cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Idiopathic Membranous Nephropathy: An Autoimmune Disease

For more than 50 years researchers have debated the evidence for an autoimmune basis of human idiopathic membranous nephritis (MN). Work published in the past 2 years has substantially strengthened the belief that MN is indeed an autoimmune disease of the kidney. Autoantibodies of the IgG4 subclass to at least three podocyte membrane proteins including phospholipase A2-receptor, aldose reductase, and manganese superoxide dismutase have been detected by immunoblotting in sera as well as in acid eluates prepared from renal biopsy tissue of patients with this disease, using either whole tissue or microdissected glomeruli from frozen sections. In each case the podocyte antigen has been shown to co-localize with the subepithelial glomerular immune deposits in renal tissue of the same patients. It is not certain if any of these podocyte proteins is an inciting/primary autoantigen or whether they are secondary antigens recruited by intermolecular epitope-spreading, initiating from a yet-to-be-discovered autoantigen. Although it is clear that autoantibodies to podocyte membrane proteins are elicited in idiopathic MN and contribute to the formation of the subepithelial deposits, many questions remain concerning the triggers for their development and their contribution toward proteinuria and progression of the disease.
Avoiding harms to kidney vendors through legal, regulated markets.

Julian Koplin's “Assessing the Likely Harms to Kidney Vendors in Regulated Organ Markets” (2014) is a welcome addition to the philosophical literature on the ethics of using payments to living vend...
Corruption by Design: Bribery in Chinese Enterprise Licensing

This article analyzes as a game a common form of corruption in Chinese bureaucracies: payment of bribes to officials for a standard good that is not in fixed supply and to which those paying bribes are, in principle, fully entitled. Formal structures and informal expectations have been identified through field research as features of "institutional design" that indicate an asymmetric information game. Bribery is derived as an equilibrium solution in the game. Exercises in comparative statics reveal the robustness of bribery when game parameter values are altered to reflect changes in institutional design. The exercises indicate that reducing corruption, in the sense of reducing bribe sizes, is relatively unproblematic. To move away entirely from corrupt equilibria, however, requires very substantial changes in institutional design and may not be feasible through changes in formal structures alone. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.
Communication Competence as a Foundation for Civic Competence: Processes of Socialization into Citizenship

The study of political socialization must move beyond examinations of knowledge and norms to consider how young people acquire the basic motives and skills needed to participate meaningfully and ef...
Do Transit Users Just Wait for Buses or Wait with Strategies?: Some Numerical Results That Transit Planners Should See

The effects of bus line headway, schedule reliability index, and many other potential predictors on passenger waiting times were investigated. A large amount of waiting time data, including passenger-related attributes and transit system operational characteristics, was collected by direct observation and by videotaping during a 6-month period in the city of Austin, Texas. Various mathematical models were developed, and a preferred model was identified. A linear regression model that uses bus line headway as the only independent variable to predict passenger waiting times was given for transit planning purposes. A great difference between the traditional random model and the study model was examined. With the use of structural breaks on the basis of an econometric analysis approach for the first time, several insights into the numerical results were provided. An 11-min vehicle headway was identified to mark the transition from practically random to less random passenger arrivals, and all transit users can be regarded as coordinated arrivals after 38-min bus headway. The benefits of coordinated arrivals compared with random arrivals were also presented.
MOVING BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES: WOMEN'S SUBJECTIVE ACCOUNTS OF THEIR VIOLENT CRIME*

This research builds on the recent scholarship that questions the anti-agentic depictions of women's acts of violence. We inductively examine women's narratives of their violence to illuminate the diversity of motivations that appear to lie behind that violence. The narratives are drawn from a racially diverse sample of 205 women who were incarcerated in the Hennepin County Adult Detention Facility (Minneapolis, Minnesota). A life events calendar was used to assess women's involvement as both victims and offenders in violent crimes over the 36 months prior to their incarceration. We found that sixty-six women provided information on 106 incidents of violence. Further, given the dominant theoretical framework in studying women's offending, we assess whether particular types of violent incidents are more likely to involve a partner as opposed to someone who is not a partner (friend, acquaintance, or stranger). Our contextualization of these events also includes an examination of the demographic and situational correlates of the incidents. Our findings reveal that women's reasons for engaging in violence are wide-ranging and that we need not essentialize stereotypic views of gender in the study of violence.
Ignition of global wildfires at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary

The recent discovery of an apparently global soot layer at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary indicates that global wildfires were somehow ignited by the impact of a comet or asteroid. It is shown here that the thermal radiation produced by the ballistic reentry of ejecta condensed from the vapor plume of the impact could have increased the global radiation flux by factors of 50 to 150 times the solar input for periods ranging from one to several hours. This great increase in thermal radiation may have been responsible for the ignition of global wildfires, as well as having deleterious effects on unprotected animal life.
Separation of vitamin E and γ-oryzanols from rice bran by normal-phase chromatography

