cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Secondary currency acceptance: Experimental evidence with a dual currency search model

Abstract Motivated by the use of non-legal tender currencies in regions experiencing economic turmoil and by the growing use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, I examine in a controlled, experimental laboratory setting, the acceptance of a secondary currency when a primary currency already circulates in an economy. The underlying model is an indivisible goods / indivisible money, dual currency search model similar to that in Kiyotaki and Wright (1993) and Curtis and Waller (2000). In such models, there are two pure Nash equilibria - total acceptance or total rejection of the secondary currency - and one unstable, mixed equilibrium. This mixed equilibrium is considered an artifact of the indivisibility of money and goods in the model and is often ignored. I find that when a significant friction - in this case the inability to barter - is introduced, the equilibrium tends towards complete acceptance of the secondary currency. Conversely, when barter is readily available to subjects, the equilibrium tends towards total rejection. As predicted by theory, the tendency towards one equilibrium or the other appears to be influenced by the mixed equilibrium and the related basins of attraction.
A local support theorem for the radiation fields on asymptotically euclidean manifolds

We prove a local support theorem for the radiation fields on asymptotically euclidean manifolds which generalizes the local support theorem for the Radon transform.
Glycine max and Glycine soja are capable of cold acclimation

Soybean has been considered a cold intolerant species; based largely upon seed germination and soil emergent evaluations. This study reports a distinct acquisition of cold tolerance, in seedlings, following short acclimation periods. Diversity in cold responses was assessed in eight cultivars of Glycine max and six accessions of G. soja. All varieties of soybean significantly increased in freezing tolerance following acclimation. This study indicates soybean seedlings are indeed capable of sensing cold and acquiring cold tolerance. Germination rates after cold imbibition were negatively correlated with maturity group, but positively correlated with cold acclimation potential in G. soja. Seed fatty acid composition was varied between the species, with Glycine soja accessions containing about 2-times more linolenic acid (18:3) than G. max. Furthermore, high levels of linoleic acid (18:2) in seeds were positively correlated with germination rates following cold imbibition in G. soja only. We suggest that domestication has not impacted the overall ability of soybean to cold acclimate at the seedling stage and that there is little variation within the domesticated species for ability to cold acclimate. Thus, this brief comparative study reduces the enthusiasm for the “wild” species as an additional source of genetic diversity for cold tolerance.
High speed 0.9 /spl mu/m lateral p-i-n photodetectors fabricated in a standard commercial GaAs VLSI process

Lateral detectors fabricated in an unmodified commercial GaAs VLSI process are presented. The detectors exhibit previously observed characteristic sensitivity and capacitance properties. High speed measurements indicate a bandwidth in excess of 4 GHz.
In Vivo Multiphoton Imaging of Mouse Brain

3-photon microscopy at the long wavelength spectral windows is well suited for deep imaging within scattering biological tissues. In vivo 3-photon imaging of neuronal structure and function deep within an intact mouse brain is presented.
COBRA - mining web for COrporate Brand and Reputation Analysis

Corporations are extremely sensitive to issues such as brand stewardship and product reputation. Traditional brand image and reputation tracking is limited to news wires and contact centre analysis. However, with the emergence of web, Consumer Generated Media (CGM), such as blogs, news forums, message boards, and web pages/sites, is rapidly becoming the “voice of the people”. Effectively leveraging such readily available and massive amount of CGM content for brand and reputation insights can be extremely valuable to corporations. Yet the existing solutions in this space are commonly limited to keyword search based technologies that often result in excessive amount of information for users to digest manually. Some text mining based technologies exist for mining the web. However, they often target very narrow problems such as web page classification instead of looking at the overall stack of technologies required for web mining. This paper describes a holistically integrated brand and reputation analysis solution that mines CGM contents for insights, called COBRA (COrporate Brand and Reputation Analysis). COBRA contains a flexible ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) engine that processes diverse sets of structured and unstructured information, a suite of analytical capabilities that mines CGM content to extract semantic entities and insights out of the data, and an alerting mechanism that utilizes a technique called “orthogonal filtering” to accurately generate brand and reputation alerts by filtering through orthogonal dimensions of information. We use a set of real-world case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of our overall approach. We show that by applying such analytics techniques, we significantly improved the accuracy of alert identification by 10-200 times when compared to the popular keyword-search based techniques in today's alerting systems.
Clinical Correlates of Bacteremia in a Veterans Administration Extended Care Facility

