bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Video Games as Meaningful or Eudaimonic Experiences
Authors: Possler Daniel
Published: June 2024

Research on meaningful or eudaimonic gaming experiences explores players’ profound responses to video games. It rests on the observation that video games have ‘grown up’ in the 2000s and 2010s. While the medium traditionally aimed at providing fun, modern games increasingly afford meaningful experiences, for example by addressing serious topics (e.g., loss). Drawing on philosophical and psychological well-being research, these meaningful experiences are often termed “eudaimonic.” Beyond this shared categorization, however, no consensual definition of eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences has yet been developed. Instead, various competing and partially overlapping conceptualizations exist in the literature, including (a) appreciation, (b) the covariation of meaningfulness, being emotionally moved or challenged, and self-reflection, (c) deep social connectedness, and (d) specific emotional responses (e.g., nostalgia, awe). The formation of eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences has mostly been attributed to game characteristics, including (1) game mechanics that allow rare performances or promote reflection by disrupting players’ gameplay expectations; (2) narratives that address emotionally challenging topics, feature moral dilemmas, or facilitate deep social bonds with game characters; (3) multiplayer features that enable cooperative interactions with close co-players; and (4) game aesthetics that facilitate awe or aesthetic contemplation. In contrast, little is known about how player characteristics affect the formation of eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences. Similarly, research on the effects of these experiences is sparse. However, initial studies suggest that eudaimonic/meaningful experiences may benefit players beyond gaming by increasing their well-being or promoting pro-social behavior. Additionally, eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences appear to have a motivational
appeal, as preliminary studies suggest that seeking such experiences can motivate playing games in general and specific titles in particular. Overall, this burgeoning line of research is still in its infancy but has already provided valuable insights into the quality and formation of eudaimonic/meaningful experiences in interactive media and the attraction and positive effects of video games.
Crime Mapping and Spatial Analysis
Authors: Valasik Matthew
Published: June 2024

Crime mapping and the spatial analysis of crime includes a variety of techniques and topics. The most rudimentary form of crime mapping is the use of geographic information systems to visualize spatial patterns and organize geographical data for more traditional statistical analysis, i.e., multivariate regression. Spatial analyses may be used in an exploratory way to help ascertain how certain environmental or ecological factors of a neighborhood may affect the geographic distribution of crime. Of particular interest is an understanding of the spatial patterns of crime and responses to them. Topics related to understanding such patterns include crime displacement and diffusion, the mobility patterns of criminal participants, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of geographically targeted crime reduction strategies.

There is a robust relationship between crime and space. Within the field of criminology, crime mapping remains an innovative domain with new techniques and visualizations, which assist researchers and practitioners in better understanding how the social and physical environments affect criminal behavior. Combining new approaches like spatialized network analysis or risk terrain modeling with more conventional crime mapping and spatial analysis techniques allows for a more holistic strategy that could inform neighborhood public safety and aid in directing the allocation of resources, e.g., specialized law enforcement and directed patrol, in a more efficient manner.
History of the Vermis Cerebelli : From Mechanical Function to Neuropsychological Circuits
Authors: Steinsiepe Klaus F. , Steinsiepe Valentin K.
Published: June 2024

The vermis cerebelli, the middle part of the cerebellum, has been anatomically known and named since Galen (around 200 ce). As part of his work in physiology, which was based on the distribution of pneuma, Galen attributed to the worm a mechanical valve function for the flow of psychic pneuma (spiritus animalis) in the brain. This function was adopted and expanded by Arab scholars who translated Galen. In Costa ben Luca (around 900 ce), for example, the worm regulates memory and thinking, whereas Avicenna (ca. 1000) sticks to Galen’s ideas. In 1316, Mondino assigned this function within the cerebral ventricles to the worm-like choroid plexus; the cerebellar vermis is forgotten. Vesalius corrected Galen on several points in 1543/1555 and clarified that the vermis cerebelli has no mechanical function; he ignored Mondino’s new, different worm. However, this vermis survived the Middle Ages and was depicted in numerous illustrations until the 17th century.

Since Thomas Willis (1621-1675), the vermis remained an anatomically conspicuous part of the cerebellum but generally does not play a special role within the general function of the cerebellum, even if there are individual speculative assumptions about its function (e.g., respiration or coenesthesia). Since Rolando in the early 19th century, the cerebellum has been increasingly associated with motor activity, but any localized functions of the cerebellum were denied by Pierre Flourens (1794-1867) and even later by Luigi Luciani (1840-1919).

This attitude changed completely in the 20th century. Through the fundamental work of Bolk, Comolli, Edinger, Larsell, Jansen, and Brodal, the cerebellum and vermis were structured anatomically, phylogenetically, and functionally. At the same time, electrophysiological research led to the discovery of somatotopic representations in the cerebellar cortex. The second half of the 20th century was characterized by an expansion of functions. The vermis was recognized as a dynamic learning structure and as an important center of emotional control—the “limbic vermis.”

