bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ultradiffuse galaxies in the IC 1459 group from the VEGAS survey
Authors: Forbes Duncan A , Dullo Bililign T , Gannon Jonah , Couch Warrick J , Iodice Enrichetta , Spavone Marilena , Cantiello Michele , Schipani Pietro
Published: April 2020

Using deep g, r, i imaging from the VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS), we have searched for ultradiffuse galaxies (UDGs) in the IC 1459 group. Assuming they are group members, we identify nine galaxies with physical sizes and surface brightnesses that match the UDG criteria within our measurement uncertainties. They have mean colours of g − i = 0.6 and stellar masses of ∼108 M⊙. Several galaxies appear to have associated systems of compact objects, e.g. globular clusters. Two UDGs contain a central bright nucleus, with a third UDG revealing a remarkable double nucleus. This appears to be the first reported detection of a double nucleus in a UDG – its origin is currently unclear.
One star, two stars, or both? Investigating metallicity-dependent models for gamma-ray burst progenitors with the IllustrisTNG simulation
Authors: Metha Benjamin , Trenti Michele
Published: April 2020

The rate of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been identified as a potential proxy for the star formation rate (SFR) across redshift, but the exact relationship depends on GRB progenitor models (single versus binary). The single-progenitor collapsar model accounts for the preference towards low-metallicity GRB progenitors, but is in apparent tension with some high-metallicity GRB host galaxy measurements. As a possible solution, we consider the scenario where high-metallicity GRB hosts harbour low-metallicity regions in which GRB progenitors form. For this, we use the IllustrisTNG cosmological hydrodynamical simulation to investigate the internal metallicity distribution of GRB hosts, implementing in post-processing different GRB formation models. Predictions (GRB rate, host metallicities, and stellar masses) are compared to the high-completeness GRB legacy surveys BAT6 and SHOALS and a sample of high-redshift GRB-DLA metallicities, allowing us to compute their relative likelihoods. When the internal metallicity distribution of galaxies is ignored, the best-fitting model requires a metallicity-independent channel, as previously proposed by Trenti, Perna, & Jimenez. However, when the internal metallicity distribution is considered, a basic metallicity bias model with a cutoff at $Z_{\rm max}=0.35\, \mathrm{\it Z}_\odot$ is the best-fitting one. Current data are insufficient to discriminate among more realistic metallicity bias models, such as weak metallicity dependence of massive binaries versus stronger metallicity bias of collapsars. An increased sample of objects, and direct measurements of host stellar masses at redshift z > 2 would allow to further constrain the origin of long GRBs.
Q wind code release: a non-hydrodynamical approach to modelling line-driven winds in active galactic nuclei
Authors: Quera-Bofarull Arnau , Done Chris , Lacey Cedric , McDowell Jonathan C , Risaliti Guido , Elvis Martin
Published: April 2020

Ultraviolet (UV) line-driven winds may be an important part of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback process, but understanding their impact is hindered by the complex nature of the radiation hydrodynamics. Instead, we have taken the approach pioneered by Risaliti & Elvis, calculating only ballistic trajectories from radiation forces and gravity but neglecting gas pressure. We have completely rewritten their Qwind code using more robust algorithms and can now quickly model the acceleration phase of these winds for any AGN spectral energy distribution spanning UV and X-ray wavebands. We demonstrate the code using an AGN with black hole mass $10^8\, \text{M}_\odot$ emitting at half the Eddington rate and show that this can effectively eject a wind with velocities ${\simeq}(0.1-0.2)\, c$. The mass loss rates can be up to ≃0.3M⊙ per year, consistent with more computationally expensive hydrodynamical simulations, though we highlight the importance of future improvements in radiation transfer along the multiple different lines of sight illuminating the wind. The code is fully public and can be used to quickly explore the conditions under which AGN feedback can be dominated by accretion disc winds.
Particle acceleration at colliding shock waves
Authors: Vieu T , Gabici S , Tatischeff V
Published: April 2020

We model the diffusive shock acceleration of particles in a system of two colliding shock waves and present a method to solve the time-dependent problem analytically in the test-particle approximation and high energy limit. In particular, we show that in this limit the problem can be analysed with the help of a self-similar solution. While a number of recent works predict hard (E−1) spectra for the accelerated particles in the stationary limit, or the appearance of spectral breaks, we found instead that the spectrum of accelerated particles in a time-dependent collision follows quite closely the canonical E−2 prediction of diffusive shock acceleration at a single shock, except at the highest energy, where a hardening appears, originating a bumpy feature just before the exponential cut-off. We also investigated the effect of the reacceleration of pre-existing cosmic rays by a system of two shocks, and found that under certain conditions spectral features can appear in the cut-off region. Finally, the mathematical methods presented here are very general and could be easily applied to a variety of astrophysical situations, including for instance standing shocks in accretion flows, diverging shocks, backward collisions of a slow shock by a faster shock, and wind–wind or shock–wind collisions.
Dynamic regulation of chromatin organizer SATB1 via TCR-induced alternative promoter switch during T-cell development
Authors: Patta Indumathi , Madhok Ayush , Khare Satyajeet , Gottimukkala Kamalvishnu P , Verma Anjali , Giri Shilpi , Dandewad Vishal , Seshadri Vasudevan , Lal Girdhari , Misra-Sen Jyoti , Galande Sanjeev
Published: April 2020

