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In this study, the post-embedded piezoceramic transducers are used to perform structural health monitoring (SHM) and detect crack damage on the reinforced concrete (RC) column. The piezoceramic transducers are utilized as actuators and sensors, respectively. To investigate the use of the piezoceramic transducer in detecting crack damage in RC columns, SHM tests are performed on three full-size RC column specimens with various failure modes under cyclic loading. The sensors are installed at two depth ranges (40–50 and 70–80 mm) beneath the surface of the column to investigate the effect of the sensor depth on the damage index. In this study, the energy and amplitude-based damage indexes are developed. Both approaches follow the same trend under various drift ratios of the specimen. However, the value of energy-based damage index is much higher than the amplitude index for all peak drift ratio of the specimen. From different depth range of piezoceramic transducers, this study recommends a depth of 80 mm as optimal for post-embedded piezoceramic transducers, since it receive more stable signals in various frequencies. In the proposed health monitoring approach using piezoceramic transducers, the equation to predict the maximum residual crack width and damage index smart aggregates are developed. The normalized damage index equation which in this study is referred as ‘crack damage index’ is introduced and used to calculate the limiting value for each damage level. The suggested value of the crack damage index for each damage level is also provided. The energy, strength and stiffness reduction factors for each damage level, which correlate with the crack damage index, are also presented. These results demonstrate that the proposed post-embedded piezoceramic transducers has the potential to be used as a tool for SHM on an RC column. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind turbines are a cost-effective alternative energy source; however, their blades are susceptible to damage. Therefore, damage detection of wind turbine blades is of great importance for condition monitoring of wind turbines. Many vibration-based structural damage detection techniques have been proposed in the last two decades. The local flexibility method, which can determine local stiffness variations of beam-like structures by using measured modal parameters, is one of the most promising vibration-based approaches. The local flexibility method does not require a finite element model of the structure. A few structural modal parameters identified from the ambient vibration signals both before and after damage are required for this method. In this study, we propose a damage detection approach for rotating wind turbine blades using the local flexibility method based on the dynamic macro-strain signals measured by long-gauge fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensors. A small wind turbine structure was constructed and excited using a shaking table to generate vibration signals. The structure was designed to have natural frequencies as close as possible to those of a typical 1.5 MW wind turbine in real scale. The optical fiber signal of the rotating blades was transmitted to the data acquisition system through a rotary joint fixed inside the hollow shaft of the wind turbine. Reversible damage was simulated by aluminum plates attached to some sections of the wind turbine blades. The damaged locations of the rotating blades were successfully detected using the proposed approach, with the extent of damage somewhat over-estimated. Nevertheless, although the specimen of wind turbine blades cannot represent a real one, the results still manifest that FBG-based macro-strain measurement has potential to be employed to obtain the modal parameters of the rotating wind turbines and then locations of wind turbine segments with a change of rigidity can be estimated effectively by utilizing these identified parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pneumocephalus is a rare complication after using loss-of-resistance to air technique of epidural anesthesia and is usually caused by inadvertent dural puncture. Most patients with pneumocephalus have headache, motor weakness, seizures, and focal neurologic deficits depending on the distribution and amount of intracranial air. Consciousness decline and death had been reported because of mass effect or cerebral gas embolism. Either conservative treatment with 100% oxygen and ventilator support or surgical intervention with external ventricular drain had been reported as a treatment. We present a 36-year-old otherwise healthy woman with cardiopulmonary arrest and deep coma as a complication of loss-of-resistance to air epidural anesthesia. She regained consciousness rapidly 3 hours after completion of 1 session of 120 minutes emergent hyperbaric oxygen therapy at 2.8 atm absolute pressure with 100% oxygen concentration. Our successful treatment provides a new insight for the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the management of epidural procedure-induced life-threatening pneumocephalus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We aimed