bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hydrophobic gasket mutation produces gating pore currents in closed human voltage-gated proton channels
Authors: Banh Richard , Cherny Vladimir V. , Morgan Deri , Musset Boris , Thomas Sarah , Kulleperuma Kethika , Smith Susan M. E. , Pomès Régis , DeCoursey Thomas E.
Published: August 2019

Significance

A large family of membrane proteins, voltage-gated ion channels, regulate a vast array of physiological functions in essentially all life forms. How these molecules sense membrane potential and respond by creating ionic conduction is incompletely understood. The voltage sensors of these channels contain a “hydrophobic gasket,” a ring of hydrophobic amino acids near the center of the membrane, separating internal and external aqueous solutions. Although voltage-gated proton channels, H
V
1, resemble voltage-sensing domains of other channels, they differ fundamentally. On depolarization, H
V
1 conducts protons, whereas other voltage sensors open a physically distinct pore. We identify Val
109
, Phe
150
, Val
177
, and Val
178
as the hH
V
1 hydrophobic gasket. Replacement with less hydrophobic amino acids accelerated channel opening and caused proton-selective leak through closed channels.
Influence of media on the differentiation of Staphylococcus spp. by volatile compounds
Authors: Jenkins Carrie L , Bean Heather D
Published: August 2019

Staphylococcus aureus asymptomatically colonizes a third of the world’s population, and it is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause life threatening diseases. To diagnose S. aureus infections, it is necessary to differentiate S. aureus from the ubiquitous human commensal Staphylococcus epidermidis, which beneficially colonizes the skin of all humans. Efforts are underway to identify volatile biomarkers for diagnosing S. aureus infections, but to date no studies have investigated whether S. aureus and S. epidermidis can be reliably differentiated under a variety of growth conditions. The overall goal of this study was to evaluate the influence of growth medium on the ability to differentiate S. aureus and S. epidermidis based on their volatile profiles. We used headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS) to examine the headspace volatiles of S. aureus and S. epidermidis when aerobically grown in four different complex media. We detected 337 volatile features when culturing S. aureus and S. epidermidis in four complex media, termed the staph volatiles, and found only 20%–40% concurrence in the volatiles produced by these two species in any single medium. Using principal components analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis on the staph volatiles, we observed that S. aureus and S. epidermidis clustered independently from each other, and distinctly clustered by growth medium within species. Removing volatiles that are species and/or media-specific from the analysis reduced the resolution between species clusters, but in all models clustering by species overrode clustering by media type. These analyses suggest that, while volatile profiles are media-specific, species differences dominate the staph volatilome. These data enable future investigations into the identification of volatile biomarkers to discriminate staphylococcal pathogens versus commensals, which will improve staph diagnoses and provide insights into the biochemistry of staph infections and immunity.
Corrigendum to “A flexible affine 𝑀-sextic which is algebraically unrealizable”
Authors: Fiedler-Le Touzé S. , Orevkov S. , Shustin E.
Published: August 2019

We prove the algebraic unrealizability of a certain isotopy type of plane affine real algebraic

M
M

-sextic which is pseudoholomorphically realizable. This result completes the classification up to isotopy of real algebraic affine

M
M

-sextics. The proof of this result given in a previous paper by the first two authors [J. Algebraic Geom. 11 (2002), pp. 293–310] was incorrect.
The Cold War and Asian Canadian Writing
Authors: Kim Christine , Lee Christopher
Published: August 2019

Despite the supposed end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, its legacies remain unresolved in Asia and continue to shape Asian Canadian writing. The presence of what are now called Asian Canadians became increasingly visible in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1967, the federal government passed a new Immigration Act that abolished national quotas which had effectively excluded most immigrants from areas outside Euro-America and introduced new opportunities for students and skilled immigrants. In the late 1970s, 60,000 refugees from Southeast Asia entered Canada, the first time that Canada had admitted a significant number of non-European refugees. This period also marked the height of postwar Canadian nationalism: in 1967, Canada celebrated its Centennial and tried to project an image of liberal inclusion; this would be further consolidated in 1971 with the adoption of state-sanctioned multiculturalism. However, this specific Canadian national identity failed to address racial discrimination, including those forms directed towards Asian immigrants from the mid-19th century until past the World War II. While Canada’s Cold War politics are informed by these unresolved historical traumas, the multiple intersections between Asian Canadian experience and the Cold War remain largely illegible when read through the frame of the Canadian nation.

