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Drug combination has been widely used in treating the most debilitating diseases such as cancer. The ideal drug-drug combination will broaden and/or deepen therapeutic efficacy while overcoming resistance and unwanted off-target effects. We have developed a 384-well combination compound plating method in 8×7 format (8 dilutions of Drug A and 7 dilutions of Drug B), and screened a number of compound pairs that showed synergistic effect in inhibiting tumor cell growth in either suspension or solid tumor lines. Compound vehicle DMSO was used as negative control and puromycin treatment as positive control for calculating% inhibition, and both HSA and Bliss independence synergy models were applied for calculating synergy scores. As 384-well 8×7 format contains one compound pair per plate, we aimed to increase the throughput by developing 384-well 5×5 format (5 dilutions of Drug A and 5 dilutions of Drug B) which contains 3 drug pairs per plate, and 1536-well 8×7 and 5×5 format which contains 4 and 12 drug pairs per plate, respectively. We compared EC50s and synergy scores generated from 384-well and 1536-well with both 8×7 and 5×5 formats, single agent EC50s within combination pairs were generally within 3 fold difference and synergy scores are largely consistent. Therefore, we have validated and enabled higher throughput drug-drug combination screen by using 384-well 5×5, 1536-well 8×7, or 5×5 format. The high-throughput method presented here can be readily adopted for combination studies in other disease areas. Citation Format: Yvonne Li, Mike Ma, Julie Chan, Yang Tian, Nikos Pagratis, Derek Stonich, Victor Chen, Louis Zhang, Mark Kenney. Developing 384-well and 1536-well cell growth inhibition assay workflow for screening drug-drug combination in tumor cell lines. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 1354.

Context.—Cervical cancer screening in women younger than 30 years relies on cervical cytology because of the poor performance of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing in this age group.Objectives.—To determine the performance of in-cell HPV E6, E7 mRNA quantification (HPV OncoTect) for the detection of high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia in women younger than 30 years.Design.—We analyzed 3133 cytology specimens from a screening population of women aged 19–75 years investigate HPV OncoTect as a triage/secondary screening test for atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) and low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) cytology in women younger than 30 years. Test results were compared to histology in 246 cases.Results.—The sensitivity of E6, E7 mRNA was 89% for CIN 2+ and 100% for CIN 3+ lesions in women 30 years and older. In women younger than 30 years, the sensitivity of E6, E7 mRNA for CIN 2+ lesions was 88% for CIN 2+ and 92% for CIN 3+ lesions. Abnormal cytology (≥ASCUS) exhibited a sensitivity of 89% for CIN 2+ and 100% for CIN 3+ in women 30 years and older and 96% sensitivity for CIN 2+ and 93% sensitivity for CIN 3+ in women younger than 30. The specificity of E6, E7 mRNA was >80% for CIN 2+ and CIN 3+ in both groups of women compared to a specificity of abnormal cytology of Conclusions.—HPV OncoTect demonstrates a performance that would be effective for ASCUS/LSIL triage in women including those younger than 30 years.

Drug discovery depends on scientists finding compounds with molecular fingerprints similar to the target drug, or pharmacophore. A new way of improving the accuracy of molecular fingerprint folding is presented. The goal is to alleviate the growing challenge of excessively long fingerprints. This improved method generates a new shorter fingerprint that is more accurate than the basic folded fingerprint. Information gathered during preprocessing is used to determine an optimal attribute order. The most commonly used blocks of bits can then be organized and used to generate a new improved fingerprint for more optimal folding. The authors then applied the widely used Tanimoto similarity search algorithm to benchmark the results. The authors showed an improvement in the final results using this method to generate an improved fingerprint compared to other traditional folding methods.

Recent progress in the use of surface-functionalized GaN for sensing of gases, heavy metals, UV photons and biological molecules is reviewed. The use of such sensors for monitoring nerve cells is also explored. Additionally, we briefly review progress with InN-based chemical sensors. For the detection of gases such as hydrogen, the GaN is coated with a catalyst metal such as Pd or Pt to increase the detection sensitivity at room temperature. Functionalizing the surface with oxides, polymers, and nitrides is also useful in enhancing the detection sensitivity for gases and ionic solutions. The use of enzymes or adsorbed antibody layers on the semiconductor surface leads to highly specific detection of a broad range of antigens of interest in the medical and homeland security fields. We give examples of recent work showing sensitive detection of glucose, lactic acid, prostate cancer, and breast cancer markers. Nerve cell-GaN surface coupling allowed for the analysis of cell reactions to different neuroinhibitors. InN chemical sensors have also been shown to be viable for sensing anions, pH, and polarity.

