nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Posterior lumbar dynamic stabilization instead of arthrodesis for symptomatic adjacent-segment degenerative stenosis: description of a novel technique.

The development of symptomatic adjacent-segment disease (ASD) is a well-recognized consequence of lumbar fusion surgery. Extension of a fusion to a diseased segment may only lead to subsequent adjacent-segment degeneration. The authors report the use of a novel technique that uses dynamic stabilization instead of arthrodesis for the surgical treatment of symptomatic ASD following a prior lumbar instrumented fusion.  A cohort of 28 consecutive patients was evaluated who developed symptomatic stenosis immediately adjacent to a previous lumbar instrumented fusion. All patients had symptoms of neurogenic claudication refractory to nonsurgical treatment and were surgically treated with decompression and dynamic stabilization instead of extending the fusion construct using a posterior lumbar dynamic stabilization system. Preoperative symptoms, visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores, and perioperative complications were recorded. Clinical outcome was gauged by comparing VAS scores prior to surgery and at the time of last follow-up.  The mean follow-up duration was 52 months (range 17-94 months). The mean interval from the time of primary fusion surgery to the dynamic stabilization surgery was 40 months (range 10-96 months). The mean patient age was 51 years (range 29-76 years). There were 19 (68%) men and 9 (32%) women. Twenty-three patients (82%) presented with low-back pain at time of surgery, whereas 24 patients (86%) presented with lower-extremity symptoms only. Twenty-four patients (86%) underwent operations that were performed using single-level dynamic stabilization, 3 patients (11%) were treated at 2 levels, and 1 patient underwent 3-level decompression and dynamic stabilization. The most commonly affected and treated level (46%) was L3-4. The mean preoperative VAS pain score was 8, whereas the mean postoperative score was 3. No patient required surgery for symptomatic degeneration rostral to the level of dynamic stabilization during the follow-up period.  The use of posterior lumbar dynamic stabilization may offer a valid and safe option for the management of patients who develop ASD rostral to a previously instrumented arthrodesis. The technique may serve as an alternative to multilevel arthrodesis in this patient population. By implanting a dynamic stabilization device instead of an extension of a rigid construct, this might translate into a reduction in the development of yet another level of ASD.

Field of study: Medicine
KPNA2-Associated Immune Analyses Highlight the Dysregulation and Prognostic Effects of GRB2, NRAS, and Their RNA-Binding Proteins in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Karyopherin α2 (KPNA2) was reported to be overexpressed and have unfavorable prognostic effects in many malignancies including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Although its contributions to inflammatory response were reported in many studies, its specific associations with immune infiltrations and immune pathways during cancer progression were unclear. Here, we aimed to identify new markers for HCC diagnosis and prognosis through KPNA2-associated immune analyses. RNA-seq expression data of HCC datasets were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas and International Cancer Genome Consortium. The gene expressions were counts per million normalized. The infiltrations of 24 kinds of immune cells in the samples were evaluated with ImmuCellAI (. The Spearman correlations of the immune infiltrations with KPNA2 expression were investigated, and the specific positive correlation of B-cell infiltration with KPNA2 expression in HCC tumors was identified. Fifteen genes in KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) B-cell receptor signaling pathway presented significant correlations with KPNA2 expression in HCC. Among them, GRB2 and NRAS were indicated to be independent unfavorable prognostic factors for HCC overall survival.  The upregulation and unfavorable prognostic effects of KPNA2 and GRB2 were confirmed, whereas, unlike its mRNA form, NRAS protein was presented to be downregulated and have favorable prognostic effects. Through receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, the diagnostic potential of the three proteins was shown. The RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) of KPNA2, NRAS, and GRB2, downloaded via The Encyclopedia of RNA Interactomes, were investigated for their clinical significance in HCC at protein level. An eight-RBP signature with independent prognostic value and dysregulations in HCC was identified. All the RBPs were significantly correlated with MKI67 expression and at least one of KPNA2, GRB2, and NRAS at protein level in HCC, indicating their roles in HCC progression and the regulation of the three proteins. We concluded that KPNA2, GRB2, NRAS, and their RBPs might have coordinating roles in HCC immunoregulation and progression. They might be new markers for HCC diagnosis and prognosis predication and new targets for HCC immunotherapy.

Field of study: Biology
On Class Administration in the View of Bucket Effects

Bucket Effects,one of the theoretical principles in business administration,enlightens the administration of students in a class greatly.In this principle,there are three constituents including the barrel head,the board and the bail.We can compare these constituents respectively to the three constituents in class administration:the counselor,the students and the student cadres.As the barrel head,the counselor needs to improve his or her personal quality so as to increase thickness of the bucket and the radius of the barrel head.As the board,all the students would effect the capacity of the bucket by their personal ability and moral character.And the bail signifies the binding force,central force and capacity of the student cadres.If we could obey this principle,the quality of entire class would be enhanced obviously.

