cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Fictive Capital and Artifacts: The Diamond Rush of Nineteenth-Century South Africa

This chapter is an examination of the late nineteenth-century diamond rush in South Africa, with particular attention to the effects of its speculative culture. The complex relationship between material culture and a speculative community is examined through a discussion of the excavated remains of a tavern on the outskirts of the fields called the Half-Way House Hotel. By positioning questions of speculative markets on the late nineteenth-century South African landscape, this chapter illustrates how some characteristics of our contemporary speculative economy were forged in the colonial context.
Contemporary Approaches to Patients with Heart Failure

Incident heart failure and the burden of hospitalization may be demonstrating a decline. However, as the population ages, the prevalence of heart failure continues to increase. Mortality among heart failure patients is increasingly due to non-cardiovascular causes. Current evidence-based therapy for heart failure has improved heart failure related mortality. Current efforts should be directed toward optimizing evidence based medical and device therapy, reducing morbidity, and increasing quality of life with heart failure. Future clinical trials should focus on therapies for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, regenerative therapy for heart failure, and optimizing durable mechanical support for end-stage heart failure.
Situated Word Learning: Words of the Year (WsOY) and Social Studies Inquiry

Current events influence public interest and drive Internet word searches. For over a decade, linguists and dictionary publishers have analyzed big data from Internet word searches to designate “Words of the Year” (WsOY). In this study, we examine how WsOY can foster critical digital literacy and illuminate essential aspects of inquiry and disciplinary thinking within social studies. We contend WsOY and online dictionaries are fertile ground for simultaneously supporting academic language development, digital literacy, critical historical literacy, comprehension, and disciplinary heuristics of social studies. WsOY also represent an exemplar of a kind of vocabulary study that can bolster situated cognition to actively engage learners with multi-genre content through disciplinary techniques. Delving into complex and layered word meanings through non-linear and generative word learning processes embedded in technology-mediated contexts naturally encourages situated word learning and models how disciplinary heuristics can be learned through word meaning development.
Red blood cell minor antigen mismatches during chronic transfusion therapy for sickle cell anemia.

Background Red blood cell (RBC) alloimmunization occurs at a high frequency in sickle cell anemia (SCA) despite serologic matching for Rh (C/c, E/e) and K antigens. RBC minor antigen genotyping allows for prediction of antigens and RH variants that may lead to alloimmunization. Study design and methods RBC antigen genotyping was performed on chronically transfused pediatric SCA patients, using PreciseType human erythrocyte antigen (HEA), RHCE, and RHD BeadChip arrays. All patients received C/c, E/e, and K serologically matched units (Category 1); patients with prior RBC antibodies were also matched for Fya , Jkb , and any antibodies (Category 2). The RBC genotypes of all leukoreduced (LR) units transfused over a 12-month period were determined by the prototype HEA-LR BeadChip assay. Results There were 2320 RBC units transfused to 90 patients in 1135 transfusion episodes. Thirty-five (38.9%) patients had homozygous or compound heterozygous RH variants. Seven new alloantibodies were detected, with alloantibody incidence of 0.706 in 100 units for Category 2 transfusions and 0.068 in 100 units for Category 1 (p = 0.02). Three patients on Category 2 transfusions formed new anti-Jsa and had a higher rate of exposure to Jsa than those who did not form anti-Jsa (20.4 vs. 8.33 exposures/100 units, p = 0.02). The most frequent mismatches were S (43.9%), Doa (43.9%), Fya (29.2%), M (28.4%), and Jkb (28.1%). Conclusions Alloimmunization incidence was higher in those with prior RBC antibodies, suggesting that past immunologic responders are at higher risk for future alloimmunization and therefore may benefit from more extensive antigen matching beyond C/c, E/e, K, Fya , and Jkb .
Small Mammal Movements and Fire History: Testing the Long-Term Effects of the 1988 Huckleberry Mountain Fire

Fires are an important ecological force shaping biological communities in western North America. Fires change landscapes in ways which influence the relative abundance and activities of the organisms occurring in those habitats. Preliminary results from previous work suggest the stage of fire succession may influence individual movements on the landscape. As part of a long-term study of the 1988 Yellowstone fires along the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway, we set out to examine these patterns in more detail to (1) test whether the two dominant small mammal species were moving different distances based upon the stage of succession in a particular habitat, and (2) determine the role of habitat complexity, resource types, and species abundance in driving these patterns. Using movement distances from capture-recapture data and fluorescent powder tracking of individuals we compared movement distances and habitat usage between mid-succession and late-succession trapping grids for red-backed voles (Myodes gapperi) and deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). The results suggest deer mice, some of the first colonizers to burned habitat, are moving farther than red-backed voles, and move farther in burned habitats than in unburned habitats. Red-backed voles exhibit slightly, but not significantly, longer movements in burned habitats. Powder tracking results suggest habitat complexity, in particular the quantity of coarse woody debris, may partially explain the differences in movement patterns by burn history. These results are important for understanding the long-lasting impacts of fire history on population and community patterns.
A Narrative Review of Physician Perspectives Regarding the Social and Environmental Determinants of Obesity.

