University of Louisiana System

We examined the effects of upregulation of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in steatotic rat liver models of ex vivo cold ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. In the model of ischemia/isolated perfusion, treatment of genetically obese Zucker rats with the HO-1 inducer cobalt protoporphyrin (CoPP) or with adenoviral HO-1 (Ad-HO-1) significantly improved portal venous blood flow, increased bile production, and decreased hepatocyte injury. Unlike in untreated rats or those pretreated with the HO-1 inhibitor zinc protoporphyrin (ZnPP), upregulation of HO-1 by Western blots correlated with amelioration of histologic features of I/R injury. Adjunctive infusion of ZnPP abrogated the beneficial effects of Ad-HO-1 gene transfer, documenting the direct involvement of HO-1 in protection against I/R injury. Following cold ischemia/isotransplantation, HO-1 overexpression extended animal survival from 40% in untreated controls to about 80% after CoPP or Ad-HO-1 therapy. This effect correlated with preserved hepatic architecture, improved liver function, and depressed infiltration by T cells and macrophages. Hence, CoPP- or gene therapy-induced HO-1 prevented I/R injury in steatotic rat livers. These findings provide the rationale for refined new treatments that should increase the supply of usable donor livers and ultimately improve the overall success of liver transplantation.

Data that represent complex and multivariate processes are well known to be multiscale due to the variety of changes that could occur in a process with different localizations in time and frequency. Examples of changes may include mean shift, spikes, drifts and variance shifts all of which could occur in a process at different times and at different frequencies. Acoustic emission signals arising from machining, images representing MRI scans and musical audio signals are some examples that contain these changes and are not suited for single scale analysis. The recent literature contains several wavelet-decomposition-based multiscale process monitoring approaches including many real life process monitoring applications. These approaches are shown to be effective in handling different data types and, in concept, are likely to perform better than existing single scale approaches. There also exists a vast literature on the theory of wavelet decomposition and other statistical elements of multiscale monitoring methods, such as principal components analysis, denoising and charting. To our knowledge, no comprehensive review of the work relevant to multiscale monitoring of both univariate and multivariate processes has been presented to the literature. In this paper, over 150 both published and unpublished papers are cited for this important subject, and some extensions of the current research are also discussed.

In an online Qualtrics panel survey experiment (N = 1620), we found that scientists posting self-portraits ("selfies") to Instagram from the science lab/field were perceived as significantly warmer and more trustworthy, and no less competent, than scientists posting photos of only their work. Participants who viewed scientist selfies, especially posts containing the face of a female scientist, perceived scientists as significantly warmer than did participants who saw science-only images or control images. Participants who viewed selfies also perceived less symbolic threat from scientists. Most encouragingly, participants viewing selfies, either of male or female scientists, did not perceive scientists as any less competent than did participants viewing science-only or control images. Subjects who viewed female scientist selfies also perceived science as less exclusively male. Our findings suggest that self-portraiture by STEM professionals on social media can mitigate negative attitudes toward scientists.

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">In finite element analysis, mesh density is a critical issue which closely relates to the accuracy of the finite element models while directly determines their complexity level. This paper presents a systematic study on finding the effects of mesh density on the accuracy of numerical analysis results, based on which brief guidelines of choosing the best mesh strategy in finite element modeling are provided. Static, modal, and impact analysis are involved in this study to discuss the effects of element size in finite element analysis.</div></div>

This paper provides a review of the Forensic Aftercare Clinic Conditional Release Program (FAC), which has been operating since December, 1995, in New Orleans, LA. The FAC is a community based program that provides clinical, rehabilitative, and supervisory services to individuals who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or unrestorably incompetent to proceed and who have been discharged from inpatient settings or diverted from jail settings and placed on conditional release by district court orders. 119 clients participated in FAC over a 7 year period. Forty-one (34.4%) had their conditional release revoked. Of the total population, 12 (10.1%) were re-arrested on at least one charge, 3 (2.4%) were arrested on felony charges, and 9 (7.6%) on misdemeanors. Only two of these charges were violent, resulting in no significant harm to victims. Twenty (16.8%) were hospitalized at least once due to relapse. Clients diverted from jail to community settings did not differ significantly on most variables from clients who were discharged from long-term hospitalization. Data related to public safety and client diversion demonstrate that clients, when appropriate, can be safely diverted to the community in lieu of hospitalization. The number of statewide clients who have been discharged from the forensic hospital into the community has increased steadily from 13 in 1995 to 29 in 2002, and statewide diversion clients have steadily increased from 0 in 1992 to 20 in 2002. The increase in statewide diversion clients and forensic discharges over this 7 year period indicates that stakeholders see the viability of the program as an alternative to as well as a step-down from long-term forensic hospitalization.