Five commercial silicas [Nova-Pak, μPorasil (Waters, Milford, MA), Kromasil (Eka Nobel, Bohus, Sweden) Spherisorb (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) and Select-KP (Biotage, Charlottesville, VA)] were tested for their efficiency in separating vitamin E and γ-oryzanol components from saponified rice bran extracts, with the perspective of future large-scale purification of the various compounds. The effects of mobile phase composition, eluent flow rate, column temperature and the physical properties of the silica on the selectivity and analysis time were studied. All silicas except Select-KP gave baseline separation of the vitamin E components with isooctane/ethyl acetate (97.5∶2.5) at room temperature. However, only the 4-μm Nova-Pak spherical silica gave adequate resolution of the oryzanols into two distinct fractions with an analysis time ofcirca 20 min. Other analytical conditions, i.e., the content of the polar modifier in the mobile phase, temperature and flow rate, can be used to optimize the separation once the silica had been chosen. Speed of separation is enhanced by increasing the polarity of the eluent, temperature and flow rate, while the selectivity is reduced only slightly. The Nova-Pak silica appears resistant to deactivation from both residual water in the mobile phase and polar components left over after sample clean-up and is suitable for preparative separation of the target compounds.
Projectile breakup in the 27Al(16O,X) reaction at 72, 84, 96, 110, and 125 MeV bombarding energies.

Angular distributions and inclusive energy spectra of isotopes with charges of 3\char21{}7 have been measured in the $^{27}\mathrm{O}$,X) reaction at 72, 84, 96, 110, and 125 MeV bombarding energies. The energy spectra of these isotopes exhibit broad peaks which appear at energies near the beam velocity. Two-body breakup calculations reproduce the energy spectra well at the lower energies, while the three-body calculations give better results at higher energies. The analysis of these spectra indicates that the number of ejectiles due to the breakup process is dependent upon the bombarding energy. The total breakup cross section was found to rise from 155 to 554 mb over the 72\char21{}125 MeV energy range. Furthermore, the percent yields of carbon, lithium, and beryllium varied over this energy range.
Mission to planet Earth: Concept of a Global Observing System

A sequence of disasters ranging from depletion of the ozone layer through droughts, heat waves, and floods to devastating earthquakes led Time magazine in 1988 to name Earth the Planet of the Year instead of naming the usual Man or Woman of the Year. A panel of 33 experts, convened by Time, developed a series of recommendations of what the nations of the world should do with regard to vanishing species, greenhouse effect, garbage disposal, and overpopulation. Clearly, there are many immediate steps that the governments of the world could and should undertake to prevent further deterioration of the environment. But when Time's lead article mentions that there is no universal agreement on the global-warming theory, the conclusion is, “It is far too risky to d o nothing while awaiting absolute proof of disaster.” Scientific disputes are seldom unresolvable if there are adequate data.
Spreads and choice in constructive mathematics

Abstract An approach to choice-free mathematics using spreads: If constructing a point satisfying property P requires choice, replace this problem by that of constructing a nonempty set of elements satisfying P. Then construct a spread, without choice, whose elements satisfy P. The theory is developed and several examples are given.
Formal foundations for systematic digital library generation

Many digital library design, development, and deployment processes are not based on systematic generation activities. The utilization of generation processes enables the precise definition of digital libraries, identification of existing software components, co-generation of multiple digital libraries, and evaluation of a digital library's coverage and completeness. The foundation of a digital library generation process is in the formal framework in which it is described. Two notable formal frameworks have previously been proposed for describing digital libraries and their content, architecture, functionality, and related societies. These two frameworks are merged in this effort to provide the foundation for a generation framework in support of an emerging class of scientific digital libraries.
Learning Lexicons From Speech Using a Pronunciation Mixture Model

In many ways, the lexicon remains the Achilles heel of modern automatic speech recognizers. Unlike stochastic acoustic and language models that learn the values of their parameters from training data, the baseform pronunciations of words in a recognizer's lexicon are typically specified manually, and do not change, unless they are edited by an expert. Our work presents a novel generative framework that uses speech data to learn stochastic lexicons, thereby taking a step towards alleviating the need for manual intervention and automatically learning high-quality pronunciations for words. We test our model on continuous speech in a weather information domain. In our experiments, we see significant improvements over a manually specified “expert-pronunciation” lexicon. We then analyze variations of the parameter settings used to achieve these gains.
Clinical pharmacokinetics of high-dose mitomycin C