Diet-related chronic diseases result from individual and non-individual (social, environmental, and macro-level) factors. Recent health policy trends, such as population health management, encourage assessment of the individual and non-individual factors that cause these diseases. In this review, we evaluate the physician’s perspective on the individual and non-individual causes and management of obesity. Physicians generally rated individual-level causes (i.e., biology, psychology, and behavior) as more important than social or environmental factors in the development of obesity, and utilized individual-level strategies over social or environmental strategies to manage obesity. This review suggests that clinicians perceive individual characteristics to be more important in the development and management of obesity than social or environmental factors. Additional research is needed to understand why.
Laser Absorption and Scaling Behavior in Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing of Metals

The effect of powder bed thickness and laser beam diameter on laser absorptivity is studied using micro-calorimetry. Dimensionless analysis is utilized to consolidate multiple influence factors into a single parameter for comparison between materials and laser parameters.
The Value of Negative Diagnosis in Thyroid Fine-Needle Aspiration: a Retrospective Study with Histologic Follow-Up

The Bethesda System for reporting thyroid cytopathology (BSRTC) predicts an incidence of malignancy of less than 5% in thyroid nodules with a benign diagnosis on fine-needle aspiration (FNA). However, recent series have suggested that the true rate of malignancy might be significantly higher in this category of patients. We reviewed our experience by performing a retrospective analysis of patients with benign thyroid FNA results who underwent thyroidectomy between 2008 and 2013 at a large academic center. Information including demographics, ultrasound features, FNA diagnosis, and surgical follow-up information were recorded. Slides were reviewed on cytology-histology discrepant cases, and it was determined whether the discrepancy was due to sampling or interpretation error. A total of 802 FNA cases with a benign diagnosis and surgical follow-up were identified. FNA diagnoses included 738 cases of benign goiter and 64 cases of lymphocytic thyroiditis. On subsequent surgical resection, 144 cases were found to be neoplastic, including 117 malignant cases. False negative, defined as interpretation error and inadequate biopsy of the nodule harboring malignancy, was 6%. When cases of noninvasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary-like nuclear features (NIFTP) were excluded from the analysis, false-negative rate was 5%. When microPTC cases were excluded, false-negative rate was 3% and was slightly less than 3% when both microPTC and NIFTP cases were excluded from the analysis. Retrospective review of neoplastic cases showed that 57% were due to sampling error and 43% were due to interpretation error. Interpretation error was more likely to occur in follicular patterned neoplasms (75%), while sampling error was more common in non-follicular variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma (non-FVPTC) (61%). With the exclusion of microPTC, interpretation errors were still more likely to occur in follicular neoplasms (79%) but there was no significant difference in sampling error between non-FVPTC (37%) and follicular patterned neoplasms (42%). Tumor size was larger in cases with interpretation error (mean = 2.3 cm) compared to cases with sampling error (mean = 1.4 cm). This study shows that the false-negative rate of thyroid FNA at our institution is not significantly above the rate suggested by the BSRTC. Interpretation errors were more likely to occur in follicular patterned neoplasms, while non-FVPTC was more frequently found in false negative cases due to inadequate sampling.
Readiness for Discharge After Foot and Ankle Surgery Using Peripheral Nerve Blocks: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Spinal and General Anesthesia as Supplements to Nerve Blocks.

