bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
Authors: Varzi Roxanne , McGrath Andrew
Published: February 2021

Stan Brakhage (b. 1933–d. 2003) was a visual artist and filmmaker who embodied many of the theoretical tensions and pragmatic themes in cultural anthropology in the 20th century, despite not being an anthropologist and working almost totally through experiments in 16mm film. In traversing, and being claimed by, both modernist and postmodernist thinkers and artists alike, he was a creator as much influenced by the poetry of American Romanticism as he was the harbinger of a millennial deconstruction. He is generally considered, along with the filmmaker Maya Deren, the quintessential savant of American avant-garde cinema. His phenomenological approach to filmmaking and his attention to poesis in visuality, combined with his persistent dispensation with narrative and plot, drew to light still pressing existential questions about the space between structure and individualism, the unconscious mind, myth, and intersubjective experiences in the shared quotidian of everyday being. While his early works of the mid-1950s showed solidarity with the surrealist and Freudian-inspired themes of compatriots like Maya Deren, in the 1960s Brakhage quickly engaged with what he viewed as the untapped potential of cinematic celluloid as a malleable medium with which to both capture and express the immediacy of sensual experience. At the core of his creative impulse was an exploration of visual perception unfiltered by symbolic textuality. To that end, his 16mm films were mostly soundless, color-saturated, nonlinear impressions of the most consequential of life’s relational phenomena; birth, sex, human development, death, and familial intimacies untethered from linguistic discourses, character drama, and traditional act-based storytelling structures. Brakhage’s process of etching and painting directly onto the emulsified film strips he used for shooting enabled his impressionistic questioning of the boundaries of representation in moving images. Brakhage asserted that, much as with human vision, such manipulations punched holes in the epistemic orthodoxy of experiential narrative and instead stressed the messy and affective ways that our sensory organs force us to negotiate our immanent worlds. His early artistic tenure found him characteristically prolific in modernist aesthetics as he explored concepts ranging from the psychoanalysis of dreaming and the Freudian death-drive in Reflections on Black (1955) to the metaphysical man-myth opus Dog Star Man (1961–1964). Such themes paralleled similar theoretical concerns emergent in anthropology in the mid-20th century as evident in both the structuralism of Levi-Strauss and the persistence of the Freudian unconscious as an explanatory hermeneutic. Today, Stan Brakhage’s influence in anthropology is evident in ethnographic filmmaking that challenges the documentary impulse, ambiguates hegemonic truth claims, and explores the modalities of sensorial representation related to human experience through iterative experimentation.
Design
Authors: Chin Elizabeth
Published: February 2021

If anthropology is about anything humans have ever done from the emergence of primates until now, design covers a territory that is equally vast, up to, and—according to some—even including the universe itself as a designed thing. This essay focuses on both anthropology and design with an eye toward highlighting examples where rigor and sophistication apply equally to the anthropological as it does to the designerly. Carving a manageable path means that some important areas, such as human-computer interaction (HCI), crip technoscience, and critiques of artificial intelligence (AI) are attenuated. Ethnographers who are not anthropologists are also largely absent. As design has moved in recent years into taking on social problems, and international development issues, anthropology has taken notice. Meanwhile, changes in technology and communication have made design an appealing site of exploration for anthropology. Much of what has emerged is what Murphy 2016 describes as ethnographies of design. Design provides inspiration, as well, in terms of research methods, ways of working, and knowledge production, that is, anthropology through design. If the first strong wave of design interest in anthropology resulted in “design anthropology,” more recent interest from anthropology in design has explored how studio culture might transform the lonely ethnographer into a team player; anthropological interest is growing, as well, in designerly modes of investigation that indulge in play, use of materials, and shortened research deployments. Tensions abound: even as anthropologists criticize designers for being bad ethnographers, they have a strong tendency to be design interlopers, ignoring or giving short shrift to designerly forms of rigor and ways of working. Still preferring to write and talk, anthropologists on the whole remain deeply undesignerly in their ability to manipulate tools, materials, and form with both creativity and skill. Design, for its part, has a stunning capacity to claim to solve problems while providing no convincing evidence that this is, indeed, the case. The debates are important. Equally important are examples that demonstrate the power and potential in synergizing the two disciplines. Wherever possible, such examples are highlighted. If debates are often centered on boundary-keeping, these experiments and examples point a way toward blurring of boundaries that promises to enrich thinking and making in exciting and durable ways, both for anthropology and for design.
Roberto Bolaño
Authors: Lawrence Jeffrey
Published: February 2021

