Search

Many [Formula: see text]-linear relations exist between multiple zeta values, the most interesting of which are the weighted sum formulas. In this paper, we generalize these to Euler sums and Kaneko and Tsumura’s multiple [Formula: see text]-values, a variant of the multiple zeta values, by considering generating functions of the Euler sums. Through this approach, we are able to re-prove a few known formulas, confirm a conjecture of Kaneko and Tsumura on triple [Formula: see text]-values, and discover many new identities.

Urocortin-1 (UCN1) is a member of the corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) family of peptides that acts through CRH-receptor 1 (CRHR1) and CRH-receptor 2 (CRHR2). UCN1 can induce the adrenocorticotropin hormone and downstream glucocorticoids through CRHR1 and promote beneficial metabolic effects through CRHR2. UCN1 has a short half-life and has been shown to improve experimental autoimmune disease. A pegylated UCN1 peptide (PEG-hUCN1) was generated to extend half-life and was tested in multiple experimental autoimmune disease models and in healthy mice to determine effects on corticosterone induction, autoimmune disease, and glucocorticoid induced adverse effects. Cardiovascular effects were also assessed by telemetry. PEG-hUCN1 demonstrated a dose dependent 4-6-fold elevation of serum corticosterone and significantly improved autoimmune disease comparable to prednisolone in several experimental models. In healthy mice, PEG-hUCN1 showed less adverse effects compared with corticosterone treatment. PEG-hUCN1 peptide induced an initial 30% reduction in blood pressure that was followed by a gradual and sustained 30% increase in blood pressure at the highest dose. Additionally, an adeno-associated viral 8 (AAV8) UCN1 was used to assess adverse effects of chronic elevation of UCN1 in wild type and CRHR2 knockout mice. Chronic UCN1 expression by an AAV8 approach in wild type and CRHR2 knockout mice demonstrated an important role of CRHR2 in countering the adverse metabolic effects of elevated corticosterone from UCN1. Our findings demonstrate that PEG-hUCN1 shows profound effects in treating autoimmune disease with an improved safety profile relative to corticosterone and that CRHR2 activity is important in metabolic regulation. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: This study reports the generation and characterization of a pegylated UCN1 peptide and the role of CRHR2 in UCN1-induced metabolic effects. The potency/selectivity, pharmacokinetic properties, pharmacodynamic effects, and efficacy in four autoimmune models and safety profiles are presented. This pegylated UCN1 shows potential for treating autoimmune diseases with reduced adverse effects compared to corticosterone treatment. Continuous exposure to UCN1 through an AAV8 approach demonstrates some glucocorticoid mediated adverse metabolic effects that are exacerbated in the absence of the CRHR2 receptor.

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has already caused enormous economic and human life losses in the United States and it is still ravaging the country. In this article, the authors argue that the pandemic has exposed key issues of concern in several areas of the American government system ranging from federalist intergovernmental relations to public health system and to health care policy. These issues of concern include the strained federal-state relations in emergency management, inadequate data collection and data reporting for disease surveillance and control, politicization and diminished role of science and evidence in administrative decision making, and underinvestment in public health programs especially in minority health. Based on their analysis, the authors admonish that it is critically important for the U.S. government to learn from the failed response to the pandemic and offer several recommendations for improving its response to future public health emergencies and research in public administration.

We study a prominent energy regulation affecting large Chinese manufacturers that are part of broader conglomerates. Using detailed firm-level data and difference-in-differences research designs, we show that regulated firms cut output and shifted production to unregulated firms in the same conglomerate instead of improving their energy efficiency. Conglomerate spillovers account for 40% of the output loss of regulated firms and substantially reduce aggregate energy savings. Using a structural model, we show that alternative polices that use public information on business networks could lower the shadow cost of the regulation by more than 40% and increase aggregate energy savings by 10%.

