bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Biofabrication of silver nanoparticles using Ostericum koreanum plant extract for treatment of allergic rhinitis in nursing care
Authors: Xiaoshang Gao , Murakonda Gopi Krishna , Mu Yingmei
Published: December 2020

In this work, the biofabrication of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) was carried out using leaf extract of Ostericum koreanum. The formation of crystalline Ag NPs was studied by using X-ray diffraction and UV–visible spectroscopy. HRTEM analysis confirmed the formation of spherical shaped Ag NPs with a mean size of 20 to 25 nm. FTIR spectroscopy confirmed the capping of Ag NPs with Ostericum koreanum extract polyphenols. On the other hand, Ag NPs were noticed to inhibit mRNA expressions and productions of inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin IL-6, (IL)-1β as well as tumor necrosis factor-α on phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate plus A23187 (PMACI) stimulated human mast cell lines (HMC-1 cells). Ag NPs abolished the nuclear factor-κB and caspase-1 activations in HMC-1 cells, and decreased the expressions of IκB kinaseβ (IKKβ) and receptor interacting protein2 (RIP2). Additionally, Ag NPs increased the expression of IKKβ and RIP2 alone in regular condition. Ag NPs also inhibited the phosphorylation of protein kinase regulated by extracellular signal and anti-dinitrophenyl IgE-activated passive cutaneous anaphylaxis. The results of this work revealed that the biofabricated Ag NPs successfully enhanced the allergic inflammatory reaction of the mast cell implying their use for potential treatment of allergic diseases mediated by mast cell.
Effects of cooling rate on the mechanical properties and precipitation behavior of carbides in H13 steel during quenching process
Authors: Ning Angang , Gao Rui , Yue Stephen , Guo Hanjie , Li Lingxia
Published: December 2020

The effects of cooling rate (CR) on the mechanical properties and precipitation behavior of carbides in H13 steel during quenching process were investigated. The retained austenite tends to be more unstable with increasing CRs, while the martensite increases gradually, based on XRD analyses and EBSD results. The values of hardness are increased, and the elongation along with impact energy is decreased, respectively, at higher CRs. Tensile strength remains above 2.0 GPa. Work hardening rates increase considerably in three samples, suggesting that transformation-induced plasticity effect may take place during the tensile test. Moreover, an increase in yield strength is observed when CR exceeds 15 K s−1, possibly due to a high volume fraction of martensite, decline in average grain size and precipitation of fine carbides. Types of the precipitates acquired were identified by electrolysis and XRD analyses. The results indicate the predominant existence of MC, M6C and M7C3, which are confirmed by SEM-EDS analyses and FactSage thermodynamic calculations. The size, volume and distribution of the carbides were also scrutinized under SEM. It is found that the volume fraction and size of the precipitates both decrease with increasing CRs. Based on these experimental data, an optimum CR for the quenching process could be determined to achieve the desired distribution of carbides, which in turn leads to the enhanced mechanical behaviors.
Judicial Behavior
Authors: Epstein Lee , Waterbury Nicholas W.
Published: December 2020

Once the sole province of U.S. scholars—and mostly political scientists at that—researchers throughout the world, drawing on history, economics, law, and psychology, are analyzing judicial behavior: why judges make the choices they do and what effect those choices have on society.

How the field moved from a modest, niche project of political scientists working in the mid-20th century to the powerhouse it has become makes for an interesting story, marked by several key developments along the way. One is certainly the influx of scholars and theories from other disciplines that have supplemented and challenged existing knowledge. Other developments include the growing interest in judging from a comparative perspective; the massive improvements in data acquisition through technological advancements; and, perhaps most importantly, the sheer number of topics that now fall under the rubric of “judicial behavior.”

Although the field has advanced markedly, much work remains. Many of the canonical theories of judicial behavior rest on the assumption that judges are rational, goal-oriented, actors. But decades’ worth of studies in social psychology, including experiments on judges, raise serious questions about the plausibility of this assumption. Should observational results converge with the experimental evidence, scholars must grapple with how to integrate insights from social psychology into the analysis of judicial behavior. On the empirical side, however notable the improvements in data infrastructure, most products ignore obvious objects of interest: the actual opinions produced by judges. Developing tools carefully calibrated to account for the unique ways judges develop and frame their work products presents yet another challenge. But it is one worth pursuing if only because of its potential to bring scholars closer to the goal of developing a fuller, more realistic conception of judicial behavior.
Youth- and Peer-Led Sex Education
Authors: Goldstein Alanna
Published: December 2020

