Southern Connecticut State University

The Kepler mission was designed to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets in and near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The habitable zone is the region where planetary temperatures are suitable for water to exist on a planet's surface. During the first 6 weeks of observations, Kepler monitored 156,000 stars, and five new exoplanets with sizes between 0.37 and 1.6 Jupiter radii and orbital periods from 3.2 to 4.9 days were discovered. The density of the Neptune-sized Kepler-4b is similar to that of Neptune and GJ 436b, even though the irradiation level is 800,000 times higher. Kepler-7b is one of the lowest-density planets (approximately 0.17 gram per cubic centimeter) yet detected. Kepler-5b, -6b, and -8b confirm the existence of planets with densities lower than those predicted for gas giant planets.

On 2011 February 1 the Kepler mission released data for 156,453 stars observed from the beginning of the science observations on 2009 May 2 through September 16. There are 1235 planetary candidates with transit-like signatures detected in this period. These are associated with 997 host stars. Distributions of the characteristics of the planetary candidates are separated into five class sizes: 68 candidates of approximately Earth-size (R_p < 1.25 R_⊕), 288 super-Earth-size (1.25 R_⊕ ≤ R_p < 2 R_⊕), 662 Neptune-size (2 R_⊕ ≤ R_p < 6 R_⊕), 165 Jupiter-size (6 R_⊕ ≤ R_p < 15 R_⊕), and 19 up to twice the size of Jupiter (15 R_⊕ ≤ R_p < 22 R_⊕). In the temperature range appropriate for the habitable zone, 54 candidates are found with sizes ranging from Earth-size to larger than that of Jupiter. Six are less than twice the size of the Earth. Over 74% of the planetary candidates are smaller than Neptune. The observed number versus size distribution of planetary candidates increases to a peak at two to three times the Earth-size and then declines inversely proportional to the area of the candidate. Our current best estimates of the intrinsic frequencies of planetary candidates, after correcting for geometric and sensitivity biases, are 5% for Earth-size candidates, 8% for super-Earth-size candidates, 18% for Neptune-size candidates, 2% for Jupiter-size candidates, and 0.1% for very large candidates; a total of 0.34 candidates per star. Multi-candidate, transiting systems are frequent; 17% of the host stars have multi-candidate systems, and 34% of all the candidates are part of multi-candidate systems.
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This chapter contains sections titled: The Study of Language Development in Typical Populations Communication and Development in Autism Conclusion

Porosities in the outer table of the cranial vault (porotic hyperostosis) and orbital roof (cribra orbitalia) are among the most frequent pathological lesions seen in ancient human skeletal collections. Since the 1950s, chronic iron-deficiency anemia has been widely accepted as the probable cause of both conditions. Based on this proposed etiology, bioarchaeologists use the prevalence of these conditions to infer living conditions conducive to dietary iron deficiency, iron malabsorption, and iron loss from both diarrheal disease and intestinal parasites in earlier human populations. This iron-deficiency-anemia hypothesis is inconsistent with recent hematological research that shows iron deficiency per se cannot sustain the massive red blood cell production that causes the marrow expansion responsible for these lesions. Several lines of evidence suggest that the accelerated loss and compensatory over-production of red blood cells seen in hemolytic and megaloblastic anemias is the most likely proximate cause of porotic hyperostosis. Although cranial vault and orbital roof porosities are sometimes conflated under the term porotic hyperostosis, paleopathological and clinical evidence suggests they often have different etiologies. Reconsidering the etiology of these skeletal conditions has important implications for current interpretations of malnutrition and infectious disease in earlier human populations.

The beam-energy scan at RHIC aims to discover whether a critical point exists in the phase diagram of QCD. This paper reports on the most comprehensive measurement of single-particle spectra for a multitude of hadrons from the first run, taken with the STAR experiment. From these the authors infer the kinetic and chemical freeze-out temperatures and the baryon chemical potential as functions of beam energy and centrality. The results provide an opportunity for the beam-energy scan program at RHIC to enlarge the ($T,\ensuremath{\mu}\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}B$) region of the phase diagram to search for the QCD critical point.

