bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
HistoriciZing the ‘Dreaming’
Authors: Smith Mike
Published: April 2021

The ‘Dreaming’ is an elaborate belief system that forms the governing ideology of Indigenous Australia. It religiously sanctions the relationship between people and place, and articulates it in a large repertoire of land-based mythology. The historical development of the ‘Dreaming’ is not known in any detail. Salomon Reinach and Émile Durkheim at the turn of the twentieth century saw it as preserving an elementary form of religious life. However, the long history of Aboriginal societies in Australia (now known to be at least 50,000–60,000 years) suggests that this belief system may itself have a long history of development and elaboration. Taking arid Australia as a case study, this article outlines the principal features of the ‘Dreaming’ in its ethnographic form and asks how we might trace it archaeologically. On the basis of current evidence, the ‘Dreaming’, in its classic form, appears to have taken shape during the last few millennia when many of its perquisites emerge in the archaeological record, although the possibility that it has more ancient roots is not discounted.
Jazz Etiquette
Authors: Duranti Alessandro , Throop Jason , McCoy Matthew
Published: April 2021

The interaction among a group of musicians before, during, and after the performance of a jazz standard is analyzed to show the interdependence of jazz aesthetics and jazz ethics. The authors argue that what makes jazz distinct from other kinds of musical traditions is not just the ubiquity of improvisation in the genre but the vulnerability that jazz improvisation always generates—a vulnerability that is due to the genre’s reliance on both shared conventions and partly unpredictable individual choices. Analyzing video recordings of a university course on jazz organized to reproduce the setting of a jam session, the authors examine in detail the interactional assumptions and consequences of choices made by band members during the performance of “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise.” The authors’ analysis shows how musicians position themselves to be responsive to one another as the song progresses, starting from an improvised “introduction” that sets the tempo, rhythm, and style of the song and continuing with smooth transitions from one solo to the next. Drawing from Erving Goffman’s ideas about the presentation of self and the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, the authors examine the ethical implications of a musical “vacuum” that was created by one musician’s decision to wait to take his solo. In the interaction, the other musicians responded to the vacuum by assuming responsibility for the group’s performance and, more broadly, the performance of the jazz tradition, and this chapter uses their actions to illustrate how “jazz etiquette” operates as a practice that includes aesthetic, ethical, and practical concerns.
Punk Zines
Authors: Dunn Kevin C.
Published: April 2021

Zines are typically regarded as noncommercial, nonprofessional works that the creators usually produce, publish, and distribute themselves, typically in small numbers. At the heart of zine culture is a commitment to a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos and the understanding that profit is not the primary intent of publication, which helped make zines an integral part of punk culture since its inception. This article provides a brief history of zines, discussing the evolution of zines, and reflecting on the implications for punk zines on local scenes and the global punk community. Challenging the dominant capitalist consumer culture, which constructs relationships between consumer and product that are devoid of any sort of reciprocal creativity, punk zines reinscribe the individual as a cultural producer instead of a passive consumer.
Human Resource Management in the Multinational Context
Authors: Rupidara Neil
Published: April 2021

This chapter deals with human resource management (HRM) in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Employing both process and institutional perspectives in order to understand HRM in MNEs, the chapter focuses more on how HRM systems within subsidiaries of MNEs, particularly in developing country contexts in Asia, are constructed and operate. Using secondary analysis of published and unpublished materials, the chapter shows the various multilevel contextual factors influencing the practices of HRM in MNE subsidiaries. We aim to contribute to the current scholarly thinking of, and stimulate further development in, the field of HRM in MNEs in the future.
Human Resource Management Outsourcing
Authors: Lazarova Mila B. , Reichel Astrid
Published: April 2021

This chapter provides an overview of the current literature on human resource management outsourcing (HRO). Human resource management outsourcing involves contracting out activities traditionally performed by the organization’s human resource department to an outside organization. While HRO is a popular topic, there are few reliable sources on the extent to which organizations implement the approach. Further, research has indicated that the overall impact of HRO is not always straightforward, with studies suggesting small positive effects on company performance and mixed effects on outcomes related to the functioning of human resource departments. This chapter examines common theoretical foundations of HRO, the need to differentiate outsourcing of different types of human resource activities, factors influencing organizations’ decisions to outsource, and effects of these decisions. It presents empirical data from a comparative HRM study on the prevalence of outsourcing for insights into the contested question of how widespread HRO really is and suggests future directions for HRO research.
Is the Human Resource Management Department Becoming More Strategic?
Authors: Farndale Elaine , Vidovic Maja
Published: April 2021