The pharmacokinetic profile of high-dose mitomycin C was determined in blood plasma and urine of twelve patients with advanced malignancies in a program including autologous bone marrow transplantation. A total dose of 60 mg/m2 was given, either as a single 60-min infusion or divided into infusions of 30 mg/m2 on each of 2 days or 15 mg/m2 on each of 4 days. One group was given 15-min infusions. Samples of blood plasma and urine were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography. Drug concentrations in plasma followed a biphasic pattern, with a terminal elimination half-life of 45 min. This half-life value and other parameters were unaffected by dose level, infusion time, and repeated doses. The lower peak plasma concentrations following 30 mg/m2 given as 60-min infusions compared to the same dose given over 15 min may have accounted for a dramatic drop in the incidence of a severe hemorrhagic colitis. Mitomycin C was excreted in urine at about the same rate as it was eliminated from plasma, but a larger percentage of the dose appeared in urine after 15-min infusions than after 60-min infusions. The pharmacokinetic profile, together with clinical observations, suggests that the dose-limiting toxicity of mitomycin C may be related to peak drug levels, and that both these levels and the toxicity are lessened as the infusion time is increased.
Stem cell-based therapies for cancer treatment: separating hope from hype

Stem cell-based therapies are emerging as a promising strategy to tackle cancer. Multiple stem cell types have been shown to exhibit inherent tropism towards tumours. Moreover, when engineered to express therapeutic agents, these pathotropic delivery vehicles can effectively target sites of malignancy. This perspective considers the current status of stem cell-based treatments for cancer and provides a rationale for translating the most promising preclinical studies into the clinic.
Creativity and Learning

This article explores personal, organisational and societal perspectives on creativity, arts, and adult education. Attention to creativity in the United States has increased during the past century. Fifty years ago, scholars and practitioners interested in the arts and sciences were focused on extraordinary creative achievements. Since then the scope of such interest has expanded from innovative and useful outcomes such as paintings and inventions, to include characteristics of very creative people, their ways of working, and various influences. The scope has also broadened from a few outstanding examples to increasingly include all people and their lifelong learning in a society in which change and learning have become widespread. This article demonstrates how creative adult education can help enhance the creativity of all people in all aspects of their life. I combine my parallel experience in art and adult education to explore the beneficiaries of art; characteristics of artists; venues where creative ...
Simulation and modeling of self-assembled monolayers of carboxylic acid thiols on flat and nanoparticle gold surfaces.

Quantitative analysis of the 16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid self-assembled monolayer (C16 COOH-SAM) layer thickness on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) was performed using simulation of electron spectra for surface analysis (SESSA) software and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) experimental measurements. XPS measurements of C16 COOH-SAMs on flat gold surfaces were made at nine different photoelectron emission angles (5–85° in 10° increments), corrected using geometric weighting factors and then summed together to approximate spherical AuNPs. The SAM thickness and relative surface roughness (RSA) in SESSA were optimized to determine the best agreement between simulated and experimental surface composition. On the basis of the glancing-angle results, it was found that inclusion of a hydrocarbon-contamination layer on top the C16 COOH-SAM was necessary to improve the agreement between the SESSA and XPS results. For the 16 COOH-SAMs on flat Au surfaces, using a SAM thickness of 1.1 A/CH2 group, an RSA of 1.05, a...
Organizational benefits of mentoring

Executive Overview When an older, more experienced member of an organization takes a junior colleague “under his or her wing,” aiding in the organizational socialization of the less experienced person and passing along knowledge gained through years of living within the organization, a mentoring relationship is said to exist. Both principals in this type of relationship benefit in ways which have often been discussed and, accordingly, many companies have instituted formal mentoring programs. In this article, the authors examine the benefits which flow, not strictly to the individuals involved, but to the organization that fosters mentoring relationships. Principal benefits are the transmission of corporate culture and the provision of a “deep sensing” apparatus for top management. The design of mentoring programs, choice of mentors, and potential pitfalls of mentoring are discussed.
A management system for motion-based gaming peripherals for physical therapy instrumentation

The rise in motion-based gaming peripherals has afforded intriguing opportunities for low-cost instrumentation of health-oriented activities. One particular activity, that of physical therapy, is of considerable interest as traditional systems in the area cost on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. However, while recent research has shown that gaming peripherals can deliver high quality instrumentation, non-expert programmers face considerable challenges in delivering robust and accurate instrumentation outside of the lab environment. Furthermore, when one considers how to fuse data across multiple peripherals, the heterogeneity of peripheral performance significantly complicates recording useful data. To that end, this paper seeks to describe our approach for delivering a robust, accurate, and scalable framework for motion-based gaming peripherals, specifically targeted at physical therapy in the clinical and research settings. We describe the principles of our framework and composition of data flow through a variety of illustrative examples. Finally, we conclude with several experimental setups designed to demonstrate the efficacy of the framework drawn directly from our experience in live clinical settings.
Italian and American masculinities: A comparison of masculine gender role norms.