Peer-led and youth-led sex education primarily involves young people teaching other young people about sex, sexuality, and sexual health. This approach gained in popularity during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s–1990s, as community organizations sought to address the unique sexual health needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth, many of whom had been underserved in traditional sex education spaces. Since then, peer-led and youth-led sex education pedagogies have been implemented by researchers, educators, and community organizations working across a range of sites around the globe. Peer-led and youth-led sex education generally draws on assumptions that young people are better situated than adults to talk to their peers about sexual health and/or to model positive sexual health behavior. However, some have noted that this perspective constructs young people as a homogenous group and ignores the ways in which sexuality and sexual health intersects with other social factors. Furthermore, there is a general lack of consensus across interventions around who constitutes a “peer” and what constitutes “peer-led” sex education, resulting in the development of interventions that at times tokenize young people, without engaging them in meaningful ways. As a result, evaluations of many peer- and youth-led sex education pedagogies suggest that even as these pedagogies improve young people’s knowledge of sexual health-related topics, they often don’t result in long-term sexual health behavior change. However, many evaluations of peer- and youth-led sex education pedagogies do suggest that acting as a peer educator is of immense benefit to those who take on this role, pointing to the need for program developers to reconsider what effective sex education pedagogy might look like. A “social ecology” or “systems thinking” approach to youth sexual health may provide alternative models for thinking about the future of peer-led and youth-led sex education. These approaches don’t task peer- and youth-led sex education with the sole responsibility of changing young people’s sexual health-related outcomes, but rather situate peer-led sex education as one potential node in the larger confluence of factors that shape and constrain young people’s sexual health.
DrugRepV: a compendium of repurposed drugs and chemicals targeting epidemic and pandemic viruses
Authors: Rajput Akanksha , Kumar Archit , Megha Kirti , Thakur Anamika , Kumar Manoj
Published: December 2020

Viruses are responsible for causing various epidemics and pandemics with a high mortality rate e.g. ongoing SARS-CoronaVirus-2 crisis. The discovery of novel antivirals remains a challenge but drug repurposing is emerging as a potential solution to develop antivirals in a cost-effective manner. In this regard, we collated the information of repurposed drugs tested for antiviral activity from literature and presented it in the form of a user-friendly web server named ‘DrugRepV’. The database contains 8485 entries (3448 unique) with biological, chemical, clinical and structural information of 23 viruses responsible to cause epidemics/pandemics. The database harbors browse and search options to explore the repurposed drug entries. The data can be explored by some important fields like drugs, viruses, drug targets, clinical trials, assays, etc. For summarizing the data, we provide overall statistics of the repurposed candidates. To make the database more informative, it is hyperlinked to various external repositories like DrugBank, PubChem, NCBI-Taxonomy, Clinicaltrials.gov, World Health Organization and many more. ‘DrugRepV’ database (https://bioinfo.imtech.res.in/manojk/drugrepv/) would be highly useful to the research community working to develop antivirals.
Deep neural networks for predicting restricted mean survival times
Authors: Zhao Lili
Published: December 2020

Restricted mean survival time (RMST) is a useful summary measurement of the time-to-event data, and it has attracted great attention for its straightforward clinical interpretation. In this article, I propose a deep neural network model that directly relates the RMST to its baseline covariates for simultaneous prediction of RSMT at multiple times. Each subject’s survival time is transformed into a series of jackknife pseudo observations and then used as quantitative response variables in a deep neural network model. By using the pseudo values, a complex survival analysis is reduced to a standard regression problem, which greatly simplifies the neural network construction. By jointly modeling RMST at multiple times, the neural network model gains prediction accuracy by information sharing across times. The proposed network model was evaluated by extensive simulation studies and was further illustrated on three real datasets. In real data analyses, I also used methods to open the blackbox by identifying subject-specific predictors and their importance in contributing to the risk prediction.

Availability and implementation

The source code is freely available at http://github.com/lilizhaoUM/DnnRMST.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Whole-Genome Sequencing of Procyonids Reveals Distinct Demographic Histories in Kinkajou (Potos flavus) and Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor)
Authors: Tsuchiya Mirian T N , Dikow Rebecca B , Koepfli Klaus-Peter , Frandsen Paul B , Rockwood Larry L , Maldonado Jesús E
Published: December 2020

Here, we present the initial comparison of the nuclear genomes of the North American raccoon (Procyon lotor) and the kinkajou (Potos flavus) based on draft assemblies. These two species encompass almost 21 Myr of evolutionary history within Procyonidae. Because assemblies greatly impact downstream results, such as gene prediction and annotation, we tested three de novo assembly strategies (implemented in ALLPATHS-LG, MaSuRCA, and Platanus), some of which are optimized for highly heterozygous genomes. We discovered significant variation in contig and scaffold N50 and L50 statistics and genome completeness depending on the de novo assembler used. We compared the performance of these three assembly algorithms in hopes that this study will aid others looking to improve the quality of existing draft genome assemblies even without additional sequence data. We also estimate the demographic histories of raccoons and kinkajous using the Pairwise Sequentially Markovian Coalescent and discuss the variation in population sizes with respect to climatic change during the Pleistocene, as well as aspects of their ecology and taxonomy. Our goal is to achieve a better understanding of the evolutionary history of procyonids and to create robust genomic resources for future studies regarding adaptive divergence and selection.
Teaching Family Nurse Practitioner Students to Provide Mental Health Care to Older Adults
Authors: Grando Victoria , Grando Roy
Published: December 2020