This chapter focuses on the historical development of the strategic orientation of human resource management (HRM) departments in different regions of the world, providing both a theoretical base and an overview of current practices and trends. By observing data on HRM departments across the globe over more than a decade, the chapter paints a picture of the HRM department’s strategic evolution in its attempt to deliver value to the organization and create sustainable competitive advantage. Analyzing the data to address the question “Is the HRM department becoming more strategic?” yields the answer of a qualified yes. The trends over time and across contexts appear to suggest directional convergence in the HRM department achieving a strategic role. There are, however, differences in the pace at which this is being achieved and even in what the ultimate goal might be, depending on the context in which an organization is operating. Moreover, there is clear evidence of a connection between how advanced an economy is and the extent to which the HRM department can be more strategic. These findings have implications for human resource practitioners and line managers alike in delivering bottom-line value to organizations.
The Context of Terrorism for Managing People in Multinational Enterprises
Authors: Bader Benjamin , Reade Carol
Published: April 2021

A number of research studies have been published in recent years dealing with the implications of terrorism for human resource management (HRM)–related issues, mostly at the individual level. Different theoretical perspectives have been utilized, such as stress theory, social identity theory, and social support theory, and the respective studies have contributed to our knowledge in this important research field. Nonetheless, a comprehensive theoretical approach at the organizational level relevant to HRM in the context of terrorism is lacking. To address this shortcoming, this chapter examines extant literature on the influence of terrorism on HRM-related issues, integrates several theoretical approaches that emerge from this literature, and introduces an HRM terrorism-response theory relevant for companies operating in countries afflicted with terrorism. Avenues for future research are discussed and practical implications are derived.
On Physicality and Narrative
Authors: Piquero Álvarez Lucía
Published: April 2021

This chapter focuses on Crystal Pite’s 2017 work for The Royal Ballet, Flight Pattern, analyzing its perceptual properties and narrative and symbolic elements as integrated elements in the audience’s experience, and supporting this discussion on ideas from theories of embodied cognition. The chapter argues first that the emotional power of the work as perceived by the audience is emergent from these perceptual properties—illustrating this through the analysis of movement qualities, music-movement relationships, and use of space—and, second, that an embodied cognition approach is necessary to understand the audience’s complex emotional experience. Finally, through the analysis of Pite’s work as situated within the programming of the Royal Opera House, the chapter argues that her work revitalizes ballet in relation to its content-form complex, its aesthetic aspects, and its potential to refer emotionally to current world issues.
The Race of Contemporary Ballet
Authors: DeFrantz Thomas F.
Published: April 2021

This chapter considers the tripartite formation of who, what, and how in considerations of Africanist aesthetics and Black mobilizations that fuel contemporary ballet. Who dances contemporary ballet, and are they Black? What sorts of Black dance movements are deployed in contemporary ballet? And, most important, how does a Black attitude mark performances within ballet as belonging to a contemporary moment? The chapter presumes that contemporary ballet emerges in direct relationship to Africanist aesthetics. It considers work by William Forsythe, Alonzo King, and Twyla Tharp as a trio of artists whose work continues to circulate with different relationships to questions of Black dancers, dances, dancing, and the contemporary.
Administrative Justice and Codification
Authors: Hoexter Cora
Published: April 2021

The debate about codification in general has been going on for centuries. This chapter focuses on a more recent debate in the context of administrative justice. With reference to country-specific examples, the chapter identifies the main ways in which administrative justice may be codified as well as two deviations from the legislative norm. It then examines arguments for and against codifying the grounds and principles of judicial review. Codifying judge-made law has presentational benefits which may in turn improve accessibility and have educative effects. Codification also enhances democratic legitimacy and may be the only way to achieve swift and systematic law reform. However, the examples also illustrate many potential pitfalls of legislating judge-made law, including increased uncertainty, complexity, unintended consequences, and the problem of resistance. The chapter concludes that the reasons for even a modest exercise in codification would need to be quite compelling to make the exercise worthwhile.
Bar Authorities and Prosecutors
Authors: Green Bruce A.
Published: April 2021

The professional regulation of U.S. prosecutors is primarily the responsibility of state judiciaries, which regulate all attorneys, including prosecutors, through the adoption and interpretation of professional conduct rules and by enforcing these rules in the attorney discipline process. Although Bar associations have no formal role in regulating prosecutors, they wield informal influence by drafting and interpreting the professional conduct rules that state judiciaries adopt and by publishing standards that offer guidance to prosecutors. Ultimately, professional regulation has limited practical significance for U.S. prosecutors because many professional conduct rules are inapplicable or minimally applicable to their work, and because those rules that do apply (such as those governing attorneys’ advocacy) are uncontroversial and largely coextensive with constitutional law and other law governing prosecutorial misconduct. The rules do not significantly address prosecutors’ charging and plea bargaining decisions—controversial areas of practice relegated to prosecutorial discretion—and do not codify some professional expectations, such as those regarding prosecutors’ heightened duty of candor, that are expressed in court decisions and in unenforceable guidelines. Occasionally, the Bar has tried to persuade courts to adopt more demanding rules for prosecutors or to interpret existing rules more demandingly. Prosecutors have generally opposed these efforts, which have achieved limited success while exacerbating tensions between prosecutors and the Bar. Consequently, professional conduct rules do not fully capture the conventional understanding that prosecutors have a unique professional role that gives rise to different and, in some respects, more demanding professional obligations than those of other lawyers. The professional conduct rules have only limited influence and do not constrain some of prosecutors’ most controversial and troublesome decisions and behaviors.
Prosecutors and the Immigration Enforcement System in the United States
Authors: Chacón Jennifer M.
Published: April 2021