BACKGROUND Neuraxial anesthesia is often viewed as superior to general anesthesia but may delay discharge. Comparisons do not typically use multimodal analgesics and nerve blockade. Combining nerve blockade with general anesthesia may reduce pain, opioid consumption, and nausea. We hypothesized that general anesthesia (with nerve blocks) would lead to earlier readiness for discharge, compared to spinal anesthesia (with nerve blocks). METHODS All patients underwent ambulatory foot and ankle surgery, with a predicted case duration of 1-3 hours. All patients received popliteal and adductor canal nerve blocks using bupivacaine and dexamethasone. No intraoperative opioids were administered. All patients received ondansetron, dexamethasone, ketamine, and ketorolac. Patients, data collectors, and the data analyst were not informed of group assignment. Patients were randomized to spinal or general anesthesia with concealed allocation. Spinal anesthesia was performed with mepivacaine and accompanied with propofol sedation. After general anesthesia was induced with propofol, a laryngeal mask airway was inserted, followed by sevoflurane and propofol. Time until ready for discharge, the primary outcome, was compared between groups after adjusting for age and surgery time using multivariable unconditional quantile regression. Secondary outcomes compared at multiple timepoints were adjusted for multiple comparisons using the Holm-Bonferroni step-down procedure. RESULTS General anesthesia patients were ready for discharge at a median of 39 minutes earlier (95% confidence interval, 2-75; P = .038) versus spinal anesthesia patients. Patients in both groups met readiness criteria for discharge substantially before actual discharge. Pain scores at rest were higher among general anesthesia patients 1 hour after leaving the operating room (adjusted difference in means, 2.1 [95% confidence interval, 1.0-3.2]; P < .001). Other secondary outcomes (including opioid use, opioid side effects, nausea, headache, sore throat, and back pain) were not different. CONCLUSIONS General anesthesia was associated with earlier readiness for discharge, but the difference may not be clinically significant and did not lead to earlier actual discharge. Most secondary outcomes were not different between groups. The choice of spinal or general anesthesia as an adjunct to peripheral nerve blockade can reflect patient, clinician, and institutional preferences.
Concepts and Artistry in the Treatment of Scapholunate Ligament Injuries.

Background Scapholunate ligament injuries are highly challenging injuries to treat. Great uncertainly remains in determining which operative procedures are most effective. Furthermore, there is no consensus on whether surgical intervention changes the natural course of scapholunate injuries. Methods The authors present their assessment of scapholunate injuries and the senior author's preferred surgical techniques. Surgical videos are included. The authors' postoperative management is described. Results Operative procedures are selected based on the patient's timing and pattern of injury, degree of associated carpal changes and arthritis, and goals. Conclusion Over the past 20 years, the senior author has had good success with these techniques, but prospective, longterm outcome studies are needed to critically assess whether these surgical techniques improve patients' long-term function and pain.
Weighing values and risks of beloved invasive species: The case of the survivor tree and conflict management in urban green infrastructure

Abstract A critical aspect of urban green infrastructure management hinges on the treatment of native and invasive species. Invasive species are widely seen as a major threat, yet the context-specific values people have for some of these species pose challenges for their management. Here, we offer a case study of the 9/11 survivor tree, a Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana Decne.) that survived the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center in New York City and has since become a symbol of resilience. That individual tree and its progeny are beloved and they are also characterized as invasive. As part of the longitudinal research of the US Forest Service Living Memorials Project, we report findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with eight stewards from six living memorial sites that have survivor trees and with five individuals who have expert knowledge of the survivor tree, its propagation and dissemination. We find that some people see the tree primarily as a heroic symbol of hope and resilience, others see it primarily a threat to personal property, safety, and to biodiversity, which overshadow its social value. We conclude that Callery pears are associated with multiple, conflicting values, having the power to both unite and divide around issues of recovery and resilience in social and ecological spheres. Whereas managers and policy makers tend to have absolute views of invasive species as negative, living memorial stewards and others affected by tragedies have personal relationships that significantly influence their attitudes and practices toward a line of Callery pears. We conclude that urban green infrastructure management might best be seen as a highly contingent and value-driven practice, and that understanding these social meanings may lead to better stewardship of the whole social-ecological system.
Women, Gender Relations and Decision-Making in Caboclo Households in the Amazon Estuary

This contribution presents an ethnographic report of the social relationships between men and women in five households situated in the region of Ponta de Pedras, Marajo Island, Para, in the beginning of the 1990s. From these reports, Siqueira concludes that the women’s power degrees in influencing household decision making is highly affected by the following factors: type of rights they hold regarding land property, effective economic contribution and education, the latter not necessarily formal. In these arrangements, the decision making process can be centralised on the masculine figure (the ‘head of the household’) or else shared, in a negotiated way, between the spouses. Siqueira stresses that to understand and to valorise woman’s role, as well as understanding the households’ dynamics in detail, is fundamental to the eventual success of projects aiming the improvement of these families’ material life quality.
Researching Consumer Decisions Making with Information Display Boards

A method of researching consumer decision making is described and illustrated in a test of consumer behaviour with respect to gift shopping. It is hypothesized that consumers put less search effort into shopping for gifts for less involving occasions than they do in shopping for themselves, but that gifts for a close personal friend will involve as much shopping as for oneself. The test results support the hypothesis.
Generalized run tests for statistical process control

In a sequence of elements, a run is defined as a maximal subsequence of like elements. The number of runs or the length of the longest run has been widely used to test the randomness of an ordered ...
SIPI Co-Sim: Signal Performance of Super Speed Differential I/O with Power Referencing Design

