bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Effect of biological and organic fertilizers on growth processes, productivity and quality of melon fruits under Southeastern Kazakhstan
Authors: Aitbayeva A T , Zorzhanov B D , Kossanov S U , Koshmagambetova M Zh , Balgabayeva R K
Published: June 2022

In Kazakhstan, melon growing is cultivated using chemical fertilizers. Organic production is not practiced where there being no research. Our country, possessing a great high-quality variety, can be the focus of world community attention as a producer and supplier of ecological melon. Besides economic interests, changeover from traditional methods of cultivation to biological one is of great importance in ecological aspect. Unregulated and too high agrochemicals application causes a number of negative consequences, upwards from soil pollution with severe salts to poisoning caused using low-quality products. The most popular and regulated elements of biological melon cultivation in production include organic fertilizers instead of chemical ones. Therefore, our research is aimed to study bioorganic fertilizers on melon culture under Southeastern Kazakhstan. Scientific experiments were held at the experimental sites of the «Fruit and Vegetable Research Institute» LLP. We experimented using classical research methods generally adopted in melon cultivation. The findings showed that bioorganic fertilizers improve the growth parameters and quality of melon culture, and increase fruit productivity. The yield growth on the studied options for control ranged from 31.23% to 41.71%, depending on the nutritional conditions.
Agrochemical characteristics of soils in the vicinity of the village of Mishkino, Mishkinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan
Authors: Minina N N , Makhmutov A R , Sinelnikova O V
Published: June 2022

The article is devoted to the analysis of the dynamics of the content of such important elements of fertility as phosphorus and potassium and the acidity of arable soils in the vicinity of the Mishkino Mishkinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan is determined. The data on the content of phosphorus and potassium and the determination of acidity in the soils of the Mishkinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan from 1976 to 2000 were compared. Studies on the phosphorus content in the soils of the Mishkino district conducted in 1976 showed an average level of phosphorus availability. Studies conducted in 1992 showed a slight increase in the availability of phosphorus in the soil. Studies in 2015 and 2020 showed a continuing trend of increasing the availability of phosphorus in the soil. Studies conducted to study the potassium content showed a fairly low potassium content in 1976. In 1992, in general, there were changes in the classes of security and in the amount of potassium content in the soil. Studies in 2015 and 2020 showed a steady trend towards an increase in potassium content in the soils of the district and the presence of soils only with an increased and high potassium content. Studies on soil acidity conducted in 1976 showed that the area of arable soils is mainly represented by medium-acid and slightly acidic soils. Studies in 1992 showed an increase in soil acidity. In the following years, the farm undertook methods of agrochemical effects on soils in order to reduce acidity. Research 2015. and 2020 showed a significant decrease in the acidity of arable soils. It has been established that due to the use of methods of rational nature management of territories, the area of agricultural soils with an average and increased content of mobile phosphorus and exchangeable potassium increases, processes of neutralization of strongly acidic soils occur.
Banach limits: extreme properties, invariance and the Fubini theorem
Authors: Avdeev N. N. , Semenov E. , Usachev A.
Published: June 2022

A Banach limit on the space of all bounded real sequences is a positive normalized linear functional that is invariant with respect to the shift. The paper studies such properties of Banach limits as multiplicativity and the validity of Fubini’s theorem. A subset of Banach limits invariant with respect to dilation operators is also treated.
On a Bellman function associated with the Chang–Wilson–Wolff theorem: a case study
Authors: Nazarov F. , Vasyunin V. , Volberg A.
Published: June 2022

The tail of distribution (i.e., the measure of the set

{
f
≥
x
}

\{f\ge x\}

) is estimated for those functions

f
f

whose dyadic square function is bounded by a given constant. In particular, an estimate following from the Chang–Wilson–Wolf theorem is slightly improved. The study of the Bellman function corresponding to the problem reveals a curious structure of this function: it has jumps of the first derivative at a dense subset of the interval

[
0
,
1
]

[0,1]

(where it is calculated exactly), but it is of

C
∞

C^\infty

-class for

x
>

3

x>\sqrt 3

(where it is calculated up to a multiplicative constant).

An unusual feature of the paper consists of the usage of computer calculations in the proof. Nevertheless, all the proofs are quite rigorous, since only the integer arithmetic was assigned to a computer.
Weighted string equation where the weight is a noncompact multiplier: continuous spectrum and eigenvalues
Authors: Sharov E. B. , Sheipak I.
Published: June 2022

The oscillation equation for a singular string with discrete weight generated by a self-similar

n
n

-link multiplier in the Sobolev space with a negative smoothness index is considered. It is shown that in the case of a noncompact multiplier, the string problem is equivalent to the spectral problem for an

(
n
−
1
)

(n-1)

-periodic Jacobi matrix. In the case of

n
=
3

n=3

, a complete description of the spectrum of the problem is given, and a criterion for emergence of an eigenvalue in a gap of the continuous spectrum is obtained.
Improving biomedical named entity recognition by dynamic caching inter-sentence information
Authors: Tong Yiqi , Zhuang Fuzhen , Zhang Huajie , Fang Chuyu , Zhao Yu , Wang Deqing , Zhu Hengshu , Ni Bin
Published: June 2022