Research since the beginning of the 21st century relies much on functional neuroimaging and genetic expression patterns and may lead to a more integrated understanding of the cerebellum.
The China-Russia Trade through Nerchinsk and Kiakhta
Authors: Vinkovetsky Ilya
Published: June 2024

Direct bilateral trade between the Romanov and the Qing Empires began officially with the signing of the Nerchinsk treaty in 1689. State-sponsored caravans initiated in European Russia traveled the lengthy continental route from European Russia across Siberia and the Gobi, arriving in Beijing to conduct trade. But by the second quarter of the 18th century, caravan trade was disrupted by a new arrangement, initiated by the Qing, that in the long term proved more agreeable to both empires: the two sides agreed to demarcate their common border, enforce and patrol it more effectively, and establish a new trading post on the Mongol/Transbaikal frontier. Caravan trade was subsequently phased out, replaced by the more efficient trade at the border hub of Kiakhta, where virtually all of the China-Russia trade was conducted almost exclusively by barter. Strict barter regulations, which became a distinguishing characteristic of the “Kiakhta system,” remained in place into the 1850s. Trade at Kiakhta expanded in the 18th century, and in the 19th century, when growing volumes of tea replaced silk, rhubarb, tobacco, and luxury goods as the chief Chinese export, it boomed. In the early years of China-Russia trade, the Russians offered furs almost to the exclusion of any other exports. But as the populations of the fur-bearing animals plummeted, they diversified their offerings. Textiles and light manufacturing came to play an increasingly important role in the 19th century. The result was that Kiakhta trade stimulated manufacturing in Russia and tea-growing agricultural economy in China. Affecting fashions, tastes, and customs, the exchange of commodities (furs, tea, rhubarb, tobacco, cloth, etc.) led to important changes in Russian and Chinese societies and economies. Ongoing trade between the Qing and the Romanov empire-states, conducted on the Buryat/Mongol frontier, also supported colonization and development, stimulated imperial expansion, and had far-ranging ramifications for the indigenous peoples of the Transbaikal region, Mongolia, Siberia, and Central Asia. Geopolitical changes of the late 1850s, culminating in the 1860 treaties that overturned the rules of China-Russia trade, put an end to Kiakhta’s status as a funnel of transregional and global trade.
Violence in the South African Transition
Authors: Evans Laura
Published: June 2024

South Africa’s negotiated transition (1990–1994), while often heralded as a “miracle,” was accompanied by a dramatic escalation of politically related violence in which more than fifteen thousand people died. A sober assessment of these years reveals that such violence was a central dynamic of the transition and its politics. The epicenters of violence were in Gauteng (then known as the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal, or PWV) and KwaZulu-Natal (then the province of Natal and the KwaZulu bantustan). Although patterns of conflict were locally and historically specific, being connected to conflicts over scarce resources, in these regions a war between Inkatha (supported by the state) and comrades aligned to the African National Congress and United Democratic Front (ANC, UDF; the dominant strand of the liberation movement) emerged as the central fault line of the violence. State-sponsored violence—much of which took place under the veil of private companies, covert operations, and bantustan regimes—played a central role in precipitating and aggravating political competition and violence, and the white-minority National Party (NP) regime, still in power, was thereby responsible for much of the violence of the period. It is also widely held that, whatever he claimed, the government of F. W. De Klerk had extensive knowledge of the “third force” covert operations that were waging violent attacks and fueling the conflict. Both the NP and the ANC, while publicly eschewing violent methods, used violence as a key element of their political strategy during the period of negotiations, even if they were not always able to control it. While the ANC’s role in aggravating the violence of this period has often been underplayed, historiography from the last decade has amended this perception.
Dambudzo Marechera
Authors: Cairnie Julie
Published: June 2024

Charles William (Dambudzo) Marechera (1952–1987) was born in poverty in Rusape, Zimbabwe and died in poverty in Harare, Zimbabwe. He was and continues to be celebrated as an iconoclast, the “enfant terrible” of African literature, and a cult figure with many acolytes across the globe. He was born in and formed by White-ruled Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe when independence was achieved in 1980) but was also deeply influenced by eight years in the United Kingdom and an immersion in European literature. The House of Hunger (1978) is Marechera’s most famous and impactful work. It is a stream-of-consciousness novella, published with nine other satellite stories, that is a semiautobiographical engagement with Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. The novella is simultaneously beautiful and brutal. The House of Hunger won the prestigious Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979, and Marechera disrupted the awards dinner by dressing in an eclectic costume and throwing plates at the chandeliers. The book and Marechera were so celebrated that there was a Channel Four production that combined a biographical study of Marechera, documenting his time in the United Kingdom and his return to an independent Zimbabwe in 1982, and a film rendering of The House of Hunger. Unfortunately, there was an acrimonious break with the White South African filmmaker, Chris Austin. After his abrupt departure from the film project, Marechera stayed in Zimbabwe until his death five years later.