Field of study: Agricultural and Food sciences
Shifting agricultural practices to produce sustainable, low carbon intensity feedstocks for biofuel production

The carbon intensity (CI) of biofuel's well-to-pump life cycle is calculated by life cycle analysis (LCA) to account for the energy/material inputs of the feedstock production and fuel conversion stages and the associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during these stages. The LCA is used by the California Air Resources Board's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program to calculate CI and monetary credits are issued based on the difference between a given fuel's CI and a reference fuel's CI. Through the Tier 2 certification program under which individual fuel production facilities can submit their own CIs with their facility input data, the LCFS has driven innovative technologies to biofuel conversion facilities, resulting in substantial reductions in GHG emissions as compared to the baseline gasoline or diesel. A similar approach can be taken to allow feedstock petition in the LCFS so that lower-CI feedstock can be rewarded. Here we examined the potential for various agronomic practices to improve the GHG profiles of corn ethanol by performing feedstock-level CI analysis for the Midwestern United States. Our system boundary covers GHG emissions from the cradle-to-farm-gate activities (i.e., farm input manufacturing and feedstock production), along with the potential impacts of soil organic carbon change during feedstock production. We conducted scenario-based CI analysis of ethanol, coupled with regionalized inventory data, for various farming practices to manage corn fields, and identified key parameters affecting cradle-to-farm-gate GHG emissions. The results demonstrate large spatial variations in CI of ethanol due to farm input use and land management practices. In particular, adopting conservation tillage, reducing nitrogen fertilizer use, and implementing cover crops has the potential to reduce GHG emissions per unit corn produced when compared to a baseline scenario of corn-soybean rotation. This work shows a large potential emission offset opportunity by allowing feedstock producers a path to Tier 2 petitions that reward low-CI feedstocks and further reduce biofuels' CI. The prevalence of significant acreage that has not been optimized for CI suggests that policy changes that incentivize optimization of this parameter could provide significant additionality over current trends in farm efficiency and adoption of conservation practice.

Field of study: Environmental science
Shell Wins $19M Refund

A district court in Texas allowed Shell Petroleum to carry back capital losses and receive a nearly $19 million refund. The losses were generated by a restructuring transaction involving an exchange of high-basis property for new subsidiary stock followed by loss-generating dispositions of the stock. In 1992, Shell Oil was facing serious financial difficulties. Oil prices had dropped significantly, causing serious declines in Shell's net income and net cash flow at the same time that its debt was increasing. In reaction, Shell and its affiliated oil companies (the Shell Group) restructured to improve cash flow while preserving assets, especially offshore leases and oil shale rights that were currently nonproducing but that Shell thought could eventually yield profitable oil discoveries. (Shell had learned its lesson decades earlier, when it had abandoned its holdings on the North Slope of Alaska and the region then became home to the biggest oil field in North America.) The Shell Group transferred the properties to a new subsidiary, Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Inc., in a section 351 transaction. In such a transaction, shareholders receive a basis in the stock of the new corporation equal to the basis of the property they transfer to acquire that stock. In this case, the basis of much of the transferred property was far greater than its value. As a result, subsequent disposal of the stock in Shell Frontier created losses exceeding $350 million for tax year 1992. The Shell Group in 2004 carried back the consolidated net capital loss to 1990, which resulted in an overpayment for that tax year of $18.9 million. The IRS disallowed these losses on various grounds. It claimed that since many of the transferred properties were nonproducing, they had no value and thus should not be considered section 351 property However, the district court found that even though the properties were nonproducing, they did in fact have value and thus were considered property for section 351 purposes. Noting that the provision does not define "property," the court said Shell's interests "fit the classical--indeed, paradigmatic--definition of 'property' in that they are identifiable and transferable real property interests." The IRS also asserted that the transfer was a sham transaction intended to artificially inflate tax basis. While the Shell Oil tax department was involved in the restructuring plan, it did not discuss any of the plan's tax benefits with management, so that the restructuring decisions would be based on economic factors. …

Field of study: Business
Weakly null sequences with upper estimates

We prove that if $(v_i)$ is a normalized basic sequence and X is a Banach space such that every normalized weakly null sequence in X has a subsequence that is dominated by $(v_i)$, then there exists a uniform constant $C\geq1$ such that every normalized weakly null sequence in X has a subsequence that is C-dominated by $(v_i)$. This extends a result of Knaust and Odell, who proved this for the cases in which $(v_i)$ is the standard basis for $\ell_p$ or $c_0$.

Field of study: Mathematics
Comparison of balloon angioplasty and papaverine infusion for the treatment of vasospasm following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.