Speech and prosody-voice profiles for 15 male speakers with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and 15 male speakers with Asperger syndrome (AS) were compared to one another and to profiles for 53 typically developing male speakers in the same 10- to 50-years age range. Compared to the typically developing speakers, significantly more participants in both the HFA and AS groups had residual articulation distortion errors, uncodable utterances due to discourse constraints, and utterances coded as inappropriate in the domains of phrasing, stress, and resonance. Speakers with AS were significantly more voluble than speakers with HFA, but otherwise there were few statistically significant differences between the two groups of speakers with pervasive developmental disorders. Discussion focuses on perceptual-motor and social sources of differences in the prosody-voice findings for individuals with Pervasive Developmental Disorders as compared with findings for typical speakers, including comment on the grammatical, pragmatic, and affective aspects of prosody.

What is the nature of the extremely negative attitudes expressed by so many employees toward their organizations?To respond to this question, we introduce the concept of organizational cynicism.We review the literature from several disciplines on this concept and suggest that organizational cynicism is an attitude composed of beliefs, affect, and behavioral tendencies toward an organization.Following our review and conceptualization, we derive implications of this concept and propose a research agenda for organizational cynicism.Cynicism is everywhere-widespread among organization members in the United States (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989), Europe, and Asia (Kouzes &Posner, 1993).Organizational change and quality improvement efforts particularly seem to engender cynicism (Shapiro, 1996).For example, Cunniff notes that employees are increasingly cynical about the "constant parade of initiatives that come with the usual promise of imminent improvement" (1993: 4).Employees in one company circulated clandestine copies of their firm's "adaptation" of the Deming Principles, which included "Humor all employees in phony efforts to include them in process improvement methodologies .... Provide slogans, meaningless exhortations [and] numerical goals.... Drive in fear by discouraging communication and by instituting a policy of Continuous Layoff."These observations are echoed in our own experience by the reaction of part-time MBA students to the topic of "teamwork" (cross-functional collaboration) in organizations.These students could see the benefits of teamwork in theory but perceived it, in practice, as merely a slogan used by their organizations to appear progressive, without changing anything about how work actually gets done (cf., Aktouf, 1992).A young woman in this class was so appalled by her organization that she thought she must be part of "some huge experiment on unmotivating employees."Another young man had been invited to lunch with his coworkers by the management of his organization; he accepted the invitation but worried that management had only made the offer "to keep us off guard."Even the popularity of the comic strip "Dilbert," about an engineer whose organization plumbs the depths of unscrupulousness, suggests that many people perceive their organizations in these terms.In fact, much of the material for the strip actually is sent to the cartoonist via e-mail by frustrated employees (Greilsamer, 1995).This article is about organization members' cynicism toward their organizations-an attitude that appears to be both widespread and ignored by organizational research.We address one major question: how should organizational cynicism be conceptualized?We organize this article as follows.First, we discuss the origin of the concept of cynicism and briefly review

We present the first results from a speckle imaging survey of stars classified as candidate exoplanet host stars discovered by the Kepler mission. We use speckle imaging to search for faint companions or closely aligned background stars that could contribute flux to the Kepler light curves of their brighter neighbors. Background stars are expected to contribute significantly to the pool of false positive candidate transiting exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission, especially in the case that the faint neighbors are eclipsing binary stars. Here, we describe our Kepler follow-up observing program, the speckle imaging camera used, our data reduction, and astrometric and photometric performance. Kepler stars range from R = 8 to 16 and our observations attempt to provide background non-detection limits 5-6 mag fainter and binary separations of ~0.05-2.0 arcsec. We present data describing the relative brightness, separation, and position angles for secondary sources, as well as relative plate limits for non-detection of faint nearby stars around each of 156 target stars. Faint neighbors were found near 10 of the stars.