In England and Zimbabwe, he wrote in a range of genres: prose, poetry, plays, essays, and even children’s literature. After the initial success of The House of Hunger, Marechera found it frustratingly difficult to publish his intellectual and esoteric work. Three books were published while he was alive (The House of Hunger, Black Sunlight, and Mindblast); three were published posthumously by his literary executor, Flora Veit-Wild (The Black Insider, Cemetery of Mind, and Scrapiron Blues). All six of these books were published between 1978 and 1994, but Marechera’s work continues to exert influence and make deep impressions on readers, whether formally trained or not, whether African or not. In addition to The House of Hunger, in Marechera’s essay “The African Writer’s Experience of European Literature” (1987), he embraces the influence of European literature on his own writing—a fidelity that is evident in his work and criticized by readers who prefer African writing that contributes to nation-building rather than privileges introspection. His essay demonstrates the breadth of his reading and the multifarious texts—from across the globe—that influenced all of Marechera’s work and captures his resistance to narrow labels that define writing and writers. Marechera continues to generate creative, critical, and theoretical responses from a variety of artists and thinkers from a range of locations—geographical, social, and racial, such as Yvonne Vera, NoViolet Bulawayo, China Miéville, Comrade Fatso, Helon Habila, and many more.
The Multiple Missions of Community College
Authors: Jepsen Christopher , Soliz Adela
Published: June 2024

U.S. community colleges are extremely diverse; these public schools provide vocational awards, the first 2 years of a 4-year university degree, adult basic education, specialized training for companies, coursework for industry credentials, and many offerings in between. In other words, community colleges have many different missions. They serve students who, on average, have less advantaged educational and socioeconomic backgrounds than students attending 4-year institutions, yet community colleges receive less funding per student, on average.

Regarding remedial or developmental education, many studies estimating the effect of participating in traditional developmental education courses use regression discontinuity models to look at the population of students who barely fail placement exams, compared to those who barely pass. These studies find mixed results. Results are more promising for corequisite models where students take remedial classes alongside college-level classes.

Many community college students state that their goal is to transfer to a 4-year school and complete a bachelor’s degree, but only roughly one quarter achieve this goal. Although state articulation agreements aim to simplify the process of transferring, descriptive analyses of these programs suggest that they have at best modest effects on transferring and completing a bachelor’s degree. Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) programs aim to reduce the number of choices students face as they work through their community college courses. In the early 21st century, evaluations of these programs suggest that they raise bachelor’s degree receipt relative to students in majors or schools that do not offer ADTs, but more research is needed.

Despite low persistence rates, particularly in academic programs at community colleges, nearly all the awards offered by these institutions lead to increases, often sizable, in labor-market outcomes. Broadly speaking, the biggest gains are for the program with the most coursework, an associate’s degree, which typically requires 2 years of full-time coursework. At the same time, stackable credentials and non-credit credentials, awards that can sometimes be completed in under a year, often lead to increases of more than 10% in earnings and over 4 percentage points in employment. In contrast, certificates have mixed impacts on labor-market outcomes, although the results for employment are more promising than those for earnings.
Monopole Excitation and Nuclear Compressibility: Present and Future Perspectives
Authors: Zamora Juan Carlos , Giraud Simon
Published: June 2024

Isoscalar giant resonances are nuclear collective excitations associated with the oscillation in phase of protons and neutrons according to a certain multipolarity
L
. In particular, the isoscalar giant monopole resonance

(
L
=
0
)

is the strongest nuclear compression mode, and its excitation energy is directly related to the compression modulus for finite nuclei. Typically, microscopic calculations are utilized to establish a relationship between the experimental compression modulus and the nuclear incompressibility that is a crucial parameter of the equation of state (EOS) for nuclear matter. The incompressibility of nuclear matter has been determined with an accuracy of 10–20% using relativistic and non-relativistic microscopic models for describing the monopole distributions in 208Pb and 90Zr isotopes. However, the same theoretical models are not able to describe data for open-shell nuclei, such as those of tin and cadmium isotopes. In fact, only effective interactions with a softer nuclear-matter incompressibility are able to predict the centroid energy of monopole distributions for open-shell nuclei. A unified description of the monopole resonance in 208Pb and other open-shell nuclei remains unsolved from the theory side. Most of this uncertainty is due to poor knowledge of the symmetry energy, which is another essential component of the EOS of nuclear matter. Therefore, experimental data on isotopic chains covering a wide range of
N
:
Z
ratios, including neutron-deficient and neutron-rich nuclei, are of paramount importance for determining both the nuclear-matter incompressibility and the symmetry energy more precisely. Novel approaches using inverse kinematics have been developed to achieve giant resonance experiments with unstable nuclei. The active target and storage ring are potentially the most feasible methods for measuring giant resonances in nuclei far from stability. The combination of these techniques with high-intensity radioactive beams at new accelerator facilities will provide the means to explore the nuclear-matter properties of the most exotic nuclei.
The History and Future of Famine
Authors: de Waal Alex
Published: June 2024