MobileAnalymator (Mobile Analysis Animator) is a visual analytic system designed to analyze geospatial-temporal data on mobile devices. The system is an Internet based application that allows analysts to work in flexile enviornments at anytime. Its client side is developed by Adobe Flash to animate and interact with data. The server side uses Java and MySQL to query, compute, and serve data. The analyst can run the analytical task from a tablet (or computer) with Internet connection. MobileAnalymator adopted spatial and temporal autocorrelations in the interface design and integrated tangible interaction in the navigation to support analysis process.

The use of electronic monitoring tools in the workplace has grown dramatically because of the availability of inexpensive but powerful monitoring systems and the wide use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in today’s workplace. However, existing research pays little attention to the pervasive use of electronic monitoring systems on ICT at work. This chapter draws theories in international and organizational cultures and concludes four hypotheses on privacy concerns of employees and their perceived trust to the management when being electronically monitored.

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a cardiovascular disorder that affects approximately 4.6 million Americans and is a leading cause of death in the United States. Current research shows that strategies to promote early recognition and treatment of symptoms and enhance self-care management behaviors reduce unnecessary hospitalizations. However, mechanisms to monitor patients' health status and behaviors are limited by constraints imposed by the patient's geography, infirmity, or resources. Remote monitoring supports a more dynamic connection between healthcare providers and patients, improves health promotion and patient care through monitoring of health data, communicates health reminders, and makes provisions for patient feedback. This paper will describe two versions of Weight and Activity with Blood Pressure Monitoring System (WANDA [22]) that leverages sensor technology and wireless communication to monitor health status of patients with CHF. The WANDA system is built on a three-tier architecture consisting of sensors, a web server, and back-end database tiers. The system was developed in conjunction with the UCLA School of Nursing and the UCLA Wireless Health Institute to enable early detection of key clinical symptoms indicative of CHF-related decompensation in a real-time automated fashion and allows health professionals to offer surveillance, advice, and continuity of care and triggers early implementation of strategies to enhance adherence behaviors. The small study has enabled patients to reduce or maintain the number of readings which are out of the acceptable range. For diastolic, systolic, and heart rate values, the t-test results show that the WANDA study is effective for patients with CHF. © 2010 ACM.

Heart failure is a leading cause of death in the United States, with around 5 million Americans currently suffering from congestive heart failure. The WANDA B. wireless health technology leverages sensor technology and wireless communication to monitor heart failure patient activity and to provide tailored guidance. Patients who have cardiovascular system disorders can measure their weight, blood pressure, activity levels, and other vital signs in a real-time automated fashion. The system was developed in conjunction with the UCLA Nursing School and the UCLA Wireless Health Institute for use on actual patients. It is currently in use with real patients in a clinical trial. © 2010 IEEE.

The problem of dictatorship testing is often used a starting in constructing a PCP system. Samorodnitsky and Trevisan in STOC 2006 designed a dictatorship test that makes q queries and has soundness approximately O(qċ2-q). However, their test has imperfect completeness. We describe some of the progress made in designing dictatorship tests with perfect completeness.

The rich collection of successes in property testing raises a natural question: Why are so many different properties turning out to be locally testable? Are there some broad "features" of properties that make them testable? Kaufman and Sudan (STOC 2008) proposed the study of the relationship between the invariances satisfied by a property and its testability. Particularly, they studied properties that were invariant under linear transformations of the domain and gave a characterization of testability in certain settings. However, the properties that they examined were also linear. This led us to investigate linear-invariant properties that are not necessarily linear. Here we describe some of the resulting works which consider natural linear-invariant properties, specifically properties that are described by forbidden patterns of values that a function can take, and show testability under various settings.