This study extends empirical data regarding the social constructionist perspective of gender roles by exploring cross-cultural differences in masculine role norms. An additional aim was to test for relations between adherence to particular norms and aspects of psychological well-being. In a sample of 152 Italian male students, participants endorsed less traditional views toward 9 of the 11 masculine norms of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory and reported significantly less conformity than comparable American students. Only the playboy norm received greater endorsement by Italian respondents in this sample. In addition, although male students residing in southern Italy reported greater conformity than their central Italian counterparts, they still endorsed a less traditional stance toward masculine norms than male students in the United States. The masculine norms of emotional control and self-reliance were negatively correlated with positive relations with others. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Optoelectronic Microwave Power Amplifiers

The power amplifiers used in the transmit/receive (TR) modules of future X-band radar systems will be required to be more efficient and compact than currently used circuits. This paper describes a simulation study of optoelectronic (OE) Class AB and Class E microwave power amplifiers based on a novel photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS). The simulations show that as the width of the gallium arsenide PCSS is reduced below 1.0 mum its dielectric breakdown field increases significantly, and at 0.1 mum the switch turn-off time is fast enough for 10.0 GHz amplifier operation. The Class AB OE amplifier based on a five-layer PCSS produced approximately 2.0 W of 10.0 GHz output power with approximately 50% efficiency. The Class E OE amplifier based on a single-layer PCSS produced approximately 86 mW output power with 56% efficiency. The Class E OE amplifier needs to be more carefully designed than the Class AB amplifier, but its output microwave waveforms exhibit less distortion.
Adam Smith: Reforming Merchant Power. The Case for an Open Public Sphere*

Two decades of Adam Smith revisionism have restored his reputation as a philosopher of some substance and refuted the idea that he was simply the ‘high priest’ of capitalism. Yet all too often Smith is still offered up as an ‘English empiricist’ in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Mill. In this article Smith’s critique of mercantilism is re-read through a peculiar Scottish tradition of social thought which began with Hume and which delivers up a surprisingly fresh, open and contemporary thinker. In what follows I will reconstruct Adam Smith’s critique of the merchant class. What I hope to reveal in the course of this reconstruction is the extent to which Smith anticipated some of the principal themes of discourse ethics; in particular, the attempt to find a procedural account of ethical practice, his active stress upon communicative rationality, his theory of recognition, ideal role-taking and the lifeworld of the subject. 1 This understanding of Smith’s analysis should demonstrate the extent to which Smith was concerned with the pragmatics of social interaction. Taken as a piece all of this appears to deliver Smith up to the tradition of continental philosophy rather than that of English empiricism where he is most often cast (Skinner, cited in Smith, 1997, Intro, p. 12, see also Graham, cited in Brodie et al., 2003, p. 341). 2 In short, Smith’s guiding principles are remarkably consistent with those of later phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl. Smith does not simply describe our experience of others; rather, he most often describes the world and the things in it as being also experienced by other minds and other selves. One result of this epistemological reconstruction, I suggest, is that Smith’s system may have something to say about recent scandals in the financial sector. It is worth noting that though this idea of Smith as a representative of phenomenology may sound strange, others have suggested that the intellectual climate of eighteenth-century Enlightenment Scotland was unique. Norman Kemp-Smith, for example, has already argued convincingly that Hume was concerned with the epistemological foundations of a priori knowledge (Kemp-Smith, 1964). George Davie drew our attention to Husserl’s interest in Hume many years ago (Davie, p. 1994). In 1989, Anna Nelli wrote a Masters dissertation supervised by Donald Livingston, entitled ‘Hume as Phenomenologist’, while more recently Donald Livingston himself has positioned Hume within a more phenomenological framework (Livingston, 1998). Finally, in a move that does much to extend and unify
Application of a Decomposition Strategy to the Optimal Synthesis/Design of a Fuel Cell Sub-System

The application of a decomposition methodology to the synthesis/design optimization of a stationary cogeneration fuel cell sub-system for residential/commercial applications is the focus of this paper. To accomplish this, a number of different configurations for the fuel cell sub-system were considered. The most promising candidate configuration, which combines features of different configurations found in the literature, is chosen for detailed thermodynamic, geometric, and economic modeling both at design and off-design. The case is then made for the usefulness and need of decomposition in large-scale optimization. The types of decomposition strategies considered are conceptual/time and physical decomposition. Specific solution approaches to the latter, namely Local-Global Optimization (LGO) are outlined in the paper. Conceptual/time decomposition and physical decomposition using the LGO approach are applied to the fuel cell sub-system. These techniques prove to be useful tools for simplifying the overall synthesis/design optimization problem of the fuel cell sub-system. Finally, the results of the decomposed synthesis/design optimization of the fuel cell sub-system indicate that this sub-system is more economical for a relatively large cluster of residences (i.e. 50). To achieve a unit cost of power production of less than 10 cents/kWh on an exergy basis requires the manufacture of more than 1500 fuel cell sub-system units per year. In addition, based on the off-design optimization results, the fuel cell sub-system is unable by itself to satisfy the winter heat demands. Thus, the case is made for integrating the fuel cell sub-system with another sub-system, namely, a heat pump, to form what is called a total energy system.Copyright © 2002 by ASME
A gaze-contingent high-dynamic range display for medical imaging applications