Alongside the tradition of Asian Canadian cultural activism, Asian Canadian writers, such as Joy Kogawa, Roy Miki, Paul Yee, SKY Lee, M. G. Vassanji, and others, produced texts that sought to address the erasure of Asian historical presence while exploring and depicting the psychic as well as social costs of racial exclusion and discrimination during the 1970s and 1980s. SKY Lee’s novel Disappearing Moon Café (1991) explores how issues such as Asian–Indigenous relations, gender hierarchies, class relations, racialization, queerness, and the politics of memory are shaped under the subtext of the Cold War. Laotian Canadian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa’s second book of poetry, Found (2007), engages with the history of her parents’ migration from Laos to Canada via a refugee camp in Thailand, and in doing so, Thammavongsa challenges the Cold War representations of Southeast Asian countries. Kim Thuy’s Ru (2009) examines migration in relation to the narrator’s journey from Vietnam to a Malaysian refugee camp and then to a small town in Quebec. Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter (2011) raises questions about post-Cold War justice by drawing attention to Canada’s involvement in the conflicts in Cambodia and implicitly posing the question of Canada’s unacknowledged responsibilities. Thammavongsa, Thuy, and Thien’s texts can be read as post-Cold War literature as the Cold War created the conditions for these literary projects to emerge. Beyond a source of thematic or historical content, the Cold War remains embedded, if ambivalently, in the very construction of Asian Canadian literature.
Transnational News Flows
Authors: Thussu Daya Kishan
Published: August 2019

The international flow of news has traditionally been dominated by that from North to South, with the West being at the core. Within the West itself, news flow is dominated by Anglo-American media, a situation which has its roots in the way that journalism developed historically. The historical context of global news begins with the introduction of the telegraph and undersea cables in the nineteenth century, which created a global market for news. Major players emerged—including news agencies—and shaped the transnational news flows. What emerges is that, in all ages, key innovations in transnational news flows have been closely linked to commerce, geopolitics, and war, from the telegraph to online news outlets. The increasing availability and use of news media, from major non-Western countries, are now affecting transnational news flows. Global journalism has been transformed in the digital age by internet-based communication and the rise of digital media opportunities—allowing for multi-directional news flows for growing global news audiences.
Latvia and the European Union
Authors: Eihmanis Edgars
Published: August 2019

How did the European Union (EU) shape Latvia’s formal institutions and policy? How has this influence varied across policy domains and over time? Furthermore, how has it shaped domestic politics? The state-of-the-art literature offers only partial answers to these questions, falling short of providing a broader perspective on the effects of Europeanization. EU influence on Latvian institutions and policy has been profound, going beyond the rather technical adoption of acquis and concerning highly contentious issues of domestic politics. The influence has varied in substance and extent over different integration phases, depending on policy agendas and conditionality mechanisms at hand. Assuming a two-dimensional political space, the EU notably pushed Latvia’s policy to the left—both on economic and cultural issue areas. If during the 1990s the EU forced Latvia to liberalize its language and citizenship laws, in the early 2000s it played a major role in building state institutions. During the crisis, the EU not only imposed austere fiscal targets but also found itself playing the role of a social advocate, as domestic authorities pushed fiscal stringency to the extreme. EU’s criticisms regarding Latvia’s social policy eventually contributed to a marked policy change. Furthermore, by shaping Latvia’s institutions and policy, the EU shaped Latvia’s politics as well, as local actors strategically used various EU issue agendas—notably, (anti)corruption—for their own political purposes. Put on the domestic political agenda by the EU (and other international actors) in the early 2000s, (anti)corruption became the second most polarizing issue/area after ethnicity for the decades to come.
Social Policy and European Union Politics
Authors: Daly Mary
Published: August 2019

Social policy has a particular character and set of associated politics in the European Union (EU) context. There is a double contestation involved: the extent of the EU’s agency in the field and the type of social policy model pursued. The former is contested because social policy is typically and traditionally a matter of national competence and the latter because the social policy model is crucial to economic and market development. Hence, social policy has both functional and political significance, and EU engagement risks member states’ capacity to control the social fate of their citizens and the associated resources, authority, and power that come with this capacity.

The political contestations are at their core territorially and/or social class based; the former crystalizes how wide and extensive the EU authority should be in social policy and the latter a left/right continuum in regard to how redistributive and socially interventionist EU social policy should be. Both are the subject of a complicated politics at EU level. First, there is a diverse set of agents involved, not just member states and the “political” EU institutions (Parliament and Council) but the Commission is also an important “interested” actor. This renders institutional politics and jockeying for power typical features of social policymaking in the EU. Second, one has to break down the monolith of the EU institutions and recognize that within and among them are actors or units that favor a more left or right position on social policy. Third, actors’ positions do not necessarily align on the two types of contestation (apart perhaps from the social nongovernmental organizations and to a lesser extent employers and business interests). Some actors who favor an extensive role for social policy in general are skeptical about the role of the EU in this regard (e.g., trade unions, some social democratic parties) while others (some sectors of the Commission) wish for a more expansive EU remit in social policy but also support a version of social policy pinned tightly to market and economic functions.