Motivation

Biomedical Named Entity Recognition (BioNER) aims to identify biomedical domain-specific entities (e.g. gene, chemical and disease) from unstructured texts. Despite deep learning-based methods for BioNER achieving satisfactory results, there is still much room for improvement. Firstly, most existing methods use independent sentences as training units and ignore inter-sentence context, which usually leads to the labeling inconsistency problem. Secondly, previous document-level BioNER works have approved that the inter-sentence information is essential, but what information should be regarded as context remains ambiguous. Moreover, there are still few pre-training-based BioNER models that have introduced inter-sentence information. Hence, we propose a cache-based inter-sentence model called BioNER-Cache to alleviate the aforementioned problems.

Results

We propose a simple but effective dynamic caching module to capture inter-sentence information for BioNER. Specifically, the cache stores recent hidden representations constrained by predefined caching rules. And the model uses a query-and-read mechanism to retrieve similar historical records from the cache as the local context. Then, an attention-based gated network is adopted to generate context-related features with BioBERT. To dynamically update the cache, we design a scoring function and implement a multi-task approach to jointly train our model. We build a comprehensive benchmark on four biomedical datasets to evaluate the model performance fairly. Finally, extensive experiments clearly validate the superiority of our proposed BioNER-Cache compared with various state-of-the-art intra-sentence and inter-sentence baselines.

Availabilityand implementation

Code will be available at https://github.com/zgzjdx/BioNER-Cache.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
6-Sulfo LacNAc monocytes are quantitatively and functionally disturbed in systemic sclerosis patients
Authors: Ricard Laure , Eshagh Déborah , Siblany Lama , de Vassoigne Frédéric , Malard Florent , Laurent Charlotte , Beurier Pauline , Jachiet Vincent , Rivière Sébastien , Fain Olivier , Mohty Mohamad , Gaugler Béatrice , Mekinian Arsène
Published: June 2022

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease characterized by fibrosis, microangiopathy, and autoantibodies. We previously reported that circulating follicular helper T (cTfh) cells are increased in SSc and induce plasmablast differentiation. However, mechanisms leading to cTfh cell expansion and activation in SSc remain to be established. Tfh cells require IL-12 for their expansion and differentiation. 6-Sulfo LacNAc monocytes (slanMo), a subset of monocytes, have a higher capacity to produce IL-12 and to induce CD4+ T cell proliferation in comparison with dendritic cells (DC) or classical monocytes. The aim of this study was to perform a quantitative and functional analysis of monocytes and DC and to correlate them with cTfh cell expansion and clinical manifestations in SSc. Using flow cytometry, we analyzed different monocyte subsets including slanMo and DC from 36 SSc patients and 26 healthy controls (HC). In vitro culture experiments of sorted slanMo were performed for functional analysis and cytokine production. We observed that slanMo, intermediate and non-classical monocytes were increased in SSc in comparison with HC. Furthermore, the increase in slanMo cells was more potent in patients with diffuse SSc. We observed a significant positive correlation between slanMo and cTfh cell levels in SSc patients but not in HC. Other monocyte subsets did not correlate with cTfh cell expansion. In addition, we observed that in vitro, slanMo cells from SSc patients produced less IL-12 than slanMo from HC. SlanMo are increased in SSc and may participate in the activation of cTfh cells in SSc.
The Evolutionary History of Peptidases Involved in the Processing of Organelle-Targeting Peptides
Authors: Garrido Clotilde , Wollman Francis-André , Lafontaine Ingrid
Published: June 2022

Most of the proteins present in mitochondria and chloroplasts, the organelles acquired via endosymbiotic events, are encoded in the nucleus and translated into the cytosol. Most of such nuclear-encoded proteins are specifically recognized via an N-terminal-encoded targeting peptide (TP) and imported into the organelles via a translocon machinery. Once imported, the TP is degraded by a succession of cleavage steps ensured by dedicated peptidases. Here, we retrace the evolution of the families of the mitochondrial processing peptidase (MPP), stromal processing peptidase (SPP), presequence protease (PreP), and organellar oligo-peptidase (OOP) that play a central role in TP processing and degradation across the tree of life. Their bacterial distributions are widespread but patchy, revealing unsurprisingly complex history of lateral transfers among bacteria. We provide evidence for the eukaryotic acquisition of MPP, OOP, and PreP by lateral gene transfers from bacteria at the time of the mitochondrial endosymbiosis. We show that the acquisition of SPP and of a second copy of OOP and PreP at the time of the chloroplast endosymbiosis was followed by a differential loss of one PreP paralog in photosynthetic eukaryotes. We identified some contrasting sequence conservations between bacterial and eukaryotic homologs that could reflect differences in the functional context of their peptidase activity. The close vicinity of the eukaryotic peptidases MPP and OOP to those of several bacterial pathogens, showing antimicrobial resistance, supports a scenario where such bacteria were instrumental in the establishment of the proteolytic pathway for TP degradation in organelles. The evidence for their role in the acquisition of PreP is weaker, and none is observed for SPP, although it cannot be excluded by the present study.
Uncertainty quantification for regularized inversion of electromagnetic geophysical data—Part I: motivation and theory
Authors: Blatter Daniel , Morzfeld Matthias , Key Kerry , Constable Steven
Published: June 2022