The chromatin organizer SATB1 is highly enriched in thymocytes and is essential for T-cell development. Although SATB1 regulates a large number of genes important for T-cell development, the mechanism(s) regulating expression of SATB1 during this process remain elusive. Using chromatin immune precipitation-seq-based occupancy profiles of H3K4me3 and H3Kme1 at Satb1 gene locus, we predicted four different alternative promoters of Satb1 in mouse thymocytes and characterized them. The expression of Satb1 transcript variants with distinct 5′ UTRs occurs in a stage-specific manner during T-cell development and is dependent on TCR signaling. The observed discrepancy between the expression levels of SATB1 mRNA and protein in developing thymocytes can be explained by the differential translatability of Satb1 transcript variants as confirmed by polysome profiling and in vitro translation assay. We show that Satb1 alternative promoters exhibit lineage-specific chromatin accessibility during T-cell development from progenitors. Furthermore, TCF1 regulates the Satb1 P2 promoter switch during CD4SP development, via direct binding to the Satb1 P2 promoter. CD4SP T cells from TCF1 KO mice exhibit downregulation of P2 transcript variant expression as well as low levels of SATB1 protein. Collectively, these results provide unequivocal evidence toward alternative promoter switch-mediated developmental stage-specific regulation of SATB1 in thymocytes.
PaccMann: a web service for interpretable anticancer compound sensitivity prediction
Authors: Cadow Joris , Born Jannis , Manica Matteo , Oskooei Ali , Rodríguez Martínez María
Published: April 2020

The identification of new targeted and personalized therapies for cancer requires the fast and accurate assessment of the drug efficacy of potential compounds against a particular biomolecular sample. It has been suggested that the integration of complementary sources of information might strengthen the accuracy of a drug efficacy prediction model. Here, we present a web-based platform for the Prediction of AntiCancer Compound sensitivity with Multimodal Attention-based Neural Networks (PaccMann). PaccMann is trained on public transcriptomic cell line profiles, compound structure information and drug sensitivity screenings, and outperforms state-of-the-art methods on anticancer drug sensitivity prediction. On the open-access web service (https://ibm.biz/paccmann-aas), users can select a known drug compound or design their own compound structure in an interactive editor, perform in-silico drug testing and investigate compound efficacy on publicly available or user-provided transcriptomic profiles. PaccMann leverages methods for model interpretability and outputs confidence scores as well as attention heatmaps that highlight the genes and chemical sub-structures that were more important to make a prediction, hence facilitating the understanding of the model’s decision making and the involved biochemical processes. We hope to serve the community with a toolbox for fast and efficient validation in drug repositioning or lead compound identification regimes.
TeamTat: a collaborative text annotation tool
Authors: Islamaj Rezarta , Kwon Dongseop , Kim Sun , Lu Zhiyong
Published: April 2020

Manually annotated data is key to developing text-mining and information-extraction algorithms. However, human annotation requires considerable time, effort and expertise. Given the rapid growth of biomedical literature, it is paramount to build tools that facilitate speed and maintain expert quality. While existing text annotation tools may provide user-friendly interfaces to domain experts, limited support is available for figure display, project management, and multi-user team annotation. In response, we developed TeamTat (https://www.teamtat.org), a web-based annotation tool (local setup available), equipped to manage team annotation projects engagingly and efficiently. TeamTat is a novel tool for managing multi-user, multi-label document annotation, reflecting the entire production life cycle. Project managers can specify annotation schema for entities and relations and select annotator(s) and distribute documents anonymously to prevent bias. Document input format can be plain text, PDF or BioC (uploaded locally or automatically retrieved from PubMed/PMC), and output format is BioC with inline annotations. TeamTat displays figures from the full text for the annotator's convenience. Multiple users can work on the same document independently in their workspaces, and the team manager can track task completion. TeamTat provides corpus quality assessment via inter-annotator agreement statistics, and a user-friendly interface convenient for annotation review and inter-annotator disagreement resolution to improve corpus quality.
A Simple Flow Classification Parameter Can Discriminate Rupture Status in Intracranial Aneurysms
Authors: Asgharzadeh Hafez , Shahmohammadi Ali , Varble Nicole , Levy Elad I , Meng Hui , Borazjani Iman
Published: April 2020

BACKGROUND

A simple dimensionless aneurysm number (

), which depends on geometry and flow pulsatility, was previously shown to distinguish the flow mode in intracranial aneurysms (IA): vortex mode with a dynamic vortex formation/evolution if

, and cavity mode with a steady shear layer if

.

OBJECTIVE

To hypothesize that

can distinguish rupture status because vortex mode is associated with high oscillatory shear index, which, in turn, is statistically associated with rupture.