In this kind of context, the strongest and most consistent political thrust is toward a type of EU social policy that is most clearly oriented to enabling the Union’s economic and market-related objectives. Given this and the institutional set-up, the default position in EU social policy is for a market-making social policy orientation on the one hand and a circumscribed role for the EU in social policy on the other.
The Politics of LGBQTI Human Rights in the United Nations System
Authors: McGoldrick Dominic
Published: August 2019

The United Nations system has been a major global site of political and legal contestation for LGBTQI human rights. However, the lack of consensus has led to major divisions within the UN’s political institutions. The independent human rights institutions that do exist within the UN system have been more progressive in advancing LGBTQI issues.
War and Religion: The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s
Authors: Mirilovic Nikola
Published: August 2019

The breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in considerable violence and in the creation of new states. Religion is one of the factors that we need to consider in order to understand the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Some of the key leaders involved in the conflict referred to religion in their rhetoric and had the support of religious organizations; places of worship were targeted for destruction; and religion to some extent influenced how actors from outside of Yugoslavia approached the conflict. However, religion is far from a sufficient explanation for the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. In particular, the role of leaders motivated by wanting to stay in power, the legacy of the war crimes committed in Yugoslavia during World War II, and the federal structure of Yugoslavia need to be considered as well.
Brazil’s Evangelical Caucus
Authors: Dos Santos Pedro A. G. , Moddelmog Linsey
Published: August 2019

Established in 2003, the Frente Parlamentar Evangélica no Congresso Nacional (National Evangelical Front in the National Congress) unites evangelical members of the Brazilian National Congress to pursue political agendas informed by their shared religious beliefs, as opposed to traditional party affiliation or political coalition. The rise in power and influence of the Evangelical Caucus is related to the transformation of Brazilian society from centuries of Catholic dominance to an early 21st century where around one-quarter of the population identifies as evangelical. Even though this group is known for its heterogeneity, as the Evangelical Caucus continues to increase in numbers and influence, the group may be able to better influence policymaking related to morality politics and views shared among evangelical Christian voters.
Religious Traditions in Politics: Catholicism
Authors: Reardon Lawrence C.
Published: August 2019

Traveling from Galilea and Judea 2,000 years ago to the far reaches of the Roman Empire, Jewish Christians gradually transformed their small gatherings of believers into a major European Catholic State-Church, which eventually became today’s Global Catholic Church-State. Popes throughout the centuries have adapted strategies to deal with internal religious challenges, including the Great Schism of 1054, which separated the Eastern and Western Christian Churches, and the European Reformation of 1517, which created separate vibrant Protestant Churches. The popes have also dealt with external threats from Islam, nationalism, and communism that sought to control or eliminate the pope’s autonomy to lead the Church. With a universal church of over 1.3 billion members in the developed and developing world, Pope Francis continues to adapt Church policies while tackling its greatest challenge to its legitimacy, the sexual abuse scandals.
Religious Regulation in Autocracies
Authors: Reardon Lawrence C.
Published: August 2019

Unlike democracies, the stability and longevity of autocracies are solely dependent on the ability of the paramount leader to maintain and wield power effectively. Whether the autocracy is composed of an absolute monarch or a supreme authoritarian, religious, military, fascist, or communist leader, the autocrat strengthens legitimacy by controlling competing power centers within the state. Autocrats are both envious and fearful of organized religion’s ability to mobilize the citizenry. Whether dealing with large religious organizations or organized religious believers, autocrats can choose to implement negative religious regulations to control or eliminate foreign and domestic religious threats, positive religious regulations to co-opt religious powers, or transformative religious regulations to create new organizations that consolidate and maintain autocratic rule. Adopting an interest-based theoretical approach, the autocratic religious regulations of four countries (China, England, Italy, and Japan) are divided into three categories (negative, positive, and transformative religious regulations). Autocrats within the four countries adopted formal regulations to consolidate their hegemonic control over societal forces within and outside the state.
Religious Regulation in Brazil
Authors: Cerqueira Claudia , Tuñón Guadalupe
Published: August 2019

During the past three decades, the tide in religious affiliation has rapidly shifted in Latin America. The predominance of Catholicism in the region has been challenged by the expansion of Evangelicalism and the number of individuals with no religious affiliation. Changes in Brazil’s religious landscape are explained in part by the opportunities and restrictions that government regulations place on religious organizations. Regulation shapes religious competition by changing the incentives and opportunities for religious producers (churches, preachers, revivalists, etc.) and the viable options available to religious consumers (church members). Importantly, as our description of Brazilian regulations shows, the incentives defined by regulation affect religious denominations differently, creating winners and losers. Moreover, established religious groups are often able to reshape religious regulation, reinforcing the degree to which it favors them.
Religious Traditions in Politics: Confucianism
Authors: Kim Youngmin , Kim Se-Hyun , Song Ji Hye
Published: August 2019