We have recently shown that low-flow (10%) ischemia in the isolated piglet heart causes an abrupt fall in mechanical function and metabolic activity (acute hibernation), with nearly complete preservation of high-energy phosphates and glycogen after 2 hours of ischemia. We attempted to determine if norepinephrine, as occurs in vivo, would modify the hibernation process. Piglet hearts were perfused at 37 degrees C with red blood cell-enhanced Krebs-Henseleit solution. Performance of the left ventricle was assessed isovolumetrically. With control coronary flow, norepinephrine (40 ng/ml) caused a approximately 50% increase in pressure-rate product and the rate of change of pressure. When coronary flow was reduced to 10%, these measures fell to levels identical to those of ischemic hearts not exposed to norepinephrine. Changes in myocardial O2 metabolism paralleled mechanical function. Lactate release was quantitatively similar in both groups. However, myocardial adenosine triphosphate was reduced from 29 +/- 1 to 13 +/- 2 mumol/gm and glycogen from 300 +/- 46 to 77 +/- 15 mumol/gm by the presence of norepinephrine. Left ventricular compliance was reduced to 51 +/- 5%, compared with 87 +/- 8% in the group without norepinephrine (p less than 0.001). In the norepinephrine group, correlation between left ventricular stiffness and adenosine triphosphate was poor (r = -0.32). Thus hibernating myocardium does not manifest progressive deterioration in the presence of high concentrations of norepinephrine. Diastolic function is less well preserved, however.

In this thesis, I present results that span a number of largely independent topics within the broader disciplines of seismology and glaciology. The problems addressed in each section are quite different, but the approach taken throughout is to use simplified models to attempt to understand more complex physical systems. In these models, use of solid and fluid mechanics are important elements, though in some cases the mechanics are greatly simplified so that progress can be more easily made. The five primary results of this thesis can be summarized as follows: (1) Glacial earthquakes, which were known as enigmatic M_S ~ 5 seismic sources prior to the work presented here, are now characterized and understood as being due to coupling of gravitational energy from large calving icebergs into the solid Earth. (2) Rapid drainage events from meltwater lakes on Greenland can be understood in terms of models of turbulent hydraulic fracture at the base of the Greenland Ice Sheet. (3) The form of ‘lake star’ melt patterns on lake ice can be quantitatively modeled as arising from flow of warm water through slushy ice. (4) The 2004 Sumatra earthquake can be approximated using a 5-point rupture model, and this model helps resolve some uncertainties of previous models. (5) The accuracy of seismic noise tomography results can be better understood and calculated through use of a new theoretical approach. While there is no overarching theme to the results obtained in this thesis, all results represent an increase in our understanding of some area of geophysics.

In this study, three characteristics of Web sites were varied: types of banner ad, Web localization, and involvement in purchasing a product. The dependent variable was attitude toward the site. In laboratory experiments conducted in Thailand and Taiwan, participants browsed versions of a Web site containing different types of banner ads and products. As a within-participants factor, each participant browsed both a standardized English-language Web site and a localized Web site. Results showed that animated (rather than static) banner ads, localized versions (rather than a standardized version) of Web sites, and high (rather than low) product involvement led to favorable attitudes toward the site.

A hypergraph dictatorship test is first introduced by Samorodnitsky and Trevisan and serves as a key component in their unique games based $\PCP$ construction. Such a test has oracle access to a collection of functions and determines whether all the functions are the same dictatorship, or all their low degree influences are $o(1).$ Their test makes $q\geq3$ queries and has amortized query complexity $1+O(\frac{\log q}{q})$ but has an inherent loss of perfect completeness. In this paper we give an adaptive hypergraph dictatorship test that achieves both perfect completeness and amortized query complexity $1+O(\frac{\log q}{q})$.

In this chapter, the authors will briefly discuss some cross cultural concerns regarding Internet privacy. The authors believe that due to the cross cultural nature of the Internet itself, different cultures will tend to result in different concerns regarding Internet privacy. As such, there is no single system of protecting Internet privacy that may be suitable for all cultures. The authors also utilize focus groups from various countries spanning Asia and the United States to discover the differences between cultures. Hopefully an understanding of such differences will aid in future research on Internet privacy to take a more culture sensitive approach.

The effects of reduced dietary fat intake on plasma lipid levels were examined in diabetic rats. One week after induction of diabetes (D) with streptozotocin (65 mg/kg, iv), the animals were fed food pellets consisting of 1.5% (D1.5), 2.5% (D2.5) or 5% (D5) fat for two weeks. Irrespective of the diets, both food and water consumed by untreated diabetic rats were 2- to 5-fold greater respectively compared to normal. Plasma glucose concentrations were also similarly increased. Plasma and skeletal muscle lipid levels were significantly greater than controls in D2.5 and D5, but not in the D1.5 group. Plasma and muscle lipid concentrations correlated directly with fat consumption. In D5 rats receiving insulin treatment, plasma glucose and lipid concentrations were comparable to control values. These findings indicate that the degree of hyperlipidemia in chronically diabetic rats is directly related to dietary fat intake. They also demonstrate that dietary interventions can modulate some of the metabolic abnormalities in diabetes.