Famines are shapeshifters. They have changed over human history and will continue to do so in the future. Potential causal elements of famine include food supply disruption, failure of market or welfare entitlements, and political agency that creates starvation. Famines have affected societies over the ages from prehistoric times, through ancient, medieval, and early modern agrarian societies, to the age of imperialism and the short 20th century of total war and totalitarianism. In the 21st century, calamitous famines that kill a million or more people have disappeared, but protracted, complex humanitarian emergencies persist. The immediate threat is posed by starvation crimes committed by armed actors at scale with impunity, and the longer-term threat is a state of permanent humanitarian emergency as governance and economic systems buckle under the pressures of the climate crisis and contested adaptations to it.
US Farm Employment and Farm Workers
Authors: Martin Philip , Rutledge Zachariah
Published: June 2024

The average employment of hired workers in US agriculture is about 1.5 million. Farm labor markets are significantly different from most other labor markets. For example, they are spread out over a wide geographic region, and the demand for labor depends upon a number of factors, including weather, wages, and the price of goods in some cases.

Due to the seasonality of agricultural production and job turnover, some 2.5 million people are employed for wages on US farms sometime during a typical year. The employment of hired farm workers is concentrated in three interrelated ways: by geography, commodity, and size of farm. The 10,000 largest fruit and berry, vegetable and melon, and horticultural specialty (FVH) farms in California, Washington, Florida, and Texas account for over half of US farm worker employment, including a third in California.

Two million farm workers, 80 percent of the total, are employed on crop farms. The National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS) finds that 70% of non-H-2A guest workers on US crop farms are Mexican-born men who have settled in one US place. Some 60 percent of these Mexican-born crop workers are unauthorized, making over 40 percent of non-H-2A crop workers unauthorized. If we consider all farm workers, including H-2A guest workers and hired workers employed in animal agriculture, the unauthorized share is lower, between 30 and 40 percent. Most settled Mexican-born farm workers have US-educated children who shun their parents’ seasonal farm jobs. According to US Census data, since the turn of the Great Recession, the non-citizen Mexican immigrant population has been declining, while the total number of Mexican immigrants started declining in 2016 (see Figure 1).
Edible Insects
Authors: Hunter Gina Louise
Published: June 2024

Insects have been an important part of the human diet from time immemorial. Although they are not a common food item in Western cultures, insects contribute to the traditional diets of many peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America where they are valued for their sustenance, taste, and medicinal properties. Research on edible insects includes historical and archeological investigations, ethnographic descriptions of insect foods in indigenous cultures, and studies of insect food farming, commercialization, and acceptability. Like other animals, insects are a source of protein and fat macronutrients and many vitamin and mineral micronutrients. Given an increasing global demand for sustainable protein, insects are a potential food resource for the future. Agricultural development experts, such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, suggest that farmed insects are environmentally sustainable because they offer high feed conversion efficiency, require less space, use less water, and need fewer chemical inputs than conventional livestock. Insects generally have a short life cycle, reproduce rapidly, and can subsist on a varied diet, sometimes including organic wastes and agricultural or industrial byproducts. Given that insects are not commonly eaten in Europe and Euro-America, much of the literature is written from the perspective of noninsect eaters on the potential and challenges of a novel or alternative food. Insect-based food items on the European, British, and American markets face regulatory challenges and lack of consumer acceptance.
Sufi Groups in North America: A History
Authors: Sparkes Jason Idriss
Published: June 2024

North America is home to an extraordinary diversity of Sufi groups. This diversity is especially great in Canada and the United States, largely because of policies that have encouraged immigration from every part of the globe, including the vast regions of Africa and Eurasia where Sufism historically emerged. These liberal immigration policies, which began in the 1960s, opened the way for immigrants and foreign students to establish North American branches of Sufi groups from their countries of origin. It also allowed them to interact with Muslims and non-Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds, including the North American descendants of Western Europeans and Africans. New Sufi groups as well as groups partly influenced by Sufism were born from this interaction. These groups have evolved as a diverse minority within an equally diverse Muslim minority in Canada and the United States. As a result, each group tends to be relatively small and includes between a handful and a few thousand adherents. In Central America and the Caribbean Islands, there are fewer groups despite the presence of Sufism, which dates to the early colonial period.

To understand contemporary expressions of Sufism in North America, it is necessary to examine the contested role of Sufism within the global Islamic tradition. For example, it is useful to consider how Sufis, who consider themselves specialists of the inner or mystical dimension of Islam, have engaged with specialists of other dimensions, such as jurisprudence and doctrine. It is also helpful to examine how Orientalist discourses associated with Western colonialism depict antinomian currents within Sufism as representing a universalist spirituality, closer to Christianity than the purported legalism of Islam.