We study a production network where quality choices are interconnected across firms. High-quality firms are skill intensive and trade more with other high-quality firms. Using data from Turkish firms, we document strong assortative matching of skills in the production network. A firm-specific export demand shock from a rich country increases the firm's skill intensity and shifts the firm toward skill-intensive domestic partners. We develop a quantitative model with heterogeneous firms, endogenous quality choices, and network formation. An economy-wide export demand shock of 5 percent induces exporters and non-exporters to upgrade quality, raising the average wage by 1.2 percent. This effect is about nine times the effect in a special case of the model with no interconnection of quality choices.

Bus rapid transit (BRT) lanes may increase the travel time cost of other motor vehicles while improving the operating efficiency of BRT vehicles. In this paper the control strategies of the...

This chapter discusses the key health challenges faced by rural families, the major national policies and programs for rural health, and the process and political context of policymaking for rural health. It first provides an overview of the health condition in rural areas and health disparities as well as their linkage to poverty in rural communities, followed by an overview of the existing government health policies and programs for rural areas and a critical analysis of the federalist system in health policymaking. Then it offers a brief overview of the American federalism and major decision-making models for health policy and discusses their application to health policy decision-making in the United States. The last part concludes by providing policy recommendations for addressing health challenges for rural families and children. It is hoped that this chapter will help professionals in social, health, and human services understand the complexity of addressing health challenges faced by many rural families and children through policy and program interventions.

With more than 1.7 million COVID-19 deaths, identifying effective measures to prevent COVID-19 is a top priority. We developed a mathematical model to simulate the COVID-19 pandemic with digital contact tracing and testing strategies. The model uses a real-world social network generated from a high-resolution contact data set of 180 students. This model incorporates infectivity variations, test sensitivities, incubation period, and asymptomatic cases. We present a method to extend the weighted temporal social network and present simulations on a network of 5000 students. The purpose of this work is to investigate optimal quarantine rules and testing strategies with digital contact tracing. The results show that the traditional strategy of quarantining direct contacts reduces infections by less than 20% without sufficient testing. Periodic testing every 2 weeks without contact tracing reduces infections by less than 3%. A variety of strategies are discussed including testing second and third degree contacts and the pre-exposure notification system, which acts as a social radar warning users how far they are from COVID-19. The most effective strategy discussed in this work was combining the pre-exposure notification system with testing second and third degree contacts. This strategy reduces infections by 18.3% when 30% of the population uses the app, 45.2% when 50% of the population uses the app, 72.1% when 70% of the population uses the app, and 86.8% when 95% of the population uses the app. When simulating the model on an extended network of 5000 students, the results are similar with the contact tracing app reducing infections by up to 79%.

Summary Background Allogeneic blood or marrow transplantation (alloBMT) is a potentially life-saving treatment for individuals with HIV and haematological malignancies; challenges include identifying donors and maintaining antiretroviral therapy (ART). The objectives of our study were to investigate interventions to expand donor options and to prevent ART interruptions for patients with HIV in need of alloBMT. Methods This single-arm, interventional trial took place at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (Baltimore, MD, USA). Individuals with HIV who were at least 18 years of age and referred for alloBMT for a standard clinical indication were eligible. The only exclusion criterion was a history of documented resistance to enfuvirtide. We used post-transplant cyclophosphamide as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis to expand donor options and an optimised ART strategy of avoiding pharmacoenhancers and adding subcutaneous enfuvirtide during post-transplant cyclophosphamide and during oral medication intolerance. Our primary outcome was the proportion of participants who maintained ART through day 60 after alloBMT. We measured the HIV latent reservoir using a quantitative viral outgrowth assay. This study is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov , NCT01836068 . Findings Between June 1, 2013, and August 27, 2015, nine patients who were referred for transplant provided consent. Two patients had relapsed malignancy before donor searches were initiated. Seven patients had suitable donors identified (two matched sibling, two matched unrelated, two haploidentical, and one single-antigen mismatched unrelated) and proceeded to alloBMT. All patients maintained ART through day 60 and required ART changes (median 1, range 1–3) in the first 90 days. One patient stopped ART and developed HIV rebound with grade 4 meningoencephalitis at day 146. Among six patients who underwent alloBMT and had longitudinal measurements available, the HIV latent reservoir was not detected post-alloBMT in four patients with more than 95% donor chimerism, consistent with a 2·06–2·54 log10 reduction in the HIV latent reservoir. In the two patients with less than 95% donor chimerism, the HIV latent reservoir remained stable. Interpretation By using post-transplant cyclophosphamide as GVHD prophylaxis, we successfully expanded alloBMT donor options for patients with HIV. Continuing ART with a regimen that includes enfuvirtide post-alloBMT was safe, but life-threatening viral rebound can occur with ART interruption. Funding amfAR (the Foundation for AIDS Research), Johns Hopkins University Center for AIDS Research, and National Cancer Institute.