In recent years, FNPs have been challenged to deliver mental health services in the primary care setting. Over half of mental health services are provided in primary care, and one-quarter of all primary care patients have a mental disorder. Moreover, 20% of older adults have a mental or neurological disorder often not diagnosed. Nationally, it is estimated that 17% of older adults commit suicide, 15% have a mental condition, 11% have dementia, and 5% have a serious mental condition. There is a paucity of adequately prepared primary care providers trained in geropsychiatric treatment. A didactic course was developed to instruct FNP students in the skills needed to provide mental health treatment in primary care. We discuss mental illness in the context of culture to ensure that treatment is congruent with a patient’s unique cultural background and experiences. This shapes the patients’ beliefs and behaviors that influence the way they view their condition and what they perceive as acceptable solutions. We then go into detail about the common mental conditions that older adults exhibit. Through the case study method, students learn to identify the presenting problem, protocols for analyzing the case, which includes making differential diagnoses and a treatment plan including initial medications, non-medical treatments, and referral. Students are introduced to the DMS-5 to learn the criteria for mental health diagnosis with an emphasis on suicide, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, substance use disorders, and neurocognitive disorders. We have found that students most often misdiagnose neurocognitive disorders.
Caregiver Mental Health Outcomes: Are There Differences Across Generations?
Authors: Mage Susanna , Rath Laura , Wilber Kathleen , Gassoumis Zachary
Published: December 2020

Informal caregivers are a critical component of support for the rapidly aging population. Previous studies have addressed the effects of caregiving on mental health. However, they have not focused on differences among generational cohorts of caregivers of older adults, i.e., Millennial (born 1981-1996), Generation X (born 1965-1980), Baby Boomer (born 1946-1964), and Silent Generation (born 1928-1945). As the Millennial caregiver population grows in parallel with older adults and their increased needs, we must better understand Millennial responses to caregiving. Millennial caregivers provide a similar intensity of care as Baby Boomers in terms of hours per week but are more likely to be fully employed (40+ hours per week or more). We used caregiver data from the nationally representative Centers for Disease Control’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey from 2015-2017 to conduct negative binomial regression (n=50,745). Data analysis indicates that Millennial caregivers have an incidence rate ratio of 1.22 times more self-reported days of “stress, depression, and/or problems with emotions” compared to Generation X caregivers (p<0.01); 1.64 times compared to Baby Boomers (p<0.001); and 2.38 times compared to Silent Generation caregivers (p<0.001). Generational differences show that Millennial caregivers may have different needs than older generations of caregivers. Rather than assuming that the policies and interventions designed for older generations of caregivers will fit younger generations, implications of this work can help inform: 1) the design of programs to support caregivers’ mental health, and 2) policy considerations that address the unique needs of a younger caregiver population.
Housing Insecurity and the Emotional and Physical Health of African Americans
Authors: Bhat Aarti , Jenkins August , Almeida David
Published: December 2020

Housing insecurity—or limited and/or unreliable access to quality housing— is a potent on-going stressor that can adversely impact individual well-being. This study extends previous research by investigating the impact of housing insecurity on both the emotional and physical health of aging African American adults using the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Refresher oversample of African Americans collected from 2012-2013 (N = 508; M age = 43.02; 57% women). Participants reported on their negative affect, number of chronic health conditions experienced in the last year, and experiences of housing insecurity since the 2008 recession (e.g., homelessness, threatened with foreclosure or eviction, lost home). Negative affect and chronic conditions, respectively, were regressed on housing insecurity, and the potential moderating effect of age was tested. Results showed that housing insecurity was associated with more negative affect (B = 0.05, SE = 0.03, p = .002) and chronic health conditions (B = 0.26, SE = 0.03, p < .001). Additionally, the association between housing insecurity and negative affect was moderated by age (B = -0.11, SE = 0.00, p = .019), such that the effect of housing insecurity on negative affect was stronger for younger adults than for older adults. These results suggest that experiences of insecure housing leave African American adults vulnerable to compromised emotional and physical health, however, the negative effects of housing insecurity may attenuate with age.
Metformin Improves Cognition by Reducing Leaky Gut and Benefiting Gut Microbiome–Goblet Cell–Mucin Axis
Authors: Yadav Hariom , Ahmadi Shokouh , Wang Bo , Justice Jamie , Ding Jingzhong , Kitzman Dalane , McClain Donald , Kritchevsky Stephen
Published: December 2020