Because of the missionary activities of Jesuits in late imperial China and the world religions paradigm that emerged in the late 19th century, scholars tend to view Confucianism as a world religion. However, Confucianism does not fit into disciplinary boxes neatly. Accordingly, Confucian religiosity has been the subject of much debate among scholars. The answer depends largely upon how one defines religion and Confucianism. However, Confucianism and religion are not self-evident categories, but historically conditioned entities. Central to the theoretical discussion of Confucian religiosity has been the idea of transcendence. To many, Confucianism does not seem a type of religion because it does not put God at the center of attention. To others, Confucianism upholds immanent transcendence as its ideal, which does not impose an other-worldly standard but instead suggests human perfectibility. By invoking the notion of immanent transcendence, scholars caution us not to take European Christianity for granted and not to close our eyes to the array of alternative forms of religion. In addition to this theoretical debate, there have been other types of study on religious aspects of Confucianism. Anthropologists and historians have been studying practices of Confucian religious rituals in Chinese history. Rituals were a powerful method that rulers, throughout the dynasties, have employed to legitimize their rule. As with other rituals, imperial authorities patronized various rituals in the hope of attaining the support of their subjects. However, from its inception, Confucian rituals became complex interpretive arenas in which various social actors disputed, accommodated, negotiated, and rearticulated the Confucian orthodoxy according to their interests. Throughout the 20th century, mainland Chinese politicians and intellectuals often stigmatized Confucianism as the cause of China’s downfall. However, Confucianism, which had been regarded as only a hindrance by the Communists, currently appears to be a resource with which to remake China.
Neural Mechanisms of Tactile Texture Perception
Authors: Lieber Justin D. , Bensmaia Sliman J.
Published: August 2019

The ability to identify tactile objects depends in part on the perception of their surface microstructure and material properties. Texture perception can, on a first approximation, be described by a number of nameable perceptual axes, such as rough/smooth, hard/soft, sticky/slippery, and warm/cool, which exist within a complex perceptual space. The perception of texture relies on two different neural streams of information: Coarser features, measured in millimeters, are primarily encoded by spatial patterns of activity across one population of tactile nerve fibers, while finer features, down to the micron level, are encoded by finely timed temporal patterns within two other populations of afferents. These two streams of information ascend the somatosensory neuraxis and are eventually combined and further elaborated in the cortex to yield a high-dimensional representation that accounts for our exquisite and stable perception of texture.
History, Politics, and Culture in Central Tanzania
Authors: Gooding Philip
Published: August 2019

Central Tanzania is a heterogenous region in the interior of East Africa. Its history, politics, and cultures have been affected by numerous outside influences. These outside influences have primarily come in the form of migrants from elsewhere in the East African interior and the Western Indian Ocean world, and in the form of “proto-colonial,” colonial, and postcolonial governance structures, whose centers since the mid-19th century have been located in Tanzania’s coastal or island regions. Despite the apparent “newness” that each migrant group or governor instituted, Central Tanzania’s politics and cultures have shown a remarkable adaptability to new influences, whether that be to ivory traders arriving in the region during the 19th century or to colonial rulers attempting to govern it during the 20th. Additionally, Islam and Christianity have taken a variety of forms within Central Tanzania, none of which exactly correspond to the ideals of those who originally brought them to the region. The peoples of Central Tanzania have acculturated to outside influences and reconciled them with their preexisting and developing political and cultural structures.
Macroeconomic Aspects of Housing
Authors: Leung Charles Ka Yui , Ng Cho Yiu Joe
Published: August 2019

This article summarizes research on the macroeconomic aspects of the housing market. In terms of the macroeconomic stylized facts, this article demonstrates that with respect to business cycle frequency, there was a general decrease in the association between macroeconomic variables (MV), such as the real GDP and inflation rate, and housing market variables (HMV), such as the housing price and the vacancy rate, following the global financial crisis (GFC). However, there are macro-finance variables, such as different interest rate spreads, that exhibited a strong association with the HMV following the GFC. For the medium-term business cycle frequency, some but not all patterns prevail. These “new stylized facts” suggest that a reconsideration and refinement of existing “macro-housing” theories would be appropriate. This article also provides a review of the corresponding academic literature, which may enhance our understanding of the evolving macro-housing–finance linkage.
Exchange Rates, Interest Parity, and the Carry Trade
Authors: Burnside Craig
Published: August 2019

The uncovered interest parity (UIP) condition states that the interest rate differential between two currencies is the expected rate of change of their exchange rate. Empirically, however, in the 1976–2018 period, exchange rate changes were approximately unpredictable over short horizons, with a slight tendency for currencies with higher interest rates to appreciate against currencies with lower interest rates. If the UIP condition held exactly, carry trades, in which investors borrow low interest rate currencies and lend high interest rate currencies, would earn zero average profits. The fact that UIP is violated, therefore, is a necessary condition to explain the fact that carry trades earned significantly positive profits in the 1976–2018 period. A large literature has documented the failure of UIP, as well as the profitability of carry trades, and is surveyed here. Additionally, summary evidence is provided here for the G10 currencies. This evidence shows that carry trades have been significantly less profitable since 2007–2008, and that there was an apparent structural break in exchange rate predictability around the same time.