We incorporate the lumpy nature of firm-level investment into the study of how tax policy affects investment behavior. We show that tax policies can directly impact the lumpiness of investment. Extensive-margin responses to tax policy are key to understanding the effects of different tax reforms and to designing effective stimulus policies. We illustrate these results by studying China's 2009 VAT reform, which lowered the tax cost of investment and reduced partial irreversibility|the price gap between new and used capital. Using administrative tax data and a difference-in-differences design, we estimate a 36% investment increase. This effect is driven by investment spikes, which is consistent with the reduction of VAT-induced partial irreversibility. Using a dynamic investment model that fits the reduced-form effects of the reform, we show that policies that directly reduce the likelihood of firm inaction are more effective at stimulating investment.

This paper presents a preliminary work of a simulation study for the evaluation of human-machine team (HMT) performance with assistance of a sentinel system under cyberattacks. Sentinel system is an intelligent agent of cyberattack-detection kit, whose user interface (UI) was designed and implemented as a proof-of-concept in the simulation. The goal for this sentinel system is to improve the pilots’ Situation Awareness (SA) of the system vulnerability and resiliency, such that the HMT performance can be improved against disruptive events. Based on the literature of cyberattacks on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control systems, realistic mission operation and cyberattack scenarios were identified and implemented on a simulated UAV ground control station (GCS). In the follow-up experiment, up to twenty-four Air Force pilots will be instructed to supervise the UAVs under specific mission scenarios, and to respond for system recovery solutions generated on Sentinel UI after detection of cyberattacks. Understanding the interactive behaviors of the pilot and Sentinel under mission contexts and cyberattacks is expected to help improve HMT performance.

Practice makes perfect to some extent. Researchhas shown that musicians who practice the piano for long peri-ods of time can suffer a range of hand problems from loss ofcontrol to diminished speed. Now imagine a rubber keyboardthat is springy, soft, and elastic. This is the new type of inputdevice that dielectric elastomers (DE) can create. However theirusage in large sensing systems is limited by a scalability chal-lenge. Each DE sensor is married to a pair of connection cablesand electronics, adding to the complexity of the backgroundoverheads. A new efficient multi-frequency method is pre-sented that is capable of detecting internal pressure changesfrom a difference in the DE’s capacitance without the need forany additional wires or connections. This effectively segmentsthe DE into smaller sections, achieving information from a sin-gle sensor equivalent to multiple sensors. V C 2015 Wiley Period-icals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2015, 00, 000–000 KEYWORDS: dielectric elastomer sensor; localized capacitance;musical keyboard; transmission lineINTRODUCTION

Dielectric elastomers, also known as artificial muscles have produced many biomimetic robots. One advantage is their ability to provide feedback through capacitance. However when the sensing frequency is too high, the measured capacitance can underestimate the true value. In this paper, the measured capacitance of dielectric elastomer stacked and rolled configurations were shown to reduce with increasing sensing frequency. A transmission line electrical model linked this to the result of high interconnect and sheet resistances of the electrodes. A design methodology to help determine the working limits of sensing frequency is presented.