An understanding of this broader history is crucial to situate the history of Sufism in North America, from the 15th century until the early 21st century. Since the early colonial period, Sufis have been present in the Americas, mostly as a marginalized and discrete population among the millions of African victims of the transatlantic slave trade. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, practitioners of Sufism in North America tended to be largely of Asian origin. Since the mid-20th century , Sufi groups with adherents of extremely diverse origins have developed in a variety of ways, including universalist groups composed of both Muslims and non-Muslims and ethnically homogeneous groups of Muslims operating discretely within local mosques and immigrant communities.
The Status of Minorities under Islamic Law
Authors: Emon Anver
Published: June 2024

How are non-Muslims treated under Islamic law? “Tolerance” features as a key trope in contemporary writing on the topic in both the scholarly and popular literature. Writers are keen to determine whether one can assess whether “Islam” is tolerant of non-Muslims or not. An exploration of the limits of “tolerance” as an analytic device by illuminating the various rationales that informed juristic conclusions of law on non-Muslims shows that while some rules certainly evince a discriminatory logic, others are more accommodative and inclusive.
Brazil’s Sanctuaries and Sculpture: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Ouro Preto
Authors: Bastos Rodrigo
Published: June 2024

Some of the main works of religious architecture and sculpture were produced in three important Brazilian cities. All of them were founded in the so-called colonial period, that is, as a territory dominated by the Portuguese Empire. All of them have a very rich historical and artistic heritage, constituting an expressive sample of religious art produced in Brazilian territory. The historical aspects of some of these main works emphasize the theoretical, artistic, and conceptual assumptions contemporary to the period of their construction.
Mercenaries and Filibusters in 19th-Century Latin America
Authors: Cabrera Geserick Marco
Published: June 2024

Private armies, especially those composed of either mercenaries or filibusters, have been instrumental in the establishment of the modern nation-states of Latin America and have affected national identities and territorial boundaries throughout the region. During the wars of Latin American independence, mercenaries participated in both the Spanish and insurgent armies. Spain incorporated mercenary units in its ranks, including the Irish-only Irlanda regiment, which saw action in Venezuela. On the patriotic side, Simón Bolívar also used foreign mercenaries in his Irish and British Legions. In contrast, filibusters threatened Spanish territories in North America and Latin American nations, unwillingly serving to promote state consolidation as a reaction. Spanish Florida and Texas became the locus for independent private armies hoping to carve out separate kingdoms within Spanish domains. Some filibuster invasions were used as spearheads for diplomatic and military initiatives by the government of the United States to annex Spanish territory. The Texas Revolution (1835–1836), largely the accomplishment of private military intruders, is considered by some scholars as the largest filibuster expedition ever organized. Mexico, Cuba, and Central America were especially frequent targets for filibuster expeditions during the middle of the 19th century. William Walker became the most infamous filibuster, provoking a war in Central America that involved several nations from 1855 to 1857. Though filibusters had diverse motives for breaking their country’s and international law, they often invoked revolutionary ideals such as republicanism, freedom, and democracy to justify their military actions. They often cited the expansionist doctrine of Manifest Destiny to make their case, while US politicians and newspapers supportive of filibustering adventures frequently invoked the Monroe Doctrine to rationalize filibuster attacks and threats against Latin American territory.
The Impact of Language Contact on North Germanic
Authors: Höder Steffen
Published: June 2024

North Germanic has been in constant contact with other languages since prehistoric times. Early contact scenarios include the contact with Uralic languages within Scandinavia itself. Increasing contact with Central Europe from the Early Middle Ages onward entailed the spread of a wider range of linguistic innovations from (or through) Romance and West Germanic languages, while few traces of the Viking Age expansion are found in the lexicon. However, the most significant contact-related changes are due to the Late Medieval contacts between Continental Scandinavian and Latin as well as, crucially, Middle Low German. The increasing integration of Scandinavia into political, economic, and cultural networks within Europe, most notably the influence of the Hanseatic League, resulted in a high number of lexical loans and grammatical innovations but also contributed to a massive simplification of the inflectional system of Continental Scandinavian. From the Early Modern period onward, the Nordic languages went through the same type of contact (with Latin, German, French, and English in particular) as other European languages. A specifically Nordic trait is the linguistic hegemony of Danish which had a considerable impact on the development of the West Nordic languages. In addition, several waves of immigration have resulted in contact-related innovations and the emergence of a new type of urban varieties.
Agreement in the Romance Languages
Authors: Loporcaro Michele
Published: June 2024