Roberto Bolaño (b. 1953–d. 2003) is widely considered to be the most important Latin American novelist of the turn of the 21st century. Bolaño’s reputation rests primarily on the fictional works he produced during a period of extraordinary creative activity from 1996 to his death in 2003: the novels La literatura nazi en América (1996), Estrella distante (1996), Los detectives salvajes (1998), Nocturno de Chile (2001), and the posthumously published 2666 (2004) as well as the short story collections Llamadas telefónicas (1997) Putas asesinas (2001), and El gaucho insufrible (2003). However, his oeuvre also encompasses a diverse corpus of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism written between the 1970s and the early 2000s, a substantial portion of which appeared in print for the first time after his death. Born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in southern Chile, Bolaño moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968, the year of the infamous Tlatelolco student massacre. In 1973, he went to Chile to “support” Salvador Allende’s socialist government (as he later put it). After briefly being detained in the aftermath of the Pinochet coup of 11 September 1973, he left the country and returned to Mexico City. Shortly after, he co-founded the avant-garde poetry movement infrarrealismo with close friend Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. In 1976, he traveled to Europe and eventually relocated to Spain, living in Barcelona and Gerona before settling in the small Spanish coastal city of Blanes. Bolaño’s fiction of the 1990s and early 2000s obsessively reconstructs this itinerary—often through the guise of his alter ego Arturo Belano—as a means of exploring the effects of the Latin American dictatorships on an entire generation of writers, political activists, and ordinary citizens. Critics have thus tended to classify Bolaño both as a major practitioner of Latin American post-dictatorial fiction and as a prominent figure within the contemporary Spanish-language tradition of autofiction. The critical discussion on his final work, 2666, on the other hand, has revolved around his turn to a “depersonalized” style of narration and a new scene of violence in Latin America: the ongoing murder and disappearance of women in the US-Mexican border city of Santa Teresa (a fictional version of the real-life Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez). His novels, short stories, and essays have been translated into multiple languages. Bolaño’s posthumous canonization in the United States has led to a voluminous body of English-language criticism of his work.
Second Language Pragmatics
Authors: Youn Soo Jung
Published: February 2021

The field of second language (L2) pragmatics surveys a range of research issues on how L2 learners learn to use a target language in context-appropriate manners. In the late 1970s, the field of interlanguage pragmatics emerged from cross-cultural pragmatic research. The field has now moved beyond comparisons of different pragmatic norms or simply describing language use. With nearly four decades of research, second language pragmatics has now become an independent field. Informed by different theories, the scope and definitions of L2 pragmatic competence have been expanded. An accumulative body of research illuminates underlying mechanisms and processes of L2 pragmatic development and what L2 pragmatic competence entails. In part, the increasing interest in interlanguage pragmatics reflects the notion that language competence entails the ability to use language in context, in addition to grammar. L2 pragmatics is also situated in a larger domain of language teaching, reflecting a call for more context-specific and more dynamic views of L2 communicative competence. In addition to formal aspects of language (e.g., grammar), L2 communicative competence entails the ability to engage in social interaction and perform speech acts in a contextually appropriate way. This article focuses on providing selective references, since the entire literature cannot be encapsulated in an article-length format. This article is organized around six topics: (1) Theoretical Approaches, (2) Analytical Objects of L2 Pragmatics, (3) Data Elicitation Methods, (4) Instructed L2 Pragmatics, (5) Assessing L2 Pragmatics, and (6) L2 Pragmatics in Diverse Social Interaction.
Default Semantics
Authors: Jaszczolt Katarzyna
Published: February 2021

Default Semantics (DS) is a theory of discourse that represents the main meaning intended by the speaker and recovered by the addressee, using truth-conditional, formal, but pragmatics-rich representations. It was originally developed at the University of Cambridge by K. M. Jaszczolt in the late 1990s and has since been applied to a variety of constructions, phenomena, and languages. The category of primary meaning, as it is understood in DS and represented in its semantic qua conceptual representations, cuts across the explicit/implicit divide. Semantic representations are not limited by the constraints imposed by the logical form of the sentence; they allow for its modifications but also, unlike in other post-Gricean theories, they allow for it to be overridden when the main informational content is conveyed through sources other than the linguistic expression itself. DS identifies five sources of information, all operating on an equal footing: word meaning and sentence structure (WS); situation of discourse (SD); properties of human inferential system (IS); stereotypes and presumptions about society and culture (SC); and world knowledge (WK). Since all of the sources can contribute to the truth-conditional representation, the traditional syntactic constraint that ties the representation to the logical form of the uttered sentence could be abandoned, resulting in modeling a cognitively plausible, main message as intended by a Model Speaker and recovered by a Model Addressee. As a result, DS-theoretic representations can pertain either to (i) the logical form of the sentence; (ii) the logical form with saturated indexical expressions; (iii) the logical form that is freely modified; as well as (iv) representations that do not make use of the logical form of the sentence. The identified sources of information are mapped onto four types of processes that interact in producing the representation (called merger representation, or Σ): processing of word meaning and sentence structure (WS); conscious pragmatic inference (CPI); cognitive defaults (CD, capturing strong informativeness, or strong intentionality of the underlying mental states, for example referential rather attributive reading of definite descriptions); and social, cultural, and world knowledge defaults (SCWD, capturing the relevant sociocultural conventions and encyclopedic knowledge). “Defaults” are understood there as automatic interpretations, “shortcuts through conscious inference” for the speaker and for the context, and as such are by definition not cancellable and are immune to controversies engendered by the “noncism”-“defaultism” debates in post-Gricean pragmatics. DS subscribes to the methodological and ontological assumption of compositionality of meaning on the level of such cognitive representations (Σs).
Data Sharing in Psychology
Authors: Kennedy Joy
Published: February 2021