Corruption remains a common governance concern for most countries, and the deployment of information technology in the public sector can potentially increase the transparency of government. This article reviews the past research on e-government and corruption at country level, develops a comprehensive model, and utilizes a most recent longitudinal dataset from 80 countries for five selected years (2003–2010). Our panel data analysis suggests that the development of e-government is correlated with lower levels of perceived corruption. In addition, the perceived level of corruption is also related to several other factors including government effectiveness, gender ratio, and government size.

In this demo, we introduce the tweet-based newsfeed summary service, called iApollo, running on a named data network (NDN) stack. This novel application provides a customized newsfeed service to individual readers based on their interests. Data sampling is essential in iApollo because of the large volume of tweets. Espresso, the automatic naming agent, translates this sampling problem into the simple tree traversal by constructing a hierarchical namespace for the given set of tweets. Two types of tree traversals are introduced: a modified breadth-first-search (BFS) and depth-first-search (DFS) which result in generating headline and complementary news, respectively. This allows readers to quickly achieve the best semantic understanding of the news topic with the minimal number of data retrievals. The newsfeeds are transmitted over NDN because NDN caching can reduce the retrieval delay while releasing burden on the end server. Furthermore, Espresso is well-matched to NDN as it naturally resolves NDN's naming requirement. The application demonstrates not only the tweet-newsfeed service, but also the great synergy between Espresso and NDN. This work can be extended into a general software framework for content summarization.

In this work we demonstrate a new methodology to conceptualise and implement geo-constraints in 3D, which has not been widely explored yet. This is done in four stages from natural language to implementation, in which geometric primitives and Object Constraint Language (OCL) play a crucial role to formulate the constraints. A database including various 3D topographic objects (e.g. buildings, trees, roads, grass, water-bodies and terrains) from CityGML (no constraints yet) is used as a case study to apply the developed methodology. In this research, a first attempt to formulate 3D geo-constraints in OCL is made. Unified Modelling Language (UML) class diagram has been extended with graphical symbols for indicating constraints between classes (in addition to the additional compartment within a class for a class constraint). These constraint expressions can be tested and translated to other models/implementations when the OCL standard is extended with spatial types and operations. During this research, new types of constraints are defined as follows: general-level constraints (applicable to all object sub-classes), parameterised constraints (containing numeric values, e.g. maximum distance), constraints allowing exceptional instances (to resolve cases that have not been defined) and constraints relating to multi-scale representations (to check the consistency between two levels of detail which model the same object). Additionally common sense rules to detect conflicting constraints are specified as well.

The paper gives a summary of RTS noise data captured from 0.18um technology. It can be a reference for the channel area and voltage bias selection for RTS measurement.

We present a new sensing method that can measure the strain at different locations in a dielectric elastomer. The method uses multiple sensing frequencies to target different regions of the same dielectric elastomer to simultaneously detect position and pressure using only a single pair of connections. The dielectric elastomer is modelled as an RC transmission line and its internal voltage and current distribution used to determine localised capacitance changes resulting from contact and pressure. This sensing method greatly simplifies high degree of freedom systems and does not require any modifications to the dielectric elastomer or sensing hardware. It is demonstrated on a multi-touch musical keyboard made from a single low cost carbon-based dielectric elastomer with 4 distinct musical tones mapped along a length of 0.1m. Loudness was controlled by the amount of pressure applied to each of these 4 positions.

Hand motion is one of our most expressive abilities. By measuring our interactions with everyday objects, we can create smarter artificial intelligence that can learn and adapt from our behaviours and patterns. One way to achieve this is to apply wearable dielectric elastomer strain sensors directly onto the hand. Applications such as this require fast, efficient and scalable sensing electronics. Most capacitive sensing methods use an analogue sensing signal and a backend processor to calculate capacitance. This not only reduces scalability and speed of feedback but also increases the complexity of the sensing circuitry. A capacitive sensing method that uses a DC sensing signal and continuous tracking of charge is presented. The method is simple and efficient, allowing large numbers of dielectric elastomer sensors to be measured simulatenously.