The interdependence of criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement systems in the United States now takes several different forms, each with implications for criminal prosecutors. Over time, federal officials have increased the number of immigration prosecutions they pursue in a given year. The immigration consequences of criminal convictions have expanded and intensified. Some state criminal prosecutors have used their charging authority to supplement the immigration enforcement efforts of the federal government, while others have applied the criminal law of the state in ways that mitigate the immigration effects of a criminal conviction. Finally, federal immigration law gives state prosecutors the authority to designate non-citizen victims of certain crimes for specialized visas that protect them from removal. These different types of interactions between criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement make state prosecutors important players in federal immigration policy and practice.
Prosecuting Misdemeanors
Authors: Roberts Jenny
Published: April 2021

Although violent crime gets the most media, public, and legislative attention in the United States, misdemeanors make up approximately 75 percent of all criminal court cases, with more than 13 million new misdemeanor cases filed each year. This chapter discusses the role of prosecutors in the misdemeanor system. First, it addresses prosecutorial discretion and mass misdemeanor criminalization. Prosecutors, with near-unfettered discretionary power, are characterized as the most powerful actors in criminal cases. Yet often, prosecutors fail to properly exercise their discretion in low-level cases or are completely absent from the charging and sometimes even the adjudicatory processes. This is particularly problematic in misdemeanor cases, where informed prosecutorial decision-making is critical given the enormous volume of arrests and structural and institutional realities that weaken the role of other lower court actors. Proper exercise of discretion is also critical given well-documented racial disparities in the misdemeanor realm and the need to mitigate the myriad disproportionate effects of the ever-growing number of collateral consequences that flow from even a minor criminal record. Second, the chapter examines the misdemeanor prosecutor’s role at key stages: charging, bail, plea bargaining, sentencing, expungement, and post-conviction innocence claims. The chapter draws on examples of prosecutorial practice as well as theoretical and empirical research about prosecutorial discretion. Some recently elected so-called progressive prosecutors have already implemented significant promised changes. Although implementation of such reforms is nascent, time will tell whether a newly attentive electorate and a fresh prosecutorial approach will begin to roll back the extreme overuse and disproportionate impact of misdemeanor prosecutions in the United States.
Prosecutors and Plea Bargaining
Authors: Johnson Brian D. , Hernandez Raquel
Published: April 2021

This article reviews the empirical research literature on plea bargaining in the United States. It starts with an historical overview of the evolution of plea bargaining in the criminal justice system. It describes how the rise in plea bargaining has been coupled with an expansion of prosecutorial power. In particular, it elaborates on the role of modern sentencing reforms in enhancing prosecutorial discretion in plea negotiations. Next, it examines normative perspectives and philosophical arguments regarding the utility of plea bargaining. This includes discussion of how plea bargaining may circumvent the goals of criminal punishment. Lastly, it reviews the empirical state of the research literature on plea bargaining and offers future directions for expanding this work. It concludes with policy recommendations aimed at addressing continuing issues and concerns in the guilty plea process.
Transnational Commercial Law—Developments and Controversies
Authors: Ali Shahla
Published: April 2021

This chapter suggests that alongside a growing recognition that the traditional territorialist theory is limited in its ability to deal with intensifying cross-border dealings, a pluralistic converging of a multiplicity of legal orders (including domestic) to ensure the efficacy of cross-border commercial law is emerging. The future development of a transnational legal order will reflect the intensifying interactions between diverse norms, laws, actors, and institutions—mirroring not necessarily the end of the nation-state—but requiring a wider loyalty beyond the nation-state. To understand these dynamics, this chapter will explore developments in the field of transnational arbitration by examining the evolution of relevant substantive commercial law and procedure, key forces including global soft-law-making bodies, relevant actors including the nation-state, arbitrators, parties and institutions, and relevant norms and governance processes influencing the continued evolution of transnational arbitration.
Transnational Sports Law: The Living Lex Sportiva
Authors: Duval Antoine
Published: April 2021

This chapter focuses on the emergence of a transnational sports law, or lex sportiva, ruling international sports. In the transnational law literature, the lex sportiva is often referred to as a key example, but rarely studied in practice. Yet, it constitutes an important playground for transnational legal practice, and this chapter aims to show why. The focus is first on the ensemble of rules of the lex sportiva produced through a variety of lawmaking procedures located within different institutions. The second section identifies the processes and institutions making the lex sportiva in its daily practice. Finally, while the lex sportiva is often presented as an autonomous transnational legal construct detached from territorialized legal and political contexts, the this section of the chapter aims to show that in practice it operates in intimate connection with them. Hence, its transnational operation is much less characterized by full autonomy than assemblage.
The Social Question in a Transnational Context
Authors: Somek Alexander
Published: April 2021