The grayscale resolution of current liquid crystal display technology limits its applications in medical imaging with wide dynamic range and dense grayscales are required. We propose an approach that dynamically processes the display image such that the luminance and contrast of the gazed area is optimized. A gaze-contingent interactive display system based on an 8-bit LCD and an eye-tracker was implemented to emulate the proposed concept for a high-dynamic range display. Keywords : High-dynamic range display, Gaze-contingent display, Eye movement.
Fuel-Optimal Control of a Double Integral Plant With Response Time Constraints

Given the double integral plant y(t)=u(t), |u(t)|?1, the control u(t) is determined which, in the time interval [0, T], forces the state of the plant to zero, minimizes the fuel consumed, as measured by ? 0 T|u(t)|dt, and results in a response time T which does not exceed a prespecified multiple of the minimum time. A design of the nonlinear controller necessary is included.
Spatial Mapping of Moisture Content and Cellular State During Desiccation Preservation in a Sessile Droplet

The use of sessile droplets in desiccation protocols has been brought into question due to potential inhomogeneity within the samples [1]. The moisture content and the corresponding viability that gets recorded, in most viability studies, represents that of the whole sample and does not account for any variation that may be present within the drop. One reason that trehalose is added to desiccation media as a biopreservative is to create a glassy state around the cell at certain moisture contents [2]. This makes it important to know the local residual moisture contents to better analyze viability results and whether or not the cells are actually capable of reaching a glassy state.Copyright © 2012 by ASME
Communicating With Bank Stakeholders During Recession: Why It's Important, Who Is Doing It, and How to Stay in the Loop

This study explores the attitudes and actions of bank managers toward communication spending during recession. Results of this study indicate that organizational leaders cut communication spending early during recession and also erroneously rely on the bank's financials to mitigate irrational customer withdrawals. This research is used to illustrate the need for public librarians to meet the needs of bank stakeholders when their institution ceases to communicate during crises, for academic librarians to educate students in undergraduate and graduate programs regarding heightened information needs during recession, and for corporate librarians to understand a potential avenue for competitive advantage during recession.
Decays of the littlest Higgs Z H and the onset of strong dynamics

The little Higgs mechanism, as realized in various models, requires a set of new massive gauge bosons, some of which mix with gauge bosons of the standard model. For a range of mixing angles the coupling of gauge bosons to scalars can become strong, ultimately resulting in a breakdown of perturbative calculation. This phenomenon is studied in the littlest Higgs model, where the approach to strong dynamics is characterized by increasing tree-level decay widths of the neutral ${Z}_{H}$ boson to lighter gauge bosons plus multiple scalars. These increasing widths suggest a distinctive qualitative collider signature for the approach to the strong coupling regime of large Higgs and other scalar multiplicities. In this work we catalog the kinematically allowed three-body decays of the ${Z}_{H}$, and calculate the partial width of the process ${Z}_{H}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{Z}_{L}HH$. This partial width is found to be larger than the comparable two-body decay ${Z}_{H}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{Z}_{L}H$ for values of the $SU(2)$ mixing angle cosine $\ensuremath{\theta}l0.13$, indicating divergence of the littlest Higgs sigma field expansion at values of cosine $\ensuremath{\theta}$ larger than a simple parametric calculation would suggest. Additionally, we present analytical expressions for all two-body decays of the littlest Higgs ${Z}_{H}$ gauge boson, including the effects of all final-state masses.
Combination therapy with interferon-dexamethasone for newly diagnosed patients with multiple myeloma.

Background. Alpha-interferon and dexamethasone are each effective in patients with multiple myeloma and have a combined inhibitory effect on the in vitro growth of myeloma colonies. The effect of combined therapy in newly diagnosed patients is unknown. Methods. Fifty-one consecutive patients with previously untreated multiple myeloma of low tumor mass received primary therapy with 3 million units (mu)/m2/day of interferon administered subcutaneously for 20 days and 20 mg/m2 of dexamethasone given orally each morning for 4 days beginning on days 1, 9, and 17. Courses were repeated after a rest period of 14 days. Results were compared with those of similar patients who received primary treatment with dexamethasone alone in the same dose regimen. Results. The response rate was similar: 57% for patients treated with interferon-dexamethasone and 48% for those treated with dexamethasone alone. Remission and survival times of both groups were identical. Twenty-nine percent of patients resistant to interferon-dexamethasone and 19% of patients resistant to dexamethasone responded subsequently to either standard melphalan-prednisone or to a cyclophosphamide-vincristine-doxorubicin-dexamethasone combination. These regimens were also effective in one third of patients with disease relapse despite interferon. Conclusion. In this nonrandomized study of previously untreated patients with multiple myeloma, the addition of interferon in a dose of 3 mu/m2/day to dexamethasone achieved results similar to those with dexamethasone alone.
The results of liver transplantation with adjuvant chemotherapy for hepatobiliary surgery