A large theoretical literature explores economic explanations of this phenomenon and is briefly surveyed here. Prominent among the theoretical models are ones based on risk aversion, peso problems, rare disasters, biases in investor expectations, information frictions, incomplete financial markets, and financial market segmentation.
The Biological Foundations of Economic Preferences
Authors: Robalino Nikolaus , Robson Arthur
Published: August 2019

Modern economic theory rests on the basic assumption that agents’ choices are guided by preferences. The question of where such preferences might have come from has traditionally been ignored or viewed agnostically. The biological approach to economic behavior addresses the issue of the origins of economic preferences explicitly. This approach assumes that economic preferences are shaped by the forces of natural selection. For example, an important theoretical insight delivered thus far by this approach is that individuals ought to be more risk averse to aggregate than to idiosyncratic risk. Additionally the approach has delivered an evolutionary basis for hedonic and adaptive utility and an evolutionary rationale for “theory of mind.” Related empirical work has studied the evolution of time preferences, loss aversion, and explored the deep evolutionary determinants of long-run economic development.
The Economics of Early Interventions Aimed at Child Development
Authors: Berlinski Samuel , Vera-Hernández Marcos
Published: August 2019

A set of policies is at the center of the agenda on early childhood development: parenting programs, childcare regulation and subsidies, cash and in-kind transfers, and parental leave policies. Incentives are embedded in these policies, and households react to them differently. They also have varying effects on child development, both in developed and developing countries. We have learned much about the impact of these policies in the past 20 years. We know that parenting programs can enhance child development, that centre based care might increase female labor force participation and child development, that parental leave policies beyond three months don’t cause improvement in children outcomes, and that the effects of transfers depend much on their design. In this review, we focus on the incentives embedded in these policies, and how they interact with the context and decision makers to understand the heterogeneity of effects and the mechanisms through which these policies work. We conclude by identifying areas of future research.
Gender in US Foreign Relations
Authors: Stur Heather
Published: August 2019

Throughout US history, Americans have used ideas about gender to understand power, international relations, military behavior, and the conduct of war. Since Joan Wallach Scott called on scholars in 1986 to consider gender a “useful category of analysis,” historians have looked beyond traditional diplomatic and military sources and approaches to examine cultural sources, the media, and other evidence to try to understand the ideas that Americans have relied on to make sense of US involvement in the world. From casting weak nations as female to assuming that all soldiers are heterosexual males, Americans have deployed mainstream assumptions about men’s and women’s proper behavior to justify US diplomatic and military interventions in the world. State Department pamphlets describing newly independent countries in the 1950s and 1960s featured gendered imagery like the picture of a young Vietnamese woman on a bicycle that was meant to symbolize South Vietnam, a young nation in need of American guidance. Language in news reports and government cables, as well as film representations of international affairs and war, expressed gendered dichotomies such as protector and protected, home front and battlefront, strong and weak leadership, and stable and rogue states. These and other episodes illustrate how thoroughly gender shaped important dimensions about the character and the making of US foreign policy and historians’ examinations of diplomatic and military history.
Arabic-Speaking Migrants in 19th- and 20th-Century Latin America
Authors: Balloffet Lily Pearl
Published: August 2019

Global transoceanic migration booms of the 19th century brought with them more than a quarter of a million migrants from the Arabic-speaking eastern Mediterranean destined for Latin American cities, towns, and rural outposts across the region. Over the course of the early 20th century, a near-constant mobility of circulating people, things, and ideas characterized the formation of immigrant identities and communities with roots primarily in the Levantine area of the Middle East. Over time, historians of this migration have come to interpret as central the transnational and transregional nature of the ties that many individuals, families, and institutions in Latin America carefully maintained with their counterparts across the Atlantic. As the 20th century progressed, Middle Eastern migrants and their subsequent generations of descendants consolidated institutions, financial networks, and a plethora of other life projects in their respective Latin American home places. Meanwhile, they continued to seek meaningful participation in the realities of a Middle East-North Africa region undergoing deep shifts in its geopolitical, social, and cultural landscapes from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War I, through the tumultuous century that followed.
A Typological Perspective on the Morphology of Nilo-Saharan Languages
Authors: Dimmendaal Gerrit Jan
Published: August 2019

Nilo-Saharan, a phylum spread mainly across an area south of the Afro-Asiatic and north of the Niger-Congo phylum, was established as a genetic grouping by Greenberg. In his earlier, continent-wide classification of African languages in articles published between 1949 and 1954, Greenberg had proposed a Macro-Sudanic family (renamed Chari-Nile in subsequent studies), consisting of a Central Sudanic and an Eastern Sudanic branch plus two isolated members, Berta and Kunama. This family formed the core of the Nilo-Saharan phylum as postulated by Greenberg in his The Languages of Africa, where a number of groups were added which had been treated as isolated units in his earlier classificatory work: Songhay, Eastern Saharan (now called Saharan), Maban and Mimi, Nyangian (now called Kuliak or Rub), Temainian (Temeinian), Coman (Koman), and Gumuz.

