bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Liberated Africans
Authors: Anderson Richard
Published: March 2021

“Liberated Africans” refers to a group of African-born men, women, and children intercepted by naval forces from slave ships and slave trading factories in the Atlantic and Indian oceans as part of the 19th-century campaign to abolish the transoceanic slave trade from Africa. Following the passage of Britain’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the British Royal Navy patrolled both the Atlantic and Indian oceans in order to suppress the external trade from Africa. Captured vessels were taken to a series of Vice-Admiralty courts, and later Mixed Commission courts, located in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Havana, Cuba; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Tortola; Cape Town, South Africa; James Town, St. Helena; Luanda, Angola; and Port Luis, Mauritius. Naval interdiction by Brazil, Portugal, the United States, and other powers resulted in a smaller number of cases brought before unilateral anti-slave-trade tribunals.

Between 1808 and 1896, this complex tribunal network “liberated” approximately 214,000 Africans who survived the Middle Passage. Perhaps 75,000 of these individuals were settled in Sierra Leone; the remainder were settled in the British Caribbean, Brazil, Cuba, Liberia, and British colonies and outposts from the Gambia, Cape Colony, and Mauritius, to Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Bombay. The arrival of an estimated 192,000 Liberated Africans into Atlantic ports continued through the demise of the transatlantic slave trade in the 1860s. In the Indian Ocean, approximately 22,000 Liberated Africans disembarked in East Africa, the Persian Gulf, and India as a result of a highly uneven British naval campaign from 1808 into the 1890s.

Many Liberated Africans experienced very liminal freedom. Adults and children were apprenticed to colonial inhabitants for periods of up to fourteen years. Men were conscripted into the British West India Regiments and Royal African Corps. Many women were forcibly married to strangers soon after arrival. Approximately one out of every four Liberated Africans underwent a second oceanic passage, most of them forcibly relocated to the British West Indies. The settlement of Liberated Africans—referred to by British officials as their “disposal”—represented a sizable involuntary African migration into and across the British Empire in the decades after the abolition of the British slave trade. Their arrival brought with it a lasting linguistic and cultural impact in many colonial societies. The descendants of Liberated Africans remain identifiable communities in many postcolonial societies from Africa to the Caribbean.
Al-Shabaab
Authors: Gakuo Mwangi Oscar
Published: March 2021

The Somalia-based Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujaheddin, commonly known as al-Shabaab, is a violent nonstate armed actor that has been designated a terrorist group. Its origins are a function of domestic and international factors that include the resurgence of political Islam in Somalia, the Afghan War of 1979 to 1989, state collapse and the prominent rise of the Union of Islamic Courts in the country. Consequently al-Shabaab adopted Islamism, in particular Salafi jihadism, as a political ideology to achieve its objective of creating an Islamic caliphate in the Horn of Africa. Since its formation in 2006, al-Shabaab’s organizational structure, its strategies and tactics of radicalization, recruitment, financing, and military warfare have been based on Islamist doctrines. Al-Shabaab’s effective use of Salafi jihadism to pursue its objectives has made it the greatest threat to peace and stability in Somalia. By establishing links with international groups that advocate a similar ideology, such as al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab has successfully managed to transform itself from a domestic to a transnational actor, thereby also constituting a threat to international security.
Spirits and Healing in West and Central Africa: A New Synthesis
Authors: MacGaffey Wyatt
Published: March 2021

Though seemingly innocent, descriptive, and even commendatory, both “spirits” and “healing” are problematic terms in the history of African studies. Rather than identifying well-bounded domains of African life, both of them have evolved from the history of European attitudes toward Africa. “Spirits” often give rise to problems of well-being that “healing” is called upon to solve. Despite this close connection, spirits have been the primary subject matter of religious studies, whereas healing is among the concerns of anthropology. The study of African religion has thus come to be divided between two disciplines embodying the distinction between “belief” and “knowledge,” the irrational and the rational, developed in Europe during the Enlightenment.

Anthropology itself has long divided social life into the separate domains of religion, politics, and economics, assigning the study of each to a different discipline with its own preoccupations and specialized vocabulary. This ethnocentric template misrepresented African societies whose institutions were unlike those of Europe.