This is an update of a pilot trial in which doxorubicin 10 mg/m2 was used pre-, intra-, and postoperatively as adjuvant chemotherapy during liver transplant for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma. The patients had advanced disease, with 17 of 20 having tumors that were multifocal, larger than 5 cm diameter unifocal, or tumors with vascular invasion. Individual followup is now 35–76 months, with a median observation time of 46 months. Eleven of the patients are alive (55%), 2 with recurrences (45% tumor free). Six patients have died from recurrent tumor and 3 from recurrent hepatitis B without evidence of malignancy. Of the eight patients with recurrent tumor, only 1 presented in the grafted liver.
Clinical significance of gastric blood flow autoregulation during stimulation

The paper by M. A. Perry et al (1) constitutes an important contribution for several reasons. Besides adding to basic knowledge of intrinsic blood flow mechanismS, this paper is relevant to clinical research. Injury in the gastric mucosa can be caused by an increase in the ratio of acid back-diffusion/ mucosal blood flow (2). Patients at risk for stress gastritis are frequently given wholesale amounts of cimetidine to reduce gastric acidity. But, if gastric mucosal autoregulation is a function of metabolic activity, then inhibition with cimetidine may deprive the mucosa of a critical defense mechanism against ischemic injury. The clinical relevance of the data of Perry et al must be tempered by the "uncertainty principle" of physiology, ie, "the more precisely we measure it, the more likely we distort it." Besides recruitment of unperfused tissue, which was discussed, other possible sources of artifact are worthy of discussion: (a) Anesthesia, surgical trauma, and fluid loss (3) are factors which may change circulating catecholamines and other agents capable of influencing local autoregulation. (b) Arterial perfusion Via tubing is known to change vascular resistance (4). Injured platelets may release several vasoactive compounds (serotonin and prostaglandins). These agents may profoundly affect local autoregulatory responses. (c) Heparin infusion is also known to cause platelet aggregation and subsequent release of these vasoactive compounds (5). This may deplete the platelets and prevent them from playing a role in local autoregulation. Perhaps platelets react to some local stimulus and release prostaglandins to mediate local vasodilation, or perhaps, platelet release of serotonin is important for enhancing the effects of catecholamines in local (a few dozen capillaries) vasoconstriction. (d) Recent studies on histamine have shown that H1 receptors may have a direct vasoconstrictor effect in the gastric vasculature (6). This effect is overshadowed by the vasodilator and stimulatory effects of the H2 receptors.
Emerging Ethnic Identity and Interethnic Group Social Preferences in Middle Childhood: Findings from the Children of Immigrants Development in Context (CIDC) Study.

This study characterizes several aspects of emerging ethnic identity in childhood and its associations with interethnic group social preferences. Understanding these processes is important, as early interethnic group social practices may form a foundation for later interethnic group attitudes and behaviors in adolescence. Children of Cambodian, Dominican, and Portuguese heritage (aged 6—12 years) consistently and accurately identified with labels of their family's nationality of origin across the three study years, and reported strong ethnic pride. In support of existing developmental models of ethnic identity in adolescence, older children demonstrated greater ethnic identity exploration than younger children. Importantly, for second-generation children, a positive sense of ethnic identity was not only associated with ingroup social preferences, but also ethnic outgroup social preferences. Findings are discussed with regard to existing models of ethnic identity development.
IPB7 transposase behavior in Drosophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti

Transposons are used in insect science as genetic tools that enable the transformation of insects and the identification and isolation of genes though their ability to insert in or near to them. Four transposons, piggyBac, Mos1, Hermes and Minos are commonly used in insects beyond Drosophila melanogaster with piggyBac, due to its wide host range and frequency of transposition, being the most commonly chosen. The utility of these transposons as genetic tools is directly proportional to their activity since higher transposition rates would be expected to lead to higher transformation frequencies and higher frequencies of insertion throughout the genome. As a consequence there is an ongoing need for hyperactive transposases for use in insect genetics, however these have proven difficult to obtain. IPB7 is a hyperactive mutant of the piggyBac transposase that was identified by a genetic screen performed in yeast, a mammalian codon optimized version of which was then found to be highly active in rodent embryonic stem cells with no apparent deleterious effects. Here we report the activity of IPB7 in D. melanogaster and the mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Somatic transposition assays revealed an increase in IPB7's transposition rate from wild-type piggyBac transposase in D. melanogaster but not Ae. aegypti. However the use of IPB7 in D. melanogaster genetic transformations produced a high rate of sterility and a low transformation rate compared to wild-type transposase. This high rate of sterility was accompanied by significant gonadal atrophy that was also observed in the absence of the piggyBac vector transposon. We conclude that IPB7 has increased activity in the D. melanogaster germ-line but that a component of the sterility associated with its activity is independent of the presence of the piggyBac transposon.
Yeast Mpk1 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Activates Transcription through Swi4/Swi6 by a Noncatalytic Mechanism That Requires Upstream Signal

