Accuracy of ASTER Level-2 thermal-infrared Standard Products of an agricultural area in Spain

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) collects five-channel thermal-infrared images that are calibrated, corrected for atmospheric effects, and then converted to land surface temperature and emissivity products by the ASTER Temperature/Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm. TES scales low- and high-contrast surfaces differently, and has been validated over water (low contrast) and rock (high contrast). Performance of TES over agricultural areas, however, has not been evaluated specifically. To address this issue, field measurements of “ground truth” were made over bare soil in addition to green grass, alfalfa and corn, at an agricultural research site in Spain during two coincident campaigns (SPectrA Barrax Campaign, or SPARC, and Exploitation of AnGular effects in Land surface, or EAGLE) during an ASTER overflight. Comparison of the ASTER Standard Products for land surface temperature (AST-08) and emissivity (AST-05) with ground measurements for the crops (corn and barley, plus grass) showed that accuracies of ± 1.5 K and ± 0.01, respectively, were achieved there. However, bare soil was assessed incorrectly by TES as having high emissivity contrast, leading to inaccurate scaling and low apparent emissivities.     

Identification of hydrophobic tags for the degradation of stabilized proteins

New HyTs are a knockout: we previously reported that labeling HaloTag proteins with low molecular weight hydrophobic tags (HyTs) leads to targeted degradation of HaloTag fusion proteins. In this report, we employed a chemical approach to extend this hydrophobic tagging methodology to highly stabilized proteins by synthesizing and evaluating a library of HyTs, which led to the identification of HyT36.     

Increasing understanding of patient needs during and after hospitalization

BACKGROUND: The value of patient satisfaction surveys in health care improvement remains controversial. This study examined the value of alternative ways of identifying patient needs and estimating importance of those needs in improving the impact of satisfaction surveys. METHODS: Ninety-one acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients from three southeast U.S. community hospitals were surveyed in 1992. Critical incident and person-focused interviews were used to identify patient needs. Besides overall/global satisfaction with care, patients rated satisfaction with and importance of 12 care delivery and 18 information and support needs. Unmet need scores (importance minus satisfaction) were estimated. Derived importance scores were assessed by correlating global satisfaction with individual need satisfaction scores. A two-step process for identifying priority areas for improvement was proposed. RESULTS: Patients identified and assigned greater scores to unmet needs for information and support needs (not included in typical satisfaction surveys) compared to typically assessed care delivery needs (p < 0.0001). Direct importance ratings differed substantially from those derived through correlation analyses (r = 0.28, p > 0.3 for care delivery needs and r = -0.17, p > 0.4 for information and support needs). Needs that received high importance and low satisfaction scores were all information and support needs. DISCUSSION: Needs that patients consider very important are usually ignored in typical patient surveys. Derived approaches typically used to assess importance of need from satisfaction data may provide misleading results. If satisfaction surveys are to result in real performance improvement, a fresh examination of the content and importance assessment strategies, as proposed, is needed.     

Predictors of Online Health Information Seeking Among Women with Breast Cancer: The Role of Social Support Perception and Emotional Well‐Being

This study attempts to examine the role of social support perception and emotional well‐being on online information seeking among cancer patients within the context of CHESS, a well‐established Interactive Cancer Communication System (ICCS). Factor and regression analyses conducted among 231 breast cancer patients revealed that social support perception and emotional well‐being interacted with each other to influence online health information seeking. Patients with low social support perception and high emotional well‐being were most likely to seek health information, whereas patients with high social support perception and high emotional well‐being sought out the same information least. Practical implications of the study findings are further discussed.     

Diversity in genetic programming: an analysis of measures and correlation with fitness

Examines measures of diversity in genetic programming. The goal is to understand the importance of such measures and their relationship with fitness. Diversity methods and measures from the literature are surveyed and a selected set of measures are applied to common standard problem instances in an experimental study. Results show the varying definitions and behaviors of diversity and the varying correlation between diversity and fitness during different stages of the evolutionary process. Populations in the genetic programming algorithm are shown to become structurally similar while maintaining a high amount of behavioral differences. Conclusions describe what measures are likely to be important for understanding and improving the search process and why diversity might have different meaning for different problem domains.     