The social question has come to us with two different understandings. Modestly understood, it is about helping the needy and creating opportunities for disadvantaged members of society. More ambitiously conceived, by contrast, it is about extricating human life generally from the false necessities of market dealings. This chapter argues that the ambitious understanding is likely to become eclipsed in a transnational context. Such an eclipse, in turn, threatens to destabilize transnational arrangements as soon as some participants embrace broader ambitions.
The Global Governance Implications of Private International Law
Authors: Muir Watt Horatia
Published: April 2021

The ways in which the background rules of private law determine the balance of power within the global economy are difficult to identify to the extent that the reach of any given legal system and its combination with other potentially contradictory sets of national regulation are uncertain. The specific contention here is that private international law, which allocates the various sets of applicable rules on all these points when they involve private, usually corporate, actors, has served above all to dispense them from the regulatory constraints to which they might be subject in a domestic setting. It has thereby provided the building blocks that have allowed capital to expand beyond borders and the pursuit of profit to develop to the detriment of competing values, beyond control.
Transnational Constitutional Law
Authors: Thornhill Chris
Published: April 2021

This chapter presents an account of the constitutional law of transnational society from a distinctively political perspective. It uses a neoclassical definition of the constitution as the legal norms that frame the actions of a political system to examine and construct constitutional functions that reach beyond the legal systems of nation-states. It advances the thesis that the concept of transnational constitutional law can be applied to three separate legal-political domains in contemporary global society. This concept can be used to analyze constitutional aspects of international law, and it can be applied to national constitutional law, both of which have a strong transnational dimension and are supported by normative elements that are formed through transnational processes. This concept can also be applied to characterize and examine an emergent, conclusively transnational legal order, in which legal formation occurs in more spontaneous and contingent fashion. In each domain, constitutional norms produce an underlying inclusionary structure for distinct political functions in society, and transnational constitutional law is defined, most essentially, by its ability to support the relative autonomy of political exchanges and political interactions.
Errancy: A Brief History of Dante’s Ferm Voler
Authors: Barolini Teodolinda
Published: April 2021

This chapter considers Dante’s lifelong meditation on issues surrounding love and compulsion: is one compelled to love, and indeed to transfer one’s love to a new object? This is the question that Dante asks in Epistola III: ‘utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari’ [‘whether the soul can pass from passion to passion’] (Ep. III, 1). Or does one have free will to consent to love or to deny one’s consent? Is variability in love—‘amorosa erranza’ as Dante calls it in the youthful sonnet Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore (VN XIII)—inevitable or is it not? And if it is not, is there a moral obligation to absolute constancy? Starting with the premise that Dante first dramatizes these issues in the donna gentile episode of the Vita nuova, this chapter posits a ‘donna gentile paradigm’, lyric in origin, that recurs in work after work and that converges with the poet’s most fundamental principles regarding ethics and the will.
Dante and the Shoah
Authors: Pertile Lino
Published: April 2021

The appropriation of Dante by the Fascist regime in support of the racial laws (1938) did not diminish his popularity after WWII, when Dante’s Inferno became a template for describing the experience of the death camps. In Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, Dante restores, though fleetingly, the belief in, and practice of, humanity that the Nazis are intent on crushing: far from being a medieval ancestor of the camp, the poem works as an antidote to it. The notion that Dante and humanistic culture may have been complicit, albeit unwittingly, in the Nazi genocidal scheme ignores the poet’s warnings on the misuse of intelligence. For Dante actually anticipates Horkheimer and Adorno’s discourse on the advances of thought and technology, and his story of Ulysses’ death could serve as an opening for Dialectic of Enlightenment. The chapter considers also Dante’s presence in Peter Weiss’s theatre and Giorgio Pressburger’s novels.
Dante in Caribbean Poetics: Language, Power, Race
Authors: Allen-Paisant Jason
Published: April 2021

This chapter considers the reception of Dante in Caribbean literature. It explores the works of two seminal Afro-Caribbean poets, the Barbadian Edward Kamau Brathwaite and the Jamaican Lorna Goodison, examining their relationship to Dante’s Commedia and De vulgari eloquentia. The chapter discusses the import of these two texts and of the figure of Dante in the articulation of Brathwaite’s seminal concept of ‘nation language’ and in Goodison’s theorizations of rhetoric, which highlight the epistemic dimensions of language, particularly in the colonial and postcolonial contexts. The chapter shows how the figure and work of Dante have been instrumental for these two writers in their exploration of the entangled concerns of language, race, and power in the colonial continuum. In so doing, the chapter highlights similarities, while underscoring differences, between Caribbean poets’ engagement with the figure and work of Dante and the reception of the Italian poet among African-American writers.
Weimar Bodies
Authors: Planert Ute
Published: April 2021