Narrowly defined, data sharing is the practice of making scientific research data available to other researchers. However, the term is often used to include a variety of open-science practices, including making data, methodology (e.g., coding scheme), analytic syntax, and other research materials available to other researchers, as well as the reuse of those resources by others. There are multiple avenues for data sharing, for example data repositories (either subscription-based or free) or direct request to the researcher. Data sharing is a fairly common practice in the life and earth sciences. Excepting a handful of longitudinal projects, psychology lacks this robust historical precedent for sharing data. In fact, in the not-so-distant past, institutional review boards typically required that data be destroyed after a preset period in order to protect participants’ privacy—and some still do. And many researchers still do not take the first step—modifying their informed consent procedures to include explicit consent to share. Although still not frequent, data sharing in psychology is becoming more common. In part, this trend is being driven by the requirements set by publications and funding agencies. For publications, data sharing is intrinsic to transparency and replication of study findings. For funders, data sharing ensures greater return on investment—that expensive and time-consuming primary data collection does not wind up sitting on a dusty shelf, but rather can be reused for secondary data analysis to answer new questions. In psychology as in other fields, technological improvements in storage capacity and computing power have also facilitated data sharing and reuse. While many psychologists are still concerned that data sharing will result in being “scooped” or found in error, there is increasing recognition of the benefits of data sharing. First, data repositories ensure that data are archived, and that the burden of preservation does not fall on the researcher or the researcher’s institution. Sharing also increases the pace of scientific progress, as researchers can build on each other’s work. For example, researchers can learn how other experts approached measurement or coding of a given outcome. In replication studies, inconsistent findings can point to contextual variations in the construct under study, rather than researcher error. And in a field where null findings are often difficult to publish, sharing allows these data to be included in meta-analyses across studies to examine broader impacts. Most importantly, data sharing enhances transparency, a key ingredient in the scientific process.
Lineups
Authors: Kovera Margaret Bull , Katzman Jacqueline
Published: February 2021

Lineups are conducted in the course of police investigations when a crime has been witnessed by one or more people. A lineup typically consists of a person whom the police believe committed the crime (i.e., the suspect) and some number of people who are known to be innocent of the crime (i.e., fillers). When the police have developed a suspect, they show witnesses a lineup to test whether they will claim that the suspect is the person who committed the crime (i.e., the perpetrator). If so, the witness is said to have made a positive identification of the suspect. What is not clear, at least in real-world investigations, is whether that identification is correct, because sometimes suspects are guilty and sometimes they are innocent. Since the late 1970s, psychologists have conducted experiments to find lineup procedures that decrease the likelihood that witnesses will mistakenly identify innocent suspects. These experiments are typically conducted in laboratory settings in which researchers expose participants to a simulated crime, often on videotape. After the participant-witnesses have viewed the crime, they are asked to attempt an identification from a lineup. In the laboratory, researchers can vary whether the perpetrator appears in that lineup. When the perpetrator is present in the lineup (i.e., a target-present lineup), the witness can identify the suspect (a correct identification), identify a filler, or say that the perpetrator is not there (an incorrect rejection of the lineup). When the perpetrator is not present (i.e., a target-absent lineup), the witness can make a mistaken identification of the suspect, identify a filler, or correctly reject the lineup. Using this method, researchers have identified lineup procedures that decrease mistaken identifications, which are the leading cause of wrongful convictions among those who have been exonerated by DNA tests conducted after trial. This article contains sections describing comprehensive General Overviews of research on lineups, research demonstrating that Live Lineups Are Equivalent to Photo Lineups, and Policy Recommendations and Best Practice Guidelines. The remaining sections describe many of these policy recommendations, including how Lineups Are Superior to Showups, having an Evidence-Based Suspicion for placing a suspect in a lineup, unbiased Lineup Composition, Double-Blind Administration, proper Lineup Instructions, collecting witnesses’ Confidence Statements in the accuracy of their identification immediately after the initial identification, Video Recording Identification Procedures, and avoiding Repeated Lineups. An additional section addresses special issues that need to be considered when Conducting Lineups with Children.
Kurtosis
Authors: Zhang Zhiyong , Qu Wen
Published: February 2021

In statistics, kurtosis is a measure of the probability distribution of a random variable or a vector of random variables. As mean measures the centrality and variance measures the spreadness of a probability distribution, kurtosis measures the tailedness of the distribution. Kurtosis for a univariate distribution was first introduced by Karl Pearson in 1905. Kurtosis, together with skewness, is widely used to quantify the non-normality—the deviation from a normal distribution—of a distribution. In psychology, kurtosis has often been studied in the field of quantitative psychology to evaluate its effects on psychometric models.
Irvine Welsh
Authors: Lamont Craig
Published: February 2021

