The National Cancer Data Base report on the relationship of race and national origin to the histology of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

This study was undertaken to clarify several aspects of morphological and taxonomic characters of Physaloptera bispiculata Vaz and Pereira, 1935, a parasite of the water rat, Nectomys squamipes. The cephalic structures (including lips, papillae, teeth, amphids, and porous areas) and details of the posterior end of male and female adult worms were examined by scanning electron microscopy, leading to the addition of new taxonomic characters for this species. We consider P. bispiculata a valid species, based on a comparative analysis of the specific characters for P. bispiculata and P. getula Seurat, 1917, including the morphology and morphometry of body structures as well as number and disposition of caudal papillae of the males.     

Organolanthanide-catalyzed hydroamination

Organolanthanides are highly efficient catalysts for inter- and intramolecular hydroamination of various C-C unsaturations such as alkenes, alkynes, allenes, and dienes. Attractive features of organolanthanide catalysts include very high turnover frequencies and excellent stereoselectivities, rendering this methodology applicable to concise synthesis of naturally occurring alkaloids and other polycyclic azacycles. The general hydroamination mechanism involves turnover-limiting C-C multiple bond insertion into the Ln-N bond, followed by rapid protonolysis by other amine substrates. Sterically less encumbered ligand designs have been developed to improve reaction rates, and metallocene and nonmetallocene chiral lanthanide complexes have been synthesized for enantioselective hydroamination.     

Cholinergic responsiveness of neurons in the ventroposterior thalamus of the anesthetized rat

Acetylcholine has been implicated as an important neurotransmitter in the mechanisms of thalamic activation. Cholinergic mechanisms are thought to directly underlie the high level of excitability observed in thalamic relay neurons during waking and rapid eye movement sleep. We sought to determine if the cholinergic responsiveness of neurons in the ventroposterior nuclei of the thalamus in rat is consistent with this view. Neurons in the chloral hydrate-anesthetized rat were studied with extracellular recording and microiontophoretic application of cholinergic agents. In most cases (63% of 63 cells), the ejection of the agonist, carbachol, had no observable effect on spontaneous activity. Facilitation (25%), inhibition (8%) and inhibition followed by facilitation (3%) were also observed. Carbachol ejections that by themselves were ineffective in altering spontaneous activity proved capable, in 93% of 28 cells, of antagonizing the uniformly facilitatory responses produced by glutamate ejection. The putative M1-selective, cholinergic agonist, McN-A-343, was also ineffective alone in altering spontaneous activity in the majority of cases (74% of 27 cells) and produced only inhibitory responses in the remaining seven neurons studied. Interacting applications of McN-A-343 and glutamate resulted, in all cases, in antagonism of glutamate facilitation (N = 12). The various responses to applied cholinergic agonists were all capable of being antagonized by muscarinic receptor-blocking agents. Both the high proportion of inhibitory responses and the antagonism of glutamate facilitatory responses suggest that ventroposterior neurons in the rat differ from other thalamocortical relay neurons in the rat and cat with regard to cholinergic responsiveness. Additionally, the lack of predominantly facilitatory responding renders it unlikely that cholinergic mechanisms directly underlie increases in excitability of ventroposterior neurons observed during waking and rapid eye movement sleep.     

Synthesis of thermoset plastics by Lewis acid initiated copolymerization of fish oil ethyl esters and alkenes

The Lewis acid initiated cationic homopolymerization of Norway fish oil ethyl ester (NFO) or the corresponding conjugated fish oil (CFO) and their copolymerization with various alkene comonomers is investigated. Among the Lewis acids employed, boron trifluoride diethyl etherate (BFE, BF₃ · OEt₂) is found to be the most effective initiator for cationic polymerization of the NFO and CFO systems. The BFE‐initiated homopolymerization of NFO generally results in low molecular weight viscous oils, while that of CFO leads to a solid elastic gel with a gel time of more than 72 h at room temperature. Copolymerization of the NFO or CFO with some alkene comonomers significantly facilitates gelation. The gel times are largely dependent upon the stoichiometry, the type of fish oil, and the alkene comonomer. After postcuring at elevated temperatures, the cationic copolymerization affords polymers ranging from soft rubbery materials to rigid plastics. These NFO and CFO polymers are composed of highly crosslinked materials and a certain amount of free oils and are found to be fully cured thermosets. Generally, CFO polymers appear to be harder than the corresponding NFO polymers. However, the thermal properties of the bulk polymers are similar to each other, and their insoluble extracts exhibit much higher thermal stability than the bulk thermosets. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 81: 2001–2012, 2001     

RECOVERING THE WIRING OF ENIGMA'S UMKEHRWALZE A

Umkehrwalze A was the original reflector used in the version of the Enigma machine employed by the German armed services. Its wiring was originally deduced by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski in December 1932 or January 1933, but details of the wiring have not previously been published. Sufficient information to recover the wiring analytically is provided in a wartime document by Alan Turing, and other sources have been found to confirm the solution. This paper presents the wiring, along with alternative methods of recovering it from Turing's data.     

Similarities of error regularization, sigmoid gain scaling, targetsmoothing, and training with jitter

The generalization performance of feedforward layered perceptrons can, in many cases, be improved either by smoothing the target via convolution, regularizing the training error with a smoothing constraint, decreasing the gain (i.e., slope) of the sigmoid nonlinearities, or adding noise (i.e., jitter) to the input training data, In certain important cases, the results of these procedures yield highly similar results although at different costs. Training with jitter, for example, requires significantly more computation than sigmoid scaling.     

基于机载多普勒雷达数据的飓风内部三维风场反演算法

利用2002年NOAA海洋飓风实验中三维风雨微波成像仪(IWRAP,UMass Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler)数据,提出了两种自适应卡尔曼滤波算法进行飓风三维风矢量的反演。为验证不同自适应滤波算法的准确性,通过对实际风场以及相应的机载雷达观测数据进行仿真,得到一种最优自适应滤波;文中对滤波结果误差进行了初步分析,探讨了误差来源。根据仿真结果,利用最优自适应滤波对2002年10月2日飓风莉莉多普勒雷达测量数据进行处理,滤波得到的三维风场与本次实验中GPS下投式探空仪的三维风场同步测量数据,多波段微波辐射计的海面风场测量数据,以及飞机高度风场数据进行了比较。