Presenting an “encyclopaedic survey” of morphological structures for the more than 140 languages belonging to this phylum is impossible in such a brief study, also given the tremendous genetic distance between some of the major subgroups. Instead, typological variation in the morphological structure of these genetically-related languages will be central. In concrete terms this involves synchronic and diachronic observations on their formal properties (section 2), followed by an introduction to the nature of derivation, inflection, and compounding properties in Nilo-Saharan (section 3). This traditional compartmentalization has its limits because it misses out on the interaction with lexical structures and morphosyntactic properties in its extant members, as argued in section 4. As pointed out in section 5, language contact also must have played an important role in the geographical spreading of several of these typological properties.
The Acquisition of Word-Formation in the Romance Languages
Authors: Clark Eve V.
Published: August 2019

Several factors influence children’s initial choices of word-formation options––simplicity of form, transparency of meaning, and productivity in current adult speech. The coining of new words is also constrained by general pragmatic considerations for usage: Reliance on conventionality, contrast, and cooperation between speaker and addressee. For children acquiring French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, the data on what they know about word-formation for the coining of new words consist primarily of diary observations; in some cases, these are supplemented with experimental elicitation studies of the comprehension and production of new word-forms. The general patterns in Romance acquisition of word-formation favor derivation over compounding. Children produce some spontaneous coinages with zero derivation (verbs converted to nouns in French, for example) from as young as 2 years, 6 months (2;6). The earliest suffixes children put to use in these languages tend to be agentive (from 2;6 to 3 years onward), followed by instrumental, objective, locative, and, slightly later, diminutive. The only prefixes that emerge early in child innovations are negative ones used to express reversals of actions. Overall, the general patterns of acquisition for word-formation in Romance are similar to those in Semitic, where derivation is also more productive than compounding, rather than to those in Germanic, where compounding is highly productive, and emerges very early, before any derivational forms.
Non-Profit Sector Organizational Actions on Risk Reduction Practices, Policymaking Participation, Community and Social Contributions, and Recovery
Authors: Chikoto-Schultz Grace L. , Xiao Yu , Manson Paul , Amiri Maryam
Published: August 2019

Non-Profit organizations make significant contributions to society in a number of ways. In addition to providing services to underrepresented, marginalized, and vulnerable populations in our communities, they also play important advocacy, expressive and leadership development, community building and democratization, and innovation-oriented roles. The sector is thus regarded as “critical civic infrastructure,” civic capacity, or a social safety net. As such, through collaborative engagement in disaster or emergency management, non-profits can be even more instrumental in helping communities become disaster resilient.

Disaster management can be understood as a four-stage cycle that includes mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery functions. Past disasters demonstrate that non-profits engage with this cycle in diverse ways. A few types of non-profit organizations explicitly include, as part of their mission, one or more of these stages of disaster management. These include traditional disaster relief organizations, organizations dedicated to preparedness, or those responsible for supporting risk reduction or mitigation efforts. Another set of organizations is typified by non-profits that shift their mission during times of disaster to fill unmet needs. These non-profits shift existing resources or skills from their pre-disaster use to new disaster relief functions. The other type of non-profit to respond or support disaster management is the emergent organization. These emergent non-profits or associations are formed during an event to respond to specific needs. They can endure past the disaster recovery period and become new permanent organizations.

It is important to remember that non-profits and more broadly, civil society—represent a unique sphere of voluntary human organization and activity separate from the family, the state, and the market. In some cases, these organizations are embedded in communities, a position that grants them local presence, knowledge, and trust. As such, they are well positioned to play important advocacy roles that can elevate the needs of underrepresented communities, as well as instigate disaster management policies that can serve to protect these communities. Furthermore, their voluntary nature—and the public benefit they confer—also position them to attract much-needed resources from various individuals and entities in order to augment or supplement governments’ often limited capacity. In all, civil society in general, is a sphere well positioned to execute the full spectrum of emergency management functions alongside traditional state responses.
Fine-Needle Aspiration Features of BCOR-CCNB3 Sarcoma
Authors: Gajdzis Pawel , Laé Marick , Pierron Gaëlle , Brisse Hervé J , Orbach Daniel , Fréneaux Paul , Laurence Valerie , Klijanienko Jerzy
Published: August 2019

Objectives

BCOR-CCNB3 sarcoma (BCS) is an undifferentiated tumor that has some clinical and morphologic similarity to classic Ewing sarcoma, but it is characterized by a distinct BCOR-CCNB3 gene fusion. There are no reports describing its cytomorphologic findings.

Methods

We describe cytologic findings of five molecularly proven BCS cases (four males and one female, aged 8.5-22 years).