Older adults are suffering from several aging-related illnesses including cognitive decline and effective strategies to prevent and/or treat them are lacking, because of a poor understanding of therapeutic targets. Low-grade inflammation is a key risk factor of aging-related morbidities and mortalities, and it is often higher in older adults. Although, precise reasons for increased inflammation remain unknown, however, emerging evidence indicates that abnormal (dysbiotic) gut microbiome and dysfunctional gut permeability (leaky gut) are linked with increased inflammation in older adults. However, no drugs are available to treat aging-related microbiome dysbiosis and leaky gut, and little is known about the cellular and molecular processes that can be targeted to reduce leaky gut in older adults. Here, we demonstrated that metformin, a safe FDA approved antidiabetic drug, decreased leaky gut and inflammation in older obese mice, by beneficially modulating the gut microbiota. In addition, metformin increased goblet cell mass and mucin production in the older gut, thereby decreasing leaky gut and inflammation. Mechanistically, metformin increased the goblet cell differentiation markers by suppressing Wnt signaling. Our results suggest that metformin can prevent and treat aging-related leaky gut and inflammation, by beneficially modulating gut microbiome/goblet cell/mucin biology.
Associations Between a New Biomarker of Elevated Chronic Inflammation and Accelerated Aging
Authors: Rasmussen Line , Caspi Avshalom , Moffitt Terrie
Published: December 2020

To further understand and measure the association between chronic inflammation, aging, and age-related diseases, broadly applicable standard biomarkers of systemic chronic inflammation are needed. We tested whether elevated blood levels of the emerging chronic inflammation marker soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) were associated with accelerated aging, lower functional capacity, and cognitive decline. We used data from the population-representative longitudinal Dunedin Study (N=875). Plasma suPAR levels were analyzed at ages 38 and 45 years. We performed regression analyses adjusted for sex, smoking, and C-reactive protein. suPAR levels increased from 2.39 ng/mL (SD 0.89) at age 38 to 3.01 (SD 1.03) at age 45 years. Elevated suPAR was associated with accelerated pace of biological aging across multiple organ systems (β 0.28, 95% CI 0.21–0.35), older facial appearance (β 0.16, 95% CI 0.10–0.22), and with structural signs of older brain age (β 0.06, 95% CI -0.00–0.13). Moreover, participants with higher suPAR levels had lower functional capacity (more physical limitations [β 0.24, 95% CI 0.18–0.30]; slower gait speed [β -0.14, 95% CI -0.20; -0.08]) and greater decline in cognitive function (β -0.07, 95% CI -0.13; -0.01) from childhood to adulthood compared to those with lower suPAR levels. Finally, improvements in health habits between age 38 and 45 (smoking cessation or increased physical activity) were associated with less steep increases in suPAR levels over those years. Our findings provide initial support for the utility of suPAR in studying the role of chronic inflammation in accelerated aging and functional decline.
Microstructural Neuroimaging of Frailty in Cognitively Normal Older Adults
Authors: Tian Qu , Resnick Susan , Landman Bennett , Ferrucci Luigi
Published: December 2020

Physical frailty is an age-related clinical syndrome that is related to adverse health outcomes, including cognitive impairment and dementia. Recent studies have shown structural neuroimaging correlates with frailty. However, most existing evidence relies on brain volumetric measures. Whether brain microstructure is associated with frailty and its spatial distribution have not been explored. In the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, we identified 776 cognitively normal participants aged 50 and older who had concurrent data on frailty and brain microstructure by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), including mean diffusivity (MD) of gray matter and fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter. We first identified neuroimaging markers that were associated with frailty score (0-5) and further examined their relationships with frailty status (0: non-frail, 1-2: pre-frail, 3+: frail) using multivariate linear regression. Models were adjusted for age, sex, race, years of education, and Apolipoprotein E e4 carrier status. DTI-based neuroimaging markers that were associated with frailty status were localized in the supplementary motor area of the frontal lobe, several subcortical regions (putamen, caudate), and body and splenium of corpus callosum. This study demonstrates for the first time that microstructure of both gray and white matter differs by frailty levels in cognitively normal older adults. Brain areas were not widespread, but mostly localized in gray matter subcortical motor areas and white matter corpus callosum. Whether changes in brain microstructure precede future frailty development warrants further investigation.
Facilitators and Barriers to Engaging Stakeholders in Use-Inspired Aging Research
Authors: DiMaria-Ghalili Rose Ann , Sefcik Justine , Clark Katherine , Fisher Kathleen , Huh-Yoo Jina , Hirsch Jana , Gitlin Laura
Published: December 2020