This article examines agreement in the Romance languages in light of current studies and with the toolkit of linguistic typology. I will first introduce the definition of agreement assumed in the article, demonstrating its superiority to the alternatives proposed in the literature, and then move on to consider empirical data from all branches of the Romance language family, illustrating how agreement works in all its components. This will require dealing with, in order, the controllers and targets of agreement, then the morphosyntactic features that are active in the agreement rules, then the conditions that may constrain those rules, and finally the syntactic domains in which agreement takes place. In the first half of this overview, the focus will be mainly on what is common to all Romance languages, while in the second half I will concentrate on the phenomena of agreement that are remarkable, in that they are rare and/or unexpected, from a crosslinguistic perspective. It will become clear from this survey that there is no dearth of such unusual phenomena, and that the Romance language family, especially through its lesser-known nonstandard local vernaculars (which will be treated here with equal dignity to the major literary languages), holds in store considerable richness that must be taken into serious consideration by any language typologist interested in agreement.
Clitic Doubling in the Romance Languages
Authors: Poletto Cecilia , Pinzin Francesco
Published: June 2024

The phenomenon of clitic doubling is very widespread in different forms in the Romance languages. It can be defined as the double occurrence of the same constituent twice inside a single clausal unit; one of the two is represented by a clitic while the other has the properties of a whole phrase. It can target essentially all arguments of the verb and is often sensitive to the semantic/pragmatic properties (like definiteness/specificity, topicality, animacy) of the phrasal doublee so that XPs with these properties are more frequently doubled than XPs that do not have them, although there are languages in which doubling covers the whole spectrum of a given argument. A robust empirical generalization is that direct objects can be doubled only in languages that also double indirect objects, while there is no relation with subject clitic doubling.
For Whose Sake and Benefit? A Critical Analysis of Leading International Treaty Proposals to Protect Nonhuman Animals
Authors: Blattner Charlotte E , Tselepy Jessica
Published: June 2024

Despite the considerable expansion of international law into virtually all areas of modern life, to date there is no international treaty in force to protect the interests of nonhuman animals. The lack of regulation and coordination at the international level comes at a considerable cost for animals, first and foremost, but also for humans, as the recent pandemic and ongoing climate crisis emphatically demonstrate. Proposals to fill this gap have proliferated in recent years, notably with the UN Convention on Animal Health and Protection (UNCAHP) and the Convention on Animal Protection for Public Health, Animal Welfare, and the Environment (CAP). This Article is the first of its kind to provide a critical legal analysis of the two draft treaties in order to assess their likely impacts on nonhuman animals, but also on human groups affected by their consequences. It first analyzes the draft treaties’ preambular language and broader setting to determine whether the treaties are embedded in arguments about human health, environmental protection, or mitigation of climate change, or whether animals are identified as direct beneficiaries of the treaty, and what the promises and dangers of each of these approaches are. The Article then looks to the treaties’ operative clauses, uncovering two problematic dynamics of the bedrock principle of “unnecessary suffering”: First, the maintenance of anthropocentric interest prioritization; and, second, its likely promotion of “Western” ways of using animals and the concomitant framing of “non-Western” practices as “culturally backward” and “uncivilized.” The Article concludes by offering guidance on how a progressive treaty could succeed at advancing human and nonhuman animals’ interests in tandem.
Evaluating the Sysmex DI-60 Integrated Slide Processing System’s impact on hematology differential turnaround times and patient care: Real-world implementation experience in a large Veterans Affairs hospital
Authors: Lundgren Cory R
Published: June 2024

Objectives

This quality improvement study conducted at the Kansas City VA Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, investigated the Sysmex DI-60 Integrated Slide Processing System’s ability to improve hematology turnaround times when integrated into daily practices. It further addressed potential patient care factors associated with changes in turnaround times.

Methods

Three months of manual and Sysmex DI-60 patient data were examined between May 2022 and February 2023. White blood cell (WBC) ranges, turnaround times, working hours, and study months were analyzed using 2-tailed unpaired t testing and percentage change. The number of specimens in these categories was further analyzed using 2-tailed, 2-sample proportion testing.

Results

This quality improvement study indicated that the Sysmex DI-60 system produced a statistically significant reduction in turnaround times overall and for various ranges of WBCs plus work shifts. The most statistically significant improvement in turnaround times occurred for WBC concentrations less than 2.0 × 103/µL and concentrations within the reference range. In addition, the off shifts experienced a notable improvement in turnaround times.

Conclusions

The Sysmex DI-60 system substantially decreases turnaround times for differentials, thus potentially benefiting patient care by providing prompt results. It is possible that reducing turnaround times could expedite emergency department admissions and discharges as well as enhance care for the oncology department’s patients. It could also lead to more timely results for patients with false-positive flags by the Sysmex analyzer, which may also help with clinician decision-making.
Evidence-Based Holistic Approach to Supporting International Students’ English Language Proficiency Needs and Wellbeing: The Impact of Personalized Autonomous Learning
Authors: Kim Mira , Black Sharyn , Clifton Jemma
Published: June 2024