Irvine Welsh is one of the most revered writers of his generation and is globally renowned for his debut novel Trainspotting (1993) and the film adaptation that followed. Though his biography is sketchy—perhaps deliberately so—we can say with some certainty that he was raised in Leith and Muirhouse, Scotland, and that he gained useful life and work experiences in London during the late 1970s and 1980s. His year of birth in Edinburgh is mainly given as 1958, though some reports offer an earlier date. Upon returning to Scotland in the late 1980s, he completed an MBA at Heriot-Watt University (his thesis was based on creating equal opportunities for women), and soon became acquainted with writers such as Alan Warner, Duncan McLean, and Kevin Williamson. Trainspotting was once a series of diary entries that were published in parts from 1991 onward in small independent magazines like DOG and Rebel Inc. Draft sections were also printed in A Parcel of Rogues and Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel. It was through this network that Welsh became known to the director of Secker & Warburg, who published Trainspotting in its entirety. Set in the late 1980s, the novel was a critique of capitalism, individualism, nationalism, and war. This sweat-lashed, dialect-driven journey into the self and the nation was met with very high critical regard and a good measure of disgust. The novel is said to have missed out on the Booker Prize shortlist for causing offense to female judges. One year later James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late won the same award, much to the bemusement of one or two judges, and so the pair have been entwined as controversial antiestablishment types ever since. For Welsh, his reputation as a writer of mind-bending literature was enhanced with The Acid House (1994) and Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), both showcasing an impressive range of narrative skills. Danny Boyle’s film version of Trainspotting (1996) propelled Welsh into a stratosphere that few Scottish writers have enjoyed, and while three more books were published before the sequel to Trainspotting, Porno (2002), he is chiefly remembered for creating one of the great novels of the late 20th century with his debut. Welsh’s extensive novels, short story collections, and stage and screen plays have kept him at the forefront of the Scottish literary scene, though he has revived the Trainspotting case time and again, most recently with Skagboys (2012), The Blade Artist (2016), and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018).
Planning for the Pandemic
Authors: Fiore-Lopez Nicolette
Published: February 2021

When the Covid 19 pandemic affected New York State, Federal and mostly State, mandates were given to hospitals to prepare for the expected influx of patients. This is a community hospital's planning journey that includes preparing for placing patients, educating caregivers, matching the abilities of the available caregivers with the needs of the patients, securing needed equipment and supplies, and caring for the caregivers. Planning for patient placement resulted in a phased-in guide, accommodating seriously and critically ill affected patients. Education and training were initial and ongoing, rapidly changing as new information became available. Effective care delivery models that focused on team were modified depending on the needs of patients and staff competence. Securing and maintaining equipment and supplies were challenging and caring for the caregivers was a priority. Working as a team, this community hospital developed a road map that was effective in planning for the surge and allowed the hospital to maintain a safe environment for staff and patients who received quality care in difficult time.
Has the COVID Pandemic Strengthened or Weakened Health Care Teams? A Field Guide to Healthy Workforce Best Practices
Authors: Thompson Renee , Kusy Mitchell
Published: February 2021

During the 2020 global pandemic crisis, some health care teams pulled together while others fell apart. The teams who pulled together put aside their differences and became stronger, putting their patients first and then each other. Those teams grew stronger, but some teams completely fell apart. They spent their days nitpicking, complaining, and arguing—making decisions based on what was best for themselves, not patients or their coworkers. The common denominator in determining how well teams performed was the leader. Employees looked to their leaders to successfully lead them through crisis, whether it was on a small or global scale. Depending on leader behaviors, the leader strengthened or weakened the team; trust was built or broken. That is a heavy burden to carry knowing that employees were so dependent on them and how they showed up every day. What lessons can leaders learn from the coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that can help them strengthen and sustain a healthy, professional, and supportive workforce culture during a crisis and beyond?
Shared Governance in Times of Change
Authors: Lal M. Maureen
Published: February 2021

A strong shared governance framework gives nurses control over their practice. Whether unit based or system wide, shared governance provides the infrastructure to deliver high-quality patient care, especially in a crisis. This month's Magnet® Perspectives column takes a closer look at the concept of shared governance, how it has evolved, why it is important, and how it helped nurses in Magnet hospitals navigate the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the critical nature of ensuring that everyone's voice is heard to not only survive but also ultimately thrive during times of change.
Lysobacter penaei sp. nov., isolated from intestinal content of a Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei)
Authors: Xu Shuaishuai , Li Anzhang , Zhang Ming-Xia , Yao Qing , Zhu Honghui
Published: February 2021

The polyphasic taxonomic approach was used to characterize a novel bacteria strain, designated SG-8T, which was isolated from intestinal content of a Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei). Cells were Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, non-gliding rods. Growth occurred at 10–45 °C (optimum, 20–30 °C), pH 5.0–10.0 (optimum, 6.0–7.0) and in 0–6.0 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 0–4.0 %). The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain SG-8T showed the highest sequence similarity to