We present a method for computing a meaningful uncertainty quantification (UQ) for regularized inversion of electromagnetic (EM) geophysical data that combines the machineries of regularized inversion and Bayesian sampling with a ‘randomize-then-optimize’ (RTO) approach. The RTO procedure is to perturb the canonical objective function in such a way that the minimizers of the perturbations closely follow a Bayesian posterior distribution. In practice, this means that we can compute UQ for a regularized inversion by running standard inversion/optimization algorithms in a parallel for-loop with only minor modification of existing codes. Our work is split into two parts. In Part I, we review RTO and extend the methodology to estimate the regularization penalty weight on the fly, not unlike in the Occam inversion. We call the resulting algorithm the RTO-TKO and explain that it samples from a biased distribution which we numerically demonstrate to be nearby the Bayesian posterior distribution. In return for accepting this small bias, the advantage of RTO-TKO over asymptotically unbiased samplers is that it significantly accelerates convergence and leverages computational parallelism, which makes it highly scalable to 2-D and 3-D EM problems. In Part II, we showcase the versatility and computational efficiency of RTO-TKO and apply it to a variety of EM inversions in 1-D and 2-D, carefully comparing the RTO-TKO results to established UQ estimates using other methods. We further investigate scalability to 3-D, and discuss the influence of prior assumptions and model parametrizations on the UQ.
Effects of fracture-surface geometries on the third-order acoustoelastic constants for aligned fluid-saturated fractures
Authors: Fu Bo-Ye , Fu Li-Yun , Han Tongcheng , Deng Wubing
Published: June 2022

The pressure sensitivity of stiffness in fractured rocks is closely related to fracture-surface geometries. The resulting stress-dependence of stiffness can be represented by the third-order elastic constants (3oECs). Fracture surfaces are generally rough at various scales, and can significantly affect the 3oECs of pre-stressed fractures as well as the wave-induced fluid flow (WIFF) induced by the Biot slow P-wave between fractures and the background medium. The WIFF usually depends on the fracture width relative to the slow P-wavelength and the fracture-surface roughness. We generate various fracture-surface geometries at different scales of random roughnesses parametrized by the surface standard deviation (SSD) of fracture-surface heights. With theoretical analyses and numerical simulations, we investigate the effect of fracture-surface geometries on the stress- and frequency-dependent stiffness through the 3oECs for pre-stressed rocks with aligned fractures. For the elastic wave in the low-frequency regime of Biot theory with the fracture scale much less than the wavelength, the induced WIFF significantly enhances the effect of fracture-surface geometries on the 3oECs and P- and S-wave moduli. The stiffness of fractured rocks increases with increasing SSDs, yielding a high sensitivity to pre-stresses. Toward the high-frequency limit, however, the fluid diffusion between fractures and the porous background decreases, which reduces the influence of fracture-surface roughnesses with the 3oECs much less than that in the low-frequency regime. The resulting P-wave modulus of aligned fluid-saturated fractures approximates to the background value.
Bidirectional Relationships between Testosterone and Aggression: A Critical Analysis of Four Predictions
Authors: George Elizabeth M , Rosvall Kimberly A
Published: June 2022

Experimentally elevated testosterone (T) often leads to enhanced aggression, with examples across many different species, including both males and females. Indeed, the relationship between T and aggression is among the most well-studied and fruitful areas of research at the intersection of behavioral ecology and endocrinology. This relationship is also hypothesized to be bidirectional (i.e., T influences aggression, and aggression influences T), leading to four key predictions: (1) Individuals with higher T levels are more aggressive than individuals with lower T. (2) Seasonal changes in aggression mirror seasonal changes in T secretion. (3) Aggressive territorial interactions stimulate increased T secretion. (4) Temporary elevations in T temporarily increase aggressiveness. These predictions cover a range of timescales, from a single snapshot in time, to rapid fluctuations, and to changes over seasonal timescales. Adding further complexity, most predictions can also be addressed by comparing among individuals or with repeated sampling within individuals. In our review, we explore how the spectrum of results across predictions shapes our understanding of the relationship between T and aggression. In all cases, we can find examples of results that do not support the initial predictions. In particular, we find that Predictions 1–3 have been tested frequently, especially using an among-individual approach. We find qualitative support for all three predictions, though there are also many studies that do not support Predictions 1 and 3 in particular. Prediction 4, on the other hand, is something that we identify as a core underlying assumption of past work on the topic, but one that has rarely been directly tested. We propose that when relationships between T and aggression are individual-specific or condition-dependent, then positive correlations between the two variables may be obscured or reversed. In essence, even though T can influence aggression, many assumed or predicted relationships between the two variables may not manifest. Moving forward, we urge greater attention to understanding how and why it is that these bidirectional relationships between T and aggression may vary among timescales and among individuals. In doing so, we will move toward a deeper understanding on the role of hormones in behavioral adaptation.
Wearable Sensor-Based Detection of Influenza in Presymptomatic and Asymptomatic Individuals
Authors: Temple Dorota S , Hegarty-Craver Meghan , Furberg Robert D , Preble Edward A , Bergstrom Emma , Gardener Zoe , Dayananda Pete , Taylor Lydia , Lemm Nana-Marie , Papargyris Loukas , McClain Micah T , Nicholson Bradly P , Bowie Aleah , Miggs Maria , Petzold Elizabeth , Woods Christopher W , Chiu Christopher , Gilchrist Kristin H
Published: June 2022