This paper reports the first application of iterative experimental design methodology for high spatiotemporal resolution characterization of river and lake aquatic systems performed using mobile robot sensing systems. Both applications involve dynamic phenomena spread over large spatial domain: 1) Characterization of contaminant concentration and flow at the confluence of two major rivers displaying dynamics due to flow of the water; and 2) Characterization of rapidly evolving biological processes such as phytoplankton dynamics in a lake system. We describe the development and application of a new general purpose method for mobile robot sensing in such environments - Iterative experiment Design for Environmental Applications (IDEA). IDEA introduces in-field adaptation of mobile robotic sensing system. Analysis of the complex spatial and temporal structures associated with each observed environment is presented. Detailed characterization of the observed environment using IDEA methodology is used as an informed prior to improve the performance of the existing adaptive experimental design approaches for mobile robotic systems - stratified adaptive sampling and hierarchical non-stationary Gaussian Processes.

With the fast growth of the Web, users often suffer from the problem of information overload, since many existing search engines respond to queries with many nonrelevant documents containing query terms based on the conventional search mechanism of keyword matching. In fact, both users and search engine developers had anticipated that this mechanism would reduce information overload by understanding user goals clearly. In this chapter, we will introduce some past research in Web search, and current trends focusing on how to improve the search quality in different perspectives of “what”, “how”, “where”, “when”, and “why”. Additionally, we will also briefly introduce some effective search quality improvements using link-structure-based search algorithms, such as PageRank and HITS. At the end of this chapter, we will introduce the idea of our proposed approach to improving search quality, which employs syntactic structures (verb-object pairs) to automatically identify potential user goals from search-result snippets. We also believe that understanding user goals more clearly and reducing information overload will become one of the major developments in commercial search engines in the future, since the amounts of information and resources continue to increase rapidly, and user needs will become more and more diverse.

This chapter explores the motivation of virtual community members in regards to knowledge sharing and understands the underlying factors of such sharing behaviors. In order to better understand the effects of the two key factors (expectancy value and transaction cost) on the behaviors of knowledge sharing in virtual communities, this chapter presents a conceptual model to illustrate the relationship between transaction cost, expectancy value, and knowledge sharing. The knowledge transaction market is also further examined, since knowledge sharing is a form of knowledge transaction and the knowledge market provides an essential platform for knowledge transaction. This chapter is concluded with closing remarks and some suggestions for future research direction.

Distributed, high-density spatiotemporal observations are proposed for answering many river related questions, including those pertaining to hydraulics and multi-dimensional river modeling, geomorphology, sediment transport and riparian habitat restoration. In spite of the recent advancements in technology, currently available systems have many constraints that preclude long term, remote, autonomous, high resolution monitoring in the real environment. We present here a case study of an autonomous, high resolution robotic spatial mapping of cross-sectional velocity and salt concentration in a river basin. The scientific objective of this investigation was to characterize the transport and mixing phenomena at the confluence of two distinctly different river streams - San Joaquin River and its tributary Merced River. Several experiments for analyzing the spatial and temporal trends at multiple cross-sections of the San Joaquin River were performed during the campaign from August 21-25, 2006. These include deterministic dense raster scans and in-field adapted experimental design. Preliminary analysis from these experiments illustrating the range of investigations is presented with the focus on adaptive experiments that enable sparse sampling to provide larger spatial coverage without discounting the dynamics in the phenomena. Lessons learned during the campaign are discussed to provide useful insights for similar robotic investigations in aquatic environments.

Distributed, high-density spatiotemporal observations are proposed for answering many river related questions, including those pertaining to hydraulics and multi-dimensional river modeling, geomorphology, sediment transport and riparian habitat restoration. In spite of the recent advancements in technology, currently available systems have many constraints that preclude long term, remote, autonomous, high resolution monitoring in the real environment. We present here a case study of an autonomous, high resolution robotic spatial mapping of cross-sectional velocity and salt concentration in a river basin. The scientific objective of this investigation was to characterize the transport and mixing phenomena at the confluence of two distinctly different river streams - San Joaquin River and its tributary Merced River. Several experiments for analyzing the spatial and temporal trends at multiple cross-sections of the San Joaquin River were performed during the campaign from August 21-25, 2006. These include deterministic dense raster scans and in-field adapted experimental design. Preliminary analysis from these experiments illustrating the range of investigations is presented with the focus on adaptive experiments that enable sparse sampling to provide larger spatial coverage without discounting the dynamics in the phenomena. Lessons learned during the campaign are discussed to provide useful insights for similar robotic investigations in aquatic environments.