Little is known about bacteremia in long-term care facilities. We have conducted a retrospective study during a 12-month period analyzing the clinical correlates of bacteremia in 533 chronically institutionalized, predominantly male patients, with an average age of 69 years. Thirty-four men had forty-two bacteremic illnesses during this period. The incidence rate was 0.30 episodes per 1000 patient care days, and the mortality rate was 21%. The urinary tract was the most frequently identified tissue source (56%), followed by respiratory tract (7%) and skin (7%). Providencia stuartii was the most common gram-negative organism, while Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae and enterococcus were the frequent gram-positive microbes. Gram-negative bacteremia accounted for 63% of the episodes (15% mortality rate), and gram-positive bacteremia accounted for 27% (18% mortality rate); 10% of the bacteremias were polymicrobial (25% mortality rate). Most of the isolated organisms were sensitive to available antimicrobial agents. The leading risk factor for bacteremia was an indwelling urinary catheter (odds ratio 39, 95% confidence limits 16 to 97). Patients with urinary catheters at the beginning of the study constituted only 5% of the population, but accounted for 40% of the gram-negative bacteremias during the year of observation.
Acetylcholinesterase plays a non-neuronal, non-esterase role in organogenesis

Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is crucial for degrading acetylcholine at cholinergic synapses. In vitro studies suggest that, in addition to its role in nervous system signaling, AChE can also modulate non-neuronal cell properties, although it remains controversial whether AChE functions in this capacity in vivo . Here, we show that AChE plays an essential non-classical role in vertebrate gut morphogenesis. Exposure of Xenopus embryos to AChE-inhibiting chemicals results in severe defects in intestinal development. Tissue-targeted loss-of-function assays (via microinjection of antisense morpholino or CRISPR-Cas9) confirm that AChE is specifically required in the gut endoderm tissue, a non-neuronal cell population, where it mediates adhesion to fibronectin and regulates cell rearrangement events that drive gut lengthening and digestive epithelial morphogenesis. Notably, the classical esterase activity of AChE is dispensable for this activity. As AChE is deeply conserved, widely expressed outside of the nervous system, and the target of many environmental chemicals, these results have wide-reaching implications for development and toxicology.
Nonlinear Regulator Design for Magnetic Suspension

Abstract Through proper design, it is possible to build an electromagnetic bearing system using a ferromagnetic rotor, such that there exists an equilibrium position in the magnetostatic field which is unstable only in the axial direction. In order to achieve axial stability, a regulator may be employed to vary the current in the coils whenever the rotor is displaced from the equilibrium position. The idea is to vary the current in such a way so that the resultant change in the magnetic field produces a restoring force to the rotor. The problem of concern here is the design of a regulator to control the magnetic field so that the rotor will remain in the vicinity of the equilibrium point in the presence of external forces (noise). Recent magnetic suspension systems have been designed using a regulator based on linear state variable feedback. It is shown here that asymptotic stability can not be maintained for the system in the presence of noise if linear feedback control is used. The effect of noise on the system is vividly demonstrated by using qualitative methods to find the boundaries of the reachable set under noise. Linear state variable feedback can maintain partial controllability of the system to some neighborhood of the equilibrium point provided a simple inequality relationship between the feedback parameters and the bounds on the noise level is maintained. Finally, it is shown that a game theoretic approach may be used for a nonlinear regulator design which will result in an asymptotically stable system in the presence of bounded noise.
Acute Renal Failure in Minimal Change Nephrotic Syndrome

The appearance of unexplained acute renal failure during the course of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome is an uncommon but well-reported phenomenon in adults.1 Its occurrence in childhood has not been reported. We present an 8-year-old girl with minimal change nephrotic syndrome in whom inexplicable acute renal failure developed following exploratory laparotomy. CASE REPORT This 8-year-old girl had a 6-year history of frequently relapsing, steroid-responsive nephrotic syndrome clinically consistent with minimal change disease. While visiting the Buffalo area with her family, she suddenly had severe constant abdominal pain associated with nausea and emesis and was brought to the emergency room for evaluation. She was receiving alternate-day prednisone in an attempt to reduce the number of her relapses.
The Urinalysis: A Critical Appraisal

The urinalysis, an inexpensive office test, is often performed unnecessarily. Improved chemical testing using reagent strips obviates the need for routine microscopy in many cases. More information is needed to make specific recommendations on the use of the routine urinalysis as a screening procedure.
The Relationship of Infection With Chlamydia Trachomatis to the Parameters of Male Fertility and Sperm Autoimmunity

The relationship of past exposure to C. trachomatis to the parameters of male fertility was examined in men from infertile couples whose wives had no known female fertility factors. In this population, the frequency of C. trachomatis antibody was low. Past infection with C. trachomatis was associated with a history of nonspecific urethritis, and with the presence of sperm agglutinating antibodies in serum. We found no difference in the seminal fluid analyses, physical examinations, or sperm penetration assays of the men with or without chlamydial antibody.
Large Thermal Motion in Halide Perovskites