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for early detection of viral infections in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals to allow for timely clinical management and public health interventions.

Methods

Twenty healthy adults were challenged with an influenza A (H3N2) virus and prospectively monitored from 7 days before through 10 days after inoculation, using wearable electrocardiogram and physical activity sensors. This framework allowed for responses to be accurately referenced to the infection event. For each participant, we trained a semisupervised multivariable anomaly detection model on data acquired before inoculation and used it to classify the postinoculation dataset.

Results

Inoculation with this challenge virus was well-tolerated with an infection rate of 85%. With the model classification threshold set so that no alarms were recorded in the 170 healthy days recorded, the algorithm correctly identified 16 of 17 (94%) positive presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, on average 58 hours postinoculation and 23 hours before the symptom onset.

Conclusions

The data processing and modeling methodology show promise for the early detection of respiratory illness. The detection algorithm is compatible with data collected from smartwatches using optical techniques but needs to be validated in large heterogeneous cohorts in normal living conditions.

Clinical Trials Registration. NCT04204493.
Intelligent data-driven denoising based on texture complexity
Authors: Li Jingye , Liu Xiwu , Liu Yuwei , Huo Zhizhou
Published: June 2022

Denoising is considered to be the most frequently technique of seismic signal processing to improve signal-to-noise ratios measured and provide a precondition for subsequent processing. Deep learning (DL), a data-driven approach, is based on statistical techniques to extract features from large amounts of training datasets to learn extremely complex functions that effectively attenuate noise, rather than assumptions about linearity, low rank or sparsity. Most of the existing strategies use all available training datasets for network training, which ignores the contribution of different training data to the results. In this case, however, the generatively huge amount of training patches inevitably increases the memory and computational overburden of DL optimization. Targeting this issue, entropy sampling strategy based on the texture complexity of the seismic data is developed to extract training patches more efficiently, reducing the training datasets while guaranteeing prediction performance. Texture complexity equates to the validity of the seismic data, with regions of higher complexity representing areas of valid signal enrichment that are sampled with higher probability. Using the proposed strategy, we can use the training dataset more efficiently. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method for denoising based on the denoising convolutional auto-encoder network. Numerical illustrations on simulation models and two real surveys show that the proposed methodology has better denoising performance with higher accuracy and efficiency compared to the conventional methods.
Improved binary solution for the gamma-ray binary 1FGL J1018.6-5856
Authors: van Soelen B , Mc Keague S , Malyshev D , Chernyakova M , Komin N , Matchett N , Monageng I M
Published: June 2022

The gamma-ray binary 1FGL J1018.6-5856 consists of an O6V((f)) type star and an unknown compact object, and shows orbitally modulated emission from radio to very high energy gamma rays. The X-ray light curve shows a maximum around the same phase as the GeV emission, but also a secondary maximum between phases ϕ = 0.2 and 0.6. A clear solution to the binary system is important for understanding the emission mechanisms occurring within the system. In order to improve on the existing binary solution, we undertook radial velocity measurements of the optical companion using the Southern African Large Telescope, as well as analysed publicly available X-ray and GeV gamma-ray data. A search for periodicity in Fermi-LAT data found an orbital period of P = 16.5507 ± 0.0004 d. The best-fitting solution to the radial velocities, held at this new period, finds the system to be more eccentric than previous observations, e = 0.531 ± 0.033 with a longitude of periastron of 151.2 ± 5.1°, and a larger mass function f = 0.00432 ± 0.00077 M⊙. We propose that the peaks in the X-ray and gamma-ray light curves around phase 0 are due to the observation of the confined shock formed between the pulsar and stellar wind pointing towards the observer. The secondary increase or strong rapid variations of the X-ray flux at phases 0.25 to 0.75 is due to the interaction of multiple randomly oriented stellar wind clumps/pulsar wind interactions around apastron.
Mass segregation and dynamics of primordial binaries in star clusters with a radially anisotropic velocity distribution
Authors: Pavlík Václav , Vesperini Enrico
Published: June 2022