METHODS

The above hypothesis is tested on a retrospective, consecutively collected database of 204 patient-specific IAs. The first 119 cases are assigned to training and the remainder to testing dataset.

is calculated based on the pulsatility index (PI) approximated either from the literature or solving an optimization problem (denoted as

). Student's t-test and logistic regression (LR) are used for hypothesis testing and data fitting, respectively.

RESULTS

can significantly discriminate ruptured and unruptured status with 95% confidence level (P < .0001).

(using PI) and

(using

) significantly predict the ruptured IAs (for training dataset

AUC = 0.85,

AUC = 0.90, and for testing dataset

sensitivity = 94%, specificity = 33%,

sensitivity = 93.1%, specificity = 52.85%).

CONCLUSION

predicts ruptured status. Unlike traditional hemodynamic parameters such as wall shear stress and oscillatory shear index,

has a physical threshold of one (does not depend on statistical analysis) and does not require time-consuming flow simulations. Therefore,

is a simple, practical discriminator of IA rupture status.
An Update on Medications for Brain Arteriovenous Malformations
Authors: Raper Daniel M S , Winkler Ethan A , Rutledge W Caleb , Cooke Daniel L , Abla Adib A
Published: April 2020

Despite a variety of treatment options for brain arteriovenous malformations (bAVMs), many lesions remain challenging to treat and present significant ongoing risk for hemorrhage. In Vitro investigations have recently led to a greater understanding of the formation, growth, and rupture of bAVMs. This has, in turn, led to the development of therapeutic targets for medications for bAVMs, some of which have begun testing in clinical trials in humans. These include bevacizumab, targeting the vascular endothelial growth factor driven angiogenic pathway; thalidomide or lenalidomide, targeting blood-brain barrier impairment; and doxycycline, targeting matrix metalloproteinase overexpression. A variety of other medications appear promising but either requires adaptation from other disease states or development from early bench studies into the clinical realm. This review aims to provide an overview of the current state of development of medications targeting bAVMs and to highlight their likely applications in the future.
Thermodynamic analysis and kinetic optimization of high-energy batteries based on multi-electron reactions
Authors: Huang Yong-Xin , Wu Feng , Chen Ren-Jie
Published: April 2020

Multi-electron reaction can be regarded as an effective way of building high-energy systems (>500 W h kg−1). However, some confusions hinder the development of multi-electron mechanisms, such as clear concept, complex reaction, material design and electrolyte optimization and full-cell fabrication. Therefore, this review discusses the basic theories and application bottlenecks of multi-electron mechanisms from the view of thermodynamic and dynamic principles. In future, high-energy batteries, metal anodes and multi-electron cathodes are promising electrode materials with high theoretical capacity and high output voltage. While the primary issue for the multi-electron transfer process is sluggish kinetics, which may be caused by multiple ionic migration, large ionic radius, high reaction energy barrier, low electron conductivity, poor structural stability, etc., it is urgent that feasible and versatile modification methods are summarized and new inspiration proposed in order to break through kinetic constraints. Finally, the remaining challenges and future research directions are revealed in detail, involving the search for high-energy systems, compatibility of full cells, cost control, etc.
Hierarchical structural complexity in atomically precise nanocluster frameworks
Authors: Wei Xiao , Kang Xi , Zuo Zewen , Song Fengqi , Wang Shuxin , Zhu Manzhou
Published: April 2020

The supramolecular chemistry of nanoclusters is a flourishing area of nano-research; however, the controllable assembly of cluster nano-building blocks in different arrays remains challenging. In this work, we report the hierarchical structural complexity of atomically precise nanoclusters in micrometric linear chains (1D array), grid networks (2D array) and superstructures (3D array). In the crystal lattice, the Ag29(SSR)12(PPh3)4 nanoclusters can be viewed as unassembled cluster dots (Ag29–0D). In the presence of Cs+ cations, the Ag29(SSR)12 nano-building blocks are selectively assembled into distinct arrays with different oxygen-carrying solvent molecules―Cs@Ag29(SSR)12(DMF)x as 1D linear chains (Ag29–1D), Cs@Ag29(SSR)12(NMP)x as 2D grid networks (Ag29–2D), and Cs@Ag29(SSR)12(TMS)x as 3D superstructures (Ag29–3D). Such self-assemblies of these Ag29(SSR)12 units have not only been observed in their crystalline state, but also in their amorphous state. Due to the diverse surface structures and crystalline packing modes, these Ag29-based assemblies manifest distinguishable optical absorptions and emissions in both solutions and crystallized films. Furthermore, the surface areas of the nanocluster crystals are evaluated, the maximum value of which occurs when the cluster nano-building blocks are assembled into 2D arrays (i.e. Ag29–2D). Overall, this work presents an exciting example of the hierarchical assembly of atomically precise nanoclusters by simply controlling the adsorbed molecules on the cluster surface.
Diaspora
Authors: Král Françoise
Published: April 2020