This study was conducted to investigate more efficient ways to support international students at the authors’ university, where a significant proportion of students speak English as an Additional Language (EAL). Recognizing limited success in holistic language development, the study assessed the impacts of a self-directed learning English course called Personalized English Language Enhancement (PELE) built from a Personalized Autonomous model of learning. Building on prior research that demonstrated the pedagogical efficacy of PELE (Kim 2023), the current study compared results from EAL students who did and did not take the course and analysed the relationships between students’ English self-efficacy and well-being. Results showed PELE benefitted students in various areas, often significantly more than non-PELE students. Improvements extended beyond language proficiency to social and self-directed learning skills and overall well-being. This study emphasizes a shift from treating language proficiency as a singular challenge to equipping students with multifaceted tools for enriched English learning, autonomy, and resilience.
Discovering genomic islands in unannotated bacterial genomes using sequence embedding
Authors: Banerjee Priyanka , Eulenstein Oliver , Friedberg Iddo
Published: June 2024

Motivation

Genomic islands (GEIs) are clusters of genes in bacterial genomes that are typically acquired by horizontal gene transfer. GEIs play a crucial role in the evolution of bacteria by rapidly introducing genetic diversity and thus helping them adapt to changing environments. Specifically of interest to human health, many GEIs contain pathogenicity and antimicrobial resistance genes. Detecting GEIs is, therefore, an important problem in biomedical and environmental research. There have been many previous studies for computationally identifying GEIs. Still, most of these studies rely on detecting anomalies in the unannotated nucleotide sequences or on a fixed set of known features on annotated nucleotide sequences.

Results

Here, we present TreasureIsland, which uses a new unsupervised representation of DNA sequences to predict GEIs. We developed a high-precision boundary detection method featuring an incremental fine-tuning of GEI borders, and we evaluated the accuracy of this framework using a new comprehensive reference dataset, Benbow. We show that TreasureIsland’s accuracy rivals other GEI predictors, enabling efficient and faster identification of GEIs in unannotated bacterial genomes.

Availability and implementation

TreasureIsland is available under an MIT license at: https://github.com/FriedbergLab/GenomicIslandPrediction.
A deep learning method to predict bacterial ADP-ribosyltransferase toxins
Authors: Zheng Dandan , Zhou Siyu , Chen Lihong , Pang Guansong , Yang Jian
Published: June 2024

Motivation

ADP-ribosylation is a critical modification involved in regulating diverse cellular processes, including chromatin structure regulation, RNA transcription, and cell death. Bacterial ADP-ribosyltransferase toxins (bARTTs) serve as potent virulence factors that orchestrate the manipulation of host cell functions to facilitate bacterial pathogenesis. Despite their pivotal role, the bioinformatic identification of novel bARTTs poses a formidable challenge due to limited verified data and the inherent sequence diversity among bARTT members.

Results

We proposed a deep learning-based model, ARTNet, specifically engineered to predict bARTTs from bacterial genomes. Initially, we introduced an effective data augmentation method to address the issue of data scarcity in training ARTNet. Subsequently, we employed a data optimization strategy by utilizing ART-related domain subsequences instead of the primary full sequences, thereby significantly enhancing the performance of ARTNet. ARTNet achieved a Matthew’s correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.9351 and an F1-score (macro) of 0.9666 on repeated independent test datasets, outperforming three other deep learning models and six traditional machine learning models in terms of time efficiency and accuracy. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrated the ability of ARTNet to predict novel bARTTs across domain superfamilies without sequence similarity. We anticipate that ARTNet will greatly facilitate the screening and identification of novel bARTTs from bacterial genomes.

Availability and implementation

ARTNet is publicly accessible at http://www.mgc.ac.cn/ARTNet/. The source code of ARTNet is freely available at https://github.com/zhengdd0422/ARTNet/.
Quantitative evaluation using carotid ultrasonography-based high-frame-rate vector flow imaging in patients with low carotid stenosis
Authors: Chen Jing , Zhang Luni , Gu Shiyao , Jia Caixia , Wu Rong
Published: June 2024

Objective

To explore the role of quantitative evaluation using carotid ultrasonography (US)-based high-frame-rate vector flow (V Flow) imaging in patients with low carotid stenosis.

Methods

This single-centre cross-sectional study consecutively recruited volunteers without carotid plaque and patients with low carotid stenosis from August 2022 to May 2023. Patients were divided into symptomatic and asymptomatic groups according to their head CT or MRI results within 8 weeks. All V Flow imaging examinations were performed using a Mindray Resona R9 US system. The wall shear stress (WSS) values, oscillatory shear index (OSI) values, and turbulence (Tur) indexes in the normal common carotid artery (CCA), normal carotid bifurcation (CB), and on the upstream and downstream surface of carotid plaque were measured. Pearson Chi-square test and Fisher exact test were used for counting data according to their type. For measurement data, independent sample t test and non-parametric rank sum test were used.

Results

The results proved that patients have higher WSS values and Tur indexes of CB than volunteers, and higher WSS values were detected on the surface of the plaques in symptomatic patients. What’s more, the downstream side of the plaque was more vulnerable to plaque rupture than the upstream side due to more dynamic blood flow.