to identify prognostic factors of early-stage cervical adenocarcinoma (AC) and adenosquamous carcinoma (ASC) treated with primary radical surgery, and to evaluate the impact of postoperative adjuvant therapy on outcome. Methods: The clinical-pathological data of all patients (n = 1132) with stages l-II cervical AC/ASC treated with primary radical surgery at the member hospitals of the Taiwanese Gynecologic Oncology Group were retrospectively reviewed. Results: In multivariate analysis, stage II, deep stromal invasion (DSI), lymphovascular space invasion (LVSI), positive pelvic lymph node (PLN), and parametrial involvement (PI) were significant factors for recurrence-free survival (RFS), while only DSI, PI, and positive PLN were independent factors for cancerspecific survival (CSS). Low- and high-risk groups were defined by prognostic scores derived from the four factors (DSI, LVSI, positive PLN, PI) selected by internal validation. Postoperative adjuvant therapy significantly improved outcome for PLN-positive patients (RFS, p = 0.014; CSS, p = 0.016), but not for PLN-negative high-risk group because of higher mean prognostic score (p = 0.028) of adjuvant+ than adjuvant-patients. Conclusions: PLN metastasis, PI, DSI, and LVSI were independent prognostic factors. Prospective studies of postoperative adjuvant therapy with prognostic score and nodal status stratification for cervical AC/ ASC are necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology for reading the mind is an important element of Heart-Touching-AI, which aims to understand and support the human mind and body. The well-known saying "The eyes are the windows to the soul" expresses the fact that pupil response and eye movement can reveal information about a person's mental state. Research is underway at NTT Communication Science Laboratories to find the principles of understanding a person's mental state from his or her eyes in order to develop basic technologies that can apply such a capability to real-world problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain processes involved in auditory perception are reflected in various physical/physiological responses. Our recent studies indicate that in addition to brainwaves, responses that might seem to have nothing to do with audition-for example, pupillary responses, sounds emitted from the ear, and rhythmic finger-tapping movements-actually provide information about subjective auditory experiences of listeners. These findings may lead to various applications such as designing auditory displays with pleasing sounds adapted to individual listeners and developing novel techniques for diagnosing or compensating for impaired hearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at research in the field of cognitive science which demonstrates that human behavior, decision making, and emotion rely on the implicit mind. Topics mentioned include methods developed to decode the implicit mind from involuntary body movements and physiological responses, an overview of brain-computer interfaces used to decode a person's brain activity, and possible application of mind-reading technology in information and communication technology.

Murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68) is genetically related to the human gammaherpesviruses, Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV/HHV-8) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). It has been proposed as a model for gammaherpesvirus infection and pathogenesis. Open reading frame 31 (ORF31) is conserved among the Beta- and Gammaherpesvirinae subfamily, and there is no known mammalian homologue of this protein. The function of MHV-68 ORF31 and its viral homologues has not yet been determined. We described here a primary characterization of this protein and its requirement for lytic replication. The native MHV-68 ORF31 was detected at peak levels by 24 h postinfection, and the FLAG-tagged and green fluorescent protein fusion ORF31 were localized in the cytoplasm and nucleus in a diffuse pattern. Two independent experimental approaches were then utilized to demonstrate that ORF31 was required for lytic replication. First, small interfering RNA generated against ORF31 expression blocked protein expression and virus production in transfected cells. Then, two-independent bacterial artificial chromosome-derived ORF31-null MHV-68 mutants (31STOP) were generated and found to be defective in virus production in fibroblast cells. This defect can be rescued in trans by MHV-68 ORF31 and importantly by its KSHV homologue. A repair virus of 31STOP was also generated by homologous recombination in fibroblast cells. Finally, we showed that the defect in ORF31 blocked late lytic protein expression. Our results demonstrate that MHV-68 ORF31 is required for viral lytic replication, and its function is conserved in its KSHV homologue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an immune‑mediated inflammatory disease that is associated with an increased incidence of cardiovascular events. Several inflammatory mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of UC are involved in the initiation and progression of aortic aneurysms (AAs). We aimed to evaluate whether patients with UC have an increased risk of AA. