞ controller exists, and can be computed through the Youla parametrization. It also shown that the optimal H∞ cost is equal to the induced norm of a novel operator defined on a Banach projective tensor space. An operator identity is deduced to compute the optimal Youla parameter, and thus the optimal controller provided a maximizing vector exists.
Noncontact Vital Sign Detection With UAV-Borne Radars: An Overview of Recent Advances

Airborne radar carried on board unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is serving as the harbinger of new remote sensing applications for security and rescue in inclement environments. The mobility and agility of UAVs, along with intelligent onboard sensors (cameras, acoustics, and radar), are more effective during the early stages of disaster response. The ability of radars to penetrate through objects and operate in low-visibility conditions enables the detection of occluded human subjects on and under debris when other sensing modalities fail. Recently, radars have been deployed on UAVs to measure minute human physiological parameters, such as respiratory and heart rates while sensing through clothing and building materials. Signal processing techniques are critical in enabling UAV-borne radars for human vital sign detection (VSD) in multiple operation modes. UAV radar interferometry provides valuable VSD in both hovering and flying motions. In the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) configuration, UAV-based VSD is available at a high spatial resolution. Novel radar configurations, such as in through-material sensing, UAV swarm, and tethered UAVs, are required to penetrate obstacles, facilitate multitasking, and allow for high endurance, respectively. This article provides an overview of the recent advances in UAV-borne VSD, with a focus on the deployment modes and processing methods.
Elongated PEO-based nanoparticles bind the high-density lipoprotein (HDL) receptor scavenger receptor class B I (SR-BI).

Targeting cell-surface receptors with nanoparticles (NPs) is a crucial aspect of nanomedicine. Here, we show that soft, flexible, elongated NPs with poly-ethylene-oxide (PEO) exteriors and poly-butadiene (PBD) interiors - PEO-PBD filomicelles - interact directly with the major high-density lipoprotein (HDL) receptor and SARS-CoV-2 uptake factor, SR-BI. Filomicelles have a ~ 6-fold stronger interaction with reconstituted SR-BI than PEO-PBD spheres. HDL, and the lipid transport inhibitor, BLT-1, both block the uptake of filomicelles by macrophages and Idla7 cells, the latter are constitutively expressing SR-BI (Idla7-SR-BI). Co-injections of HDL and filomicelles into wild-type mice reduced filomicelle signal in the liver and increased filomicelle plasma levels. The same was true with SCARB1-/- mice. SR-BI binding is followed by phagocytosis for filomicelle macrophage entry, but only SR-BI is needed for entry into Idla7-SR-BI cells. PEO-PBD spheres did not interact strongly with SR-BI in the above experiments. The results show elongated PEO-based NPs can bind cells via cooperativity among SR-BI receptors on cell surfaces.