Like the arts and politics, sexuality, bodies, and the gender order in the Weimar Republic were sites of experimentation in and with modernity. The First World War and the revolution had accelerated the breakthrough of women into arenas such as politics, the public sphere, and professional gainful employment. Big cities provided space for sexual libertinage, in which the transgression of heterosexual norms was possible. A rationalization of sexuality took place, which combined increased freedoms and liberties with attempts at regulation. Sports became an important transmission belt for ideas of discipline, efficiency, and self-optimization. The Weimar welfare state combined the entitlement to live a healthy life with the duty to actively retain the health of one’s body. The latter included considering future generations via eugenicist ideas. A far-reaching consensus on the value of eugenics emerged, yet only under the pressure of the world economic crisis did it materialize in concrete proposals to recalibrate social policy. The final years of the Weimar Republic were marked by a remasculinization of the public sphere and a partial return to more traditional views on gender roles. Overall, gender and gendered bodies, sexuality and human reproduction, were inherent elements of the political conflicts that shaped modern society. At the end of the Weimar Republic, they were more contested than ever.
James and Consciousness
Authors: Klein Alexander Mugar
Published: April 2021

Between 1872 and 1890, William James developed an evolutionary account of phenomenal consciousness. He contended that consciousness enables the active evaluation of what is in (or might be in) one’s environment. James hypothesized that this evaluative capacity was selected (in the Darwinian sense) because it regulated the behavior of vertebrates with highly articulated brains. His hypothesis was intended to explain some surprising results in physiology, particularly a series of experiments purporting to show purposive behavior in (of all things) decapitated frogs. This chapter reconstructs and evaluates James’s evolutionary hypothesis, showing how it would explain those surprising experiments. His account requires interactionist dualism, so he also developed what would become an influential objection to epiphenomenalism: that the latter cannot explain the evolution of our natively patterned, phenomenal pleasures and pains.
Hyper Suprime-Cam Legacy Archive
Authors: Tanaka Masayuki , Ikeda Hiroyuki , Murata Kazumi , Takita Satoshi , Mineo Sogo , Koike Michitaro , Okura Yuki , Harasawa Sumiko
Published: April 2021

We present the launch of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Legacy Archive (HSCLA), a public archive of processed, science-ready data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). HSC is an optical wide-field imager installed at the prime focus of the Subaru Telescope and has been in operation since 2014. While ∼1/3 of the total observing time of HSC has been used for the Subaru Strategic Program (SSP), the remainder of the time is used for Principal Investigator (PI)-based programs. We have processed the data from these PI-based programs and make the processed, high-quality data available to the community through HSCLA. The current version of HSCLA includes data taken in the first year of science operation, 2014. We provide both individual and coadd images as well as photometric catalogs. The photometric catalog from the coadd is loaded to the database, which offers a fast access to the large catalog. There are other online tools such as an image browser and an image cutout tool and they will be useful for science analyses. The coadd images reach 24–27th magnitudes at 5σ for point sources and cover approximately 580 square degrees in at least one filter with 150 million objects in total. We perform extensive quality assurance tests and verify that the photometric and astrometric quality of the data is good enough for most scientific explorations. However, the data are not without problems and users are referred to the list of known issues before exploiting the data for science. All the data and documentations can be found at the data release site, 〈https://hscla.mtk.nao.ac.jp/〉.
EnhFFL: A database of enhancer mediated feed-forward loops for human and mouse
Authors: Kang Ran , Tan Zhengtang , Lang Mei , Jin Linqi , Zhang Yin , Zhang Yiming , Guo Tailin , Guo Zhiyun
Published: April 2021

Feed-forward loops (FFLs) are thought to be one of the most common and important classes of transcriptional network motifs involved in various diseases. Enhancers are cis-regulatory elements that positively regulate protein-coding genes or microRNAs (miRNAs) by recruiting DNA-binding transcription factors (TFs). However, a comprehensive resource to identify, store, and analyze the FFLs of typical enhancer and super-enhancer FFLs is not currently available. Here, we present EnhFFL, an online database to provide a data resource for users to browse and search typical enhancer and super-enhancer FFLs. The current database covers 46 280/7000 TF-enhancer-miRNA FFLs, 9997/236 enhancer-miRNA-gene FFLs, 3 561 164/3 193 182 TF-enhancer-gene FFLs, and 1259/235 TF-enhancer feed-back loops (FBLs) across 91 tissues/cell lines of human and mouse, respectively. Users can browse loops by selecting species, types of tissue/cell line, and types of FFLs. EnhFFL supports searching elements including name/ID, genomic location, and the conservation of miRNA target genes. We also developed tools for users to screen customized FFLs using the threshold of q value as well as the confidence score of miRNA target genes. Disease and functional enrichment analysis showed that master miRNAs that are widely engaged in FFLs including TF-enhancer-miRNAs and enhancer-miRNA-genes are significantly involved in tumorigenesis. Database URL:http://lcbb.swjtu.edu.cn/EnhFFL/.
The role of ‘Alay Kapwa Spirituality’ amid COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Rosales Renniel Jayson Jacinto , Agena Kristel Eunice Geroleo
Published: April 2021