We develop a model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous quality choices. Producing higher quality involves returns to scale, it is intensive in skilled labor and high-quality inputs. Firms' quality choices are interrelated because firms sell their goods to consumers and to other firms. We estimate the model using data on manufacturing plants in Colombia before the trade liberalization, simulate a counterfactual liberalization and compare the results to post-liberalization data. Like other unilateral trade liberalizations in developing countries, the skill premium and skill intensity in manufacturing increased, and the size of firms decreased in Colombia. In the model, lower tariffs lead importers and exporters to upgrade quality, increasing the domestic demand and supply of high-quality inputs. Other firms then upgrade their own product quality, thereby amplifying these effects of domestic inputs. Relative demand for skilled labor increases in a wide range of firms, despite a contraction in sales.

We develop a model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous quality choices. Producing higher quality involves returns to scale, it is intensive in skilled labor and high-quality inputs. Firms' quality choices are interrelated because firms sell their goods to consumers and to other firms. We estimate the model using data on manufacturing plants in Colombia before the trade liberalization, simulate a counterfactual liberalization and compare the results to post-liberalization data. Like other unilateral trade liberalizations in developing countries, the skill premium and skill intensity in manufacturing increased, and the size of firms decreased in Colombia. In the model, lower tariffs lead importers and exporters to upgrade quality, increasing the domestic demand and supply of high-quality inputs. Other firms then upgrade their own product quality, thereby amplifying these effects of domestic inputs. Relative demand for skilled labor increases in a wide range of firms, despite a contraction in sales.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Physical activity affects the immune system, which in turn may modify the risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). The effect of sitting on CIN is unknown. This study investigated the relationship between sitting time, physical activity and the risk of CIN.Community-dwelling adult women within metropolitan Perth, Western Australia, who had had a Papanicolaou (Pap) smear test at any of five clinics and medical centres, were approached by their general practitioners. In total, 348 women were recruited and interviewed for information on sitting time, physical activity level and lifetime physical activity exposure using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ)--short form. Associations of exposure variables with CIN risk were assessed by unconditional logistic regression analyses.The prevalence of abnormal Pap smear status indicating CIN was found to be 15.8%. Women with prolonged sitting duration (≥42 h per week) had significantly increased risk of CIN (adjusted OR 3.49, 95% CI 1.12-10.88) than women who sat less than 24.5h per week. Although the effect of total physical activity level was non-significant (P=0.408), being always involved in physical activity during the entire life appeared to be inversely associated with the CIN risk (P=0.036).Prolonged sitting time was significantly associated with increased risk of abnormal Pap smear status indicating CIN. SO WHAT?: This preliminary investigation highlights a new prospect for health-promotion intervention to reduce the risk of CIN. Health practitioners should encourage women to reduce their sitting time and maintain physically active throughout their life course.

Being able to accurately record body motion allows complex movements to be characterised and studied. This is especially important in the film or sport coaching industry. Unfortunately, the human body has over 600 skeletal muscles, giving rise to multiple degrees of freedom. In order to accurately capture motion such as hand gestures, elbow or knee flexion and extension, vast numbers of sensors are required. Dielectric elastomer (DE) sensors are an emerging class of electroactive polymer (EAP) that is soft, lightweight and compliant. These characteristics are ideal for a motion capture suit. One challenge is to design sensing electronics that can simultaneously measure multiple sensors. This paper describes a scalable capacitive sensing device that can measure up to 8 different sensors with an update rate of 20Hz.