The Cell2Society Aging Research Network at Drexel University is a university-wide, novel ecosystem for the pursuit of use-inspired aging research focused on topics from cellular to societal level. Our goals include: 1) Engaging stakeholders to jointly participate in age-related research; 2) Collaborating to build an infrastructure for age-related research through team science; 3) Develop and implement person-centered research that matters to older adults. We apply interdisciplinary, use-inspired approaches in three areas of relevance to older individuals, their families, healthcare and payment systems, communities and policy makers: (a) preventing and managing chronic conditions, (b) enhancing active and purposeful living, and (c) enabling aging in place in home and communities. Our initial qualitative study described facilitators and barriers experienced by community-based service providers (N=9) and payers/providers (N=5) in the greater Philadelphia area when engaging with academic investigators. We conducted three focus groups. Participants were mostly female (64%), white (64%) and were at their organization between 1-10 years (79%).Conventional content analysis revealed that successful research partnerships were facilitated by: 1) trusted investigators and academic institutions and 2) demonstrated collaborative qualities of investigators (e.g., good communication; provides staff education). Negative experiences engaging with academic-led research were related to: 1) research leaving the community (e.g., results never being shared) and 2) organizational limitations (e.g., lack of internal resources to complete projects). These findings will inform the development of stakeholder-academic partnerships from 2020 onward to design use-inspired aging research initiatives.
Demography and shell use of the terrestrial hermit crab Coenobita clypeatus Fabricius, 1787 (Decapoda: Anomura: Coenobitidae) in two marine protected areas in Puerto Rico
Authors: Colón-Piñeiro Zuania , Nieves-Álvarez Juan J , Rodríguez-Fourquet Concepción
Published: December 2020

Individuals of the terrestrial hermit crab Coenobita clypeatus  Fabricius, 1787 use different gastropod shells for shelter during their life span. Availability of shells affects population traits, including density and size structure, influencing their fitness and survival. Locality and human presence can induce variation in the diversity and size of gastropod shells, influencing available shells for hermit crabs. We assessed how the diversity, size, and abundance of the occupied species of gastropod shells affect the density and demography of C. clypeatus in two marine protected areas (MPA) with different recreational use in Puerto Rico, Manatí (high) and Mona Island (low). We also evaluated the relationship between three shell traits (length, width, and aperture length) and the length of the crab chela as a size proxy. We did not find differences in the sex ratio. The density and median chela sizes were higher in crabs from Manatí. In Mona, however, they reached larger sizes. The diversity of occupied shell species was higher in Manatí than in Mona. Dimensions of occupied shells differed between genera and between study sites, and they scaled positively with hermit crab size. Differences in shells diversity, sizes, and abundance between MPAs might cause differences in density and demography of C. clypeatus. We only found large shells of Cittarium pica (Linnaeus, 1758), the only species occupied by larger individuals, occupied by hermit crabs in Mona. The low abundance of C. pica shells in Manatí might have affected the size of hermit crabs in this locality. Our in situ findings suggest that hermit crabs need larger shells to reach larger sizes as previously shown, and that location and the degree of human intervention might influence the availability of gastropod shells. Our study is the first attempt to characterize the demography and gastropod shells used by hermit crabs in Puerto Rico.
Post-operative oral chemoprophylaxis in patients undergoing hip arthroscopy mitigates VTE risk with a low side-effect profile
Authors: Verhoogt Wesley A M , Pietrzak Jurek R T , Ayeni Olufemi R , Cakic Josip N
Published: December 2020

Hip arthroscopy (HA) has increased exponentially over the last decade. A recent systematic review found that the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) is 2%. This was higher than previous reports which may have underestimated the true incidence of VTE in HA. Thus, protocols to mediate VTE may be more necessary than previously thought. The aim of this article is to present a VTE prevention protocol and evaluate its subsequent efficacy. This is a prospective study of 880 consecutive HA cases. All patients were treated according to a predetermined VTE protocol which classified patients as high (≥1 risk factors) or low (no risk factors) risk for post-operative VTE. In high-risk patients, the protocol followed that of low-risk patients but additionally included rivaroxaban for 2 weeks post-operatively. The incidence of VTE was recorded and analysed in this study. A total of 880 HA cases at an average age of 35.4 years were evaluated, with 76.6% (n = 674) undergoing labral repair and concomitant cam and/or pincer resection, 17.2% (n = 151) of cases for isolated labral tear repaired, and 6.1% (n = 55) classified as other. The overall incidence of VTE was 0.45%. The incidence of VTE was 1.2% and 0.16% in high- and low-risk groups, respectively. Oral VTE prophylaxis was not associated with post-operative complications. This study demonstrated a lower rate of VTE in both risk groups. It highlights the value of a predetermined risk-adjusted protocol to VTE prophylaxis. Rivaroxaban prophylaxis is safe and efficacious in HA with a low associated morbidity.
Assessing Cancer History Accuracy in Primary Care Electronic Health Records Through Cancer Registry Linkage
Authors: Hoopes Megan , Voss Robert , Angier Heather , Marino Miguel , Schmidt Teresa , DeVoe Jennifer E , Soule Jeffrey , Huguet Nathalie
Published: December 2020

Background

Many cancer survivors receive primary care in community health centers (CHCs). Cancer history is an important factor to consider in the provision of primary care, yet little is known about the completeness or accuracy of cancer history data contained in CHC electronic health records (EHRs).

Methods

We probabilistically linked EHR data from more than1.5 million adult CHC patients to state cancer registries in California, Oregon, and Washington and estimated measures of agreement (eg, kappa, sensitivity, specificity). We compared demographic and clinical characteristics of cancer patients as estimated by each data source, evaluating distributional differences with absolute standardized mean differences.