This paper is the third in a series investigating, by means of N-body simulations, the implications of an initial radially anisotropic velocity distribution on the dynamics of star clusters. Such a velocity distribution may be imprinted during a cluster’s early evolutionary stages and several observational studies have found examples of old globular clusters in which radial anisotropy is still present in the current velocity distribution. Here we focus on its influence on mass segregation and the dynamics of primordial binary stars (disruptions, ejections, and component exchanges). The larger fraction of stars on radial/highly eccentric orbits in the outer regions of anisotropic clusters lead to an enhancement in the dynamical interactions between inner and outer stars that affects both the process of mass segregation and the evolution of primordial binaries. The results of our simulations show that the time-scale of mass segregation of the initially anisotropic cluster is longer in the core and shorter in the outer regions, when compared to the initially isotropic system. The evolution of primordial binaries is also significantly affected by the initial velocity distribution and we find that the rate of disruptions, ejections, and exchange events affecting the primordial binaries in the anisotropic clusters is higher than in the isotropic ones.
Modelling magnetically channeled winds in 3D – I. Isothermal simulations of a magnetic O supergiant
Authors: Subramanian Sethupathy , Balsara Dinshaw S , ud-Doula Asif , Gagné Marc
Published: June 2022

In this paper we present the first set of 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations performed with the riemann geomesh code. We study the dynamics of the magnetically channeled winds of magnetic massive stars in full three dimensions using a code that is uniquely suited to spherical problems. Specifically, we perform isothermal simulations of a smooth wind on a rotating star with a tilted, initially dipolar field. We compare the mass-loss, angular momentum loss, and magnetospheric dynamics of a template star (with the properties that are reminiscent of the O4 supergiant ζ Pup) over a range of rotation rates, magnetic field strengths, and magnetic tilt angles. The simulations are run up to a quasi-steady state and the results are observed to be consistent with the existing literature, showing the episodic centrifugal breakout events of the mass outflow, confined by the magnetic field loops that form the closed magnetosphere of the star. The catalogued results provide perspective on how angular-momentum loss varies for different configurations of rotation rate, magnetic field strength, and large magnetic tilt angles. In agreement with previous 2D MHD studies, we find that high magnetic confinement reduces the overall mass-loss rate, and higher rotation increases the mass-loss rate. This and future studies will be used to estimate the angular-momentum evolution, spin-down time, and mass-loss evolution of magnetic massive stars as a function of magnetic field strength, rotation rate, and dipole tilt.
Music-Assisted Reminiscence Therapy with Older Adults: Feasibility, Acceptability, and Outcomes
Authors: Engelbrecht Romy , Bhar Sunil , Ciorciari Joseph
Published: June 2022

Reminiscence therapy (RT) is often used in music therapy; however, it remains unclear how music can be integrated within this therapy. This pilot study aimed to contrast the user experience and acceptability of RT with and without music. Eight older adults experiencing symptoms of anxiety and/or depression were randomly allocated to a single session of either verbal RT (VRT) or music-assisted RT (MRT). Pre- and post-measures of affect (Positive and Negative Affect Scale) and memory (Memory Experience Questionnaire, Short Form) were administered to compare VRT and MRT, followed by a brief semi-structured interview to understand the participants’ experiences and level of satisfaction. Interviews were qualitatively analyzed using an inductive coding approach. Two MRT protocols were also delivered to examine different ways of embedding music into RT and compared using qualitative interview data. Participants reported that VRT and MRT were equally acceptable and well tolerated. All participants completed the VRT or MRT session. Participants were able to identify a song to listen to in both MRT protocols and found both acceptable. A pre–post pattern of improvement was observed for affect following VRT, and particularly MRT, suggesting both as promising interventions. The high treatment fidelity achieved in this study indicates that the interventions can be successfully implemented with this population. MRT resulted in higher scores on memory experience characteristics, such as vividness, coherence, and accessibility, and, therefore, may provide changes above and beyond VRT for older people experiencing psychological distress, suggesting that large-scale clinical trials are warranted.
Information Processing in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Authors: Ehlers Anke , Ehring Thomas , Wittekind Charlotte E. , Kleim Birgit
Published: June 2022

The chapter reviews the contribution of information processing models to understanding the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Individual differences in cognitive processing during the trauma and basic memory mechanisms, such as priming and associative learning, may help explain why people with PTSD involuntarily reexperience parts of the trauma in a wide range of situations. Individual differences in how people remember traumatic events may influence the likelihood of developing PTSD. Attentional bias to trauma-related cues and threatening interpretations of the trauma or its aftermath help explain why people with PTSD have anxiety symptoms although the trauma is over and the actual threat lies in the past. Cognitive strategies people use to deal with memories of the trauma, such as effortful suppression of trauma memories and rumination, help explain why some develop chronic PTSD whereas many recover from trauma. Directions for future research are outlined.
Thinking about Religious Space
Authors: Kilde Jeanne Halgren
Published: June 2022