In the forest zones of West and Central Africa a particular set of beliefs and practices regulated the use of power for personal and collective well-being. Power, or the ability to effect change for good or ill, was and is still thought to be derived from forces called “spirits,” which are in fact as much material as spiritual. Following special procedures, gifted persons obtain power from an otherworld that is simultaneously the earth itself and the land of “the living dead,” who are buried in it. The uses of such power to kill or to cure, for collective or private benefit, define a contrast set of four roles—called for convenience chief, priest, witch, and magician—whose functions are simultaneously moral, political, economic, and therapeutic. This system is open to novel revelations within a stable cognitive framework, and adapts to new conditions. Different ideologies and practices of social regulation are found in other parts of Africa.
Archives and History in The Gambia
Authors: Saho Bala
Published: March 2021

The Gambian archives, established in the 1960s, have rich and valuable resources for deeper study and teaching of the history of The Gambia and the subregion. The collections are representative of a substantial amount of The Gambia’s precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history on a range of subjects, including settlement patterns, migration, family histories, folktales, myths, legends, proverbs, songs, religion, early colonial trading in The Gambia, histories of the ethnic groups and their cultural ceremonies, history of individuals, nationalists politicians, postcolonial political parties, and World War II. Although these sources can be valuable to students, international researchers, and specialists, there is a great need for their care and maintenance.
Markov Switching
Authors: Song Yong , Woźniak Tomasz
Published: March 2021

Markov switching models are a family of models that introduces time variation in the parameters in the form of their state, or regime-specific values. This time variation is governed by a latent discrete-valued stochastic process with limited memory. More specifically, the current value of the state indicator is determined by the value of the state indicator from the previous period only implying the Markov property. A transition matrix characterizes the properties of the Markov process by determining with what probability each of the states can be visited next period conditionally on the state in the current period. This setup decides on the two main advantages of the Markov switching models: the estimation of the probability of state occurrences in each of the sample periods by using filtering and smoothing methods and the estimation of the state-specific parameters. These two features open the possibility for interpretations of the parameters associated with specific regimes combined with the corresponding regime probabilities.

The most commonly applied models from this family are those that presume a finite number of regimes and the exogeneity of the Markov process, which is defined as its independence from the model’s unpredictable innovations. In many such applications, the desired properties of the Markov switching model have been obtained either by imposing appropriate restrictions on transition probabilities or by introducing the time dependence of these probabilities determined by explanatory variables or functions of the state indicator. One of the extensions of this basic specification includes infinite hidden Markov models that provide great flexibility and excellent forecasting performance by allowing the number of states to go to infinity. Another extension, the endogenous Markov switching model, explicitly relates the state indicator to the model’s innovations, making it more interpretable and offering promising avenues for development.
Children in Violent Movements: From Child Soldiers to Terrorist Groups
Authors: Bloom Mia , Warpinski Kristian Kastner
Published: March 2021

While the use of child soldiers has declined in recent years, it has not ended entirely. Children remain front-line participants in a variety of conflicts throughout the world and are actively recruited by armed groups and terrorist organizations. Reports of children involved in terrorism have become all too common. Boko Haram has repeatedly selected women and girls as their primary suicide attackers, and, in Somalia, the United Nations reported that al-Shabaab was responsible for recruiting over 1,800 children in 2019. In Iraq and Syria, children were routinely featured in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) propaganda, and the group mobilized children as “cubs” to fight for the so-called Caliphate. Unfortunately there is a myriad of reasons why terrorist organizations actively include children within their ranks: children can be proficient fighters, and they are easy to train, cheaper to feed, and harder to detect. Thus, recruiting and deploying children is often rooted in “strategy” and not necessarily the result of shrinking numbers of adult recruits. Drawing from the robust literature on child soldiers, there are areas of convergence (and divergence) that explain the pathways children take in and out of terrorist organizations and the roles they play. Focusing on two cases, al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we argue that there are three distinct but overlapping processes of child recruitment, including forced conscription (i.e., kidnapping), subtle manipulation and coercion (i.e., cultures of martyrdom), and a process of seemingly “voluntary recruitment,” which is almost always the result of intimidation and pressure given the children’s age and their (in)ability to provide consent. The concepts of consent and agency are key, especially when weighing the ethical and legal questions of what to do with these children once rescued or detained. Nonetheless, the children are first and foremost victims and should be awarded special protected status in any domestic or international court. In 2020, countries were seeking to balance human rights, legal responsibility, and national security around the challenge of repatriating the thousands of children affiliated with ISIS and still languishing in the al-Hol and Al Roj camps.
The Pursuit and Use of Biological Weapons by States
Authors: Malet David
Published: March 2021

Biological weapons (BW) have been a fixture of warfare throughout history, although states did not have the capability of manufacturing BW arsenals until the 20th century. Few states had strategic objectives for BW production, but the fear of being outmatched by rivals produced arms races beginning in the 1920s. Both hegemonic and rogue states sought BW arsenals, although only Imperial Japan is known to have employed them. International agreements prohibiting BW have been ineffective, but normative, technical, and deterrent constraints have prevented the arms from being used.

BW remain undertheorized in the international studies literature and have not been part of the great debates within the field. The literature on BW has instead been far more technical than that for other categories of armaments. The main division among BW researchers is whether the select agents are likely to be spread by proliferation to rogue states, terrorists, or lone actors or whether the technical difficulties inherent in production mean that only states that have invested in advanced research will be able to harness them.