Results

A total 74 707 cancer patients were identified between the 2 sources (EHR only, n = 22 730; registry only, n = 23 616; both, n = 28 361). Nearly one-half of cancer patients identified in registries were missing cancer documentation in the EHR. Overall agreement of cancer ascertainment in the EHR vs cancer registries (gold standard) was moderate (kappa = 0.535). Cancer site–specific agreement ranged from substantial (eg, prostate and female breast; kappa > 0.60) to fair (melanoma and cervix; kappa < 0.40). Comparing population characteristics of cancer patients as ascertained from each data source, groups were similar for sex, age, and federal poverty level, but EHR-recorded cases showed greater medical complexity than those ascertained from cancer registries.

Conclusions

Agreement between EHR and cancer registry data was moderate and varied by cancer site. These findings suggest the need for strategies to improve capture of cancer history information in CHC EHRs to ensure adequate delivery of care and optimal health outcomes for cancer survivors.
The Loango Turn
Authors: Parfitt Tudor
Published: December 2020

In 1777 it was revealed that there were not only white negroes and other weird and wonderful hybrids in Loango, there were also black Jews with some striking customs. This was revealed in a book by Christian George Andreas Oldendorp. The scientists of the Enlightenment were as fascinated by these black Jews as they had been by the white negroes and other hybrids. Some, such as Theophil Ehrmann, were dubious about Oldendorp’s revelation. But leading Enlightenment figures such as Anton Büsching, Conrad Malte-Brun, Johann David Michaelis, Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann, Kurt Sprengel, and others debated their importance from a racial and historical standpoint. Other black Jews were invoked by Paul Jakob Bruns. The Ethiopian Jews had been introduced to Enlightenment thinkers by James Bruce. Jews, who were anxious to be seen as white, were not much interested in black Jews. An exception was Ludwig Markus, who wrote about Loango Jews and others, including the Falashas of Ethiopia. Black Indian Jews were brought into the conversation and became an important object of Enlightenment speculation about race and color determinism. The idea of a color spectrum for Jews was born.
Determination of Structure
Authors: Leong Daphne
Published: December 2020

How can a performer’s voice complement that of a theorist in the analysis of a musical work? This chapter takes the opening cadenza of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand as a case study. Certain performance considerations—embodied facets, instrumental affordances, and affective implications—comprise warp and weft not only of the Concerto’s execution and interpretation, but also of its structure and meaning. The chapter explores the cadenza: visual and kinesthetic aspects, rhetorical and tonal function, form and structure, rhythmic features and performance issues. The analysis is informed by the authors’ experiences of performing the Concerto and by historical recordings of the work. Video performances and audio examples complement the written text.
Organizational Effects of Intellectual Property (Micro Level)
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: December 2020

This chapter identifies real-world circumstances in which secure IP rights are a precondition for innovation specialists to extract value from R&D investments, given the ability of large integrated firms to imitate any successful innovation and capture the market through financing, production, and distribution efficiencies. Survey evidence and other evidence on patent application, issuance, and enforcement indicate that smaller firms tend to place a higher value on patents than larger firms as a mechanism for capturing returns on innovation. A secure IP regime enables firms to select from the full range of monetization structures in order to assemble the maximally efficient mix of organizational forms for executing the innovation and commercialization process.
Narrative and Foundational Assumptions
Authors: Josselson Ruthellen
Published: December 2020

This chapter describes a training program in China involving working intimately with Chinese therapists in quite revealing experiential groups over ten years. The author learned that whatever she could tell about her experiences would be infiltrated by her own Western culture. Her struggle was to bring her embeddedness in a Western perspective into narrative contact with an Eastern, quite different, set of foundational assumptions about life and human relationships. Narrative is always rooted in culture-bound worldviews but can also be a way of bridging them. Culture can only be told in storied form and involves the intersection of self and other. Cross-cultural knowing of the Other is a humbling experience.
Ennius Noster
Authors: Nethercut Jason S.
Published: December 2020

This study argues that Lucretius engages in a comprehensive revision of the entire Ennian value system, literary as well as philosophical, in terms of form as well as content. Lucretius selected Ennius as a model precisely in order to dismantle thoroughly the values for which he claimed Ennius stood. These values include the cosmic importance of history as a poetic subject in general, the importance of Rome’s historical achievement in particular, and Ennius’ innovative, quasi-philosophical conception of literary history. This is the first book-length treatment of the relationship between Lucretius and Ennius in any language, and the only study to date to offer substantial analysis of this relationship. It therefore fills an important gap not only in Lucretian scholarship, but also in our understanding of Latin literary history.
Communicable Diseases, Health Security, and Human Rights
Authors: Sekalala Sharifah , Harrington John
Published: December 2020