This handbook asks the question, How do we understand religious spaces? It brings together authors from several disciplines to write on specific spaces around the world and across time, and demonstrates how contemporary innovations in the study of religious space are reshaping the study of religion itself. The overarching principle that grows from this collection is that religious space plays a constitutive role in religion and religious experience. This chapter outlines these goals and themes and contextualizes them in two ways, creating a scaffolding on which readers may build their knowledge as they read individual chapters. The first context is the historical development of the scholarly study of religious space. The second is a four-part typology of the approaches to religious space that have developed since the mid-twentieth century. The chapter ends with a discussion of themes that cut across the volume’s chapters and a call for cross-disciplinary reading and enrichment.
Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Religious Spaces in Mesoamerica
Authors: Woodfill Brent K. S.
Published: June 2022

For ancient and contemporary Indigenous populations in Mexico and northern Central America, the landscape is populated by living beings who exert real authority over the people who depend on them. Mountains, caves, springs, and other geological idiosyncrasies are named individuals with drives, desires, and personalities, and their human neighbors need to actively maintain a relationship with them through ceremonies and gift-giving. Sacred places are therefore persons in Mesoamerica and the recipients of ritual events, not simply stages where events occur. Since continued access to these beings is an essential component of nearly every aspect of well-being, they become central to local identity and often become a tool of conquest and resistance. Rival states, the Spanish empire, and modern corporations, intentionally or not, have taken over these places, forcing locals to submit to their authority to be able to access them. But they also become the focus of independence movements.
Religious Spaces as Tourist Sites in Ghana
Authors: Nsiah Alice Matilda
Published: June 2022

This chapter discusses religious spaces at tourist sites in Ghana. It identifies a deity called Anyaman in Antoa, a village near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, that manifested and inhabited a river in a thick forest grove. The chapter argues that the presence of the deity has made the groove intrinsically sacred, popular, and rich. It then examines the history and roles of the first Christian churches, located in Elmina Castle, which became extrinsically sacred by consecration. The castle made the churches popular and rich, and it both sacralized and desacralized them in history. The chapter concludes that spatial location may function together with language, culture, tradition, and ideology to enhance the profound religious experiences of worshipers or may create fear, intimidation, and repulsion that may block the opportunity for such experiences.
Form and Function in the Ancient Synagogue
Authors: Chiat Marilyn J.
Published: June 2022

Since the first excavations of ancient synagogues began in the Galilee in the early decades of the twentieth century, scholars have sought to understand how the form, or plan, of these building relates to their function. The question became more complex as additional synagogue sites were uncovered, both in modern Israel and the ancient Diaspora, which revealed a diversity in form that could not be attributed to an evolutionary development over time. This chapter surveys seven excavated synagogue sites that illustrate these diverse forms and the complexities scholars confront as they search for the various functions that may have occurred in them and offers provisional answers about this relationship.
Corpus Approaches to Orchestration
Authors: Chon Song Hui
Published: June 2022

In Western art music, thousands of works have been composed for an orchestra. Despite the wealth of published treatises by composers on the instrument combination techniques, orchestration was regarded as an art of combining instruments that a person could achieve only after years of practice, rather than a system of techniques that can be scientifically studied. Numerous composers have written treatises on orchestration, but discussions of orchestration tend to be idiosyncratic rather than systematic. This chapter surveys research efforts to understand the practice of orchestration from the systematic perspective of corpus analysis. The development of technology, such as reliable automatic optical music recognition and conversion, will improve data collection and allow researchers to discover more meaningful patterns hidden in data, which eventually will illuminate changes through history as well as provide a scientific explanation of principles behind orchestration practices.
Late-Soviet Occulture
Authors: Engström Maria
Published: June 2022

This chapter examines Moscow’s esoteric underground from the 1960s to 1980s and the Iuzhinskii Circle of writer Iurii Mamleev (1931–2015). The participants in Mamleev’s salon, observers, and a small number of scholars often call Mamleev’s salon the center of Moscow’s “metaphysical” underground and of the esoteric revolution of the 1960s. According to Mamleev himself, Iuzhinskii was an attempted revival of the Silver Age, with its interest in the otherworldly and the esoteric. The writers and artists who frequented Mamleev’s salon were distinguished by their radical distrust of rationality and progress. The main characteristic of Iuzhinskii as a community was that its radical doubt encompassed not only the Soviet system, but the modern world in and of itself. Special attention is given to the work of translator and poet Evgenii Golovin (1938–2010) as the central figure in late-Soviet “occulture.” This chapter also traces the influence of the ideas and the everyday way of life of the Iuzhinskii Circle and Evgenii Golovin on the late-Soviet musical avant-garde and on the formation of the post-Soviet radical right-wing counterculture.
The Southern Cone Novel (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay)
Authors: Majstorovic Gorica
Published: June 2022