It is not known how the volume of the cell nucleus is set, nor how the ratio of nuclear volume to cell volume (N/C) is determined. Here, we have measured the size of the nucleus in growing cells of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Analysis of mutant yeast strains spanning a range of cell sizes revealed that the ratio of average nuclear volume to average cell volume was quite consistent, with nuclear volume being approximately 7% that of cell volume. At the single cell level, nuclear and cell size were strongly correlated in growing wild-type cells, as determined by three different microscopic approaches. Even in G1-phase, nuclear volume grew, although it did not grow quite as fast as overall cell volume. DNA content did not appear to have any immediate, direct influence on nuclear size, in that nuclear size did not increase sharply during S-phase. The maintenance of nuclear size did not require continuous growth or ribosome biogenesis, as starvation and rapamycin treatment had little immediate impact on nuclear size. Blocking the nuclear export of new ribosomal subunits, among other proteins and RNAs, with leptomycin B also had no obvious effect on nuclear size. Nuclear expansion must now be factored into conceptual and mathematical models of budding yeast growth and division. These results raise questions as to the unknown force(s) that expand the nucleus as yeast cells grow.

Despite agreement that dysnomia affects virtually every aphasic patient, there is no consensus about the purpose and effectiveness of techniques to treat it. Semantic feature analysis (SFA), a treatment technique designed to improve retrieval of conceptual information by accessing semantic networks, was used to treat aphasic dysnomia in a 57-year-old male who exhibited Broca's aphasia secondary to a left frontoparietal ischemic infarction. SFA was effective for improving confrontation naming and for generalized improvement to untreated pictures. However, no generalization to connected speech was seen on the measures of mean words per minute, mean correct information units per minute, or the percentage of all words that were correct information units.

A comprehensive cognitive appraisal of elementary school children with learning disabilities showed that within the language sphere, deficits associated with reading disability are selective Phonological deficits consistently accompany reading problems whether they occur in relatively pure form or in the presence of coexisting attention deficit or arithmetic disability Although reading-disabled children were also deficient in production of morphologically related forms, this difficulty stemmed in large part from the same weakness in the phonological component that underlies reading disability In contrast, tests of syntactic knowledge did not distinguish reading-disabled children from those with other cognitive disabilities, nor from normal children after covarying for intelligence

Cancer arises in the context of an in vivo tumor microenvironment. This microenvironment is both a cause and consequence of tumorigenesis. Tumor and host cells co-evolve dynamically through indirect and direct cellular interactions, eliciting multiscale effects on many biological programs, including cellular proliferation, growth, and metabolism, as well as angiogenesis and hypoxia and innate and adaptive immunity. Here we highlight specific biological processes that could be exploited as targets for the prevention and therapy of cancer. Specifically, we describe how inhibition of targets such as cholesterol synthesis and metabolites, reactive oxygen species and hypoxia, macrophage activation and conversion, indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase regulation of dendritic cells, vascular endothelial growth factor regulation of angiogenesis, fibrosis inhibition, endoglin, and Janus kinase signaling emerge as examples of important potential nexuses in the regulation of tumorigenesis and the tumor microenvironment that can be targeted. We have also identified therapeutic agents as approaches, in particular natural products such as berberine, resveratrol, onionin A, epigallocatechin gallate, genistein, curcumin, naringenin, desoxyrhapontigenin, piperine, and zerumbone, that may warrant further investigation to target the tumor microenvironment for the treatment and/or prevention of cancer.

Following B.B. Mandelbrot's fractal theory (1982), it was found that the fractal dimension could be obtained in medical images by the concept of fractional Brownian motion. An estimation concept for determination of the fractal dimension based upon the concept of fractional Brownian motion is discussed. Two applications are found: (1) classification; (2) edge enhancement and detection. For the purpose of classification, a normalized fractional Brownian motion feature vector is defined from this estimation concept. It represented the normalized average absolute intensity difference of pixel pairs on a surface of different scales. The feature vector uses relatively few data items to represent the statistical characteristics of the medial image surface and is invariant to linear intensity transformation. For edge enhancement and detection application, a transformed image is obtained by calculating the fractal dimension of each pixel over the whole medical image. The fractal dimension value of each pixel is obtained by calculating the fractal dimension of 7x7 pixel block centered on this pixel.