Future exploration and human missions on large planetary bodies (e.g., moon, Mars) will require advanced guidance navigation and control algorithms for the powered descent phase, which must be capable of unprecedented levels of autonomy. The advent of machine learning, and specifically reinforcement learning, has enabled new possibilities for closed-loop autonomous guidance and navigation. In this paper, image-based reinforcement meta-learning is applied to solve the lunar pinpoint powered descent and landing task with uncertain dynamic parameters and actuator failure. The agent, a deep neural network, takes real-time images and ranging observations acquired during the descent and maps them directly to thrust command (i.e., sensor-to-action policy). Training and validation of the algorithm and Monte Carlo simulations shows that the resulting closed-loop guidance policy reaches errors in the order of meters in different scenarios, even when the environment is partially observed, and the state of the spacecraft is not fully known.

The Gibbs and the Boltzmann definition of temperature agree only in the macroscopic limit. The ambiguity in identifying the equilibrium temperature of a finite-sized 'small' system exchanging energy with a bath is usually understood as a limitation of conventional statistical mechanics. We interpret this ambiguity as resulting from a stochastically fluctuating temperature coupled with the phase space variables giving rise to a broad temperature distribution. With this ansatz, we develop the equilibrium statistics and dynamics of small systems. Numerical evidence using an analytically tractable model shows that the effects of temperature fluctuations can be detected in the equilibrium and dynamical properties of the phase space of the small system. Our theory generalizes statistical mechanics to small systems relevant in biophysics and nanotechnology.

, IncRNA chip and gene expression of PCNA, P53, and Cx43 when cultured with elemene. It was found that elemene can inhibit proliferation, induce apoptosis and block the connections between VSMCs in a dose-dependent manner. IncRNA chip analysis has revealed that there was a significant difference in the expression of 1417 genes and 34 signaling pathways. Elemene liposome membranes prepared by electrostatic spray could also inhibit the proliferation of VSMCs. In addition, after implanting the elemene-coated stent into a rabbit iliac artery for 12 weeks, the surface of elemene-coated stents was fully covered with a layer of neointima and a few platelets. However, a large number of platelets aggregated and attached on the uncoated stents (control samples). In conclusion, elemene could inhibit VSMC proliferation in vitro, which involved the regulation of various signal transduction pathways, and elemene-coated stents could promote endothelialization after stent implantation. Thus, elemene has great potential for the clinical treatment of restenosis and reendothelialization.

Spark-induced breakdown spectroscopy (SIBS) utilizes an electric spark to induce a strong plasma for collecting atomic emissions.

In the era of development of space technology, miniaturization plays a vital role in low cost small satellite missions. The versatile application capabilities and low cost of Pico/Nano satellites missions make them attractive for a wide scope of space exploration projects. This paper outlines the steps involved in design, development and fabrication of a Pico-satellite `STUDSAT': STUDent SATellite along with the development of ground station that is capable of communicating with STUDSAT. It elaborates upon the different subsystems in the satellite. The satellite falls in the category of pico satellites, where the mass of satellite is restricted to 1 Kg and volume to 1.1 liters. The overall dimension of the satellite is (10 × 10 × 13.5) cm. The satellite is capable of capturing images of ground resolution 90 meters at an altitude of 680 Kms. The STUDSAT was launched with ISRO's PSLV C-15 on 12th July 2010 as a secondary payload. Further, the paper elaborates on the beacon and telemetry data that were received from the satellite. The satellite mission was terminated officially after 3 months from its launch date. The paper also presents the analysis on failures that had caused early termination of STUDSAT mission.

