Metatheorizing citation

This paper reviews a variety of perspectives on citation. It argues that citations have multiple articulations in that they inform our understanding of the socio-cultural, cognitive, and textual aspects of scientific communication. Two metatheoretical frameworks are proposed as a means of negotiating the interpretative differences which characterize the various discourse communities concerned with citation theory and practice.     

Ground Response in Lotung: Total Stress Analyses and Parametric Studies

Previous papers have reported on the performance of a recently developed nonlinear ground response analysis code, SPECTRA, with reference to the prediction of the free-field response at a Large-Scale Seismic Test site in Lotung, Taiwan during the M6.5 earthquake of May 20, 1986. Two more major earthquakes of different characteristics shook this test site later that same year, a M6.2 earthquake that occurred on July 30 and a M7.0 earthquake that occurred on November 15. The present article analyzes the free-field responses recorded by a downhole array from these latter two events using the code SPECTRA and a widely used equivalent linear analysis code SHAKE. The studies focus on the relative accuracy and sensitivity of the two codes with respect to the variations of the input material parameters, using time histories, acceleration response spectra, Fourier acceleration amplitude spectra, and Arias intensities as criteria for the comparison. The two codes captured the general wave form of the acceleration histories well, but there was a general tendency for both codes (particularly SHAKE) to underpredict the Arias intensities of the earthquakes.     

Quasi-static scheduling of communicating tasks

Good scheduling policies for distributed embedded applications are required for meeting hard real time constraints and for optimizing the use of computational resources. We study the quasi-static scheduling problem in which (uncontrollable) control flow branchings can influence scheduling decisions at run time. Our abstracted distributed task model consists of a network of sequential processes that communicate via point-to-point buffers. In each round, the task gets activated by a request from the environment. When the task has finished computing the required responses, it reaches a pre-determined configuration and is ready to receive a new request from the environment. For such systems, we prove that determining the existence of a scheduling policy that guarantees upper bounds on buffer capacities is undecidable. However, we show that the problem is decidable for the important subclass of “data-branching” systems in which control flow branchings are exclusively due to data-dependent internal choices made by the sequential components. This decidability result exploits ideas derived from the Karp and Miller coverability tree for Petri nets as well as the existential boundedness notion of languages of message sequence charts.     

Resistance of the failing dystrophic hamster heart to the cardioprotective effects of diltiazem and clentiazem: evidence of coronary vascular dysfunctions

Although hypothermia and cardioplegic cardiac arrest provide effective protection during cardiac surgery, ischemia of long duration, poor preoperative myocardial function, and ventricular hypertrophy may lead to heterogeneous delivery of cardioplegic solutions, incomplete protection, and impaired postischemic recovery. Calcium antagonists are potent cardioprotective agents, but their efficacy in the presence of cold cardioplegia is still controversial, especially in heart failure, since it is often believed that failing hearts are more sensitive to their negative inotropic and chronotropic actions. However, recent data have demonstrated that the benzothiazepine-like calcium antagonists diltiazem and clentiazem, in selected dose ranges, elicit significant cardioprotection independently of intrinsic cardiodepression, thus lending support to their use in cardioprotective maneuvers involving the failing heart. We therefore evaluated the cardioprotective interaction of diltiazem, clentiazem, and cold cardioplegia in both normal and failing ischemic hearts. Hearts were excised from 200- to 225-day-old cardiomyopathic hamsters (CMHs) of the UM-X7.1 line and age-matched normal healthy controls. Ex vivo perfusion was performed at a constant pressure (140 cmH2O; 1 cmH2O = 98.1 Pa) according to the method of Langendorff. Heart rate, left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP), and coronary flow were monitored throughout the study. Global ischemia was produced for 90 min by shutting down the perfusate flow, followed by reperfusion for 30 min. Normal and failing CMH hearts were either untreated (control) or perfused at the onset of global ischemia with one of the following combinations: cold cardioplegia alone (St. Thomas' Hospital cardioplegic solution, 4 degrees C, infused for 2 min), cold cardioplegia + 10 nM diltiazem, or cold cardioplegia + 10 nM clentiazem. The cardiac and coronary dilator properties of 10 nM diltiazem and 10 nM clentiazem alone were investigated in separate groups of isolated preparations. Failing CMH hearts had lower basal LVDP (42 +/- 2 vs. 77 +/- 2 mmHg (1 mmHg = 133.3 Pa) for normal hearts, p < 0.05), while coronary flow was only slightly reduced (5.6 +/- 0.2 vs. 6.2 +/- 0.2 mL/min for normal hearts). Following 90 min global ischemia, coronary flow was increased in both groups, but the peak hyperemic response declined only in failing CMH hearts (+50 +/- 17 vs. +82 +/- 17% in normal hearts). In normal hearts, LVDP virtually recovered within 5 min of reperfusion but steadily decreased thereafter (-37 +/- 4% at 30 min). In contrast, in failing CMH hearts, LVDP significantly decreased early during reperfusion but improved over time (-19 +/- 7% at 30 min). In normal hearts, the addition of diltiazem or clentiazem to cold cardioplegic solutions resulted in improved postischemic contractile function for the duration of reperfusion (85 +/- 4% vs. only 71 +/- 6% for cardioplegia, p < 0.05). The post-ischemic increase in coronary flow was similar in all groups. In failing CMH hearts, the addition of diltiazem or clentiazem afforded no significant contractile benefit at reperfusion. In nonischemic normal hearts, infusion of diltiazem or clentiazem (10 nM) alone increased coronary flow (+6 +/- 1% for diltiazem and +24 +/- 3% for clentiazem) without significant negative inotropic or chronotropic effects. In nonischemic failing CMH hearts, infusion of diltiazem or clentiazem did not elicit cardiodepression. In contrast their coronary dilator actions reverted to vasoconstriction (diltiazem) or were significantly attenuated (clentiazem). From these experiments we can conclude that, compared with the normal heart, the failing CMH heart adapted differently to global ischemia.     