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using data extracted from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database. All medical conditions for each case and control subject were categorized using the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for associations between UC and AA were estimated using the Cox regression adjusted for comorbidities. Results: Our analyses included 7256 UC patients and propensity score‑matched controls. Compared to the controls, UC patients exhibited a significantly increased risk of developing an AA (adjusted odds ratio = 3.154, P < 0.001). Conclusion: UC patients have an increased risk of developing an AA, and healthcare professionals should be aware of this risk when treating UC patients. Aortic surveillance may be required for UC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68) has been developed as a model for the human gammaherpesviruses Epstein-Barr virus and human herpesvirus 8/Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (HHV-8/KSHV), which are associated with several types of human diseases. Open reading frame 45 (ORF45) is conserved among the members of the Gammaherpesvirinae subfamily and has been suggested to be a virion tegument protein. The repression of ORF45 expression by small interfering RNAs inhibits MHV-68 viral replication. However, the gene product of MHV-68 ORF45 and its function have not yet been well characterized. In this report, we show that MHV.68 ORF45 is a phosphorylated nuclear protein. We constructed an ORF45-null MHV-68 mutant virus (45STOP) by the insertion of translation termination codons into the portion of the gene encoding the N terminus of ORF45. We demonstrated that the ORF45 protein is essential for viral gene expression immediately after the viral genome enters the nucleus. These defects in viral replication were rescued by providing ORF45 in trans or in an ORF45-null revertant (45STOP.R) virus. Using a transcomplementation assay, we showed that the function of ORF45 in viral replication is conserved with that of its KSHV homologue. Finally, we found that the C-terminal 23 amino acids that are highly conserved among the Gammaherpesvirinae subfamily are critical for the function of ORF45 in viral replication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can we turn AI black boxes into code? Although this mission sounds extremely challenging, we show that it is not entirely impossible by presenting a proof-of-concept method, MIPS, that can synthesize programs based on the automated mechanistic interpretability of neural networks trained to perform the desired task, auto-distilling the learned algorithm into Python code. We test MIPS on a benchmark of 62 algorithmic tasks that can be learned by an RNN and find it highly complementary to GPT-4: MIPS solves 32 of them, including 13 that are not solved by GPT-4 (which also solves 30). MIPS uses an integer autoencoder to convert the RNN into a finite state machine, then applies Boolean or integer symbolic regression to capture the learned algorithm. As opposed to large language models, this program synthesis technique makes no use of (and is therefore not limited by) human training data such as algorithms and code from GitHub. We discuss opportunities and challenges for scaling up this approach to make machine-learned models more interpretable and trustworthy.

Interactive visualizations can allow science museum visitors to explore new worlds by seeing and interacting with scientific data. However, designing interactive visualizations for informal learning environments, such as museums, presents several challenges. First, visualizations must engage visitors on a personal level. Second, visitors often lack the background to interpret visualizations of scientific data. Third, visitors have very limited time at individual exhibits in museums. This paper examines these design considerations through the iterative development and evaluation of an interactive exhibit as a visualization tool that gives museumgoers access to scientific data generated and used by researchers. The exhibit prototype, Living Liquid, encourages visitors to ask and answer their own questions while exploring the time-varying global distribution of simulated marine microbes using a touchscreen interface. Iterative development proceeded through three rounds of formative evaluations using think-aloud protocols and interviews, each round informing a key visualization design decision: (1) what to visualize to initiate inquiry, (2) how to link data at the microscopic scale to global patterns, and (3) how to include additional data that allows visitors to pursue their own questions. Data from visitor evaluations suggests that, when designing visualizations for public audiences, one should (1) avoid distracting visitors from data that they should explore, (2) incorporate background information into the visualization, (3) favor understandability over scientific accuracy, and (4) layer data accessibility to structure inquiry. Lessons learned from this case study add to our growing understanding of how to use visualizations to actively engage learners with scientific data.