Printed circuit board (PCB) design with full ground referencing for high speed signaling is generally preferred for better or cleaner signal return path. However, this has become very challenging when platform design is trending toward a smaller and thinner form factor where having full ground layers in between PCB stack-up is no longer feasible for practical hardware implementation. With the increase in popularity to have signal-to-power referencing in PCB design, signal-integrity (SI) and power-integrity (PI) co-simulation is however not that straight forward and often comes with sophisticated co-sim’s assumptions. This is because signaling quality is impacted by noise coupling suffered by the signal which has high dependency on the power plane sizes and shapes, area of power referenced, as well as how well the power delivery network (PDN) design is. In this paper, we evaluate the SI performance of a super speed input/output (I/O) buffer with full ground plane or partial power plane as its return path. Three controlled electrical parameters - voltage threshold, peak-to-peak noise and frequency are varied in our studies to investigate the impact of power referencing to signal eye margin. From the study, it is shown that power referencing is doable for high-speed I/O on the conditions that the power referenced voltage rail is a low frequency rails that has dominant frequency contents in the range of less than 5% of the targeted signal operating frequency and the total peak-to-peak noise is below 330mVpp. With these findings, platform routing guidelines for I/O design could be more relaxed and flexible, by allowing partial power referencing to the high speed signal traces.
Pragmatism and the Origins of the Policy Sciences: Rediscovering Lasswell and the Chicago School

This Element presents an examination of the origins of the policy sciences in the School of Pragmatism at the University of Chicago in the period 1915–38. Harold D. Lasswell, the principal creator of the policy sciences, based much of his work on the perspectives of public policy of John Dewey and other pragmatists at Chicago. Characteristics of the policy sciences include orientations that are normative, policy-relevant, contextual, and multi-disciplinary. These orientations originate in pragmatist principles of the unity of knowledge and action and functionalist explanations of action by reference to values. These principles are central to the future development of the policy sciences.
Tissue Permittivity Measurement with Concurrent CT Imaging: Analysis of Heterogeneity Effects

Tissue dielectric properties are important parameters in microwave sensing and microwave ablation as the tissue contrast and input to simulations, respectively. Coaxial probes are widely used in property measurements, however inhomogeneities in tissues might result in inconsistent measurements. To further analyze this issue, computed tomography (CT) was used to image assumed coaxial probe sensing volume in an ex-vivo lung tissue. Even though density of lung and measured permittivity had positive correlation, high variation in data suggested limitations in CT image resolution might have contributed the variation. Further analysis with simulations showed an inclusion with the width of 0.3 mm and 50% of the permittivity of the background tissue can impact measurements significantly.
Laser-Supported Monocular Visual Tracking for Natural Environments

This paper presents and demonstrates a 2D laser-supported visual tracking solution, that can achieve reliable performance in unstructured scenes such as those seen in natural environment surveys. The method is shown to sufficiently stabilize scale and account for scale drift, as well as improve overall reliability. The suggested method is minimally invasive, does not require any additional parameter and does not necessarily require a laser, which can be replaced by any set of points with known depth, with no constraint on the temporal continuity of known points. We also test our method on 4 surveys, captured in a natural riverine environment, that proved to be challenging even for the state-of-the-art in visual tracking.
Disparities in the Use of Neoadjuvant Therapy for Resectable Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND Current guidelines support either immediate surgical resection or neoadjuvant therapy (NT) for patients with resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, which patients are selected for NT and whether disparities exist in the use of NT for PDAC are not well understood. METHODS Using the National Cancer Database from 2004 through 2016, the clinical, demographic, socioeconomic, and hospital-related characteristics of patients with stage I/II PDAC who underwent immediate surgery versus NT followed by surgery were compared. RESULTS Among 58,124 patients who underwent pancreatectomy, 8,124 (14.0%) received NT whereas 50,000 (86.0%) did not. Use of NT increased significantly throughout the study period (from 3.5% in 2004 to 26.4% in 2016). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that travel distance, education level, hospital facility type, clinical T stage, tumor size, and year of diagnosis were associated with increased use of NT, whereas comorbidities, uninsured/Medicaid status, South/West geography, left-sided tumor location, and increasing age were associated with immediate surgery (all P<.001). Based on logistic regression-derived interaction factors, the association between NT use and median income, education level, Midwest location, clinical T stage, and clinical N stage significantly increased over time (all P<.01). CONCLUSIONS In addition to traditional clinicopathologic factors, several demographic, socioeconomic, and hospital-related factors are associated with use of NT for PDAC. Because NT is used increasingly for PDAC, efforts to reduce disparities will be critical in improving outcomes for all patients with pancreatic cancer.
7 – Adjustment Dynamics