The importance of spiritual nourishment has become the hope of the people in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. This spiritual side of the people must be in tandem with the social responsibility for those in need. Dealing with both spiritual and social responsibilities points out the ‘Alay Kapwa Spirituality’. Thus, in both spiritual and social aspects, this paper highlights that practicing ‘Alay Kapwa Spirituality’ in the time of the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic is highly useful response in satisfying one’s spiritual thirst and social responsibility.
Plasticity in Prefrontal Cortex Induced by Coordinated Synaptic Transmission Arising from Reuniens/Rhomboid Nuclei and Hippocampus
Authors: Banks Paul J , Warburton E Clea , Bashir Zafar I
Published: April 2021

The nucleus reuniens and rhomboid nuclei of the thalamus (ReRh) are reciprocally connected to a range of higher order cortices including hippocampus (HPC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The physiological function of ReRh is well predicted by requirement for interactions between mPFC and HPC, including associative recognition memory, spatial navigation, and working memory. Although anatomical and electrophysiological evidence suggests ReRh makes excitatory synapses in mPFC there is little data on the physiological properties of these projections, or whether ReRh and HPC target overlapping cell populations and, if so, how they interact. We demonstrate in ex vivo mPFC slices that ReRh and HPC afferent inputs converge onto more than two-thirds of layer 5 pyramidal neurons, show that ReRh, but not HPC, undergoes marked short-term plasticity during theta frequency transmission, and that HPC, but not ReRh, afferents are subject to neuromodulation by acetylcholine acting via muscarinic receptor M2. Finally, we demonstrate that pairing HPC followed by ReRh (but not pairing ReRh followed by HPC) at theta frequency induces associative, NMDA receptor dependent synaptic plasticity in both inputs to mPFC. These data provide vital physiological phenotypes of the synapses of this circuit and provide a novel mechanism for HPC–ReRh–mPFC encoding.
High-Quality Complete Genome Resource of Plant-Pathogenic Bacterium Dickeya solani IPO 2019, Isolated from Hyacinthus orientalis
Authors: Czajkowski Robert , Rabalski Lukasz , Bartnik Przemysław , Jafra Sylwia
Published: April 2021

Dickeya solani is an emerging plant-pathogenic bacterium causing disease symptoms in a variety of agriculturally relevant crop species worldwide. To date, a number of D. solani genomes have been sequenced and characterized; the great majority of these genomes have, however, come from D. solani strains isolated from potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) and not from other plant hosts. Herewith, we present the first complete, high-quality genome of D. solani IPO 2019 (LMG 25990), isolated from the ornamental plant Hyacinthus orientalis. The genome of D. solani IPO 2019 consists of one chromosome of 4,919,542 bp, with a GC content of 56.2% and no plasmids. The genome contains 4,502 annotated features, 22 ribosomal RNA genes, 73 transfer RNA genes, and one CRISPR. We believe that the information on this high-quality, complete, closed genome of D. solani strain isolated from a host plant different from potato (i.e. hyacinth) will provide resources for comparative genomic studies and for analyses targeting adaptation and ecological fitness mechanisms present in Dickeya solani species.

[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .
Multilocus Sequence Analysis and Copper Ion Resistance Detection of 60 Xanthomonas arboricola pv. juglandis Isolates from China
Authors: Fu Benzhong , Zhu Jieqian , Lee Conard , Wang Lihua
Published: April 2021

Walnut bacterial blight caused by Xanthomonas arboricola pv. juglandis has serious repercussions for walnut production around the world. Between 2015 and 2017, disease samples were collected from six counties (Danjiangkou, Baokang, Suizhou, Shennongjia, Zigui, and Xingshan) in Hubei Province, China. Fifty-nine X. arboricola pv. juglandis isolates were identified by morphology and specific PCR primers from 206 isolates. The genetic diversity of 60 X. arboricola pv. juglandis isolates (59 from Hubei plus 1 from Beijing) was evaluated by multilocus sequence analysis, and their resistance to copper ion (Cu2+) treatment was determined. A neighbor-joining phylogenetic dendrogram was constructed based on four sequences of housekeeping genes (atpD-dnaK-glnA-gyrB). Two groups of isolates whose clustering was consistent with that of glnA were identified. The minimal inhibitory concentration of Cu2+ on representative X. arboricola pv. juglandis strain DW3F3 (the first genome sequenced X. arboricola pv. juglandis from China) was 115 μg/ml. Setting the copper-resistant threshold value to 125 μg/ml, 47 and 13 isolates were considered sensitive and resistant to Cu2+, respectively. Furthermore, five isolates showed Cu2+ resistance at 270 μg/ml. Compared with the copper resistance gene B (copB) from sensitive isolates, the copB gene in resistant isolates had a 15-bp insertion and eight scattered single-nucleotide polymorphisms. Interestingly, the clustering based on multilocus sequence analysis was distinct between X. arboricola pv. juglandis Cu2+-resistant and -sensitive isolates.
Ready-to-Use Micronized Human Acellular Dermal Matrix to Accelerate Wound Healing in Diabetic Foot Ulcers: A Prospective Randomized Pilot Study
Authors: Hahn Hyung Min , Lee Dong Hwan , Lee Il Jae
Published: April 2021