Solar cells based on hybrid perovskites have shown high efficiency while possessing simple processing methods. To gain a fundamental understanding of their properties on an atomic level, we investigate single crystals of CH3NH3PbI3 with a narrow transition (~5 K) near 327 K. Temperature dependent structural measurements reveal a persistent tetragonal structure with smooth changes in the atomic displacement parameters (ADPs) on crossing T*. We show that the ADPs for I ions yield extended flat regions in the potential wells consistent with the measured large thermal expansion parameter. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that this material exhibits significant asymmetries in the Pb-I pair distribution functions. We also show that the intrinsically enhanced freedom of motion of the iodine atoms enables large deformations. This flexibility (softness) of the atomic structure results in highly localized atomic relaxation about defects and hence accounts for both the high carrier mobility as well as the structural instability.
Metachronal motion of artificial magnetic cilia

Organisms use hair-like cilia that beat in a metachronal fashion to actively transport fluid and suspended particles. Metachronal motion emerges due to a phase difference between beating cycles of neighboring cilia and appears as traveling waves propagating along ciliary carpet. In this work, we demonstrate biomimetic artificial cilia capable of metachronal motion. The cilia are micromachined magnetic thin filaments attached at one end to a substrate and actuated by a uniform rotating magnetic field. We show that the difference in magnetic cilium length controls the phase of the beating motion. We use this property to induce metachronal waves within a ciliary array and explore the effect of operation parameters on the wave motion. The metachronal motion in our artificial system is shown to depend on the magnetic and elastic properties of the filaments, unlike natural cilia, where metachronal motion arises due to fluid coupling. Our approach enables an easy integration of metachronal magnetic cilia in lab-on-a-chip devices for enhanced fluid and particle manipulations.
Absolute phase unwrapping for dual-camera system without embedding statistical features

This paper proposes an absolute phase unwrapping method for three-dimensional measurement that uses two cameras and one projector. On the left camera image, each pixel has one wrapped phase value, which corresponds to multiple projector candidates with different absolute phase values. We use the geometric relationship of the system to map projector candidates into the right camera candidates. By applying a series of candidate rejection criteria, a unique correspondence pair between two camera images can be determined. Then, the absolute phase is obtained by tracing the correspondence point back to the projector space. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed absolute phase unwrapping algorithm can successfully work on both complex geometry and multiple isolated objects measurement.
Universal sequential outlier hypothesis testing

ABSTRACTUniversal outlier hypothesis testing is studied in a sequential setting. Multiple observation sequences are collected, a small subset of which are outliers. A sequence is considered an outlier if the observations in that sequence are generated by an “outlier” distribution, distinct from a common “typical” distribution governing the majority of the sequences. Apart from being distinct, the outlier and typical distributions can be arbitrarily close. The goal is to design a universal test to best discern all the outlier sequences. A universal test with the flavor of the repeated significance test is proposed and its asymptotic performance, as the error probability goes to zero, is characterized under various universal settings. The proposed test is shown to be universally consistent. For the model with at most one outlier, conditioned on the outlier being present, the test is shown to be asymptotically optimal universally when the typical distribution is known and as the number of sequences goes to i...
The Matching Polytope has Exponential Extension Complexity

A popular method in combinatorial optimization is to express polytopes P, which may potentially have exponentially many facets, as solutions of linear programs that use few extra variables to reduce the number of constraints down to a polynomial. After two decades of standstill, recent years have brought amazing progress in showing lower bounds for the so-called extension complexity, which for a polytope P denotes the smallest number of inequalities necessary to describe a higher-dimensional polytope Q that can be linearly projected on P.However, the central question in this field remained wide open: can the perfect matching polytope be written as an LP with polynomially many constraints?We answer this question negatively. In fact, the extension complexity of the perfect matching polytope in a complete n-node graph is 2Ω (n). By a known reduction, this also improves the lower bound on the extension complexity for the TSP polytope from 2Ω (√ n) to 2Ω (n).
Adolescent and Adult HIV Providers' Definitions of HIV-Infected Youths' Successful Transition to Adult Care in the United States.