Lysobacter maris

KMU-14T (98.6 %). On phylogenetic trees, strain SG-8T formed a stable cluster with

Lysobacter maris

KMU-14T,

Lysobacter alkalisoli

SJ-36T,

Lysobacter spongiae

119BY6-57T and

Lysobacter aestuarii

S2-CT. The average nucleotide identity and digital DNA–DNA hybridization values between strain SG-8T and the four reference type strains listed above were 83.3, 82.3, 83.5, 83.3% and 22.8, 22.7, 22.7, 22.9 %, respectively. The major fatty acids (>5 %) were iso-C15 : 0, summed feature 9 (iso-C17 : 1
 ω9c and/or 10-methyl C16 : 0), iso-C16 : 0, summed feature 3 (C16 : 1
 ω6c and/or C16 : 1
 ω7c), iso-C17 : 0, iso-C11 : 0 3OH and iso-C11 : 0. Ubiquinone-8 (Q-8) was the only respiratory quinone. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylglycerol. The DNA G+C content was 68.8 mol%. Based on the results of genomic, phylogenetic, phenotypic and chemotaxonomic analyses, strain SG-8T represents a novel species of the genus

Lysobacter

, for which the name Lysobacter penaei sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is SG-8T (=GDMCC 1.1817T=KACC 21942T).
Comprehensive in silico survey of the Mycolicibacterium mobilome reveals an as yet underexplored diversity
Authors: Morgado Sergio Mascarenhas , Vicente Ana Carolina Paulo
Published: February 2021

The mobilome plays a crucial role in bacterial adaptation and is therefore a starting point to understand and establish the gene flow occurring in the process of bacterial evolution. This is even more so if we consider that the mobilome of environmental bacteria can be the reservoir of genes that may later appear in the clinic. Recently, new genera have been proposed in the family

Mycobacteriaceae

, including the genus

Mycolicibacterium

, which encompasses dozens of species of agricultural, biotechnological, clinical and ecological importance, being ubiquitous in several environments. The current scenario in the

Mycobacteriaceae

mobilome has some bias because most of the characterized mycobacteriophages were isolated using a single host strain, and the few plasmids reported mainly relate to the genus

Mycobacterium

. To fill in the gaps in these issues, we performed a systematic in silico study of these mobile elements based on 242 available genomes of the genus

Mycolicibacterium

. The analyses identified 156 putative plasmids (19 conjugative, 45 mobilizable and 92 non-mobilizable) and 566 prophages in 86 and 229 genomes, respectively. Moreover, a contig was characterized by resembling an actinomycete integrative and conjugative element (AICE). Within this diversity of mobile genetic elements, there is a pool of genes associated with several canonical functions, in addition to adaptive traits, such as virulence and resistance to antibiotics and metals (mercury and arsenic). The type-VII secretion system was a common feature in the predicted plasmids, being associated with genes encoding virulent proteins (EsxA, EsxB, PE and PPE). In addition to the characterization of plasmids and prophages of the family

Mycobacteriaceae

, this study showed an abundance of these genetic elements in a dozen species of the genus

Mycolicibacterium

.
Genomic epidemiology of a Cryptococcus neoformans case cluster in Glasgow, Scotland, 2018
Authors: Farrer Rhys A. , Borman Andrew M. , Inkster Teresa , Fisher Matthew C. , Johnson Elizabeth M. , Cuomo Christina A.
Published: February 2021

In 2018, a cluster of two cases of cryptococcosis occurred at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow, Scotland (UK). It was postulated that these cases may have been linked to pigeon droppings found on the hospital site, given there have been previous reports of Cryptococcus neoformans associated with pigeon guano. Although some samples of pigeon guano taken from the site yielded culturable yeast from genera related to Cryptococcus, they have since been classified as Naganishia or Papiliotrema spp., and no isolates of C. neoformans were recovered from either the guano or subsequent widespread air sampling. In an attempt to further elucidate any possible shared source of the clinical isolates, we used whole-genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis to examine the relationship of the two Cryptococcus isolates from the QEUH cases, along with two isolates from sporadic cases treated at a different Glasgow hospital earlier in 2018. Our work demonstrated that these four clinical isolates were not clonally related; while all isolates were from the VNI global lineage and of the same mating type (MATα), the genotypes of the two QEUH isolates were separated by 1885 base changes and belonged to different sub-lineages, recently described as the intercontinental sub-clades VNIa-93 and VNIa-5. In contrast, one of the two sporadic 2018 clinical isolates was determined to belong to the VNIb sub-lineage and the other classified as a VNIV/VNI hybrid. Our work demonstrated that the two 2018 QEUH isolates and the two prior C. neoformans clinical isolates were all genetically distinct. It was not possible to determine whether the QEUH genotypes stemmed from independent sources or from the same source, i.e. pigeons carrying different genotypes, but it should be noted that whilst members of allied genera within the Tremellomycetes were isolated from the hospital environment, there were no environmental isolations of C. neoformans.
Subtle oromotor signs in early Parkinson’s disease before clinical manifestations of dysphagia
Authors: Gudwani Sunita , Upadhyay Prabhakar , Sharma Kamlesh , Sagar Rajesh , Kumaran S. Senthil , Dhamija R.K.
Published: February 2021