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on adjustment dynamics. A powerful theory of disequilibrium economics is of great importance in two ways. First, if it shows the stability of equilibrium, then there is a method of finding equilibrium—simply set up the disequilibrium system and trace its path to equilibrium. Second, most economic variables are likely to be in at least slight disequilibrium; therefore, a more realistic theory would be forthcoming relative to the macrostatics ordinarily used by applied economists. Several different price adjustment systems are reviewed in the chapter. First, the systems independent of asset accumulation, both Walrasian and Keynesian, are discussed. The analysis is appropriate to a very short run, for example, a month. The chapter also discusses asset accumulation but without growth in productive capital. This applies to intermediate-run adjustments, perhaps, over six months. The chapter also shows how Marshallian- type and Keynesian-type systems incorporate constraints on the Walrasian-type system.
Agent-Based Privacy Preserving Transactive Control for Managing Peak Power Consumption

Many communities, such as college campuses, purchase electricity at a rate that includes a peak demand charge (averaged over 15-minute intervals). Energy cost reduction and demand response require actively managing the peak demand. In this paper, we develop transactive control mechanisms that enable buildings in an active distribution system or microgrid to cooperatively manage peak demand. A decentralized transactive control (DTC) approach is designed based on a novel decomposition algorithm that preserves the detailed load profile and information. By directly solving a mixed integer linear program, the scalable algorithm determines the optimal or near-optimal operating point for the system. Selected buildings on a real-world campus are used to evaluate the proposed platform. The results show the peak demand can be dramatically reduced while maintaining the largest possible building energy revenue.
Ego effectiveness: A novel individual difference approach to health behavior and coping:

Taking care of one’s health can require trading current feelings for longer-term considerations of health and well-being. The present research (total N = 366) sought to assess ego operations of thi...
Abstract 15540: Prevalence and Sociodemographic Determinants of Food Insecurity Among Adults With Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in the United States

Background: High out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures among US adults with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) may expose them to food insecurity, which can lead to worse health outcome...
Project Pipeline: Preservation, Persistence, and Performance.

Preservation pipelines demonstrate extended value when digitized content is also computation ready. Expanding this to historical controlled vocabularies published in analog format requires additional steps if they are to be fully leveraged for research. This paper reports on work addressing this challenge. We report on a pipeline and project progress addressing three key goals: 1) transforming the 1910 Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) linked data standard, 2) implementing persistent identifiers (PIDs) and launching our prototype ARK resolver, and 3) importing the 1910 LCSH into the Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Engineering (HIVE) System to support automatic metadata generation and scholarly analysis of the historical record. The discussion considers the implications of our work in the broader context of preservation, and the conclusion summarizes our work and identifies next steps.
Light Scattering from Structured Particles

In many problems, particularly in the field of biology1 it is of interest to study the dynamical behavior of scattering centers with dimensions comparable or larger than the wavelength of light. Recently, a model calculation has been published2 which describes the scatterer as a coated ellipsoid. It is found that the width of the correlation function exhibits a periodic dependence on scattering angle which is characteristic of the interference pattern produced by the shape and the internal structure of the particle. The results of this work by Chen et al. will be outlined briefly in the following article.
Inhaled nitric oxide prevents neutrophil-mediated, oxygen radical-dependent leak in isolated rat lungs.

We found that ventilation with nitric oxide (NO, 50 ppm) significantly (P 0.05) PAP at 10 min and only modestly reduced PAP at 30 and 60 min of perfusion. Our results suggest that oxidative endothelial damage, and not increased hydrostatic pressure, was the primary cause of the capillary leak, and that the protection provided by inhaled NO was not solely a consequence of vasodilation. We conclude that inhaled NO prevents neutrophil-mediated, oxygen radical-dependent leak in isolated rat lungs, and speculate that inhaled NO has anti-inflammatory properties in addition to its ability to cause pulmonary vasodilation.
As Many as Six Impossible Patents Before Breakfast: Property Rights for Business Concepts and Patent System Reform