The term “diaspora” was a neologism coined by the translators of the Hebraic Bible into Greek in the 3rd century bc, and derived from the Greek diaspeirein (“dia” meaning “through, across” and “speirein” “to scatter”). Originally associated with the Jewish diaspora, the term was later used to refer to other diasporas, and in particular the Armenian diaspora. In the second half of the 20th century, the term “diaspora” took on a broader meaning, often being used synonymously with migration as in the cases of the migrations from eastern European nations to western Europe or the United States between the two world wars; the Empire Windrush generation of West Indians who relocated to the United Kingdom; the Asian and South Asian diasporas in America, the United Kingdom, and Canada; and sometimes the “double diasporas” (people from former colonial nations sent to other colonized countries under colonial rule, such as the Indians sent to Kenya by the British and who helped build the railway lines). These more recent diasporas are no longer religious diasporas; they have their origins in economic, political, and more recently climate-related issues and are triggered by reasons ranging from improving the quality of their lives to war and being in fear for their lives. While immigration is defined as an individual venture, the collective dimension is central to the diasporic experience as diasporas are not only made up of individuals but also of groups of people who leave their home countries. Despite their relocation to a new land, diasporas maintain a strong bond with their homelands; diasporas are therefore often associated with nostalgia, a mood largely reflected in their cultural productions, particularly in film and literature. The polarity home country/host country was later called into question, in particular in the wake of the deconstructionist critique of essentialist concepts, such as home, identity, or belonging, leading to a redefinition of “home” as “homemaking.” The central issue of identity also ceased to be defined in an essentialist perspective as the negotiation of dual identities, double belonging, bilingualism, double loyalties and transnationalism came into focus. In the 21st century, in the context of global economic migrations, terror migration, and environmental migrations, the emphasis is gradually shifting from issues of identity and belonging to the pragmatics of survival and relocation; and the field increasingly intersects not only with contiguous disciplines in the humanities but with contiguous areas of scholarship (gender studies, queer studies, vulnerability studies, disability studies, ecocriticism, the digital humanities, to name only a few).
Colson Whitehead
Authors: Maus Derek C.
Published: April 2020

Over the course of his career, Colson Whitehead has produced a diverse eleven-book oeuvre that has made him one of the foremost 21st-century American literary authors. Born Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead in New York on 6 November 1969, he spent his childhood and adolescence devouring pop culture—in particular, science fiction and horror films. His early years were generally divided between Manhattan and his family’s summer home in Sag Harbor on Long Island. In 1987, he began studying literature at Harvard University, where he befriended poet and editor Kevin Young and other members of the influential Dark Room Collective. After graduation, he spent several years in New York writing for the Village Voice, while also working on what eventually became his debut novel, The Intuitionist (Whitehead 1999, cited under Novels). Although his initial readership remained relatively small, Whitehead’s critical reputation grew quickly, with each of his first two books earning rave reviews and literary prizes. The Intuitionist was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for debut fiction; his second novel, John Henry Days (Whitehead 2001, cited under Novels), won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2000, he received the Whiting Award and then followed that up with a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (colloquially known as a “Genius Grant”) in 2002 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. Although his third novel, Apex Hides the Hurt (Whitehead 2006, cited under Novels), was less critically lauded, it nevertheless won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for outstanding multicultural literature. Over the next decade, Whitehead’s readership began to catch up with his critical acclaim and each of his subsequent five novels has landed on the New York Times bestseller list. The Underground Railroad (Whitehead 2016, cited under Novels) has been his most noteworthy book to date, reaching the top of the New York Times bestseller list as well as earning him the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the National Book Award, and public endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, among others. He followed this success up with a short historical novel, The Nickel Boys (Whitehead 2020, cited under Novels), which was published with considerable fanfare and earned Whitehead both continued critical praise and further awards. Harlem Shuffle (Whitehead 2021, cited under Novels) and Crook Manifesto (Whitehead 2023, cited under Novels) are the first two installments of what Whitehead has called his “Harlem Trilogy” of crime fiction that surveys the complex social history of Harlem during the latter half of the twentieth century. Regardless of subject-matter or genre, Whitehead remains both a masterful prose stylist and a pointed social critic.
Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology
Authors: Melchior Guido
Published: April 2020