Abstract It is important for both individual- and population-level health that HIV-infected individuals progress through the Care Continuum. However, HIV-infected youth frequently disengage from care during transition from pediatric/adolescent to adult care; only 50% remain in adult care after 1 year. Understanding how providers define and approach a successful healthcare transition can improve the delivery of HIV-related services during critical years of HIV treatment. We conducted 58 staff interviews across 14 Adolescent Trials Network clinics (n = 30) and 20 adult clinics (n = 28). We used the constant comparative method to examine how providers defined and approached youths' successful transition. Providers identified four components critical to successful transition: (1) clinical outcomes (e.g., medication adherence and viral suppression); (2) youth knowing how to complete treatment-related activities (e.g., refilling prescriptions and making appointments); (3) youth taking responsibility for treatme...
The uneven implementation of universal school policies: Maternal education and Florida’s mandatory grade retention policy

Educational accountability policies are a popular tool to close the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. However, these policies may exacerbate inequality if families fro...
Inferring the evolutionary reduction of corm lobation in Isoëtes using Bayesian model-averaged ancestral state reconstruction.

PREMISE OF THE STUDY:Inferring the evolution of characters in Isoetes has been problematic, as these plants are morphologically conservative and yet highly variable and homoplasious within that conserved base morphology. However, molecular phylogenies have given us a valuable tool for testing hypotheses of character evolution within the genus, such as the hypothesis of ongoing morphological reductions. METHODS:We examined the reduction in lobe number on the underground trunk, or corm, by combining the most recent molecular phylogeny with morphological descriptions gathered from the literature and observations of living specimens. Ancestral character states were inferred using nonstationary evolutionary models, reversible-jump MCMC, and Bayesian model averaging. KEY RESULTS:Our results support the hypothesis of a directional reduction in lobe number in Isoetes, with the best-supported model of character evolution being one of irreversible reduction. Furthermore, the most probable ancestral corm lobe number of extant Isoetes is three, and a reduction to two lobes has occurred at least six times. CONCLUSIONS:From our results, we can infer that corm lobation, like many other traits in Isoetes, shows a degree of homoplasy, and yet also shows ongoing evolutionary reduction.
Outlying Observation Diagnostics in Growth Curve Modeling.

Growth curve models are widely used for investigating growth and change phenomena. Many studies in social and behavioral sciences have demonstrated that data without any outlying observation are ra...
The demand for Divisia Money: Theory and evidence

Abstract A money-in-the-utility function model is extended to capture the distinct roles of noninterest-earning currency and interest-earning deposits in providing liquidity services to households. It implies the existence of a stable money demand relationship that links a Divisia monetary aggregate to consumption as a scale variable and the associated Divisia user-cost dual as an opportunity cost measure. Cointegrating money demand equations of this form appear for the Divisia M2 and MZM aggregates in quarterly United States data spanning the period from 1967:1 through 2019:1. The identification of a stable money demand function over a period that includes the financial innovations of the 1980s and continues through the recent financial crisis and Great Recession suggests that a properly measured aggregate quantity of money can play a role in the conduct of monetary policy. That role can be of greater prominence when traditional interest rate policies are constrained by the zero lower bound.
Effects of nicotine on alcohol drinking in female mice selectively‐bred for high or low alcohol preference

BACKGROUND Studies show that repeated nicotine use associates with high alcohol consumption in humans and that nicotine exposure sometimes increases alcohol consumption in animal models. However, the relative roles of genetic predisposition to high alcohol consumption, the alcohol drinking patterns, and the timing of nicotine exposure both with respect to alcohol drinking and developmental stage remain unclear. The studies here manipulated all these variables, using mice selectively bred for differences in free-choice (FC) alcohol consumption to elucidate the role of genetics and nicotine exposure in alcohol consumption behaviors. METHODS In Experiments 1 and 2, we assessed the effects of repeated nicotine (0, 0.5, or 1.5 mg/kg) injections immediately before binge-like (drinking-in-the-dark; Experiment 1) or during FC alcohol access (Experiment 2) on these alcohol drinking behaviors (immediately after injections and during re-exposure to alcohol access 14 days later) in adult high- (HAP2) and low-alcohol-preferring (LAP2) female mice (co-exposure model). In Experiments 3 and 4, we assessed the effects of repeated nicotine (0, 0.5, or 1.5 mg/kg) injections 14 days prior to binge-like and FC alcohol access on these alcohol drinking behaviors in adolescent HAP2 and LAP2 female mice (Experiment 3) or adult HAP2 female mice (Experiment 4). RESULTS In Experiment 1, we found that repeated nicotine (0.5 and 1.5 mg/kg) and alcohol co-exposure significantly increased binge-like drinking behavior in HAP2 but not LAP2 mice during the re-exposure phase after a 14-day abstinence period. In Experiment 2, 1.5 mg/kg nicotine injections significantly reduced FC alcohol intake and preference in the third hour postinjection in HAP2 but not LAP2 mice. No significant effects of nicotine treatment on binge-like or FC alcohol drinking were observed in Experiments 3 and 4. CONCLUSIONS These results show that the temporal parameters of nicotine and alcohol exposure, pattern of alcohol access, and genetic predisposition for alcohol preference influence nicotine's effects on alcohol consumption. These findings in selectively bred mice suggest that humans with a genetic history of alcohol use disorders may be more vulnerable to develop nicotine and alcohol co-use disorders.
Conversion between parallel and antiparallel β-sheets in wild-type and Iowa mutant Aβ40 fibrils