Though Deflazacort and prednisone improve clinical endpoints in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients, Deflazacort produces fewer side effects. As mechanisms of improvement and side effect differences remain unknown, we evaluated effects of corticosteroid administration on gene expression in blood of DMD patients. Whole blood was obtained from 14 children and adolescents with DMD treated with corticosteroids (DMD-STEROID) and 20 DMD children and adolescents naïve to corticosteroids (DMD). The DMD-STEROID group was further subdivided into Deflazacort and prednisone groups. Affymetrix U133 Plus 2.0 expression microarrays were used to evaluate mRNA expression. Expression of 524 probes changed with corticosteroids, including genes in iron trafficking and the chondroitin sulfate biosynthesis pathway. Deflazacort compared with prednisone yielded 508 regulated probes, including many involved in adipose metabolism. These genes and pathways help explain mechanisms of efficacy and side effects of corticosteroids, and could provide new treatment targets for DMD and other neuromuscular disorders.

Background: While human auditory cortex is known to contain tonotopically organized auditory cortical fields (ACFs), little is known about how processing in these fields is modulated by other acoustic features or by attention., Methodology/principal Findings: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and population-based cortical surface analysis to characterize the tonotopic organization of human auditory cortex and analyze the influence of tone intensity, ear of delivery, scanner background noise, and intermodal selective attention on auditory cortex activations. Medial auditory cortex surrounding Heschl's gyrus showed large sensory (unattended) activations with two mirror-symmetric tonotopic fields similar to those observed in non-human primates. Sensory responses in medial regions had symmetrical distributions with respect to the left and right hemispheres, were enlarged for tones of increased intensity, and were enhanced when sparse image acquisition reduced scanner acoustic noise. Spatial distribution analysis suggested that changes in tone intensity shifted activation within isofrequency bands. Activations to monaural tones were enhanced over the hemisphere contralateral to stimulation, where they produced activations similar to those produced by binaural sounds. Lateral regions of auditory cortex showed small sensory responses that were larger in the right than left hemisphere, lacked tonotopic organization, and were uninfluenced by acoustic parameters. Sensory responses in both medial and lateral auditory cortex decreased in magnitude throughout stimulus blocks. Attention-related modulations (ARMs) were larger in lateral than medial regions of auditory cortex and appeared to arise primarily in belt and parabelt auditory fields. ARMs lacked tonotopic organization, were unaffected by acoustic parameters, and had distributions that were distinct from those of sensory responses. Unlike the gradual adaptation seen for sensory responses, ARMs increased in amplitude throughout stimulus blocks., Conclusions/significance: The results are consistent with the view that medial regions of human auditory cortex contain tonotopically organized core and belt fields that map the basic acoustic features of sounds while surrounding higher-order parabelt regions are tuned to more abstract stimulus attributes. Intermodal selective attention enhances processing in neuronal populations that are partially distinct from those activated by unattended stimuli.

A survey assessing the practice of epidemiology in the pharmaceutical industry was sent to all member companies and research affiliates of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and to six non-member companies. Eighty-three companies were surveyed. Screening questions established whether or not a company employed epidemiologists, had an epidemiology department, or contracted work to epidemiologists outside the company. The survey included questions about organizational structure, functional role of epidemiologists, epidemiology department activities within the company, and collaboration with external partners. The response rate was 90.4%. Of the responding companies, 40% employed epidemiologists, 20% had epidemiology departments, and 36% utilized epidemiologists contracted outside the company. Eighty per cent of companies that employed epidemiologists also contracted epidemiology services outside of the company, while 6.7% of companies that did not employ epidemiologists utilized outside epidemiology services. Among all companies 42.7% employed or utilized epidemiologists. Differences were found in the extent to which large, medium and small pharmaceutical companies employ and utilize epidemiologists. The survey demonstrates that epidemiologists perform many roles within the pharmaceutical industry; that there are many potential opportunities for epidemiologists in this industry and that increased emphasis on safety will require more epidemiology training and recruitment efforts. Copyright (c) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.