This chapter offers a survey of the Southern Cone novel. It follows a chronological approach, beginning with the key role the novel played in nation formation throughout the nineteenth century and ending with Bolaño, the digital revolution, and women’s writing. The second section addresses the Argentine novelas de la bolsa. The realist novel exposed social injustice, a tendency that continued in the 1920s and 1930s with regional novels by Güiraldes and Lynch (Argentina), Rojas (Chile), and Amorim (Uruguay). Arlt, the founder of the modern urban novel, is the subject of the fourth section, followed by the discussion of Boom (Cortázar, Donoso, and Roa Bastos). If women were sidestepped by the Boom, the final section does them justice by focusing on the Southern Cone novelists that are particularly prominent in the contemporary resurgence of Latin American literature written by women: Schweblin, Enriquez, Almada, Cabezón Cámara, Trías, Eltit, Meruane, and Fernández, among others.
The Indigenous Novel
Authors: Rocha Vivas Miguel
Published: June 2022

This chapter focuses on Los dolores de una raza: novela histórica de la vida real contemporánea del indio guajiro, one of the first novels in South America to be written by a self-described indigenous author. Since Los dolores de una raza is a forerunner novel that gives the reader an insider’s perspective on the internal conflicts and intercultural challenges of the Wayuu community in Colombia and Venezuela, this chapter examines related issues that are also present in other indigenous novels such as Sujuy k’iin/ Día sin mancha by the Yucatec Maya writer Marisol Ceh Moo, U yóok otilo’ob áak’ab/Danzas de la noche by the Yucatec Maya writer Isaac Esau Carrillo Can, Nu pama nzhogú/El eterno retorno by the Mazahua author Francisco Antonio León Cuervo, and Los ríos profundos by the Quechua Peruvian writer José María Arguedas.
Carlos Fuentes’s Narrative Universe
Authors: van Delden Maarten
Published: June 2022

This chapter examines three aspects of Carlos Fuentes’s narrative oeuvre. First, it explores his approach to the relationship between the individual and the community. Fuentes inherited the modernist and existentialist preoccupation with the isolated individual; at the same time, his novels focus persistently on the relationship between self and other, and on our obligations to our fellow human beings. Second, the chapter explores the representation of geographic space in Fuentes’s novels, zeroing in on the depiction of Mexico City, various other Mexican cities and regions, and foreign countries including the United States, Spain, and France. Third, the chapter looks at two key literary influences on Fuentes: Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda. From Paz, the Mexican novelist drew key ideas about Mexican history, culture, and identity. Neruda’s example led Fuentes to reflect on the relationship between the Latin American writer and the world to which he wished to give a voice.
Reportage, Testimony, and Biography in the Novels of Elena Poniatowska
Authors: Schuessler Michael K.
Published: June 2022

Elena Poniatowska is the author of more than fifty books that encompass almost every literary genre, including the novel and its various forms: semi-autobiographical, biographical, epistolary, and testimonial. Despite her wide-ranging literary production, Poniatowska is best known for the journalistic genres she reinvented in Mexico, evoking comparison with the New Journalism of the 1960s, such as the chronicle and the group testimonial. This chapter explores both her reportage and the literary devices she uses in her works of fiction through a chronological discussion and analysis of some of her most relevant works. It also includes citations from original sources -particularly journalistic- that have not been provided in past studies.
Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois
Authors: Clayton Obie , Hopps June Gary , Strickland Chris , Brown Shena Leverett
Published: June 2022

This chapter attempts to show how the traits of intellectual prowess, humanitarianism, the belief in social equality, and activism influenced and elevated the work of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois, forming the basis of an unconventional but consequential relationship. This chapter argues that their relationship was one characterized and confounded by a plethora of social and economic events tearing at the very fabric of the nation. These events spanned the apparent dimensions of race and gender in a society shifting from agrarian to industrial/urban dominance but were also accompanied by the turbulence of migration of children of former slaves, the tenacity of Jim Crow, the struggle of European immigrants, the influence of the progressives, the emergence of new social science disciplines (i.e., sociology, applied sociology, and social work), the campaign for women’s suffrage, and the beginning of African Americans’ first national social movement. It was against this backdrop that Addams and Du Bois forged their relationship: one based on intellectual and justice-based activities. We argue that these traits are essential for contemporary organizations to implement diversity and inclusion in their programmatic offerings successfully.
Blogging as Popular Scholarship
Authors: VanHandel Leigh
Published: June 2022

Blogging has become an increasingly common and popular way of disseminating information. However, academia has been slow to embrace blogging as a publication option, likely because blogging does not rely on the traditional process of peer review that other forms of academic scholarship require. This chapter discusses the rise of blogging as popular scholarship, highlighting blogs that have been successful at gaining a wide audience. It interrogates what constitutes scholarship, considering arguments both for and against considering blogs as scholarly writing. The chapter also discusses the potential advantages and disadvantages of blogging, suggests processes for evaluating blogs as scholarship in the hiring and reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process, and proposes how academia in general and the Society for Music Theory (SMT) in particular can provide support for blogging as an effective means of outreach and of making music theory research accessible to other scholars and the general public.
Paired-coil Measures
Authors: Hanajima Ritsuko , Di Lazzaro Vincenzo , Ugawa Yoshikazu
Published: June 2022