OBJECTIVE

To examine and report clinical outcomes of a ready-to-use micronized dermal matrix for diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) and compare it to treatment with conventional negative-pressure wound therapy (NPWT) only.

METHODS

The researchers randomly allocated 30 DFUs Wagner grade 2 or higher from 30 adult patients into two groups. The control group (n = 15) was treated with conventional NPWT, and the experimental group (n = 15) was treated with micronized dermal matrix and NPWT. The researchers evaluated the following outcomes: granulation tissue formation, proportion of patients with closed or granulated wounds at 42 and 120 days, achievement of complete wound healing in the 6 months of follow-up, and intervals from enrollment to final surgical procedures.

RESULTS

All 15 wounds treated with the micronized matrix showed healthy granulation tissue without noticeable complications during follow-up. At 42 days, 46.7% of wounds in the experimental group had closed compared with 28.6% in the conventional NPWT group (P = .007). At 120 days, 86.7% of the experimental group had completely closed wounds, compared with 57.1% in the conventional therapy group (P = .040). During the 6-month follow-up period, 93.3% of the experimental group achieved complete wound healing compared with 85.7% of the conventional therapy group (P = .468).

CONCLUSIONS

The healing outcomes for DFUs in the experimental group were superior when micronized matrix treatment was combined with NPWT.
The effect of high-dose versus low-dose epidural fentanyl on gastric emptying in nonfasted parturients
Authors: Fiszer Elisheva , Aptekman Boris , Baar Yuval , Weiniger Carolyn F.
Published: April 2021

BACKGROUND

Epidural fentanyl doses above 100 μg have been shown, using the paracetamol absorption test, to reduce gastric emptying in fasted labouring women.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the effect of fentanyl dose on gastric emptying in nonfasted labouring women using gastric ultrasonography.

DESIGN

A double-blinded randomised controlled study.

SETTING

A tertiary medical centre in Tel Aviv, Israel between 30 July 2020 and 11 October 2020.

PATIENTS

Eighty labouring women with cervical dilation 5 cm or less, at least 18 years age, at least 37 weeks gestation with a singleton pregnancy and cephalad foetus.

INTERVENTIONS

Women randomised to high (>100 μg) or low (<100 μg) cumulative epidural fentanyl had ultrasound gastric content assessment, measuring antral cross-sectional area (CSA) at epidural placement and 2 h thereafter (T
2 
h).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

The primary outcome was CSA at T
2 
h comparing high-dose versus low-dose fentanyl. Secondary outcomes included change in CSA between baseline and T
2 
h. Sub-group analysis compared stomach content at T
2 
h according to baseline stomach content, empty (CSA <381 mm2) or full (CSA ≥381 mm2), and high-dose versus low-dose fentanyl.

RESULTS

Data from 80 women were analysed; 63 had empty and 17 had full stomach at baseline. There was no significant difference in CSA at T
2 
h between high-dose, mean 335 ± SD 133 mm2, versus low-dose fentanyl, mean 335 ± SD 172 mm2, P = 0.991. Change in CSA baseline to T
2 
h was 46 ± SD 149 mm2 for high and 49 ± SD 163 mm2 for low-dose group, P = 0.931. The subgroup analysis according to baseline stomach content showed no statistically significant differences in CSA at T
2 
h.

CONCLUSION

The CSA at T
2 
h was similar for women who received high-dose versus low-dose epidural fentanyl, measured by ultrasound, in our nonfasted labouring cohort.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

Clinicaltrials.gov number: NCT04202887.
Non-shoulder Injuries in Swimming: A Systematic Review
Authors: Hill Lee , Mountjoy Margo , Miller Jim
Published: April 2021

Objective:

The shoulder is the most common injury in swimming, followed by the knee and spine. The repetitive nature of swimming training may predispose a swimmer to injury. Several risk factors have been previously identified, but the level of evidence and level of certainty that these risk factors predispose a swimmer to injury risk has yet to be evaluated critically in a systematic review.

Design:

Systematic review and meta-analysis following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.