Biology is a source of inspiration for many functional aspects of engineered systems. Fish can provide guidance for the design of animal-like robots, which have soft elastic bodies that are a continuum of actuator, sensor, and information processor. Fish respond to minute pressure changes in water, generating thrust and gaining lift from obstacles in the current, altering the shape of body and fins and using sensory nerves in their muscles to control them. Dielectric Elastomer (DE) artificial muscles offer a mechanism for a fish muscle actuator. DE devices have already been shown to outperform natural muscle in terms of active stress, strain, and speed[1-3]. DE's also have multi-functional capabilities that include actuation, sensing, logic and even energy harvesting, all achievable through appropriate control of charge[4, 5]. But DE actuators must be designed so that they provide enough torque to drive the tail and develop useful forward thrust.

On one hand, web services have demonstrated their important roles in the field of computing. On the other, networked games need server support, which is usually based on socket programming. For example, in a two-player taketurn game using TCP protocol, a server communicates and coordinates the two game GUIs utilized by the two players. This gives rise to one important research question, “Can the server take the advantages of web services in order to replace the sockets while supporting networked games?” This article describes some technical aspects for accomplishing this goal.

R&D are reduced.

For the purpose of this paper Controlled Pressure Drilling (CPD) here is referred to as underbalanced reservoir drilling, managed pressured drilling or performance drilling. Since the operations differ between underbalanced drilling and traditional overbalanced drilling, risk management plays a key role in ensuring drilling operations are processed safely to protect people, the environment and assets.Firstly, this paper gives a brief introduction of controlled pressure drilling. Secondly, the paper discusses the key risk management techniques applied in one organisation, such as the risk matrix, SURE, Job Safety Analysis (JSA), Hazard Identification Studies (HAZID), Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP), Bow-tie type risk analysis, etc. Thirdly the paper discusses the necessary HSE documentation required to integrate risk management techniques into a CPD project as a road map to a successful project. Lastly, using one project completed in Asia Pacific to elaborate the risk management process and the challenges faced over the years.

Stretchability is a property that brings versatility and design freedom to human interface devices. We present a soft, flexible and stretchable keyboard made from a dielectric elastomer sensor sheet. Using a multi-frequency capacitance sensing technique based on a transmission line model, we demonstrate how this keyboard can detect touch in two dimensions, programmable to increase the number of keys and into different layouts, all without adding any new wires, connections or modifying the hardware. The method is efficient and scalable for large sensing systems with multiple degrees of freedom.

Photonic switches are being deployed in optical telecommunications networks because the need for transmission bandwidth is outstripping the capacity of today’s optical-electrical-optical (OEO) switches.

Because of their large output strain, dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have been proposed for tunable optics applications such as tunable gratings. However, the inherent viscoelastic drift of these actuators is an important drawback and closed-loop operation of DEAs is a prerequisite for any accurate real-world application. In this paper, we show how capacitive self-sensing can be used to drive a DEA in closed-loop without the need for any external sensor. The method has been demonstrated on a DEA tunable grating based on a VHB acrylic and silicone membrane. The results show that the widely used VHB presents a time-dependent drift between the capacitance of the electrodes and their strain. The silicone-based grating does not exhibit such a drift, and its strain can be stabilized by regulating the capacitance of the device to a constant value. We also report on an new fabrication method for thin deformable gratings based on replication on a water-soluble master and a 27% change in the grating period has been obtained on a VHB-based device.

We report on the use of capacitive self-sensing to operate a DEA-based tunable grating in closed-loop mode. Due to their large strain capabilities, DEAs are key candidates for tunable optics applications. However, the viscoelasticity of elastomers is detrimental for applications that require long-term stability, such as tunable gratings and lenses. We show that capacitive sensing of the electrode strain can be used to suppress the strain drift and increase the response speed of silicone-based actuators. On the other hand, VHB actuators exhibit a time-dependent permittivity, which causes a drift between the device capacitance and its strain.

Highlights: • Real-Time Control can enhance a rainwater tank's ability to mitigate flooding and restore baseflow. • Using 7-day lead-time rainfall forecast further increases the ability of RTC to reduce flooding risk. • Using 7-day rainfall forecast allows the controlled release to mimic reference streamflow regime.