OBJECT
The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that balloon angioplasty is superior to papaverine infusion for the treatment of proximal anterior circulation arterial vasospasm following subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Between 1989 and 1995, 125 vasospastic distal internal carotid artery or proximal middle cerebral artery vessel segments were treated in 52 patients.



Blood flow velocities of the involved vessels were assessed by using transcranial Doppler (TCD) monitoring in relation to the day of treatment with balloon angioplasty or papaverine infusion. Balloon angioplasty and papaverine infusion cohorts were compared based on mean pre- and posttreatment velocity at 24 and 48 hours using the one-tailed, paired-samples t-test. Balloon angioplasty alone was performed in 101 vessel segments (81%) in 39 patients (75%), whereas papaverine infusion alone was used in 24 vessel segments (19%) in 13 patients (25%). Although repeated treatment after balloon angioplasty was needed in only one vessel segment, repeated treatment following papaverine infusion was required in 10 vessel segments (42%) in six patients because of recurrent vasospasm (p < 0.001). Seven vessel segments (29%) with recurrent spasm following papaverine infusion were treated with balloon angioplasty. Although vessel segments treated with papaverine demonstrated a 20% mean decrease in blood flow velocity (p < 0.009) on posttreatment Day 1, velocities were not significantly lower than pretreatment levels by posttreatment Day 2 (p = 0.133). Balloon angioplasty resulted in a 45% mean decrease in velocity to a normal level following treatment (p < 0.001), a decrease that was sustained.



Balloon angioplasty is superior to papaverine infusion for the permanent treatment of proximal anterior circulation vasospasm following aneurysmal SAH.

Field of study: Medicine
Electric control of spin currents and spin-wave logic.

Spin waves in insulating magnets are ideal carriers for spin currents with low energy dissipation. An electric field can modify the dispersion of spin waves, by directly affecting, via spin-orbit coupling, the electrons that mediate the interaction between magnetic ions. Our microscopic calculations based on the superexchange model indicate that this effect of the electric field is sufficiently large to be used to effectively control spin currents. We apply these findings to the design of a spin-wave interferometric device, which acts as a logic inverter and can be used as a building block for room-temperature, low-dissipation logic circuits.

Field of study: Physics
An oligocene sink for organic carbon: Upwelling in the paratethys?

A synoptic review of the organic carbon content, kerogen type, biogenic siliceous sediments and planktonic remains is attempted for the often anoxic Oligocene-Early Miocene sediments of the Paratethys covering a large area between the Rhine Valley and the Aral Sea. On this basis stratification of the sea and intensity of planktonic productivity are discussed for different parts of the Paratethys. The Eastern parathethys and some parts of the Central and Western Paratethys show a Black Sea-like stable stratificatin, while the bulk of the anoxic sediments in the Carpathian Flysch Basin are interpreted to have an upwelling origin. The supposed Flysch Ocean upwelling regime has no good recent analogue, although it shows similarities with the Bay of California (high rate of Corg burial, laminated, diatomaceous sediments, and turbiditic intercalations) and offshore NW-Africa (abundant fresh-water discharge). Sediments of a brackish-water incursion are widespread on the bottom of the NP 23 zone. From earliest Oligocene to Early Miocene a continuous narrowing of the anoxic sedimentary belt towards the East-European Platform is observed.

Field of study: Environmental science, Geography
Conformations and mutarotations of poly(5-methyl-L-proline)

Optically active poly( cis -5-methyl-L-proline) and poly( trans -5-methyl-L-proline) were synthesized from their respective N-carboxy-anhydrides (NCA). Analysis of the i.r., u.v., n.m.r., ORD, and CD spectra of the polymers showed that two different conformations of each polymer exist in the solid and in solution in appropriate solvents. Form I and form II of poly( trans -5-methyl-L-proline) were found to have the same conformations as the form I and form II of poly-L-proline, respectively. Form B of poly( cis -5-methyl-L-proline) seemed to have a somewhat different conformation from form II of poly-L-proline. The changes in viscosity during the mutarotations of the two polymers showed that the mutarotation entailed cis-trans isomerization of amide bonds in the polymers. By following the kinetics of the mutarotations it was found that the activation energies for poly( cis -5-methyl-L-proline) was 22 kcal per residue mole, whereas E a of poly( trans -5-methyl-L-proline) was 33 kcal per residue mole. The excess 10 kcal for the latter polymer was attributed partially to the steric barrier between the methyl group at the trans -5-position and the carbonyl group in the polymer.