Background

Swallowing is complex phenomena comprising oral (preparatory and pre-swallow positioning), oropharyngeal, pharyngeal and esophageal phases. The timing of these phases is controlled by brain stem pattern generators including reflex for oropharyngeal propulsion and transit. Dysphagia in Parkinson’s disease (PD) commonly observed at late stages with aspiration, pneumonia and hospitalization.

Objective

Can subtle oromotor signs (if any) be observed for planning early interventions in PD

Methods

The present study investigated oromotor function in fourteen early PD (onset ≤2years; H&Y score ≤2.5) with dynamic MRI using saline (water) bolus and compared with seven age-matched healthy controls.

Results

All the patients with PD were non-symptomatic for dysphagia by self-reporting, and on clinical assessment (Part-II MDS-UPDRS, Swallowing disturbance questionnaire, SDQ and Clinical assessment of dysphagia in neurodegeneration, CADN). Qualitatively MR images visualized, differences in PD compared to healthy controls for tongue-wave, velar-closure or release, bolus placement, oropharyngeal reflex-initiation, transit-time, epiglottic-closure-coordination and post-swallow oral or pharyngeal residue. Descriptive analysis showed higher variability of velar-closure, oropharyngeal- and pharygoesophageal-transit time in patient with PD. Group analysis (two-sample) show significant difference for velar-closure.

Conclusion

Multiple lingual-waves, reverse-tongue thrust, with delayed velar control attributed to incoordinated muscular rhythm. Variable oropharyngeal transit time (0.64 to 2.25 msec) in PD ascribed to brainstem degenerative changes. Findings imply that subtle observable early oromotor signs as pre-clinical manifestation when evaluated with non-invasive, non-contrast dynamic MRI support early intervention, to prevent late-stage aspiration episodes and consequent hospitalizations.
Impact of early life nutrition on gut health in children: A prospective clinical study
Authors: Ley Delphine , Beghin Laurent , Morcel Jules , Flamein Florence , Garabedian Charles , Accart Bertrand , Drumez Elodie , Labreuche Julien , Gottrand Frédéric , Hermann Emmanuel
Published: February 2021

Introduction

The first 1000 days of life could contribute to individual susceptibility to the later development of chronic non-communicable diseases. Nutrition in early life appears to be an important determinant factor for a sustainable child’s health. In this study, we propose to investigate the impact of exclusive breastfeeding on gut health in children.

Methods and analysis

A prospective cohort of newborns (n=350) will be recruited at birth and followed up to 4 years of age. The main objective is to evaluate the link between exclusive breastfeeding for at least 3 months and the gut health of the child at 4 years. The primary endpoint of assessment of gut health will be based on the non-invasive measurement of fecal secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) as a sensitive biomarker of the intestinal ecosystem. The presence of gastrointestinal disorders will be defined according to the clinical criteria of ROME IV. Information on parent’s nutritional habits and life style, breastfeeding duration and child’s complementary feeding will be collected along the follow-up. Cord blood cells and plasma at birth will be purified for further analysis. The meconium and stools collected at birth, 6 months, 2 years and 4 years of age will allow sIgA analysis.

Ethics and dissemination

This clinical study has obtained the approval from the national ethical committee. We plan to publish the results of the study in peer-review journals and by means of national and international conference.

Trial registration number

NCT04195425

Strengths and limitations of the study

-

This is a prospective and longitudinal mother/child cohort with minimal constraints (3 visits over 4 years) and minimal risk (no intervention and minimally invasive procedures).

-

The study will collect a great deal of longitudinal information on children during the first years of life, their parents and their environment via questionnaires and biological samples (cord blood, meconium, stools).

-

This study will obtain precise data on breastfeeding practices and their short- and medium-term effects on the health of the child, in particular and in an innovative way on gut health through stool samples for immunological analysis, and by using the ROME IV paediatric questionnaire.

-

Weaknesses could be relied to confounding factors at the selection process and during the follow-up.

-

Due to the non-interventional study design we will be able to study association but no causal relationship.

-

The nutritional survey during the study is primarily based on reports from parents and is retrospective which could contribute to inaccuracies due to long delay between each visit.
In search for the SARS-CoV-2 protection correlate: A head-to-head comparison of two quantitative S1 assays in a group of pre-characterized oligo-/asymptomatic patients
Authors: Rubio-Acero Raquel , Castelletti Noemi , Fingerle Volker , Olbrich Laura , Bakuli Abhishek , Wölfel Roman , Girl Philipp , Müller Katharina , Jochum Simon , Strobl Matthias , Hoelscher Michael , Wieser Andreas
Published: February 2021

Background

Quantitative serological assays detecting response to SARS-CoV-2 infection are urgently needed to quantify immunity. This study analyzed the performance and correlation of two independent quantitative anti-S1 assays in oligo-/asymptomatic individuals from a previously characterized population-based cohort.