In this paper, Professor Merges describes the emergence of patents for business "methods" or concepts, such as Internet airplane ticket pur-chase systems. Professor Merges is agnostic about whether these patents are worthwhile. Nevertheless, he argues that the increased volume of patent applications stemming from this newly patentable subject matter has pushed the patent system into crisis. In particular, he focuses attention on determining an acceptable "error rate" for issued patents, with an eye toward reducing the number of invalid business concept patents that are actually issued. In the process, he calls for new appreciation of the relationship between the patent office and private parties. He argues for policies that will efficiently coordinate the efforts of both groups to achieve the socially desirable end, which is an appropriate expenditure to determine patent validity. Some of these reforms involve restructuring jobs and incentives in the Patent Office. Others involve obtaining the in-put of those parties that suffer most if a firm receives an invalid patent ? i.e., the firm's competitors. These also tend to be the parties with the best information about patent validity. It is therefore logical, according to Professor Merges, to get these competitors into the patent process as early and as thoroughly as possible. This leads to a proposal to adopt a patent opposition system in the U.S., much like the one currently in place in Europe. Only reforms such as these will lower the incidence of poor-quality patents. And only then, Merges argues, will we be able to decide whether patents for business concepts make sense or not.
Error Rate Bounds and Iterative Weighted Majority Voting for Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has become an eective and popular tool for human-powered computation to label large datasets. Since the workers can be unreliable, it is common in crowdsourcing to assign multiple workers to one task, and to aggregate the labels in order to obtain results of high quality. In this paper, we provide nite-sample exponential bounds on the error rate (in probability and in expectation) of general aggregation rules under the Dawid-Skene crowdsourcing model. The bounds are derived for multi-class labeling, and can be used to analyze many aggregation methods, including majority voting, weighted majority voting and the oracle Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) rule. We show that the oracle MAP rule approximately optimizes our upper bound on the mean error rate of weighted majority voting in certain setting. We propose an iterative weighted majority voting (IWMV) method that optimizes the error rate bound and approximates the oracle MAP rule. Its one step version has a provable theoretical guarantee on the error rate. The IWMV method is intuitive and computationally simple. Experimental results on simulated and real data show that IWMV performs at least on par with the state-of-the-art methods, and it has a much lower computational cost (around one hundred times faster) than the state-of-the-art methods.
50.1: Invited Paper: The Importance of Melanopsin Activation in Perception, Health, and Lighting Design

We reviewed the role of melanopsin-containing intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) in light-dependent functions, including circadian rhythm that is important for health, pupil responses and visual perception. We then discussed the implications for lighting design. Finally we described a five-primary photostimulating method that can independently control melanopsin activation in humans.
New finds along Arctic mid-ocean ridge

A recent expedition to explore the 1,100-mile Gakkel Ridge beneath the Arctic ice cap has turned up 12 previously unknown volcanoes, hydrothermal vents with species that are potentially new to science, and other unexpected findings about the world's slowest-spreading and least volcanically active mid- ocean ridge. Researchers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy and the German icebreaker F.S. Polarstern made the findings during a July 31–October 3 cruise as part of the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition (AMORE), funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The researchers announced their results on November 28.
Histologic characterization of the thymus in canine X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency

Abstract This study describes the thymic morphology in 52 dogs (ranging in age from 1 to 79 days) with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency disease (XSCID). The thymuses from the XSCID dogs and age-matched controls were evaluated histotogically for the presence of Hassall's corpuscles and branchial duct remnants, the degree of corticomedullary differentiation, and lymphoid development and organization. Within this population of XSCID dogs with the same genetic defect, three histologic patterns of thymic dysplasia were recognized. Simple dysplasia, noted in 27 XSCID thymuses, was characterized by varying numbers of lymphocytes, no corticomedullary demarcation, and an absence of Hassall's corpuscles. Dysplasia with Hassall's corpuscles was noted in 21 dogs and consisted of varying numbers of lymphocytes, no corticomedullary demarcation, and varying numbers of Hassall's corpuscles. Dysplasia with partial corticomedullary demarcation, noted in 4 dogs, consisted of relatively normal-looking thymuses with well-defined corticomedullary demarcation and numerous Hassall's corpuscles; however, the lobules were extremely small and the subcapsular cortical region was devoid of lymphocytes. Cystic branchial duct remnants were present in 46 of the 52 XSCID thymuses and were more numerous in those thymuses with the pattern of simple dysplasia. The thymuses of XSCID pups less that 4 weeks of age were of the simple dysplastic type and thymuses of XSCID dogs greater than 4 weeks of age were more developed, as evidenced by increased numbers of Hassall's corpuscles and greater corticomedullary demarcation. In conclusion, the thymic dysplasia and lymphoid hypoplasia associated with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency disease in the dog does not appear to be due to a developmental arrest but rather due to an active process dependent on factors probably related to the overall genetic defect.
Single particle tracking reveals biphasic transport during nanorod magnetophoresis through extracellular matrix

Magnetic drug targeting has been proposed as a means of efficiently targeting drugs to tumors. However, the extracellular matrix (ECM) remains a significant barrier to long-range magnetophoretic transport through the tumor volume. While ensemble measurements of nanoparticle magnetophoresis have been reported, a single particle level understanding of magnetophoretic transport remains at large. We quantify nanorod magnetophoresis through ECM based on single particle observations. We find that smaller diameter particles achieve larger velocities through ECM despite experiencing smaller magnetic forces. Additionally, two interesting dynamics are elucidated. First, 18 nm diameter nanorods experience bimodal stick-slip motion through ECM during static field magnetophoresis, while similar bimodal transport is not observed for 55 nm nor 200 nm diameter nanorods. Second, smaller particles experience larger deviations in their orientation angle with respect to the magnetic field. This work elucidates important dynamics of nanoparticle transport through complex, porous biomaterials that may go unnoticed during ensemble measurements.
Comparison of two single‐channel vibrotactile aids for the hearing impaired

Two commercially available single-channel vibrotactile aids, designed to transmit information about acoustic stimuli to persons who cannot perceive such stimuli through conventional amplification, ...
Solvated interaction energy (SIE) for scoring protein-ligand binding affinities. 2. Benchmark in the CSAR-2010 scoring exercise.