Results

Smears showed mainly round cells, but some spindle cells and rhabdoid-like cells were also observed. Dispersed cells dominated in smears, but also distinct pseudopapillary structures with vascular cores were noted in four cases. Scant connective tissue fragments were found in four cases. There was no rosette formation in any case.

Conclusions

BCS should be differentiated from other round cell tumors. Some cytologic features, especially rhabdoid-like cells, connective tissue fragments, and pseudopapillary formations, combined with immunohistochemical and molecular studies, may be helpful in making the appropriate diagnosis.
Association Between High FSH, Low Progesterone, and Idiopathic Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension in Women of Reproductive Age
Authors: Zhang Yi-Xin , Wang Lan , Lu Wen-Zhao , Yuan Ping , Wu Wen-Hui , Zhou Yu-Ping , Zhao Qin-Hua , Zhang Si-Jin , Li Yuan , Wu Tao , Jiang Xin , Jing Zhi-Cheng
Published: August 2019

Background

While sex differences characterize susceptibility and severity of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH), our understanding of the relationship between levels of gonadotropins and sex hormones in fertile women and the disease is limited. We aimed to investigate whether gonadotropin and sex hormone levels in women of reproductive age were associated with risk and mortality of IPAH.

Methods

We did a matched case-control study. Cases were reproductive female patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension admitted in Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital (Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China) during 2008–2014. Healthy controls were matched on age and body mass index. We also did a prospective cohort study to assess the effects of hormone levels on mortality in IPAH fertile female patients.

Results

One hundred sixty-four cases and 133 controls were included. After adjustment for age and body mass index, the odds ratios of having IPAH for follicle-stimulating hormone, testosterone, and progesterone as expressed on natural log scale were 1.51 (95% confidence interval: 1.06, 2.16), 0.42 (0.31–0.57), and 0.52 (0.43–0.63), respectively. In the cohort study with a median follow-up of 77 months, the hazard ratios for dying after adjustment for baseline characteristics and treatments among IPAH patients were 2.01 (95% confidence interval: 1.22–3.30) and 0.78 (95% confidence interval: 0.62–0.98) for follicle-stimulating hormone and progesterone in natural log scale, respectively.

Conclusions

In reproductive women with IPAH, high follicle-stimulating hormone and low progesterone tended to be associated with high risk of IPAH and mortality among patients.
Calcium and metals are not evenly distributed in avian eggshells over their longitudinal section
Authors: Orłowski Grzegorz , Siekiera Joachim , Karg Jerzy , Tobolka Marcin , Wuczyński Andrzej , Kaługa Ireneusz , Siekiera Artur , Cyga-Döhner Roman , Dudzik Eliza
Published: August 2019

Whether Ca and other micronutrients are equally distributed in an avian eggshell over its longitudinal section and what portion of these local resources are utilized by developing embryos are unanswered questions in avian reproductive physiology. Here, we measured the thickness and concentrations of Ca and 16 other chemical elements (Al, As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, K, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, Pb, Se, and Sr) in 4 shell regions (sharp pole, equator, shoulder, blunt pole) of White Stork (Ciconia ciconia) eggs representing different stages of embryonic development, from unresorbed eggshells to almost fully resorbed ones (with near-to-hatch embryos). We found that unresorbed eggshells displayed several significant differences in the concentrations of 15 elements (Al, As, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Fe, K, Hg, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, Se, and Sr) between various regions of the same shell. Only 2 metals (As and Ca) showed a cross-sectional decrease in concentrations from the sharp pole to the blunt one. In particular, we observed that unresorbed eggshells at the blunt pole were less calcified (with 2.4% less Ca) compared to the sharp pole. In contrast, the concentrations of 6 other metals (Co, Fe, Mg, Mn, Na, and Se) peaked in the relatively less calcified region of the blunt pole, where concentrations (such as Se) were up to 10 times as high as in other regions of unresorbed eggshells. Our findings highlight that eggshells over their longitudinal sections are not chemically homogeneous. Surprisingly, however, and contrary to our expectations, we found that unresorbed eggshells were thinner (2.1–5.9% less depending on the region) and at the same time more strongly calcified than resorbed eggshells. This suggests that some modification has occurred in the shell structure and raises the question of thin-shelled eggs in populations of wild birds.
Semi-blind sparse affine spectral unmixing of autofluorescence-contaminated micrographs
Authors: Rossetti Blair J , Wilbert Steven A , Mark Welch Jessica L , Borisy Gary G , Nagy James G
Published: August 2019

Motivation

Spectral unmixing methods attempt to determine the concentrations of different fluorophores present at each pixel location in an image by analyzing a set of measured emission spectra. Unmixing algorithms have shown great promise for applications where samples contain many fluorescent labels; however, existing methods perform poorly when confronted with autofluorescence-contaminated images.

