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Food spoilage is mainly caused by microorganisms, such as bacteria. In this study, we measure the autofluorescence in meat samples longitudinally over a week in an attempt to develop a method to rapidly detect meat spoilage using fluorescence spectroscopy. Meat food is a biological tissue, which contains intrinsic fluorophores, such as tryptophan, collagen, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) etc. As meat spoils, it undergoes various morphological and chemical changes. The concentrations of the native fluorophores present in a sample may change. In particular, the changes in NADH and FAD are associated with microbial metabolism, which is the most important process of the bacteria in food spoilage. Such changes may be revealed by fluorescence spectroscopy and used to indicate the status of meat spoilage. Therefore, such native fluorophores may be unique, reliable and non-subjective indicators for detection of spoiled meat. The results of the study show that the relative concentrations of all above fluorophores change as the meat samples kept in room temperature (~19°C) spoil. The changes become more rapidly after about two days. For the meat samples kept in a freezer (~ -12°C), the changes are much less or even unnoticeable over a-week-long storage.

Native fluorescence spectra are acquired from fresh normal and cancerous human prostate tissues. The fluorescence data are analyzed using an unsupervised machine learning algorithm such as non-negative matrix factorization. The nonnegative spectral components are retrieved and attributed to the native fluorophores such as collagen, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), and flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) in tissue. The retrieved scores of the components are used to estimate the relative concentrations of the native fluorophores such as NADH and FAD and the redox ratio. A supervised machine learning algorithm such as support vector machine (SVM) is used to classify normal and cancerous tissue samples based on either the relative concentrations of NADH and FAD or the redox ratio alone. Various statistical measures such as sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, along with the area under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve are used to show the classification performance. A cross validation method such as leave-one-out is used to further evaluate the predictive performance of the SVM classifier to avoid bias due to overfitting, and the accuracy was found to be 93.3%.

PURPOSE: Our objective is to evaluate the "reach" component of the Reach Effectiveness Adoption Implementation Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework by comparing prediabetics who were and were not interested in enrolling in a free work site diabetes prevention program (DPP) during the first year of the program. Reach is defined as the proportion of eligible participants who enroll in a health program., DESIGN: A cross-sectional study design was used., SETTING: The setting was a large health system in the Midwest., PARTICIPANTS: Prediabetic health plan enrollees and spouses (N = 2158)., MEASURES: An online health survey, annual voluntary biometric screenings delivered by a trained health-care professional using standardized protocols via point-of-care testing, and records from the DPP office were the sources of data for this study., ANALYSIS: Health behaviors and biometric screening results were simultaneously compared using multivariable logistic regression., RESULTS: The study population was 63% female, 79% white, and 16% black, and the mean age was 50.2 years (SD = 10.2). The reach of this program was 10%. Prediabetics were more likely to express interest in the DPP, if they were female (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 2.4; 95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 1.55-3.72; P < .001), black (AOR = 2.23; 95% CI: 1.43-3.47; P < .001), older in age (AOR: 1.08; 95% CI: 0.99-1.17; P = .05), or had a high-risk waist circumference (AOR = 1.44; 95% CI: 0.98-2.13; P = .07), lower self-efficacy to make healthy changes (AOR = 0.48; 95% CI: 0.26-0.91; P = .03), and 5 or more doctor visits in the last year (AOR = 2.13; 95% CI: 0.99-4.57; P = .05), after controlling for other covariates., CONCLUSION: Current recruitment and implementation strategies are reaching only a small group of individuals who are not representative of the larger prediabetic population. These findings inform future engagement strategies, and we recommend that public health practitioners evaluate reach to ensure that health promotion programs are of high value.

A growing number of organizations have difficulty scaling-up their IT infrastructure to handle their growing needs and increased resource demands. Digital Technology Platforms (DTPs) have been identified by Gartner, Inc. as one of the top 10 strategic technology trends of 2017. While DTPs may be mainstream and easily adopted by large enterprise-sized organizations, there is an opportunity for such platforms within Small and Mid-Size Businesses (SMBs). The bottom line is that computing and server hardware is expensive for SMBs. Furthermore, it may be difficult for SMBs to assess and price the labor and resources needed for a company to have acceptable performance while controlling costs. The purpose of this paper is to examine how cloud computing technologies are adopted by SMBs and the respective drivers associated with costs and capability that may reduce costs for an organization. This paper explores how four variables – Robust Capability, Limited Capability, Cost Constraint, and Resource Abundance interact to impact the adoption of DTPs within SMBs. Adopters of DTPs are classified as Efficient, Proactive, Resistive, and Reactive. With respect to adoption efficacy, a model is proposed for assessing the capability and resource readiness as correlated to SMB adoption of DTPs. A study of 12 SMBs and the implementations of DTPs is presented and posited with the proposed adoption model. Due to the extensive investments required in procuring infrastructure services –adoption enablement is imperative for SMB-sized organizations to realize a return on investment. Implications are discussed.