Using a variant of Hamilton-replica-exchange, we study for wild type and Iowa mutant Aβ40 the conversion between fibrils with antiparallel β-sheets and such with parallel β-sheets. We show that wild type and mutant form distinct salt bridges that in turn stabilize different fibril organizations. The conversion between the two fibril forms leads to the release of small aggregates that in the Iowa mutant may shift the equilibrium from fibrils to more toxic oligomers.
Those who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching

Este articulo fue un discurso presidencial en la reunion de America Educational Research Association de Chicago el ano 1985. -- Curioso sobre el por que el publico a menudo tiene una baja opinion sobre el conocimiento de los profesores, Shulman observa la historia de evaluaciones docentes. En la segunda mitad del 1800, las evaluaciones para quienes deseaban ensenar se basaban casi por completo en contenido. Para el ano en que el autor escribe el articulo, en 1985, la evaluacion era completamente distinta. En lugar de enfocarse en contenido, se enfocaba en topicos como planificacion de clases, sensibilizacion cultural, y otros aspectos de la conducta docente. Mientras los topicos usualmente tenian raices en la investigacion, claramente no representan el amplio espectro de habilidades y conocimientos que un docente necesita para ser efectivo. Mas especificamente, para los anos 80', la evaluacion docente parecia preocuparse tanto por los conocimientos, como el siglo anterior se preocupaba por la pedagogia.
Quantum Quench Dynamics

Quench dynamics is an active area of study encompassing condensed matter physics and quantum information, with applications to cold-atomic gases and pump-probe spectroscopy of materials. Recent theoretical progress in studying quantum quenches is reviewed. Quenches in interacting one-dimensional systems as well as systems in higher spatial dimensions are covered. The appearance of nontrivial steady states following a quench in exactly solvable models is discussed, and the stability of these states to perturbations is described. Proper conserving approximations needed to capture the onset of thermalization at long times are outlined. The appearance of universal scaling for quenches near critical points and the role of the renormalization group in capturing the transient regime are reviewed. Finally, the effect of quenches near critical points on the dynamics of entanglement entropy and entanglement statistics is discussed. The extraction of critical exponents from the entanglement statistics is outlined.
Reactive solute transport in an asymmetrical fracture–rock matrix system

Abstract The understanding of reactive solute transport in a single fracture–rock matrix system is the foundation of studying transport behavior in the complex fractured porous media. When transport properties are asymmetrically distributed in the adjacent rock matrixes, reactive solute transport has to be considered as a coupled three-domain problem, which is more complex than the symmetric case with identical transport properties in the adjacent rock matrixes. This study deals with the transport problem in a single fracture–rock matrix system with asymmetrical distribution of transport properties in the rock matrixes. Mathematical models are developed for such a problem under the first-type and the third-type boundary conditions to analyze the spatio–temporal concentration and mass distribution in the fracture and rock matrix with the help of Laplace transform technique and de Hoog numerical inverse Laplace algorithm. The newly acquired solutions are then tested extensively against previous analytical and numerical solutions and are proven to be robust and accurate. Furthermore, a water flushing phase is imposed on the left boundary of system after a certain time. The diffusive mass exchange along the fracture/rock matrixes interfaces and the relative masses stored in each of three domains (fracture, upper rock matrix, and lower rock matrix) after the water flushing provide great insights of transport with asymmetric distribution of transport properties. This study has the following findings: 1) Asymmetric distribution of transport properties imposes greater controls on solute transport in the rock matrixes. However, transport in the fracture is mildly influenced. 2) The mass stored in the fracture responses quickly to water flushing, while the mass stored in the rock matrix is much less sensitive to the water flushing. 3) The diffusive mass exchange during the water flushing phase has similar patterns under symmetric and asymmetric cases. 4) The characteristic distance which refers to the zero diffusion between the fracture and the rock matrix during the water flushing phase is closely associated with dispersive process in the fracture.
Unsupervised frequency clustering algorithm for null space estimation in wideband spectrum sharing networks

In spectrum sharing networks, a base station (BS) needs to mitigate the interference to users associated with other coexisting network in the same band. The BS can achieve this by transmitting its downlink signal in the null space of channels to such users. However, under a wideband scenario, the BS needs to estimate null space matrices using the received signal from such non-cooperative users in each frequency bin where the users are active. To reduce the computational complexity of this operation, we propose a frequency clustering algorithm that exploits the channel correlations among adjacent frequency bins. The proposed algorithm forms clusters of frequency bins with correlated channel vectors without prior knowledge of the channels and obtains a single null space matrix for each cluster. We show that the number of matrices and the number of eigenvalue decompositions required to obtain the null space significantly reduce using the proposed clustering algorithm.
Testing the acculturation of the 1.5 generation in the United States: Is there a “critical” age of migration?