Cooling represents a considerable fraction of energy consumption. However, it is indispensable to develop eco-friendly, biocompatible, and ductile cooling materials for personal applications. In this study, we demonstrate the ductile cooling ability with phase change of thermally passivated hydrogel composite materials with additive manufacturing ability. Thermal evaluation of such water-based composites indicates a superior cold retention capacity with a cooling comfort over 6 hours, while the composite displays a full recovery when strained up to 80% in uniaxial compression tests as a result of the intertwining between covalent and ionic bonds. A three-layered rectangular model was utilized to simulate the problem in a steady-state thermal analysis to study the cooling effect. Our findings indicate the potential of hydrogel as a cooling phase-change medium and its contribution towards ductile cooling applications.

Mit der Idee, den Staat nicht nur mit den Mitteln der juristischen Methode zu erfassen, sondern auch mit denen einer sozialen Staatslehre, hat Georg Jellinek der politischen Soziologie Max Webers entscheidende Anstöße gegeben. Ähnliches gilt für seinen Vorschlag, den Staat zu den gesellschaftlichen Gruppen in Beziehung zu setzen. Im Unterschied zur sozialen Staatslehre Jellineks behandelt die soziologische Staatslehre Webers jedoch auch Themen, die bei Jellinek nur in normwissenschaftlicher Perspektive erörtert werden: die Trias von Staatsgebiet, Staatsvolk und Staatsgewalt sowie die Verfassungen, Formen und Funktionen des Staates. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die unterschiedlichen verfassungspolitischen Optionen beider Autoren beleuchtet, insbesondere das Verhältnis von parlamentarischer und plebiszitärer Herrschaft. Eine Neubewertung von Webers Vorschlägen zur Ausgestaltung des Präsidentenamts beschließt die Studie, die sich vor allem an Staatsrechtler, Politikwissenschaftler und Soziologen richtet. Der Verfasser hat zahlreiche Arbeiten zu Max Weber und zur historischen Soziologie des Staates veröffentlicht.

An online survey was conducted with Egyptian users who visited commercial websites. A total of 296 people responded to an Arabic survey that questioned the reasons they use commercial websites as well as what gratifications they obtain from the experience. Education level and type of job were found to be significant predictors of commercial website use. Social interaction and information gathering were found to be key predictors of how long a respondent stayed on a website. Positive attitudes about a commercial website were found to be correlated with gratifications sought from using the site as well as perceived gratifications obtained from the experience. As expected, gratifications sought were positively correlated with gratifications obtained. Amount of time spent these websites was correlated with gratifications sought and obtained.This study attempts to clarify the motives, attitudes and obtained gratifications from commercial websites, as well as the relationships among these elements. The present research has demonstrated that the intersection of uses and gratifications theory and online marketing can lead to a deeper understanding of the marketing constraints and utilities offered by interactive computer-mediated communication technology.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to screen pertinent variables to identify ordered relations that provide easily interpretable and accurate predictions of the probability of cigarette use among adolescents using a classification tree modeling approach. Methods: This cross-sectional study included a national sample of 3717 U.S. adolescents aged between 12 and 20 years old from the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Results: The results indicated that age was the most influential variable, followed by depression, race/ethnicity, family income, gender, and alcohol abuse and dependence. Additionally, several interaction emerged that identified higher and lower cigarette use profiles: youth who were between 18 and 20 years old and self-identified as non-Hispanic White, Native American/Alaska Native, and “Other” racial/ethnic group and African American, Asian, and Latinx adolescents, with depressive symptoms were at higher risk of cigarette use; while youth who reported lower family incomes, were 16–17 years old, who identified as African American, Asian, and Latinx, were also likely to report lower use of cigarettes when they reported lower depressive symptom scores. Discussion: These results are discussed relative to practice implications.