Field of study: Chemistry
Effect of Performing Process on Microstructure and Properties of Cold-rolled N04400 Pipe

Under technology of same cold roll,the drilled and skew rolling pierced ingot of N04400 alloy was rolled into the same dimension tubes respectively,and the tubes were annealed in vacuum at different temperatures.The effects of two performing process on microstructure and mechanical properties of the cold rolled and annealed pipe were studied.The results show that: the microstructure of the drilled tubes is massive along the rolling direction,but the microstructure of the skew rolling pierced tubes is compact and the fibrous is visible;the strength of both tubes has a little difference,but the elongation of the skew rolling pierced tubes is higher significantly;after the same annealing processes,the recrystallization temperature of the skew rolling pierced tubes is lower,and the microstructure is smaller;the strength of the skew rolling pierced tubes falls quickly and the elongation rises obviously.

Field of study: Materials science
Randomized Nonlinear Component Analysis

Classical methods such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) are ubiquitous in statistics. However, these techniques are only able to reveal linear relationships in data. Although nonlinear variants of PCA and CCA have been proposed, these are computationally prohibitive in the large scale. 
 
In a separate strand of recent research, randomized methods have been proposed to construct features that help reveal nonlinear patterns in data. For basic tasks such as regression or classification, random features exhibit little or no loss in performance, while achieving drastic savings in computational requirements. 
 
In this paper we leverage randomness to design scalable new variants of nonlinear PCA and CCA; our ideas extend to key multivariate analysis tools such as spectral clustering or LDA. We demonstrate our algorithms through experiments on real-world data, on which we compare against the state-of-the-art. A simple R implementation of the presented algorithms is provided.

Field of study: Computer science
Investigation on High-Power Stirling-Type Pulse Tube Coolers for Cooling HTS Motors

High-power Stirling-type pulse tube coolers (HSPTCs) driven by oil-free linear compressors are promising candidates for cooling HTS devices for the advantages of simple configuration, low noise and stable operation. Three U-shaped two-stage pulse tube coolers driven by a 10 kW linear compressor were built and studied. The effects of flow inhomogeneity on the temperature profiles along the regenerator and on the cooling capacity were investigated experimentally. By optimizing the impedance matching and operating conditions, the first cooler can reach a base temperature of 44.2 K; the second cooler reaches a base temperature of 27.1 K and provides a cooling power of 50 W at 45.6 K with 4.8 kW of power; the last cold head reaches a base temperature of 13.27 K and provides a cooling power of 18.3 W at 30 K. The present results form a foundation for building a HSPTC system capable of providing a cooling power of 80 W at 30 K.

Field of study: Physics
Odor-guided fear conditioning in rats: 1. Acquisition, retention, and latent inhibition.

Three experiments examined the acquisition, retention, and latent inhibition of odor-guided fear conditioning in rats. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that forward conditioned stimulus (CS)-unconditioned stimulus (US) pairings resulted in robust freezing responses to subsequent presentation of the CS alone. In Experiment 2, rats in one group (PRE) received unreinforced preexposures to the odorant CS, and those in a second group (NON) were not preexposed to the odorant. All rats then received forward CS-US pairings. PRE rats exhibited a marked attenuation of freezing to subsequent exposure to the CS relative to NON rats. All rats were then retested at one of the following posttraining delays: 17, 24, or 31 days. Freezing behavior of the NON rats declined significantly across these delays, whereas rats in the PRE group froze no more at any delay than they had 24 hr after training. Experiment 3 examined the contextual specificity of latent inhibition. Only those rats that were preexposed and trained in the same context exhibited latent inhibition. These results indicate that odor-guided fear conditioning is a robust and useful paradigm suitable for future studies of the neural bases of associative learning.

Field of study: Biology, Psychology
Health Care Reform: Preparing the Psychology Workforce

This article is based on the opening presentation by the author to the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers’ 5th National Conference, “Preparing Psychologists for a Rapidly Changing Healthcare Environment” held in March, 2011. Reviewing the patient protection and affordable care act (ACA), that presentation was designed to set the stage for several days of symposia and discussions anticipating upcoming changes to the healthcare system. This article reviews the ACA; general trends that have impacted healthcare reform; the implications of the Act for psychology’s workforce including the growing focus on interprofessional education, training, and practice, challenges to address in order to prepare for psychology’s future; and recommendations for advocating for psychology’s future as a healthcare profession.

Field of study: Psychology
Research on Component Composition Based on Linear Logic

Software component composition is widely recognized to be a crucial problem in component-based software engineering.In this paper,the component model which has the pre-condition and the post-condition and three composition architectures including sequential architecture,alternative architecture and parallel architecture are described in linear logic.The approach of component composition can be given automatically according to the available component and the composition architectures in theorem prove.The complex component's specification can be made automatically from the adapted components' specifications.The proposed approach in the paper improves the ability of specification and analysis of system to component adaptation and offers a guarantee to the formal analysis of component composition and the validation of the proper component composition.At last the future works are listed.

Field of study: Computer science