Methods

A total of 362 samples included 108 from individuals who had viral RNA detected in pharyngeal swabs, 111 negative controls and 143 samples with positive serology but not confirmed by RT-PCR. Blood plasma was tested with quantitative assays Euroimmun Anti-SARS-CoV-2 QuantiVac ELISA (IgG) (EI-S1-IgG-quant) and Roche Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 CoV-2 S (Ro-RBD-Ig-quant), which were compared with each other and with confirmatory tests, including wild-type virus micro-neutralization (NT) and GenScript®cPass™. Results were analyzed using square roots R of coefficients of determination for association among continuous variables and non-parametric tests for paired comparisons.

Results

Quantitative anti-S1 serology correlated well with each other (96%/97% for true-positives and true-negatives, respectively). Antibody titers decreased over time (from <30 days to >240 days after initial positive RT-PCR). Agreement with GenScript-cPass was 96%/99% for true-positives and true-negatives, respectively, for Ro-RBD-Ig-quant and 93%/97% for EI-S1-IgG-quant. Ro-RBD-Ig-quant allowed a distinct separation between positive and negative values, and less non-specific reactivity compared with EI-S1-IgG-quant. Raw values (with 95% CI) ≥28.7 U/mL (22.6–36.4) for Ro-RBD-Ig-quant and ≥49.8 U/mL (43.4–57.1) for EI-S1-IgG-quant predicted virus neutralization >1:5 in 95% of cases.

Conclusions

Both quantitative anti-S1 assays, Ro-RBD-Ig-quant and EI-S1-IgG-quant, may replace direct neutralization assays in quantitative measurement of immune protection against SARS-CoV-2 in certain circumstances in the future.

Key points

Two quantitative anti-S1 assays showed similar performance and a high level of agreement with direct virus neutralization and surrogate neutralization tests, arguing for their utility in quantifying immune protection against SARS-CoV-2.
Thalamic organization in essential tremor patients with neuropathy: implication for functional neurosurgery
Authors: Sammartino Francesco , Narayan Vinayak , Changizi Barbara , Merola Aristide , Krishna Vibhor
Published: February 2021

Background

Mechanisms underlying the suboptimal effect of ventral intermediate nucleus deep brain stimulation in patients with essential tremor and co-morbid peripheral neuropathy remain unclear.

Objectives

We compared disease-related (location and extension of the ventral intermediate nucleus) and surgery-related (targeting, intraoperative testing) factors in essential tremor patients with and without peripheral polyneuropathy treated with deep brain stimulation of the ventral intermediate nucleus, testing whether the overlap between volume of tissue activated and ventral intermediate nucleus (target coverage) was associated with clinical outcomes.

Methods

Preoperative diffusion magnetic resonance imaging was used for thalamic segmentation, based on preferential cortical connectivity. The target coverage was estimated using a finite element model. Tremor severity was scored at rest, posture, action, and handwriting at baseline, 6, and 12 months. Tremor improvement <50% at 12 months was deemed suboptimal. Vertex-wise shape analysis and edge analysis were performed to compare the ventral intermediate nucleus location and extension.

Results

9.7% (18/185) of essential tremor patients treated with deep brain stimulation had co-morbid polyneuropathy. These patients showed a more medial (p=0.03) and anterior (p=0.04) location of the ventral intermediate nucleus, lower target coverage (p=0.049), and worse clinical outcomes (p=0.006) compared to those without polyneuropathy. No differences were observed in the volume of tissue activated between the two groups. Optimal clinical outcomes were associated with greater target coverage (optimal coverage >48%).

Conclusions

In essential tremor, co-morbid polyneuropathy may result in suboptimal deep brain stimulation outcomes and lower target coverage, likely related to a reorganization of the ventral thalamic nuclei.
Increased complement activation is a distinctive feature of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection
Authors: Ma Lina , Sahu Sanjaya K. , Cano Marlene , Kuppuswamy Vasanthan , Bajwa Jamal , McPhatter Ja’Nia , Pine Alexander , Meizlish Matthew , Goshua George , Chang C-Hong , Zhang Hanming , Price Christina , Bahel Parveen , Rinder Henry , Lei Tingting , Day Aaron , Reynolds Daniel , Wu Xiaobo , Schriefer Rebecca , Rauseo Adriana M. , Goss Charles W. , O’Halloran Jane A. , Presti Rachel M. , Kim Alfred H. , Gelman Andrew E. , Cruz Charles Dela , Lee Alfred I. , Mudd Phillip , Chun Hyung J. , Atkinson John P. , Kulkarni Hrishikesh S.
Published: February 2021