The cell wall integrity mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade of Saccharomyces cerevisiae drives changes in gene expression in response to cell wall stress. We show that the MAPK of this pathway (Mpk1) and its pseudokinase paralog (Mlp1) use a noncatalytic mechanism to activate transcription of the FKS2 gene. Transcriptional activation of FKS2 was dependent on the Swi4/Swi6 (SBF) transcription factor and on an activating signal to Mpk1 but not on protein kinase activity. Activated (phosphorylated) Mpk1 and Mlp1 were detected in a complex with Swi4 and Swi6 at the FKS2 promoter. Mpk1 association with Swi4 in vivo required phosphorylation of Mpk1. Promoter association of Mpk1 and the Swi4 DNA-binding subunit of SBF were codependent but did not require Swi6, indicating that the MAPK confers DNA-binding ability to Swi4. Based on these data, we propose a model in which phosphorylated Mpk1 or Mlp1 forms a dimeric complex with Swi4 that is competent to associate with the FKS2 promoter. This complex then recruits Swi6 to activate transcription. Finally, we show that human ERK5, a functional ortholog of Mpk1, is similarly capable of driving FKS2 expression in the absence of protein kinase activity, suggesting that this mammalian MAPK may also have a noncatalytic function in vivo.
Cervical epidural steroid injection for refractory somatic tinnitus

Somatic tinnitus is a common disorder, yet few treatments described in the literature have demonstrated strong efficacy. We report a case of a 61-year-old male with refractory somatic tinnitus, temporally related to a prior bacterial otitis media, wherein auditory symptoms were successfully treated with cervical epidural injections of long-acting corticosteroid. We discuss the proposed mechanism of somatic tinnitus and the means by which neuraxial steroids may inhibit somatic tinnitus symptoms.
ON SHADOW PRICING LABOUR AND FOREIGN EXCHANGE

A simple model is built to shadow-price labor in foreign exchange numeraire and foreign exchange in utility numeraire, first by assuming that ex change-rate or nominal wage adjustment is the mechanism by which fore ign exchange is allocated, then assuming that sector-specific taxes a nd/or subsidies on consumption, international trade, and/or productio n are the mechanisms used. In the process, the authors show how to us e effective rates of protection in calculating these shadow prices, p rovide a proof of the proposition of M. F. G. Scott, and resolve the meaning of a formula designed by Bela Balassa to describe the shadow prices of both foreign exchange and primary factors of production. Copyright 1987 by Royal Economic Society.
A nakagami fading phase difference distribution and its impact on BER performance

We propose a new model for investigating the impact of complex imperfect channel state information (CSI) over Nakagami-m fading channels. The phase difference between two correlated complex Nakagami random variables (RVs) is proposed and its statistical properties are investigated. A closed-form expression for the distribution is obtained using an approach from [1] and depends on the Nakagami-m parameter and the power correlation coefficient (p) between two correlated complex RVs. A simple approximation is given when p is close to unity. The proposed phase difference is shown to accurately approximate that of the Ricean. We derive the joint density function of this phase difference and its associated correlated envelopes. This is given in a closed form in terms of a generalized hypergeometric function, but the RVs can be easily generated for simulation. We analyze the impact of imperfect CSI on the bit error rate (BER) of uncoded and coded modulation. For uncoded modulation, the average BER and a closed-form expression of the asymptotic BER or error floor are obtained. For coded modulation, we determine the error free feedback bound of bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding for both perfect and imperfect CSI. We show that imperfect phase estimation is the major cause of the error floor.
DNA repair mediated by endonuclease-independent LINE-1 retrotransposition

Long interspersed elements (LINE-1s) are abundant retrotransposons in mammalian genomes that probably retrotranspose by target site-primed reverse transcription (TPRT). During TPRT, the LINE-1 endonuclease cleaves genomic DNA, freeing a 3' hydroxyl that serves as a primer for reverse transcription of LINE-1 RNA by LINE-1 reverse transcriptase. The nascent LINE-1 cDNA joins to genomic DNA, generating LINE-1 structural hallmarks such as frequent 5' truncations, a 3' poly(A)+ tail and variable-length target site duplications (TSDs). Here we describe a pathway for LINE-1 retrotransposition in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells that acts independently of endonuclease but is dependent upon reverse transcriptase. We show that endonuclease-independent LINE-1 retrotransposition occurs at near-wildtype levels in two mutant cell lines that are deficient in nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ). Analysis of the pre- and post-integration sites revealed that endonuclease-independent retrotransposition results in unusual structures because the LINE-1s integrate at atypical target sequences, are truncated predominantly at their 3' ends and lack TSDs. Moreover, two of nine endonuclease-independent retrotranspositions contained cDNA fragments at their 3' ends that are probably derived from the reverse transcription of endogenous mRNA. Thus, our results suggest that LINE-1s can integrate into DNA lesions, resulting in retrotransposon-mediated DNA repair in mammalian cells.
Classification of medical software