This chapter examines the influence of human rights in the quest to control communicable diseases. Communicable diseases are emerging and spreading faster than ever before, with devastating consequences for the most vulnerable in a rapidly globalizing world. Human rights have come to frame infectious disease control, beginning in the early response to AIDS and expanding from the stigmatization of marginalized populations to include the provision of essential medicines. Human rights claims have correspondingly expanded, arising out of norms of non-discrimination, consent, and privacy and now including the right to health. As individual rights compete with state authority, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Health Regulations (2005) aim to guide states in a rights-based response to communicable disease. However, as seen in recent Ebola outbreaks, human rights have lost priority to health security as the dominant frame for health policy, and this securitization of communicable disease control may undermine the gains of human rights, risking the future of global health.
From Kant to Hegel via Philippe Pinel
Authors: Bergo Bettina
Published: December 2020

This excursus reviews Kant’s treatment of Affectus and Leidenschafte (affects and passions) in the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (lectures given over a span of many years). Having argued that empirical psychology was scientifically unfeasible and established his rational psychology as beyond the fictions of dogmatic metaphysicians, Kant could only treat affects from the perspective of practice in the world, like a behaviorism before its time. Nevertheless, his classification of passions ran as if parallel with psychopathologies—ordered according to representations, imagination, judgement, and reason. Building on his 1763 essay “Negative Magnitudes,” the anthropology was profoundly critical of affects, pointing to those “tensions constantly ready to explode,” and requiring vigilance. In sharp contrast, Hegel reintegrated passions into his mature Philosophy of Mind (1813) arguing that inclinations and passions overcame their subjective enclosure thanks to the idea of freedom. He supported his arguments using the French revolutionary psychiatry of Philippe Pinel. Pinel’s original taxonomy had the advantage of being monist; thus different from the binary of neurosis and psychosis, Pinel argued in favor of forms of “mania.” Crucial for Hegel was that even manias with delirium, grouping passions around an idée fixe, an indestructible kernel of rationality endured. This allowed Hegel to claim that freedom and nature were rooted in reason, and although reason might find itself tangled in contradictions it never entirely disappeared. This audacious claim resignified the function of reason as Geistlichkeit (spirituality) apt to integrate psychology into the dialectical movement of mind subjective.
Husserl
Authors: Bergo Bettina
Published: December 2020

Following the Kantian “Copernican revolution,” Husserl’s phenomenology is the most powerful idealistic reformalization in twentieth century philosophy. He “corrected” Kant’s transcendental deduction and second-order investigation of mind by arguing that thoughts, associative memory, and affects were available to phenomenological description. In his mature, 1920s investigation into passive synthesis and the complexity of “subjective” time, Husserl approached affects in light of dynamic forces running up and down the temporalizing flux of consciousness. As “retentions,” they joined representations, sometimes clustering around the Schwelle des Bewusstseins (threshold of consciousness), and returning through association. With the transcendental “ego” defined as a universal flow, experiences within the latter, which Husserl defined as retentions and protensions, remained active and betokened in memory, phantasy, and affects.
Heidegger I
Authors: Bergo Bettina
Published: December 2020

Heidegger deformalized Husserl’s phenomenology by proposing the unity of understanding, states of mind, and our abiding sense of being cast into the world and of anxious “falling.” Influenced by Kierkegaard’s angest, he defined humans as an open site in-the-world (Dasein) ever haunted by two anxieties; that of our everyday cares (Sorge) and the profound angst that opens us to the question of what we really are, and of why there is being instead of simply nothing. He thus adapted Leibniz’s metaphysical question about being in hermeneutic terms and argued that this was the path out of an exhausted, European metaphysics and toward a new thinking.
Heidegger II
Authors: Bergo Bettina
Published: December 2020

Following claims that Being and Time was essentially philosophical anthropology, and questions about the embodiment and mortality of Dasein, and Heidegger recurred to the distinction between humans who, as being-there, create a “world” for themselves and confront their death resolutely, versus animals who are caught up in their natural environments and do not die so much as “perish” biologically. In 1929 he studied the work of gestalt biologists like Jakob von Uexküll to support his arguments for the world-poverty of animals, unable hermeneutically to forge a real “world.” By 1936, nevertheless, his logic faltered when he argued that the age of technology and giganticism had reduced most humans to mere “technicized animals.” Even if this was a rhetorical flourish, it remained that only an anxious few remained among us who could dwell poetically and be free for their death, an idea with significant implications for the metaphysical politics Heidegger developed in response to Nazi politics. By 1949, the technicized animal—poor in world—appeared to perish with no greater resoluteness and dignity than its animal relatives.
Interpretation and Implication of Contractual Terms in Malaysia
Authors: TAY Pek San
Published: December 2020