Effective connectivity between two areas of the human brain can be studied by testing the effects of conditioning stimulation at one site on the effect of test stimulation at another site by using two coils (dual coil, or paired-coil transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)). TMS over the bilateral primary motor cortices (M1) induces interhemispheric inhibition (IHI) and weak interhemispheric facilitation (IHF), largely mediated by the corpus callosum. IHI consists of short-interval (~ 10 ms) IHI (SIHI) and long-interval (~ 50 ms) IHI (LIHI). Abnormalities of IHI have been identified in a variety of brain disorders. The cerebello-dentato-thalamo-motor cortical connection is studied with a conditioning stimulus over one cerebellar hemisphere and a test stimulus over the contralateral M1 at interstimulus intervals of 5–8 ms (cerebellar brain inhibition (CBI)). CBI is caused by inhibitory Purkinje cell activation by the cerebellar stimulus, which inhibits the dentato-thalamo-M1 facilitatory projection. Abnormally reduced CBI is a hallmark of disorders of the cerebello-dentato-thalamo-motor cortical connection. Sensory inputs from peripheral nerve stimulation also affect M1 excitability in the form of short-latency afferent inhibition (SAI, interstimulus interval ~ 20 ms) and long-latency afferent inhibition (LAI, interstimulus interval ~ 200 ms). SAI is a marker of central cholinergic function. SAI is reduced in disorders with central cholinergic dysfunction, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The effect of community water fluoridation on dental caries in children and young people in England: an ecological study
Authors: Roberts David J , Massey Vicky , Morris John , Verlander Neville Q , Saei Ayoub , Young Nick , Makhani Semina , Wilcox David , Davies Gill , White Sandra , Leonardi Giovanni , Fletcher Tony , Newton John
Published: June 2022

Background

The protective effect of community water fluoridation (CWF) against dental caries may be modified by secular changes in health behaviour. We aimed to determine the contemporary association between fluoride in public water supplies (PWS) and dental caries indicators and inequalities in England.

Methods

We estimated exposure to CWF and PWS fluoride concentrations from national monitoring data, using Geographic Information Systems and water supply boundaries, categorizing mean period exposure into <0.1, 0.1–<0.2, 0.2–<0.4, 0.4–<0.7 and ≥0.7 mg/l. We used area-level health outcome and confounder data in multivariable regression models to determine the association between fluoride and caries outcomes and calculated preventive fractions using these coefficients.

Results

The odds of caries and of severe caries in 5-year-olds fell with increasing fluoride concentration in all SES quintiles (P < 0.001 to P = 0.003). There was a negative trend between increasing fluoride concentration and dental extractions (P < 0.001). Compared to PWS with <0.2 mg/l, CWF prevented 17% (95% confidence interval (CI): 5–27%) to 28% (95% CI: 24–32%) of caries (high-low SES) and 56% (95% CI: 25–74%) of dental extractions. The association between fluoride concentration and caries prevalence/severity varied by socioeconomic status (SES) (P < 0.001).

Conclusions

Exposure to fluoride in PWS appears highly protective against dental caries and reduces oral health inequalities.
Updated Living Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Controlled Trials of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells to Treat COVID-19: A Framework for Accelerated Synthesis of Trial Evidence for Rapid Approval—FASTER Approval
Authors: Kirkham Aidan M , Bailey Adrian J M , Monaghan Madeline , Shorr Risa , Lalu Manoj M , Fergusson Dean A , Allan David S
Published: June 2022

Background

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) may reduce mortality in patients with COVID-19; however, early evidence is based on few studies with marked interstudy heterogeneity. The second iteration of our living systematic review and meta-analysis evaluates a framework needed for synthesizing evidence from high-quality studies to accelerate consideration for approval.

Methods

A systematic search of the literature was conducted on November 15, 2021, to identify all English-language, full-text, and controlled clinical studies examining MSCs to treat COVID-19 (PROSPERO: CRD42021225431).

Findings

Eleven studies were identified (403 patients with severe and/or critical COVID-19, including 207 given MSCs and 196 controls). All 11 studies reported mortality and were pooled through random-effects meta-analysis. MSCs decreased relative risk of death at study endpoint (RR: 0.50 [95% CI, 0.34-0.75]) and RR of death at 28 days after treatment (0.19 [95% CI], 0.05-0.78) compared to controls. MSCs also decreased length of hospital stay (mean difference (MD: −3.97 days [95% CI, −6.09 to −1.85], n = 5 studies) and increased oxygenation levels at study endpoint compared to controls (MD: 105.62 mmHg O2 [95% CI, 73.9-137.3,], n = 3 studies). Only 2 of 11 studies reported on all International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) criteria for MSC characterization. Included randomized controlled trials were found to have some concerns (n = 2) to low (n = 4) risk of bias (RoB), while all non-randomized studies were found to have moderate (n = 5) RoB.

Interpretation

Our updated living systematic review concludes that MSCs can likely reduce mortality in patients with severe or critical COVID-19. A master protocol based on our Faster Approval framework appears necessary to facilitate the more accelerated accumulation of high-quality evidence that would reduce RoB, improve consistency in product characterization, and standardize outcome reporting.