Evidence for hepatocarcinogenic activity of pentachlorobenzene with intralobular variation in foci incidence

Pentachlorobenzene (PeCB) is an important environmental contaminant derived primarily from the by-product contamination of the popular fungicides hexachlorobenzene and pentachloronitrobenzene. Its tumor-promoting activity was studied in a medium-term initiation/promotion assay in male F344 rats. Animals were given a single i.p. injection of diethylnitrosamine (200 mg/kg body weight) and 2 weeks later were administered 0.1 or 0.4 mmol/kg per day PeCB by gavage in a corn oil vehicle, 7 days/week. At the end of week 3, rats were subjected to a partial hepatectomy. Results showed that PeCB, at both doses, significantly increased both the number and area of glutathione S-transferase pi (GST-P) foci (>0.2 mm diameter) (P < 0.05). This trend was dose-dependent. In addition to increases in preneoplastic foci, liver glutathione concentrations and glutathione-associated enzymes showed significant changes in animals treated with PeCB. Glutathione reductase (GR) and gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase (gamma-GCS) were both significantly induced in the centrilobular region. Changes in oxidized glutathione concentrations corresponded with the increase in GR activity with decreases of 40 and 30% in the low and high dose groups, respectively. No significant changes were detected in reduced glutathione concentrations. Together with changes in GR and gamma-GCS expression, a decrease in GST-P foci around the central veins was significant (P = 0.004) at the high dose. In these animals, 26% of the foci were classified as centrilobular whereas 37 and 39% of the foci were centrilobular in the low dose and control groups, respectively. Because of the co-localized nature of the changes in glutathione-associated enzymes and the decreased incidence of centrilobular foci, our results suggest that the reduced cellular environment may ultimately play a role in negatively selecting for foci growth.     

Evidence for an insulin receptor substrate 1 independent insulin signaling pathway that mediates insulin-responsive glucose transporter (GLUT4) translocation

Interaction of the activated insulin receptor (IR) with its substrate, insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1), via the phosphotyrosine binding domain of IRS-1 and the NPXY motif centered at phosphotyrosine 960 of the IR, is important for IRS-1 phosphorylation. We investigated the role of this interaction in the insulin signaling pathway that stimulates glucose transport. Utilizing microinjection of competitive inhibitory reagents in 3T3-L1 adipocytes, we have found that disruption of the IR/IRS-1 interaction has no effect upon translocation of the insulin-responsive glucose transporter (GLUT4). The activity of these reagents was demonstrated by their ability to block insulin stimulation of two distinct insulin bioeffects, membrane ruffling and mitogenesis, in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and insulin-responsive rat 1 fibroblasts. These data suggest that phosphorylated IRS-1 is not an essential component of the metabolic insulin signaling pathway that leads to GLUT4 translocation, yet it appears to be required for other insulin bioeffects.     

Changes in infants'' cries as a function of time in a cry bout

Endoluminal ultrasound of the obstructed ureteropelvic junction (UPJ) provides accurate anatomic information not available through other studies. Endoluminal ultrasonography in the evaluation of the obstructed UPJ can be extremely valuable and its use can be expected to expand with increasing experience with the techniques. The anatomy demonstrated through the fine resolution of this technique may ultimately provide the key to the selection of optimal therapy for the obstructed UPJ.     

Stop mechanism for cementitious grouts at different water-to-cement ratios

Cementitious grouts are the most commonly used grouting material in the world. The general concept of grouting is to propagate the grout in a sufficiently large volume in the grouted medium and hence to have a controlled penetration. This study has been performed in order to determine and test the different mechanisms that result in stoppage of the penetration of cementitious grouts. This is performed as sand column tests in a laboratory study, coupled with grouting in the field. The result shows that three different stop mechanisms can be identified depending on the ratio between the grain size of the grout and the available opening. At an opening up to three times the size of the largest grout grains, penetration does not occur due to clogging of the grains. For an opening larger than five times the largest grain the penetration is unrestricted and stoppage occurs due to equilibrium between the driving and resistance forces. Between these ratios, a transition area exists where the water content determines the penetrability and the stoppage is governed by a filtration process for the grout grains. This implies that grouting with higher water-to-cement ratios results in a larger penetration area and hence by applying the mixture-thickening method during grouting an increased sealing efficiency can be obtained.