This chapter examines two closely connected issues in defining the contents of contracts in Malaysia: first, the approaches adopted in interpreting the meaning of agreed contractual terms and, second, the extent to which additional terms are implied to supplement the express terms. It discusses the underlying philosophy of interpretation with regard to the dichotomy of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ approaches; it details the various interpretative aids, such as customs, usages, the commercial background, and the negotiations of the parties; and it shows how Malaysian law resolves the tension between literalist and contextualist approaches to interpretation. A number of hypothetical scenarios illustrate how Malaysian courts deal with issues of contractual interpretation and gap-filling in practice.
Heteronyms as Virtual Subjects
Authors: Ganeri Jonardon
Published: December 2020

The authorial act of heteronymic self-transformation is quite different from that of inventing a character in a story. What is fundamental to the notion of a heteronym is that it is an othered I, ‘lived by the author within himself’, that is to say, lived first-personally. A heteronym is not a character because the relationship an author stands in to an invented character is a third-personal one. A closer analogy would be with one of those stories in which each section has a different narrator writing from a first-person position, such as Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red or William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Yet a sequence of distinct narrators writing in the first person is still not a display of heteronymy: they are distinct characters taking it in turn to speak about themselves. When one dreams it is not uncommon for one to oneself figure in the dream, as the one to whom the events in the dream are presenting. The ‘subject-within-the-dream’ is both a virtual subject and a simulation of the dreaming subject; and for this reason it would be entirely appropriate to describe the subject-within-the-dream as the dreaming subject’s heteronym in the dream. The idea of heteronymy is also well-captured in Yasumasa Morimura’s multiple self-portraiture under the assumed identities of famous historical artists.
Intersecting Horizons
Authors: Ganeri Jonardon
Published: December 2020

How are we to imagine a situation in which I am simultaneously yet severally multiple subjects? Many contemporary writers on personal identity have said that one can imagine a scenario involving the fission of a person, a situation where as a result of division what was up to that moment a single person subsequently continues as two distinct people. One solution to the challenge of multiple embodiment is to defend the view that persons are individuals of a special sort, higher-order individuals somewhat akin to kinds. And yet the deeper issue is not metaphysical but phenomenological, and it isn’t a puzzle about the multiple embodiment of a single person but about a person’s simultaneous embrace of multiple first-person positions. Pessoa introduces the term ‘intersection’ as a philosophical term of art to denote the unified phenomenology of a doubled, interwoven experiential state. In one place he gives, as an example, the hypnagogic state. While the hypnagogic state occurs spontaneously, Pessoa claims that states of ‘intersecting sensation’ can also be brought about through the conscious exercise of guided attention. Yet Pessoa abandoned his experiments in intersectionist poetry, and his view seems to have undergone a shift. I wonder if he recognized that the force of the idea behind simultaneous subject plurality, that is, the experiential possibility to be in multiple subject positions simultaneously yet severally, is not fully realized in the concept of an emulsified experience.
Neurocognitive Mechanisms
Authors: Piccinini Gualtiero
Published: December 2020

This book provides the foundations for a neurocomputational explanation of cognition based on contemporary cognitive neuroscience. An ontologically egalitarian account of composition and realization, according to which all levels are equally real, is defended. Multiple realizability and mechanisms are explicated in light of this ontologically egalitarian framework. A goal-contribution account of teleological functions is defended, and so is a mechanistic version of functionalism. This provides the foundation for a mechanistic account of computation, which in turn clarifies the ways in which the computational theory of cognition is a multilevel mechanistic theory supported by contemporary cognitive neuroscience. The book argues that cognition is computational at least in a generic sense. The computational theory of cognition is defended from standard objections yet a priori arguments for the computational theory of cognition are rebutted. The book contends that the typical vehicles of neural computations are representations and that, contrary to the received view, neural representations are observable and manipulable in the laboratory. The book also contends that neural computations are neither digital nor analog; instead, neural computations are sui generis. The book concludes by investigating the relation between computation and consciousness, suggesting that consciousness may have a functional yet not wholly computational nature.
Implementation of health workforce information systems: a review of eight sub-Saharan country experiences
Authors: Chibuzor M , Arikpo I , Aquaisua E , Esu E , Okoroafor S C , Omar S , Effa E , Oyo-Ita A , Meremikwu M
Published: December 2020

Background

Globally, one of the major problems facing health systems is an acute deficit of health workforce. To ensure equitable distribution and deployment of health workers, up-to-date and timely information on the health workforce is vital. Health workforce registries (HWRs) have the potential to generate data for evidence-based human resource planning and policies. There is a lack of evaluative research on the capacity of HWRs to improve health systems. This review aims to assess the effectiveness of HWRs for improving health systems in low- and middle-income countries.

Methods

We searched selected electronic databases from inception to 14 April 2020. Two authors independently screened studies and extracted data from included studies. We presented results as a narrative synthesis.

Results

We included eight studies of moderate–high quality in this review. The results suggest that HWRs can improve the distribution and skill-mix of the health workforce, quality of health workforce data, availability and use of data for policy and planning, and user satisfaction. The evidence was derived from case studies, which limited our ability to infer a causal relationship.

Conclusion

More rigorous research from controlled experimental studies is needed to consolidate the available evidence from observational studies.