The biological weapons of the 21st century will be new technologies developed by great power militaries ranging from enhanced supersoldiers to genetic attacks that cause organ failure at the push of a button. These advancements raise difficult questions about Just War, military service, and domestic civil liberties. Just as the advent of nuclear weapons and drones preceded informed debate, military uses of biotechnology have already begun and require examination before they are deployed widely.
Malthusian Thought
Authors: Stone Glenn Davis
Published: March 2021

Robert Malthus’s 1798 Population has proven to be one of the most influential publications in history. Challenging ideas popular among Enlightenment writers, including the perfectibility of human institutions, he argued that since population could grow exponentially and agriculture only linearly, there was an inherent and irresolvable imbalance in nature that unavoidably led to population being checked by mortality among the poor. The policy implication was that aid to the hungry would only create more misery. The most famous “proof” of the theory came in Ireland in the 1840s, and Malthus’s policy recommendations were followed. However, Ireland was setting food export records during the famine, and agriculture has grown much more rapidly than population ever since. The basic tenets of Malthus’s have been debunked, but it continues to be influential, especially in the form of neo-Malthusianism, largely because of the interests it serves.
Religion and Moral Economy
Authors: Keane Webb
Published: March 2021

Religious stances toward moral economy have long provided important resources for critical reflection on economic life. When religious institutions seek to build alternatives to existing economic systems and financial practices, however, they also encounter a range of problems. In contrast to many secular critiques of economics, religious ones tend to be explicit about both their moral directives and the ontological assumptions on which they are grounded and give rise to distinctive economic habits and financial institutions. For this reason, their ethnographic study sheds light on a range of more general anthropological questions about the sources of value, the limits of rational calculation, the morality of debt, the meaning of inequality, economic justice, and the legitimate purposes of an economy.
Dunhuang Texts
Authors: Doumy Mélodie
Published: March 2021

At the turn of the 20th century, a small, walled-up cave was discovered by Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu王圆禄on the Buddhist site of the Thousand Buddha Caves, or Mogao Caves, located near Dunhuang (in the present-day Chinese province of Gansu). The room revealed a huge cache of manuscripts dating from the late 4th century up to the beginning of 11th century; the time around which it was probably sealed off. Although it also contained a smaller number of drawings, paintings, textiles, and other artifacts, the secret repository is popularly referred to as the “Library Cave” or “Cave 17” after the number that the explorer Marc Aurel Stein assigned to it.

The oasis town of Dunhuang was once positioned at a strategic point on the Silk Road. The manuscripts found in Cave 17 reflect the multicultural nature of the region through the range of languages represented and the variety of subject matters covered. They were written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and other ancient Central Asian languages. Although they are primarily Buddhist texts, there are also secular manuscripts, such as letters and contracts, along with a minority of manuscripts showcasing other religions.

For these reasons, as well as the relative scarcity of materials surviving from the period, the Dunhuang manuscripts have revolutionized the understanding of medieval China and Central Asia. A whole academic discipline, Dunhuangology, or Dunhuang studies, has developed around them. They open a window into the wider religious and secular worlds of the Silk Road, constituting a major resource for various research fields, including history, Buddhism, linguistics, science, literature, and manuscript studies.
Christian Feminist Theology and the Arts
Authors: Ursic Elizabeth
Published: March 2021

Christian theology is the study of God and religious belief based on the Christian Bible and tradition. For over 2,000 years, Christian theologians have been primarily men writing from men’s perspectives and experiences. In the 1960s, women began to study to become theologians when the women’s rights movement opened doors to higher education for women. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, female theologians developed Christian feminist theology with a focus on women’s perspectives and experiences. Christian feminist theology seeks to empower women through their Christian faith and supports the equality of women and men based on Christian scripture. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). The arts have an important role in Christian feminist theology because a significant way Christians learn about their faith is through the arts, and Christians engage the arts in the practice of their faith.

Christian feminist theology in the visual arts can be found in paintings, sculptures, icons, and liturgical items such as processional crosses. Themes in visual expression include female and feminine imagery of God from the Bible as well as female leaders in the scriptures. Christian feminist theology in performing arts can be found in hymns, prayers, music, liturgies, and rituals. Performative expressions include inclusive language for humanity and God as well as expressions that celebrate Christian women and address women’s life experiences. The field of Christian feminist theology and the arts is vast in terms of types of arts represented and the variety of ways Christianity is practiced around the world. Representing Christian feminist theology with art serves to communicate both visually and performatively that all are one in Christ.
Secularization and Sacred Space
Authors: Bains David
Published: March 2021