Data Sources:

Data were obtained through PubMed, Cochrane, and Google Scholar. The database search was limited to articles that were published between January 1980 and December 2019.

Eligibility Criteria for Selecting Studies:

Level I, II, and III studies were included in this review. All studies must have been conducted in swimmers or swimming, a description of the specific pathology and provide at least one identified risk factor with an association (P < 0.05).

Results:

A total of 19 critically appraised articles identified 28 potential risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries in swimmers. The risk factors were grouped by the anatomical region: neck and back, pelvis and hip, and the knee. Only 2 risk factors were appraised at a moderate level of certainty, both occurring in the knee. The remaining 26 identified risk factors were appraised at a low level of certainty. There is a clear lack of research surrounding nonshoulder injuries in swimmers.
Hepatopulmonary syndrome delays postoperative recovery and increases pulmonary complications after hepatectomy
Authors: Li Yu-jie , Bai Xue-hong , Tang Xi , Yang Zhi-yong , Wang Dan-dan , Hu Xiao-yan , Li Peng , Gu Jian-teng , Lu Kai-zhi , Belguise Karine , Wang Xiao-bo , Yu Wei-feng , Yang Li-qun , Xia Zheng-yuan , Yi Bin
Published: April 2021

Background

This study attempted to investigate the impact of hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) on postoperative outcomes in hepatitis B virus-induced hepatocellular carcinoma (HBV-HCC) patients.

Methods

HBV-HCC patients undergoing primary curative hepatectomy for HCC in our hospital were diagnosed with HPS by contrast-enhanced echocardiography (CEE) and arterial blood gas analysis. Patients were divided into HPS, intrapulmonary vascular dilation (IPVD) (patients with positive CEE results and normal oxygenation) and control (patients with negative CEE results) groups. Baseline information, perioperative clinical data and postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) were compared among all groups. Cytokines in patient serums from each group (n = 8) were also assessed.

Results

Eighty-seven patients undergoing hepatectomy from October 2019 to January 2020 were analyzed. The average time in the postanaesthesia care unit (112.10 ± 38.57 min) and oxygen absorption after extubation [34.0 (14.5–54.5) min] in the HPS group was longer than in IPVD [81.81 ± 26.18 min and 16.0 (12.3–24.0) min] and control [93.70 ± 34.06 min and 20.5 (13.8–37.0) min] groups. There were no significant differences in oxygen absorption time after extubation between HPS and control groups. The incidence of PPCs, especially bi-lateral pleural effusions in the HPS group (61.9%), was higher than in IPVD (12.5%) and control (30.0%) groups. Increased serum levels of the growth-regulated oncogene, monocyte chemoattractant protein, soluble CD40 ligand and interleukin 8 might be related to delayed recovery in HPS patients.

Conclusions

HPS patients with HBV-HCC suffer delayed postoperative recovery and are at higher risk for PPCs, especially bi-lateral pleural effusions, which might be associated with changes in certain cytokines.
Changes in disease behaviour and location and factor analysis in patients with Crohn’s disease undergoing repeated-resections
Authors: Li Tao , Gao Lei , Cao Lei , Guo Zhen , Qian Wenwei , Yin Yi , Li Yi , Zhu Weiming
Published: April 2021

Aim

Crohn’s disease affects the entire gastrointestinal tract and is accompanied by changes in disease location and behaviour. We aimed to analyse changes and the factors in patients with Crohn’s disease undergoing intestinal repeated-resection.

Methods

We included and retrospectively analyzed patients with Crohn’s disease who received ≥2 bowel surgeries from a tertiary inflammatory bowel disease centre from January 2008 to December 2019. The Montreal classification was used to describe the disease site and behaviour. Factors were assessed by univariate and multivariate analysis.

Results

A total of 339 patients were included of whom 94 patients received ≥3 bowel resections. The median patient’s age at the second and third surgery was 36.4 and 39.6, respectively. Repeated-resection most commonly occurred in the original surgical site. However, disease behaviour progressed with the number of surgical interventions and disease duration, especially for patients with B1 phenotype. Patients with L1 Crohn’s disease at a primary resection that progressed to L2 Crohn’s disease at a second surgical resection required a resection earlier than patients whose disease remained in L1 or progressed to L3 Crohn’s disease. Multivariate analysis showed that history of appendectomy was a predictor of progression from L1 to L3 Crohn’s disease at a second surgical resection, while treatment with azathioprine (AZA) may be a protective factor that abated the risk of progression from L1 to L3 Crohn’s disease.

Conclusion

The original resection site is the most common location for recurrence in patients with Crohn’s disease, but disease behaviour progresses with the number of surgeries and disease duration. L1 Crohn’s disease patients with a history of appendectomy have a higher risk to progress to L3 Crohn’s disease at a second surgical resection, while the AZA may be a protective factor that reduces the risk of progression from L1 to L3.