OBJECTIVES: Increasing numbers of young children referred for a differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) necessitates better understanding of the early syndrome expression and the utility of the existing state-of-the art diagnostic methods in this population. METHOD: Out of 31 infants under the age of 2 years referred for a differential diagnosis, 19 were diagnosed with autism, and 9 with pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) when reassessed at 3 years. We examined 1) the symptoms of ASD in the second year and changes in the syndrome expression by the age of three; 2) relationship between expert-assigned clinical diagnosis and diagnostic classification based on Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Generic (ADOS-G) and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) in the second year; 3) the relationship between direct observation and parental report of ASD symptoms. RESULTS: Symptoms of autism and PDD-NOS in the second year were pronounced and stability of the clinical diagnosis was high. The agreement between clinician-assigned autism but not PDD-NOS diagnosis and the ADOS-G was high. However, sensitivity of the ADI-R diagnostic classification of autism was poor. Comparison of concurrent parental report and direct observation revealed discrepancies in severity ratings of key dyadic social behaviors. Changes in communication reflected acquisition of language accompanied by the emergence of unusual language characteristics. Symptoms of social dysfunction were relatively stable over time, and so was the severity of stereotyped behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides support for stability of clinical diagnosis and syndrome expression in the second year and highlights advantages and limitations of the ADI-R and ADOS-G for diagnosing and documenting symptoms of ASD in infants.

In the spring of 2009, the Kepler Mission commenced high-precision photometry on nearly 156,000 stars to determine the frequency and characteristics of small exoplanets, conduct a guest observer program, and obtain asteroseismic data on a wide variety of stars. On 2010 June 15, the Kepler Mission released most of the data from the first quarter of observations. At the time of this data release, 705 stars from this first data set have exoplanet candidates with sizes from as small as that of Earth to larger than that of Jupiter. Here we give the identity and
\ncharacteristics of 305 released stars with planetary candidates. Data for the remaining 400 stars with planetary
\ncandidates will be released in 2011 February. More than half the candidates on the released list have radii less than half that of Jupiter. Five candidates are present in and near the habitable zone; two near super-Earth size, and three bracketing the size of Jupiter. The released stars also include five possible multi-planet systems. One of these has two Neptune-size (2.3 and 2.5 Earth radius) candidates with near-resonant periods.

Global polarization of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ hyperons has been measured to be of the order of a few tenths of a percentage in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{{s}_{{}_{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV, with no significant difference between $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ and $\overline{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}}$. These new results reveal the collision energy dependence of the global polarization together with the results previously observed at $\sqrt{{s}_{{}_{NN}}}$ = 7.7--62.4 GeV and indicate noticeable vorticity of the medium created in noncentral heavy-ion collisions at the highest Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider collision energy. The signal is in rough quantitative agreement with the theoretical predictions from a hydrodynamic model and from a multi-phase transport model. The polarization is larger in more peripheral collisions, and depends weakly on the hyperon's transverse momentum and pseudorapidity ${\ensuremath{\eta}}^{H}$ within $|{\ensuremath{\eta}}^{H}|<1$. An indication of the polarization dependence on the event-by-event charge asymmetry is observed at the $2\ensuremath{\sigma}$ level, suggesting a possible contribution to the polarization from the axial current induced by the initial magnetic field.