Solvated interaction energy (SIE) is an end-point physics-based scoring function for predicting binding affinities from force-field nonbonded interaction terms, continuum solvation, and configurational entropy linear compensation. We tested the SIE function in the Community Structure–Activity Resource (CSAR) scoring challenge consisting of high-resolution cocrystal structures for 343 protein–ligand complexes with high-quality binding affinity data and high diversity with respect to protein targets. Particular emphasis was placed on the sensitivity of SIE predictions to the assignment of protonation and tautomeric states in the complex and the treatment of metal ions near the protein–ligand interface. These were manually curated from an originally distributed CSAR-HiQ data set version, leading to the currently distributed CSAR-NRC-HiQ version. We found that this manual curation was a critical step for accurately testing the performance of the SIE function. The standard SIE parametrization, previously calib...
Lymphoid neoplasms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and dermatomyositis: Frequency of Epstein-Barr virus and other features associated with immunosuppression☆

We recently reported two cases of reversible Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated lymphomas in patients undergoing methotrexate therapy for rheumatic disease. The current study was undertaken to investigate how frequently lymphoid neoplasms in patients with rheumatic disease show features of lymphoproliferations occurring in immunocompromised patients. Eighteen patients (including the two previously reported patients) with rheumatoid arthritis or dermatomyositis who developed lymphoproliferative lesions and on whom detailed clinical information was available were studied. As a group these patients developed a spectrum of lymphoproliferative lesions; however, a subset of patients developed neoplasms with features associated with immunosuppression. The neoplasms occurred in extranodal sites in 10 (56%) patients, showed a diffuse large-cell histology in nine (50%) patients, and contained EBV (EBER1) transcripts and EBV latent membrane protein in six (33%) patients. In three (17%) patients the neoplasms showed the entire constellation of features typical of immunosuppression-associated lymphoproliferations, including extranodal location, large-cell or polymorphous histology, geographic areas of necrosis, and the presence of EBV. These three patients were receiving both steroids and methotrexate at the time they developed their neoplasms. The findings of this study support the hypothesis that a subset of lymphoid neoplasms in rheumatic patients occurs in an immunocompromised setting and suggest that therapeutic immunosuppression may contribute, at least in part, to the development of these lymphoid neoplasms.
Headspace analysis identifies indole and 1-octen-3-ol as the "coal tar" odor of Tricholoma inamoenum

The odor emanating from sporocarps of Tricholoma inamoenum has been described as resembling “coal tar”. To characterize the compounds responsible for this odor, volatile chemicals released from T. inamoenum sporocarps were collected using solid phase microextraction (SPME). Subsequent analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) showed only indole and 1-octen-3-ol, so these compounds must be responsible for the “coal tar” odor of T. inamoenum. Mushroom pileus size was a factor in the amount of indole produced; larger mushrooms released 25-times more indole than smaller ones. A comparison of SPME and CH2Cl2 solvent extraction of sporocarps showed major differences in the volatile organic compounds. Benzaldehyde and phenyl acetaldehyde were the major compounds in the solvent extracts, but were not detected in the SPME experiments. Tissue disruption of the mushroom before solvent extraction showed up to a 40-fold increase in the amount of 1-octen-3-ol present.
What a Coincidence! The Effects of Incidental Similarity on Compliance

Four studies examined the effect of an incidental similarity on compliance to a request. Undergraduates who believed they shared a birthday (Study 1), a first name (Study 2), or fingerprint similarities (Study 3) with a requester were more likely to comply with a request than participants who did not perceive an incidental similarity with the requester. The findings are consistent with past research demonstrating that people often rely on heuristic processing when responding to requests and with Heider's description of unit relationships in which perceived similarities lead to positive affect. Consistent with the unit relation interpretation, participants did not increase compliance when hearing about an incidental similarity with someone other than the requester or when they believed the feature they shared with the requester was common.
The cycling of biogenic compounds and their diagenetically transformed products in seawater