Existing research shows that on average first-generation immigrants earn less than native-born workers in the United States, especially during their first decade in the country, but eventually overtake the native-born; second-generation immigrants (2g) tend to earn more than subsequent generations (3+g). However, the labor market outcomes of the “1.5 generation” (1.5g), the foreign born who migrate as children, have not been thoroughly analyzed. This paper hypothesizes that the 1.5g could have an earnings advantage relative to subsequent generations due to the higher ability of their parents; however, the accumulation of destination-specific human capital (i.e., acculturation) also declines with age at migration (AAM). Using a Mincerian earnings regression as applied to CPS data (1994–2016), this analysis tests whether there is a within-group “critical” AAM threshold after which the earnings advantage of the 1.5g becomes an earnings disadvantage. Results show that this threshold is approximately ages 5–9, varying by ethnicity and gender.
Cervical spine surgery for tandem spinal stenosis: The impact on low back pain.

Abstract Study Design Retrospective Cohort. Objective Tandem spinal stenosis (TSS) can present similarly to cervical myelopathy, but often has a worse prognosis. Few studies have investigated outcomes and compared treatment approaches for patients with TSS. We sought to determine the impact of cervical spine surgery on cervical and lumbar spine symptoms in patients with symptomatic tandem spinal stenosis. Patients Methods 84 patients with TSS were identified over 5 years. 48 underwent cervical spine surgery alone, 20 underwent both cervical and lumbar spine surgery, and 16 received conservative treatment alone (conservative cohort). Quality of life (QOL) measures included the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for arm, neck, and back pain, and EuroQOL-5 Dimensions (EQ-5D). QOL data were acquired at baseline (pre-operative) and 1 year postoperatively via an institutional prospectively collected database. Results Both surgical cohorts showed significant (p Conclusions Cervical spine surgery with or without follow-up lumbar spine surgery significantly improves neck pain in patients with TSS. In contrast, cervical spine surgery in these patients does not improve lumbar symptoms. Lumbar surgery also did not improve low back pain or quality of life. Future prospective studies are necessary to examine the impact of lumbar decompression alone on cervical spine symptoms in patients with TSS.
Hair As a Barrier to Physical Activity among African American Women: A Qualitative Exploration.

Background. African American (AA) women face unique sociocultural barriers to physical activity (PA) engagement. Such barriers may contribute to their low PA levels and high cardiometabolic disease burden. One particular barrier reported among AA women in recent research is that being physically active can have an undesirable effect on the hairstyles and hair maintenance of many AA women. However, the underlying mechanisms contributing to this barrier have not been fully elucidated. The purpose of this study was to explore hairstyle maintenance as a barrier to PA among AA women and identify effective strategies to overcome this barrier in the design of a culturally relevant PA intervention. Methods. A qualitative study design was used. Data were collected from focus groups conducted with 23 sedentary and obese AA women (M age = 38.1 years, M BMI = 39.8 kg.m2). Content analysis was used to analyze these focus group data. Results. Three key themes emerged from the qualitative narratives of participants: 1) Impact of Perspiration on Hair and Hairstyle Maintenance, 2) Image and Social Comparisons, and, 3) Solutions to Overcome Hair-related Barriers to PA. For Impact of Perspiration and Hairstyle Maintenance, participants described how perspiring while engaging in PA negatively impacts many of their hairstyles. Participants further discussed how time and monetary burdens associated with PA-related hairstyle maintenance further contributed to this issue. Findings for the theme of Image and Social Comparison focused on how an AA woman’s hairstyle is an important part of the image and the social comparisons made by non-AAs regarding the hairstyles and maintenance practices of AA women. For Solutions to Hairstyle Maintenance Barriers, participant described a variety of potential styling techniques that may help alleviate PA-related maintenance concerns, including braids, locks, and natural hairstyles. However, no styling technique was uniformly endorsed by all study participants. Conclusions. Findings highlight the significance of hair in the AA community and provide further insight on appropriate intervention design strategies to overcome this sociocultural barrier to PA. Future research is needed to corroborate and further expand on our findings.
Reporting quality of music intervention research in healthcare: A systematic review.