Results

We propose an unmixing algorithm designed to separate fluorophores with overlapping emission spectra from contamination by autofluorescence and background fluorescence. First, we formally define a generalization of the linear mixing model, called the affine mixture model (AMM), that specifically accounts for background fluorescence. Second, we use the AMM to derive an affine nonnegative matrix factorization method for estimating fluorophore endmember spectra from reference images. Lastly, we propose a semi-blind sparse affine spectral unmixing (SSASU) algorithm that uses knowledge of the estimated endmembers to learn the autofluorescence and background fluorescence spectra on a per-image basis. When unmixing real-world spectral images contaminated by autofluorescence, SSASU greatly improved proportion indeterminacy as compared to existing methods for a given relative reconstruction error.

Availability and implementation

The source code used for this paper was written in Julia and is available with the test data at https://github.com/brossetti/ssasu.
A fast divide-and-conquer sparse Cox regression
Authors: Wang Yan , Hong Chuan , Palmer Nathan , Di Qian , Schwartz Joel , Kohane Isaac , Cai Tianxi
Published: August 2019

We propose a computationally and statistically efficient divide-and-conquer (DAC) algorithm to fit sparse Cox regression to massive datasets where the sample size $n_0$ is exceedingly large and the covariate dimension $p$ is not small but $n_0\gg p$. The proposed algorithm achieves computational efficiency through a one-step linear approximation followed by a least square approximation to the partial likelihood (PL). These sequences of linearization enable us to maximize the PL with only a small subset and perform penalized estimation via a fast approximation to the PL. The algorithm is applicable for the analysis of both time-independent and time-dependent survival data. Simulations suggest that the proposed DAC algorithm substantially outperforms the full sample-based estimators and the existing DAC algorithm with respect to the computational speed, while it achieves similar statistical efficiency as the full sample-based estimators. The proposed algorithm was applied to extraordinarily large survival datasets for the prediction of heart failure-specific readmission within 30 days among Medicare heart failure patients.
Genetic Increases in Olfactory Bulb BDNF Do Not Enhance Survival of Adult-Born Granule Cells
Authors: McDole Brittnee , Berger Rachel , Guthrie Kathleen
Published: August 2019

Adult-born neurons produced in the dentate gyrus subgranular zone (SGZ) develop as excitatory hippocampal granule cells (GCs), while those from the subventricular zone (SVZ) migrate to the olfactory bulb (OB), where most develop as GABAergic olfactory GCs. Both types of neurons express TrkB as they mature. Normally ~50% of new olfactory GCs survive, but survival declines if sensory drive is reduced. Increases in endogenous brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in hippocampus, particularly with wheel running, enhance dentate GC survival. Whether survival of new olfactory GCs is impacted by augmenting BDNF in the OB, where they mature and integrate, is not known. Here, we determined if increasing OB BDNF expression enhances survival of new GCs, and if it counters their loss under conditions of reduced sensory activity. Neurogenesis was assessed under normal conditions, and following unilateral naris occlusion, in mice overexpressing BDNF in the granule cell layer (GCL). OB BDNF levels were significantly higher in transgenic mice compared to controls, and this was maintained following sensory deprivation. Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) cell birth dating showed that at 12–14 days post-BrdU, numbers of new GCs did not differ between genotypes, indicating normal recruitment to the OB. At later intervals, transgenic and control mice showed levels of GC loss in deprived and nondeprived animals that were indistinguishable, as was the incidence of apoptotic cells in the GCL. These results demonstrate that, in contrast to new dentate GCs, elevations in endogenous BDNF do not enhance survival of adult-born olfactory GCs.
Reliability Assessment of Some Regular Networks
Authors: Zhao Shu-Li , Hao Rong-Xia , Peng Sheng-Lung
Published: August 2019

The generalized $k$-connectivity of a graph $G$ is a parameter that can measure the reliability of a network $G$ to connect any $k$ vertices in $G$, which is a generalization of traditional connectivity. Let $S\subseteq V(G)$ and $\kappa _{G}(S)$ denote the maximum number $r$ of edge-disjoint trees $T_{1}, T_{2}, \cdots , T_{r}$ in $G$ such that $V(T_{i})\bigcap V(T_{j})=S$ for any $i, j \in \{1, 2, \cdots , r\}$ and $i\neq j$. For an integer $k$ with $2\leq k\leq n$, the generalized $k$-connectivity of a graph $G$ is defined as $\kappa _{k}(G)= min\{\kappa _{G}(S)|S\subseteq V(G)$ and $|S|=k\}$. In this paper, we introduce a family of regular graph $G_{n}$ that can be constructed recursively and each vertex with exactly one outside neighbor. The generalized $3$-connectivity of the regular graph $G_{n}$ is studied, which attains a previously proven upper bound on $\kappa _{3}(G)$. As applications of the main result, the generalized $3$-connectivity of some important networks including some known results such as the alternating group network $AN_{n}$, the star graph $S_{n}$ and the pancake graphs $P_{n}$ can be obtained directly.