Recently, there are many papers on electromagnetic pre-earthquake phenomena such as geomagnetic, ionospheric, and atmospheric anomalous changes. Ionospheric anomaly preceding large earthquakes is one of the most promising phenomena. Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling (LAIC) model has been proposed to explain these phenomena. In this study, to evaluate the possibility of chemical channel of LAIC by observation, we have installed sensors for atmospheric electric field, atmospheric ion concentration, atmospheric Rn concentration, underground Rn concentration (GRC), and weather elements at Asahi station, Boso, Japan. Since the atmospheric electricity parameters are very much influenced by weather factors, it is necessary to remove these effects as much as possible. In this aim, we apply the MSSA (Multi-channel Singular Spectral Analysis) to remove these influences from the variation of GRC and estimate the underground Rn flux (GRF). We investigated the correlations between GRF and the local seismic activity around Asahi station. The preliminary results show that there is a tendency of correlation between GRF and local seismicity within an epicenter distance of 50 km from the station.

Graphene oxide (GO) membranes have attracted considerable interest due to their oxygenated functional groups and their potential in hydrogen (H2) separation applications. This work introduces a flexible and stable lamellar graphene oxide membrane combined with silk fibroin (SF) for hydrogen permeation performance. The intercalating of silk fibroin into GO nanosheet enhanced the interlayer distance of a membrane by 43%, promoting the uptake of a significant amount of water molecules that develop hydrogen bonds between SF and GO. GO-SF has an improved proton conductivity of 1.2 mS cm–1, similar to that of Nafion, and conserves stability up to 100 °C. Concentration cell experiments demonstrated that the SF-modified membrane displays as a pure proton conductor at ambient temperature and up to 60 °C. In addition, the diffusion of electrons occurs between the sp2 carbon backbone of the GO layer and the hydrophobic site of SF, enabling the mixed proton and electron conductivity. The GO-SF membrane, covered with Pt/C on both the anode and cathode, efficiently allows for the permeation of hydrogen gas while preventing the migration of He and CO2. Our research findings demonstrate the significant potential of carbon-based membranes for hydrogen separation applications.

The diffusible gas nitric oxide (NO) and amino acid γ-gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) exert contrary effects on glucose counterregulation in the male rat, but how these neurochemical signals integrate within ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMN) neural circuitries remains unclear. Female rat dorsomedial (VMNdm) and ventrolateral (VMNvl) GABAergic neurons express neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) mRNA; notably these subpopulations exhibit dissimilar nNOS transcriptional responses to insulin-induced hypoglycemia (IIH). Here, nNOS gene knockdown tools were used to examine whether one or both VMN GABA neuron groups may be a target for nitrergic control of basal and hypoglycemic counterregulatory hormone secretion in the male. Data show that VMN nNOS gene knockdown respectively up- or down-regulated counterregulatory hormone profiles in eu- versus hypoglycemic male rats. Single-cell multiplex qPCR analysis of laser-catapult-microdissected GABA neurons showed that IIH elevated nNOS gene expression in GABA neurons from each VMN division, yet nNOS siRNA pretreatment attenuated distinctive IIH-associated transmitter marker gene expression patterns in VMNdm versus VMNvl GABAergic neurons. nNOS gene silencing had similar effects on glucokinase and glucose transporter gene responses to IIH in each GABA neuron subpopulation but elicited division-specific effects on mRNA encoding 5-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) alpha/catalytic subunits and the lactate membrane receptor GPR81/HCAR1. Current findings provide original evidence that VMN NO may impose bi-directional, glucose status-contingent control of counterregulatory hormone outflow in the male rat. Data moreover imply that during IIH, NO may control distinctive sources of metabolic sensory regulatory stimuli in VMNdm versus VMNvl GABA neurons and may shape unique counterregulation-controlling neurochemical transmission by each cell population.