Sensitivity is a modal epistemic principle. Modal knowledge accounts are externalist in nature and claim that the knowledge yielding connection between a true belief and the truthmaker must be spelled out in modal terms. The sensitivity condition was introduced by Robert Nozick. He suggests that if S knows that p, then S’s belief that p tracks truth. Nozick argues that this truth-tracking relation can be captured by subjunctive conditionals. As a first approximation, he provides the following modal analysis of knowledge: S knows that p iff (1) p is true; (2) S believes that p; (3) if p were false, S wouldn’t believe that p and (4) if p were true, S would believe that p. The dominant terminology in the literature, also adopted here, is to call condition (3) the sensitivity condition and condition (4) the adherence condition. The sensitivity condition is intuitively appealing since it states that a subject does not know that p if she would believe that p even if p were false. Nozick used the sensitivity condition to accomplish two major tasks. First, he provided a solution to the Gettier problem by arguing that in Gettier cases subjects do not know since the sensitivity condition is violated. Second, he presented a controversial solution to the skeptical problem according to which we have external world knowledge but do not know that the skeptical hypothesis is false. This solution is available because sensitivity is not closed under known entailment. Quickly, criticism of the sensitivity condition emerged. First, most epistemologists regarded the price of abandoning knowledge closure as a price too high to pay. Second, it was noted that sensitivity leads to the counterintuitive consequence of precluding us from inductive knowledge since induction typically yields insensitive beliefs. The most dominant reaction to these problems was to replace sensitivity by the modal principle of safety, nowadays the most popular modal principle. However, sensitivity is not only important as a starting point of modal epistemology. Because of its intuitive attractiveness, many authors aimed at refining the original sensitivity account in order to avoid well-known problems. This has led to a second wave of sensitivity accounts. As of today, various sensitivity-based theories are on the market, including accounts that avoid closure failure, probabilistic interpretations of sensitivity and adherence, and contextualist approaches. There is thus a vivid and ongoing debate about the sensitivity principle in epistemology.
Consumer Fraud
Authors: Van Slyke Shanna R. , Corbo Leslie
Published: April 2020

Consumer fraud is a broad category of unethical and illegal marketplace behaviors engaged in by unscrupulous sellers to the detriment of their customers. Consumers might buy a weight-loss product that is advertised as “guaranteed to lead to significant weight loss in just two weeks,” for instance, but then never lose any weight because the product is a fake. Online consumers may provide payment information yet never receive the product they paid for, or people may donate money to a charity that does not actually exist. Although consumer fraud can take on countless forms—from price misrepresentation, unnecessary repairs, and fraudulent business ventures to false stockbroker information, unauthorized use of credit-card information, and credit-repair scams—at its core, consumer fraud involves a violation of trust. Given this violation of trust, the legitimate business setting in which these crimes often occur, the financial goal of these crimes, and the lack of overt violence, consumer fraud can in turn be classified as one form of white-collar crime. This point is important because it means that one can gain the fullest understanding of consumer fraud by supplementing the relatively limited research on consumer fraud with the broader, more developed literature on white-collar crime. Accordingly, this article presents the classic and contemporary literature on consumer fraud and white-collar crime. That said, excluded from this article are white-collar crime studies that address specific forms of white-collar crime other than consumer fraud. A study specifically on embezzlement or worker-safety violations, for example, would not be included here.
Defining "Success" in Corrections and Reentry
Authors: Soyer Michaela
Published: April 2020

Defining what exactly constitutes successful reentry into society is challenging. Is abstaining from criminal behavior enough to be considered a success? Or does a successful reentry imply more than desistance from crime, for example, the ability to live independently—without receiving substantial support from family or the government? What about those formerly incarcerated persons who desist for a significant period of time and then relapse unexpectedly? Should they be defined by their momentary failure? Research suggests that formerly incarcerated persons have a wide range of social welfare needs such as substance abuse problems, housing insecurity, and prolonged unemployment. Recent studies therefore conclude that reentry cannot be measured easily as a binary concept. Reentry, many contemporary criminologists argue, is a complex process marked by cycles of success and failure. By integrating concepts such as individual agency and identity formation, criminologists and sociologists have developed a more nuanced understanding of reentry processes. Qualitative research in particular challenges a dichotomous understanding of recidivism and desistance, emphasizing that reentering society after prison is a process marked by setbacks. In those studies, success or failure are not definitive verdicts, but rather momentary snapshots of pathways whose outcome remain uncertain.
Cross-Sectional Research Designs in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Authors: Ray James V.
Published: April 2020

Cross-sectional research allows researchers to study a phenomenon or the relationship between variables at one point in time. In cross-sectional research data are collected once for each case (e.g., individual, neighborhood, city, state) at a single point in time. Cross-sectional research is most appropriate for studies that have descriptive or exploratory aims and in many cases are inadequate to assess causal processes due to an inability for researchers to establish temporal order—a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality. However, in some cases cross-sectional research may be adequate or even preferable to assess mediational models such as when the mediator variable is contemporaneous. Due to the nature of cross-sectional research, it is also not possible to utilize this approach to examine patterns or within-individual change in behavior over time. Alternatively, longitudinal designs typically follow the same cases over time and make observations (e.g., surveys, interviews) for each case at multiple time points. This approach allows for researchers to establish temporal order and assess both between and within-individual change over time. There is an ongoing debate among criminologists, particularly those interested in developmental processes and theories, regarding the worth of cross-sectional designs over longitudinal designs. This debate largely stems from the relationship between age and crime in what is typically referred to as the age-crime curve and the criminal career paradigm. That is, traditional cross-sectional research has found that crime peaks in mid- to late adolescence and then gradually declines across adult age groups. Despite the criticisms waged against cross-sectional research and the benefits of longitudinal research to establish temporal order, cross-sectional research designs still dominate criminology and criminal justice research. This may be due to some of the advantages of cross-sectional research and disadvantages of longitudinal research. For instance, cross-sectional research is relatively quick and affordable to carry out, making it a fairly accessible research design to conduct without funding and enables production of timely findings. Most importantly, researchers have developed unique methods of data collection and statistical analyses to overcome concerns of causality in cross-sectional research including retrospective or life history analyses, experimental survey designs, and repeated cross-sections or trend data. While these “fixes” do not allow researchers to assess within-individual change in outcomes (e.g., behaviors, attitudes, personality), they do address issues of temporal order and nonspuriousness within the cross-sectional design. The following article presents works that address various aspects of cross-sectional research and some examples of research utilizing this design.
Women’s Inclusion in Executive Cabinets
Authors: Jalalzai Farida
Published: April 2020