The primary purposes of the study were to investigate how often bullying occurs in libraries and whether bullying policies exist in libraries. The first survey questionnaire was sent to library personnel in the six New England states through statewide email distribution lists. Altogether 571 library staff members completed the survey. The second survey questionnaire was sent to large public and academic libraries in New England to see if they have anti-bullying policies in the workplace. The results of the study clearly showed there were significant reports of workplace bullying in all kinds of libraries. Nonetheless, not many libraries have policies that deal with this workplace challenge.

This new work is currently the only book devoted to the teaching of one of the most canonical and frequently taught American authors.In addition to a Preface by the noted Hawthorne scholar Larry J. Reynolds [University Distinguished Professor and Thomas Franklin Mayo Professor of Liberal Arts Department of English Texas A&M University] the contributors include well-known and rising teacher-scholars who offer theoretical and pedagogical approaches to Hawthorne's four published novels and a wide range of his short stories.The specially commissioned essays are designed to help teachers meet students at points of genuine interest and need. They incorporate biographical, literary, historical, and multidisciplinary scholarship. The studies are further grounded in specific contexts such as literature surveys, interdisciplinary humanities courses, upper division literature seminars, and study abroad courses.Special emphasis is given to the issues of gender, science, and visual culture (including film adaptations). Offering both theoretical and practical classroom resources, this anthology confirms the continued vitality of Hawthorne's work - his critiques of religious and moral authority are more relevant than ever in today's global political environment - even as it showcases how today's "Hawthorne" is more of a diverse amalgam of texts and perspectives than ever before. Given its diversity of approaches and authors (including essayists from Germany, Israel, and Sweden), Nathaniel Hawthorne in the College Classroom charts new paths for reading and teaching Hawthorne in the 21st century.

Since 2014, NASA's K2 mission has observed large portions of the ecliptic plane in search of transiting planets and has detected hundreds of planet candidates. With observations planned until at least early 2018, K2 will continue to identify more planet candidates. We present here 275 planet candidates observed during Campaigns 0-10 of the K2 mission that are orbiting stars brighter than 13 mag (in Kepler band) and for which we have obtained high-resolution spectra (R = 44,000). These candidates are analyzed using the vespa package in order to calculate their false-positive probabilities (FPP). We find that 149 candidates are validated with an FPP lower than 0.1%, 39 of which were previously only candidates and 56 of which were previously undetected. The processes of data reduction, candidate identification, and statistical validation are described, and the demographics of the candidates and newly validated planets are explored. We show tentative evidence of a gap in the planet radius distribution of our candidate sample. Comparing our sample to the Kepler candidate sample investigated by Fulton et al., we conclude that more planets are required to quantitatively confirm the gap with K2 candidates or validated planets. This work, in addition to increasing the population of validated K2 planets by nearly 50% and providing new targets for follow-up observations, will also serve as a framework for validating candidates from upcoming K2 campaigns and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, expected to launch in 2018. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Research on college substance use and mental illness is limited and inconsistent. Measures of substance use, and anxiety and depressive symptoms, were completed by 1,316 undergraduates within a major drug transportation corridor. Hierarchical linear regressions were used to test associations between anxious and depressive symptoms and substance use (i.e., alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, cocaine, other amphetamines, sedatives, hallucinogens, and designer drugs). Depressive symptoms were associated with use of cannabis, tobacco, amphetamines, cocaine, sedatives, and hallucinogens. Anxiety symptoms were unrelated to substance use. These findings support the need for education and prevention at universities, emphasizing tobacco, cannabis, and certain “harder” drugs.

In this study, the literature in disability and higher education was examined, with a specific focus on assessment instruments. Published articles (n = 203) on development of new or refinement of existing instruments were reviewed for traits measured and psychometric rigor reported. Findings showed instruments are intended for professionals and students, and of the student instruments, broad categories are academic, nonacademic, and specific to a disability diagnosis. Not all instruments are limited to students with disabilities; many of the reviewed instruments can be utilized in higher-education settings on all students, faculty, and staff, regardless of disability. The implications of the findings undergird the urgency to prioritize disability as a facet of diversity within higher-education scholarship, and furthermore aid this prioritization by providing a catalogue of robust instruments to researchers and practitioners.