The Internet is widely recognized as an important information and communication medium. It has also become a useful tool for children’s education, but since the Internet is an open environment, it contains much information unsuitable for the under aged. This article introduces several content-filtering methods that can assist parents and educators in protecting children from harmful material. However, it must be noted that these are of limited value unless they are supported by sex education and parental monitoring of children’s Internet use.

The NEAR (Navigating Exhibitions, Annotations and Resources) is a compact panel designed to help people navigating, searching and interacting in an information repository by visualizing implicit data relations such as sharing, reference and similarity. It is implemented on A∙VI∙RE, an online multimedia repository. A∙VI∙RE supports semi-structured collections (exhibitions) containing various resources and annotations. Its users are encouraged to contribute, share, annotate and interpret resources. Similar to the act of adding items into shopping carts in the e-commence applications, a user’s acts of searching and organizing and interpreting data in A∙VI∙RE are considered as evidence of the user’s preferences. The design process of NEAR was guided by several design moves analyzed from literatures. It implements new navigation and communication approaches that support discovery of relations.

In order to understand and control the impact of non-point source pollution in Central California and many semi-arid regions of the world, a multiscale observational network focused on several water quality issues is proposed. Specifically, we are targeting the main stem of the San Joaquin River as a prototypical river system. By developing multiscale modeling approaches, we will endeavor first to understand the hydrodynamics of salt mixing on the San Joaquin at each of the three river confluences (with the Merced, Tuolumne, and Stanislaus Rivers) and create salt-flow rating curves characterizing 5 different flow conditions, and second, to quantify and sample groundwater-surface water interactions along critical reaches of the river where the US Geological Survey is investigating with respect to groundwater accretion.

This paper reports the first application of actuated sensing systems for high spatiotemporal resolution characterization of the threedimensional environment of river and lake aquatic systems. The development of a new method and its verification in these two application areas is described. Both applications involve dynamic phenomena - one resulting from flow of the water and the other from rapidly evolving biological processes. These applications are typical environmental monitoring problems. They exemplify the key challenge in such problems - characterizing phenomena displaying spatiotemporal heterogeneity. In many such examples, the application requires a diverse array of measurements based on sensors for physical, chemical and biological systems. Together, these requirements pose a significant challenge for conventional sensor network methods. We describe the development and applications of a new general purpose method for actuated sensing - Iterative experiment Design for Environmental Applications (IDEA). IDEA introduces a new in-field adaptation of the sensing systems including static and actuated sensors. IDEA addresses the limitations of previous sampling approaches, for example conventional adaptive sampling, by guiding adaptive sampling with an iteratively developed phenomenon model. This paper presents applications of IDEA to: (1) Three-dimensional characterization of contaminant concentration and flow at the confluence of two major rivers; and (2) Characterization of phytoplankton dynamics in a lake system. These applications provide ideal tests by presenting complex structures associated with each phenomenon and enabling a comprehensive evaluation of the general applicability of IDEA methodology. Improved performance using guided adaptive sampling is demonstrated for two existing methodologies, stratified adaptive sampling and hierarchical non-stationary Gaussian Processes. The IDEA experimental results both validate the general applicability of this method and also have advanced the understanding of interrelated physical, chemical and biological processes in these sampled environments.

Environmental monitoring has proven to be a rich source of biological and ecological data but typically does not conform to traditional monitoring techniques. Events of interest are often dynamic and may not tolerate the introduction of a conventional infrastructure without disrupting the environment being monitored. The new NIMS architectures require minimal infrastructure, are rapidly deployable, and have self anchoring coordinate systems. Simple cableways provide system mobility with minimal occlusion of the monitored transect allowing for accurate positioning and high positional resolution within the space of interest. These new systems have been developed to operate in either a two dimensional plane (NIMS-RD: e.g. monitor river or stream properties) or in a three dimensional volume (NIMS-3D: e.g. monitor incident solar radiation under a forest canopy).