This article focuses on trends in women’s inclusion in executive cabinet positions. It discusses the factors facilitating women’s selection to these positions, the quality of portfolios held, and the benefits that gender diversity offers in the cabinet. The percentage of women cabinet ministers has increased worldwide since the 1990s. Moreover, women have started to obtain positions affording more power that are less traditional. At the same time, women still represent a very small portion of cabinet ministers. Conditions that help promote women to power include leftist governments, higher percentages of women in the legislature, and growing international norms valuing gender diversity. Only 21 percent of cabinet ministers are women, but that constitutes record levels. Increasingly, countries have women in at least 50 percent of cabinet positions. This article is organized as follows: It first provides an overview of theoretical foundations related to cabinet selection; it then assesses facilitating conditions related to women’s cabinet incorporation, focusing first on global findings, followed by regional findings. It then addresses types of positions held as well as gender differences in backgrounds. Finally, it outlines the benefits of diverse cabinets.
The Policy Context of United States Educational Innovation and Improvement
Authors: Peurach Donald J. , Foster Anna T.
Published: April 2020

The purpose of this contribution to Oxford Bibliographies in Education is to establish context for the series of articles on improvement-focused educational research, a developing field aimed at producing and using knowledge to address problems, needs, and opportunities grounded deeply in practice contexts. This article frames the policy context of educational innovation and improvement in the United States from which improvement-focused educational research has emerged and in which it is currently developing. We conceptualize “policy” broadly as initiatives and movements that aim to drive the agenda for (and pursuit of) educational innovation as advanced both (a) within and by branches and agencies of government and (b) outside of government, by philanthropies, non-profit organizations, associations, and interest groups. We focus specifically on federal and national policy initiatives since the 1950s that have shared the central priorities of improvement-focused educational research: i.e., effecting innovation and improvement in instructional practice, its organization, and its management, with the primary goals of improving quality and reducing disparities in students’ educational experiences and outcomes. This is for three reasons: (1) the 1950s mark a pivot in societal ambitions for public education in the United States, beyond universal access to public schools to excellence and equity in students’ educational experiences and outcomes; (2) the 1950s mark the beginning of a decades-long period of increasing federal engagement in public education, with a central focus on improving educational quality and reducing educational disparities; and (3) investment in educational research and development in the United States has played out largely at the national level, with weak state investment and with state policy agendas for innovation and improvement shaped heavily by national-level policy activity. Understanding the policy context of improvement-focused educational research, thus, is an interpretive exercise that requires examining patterns of thought and action in this complex idea space. To support readers in this exercise, this article is structured in three parts: (1) an examination of the broader US educational policy context; (2) an examination of what we describe as a “resource-based approach” to educational innovation and improvement; and (3) an examination of what we describe as the “practice-based approach” to educational innovation and improvement. Since the 1950s, the resource-based approach has been a chief focus of federal and national policy. The practice-based approach has developed concurrently and in interaction with the resource-based approach, though absent commensurate federal policy support. Together, the resource-based and practice-based approaches to educational innovation and improvement provide a framework for understanding the policy contexts from which improvement-focused educational research has emerged and in which it is developing.
Germaine Tailleferre
Authors: Epstein Louis K.
Published: April 2020