The Leading Arm (LA) of the Magellanic Stream is a vast debris field of H i clouds connecting the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. It represents an example of active gas accretion onto the Galaxy. Previously, only one chemical abundance measurement had been made in the LA. Here we present chemical abundance measurements using Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Green Bank Telescope spectra of four AGN sightlines passing through the LA and three nearby sightlines that may trace outer fragments of the LA. We find low oxygen abundances, ranging from 4.0-2.0+2.0% solar to 12.6-4.16.0% solar, in the confirmed LA directions, with the lowest values found in the region known as LA III, farthest from the LMC. These abundances are substantially lower than the single previous measurement, S/H =35 ±7% solar, but are in agreement with those reported in the SMC filament of the trailing Stream, supporting a common origin in the SMC (not the LMC) for the majority of the LA and trailing Stream. This provides important constraints for models of the formation of the Magellanic System. Finally, two of the three nearby sightlines show high-velocity clouds with H i columns, kinematics, and oxygen abundances consistent with LA membership. This suggests that the LA is larger than traditionally thought, extending at least 20° further to the Galactic northwest. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Scholars have offered at least four distinct but interrelated conceptual frameworks for examining the relationship between militaries and the natural world.

The goal of the research is to determine the prognostic molecular pathological changes in components and composition, for human brain glioma gradings in comparison with normal tissues in three-dimensional Raman imaging profiles by visible Resonance Raman (VRR) imaging. <p> </p>VRR images from twenty-five specimens including three healthy tissues, one normal control, and twenty-one glioma tissues of grades II, II-III and III-IV with histology examination were measured and investigated using WITec300R confocal micro Raman imaging system with laser excitation of 532nm. <p> </p>Two-dimensional RR spectral mappings performed in 20&mu;m x 20&mu;m generated 400 images which integrated the intensity of the specific biochemical bonds as the third dimension. The three-dimension (3D) map demonstrated the spatial distributions of three selected sets of RR spectra of molecular biomarkers, and revealed significant differences in the spectra between normal and glioma tissues of different grades due to the composition changes in key molimageecules. These RR molecular spectral fingerprints have displayed: a clear enhancement of RR vibrational modes at 1129-1131cm^-1 and 2934cm^-1 which are supposed to be arising from lipoproteins; evident decreased RR vibrational modes at 1442cm^-1 and 2854cm^-1 which are from saturated fatty acids bonds in all-grades of glioma brain tissues compared with normal tissues; and the enhanced RR spectral modes of 1129 cm^-1 and 2938cm^-1 which suggest contribution from lactate. These findings may provide a novel proof for anaerobic glycolysis metabolic process in brain glioma cancer tissues that has been explained by Warburg effects.

Analyzing spectral or imaging data collected with various optical biopsy methods is often times difficult due to the complexity of the biological basis. Robust methods that can utilize the spectral or imaging data and detect the characteristic spectral or spatial signatures for different types of tissue is challenging but highly desired. In this study, we used various machine learning algorithms to analyze a spectral dataset acquired from human skin normal and cancerous tissue samples using resonance Raman spectroscopy with 532nm excitation. The algorithms including principal component analysis, nonnegative matrix factorization, and autoencoder artificial neural network are used to reduce dimension of the dataset and detect features. A support vector machine with a linear kernel is used to classify the normal tissue and cancerous tissue samples. The efficacies of the methods are compared.

Worldwide breast cancer incidence has increased by more than twenty percent in the past decade. It is also known that in that time, mortality due to the affliction has increased by fourteen percent. Using optical-based diagnostic techniques, such as Raman spectroscopy, has been explored in order to increase diagnostic accuracy in a more objective way along with significantly decreasing diagnostic wait-times. In this study, Raman spectroscopy with 532-nm excitation was used in order to incite resonance effects to enhance Stokes Raman scattering from unique biomolecular vibrational modes. Seventy-two Raman spectra (41 cancerous, 31 normal) were collected from nine breast tissue samples by performing a ten-spectra average using a 500-ms acquisition time at each acquisition location. The raw spectral data was subsequently prepared for analysis with background correction and normalization. The spectral data in the Raman Shift range of 750- 2000 cm-1 was used for analysis since the detector has highest sensitivity around in this range. The matrix decomposition technique nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) was then performed on this processed data. The resulting leave-oneout cross-validation using two selective feature components resulted in sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 92.6%, 100% and 96.0% respectively. The performance of NMF was also compared to that using principal component analysis (PCA), and NMF was shown be to be superior to PCA in this study. This study shows that coupling the resonance Raman spectroscopy technique with subsequent NMF decomposition method shows potential for high characterization accuracy in breast cancer detection.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is documented to curb executive risk-taking and firm risk. Utilizing SOX as an exogenous shock on firm risk, we find that proxy fight threats are positively related to a firm’s total risk and idiosyncratic risk. Specifically, although firm risk generally decreases post-SOX, high proxy fight threats mitigate this change in firm risk. We also find that although firms adopt more conservative policies such as decreasing their leverage and payout post-SOX, these changes are mitigated by proxy fight threats. In sum, our findings indicate that proxy fights act as an external disciplinary mechanism, encourage executive risk-taking, and increase firm risk.