It is crucial to minimize the parasitic capacitance at a high-frequency I/O, found in applications such as high-speed serial links and radio receivers. Here, we study the bias-dependent capacitance of a poly-defined SOI diode-a popular ESD protection device according to C. Putnam et al. (2004), C. Entringer et al. (2005), M. Khazbinisky et al. (2005), S. Mitra et al. (2005), and S. Voidman et al. (1996). Also, we present a model for this diode; the model is intended for circuit simulation

Multidrug resistance protein-5 (MRP5, ABCC5) is a member of the ATP-binding cassette transporter superfamily that effluxes a broad range of natural and xenobiotic compounds such as cyclic GMP, antiviral compounds, and cancer chemotherapeutic agents including nucleoside-based drugs, antifolate agents and platinum compounds. In cellular assays, MRP5 transfectants are less fluorescent after incubation with 5-chloromethylfluorescein diacetate (CMFDA). The present study examines the uptake of a close fluorescent analog, carboxydichlorofluorescein (CDCF), and drug substrates into inside-out membrane vesicles prepared from MRP transfected cells. MRP5-mediated uptake of CDCF was ATP-dependent and GSH-independent and possessed a Km of 12 microM and a Vmax of 56 pmol/min/mg prot. Comparison of kinetic parameters with drug substrates such as methotrexate (MTX), pemetrexed (Alimta), and the metabolite of 5-fluorouracil, 5-fluorodeoxyuridine monophosphate (5-FdUMP) (Km values of 0.3-1.3 mM) indicated that MRP5 has a 25-100-fold higher affinity for CDCF than for these drugs and that they share a common transport binding site. In addition, the potency of MRP5 inhibitors such as probenecid, MK571, and the phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors correlated well between the uptake of CDCF and MTX. A survey of CDCF uptake by other MRPs revealed that MRP2 (ABCC2) also demonstrated ATP-dependent uptake with a Km of 19 microM and Vmax of 95.5 pmol/min/mg prot, while MRP1 (ABCC1) and MRP4 (ABCC4) had little to no uptake. Taken together, these data indicate that CDCF is a useful fluorescent drug surrogate with which to measure ATP-dependent MRP5-mediated transport.

In multifrequency ultrasound holographic imaging systems it should be possible in principle to use ARMA modeling to interpolate and extrapolate spatial arrays of detectors and to interpolate and extrapolate discrete frequencies used for frequency diversity. Our preliminary results indicate that this hypothesis is valid. However more explorations are required before general use can be recommended.

The ability to remotely monitor the dynamics of a natural environment is an increasingly important avenue for investigating and ultimately protecting natural ecosystems and safeguarding public health. NIMS provides a new capability for mobile monitoring of complex environments. NIMS enables the first spatiotemporally resolved sensing capability for applications including microclimate characterization in the forest canopy by using this new multisensor module.

Cool ambient air temperatures and warm soil and rock surfaces in alpine fellfield ecosystems produce sharp and dynamic spatial gradients in surface temperatures, with profound impacts on plant ecophysiology. Spot measurements of plant and soil surface temperatures are not sufficient to understand the complexity of this environment. Thermal scanner instrumentation mounted on a NIMS-RD system can provide dense measurements of spatial and temporal patterns of surface temperatures across a fellfield habitat, as well as a photographic log of transect position.

Rapidly growing stress on the natural environment has created an urgent demand for new environmental exploration systems that operate remotely and autonomously. As sensor networks are applied to these critical environmental monitoring problems, a series of new requirements have emerged for extensive characterization of dynamic phenomena in three-dimensional environments. The unpredictable presence of obstacles to sensing and the inherent temporal evolution of events create limitations for optimal deployment of sensors in the environment.

Following in the footsteps of the field Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS) currently deployed at the James San Jacinto Mountain Reserve in Idyllwild California, two smaller scale NIMS architectures have emerged. The Laboratory Systems (NIMS-LS) provides an experimental testbed for verification of actuated sensing of environmental phenomena. The NIMS-LS System also includes emulation of environmental phenomena (i.e. light distribution in ecosystems). The Rapidly Deployable (NIMS-RD) platform provides a flexible means of sampling environmental phenomena directly with minimal infrastructure, rapid deployability and minimal impact on the environment. NIMS-RD has been deployed at the James San Jacinto Mountain Reserve, Medea Creek in the Santa Monica Mountains, Merced River in Merced CA and White Mountains Research Station near Bishop CA.