Abstract Introduction Concomitant with the growth of music intervention research, are concerns about inadequate intervention reporting and inconsistent terminology, which limits validity, replicability, and clinical application of findings. Objective Examine reporting quality of music intervention research, in chronic and acute medical settings, using the Checklist for Reporting Music-based Interventions. In addition, describe patient populations and primary outcomes, intervention content and corresponding interventionist qualifications, and terminology. Methods Searching MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL, HealthSTAR, and PsycINFO we identified articles meeting inclusion/exclusion criteria for a five-year period (2010–2015) and extracted relevant data. Coded material included reporting quality across seven areas (theory, content, delivery schedule, interventionist qualifications, treatment fidelity, setting, unit of delivery), author/journal information, patient population/outcomes, and terminology. Results Of 860 articles, 187 met review criteria (128 experimental; 59 quasi-experimental), with 121 publishing journals, and authors from 31 countries. Overall reporting quality was poor with Conclusions Problems with reporting quality impedes meaningful interpretation and cross-study comparisons. Inconsistent and misapplied terminology also create barriers to interprofessional communication and translation of findings to patient care. Improved reporting quality and creation of shared language will advance scientific rigor and clinical relevance of music intervention research.
The Crisis of Reproducibility, the Denominator Problem and the Scientific Role of Multi-scale Modeling.

The “Crisis of Reproducibility” has received considerable attention both within the scientific community and without. While factors associated with scientific culture and practical practice are most often invoked, I propose that the Crisis of Reproducibility is ultimately a failure of generalization with a fundamental scientific basis in the methods used for biomedical research. The Denominator Problem describes how limitations intrinsic to the two primary approaches of biomedical research, clinical studies and preclinical experimental biology, lead to an inability to effectively characterize the full extent of biological heterogeneity, which compromises the task of generalizing acquired knowledge. Drawing on the example of the unifying role of theory in the physical sciences, I propose that multi-scale mathematical and dynamic computational models, when mapped to the modular structure of biological systems, can serve a unifying role as formal representations of what is conserved and similar from one biological context to another. This ability to explicitly describe the generation of heterogeneity from similarity addresses the Denominator Problem and provides a scientific response to the Crisis of Reproducibility.
Shortest Path Problems on a Polyhedral Surface

We develop algorithms to compute edge sequences, Voronoi diagrams, shortest path maps, the Frechet distance, and the diameter for a polyhedral surface. Distances on the surface are measured either by the length of a Euclidean shortest path or by link distance. Our main result is a linear-factor speedup for computing all shortest path edge sequences on a convex polyhedral surface.
Prevalence of cranial MRI findings in girls with central precocious puberty: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Some pediatric endocrinologists recommend that girls with central precocious puberty (CPP) have cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) performed only if they are younger than 6 years of age. However, no practice guidelines exist. The objective of this review was to assess the frequency of intracranial lesions in girls with CPP. Content We searched six electronic databases (PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, SCOPUS, ProQuest, and Dissertation & Theses) from 1990 through December 2015. We included studies on girls with CPP and MRI data. Case reports, case series, studies from the same author/group with the same patient population, and studies with conditions predisposing to CPP were excluded. Two physicians independently reviewed the search results and extracted data. A random-effects model was used to obtain pooled prevalence of positive MRI's across studies. Heterogeneity among studies was evaluated with the Q-statistic. Publication bias was assessed with funnel plots and Egger's test. Pooled prevalence was computed by age group. A linear regression assessed the relationship between intracranial lesion prevalence and healthcare availability. We included 15 studies with a total of 1853 girls <8 year old evaluated for CPP. Summary The pooled prevalence from all studies was 0.09 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.06-0.12]. There was a significant heterogeneity, indicating the appropriateness of a random effects model in computing pooled prevalence. In the few studies stratified by age group, pooled prevalence was 25% in girls <6 years vs. 3% in girls 6-8 of age. Outlook Our results support that the benefit of routine MRIs in girls with CPP older than 6 years of age without any neurological concerns is not clear-cut.
Prediction and Evaluation of PWM-Induced Current Ripple in IPM Machines Incorporating Slotting, Saturation, and Cross-Coupling Effects

This paper presents an improved analytical model for estimating the high-frequency current ripple of interior permanent magnet synchronous machines due to pulsewidth modulation (PWM) switching. The proposed model accounts for the impact of slotting effect, magnetic saturation, and cross-coupling between the $d$ - and $q$ -axis. The model is subsequently used to investigate several factors that influence the PWM-induced current ripple. These include the PWM switching frequency, fundamental frequency (i.e., machine speed), dc-bus voltage, current control angle (i.e., γ angle), and the excitation current amplitude (i.e., saturation level). Experiments have been conducted to verify the analytical prediction results. These results show that the analytical model can predict the PWM-induced current ripple waveshape very well for many operating conditions and accurately estimate its rms value over a complete fundamental period.
Endogenous scope economies in microfinance institutions