ACSM’S Exercise Testing and Prescription adapts and expands upon the assessment and exercise prescription-related content from ACSM’s Resource Manual for Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 7th Edition, to create a true classroom resource. Fully aligned with the latest edition of ACSM’s flagship title, ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription , this practical resource walks students through the process of selecting and administering fitness assessments, using Guidelines to interpret results, and drafting an exercise prescription that is in line with Guidelines parameters .Designed for today’s learners, the text is written in a clear, concise style, and enriched by visuals that promote student engagement. As an American College of Sports Medicine publication, the book offers the unsurpassed quality and excellence that has become synonymous with titles by the leading exercise science organization in the world.The nuances of fitness assessment and the particulars of crafting exercise prescriptions are explored in expansive sections throughout the book.A full section devoted to Special Populations prepares students to meet the needs of the full range of both typically healthy and special needs clients they’ll see in practice.Comprehensive case studies written by experts to reinforce practical applications of concepts.A wide range of online resources includes laboratory materials and activities that provide opportunities for hands-on learning, and a library of journal articles that helps students connect research to practice.100% alignment with the most up-to-date version of the ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription enhances the learning experience, making it easy to go back and forth between Guidelines and the text.eBook available. Fast, smart, and convenient, today’s eBooks can transform learning. These interactive, fully searchable tools offer 24/7 access on multiple devices, the ability to highlight and share notes, and much more.

ACSM’S Exercise Testing and Prescription adapts and expands upon the assessment and exercise prescription-related content from ACSM’s Resource Manual for Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 7th Edition, to create a true classroom resource. Fully aligned with the latest edition of ACSM’s flagship title, ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription , this practical resource walks students through the process of selecting and administering fitness assessments, using Guidelines to interpret results, and drafting an exercise prescription that is in line with Guidelines parameters .Designed for today’s learners, the text is written in a clear, concise style, and enriched by visuals that promote student engagement. As an American College of Sports Medicine publication, the book offers the unsurpassed quality and excellence that has become synonymous with titles by the leading exercise science organization in the world.The nuances of fitness assessment and the particulars of crafting exercise prescriptions are explored in expansive sections throughout the book.A full section devoted to Special Populations prepares students to meet the needs of the full range of both typically healthy and special needs clients they’ll see in practice.Comprehensive case studies written by experts to reinforce practical applications of concepts.A wide range of online resources includes laboratory materials and activities that provide opportunities for hands-on learning, and a library of journal articles that helps students connect research to practice.100% alignment with the most up-to-date version of the ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription enhances the learning experience, making it easy to go back and forth between Guidelines and the text.eBook available. Fast, smart, and convenient, today’s eBooks can transform learning. These interactive, fully searchable tools offer 24/7 access on multiple devices, the ability to highlight and share notes, and much more.

Boron compounds have been used extensively in organic synthesis for more than sixty years. Some of the best known reactions in synthesis, such as the Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling and the hydroboration reaction, involve boron compounds. Several natural products containing boron have been isolated in the last fifty years, including ionophoric macrodiolide antibiotics boromycin, borophycin, aplasmomycins A, B, and C, and tartrolons B, C, and E, as well as autoinducer-2. The study of compounds containing boronic acids for application in pharmaceuticals and materials science has grown tremendously over the last few decades. These include bortezomib, ixazomib, and tavaborole. Several more boron-based drugs are currently in clinical trials. Boron neutron capture therapy has the potential to provide a treatment for various cancers. In addition, materials bearing boronic acids are been studied as potential sensors for biological molecules, such as saccharides and glycoproteins that possess cis-1,2- or cis-1,3-diols.