Abstract Results are presented for two studies concerned with the sources, transport and transformation mechanisms of two classes of organic compounds. An emphasis is placed on the importance of collecting and correlating related chemical and oceanographic data with the qualitative and quantitative organic compound analyses. The first study involves the analysis of seawater samples for a class of relatively labile, biogenic compounds, the sterols. From the vertical profiles of the sterols, along with hydrographic, particulate organic carbon, and total particulate matter data, an attempt is made to understand sterol distributions in the ocean and the transport mechanisms governing their movement into the deep sea. The second study involves the analysis of Sargasso Sea water samples for a class of more resistant, transformed biogenic compounds, humic and fulvic acids. Their isolation, structural elucidation, mechanism of formation and fate are discussed.
Coupled changes in sand grain size and sand transport driven by changes in the upstream supply of sand in the Colorado River: Relative importance of changes in bed-sand grain size and bed-sand area

Sand transport in the Colorado River in Marble and Grand canyons was naturally limited by the upstream supply of sand. Prior to the 1963 closure of Glen Canyon Dam, the river exhibited the following four effects of sand supply limitation: (1) hysteresis in sediment concentration, (2) hysteresis in sediment grain size coupled to the hysteresis in sediment concentration, (3) production of inversely graded flood deposits, and (4) development or modification of a lag between the time of a flood peak and the time of either maximum or minimum (depending on reach geometry) bed elevation. Construction and operation of the dam has enhanced the degree to which the first two of these four effects are evident, and has not affected the degree to which the last two effects of sand supply limitation are evident in the Colorado River in Marble and Grand canyons. The first three of the effects involve coupled changes in suspended-sand concentration and grain size that are controlled by changes in the upstream supply of sand. During tributary floods, sand on the bed of the Colorado River fines; this causes the suspended sand to fine and the suspended-sand concentration to increase, even when the discharge of water remains constant. Subsequently, the bed is winnowed of finer sand, the suspended sand coarsens, and the suspended-sand concentration decreases independently of discharge. Also associated with these changes in sand supply are changes in the fraction of the bed that is covered by sand. Thus, suspended-sand concentration in the Colorado River is likely regulated by both changes in the bed-sand grain size and changes in the bed-sand area. A physically based flow and suspended-sediment transport model is developed, tested, and applied to data from the Colorado River to evaluate the relative importance of changes in the bed-sand grain size and changes in the bed-sand area in regulating suspended-sand concentration. Although the model was developed using approximations for steady, uniform flow, and other simplifications that are not met in the Colorado River, the results nevertheless support the idea that changes in bed-sand grain size are much more important than changes in bed-sand area in regulating the concentration of suspended sand. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Going, going, gone: the effects of aid policies on graduation at three large public institutions

This paper exploits uniquely detailed data and cross-institution variation in aid for three large public universities to identify the effects of aid on the probability of college graduation. The results indicate that need-based and merit-based aid both increase graduation rates at large public institutions, but primarily through the types of students that ‘select’ these institutions. Merit-based aid facilitates an institution attracting students who have higher observed academic ability that raises the probability of graduation. Need-based aid enables an institution to attract students with non-academic attributes such as social and cultural networks that, while often unobserved, improve graduation success. Broadly, our results suggest that recent aid policy that has moved away from need-based aid for low-income students (reducing their ability to find the best institutional match) and toward merit-based aid (that alters the distribution of high ability students across colleges) could foster stagnant graduation rates even with rising enrollment rates that have been observed over the last three decades.
Quenching mechanisms of room-temperature phosphorescence of tryptophan in proteins

As a means to study the relationship of diffusion through proteins with the protein dynamics the authors used the quenching of phosphorescence of an intrinsic tryptophan by molecules that are free to diffuse in solution. Tryptophans in rigid environments within proteins are well known to exhibit long-lived phosphorescence at room temperature. Phosphorescence can be used to study the triplet quenching reaction in this way: the reactive triplet species of tryptophan is formed by excitation to the singlet state followed by spontaneous conversion to the triplet state and the reaction of the triplet state with an external molecule is monitored by a decrease in phosphorescence lifetime. The phosphorescence lifetimes of tryptophan in proteins are often > msec, as contrasted to fluorescence lifetimes on the order of nsec, therefore, phosphorescence is very sensitive to quenching reactions. In previous studies the quenching reaction of tryptophan by molecules with > 4 atoms was examined with the conclusion they interacted with buried tryptophan by a reaction that occurs over distance, not requiring the physical diffusion of these molecules through the protein for the reaction to occur. In contrast, diatomic molecules appear to be able to diffuse through the protein matrix, although diffusion is hindered relative to aqueous medium. Little information is available about the diffusion of triatomic molecules H2O and CO2. The authors use their sulfur analogues, H2S and CS2, respectively, to approach the question whether protein fluctuations allow their penetration.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.