Scope economies resulting from the joint offering of loans and savings accounts (as opposed to loans only) are customarily invoked to promote the transformation of credit-only microfinance institutions (MFIs) into integrated loans-and-savings entities. To ensure robust inference, we estimate scope economies for the microfinance industry using a novel approach which, among its other advantages, accommodates inherent heterogeneity across loans-only and loans-and-savings MFIs as well as controls for endogenous self-selection of institutions into the either type. For analysis, we use a large 2004--2014 Mixmarket dataset. Unlike earlier studies, we do not find prevalent scope economies in the microfinance industry. We find that the median degree of scope economies is statistically indistinguishable from zero and that scope economies are significantly positive for less than a half of loans-and-savings MFIs. For a non-trivial 14% of institutions, the empirical evidence suggests the existence of significantly negative diseconomies of scope indicating that the separate production of loans and savings accounts actually has the potential to reduce an MFI's costs. We also find that the failure to account for endogenous selectivity dramatically overestimates the degree of scope economies resulting in the failure to detect scope diseconomies among MFIs. Thus, our findings call for caution when invoking scope economies as a blanket justification for universal expansion of the scope of financial operations by MFIs. Instead, promoting integrated loans-and-savings MFIs may be justifiable as a means to meeting the needs of the poor rather than as a way for the industry to save costs.
Improved pseudorandomness for unordered branching programs through local monotonicity

We present an explicit pseudorandom generator with seed length O((logn)w+1) for read-once, oblivious, width w branching programs that can read their input bits in any order. This improves upon the work of Impagliazzo, Meka and Zuckerman (FOCS’12) where they required seed length n1/2+o(1). A central ingredient in our work is the following bound that we prove on the Fourier spectrum of branching programs. For any width w read-once, oblivious branching program B:{0,1}n→ {0,1}, any k ∈ {1,…,n}, [complex formula not displayed] This settles a conjecture posed by Reingold, Steinke and Vadhan (RANDOM’13). Our analysis crucially uses a notion of local monotonicity on the edge labeling of the branching program. We carry critical parts of our proof under the assumption of local monotonicity and show how to deduce our results for unrestricted branching programs.
Governance of shale gas development: Insights from the Bloomington school of institutional analysis

The boom in shale gas production has been accompanied by concerns that polycentricity, whereby multiple levels of government share regulatory authority, has resulted in an inefficient and ineffective governance. The Bloomington School of institutional analysis suggests otherwise. Drawing on the work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, we clarify a diverse regulatory response to shale gas development within federations may be appropriate depending on the physical context of shale gas development, local demand for economic development (including geology, geography, and the built environment), the regulatory capacity of local governments, uncertainty about the appropriate regulations to address externalities from shale gas production, and the extent of inter-jurisdictional coordination problems. We apply the framework to regulation of shale gas development two fracking federations: the US and EU. In each context, letting a thousand regulatory flowers bloom is more sensible than uniform standards.
Phase I of the Detecting and Evaluating Childhood Anxiety and Depression Effectively in Subspecialties (DECADES) Study: Development of an Integrated Mental Health Care Model for Pediatric Gastroenterology.

Background Children with gastrointestinal symptoms have a very high rate of anxiety and depression. Rapid identification of comorbid anxiety and depression is essential for effective treatment of a wide variety of functional gastrointestinal disorders. Objective The objective of our study was to determine patient and parent attitudes toward depression, anxiety, and mental health screening during gastroenterology (GI) visits and to determine patient and parent preferences for communication of results and referral to mental health providers after a positive screen. Methods We augmented standard qualitative group session methods with patient-centered design methods to assess patient and parent preferences. We used a variety of specific design methods in these sessions, including card sorting, projective methods, experience mapping, and constructive methods. Results Overall, 11 families (11 patients and 14 parents) participated in 2 group sessions. Overall, patients and their parents found integrated mental health care to be acceptable in the subspecialty setting. Patients' primary concerns were for the privacy and confidentiality of their screening results. Patients and their parents emphasized the importance of mental health services not interfering with the GI visit and collaboration between the GI physician, psychologist, and primary care provider. Conclusions Patients and their families are open to integrated mental health care in the pediatric subspecialty clinic. The next phase of the DECADES study will translate patient and parent preferences into an integrated mental health care system and test its efficacy in the pediatric GI office.