We measure the mass of a modestly irradiated giant planet, KOI-94d. We wish to determine whether this planet, which is in a 22 day orbit and receives 2700 times as much incident flux as Jupiter, is as dense as Jupiter or rarefied like inflated hot Jupiters. KOI-94 also hosts at least three smaller transiting planets, all of which were detected by the Kepler mission. With 26 radial velocities of KOI-94 from the W. M. Keck Observatory and a simultaneous fit to the Kepler light curve, we measure the mass of the giant planet and determine that it is not inflated. Support for the planetary interpretation of the other three candidates comes from gravitational interactions through transit timing variations, the statistical robustness of multi-planet systems against false positives, and several lines of evidence that no other star resides within the photometric aperture. We report the properties of KOI-94b (MP = 10.5 ± 4.6 M⊕, RP = 1.71 ± 0.16 R⊕, P = 3.74 days), KOI-94c (MP = 15.6+5.7-15.6 M⊕, RP = 4.32 ± 0.41 R⊕, P = 10.4 days), KOI-94d (MP = 106 ± 11 M⊕, RP = 11.27 ± 1.06 R⊕, P = 22.3 days), and KOI-94e (MP = 35+18-28 M⊕, RP = 6.56 ± 0.62 R⊕, P = 54.3 days). The radial velocity analyses of KOI-94b and KOI-94e offer marginal (>2σ) mass detections, whereas the observations of KOI-94c offer only an upper limit to its mass. Using the KOI-94 system and other planets with published values for both mass and radius (138 exoplanets total, including 35 with MP < 150 M⊕), we establish two fundamental planes for exoplanets that relate their mass, incident flux, and radius from a few Earth masses up to 13 Jupiter masses: (RP/R⊕) = 1.78(MP/M⊕)0.53(F/erg s−1 cm−2)−0.03 for MP < 150 M⊕, and RP/R⊕ = 2.45(MP/M⊕)−0.039(F/erg s−1 cm−2)0.094 for MP > 150 M⊕. These equations can be used to predict the radius or mass of a planet.

The first systematic study on alloy formation on well-defined nanostructured materialshas been conducted by these authors. Nanostructured silicon and germanium materials were reacted with lithium metal by solid-state chemistry and electrochemical methods, in which nanocrystalline Si (unlike bulk material) forms Li–Si alloys already at room temperature. The Li–Si(Ge) alloys have interesting electrochemical properties, which make them attractive as anode material in lithium batteries.

We present a study on the effect of undetected stellar companions on the derived planetary radii for Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs). The current production of the KOI list assumes that each KOI is a single star. Not accounting for stellar multiplicity statistically biases the planets toward smaller radii. The bias toward smaller radii depends on the properties of the companion stars and whether the planets orbit the primary or the companion stars. Defining a planetary radius correction factor, X R , we find that if the KOIs are assumed to be single, then, on average, the planetary radii may be underestimated by a factor of X 1.5 R . If typical radial velocity and high-resolution imaging observations are performed and no companions are detected, then this factor reduces to X 1.2

Targeted therapies and the consequent adoption of "personalized" oncology have achieved notable successes in some cancers; however, significant problems remain with this approach. Many targeted therapies are highly toxic, costs are extremely high, and most patients experience relapse after a few disease-free months. Relapses arise from genetic heterogeneity in tumors, which harbor therapy-resistant immortalized cells that have adopted alternate and compensatory pathways (i.e., pathways that are not reliant upon the same mechanisms as those which have been targeted). To address these limitations, an international task force of 180 scientists was assembled to explore the concept of a low-toxicity "broad-spectrum" therapeutic approach that could simultaneously target many key pathways and mechanisms. Using cancer hallmark phenotypes and the tumor microenvironment to account for the various aspects of relevant cancer biology, interdisciplinary teams reviewed each hallmark area and nominated a wide range of high-priority targets (74 in total) that could be modified to improve patient outcomes. For these targets, corresponding low-toxicity therapeutic approaches were then suggested, many of which were phytochemicals. Proposed actions on each target and all of the approaches were further reviewed for known effects on other hallmark areas and the tumor microenvironment. Potential contrary or procarcinogenic effects were found for 3.9% of the relationships between targets and hallmarks, and mixed evidence of complementary and contrary relationships was found for 7.1%. Approximately 67% of the relationships revealed potentially complementary effects, and the remainder had no known relationship. Among the approaches, 1.1% had contrary, 2.8% had mixed and 62.1% had complementary relationships. These results suggest that a broad-spectrum approach should be feasible from a safety standpoint. This novel approach has potential to be relatively inexpensive, it should help us address stages and types of cancer that lack conventional treatment, and it may reduce relapse risks. A proposed agenda for future research is offered.