Privacy preserving minimal observability for composite transactional services

For complex services composed of many (component) services, logging is an integral middleware aspect, especially for providing transactions and monitoring. In the event of a failure, the log allows us to deduce the cause of failure (diagnosis) and recover by compensating the executed services (atomicity). However, for heterogeneous services with parts of the functionality provided by multiple organizations, logging details of all executed services is often impracticable due to privacy/security constraints. Also, logging is expensive in terms of both time and space. Thus, we are interested in determining the minimal number of services that need to be logged, and which is still sufficient to know with certainty the actual sequence of executed services from any given log. Further to privacy issues, the complexity of determining a minimal set of such services to log is actually NP-Complete. To solve both issues, we resort to considering each component service as a grey box. Logs are recorded and kept local to each component, and a black-box view of the implementation details of each component is provided. In particular, a service which is reused as a component several times (often observed in real-life services) need not be re-computed each time. We show that this dramatically decreases the complexity up to 2 exponentials. For large monolithic component services that cannot be decomposed simply, we also provide heuristics to compute a small (but not necessarily minimal) number of services to log, and experimentally analyze their accuracy and performance.     

The heat capacities of U3As4 and Th3As4

The heat capacities of the arsenides of uranium (U₃As₄) and thorium (Th₃As₄) have been measured in the temperature range 5–300 K. A sharp -shaped anomaly at 195.8 K, associated with the ferromagnetic transition, was observed in U₃As₄. The smooth specific heat curve C _p(T) for nonmagnetic analog Th₃As₄ has been used to determine the lattice contribution to the heat capacity of U₃As₄. The resulting magnetic entropy at 290 K has been estimated as 10.67 J/K mole of U atom, which is close to the theoretical R ln 4 value. This fact is interpreted in terms of crystal field interactions in the crystal lattice with S₄ point symmetry. Critical entropy and enegy parameters are compared with the theoretical predictions for 3d Ising and Heisenberg models. The critical coefficients are also considered.     

Impaired coronary sensitivity to diltiazem in experimental heart failure: involvement of the cyclooxygenase but not the nitric oxide-synthase pathway

Because controversies surround the increased negative inotropic effects of calcium antagonists in heart failure, other mechanisms may explain their lack of efficacy in this condition. We hypothesized that altered coronary sensitivity through endothelial dysfunctions may be involved. Our goal was to evaluate the effects of heart failure on coronary and cardiac sensitivity to the calcium antagonist diltiazem. Left ventricular developed pressure (LVP) and coronary flow (CF) were assessed in isovolumetrically beating, perfused, failing hearts from cardiomyopathic hamsters (UM-X7.1) and hearts from normal hamsters. Diltiazem concentration-response curves for both coronary dilation and its negative inotropic effects were charted under control conditions and in the presence of the specific nitric oxide (NO) synthase inhibitor, NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME, 30 microM), and the cyclooxygenase inhibitor, indomethacin (10 microM). Diltiazem concentration-response curves for its negative inotropic action were similar in normal and failing hearts (IC50 1.2 and 2.3 microM, respectively). In contrast, the coronary dilator effects of diltiazem were impaired in failing hearts (EC50 for diltiazem-induced coronary dilation increased from 90 nM in normal hearts to 1.1 microM in failing hearts, p < 0.01). The involvement of endothelial dysfunctions in the observed coronary "desensitization" to diltiazem in heart failure was evaluated through the NO-synthase and cyclooxygenase pathways. Diltiazem concentration-response curves from failing hearts were not modified in the presence of L-NAME, whereas indomethacin normalized the coronary response to diltiazem in heart failure. These findings suggest that coronary "desensitization" to diltiazem occurs through parallel production and/or release of a vasoconstricting factor or factors originating from the cyclooxygenase pathway. Heart failure was not associated with increased cardiac sensitivity to diltiazem but rather with altered coronary sensitivity. These findings suggest that coronary desensitization may play a role in the lack of efficacy of diltiazem in heart failure and provide a better understanding of factors modulating the effects of calcium antagonists in heart failure.