Germaine Tailleferre (b. 1892–d. 1983) was a prolific composer of symphonic, chamber, film, and radio music who participated actively in French and international musical life for more than six decades. Tailleferre is most commonly remembered as the sole female member of Les Six, but her association with that group was relatively brief in the broader context of her career. Displaying early brilliance as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Tailleferre won all the major prizes in her disciplines—Premier Prix in Harmony, Counterpoint, and Accompaniment—but never had the opportunity to compete for the Premier Prix in composition due to the suspension of the competition during the First World War. After leaving the Conservatoire, she studied with Charles Koechlin and Maurice Ravel. The latter in particular inspired her early efforts to imbue her music with neo-Baroque and neoclassical qualities. Tailleferre’s devotion to Ravel in the early 1920s, and her independence from the more capricious, experimental aesthetics pursued by Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Georges Auric, led her away from the sphere of Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie, who had helped usher Les Six into existence. In her first full-length ballet, Le Marchand d’oiseaux, composed for the Ballets Suédois in 1923, and in her Concerto for Piano commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac in 1924, Tailleferre demonstrated a propensity for pastiche and emulation, combining allusions to J. S. Bach, Chopin, Poulenc, and Stravinsky. From the beginning through the end of her career, many works reveal her attachment to perpetuum mobile rhythms and Bachian counterpoint. Although her music was widely performed in the 1920s and 1930s, and although she continued to earn accolades throughout her life, including one of the first state commissions from the French government (1938), the Prix de l’Académie des Beaux Arts (1973), and the Grand Prix Musical de la Ville de Paris (1978), her writings and her friends’ reminiscences reveal Tailleferre to have been extraordinarily modest. Due in part to her modesty, Tailleferre left behind far less music criticism and autobiographical writing than most other members of Les Six. Indeed, after Louis Durey, who left Les Six in 1921, Tailleferre is the next most meagerly documented member of Les Six, as a comparison between this article and those of her peers will attest. (See the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles “Arthur Honegger”, “Francis Poulenc”, and “Darius Milhaud”.) And those sources that do treat her output focus disproportionately on her interwar works to the exclusion of the many works she produced later in life, including Paris-Magie (1948) and Concerto de la fidelité (1981). But numerous sources touch on her contributions to French music and on her relationships with artists, composers, patrons, impresarios, and others.
The Taba Arbitration
Authors: Sabel Robbie
Published: April 2020

The 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty stipulated that the boundary was the “[r]ecognized international boundary between Egypt and the former mandated territory of Palestine.” A disagreement arose between the Egyptian and Israeli surveyors as to the correct location of parts of the mandatory border, however. Egypt claimed that Israel was refraining from complete withdrawal from Sinai, and therefore refused to normalize relations with Israel. The issue also became one of internal Israel politics, with the right wing led by Yitzhak Shamir taking a hard line on the issue and the left-wing Labour Movement led by Shimon Peres being more willing to compromise. Egypt’s claim relied on existing pillars, and Israel relied on the 1906 agreement between Britain, as the administrator of Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Palestine. The majority award of the Tribunal held that it would decide the location of the pillars “as it was demarcated, consolidated, and commonly understood during the period of the Mandate,” which was “the critical period.” As to the site advanced by Egypt, the Award admitted that “there is no evidence with respect to the erection of this pillar in 1907–07 nor with regard to its existence in the following years”; however, “throughout the critical period until a time after 1967 there was a boundary pillar at the location which during this whole period was considered to be a boundary pillar.” “Where the States concerned have, over a period of more than fifty years, identified a marker as a boundary pillar and acted upon that basis, it is no longer open to one of the parties or to third states to challenge that long held assumption on the basis of an alleged error.” “The principle of the stability of boundaries, requires that boundary markers, long accepted as such by the States concerned, should be respected and not open to challenge indefinitely on the basis of error.” The dissenting opinion of Ruth Lapidoth held that that “Egypt and Great Britain adopted the boundary line of the 1906 Agreement, without reference to any changes on the ground which may have occurred subsequent to that Agreement.” According to Lapidoth, “The majority erroneously attributes stability to boundary markers whereas the principle of stability and permanence applies not to markers but to boundaries lawfully established and recognized.” Since the arbitrators were not authorized to choose a location for a pillar not advanced by the parties, the final pillar on the seashore was not determined and, after the arbitration was concluded, the parties negotiated its location.
Medieval Art and the Cult of Saints
Authors: Gertsman Elina , DeLuca Dominique
Published: April 2020

It can be said that medieval art, in great part, is predicated on the engagement with the cult of the saints. Between the 5th and 16th centuries, saints and their images grounded Christian belief and shaped its practices. Patron saints formed a crucial part of the devotee’s spiritual life, believed to provide intercession, work miracles, and model pious behavior. Countless churches and shrines were dedicated to well-known as well as local saints, their visual programs coalescing around reliquaries that held the bodily remains or contact relics of holy men and women. The faithful undertook pilgrimages to holy shrines in order to secure saints’ help and to petition them with prayer. Saints’ likenesses were fashioned in wood and metal, paint and stone, ivory and textile; their lives were narrated and visualized in scores of manuscripts. In other words, to explore a history of medieval art and the cult of saints one would have to write a history of medieval art as a whole. The following bibliography provides but a sample of key studies that address specific topics with a focus on Western medieval and Byzantine art: images of saints in churches and monasteries; art along pilgrimage roads; relics and reliquaries; and saints and piety. It does not include sources that treat sacred spaces dedicated to saints—churches, shrines, chapels—as a whole.
RAD-seq-Based High-Density Linkage Map Construction and QTL Mapping of Biomass-Related Traits in Sorghum using the Japanese Landrace Takakibi NOG
Authors: Kajiya-Kanegae Hiromi , Takanashi Hideki , Fujimoto Masaru , Ishimori Motoyuki , Ohnishi Norikazu , Wacera W. Fiona , Omollo Everlyne A , Kobayashi Masaaki , Yano Kentaro , Nakano Michiharu , Kozuka Toshiaki , Kusaba Makoto , Iwata Hiroyoshi , Tsutsumi Nobuhiro , Sakamoto Wataru
Published: April 2020

Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] grown locally by Japanese farmers is generically termed Takakibi, although its genetic diversity compared with geographically distant varieties or even within Takakibi lines remains unclear. To explore the genomic diversity and genetic traits controlling biomass and other physiological traits in Takakibi, we focused on a landrace, NOG, in this study. Admixture analysis of 460 sorghum accessions revealed that NOG belonged to the subgroup that represented Asian sorghums, and it was only distantly related to American/African accessions including BTx623. In an attempt to dissect major traits related to biomass, we generated a recombinant inbred line (RIL) from a cross between BTx623 and NOG, and we constructed a high-density linkage map based on 3,710 single-nucleotide polymorphisms obtained by restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing of 213 RIL individuals. Consequently, 13 fine quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were detected on chromosomes 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9, which included five QTLs for days to heading, three for plant height (PH) and total shoot fresh weight and two for Brix. Furthermore, we identified two dominant loci for PH as being identical to the previously reported dw1 and dw3. Together, these results corroborate the diversified genome of Japanese Takakibi, while the RIL population and high-density linkage map generated in this study will be useful for dissecting other important traits in sorghum.
CYP2D6Basic Genotyping of Patients with Chronic Pain Receiving Tramadol or Codeine. A Study in a Greek Cohort
Authors: Batistaki Chrysanthi , Chrona Eleni , Kostroglou Andreas , Kostopanagiotou Georgia , Gazouli Maria
Published: April 2020

Objective

To assess CYP2D6 genotype prevalence in chronic pain patients treated with tramadol or codeine.

Design

Prospective cohort study.

Setting

General hospital, pain management unit.

Subjects

Patients with chronic pain, treated with codeine or tramadol.

Methods

Patients’ pain was assessed at baseline (numeric rating scale [NRS]; 0–10). Prescription of codeine or tramadol was selected randomly. The assessment of patients’ response to the drug in terms of pain relief and adverse effects was performed after 24 hours. Reduction of pain intensity of >50% or an NRS <4 was considered a positive response. Patients’ blood samples were collected during the first visit. Genotyping for the common variants CYP2D6 *2, *3, *4, *5, *6, *9, *10, *14, and *17 was performed, and alleles not carrying any polymorphic allele were classified as CYP2D6*1 (wild-type [wt]).

Results

Seventy-six consecutive patients were studied (20 males, 56 females), aged 21–85 years. Thirty-four received tramadol and 42 codeine. The main genotypes of CYP2D6 identified were the wt/wt (35.5%), the *4/wt (17.1%), and the *6/wt (10.5%). Adverse effects were common, especially in carriers of *9/*9, *5/*5, *5/*4, and *10/*10, as well as in variants including the 4 allele (*4/*1 [38.4%] and *4/*4 [42.8%]).

Conclusions

Genotyping can facilitate personalized pain management with opioids, as specific alleles are related to decreased efficacy and adverse effects.
Meta-Analysis of Sensorimotor Gating Deficits in Patients With Schizophrenia Evaluated by Prepulse Inhibition Test
Authors: San-Martin Rodrigo , Castro Leonardo Andrade , Menezes Paulo Rossi , Fraga Francisco José , Simões Priscyla Waleska , Salum Cristiane
Published: April 2020

Abstracts

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle is an operational measure of sensorimotor gating that is often impaired in patients with schizophrenia. Despite the large number of studies, there is considerable variation in PPI outcomes reported. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis investigating PPI impairment in patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy control subjects, and examined possible explanations for the variation in results between studies. Major databases were screened for observational studies comparing healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia for the prepulse and pulse intervals of 60 and 120 ms as primary outcomes, ie, PPI-60 and PPI-120. Standardized mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were extracted and pooled using random effects models. We then estimated the mean effect size of these measures with random effects meta-analyses and evaluated potential PPI heterogeneity moderators, using sensitivity analysis and meta-regressions. Sixty-seven primary studies were identified, with 3685 healthy and 4290 patients with schizophrenia. The schizophrenia group showed reduction in sensorimotor gating for both PPI-60 (SMD = −0.50, 95% CI = [−0.61, −0.39]) and PPI-120 (SMD = −0.44, 95% CI = [−0.54, −0.33]). The sensitivity and meta-regression analysis showed that sample size, gender proportion, imbalance for gender, source of control group, and study continent were sources of heterogeneity (P < .05) for both PPI-60 and PPI-120 outcomes. Our findings confirm a global sensorimotor gating deficit in schizophrenia patients, with overall moderate effect size for PPI-60 and PPI-120. Methodological consistency should decrease the high level of heterogeneity of PPI results between studies.