To cross the formidable obstacle in the way of developing renewable energy using photocatalysis, exact control over the chemical reactivity of the nanomaterials, as well as the behavior of photogenerated charge carriers, we investigated real-time photocarrier dynamics and used graph neural networks (GNN) to accelerate screening of the nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) mechanism on economical and ecofriendly 2D sulfur-defected gallium sulfide (2D V-GaS). Our density functional theory study revealed its thermal stability, optical properties, and favorable band alignment for the NRR. The best site over GaS sheets for the photocatalytic NRR was identified using GNN and MD data. Gibbs free energy calculations showed a downhill energy profile under a light-induced potential. A prolonged electron–hole recombination time of 4.06 ns indicates that photogenerated electrons have enough time to reach the active sites of the reaction. Therefore, our study suggests 2D V-GaS is a promising photocatalyst for sustainable and cost-effective NH3 production via NRR.

There have been many developments of mine or metal detectors based on ground penetrating radar techniques, usually in hand-held or rover-mounted devices. In most mine or metal detector applications, conditions are in a stationary mode and detection speed is not an important factor. A novel, forward-looking, stepped-frequency ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been developed with a capability to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at vehicular speeds of 15 to 20 mph (24 to 32 km/h), 10 to 20 m ahead of the vehicle, to ensure adequate time for response. The GPR system employs two horn antennas (1.7 to 2.6 GHz, 20 dBi) as transmit and receive. The detector system features a user-friendly instantaneous display on a laptop PC and is a low-power-consumption (3 W) compact system with minimal impact on vehicle operations. In practice, the whole GPR system and a laptop PC can be powered by plugging into a cigarette lighter of a vehicle. The stepped-frequency continuous-wave (CW) radar scans frequency from 1.7 to 2.6 GHz in 1,000 steps of 0.9 MHz, with the full frequency scan in 60 ms. The GPR uses a bi-static configuration with one horn antenna used as a transmitter and the other used as a receiver so that isolation between transmitter and receiver is improved. Since the horn antennas (20 dBi) are mounted on the roof of a vehicle at a shallow inclination angle (15 to 25 with respect to horizontal), there is a first-order reduction in ground reflection so that a significant amount of the total reflected power received by the GPR comes from the scattering of RF energy off of buried objects. The stepped-frequency technique works by transmitting a tone at a particular frequency, while the received signal is mixed with the transmitted tone. As a result, the output of the mixer produces a signal that indicates the strength of the received signal and the extent to which it is in phase or out of phase with the transmitted tone. By taking measurements of the phase relationship between the transmitted and received signals over a wide frequency range, an interference pattern is produced showing all target reflections. When a Fourier transform is performed on this pattern, the result is a time-domain representation of targets. Among the advantages of this technique over impulse radar is the ability to transmit and receive much more total energy, and to use non-damped, highly focused horn antennas. The novelty of the IED detector GPR has been achieved by miniaturization of GPR electronics (single electronics board, 10x5x2 cm), low power consumption (3 W), faster signal processing capability, and minimal impact on vehicle operations.

As LLMs are increasingly integrated into systems that browse, retrieve, summarize, and act on web content, webpages have become an untrusted input vector for downstream model behavior. This enables site owners, contributors, and adversaries to embed instructions directly in web resources, i.e., indirect prompt injections. While prior work demonstrates such attacks in controlled settings, their prevalence, deployment, and real-world impact remain unclear. We present one of the first large-scale empirical analyses of indirect prompt injections in webpages and HTTP responses. Analyzing 1.2B URLs from 24.8M hosts, we identify 15.3K validated instances across 11.7K pages. These are not isolated cases: a small number of recurring templates account for most cases. We characterize their objectives, delivery mechanisms, visibility, persistence, and impact, revealing a heterogeneous ecosystem spanning disruptive prompts, reputation manipulation, content-protection directives, and AI-bot detection, targeting systems such as crawlers, search pipelines, customer-support agents, and hiring workflows. A key finding is that most instructions target machines rather than humans: about 70% appear in non-rendered HTML (e.g., headers, comments, metadata), and many visible cases are hidden via rendering techniques. To assess practical risk, we run 5,200 controlled experiments across 13 models and four webpage representations. Our results show compliance is limited but non-negligible, reaching up to 8% for smaller models on plain-text inputs, while structured representations reduce compliance by preserving structural cues. Overall, prompt-based interference is already present in the web ecosystem and represents a growing source of tension between LLM-driven automation and the sites it consumes.