The impacts of anthropogenic inputs on streams in urban watersheds include seasonal algal blooms, high bacteria levels, elevated nutrient concentrations, and altered channel morphology, all of which are commonplace in southern California urban streams. Although it is clear that urbanization effects stream health, the complex mechanisms leading to symptoms such as elevated algal biomass are not well understood. In order to better understand the relationship between urbanization and stream health, the temporal and spatial variation of stream water parameters in urban streams need to be known. Understanding these patterns will help elucidate the driving mechanisms leading to stream degradation and allow for improved management practices. Using various water quality sensors and NIMS technology, the temporal (daily, weekly, and monthly) and spatial (cross sectional and reach scale) variation in Medea Creek in Agoura Hills, CA is being monitored. By analyzing the correlations between these parameters we will be able to determine the driving biotic and abiotic mechanisms leading to the excess algal biomass and nutrient concentrations in Medea Creek.

Trust and privacy have been widely recognized as important issues in the field of electronic commerce. We propose a research model with trust and privacy as two endogenous variables along with other exogenous variables like independent self-construal, interdependent self-construal, technological knowledge, and Web site quality, that are expected to effect Internet consumers' trust level and privacy concerns.

Type I male midshipman fish produce high-frequency hums for prolonged durations using sonic muscle fibers, each of which contains a hollow tube of radially oriented thin and flat myofibrils that display extraordinarily wide ( approximately 1.2 microm) Z bands. We have revealed an elaborate cytoskeletal network of desmin filaments associated with the contractile cylinder that form interconnected concentric ring structures in the core and periphery at the level of the Z bands. Stretch and release of single fibers revealed reversible length changes in the elastic desmin lattice. This lattice is linked to Z bands via novel intracellular desmosome-like junctional complexes that collectively form a ring, termed the "Z corset," around the periphery and within the core of the cylinder. The junctional complex consists of regularly spaced parallel approximately 900-nm-long cytoskeletal rods, or "Z bars," interconnected with slender (3-4 nm) plectin-positive filaments. Z bars are linked to the Z band by plectin filaments and on the opposite side to a dense mesh of desmin filaments. Adjacent Z bands are linked by slender filaments that appear to suspend sarcotubules. We propose that the highly reinforced elastic desmin cytoskeleton and the unique Z band junctions are structural adaptations that enable the muscles' high-frequency and high-endurance activity.

Support for updating XML documents has recently attracted interest. When an XML document is to conform to a given schema, the problem of structural consistency arises during updating, i.e., how to incrementally guarantee that the modified XML document continues to conform to the given XML Schema. To achieve this following the traditional database approach, the XML Schema would first have to be analyzed to construct a structured repository and the XML documents would have to be loaded into this repository before any update could be checked for possible schema constraint violation. Due to the very nature of XML being lightweight and freely shared over the Web, we instead propose a novel approach towards incremental constraint checking that follows the loosely-coupled web paradigm. Namely, we propose to rewrite an XML update query into a safe XML update query by extending the original query with appropriate constraint checking subqueries. This enhanced XML update query can then safely be executed using any existing XQuery engine that supports updates. In order to verify the feasibility of our approach, we have implemented a prototype, SAXE, that implements the above techniques by extending the Kweelt XML query engine by University of Pennsylvania with both XML update support as well as incremental constraint support.

The effect of CSF filtration on inflammation and neuronal damage was studied in experimental Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis. New Zealand white rabbits received either antibiotic therapy alone (ceftriaxone i.v., 20 mg/kg bolus, 10 mg/kg maintenance dose; n = 10) or ceftriaxone plus CSF filtration (n = 11) 12 h after intracisternal infection. Immediately after the onset of antibiotic therapy 300 microliters cisternal CSF was removed, passed through a miniaturized CSF-1 filter at a constant flow of 20 microliters/min, and then reinjected. This procedure was repeated six times at intervals of 20 min. Antibiosis plus CSF filtration caused a transient reduction in CSF bacterial titers and leukocyte counts compared with antibiosis alone (P = 0.04 and 0.02 5 h after initiation of therapy). CSF lipoteichoic acid concentrations were not reduced. The concentration of neuron-specific enolase in CSF and the density of apoptotic neurons in the dentate gyrus were almost equal 12 h after the onset of treatment. Adjuvant CSF filtration accelerated the elimination of viable bacteria from CSF in comparison to antibiotic treatment alone. Parameters of neuronal destruction, however, were not reduced.