Conclusion

Therefore, carotid US-based high-frame-rate V Flow imaging provides reliable mechanical biomarkers for assessing the haemodynamic change in patients with low stenosis. Our study may provide a new imaging tool for monitoring the progression of atherosclerosis and aiding the management of early atherosclerotic patients.

Advances in knowledge

Our study firstly investigated the difference of V Flow parameters on the surface of carotid plaques between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients with low carotid stenosis, which is expected to provide haemodynamic information and the mechanical basis for plaque rupture.
Do we empathize humanoid robots and humans in the same way? Behavioral and multimodal brain imaging investigations
Authors: Wu Taoyu , Zheng Huang , Zheng Guo , Huo Tengbin , Han Shihui
Published: June 2024

Humanoid robots have been designed to look more and more like humans to meet social demands. How do people empathize humanoid robots who look the same as but are essentially different from humans? We addressed this issue by examining subjective feelings, electrophysiological activities, and functional magnetic resonance imaging signals during perception of pain and neutral expressions of faces that were recognized as patients or humanoid robots. We found that healthy adults reported deceased feelings of understanding and sharing of humanoid robots’ compared to patients’ pain. Moreover, humanoid robot (vs. patient) identities reduced long-latency electrophysiological responses and blood oxygenation level–dependent signals in the left temporoparietal junction in response to pain (vs. neutral) expressions. Furthermore, we showed evidence that humanoid robot identities inhibited a causal input from the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex to the left temporoparietal junction, contrasting the opposite effect produced by patient identities. These results suggest a neural model of modulations of empathy by humanoid robot identity through interactions between the cognitive and affective empathy networks, which provides a neurocognitive basis for understanding human–robot interactions.
How do we treat severely prolapsed true ectopia cordis?
Authors: Masaki Naoki , Tatewaki Hideki , Sanada Takehiko , Sai Sadahiro
Published: June 2024

Ectopia cordis is an extremely rare condition where the heart displaces outside the thoracic cavity. Treating this, especially when accompanied by congenital heart diseases and severe protrusion, is challenging. Here, we present a case of successful treatment involving intracardiac repair and delayed sternal closure using local skin flaps.
Occurrence of premature battery depletion in a large multicentre registry of subcutaneous cardioverter-defibrillator patients
Authors: Wörmann Jonas , Strik Marc , Jurisic Stjepan , Stout Kara , Elrefai Mohamed , Becher Nina , Schaer Beat , van Stipdonk Antonius , Srinivasan Neil T , Ploux Sylvain , Breitenstein Alexander , Kron Jordana , Roberts Paul R , Toennis Tobias , Linz Dominik , Dulai Rajdip , Hermes-Laufer Julia , Koneru Jay , Erküner Ömer , Dittrich Sebastian , van den Bruck Jan-Hendrik , Schipper Jan-Hendrik , Sultan Arian , Rosenberger Kerstin D , Steven Daniel , Lüker Jakob
Published: June 2024

Aims

Subcutaneous implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (S-ICDs) have become established in preventing sudden cardiac death, with some advantages over transvenous defibrillator systems, including a lower incidence of lead failures. Despite technological advancements, S-ICD carriers may suffer from significant complications, such as premature battery depletion (PBD), that led to an advisory for nearly 40 000 patients. This multicentre study evaluated the incidence of PBD in a large set of S-ICD patients.

Methods and results

Data from patients implanted with S-ICD models A209 and A219 between October 2012 and July 2023 across nine centres in Europe and the USA were reviewed. Incidence and implications of PBD, defined as clinically observed sudden drop in battery longevity, were analysed and compared to PBD with the definition of battery depletion within 60 months. Prospectively collected clinical data were obtained retrospectively from medical records, device telemetry, and manufacturer reports. This registry is listed on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05713708). Of the 1112 S-ICD devices analysed, 547 (49.2%) were equipped with a potentially affected capacitor linked to PBD occurrence, currently under Food and Drug Administration advisory. The median follow-up time for all patients was 46 [inter-quartile range (IQR) 24–63] months. Clinically suspected PBD was observed in 159 (29.1%) of cases, with a median time to generator removal or replacement of 65 (IQR 55–72) months, indicative of significant deviations from expected battery lifespan. Manufacturer confirmation of PBD was made in 91.7% of devices returned for analysis. No cases of PBD were observed in devices that were not under advisory.

Conclusion

This manufacturer-independent analysis highlights a notable incidence of PBD in patients equipped with S-ICD models under advisory, and the rate of PBD in this study corresponds to the rate currently estimated by the manufacturer. To the best of our knowledge, this provides the largest contemporary peer-reviewed study cohort investigating the actual incidence of PBD in S-ICD patients. These findings emphasize the importance of post-market registries in collaboration between clinicians and the manufacturer to optimize safety and efficacy in S-ICD treatment.