Complement activation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, it remains to be determined whether increased complement activation is a broad indicator of critical illness (and thus, no different in COVID-19). It is also unclear which pathways are contributing to complement activation in COVID-19, and, if complement activation is associated with certain features of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, such as endothelial injury and hypercoagulability. To address these questions, we investigated complement activation in the plasma from patients with COVID-19 prospectively enrolled at two tertiary care centers. We compared our patients to two non-COVID cohorts: (a) patients hospitalized with influenza, and (b) patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with acute respiratory failure requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). We demonstrate that circulating markers of complement activation (i.e., sC5b-9) are elevated in patients with COVID-19 compared to those with influenza and to patients with non-COVID-19 respiratory failure. Further, the results facilitate distinguishing those who are at higher risk of worse outcomes such as requiring ICU admission, or IMV. Moreover, the results indicate enhanced activation of the alternative complement pathway is most prevalent in patients with severe COVID-19 and is associated with markers of endothelial injury (i.e., Ang2) as well as hypercoagulability (i.e., thrombomodulin and von Willebrand factor). Our findings identify complement activation to be a distinctive feature of COVID-19, and provide specific targets that may be utilized for risk prognostication, drug discovery and personalized clinical trials.

SUMMMARY

Complement has been implicated in COVID-19. However, whether this is distinctive of COVID-19 remains unanswered. Ma et al report increased complement activation in COVID-19 compared to influenza and non-COVID respiratory failure, and demonstrate alternative pathway activation as a key marker of multiorgan failure and death.
Identification of age and ethnicity specific gene expression biomarkers for immune aging
Authors: Hu Yang , Xu Yudai , Mao Lipeng , Lei Wen , Xiang Jian , Zhu Guodong , Hu Yutian , Niu Haitao , Gao Feng , Gao Lijuan , Huang Li’an , Luo Oscar Junhong , Chen Guobing
Published: February 2021

Human immune system functions over an entire lifetime, yet how and why the immune system becomes less effective with age are not well understood. Here, we characterize peripheral blood mononuclear cells transcriptome from 172 healthy adults with 21~90 years of age using RNA-seq and the weighted gene correlation network analyses (WGCNA). These data reveal a set of insightful gene expression modules and representative gene biomarkers for human immune system aging from Asian and Caucasian ancestry, respectively. Among them, the aging-specific modules show an age-related gene expression variation spike around early-seventies. In addition, it is not known whether Asian and Caucasian immune systems go through similar gene expression changes throughout their lifespan, and to what extent these aging-associated changes are shared among ethnicities. We find the top hub genes including NUDT7, CLPB, OXNAD1 and MLLT3 are shared between Asian and Caucasian aging related modules and further validated in human PBMCs from different age groups. Overall, the impact of age and race ontranscriptional variationelucidated from this study provide insights into the transcriptional driver of immune aging.
SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 Spike variants bind human ACE2 with increased affinity
Authors: Ramanathan Muthukumar , Ferguson Ian D. , Miao Weili , Khavari Paul A.
Published: February 2021

SARS-CoV2 being highly infectious has been particularly effective in causing widespread infection globally and more variants of SARS-CoV2 are constantly being reported with increased genomic surveillance. In particular, the focus is on mutations of Spike protein, which binds human ACE2 protein enabling SARS-CoV2 entry and infection. Here we present a rapid experimental method leveraging the speed and flexibility of Mircoscale Thermopheresis (MST) to characterize the interaction between Spike Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) and human ACE2 protein. The B.1.351 variant harboring three mutations, (E484K, N501Y, and K417N) binds the ACE2 at nearly five-fold greater affinity than the original SARS-COV-2 RBD. We also find that the B.1.1.7 variant, binds two-fold more tightly to ACE2 than the SARS-COV-2 RBD.
The effect of on-the-job shocks on employees’ intention to stay: an investigation of organizational embeddedness
Authors: Yang Chunjiang , Chen Yashuo , Chen Aobo
Published: February 2021

Purpose

Using the theoretical lens of sensemaking, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between on-the-job shocks, as experienced by the employees and intention to stay (IS) by shedding light on the mediating role of organizational embeddedness (OE) and the moderating role of commitment human resource practices (CHRP).

Design/methodology/approach

The study used a time-lagged research design, collecting data from 304 employees from 48 teams in China to conduct multilevel structural equation modeling to test hypotheses.

Findings

This study found that employees who suffer on-the-job shocks tend to decrease their IS in organizations via OE. However, CHRP did not bound the main effect of on-the-job shocks on OE.

Practical implications

Given the increasingly dynamic business environment, employees constantly encounter shocks in the workplace. Organizations or leaders should be aware of the on-the-job shocks in harming employee retention.

Originality/value

The research highlights workplace events’ significance in investigating employees’ retention and specifically offers glimpses into the mechanisms by which on-the-job shocks manifest themselves in employees’ IS.