The current state of software engineering practices in medical software development is discussed. The authors focus on patient safety (freedom from harm by a medical device) and patient vulnerability (possible indirect harm due to erroneous output). A definition of medical software which can be viewed as a three-dimensional model for medical software classification is proposed. To reduce patient vulnerability and enhance patient safety, specific points of control are derived from the model, and the implications of classification and control for medical software are discussed. >
Josephson Effect in a Superconducting Ring

It was pointed out in a preceding letter1 that the Josephson effect2,3 can be interpreted as the direct consequence of general principles if one considers the geometry of a superconducting ring interrupted by a barrier. In close analogy to the earlier explanation4 of quantized flux trapping, the periodic dependence of the current upon the flux through the ring was found sufficient to account for the essential features of the effect. The considerations were restricted to the simplest case where the flux through the ring has a single well-defined value. This situation is encountered if the ring is sufficiently thin to neglect the variation of the flux caused by penetration of the magnetic field into the material or, equivalently, if the shielding by the supercurrent is sufficient to prevent any appreciable penetration. It was shown in particular that one obtains in this case the Josephson relation between voltage and frequency of the current.
Effects of Nicotine on Gastrointestinal Secretions

The effect of nicotine on gastric, pancreatic, and hepatic exocrine secretions was assessed in conscious dogs prepared with various combinations of Heidenhain pouch, gastric, pancreatic, and biliary fistulas. The alkaloid was infused in doses corresponding to amounts absorbed from smoking up to four cigarettes in 1 hr. In the pancreas, nicotine inhibited the secretin-stimulated secretion of both fluid and bicarbonate, and the degree of inhibition was dose-related. Spontaneous biliary secretion of bicarbonate was also depressed by the drug. Nicotine did not alter gastric secretion of acid, gastric mucosal blood flow, or the mucosal barrier to hydrogen or sodium ions. These findings provide a possible link between cigarette smoking and duodenal ulcer formation. Specifically, the nicotine from cigarette smoke may inhibit pancreatic and hepatic bicarbonate secretion in man, thereby depriving the duodenum of the alkaline secretion it needs to neutralize gastric acid adequately.
A Theory of Fatigue: A Physical Approach With Application to Lead-Rich Solder

A fatigue theory with its failure criterion based on physical damage mechanisms is presented for solders. The theory applies Mura's micromechanical fatigue model to individual grains of the solder structure. By introducing grain orientation (Schmid factor m) into the fatigue formula, an m-N curve at constant loading, similar to a fatigue S-N curve, is suggested for fatigue failure of grains with different orientations. A solder structure is defined as fatigued when the ratio of its failed grains reaches a critical threshold, since at this threshold the failed grains may form a cluster, according to percolation theory. Experimental data for 96.5Pb-3.5Sn (wt. %) solder bulk specimens showed good agreement with the theory and its associated failure criterion. The theory is anisotropic, and there is no size limitation to its application, which could be suitable for anisotropic small-scale (micron scale or smaller) solder joints. ©2002 ASME
Sometimes an ounce of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation prevention is worth a pound of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation cure

Emergency aortic valve replacement in the setting of severe aortic valve stenosis and cardiogenic shock carries increased risk of morbidity, including postcardiotomy cardiac failure. 1 Mechanical circulatory support with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) can be a lifesaving therapy for such patients. We report here the management of a patient with severe prosthetic aortic stenosis in cardiogenic shock whom we treated with ECMO therapy to achieve clinical stabilization before urgent aortic valve replacement. CLINICAL SUMMARY A 77-year old woman was admitted with a non–STsegment myocardial infarction, severe prosthetic aortic valve stenosis, and an ejection fraction of 37%. The patient had cardiogenic shock develop and underwent placement of an intra-aortic balloon pump. This resulted in stabilization of her systemic blood pressure; however, acute kidney injury developed, with low urinary output (67 mL over 6 hours) and elevated serum creatinine level (acute increase
Conflict analysis of multistage interconnection networks

In most applications, some permutations are used more frequently than others. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the efficiency with which various MINs realize the set of frequently used permutations. It is known that the problem of determining the exact number of passes to realize a permutation is NP-complete. We present an efficient algorithm to determine the upper bound on the number of passes by first finding an O(NlogN) algorithm for conflict detection. >
A tunable low-pass filter using a liquid-metal reconfigurable periodic defected ground structure

A new type of tunable low-pass filter is demonstrated that uses liquid metal to reconfigure a defected ground structure (DGS). By filling in different DGS lattices with Galinstan liquid metal, the tunable low-pass filter provides tuning of up to eight cutoff frequencies. Measurements of four of the cutoff frequencies show a 62% tuning range while maintaining a stopband of more than 5 GHz.