Secularization, or the decline in the authority of religious institutions, became a pronounced feature of Western culture in the 20th century, especially in its latter half. Secularization has affected the history of Western sacred space in four ways: (a) It has helped to shape the concept of “sacred space” so that it designates a space that helps generate a personal religious experience independent of religious rituals and teachings. (b) It has caused many houses of worship to use architectural forms not previously associated with religion in order to link their religious communities to the respected realms of business, science, and entertainment. And it has motivated religious communities to craft spaces that encourage worshipers to recognize God at work in the secular world and to demonstrate to others the continued relevance of religion. (c) Many former houses of worship have been destroyed or converted to other uses. Sometimes this occurred not because of declining membership but in order to relocate to a more favorable building or location. Nonetheless, these changes have created a more secular cityscape. Other times destruction and conversion have been the product of state-sponsored regimes of secularization or a decline in the number of clergy or church supporters. The reuse of these former houses of worship often results in the association of religious symbols with commercial or personal endeavors. It also raises challenges for maintaining public space in dense urban environments and for preserving artistic and cultural heritage. Given the increasing closure of churches, in 2018 the Pontifical Council of Culture issued guidelines to guide Roman Catholics in determining best uses for buildings no longer needed for worship. (d) Spaces which are not linked to religious communities, especially museums and monuments, came to be frequently designed in ways similar to historic sacred spaces. For this reason and others, they are esteemed by many people as places to encounter the sacred in a secularized world.
Slave Revolts
Authors: Pirola Ricardo Figueiredo
Published: March 2021

Brazil received the largest number of enslaved Africans in the countries in the Americas. Of the 12.5 million men and women taken captive in Africa, about 5.5 million (44 percent) were sent to Brazil, which became one of the main slaveholding areas in the world. The enslavement of Africans and their descendants persisted in that country for more than three centuries and permeated all aspects of life. There was no work in which slave labor was not used, whether in the fields or in towns and cities throughout Brazil’s vast territory. The wealth produced by the exploitation of sugar cane, coffee, and the extraction of gold and diamonds relied primarily on the work of enslaved Africans. Brazil was built on the backs of Blacks.

If the work of enslaved Africans and their descendants marked the building of wealth in that country, the struggles they waged over the centuries were also part of Brazilian history. The enslaved resisted the world conceived by their masters in many ways: by sabotaging the production of goods, slowing the pace of work, escaping, forming quilombos (maroon communities), killing masters and overseers, and planning slave revolts. These various forms of resistance coexisted during over three centuries of slavery in Brazil, but above all in the 19th century, when most of the collective slave revolts occurred. This does not mean that there were no uprisings before that time, but the accelerated arrival of Africans in the 19th century and the dissemination of several revolutionary ideologies (such as Islamism and the ideas of equality and freedom arising from the Enlightenment) created a favorable context for the outbreak of mass revolts. It was in the 1800s, specifically in 1835, that Brazil witnessed the largest urban uprising of enslaved individuals in the Americas when the Revolt of the Malês erupted in the streets of Salvador, Bahia.
Regionalism in Brazil
Authors: Weinstein Barbara
Published: March 2021

A major aspect of Brazilian history is the ongoing significance of regionalism and regional identities. To explore this history, one needs to consider how a particular space becomes a region in the first place, and how certain attributes, human and natural, become associated with that space. Regionalism emerged as a major feature of the political sphere in Brazil during the immediate postcolonial decades as liberal and conservative elites struggled over the degree of provincial autonomy under the empire. This was followed by a period of republican-federalist rule that in some ways increased political autonomy for the individual states, but also allowed certain regions to consolidate their political and economic dominance, which led to an entrenched pattern of highly uneven development. Regionalism becomes the basis for competition over political and material resources, and regional identities were increasingly implicated in debates about tradition and modernity. Regional disparities also become racialized, as prosperity in the southern states became linked with European immigration and whiteness. And even as internal migration accelerated in the period following World War II, migrants continued to bear the “attributes” of the originating region, and in some cases, such as the northeasterners in São Paulo, the experience of migration intensifies the connection with the Nordeste. These disparities produce regional resentments that have fueled regionally based political divisions in national elections in the early 21st century.
Earthquakes in Colonial Peru
Authors: Mansilla Judith
Published: March 2021

Natural events have afflicted human societies periodically. They become disasters when their effects drastically alter and disrupt people’s quotidian patterns of life and political-economic organization. The chaos and distress natural disasters produce require people to react immediately, taking essential measures to cope with post-disaster conditions. While in the early 21st century, technological and scientific tools permit human communities to prepare for certain forecastable natural events, or to expedite responses to sudden and unforeseen disasters, such resources were lacking in early modern times.

The viceroyalty of Peru was one of the most valuable colonial territories of the Spanish monarchy. Located over a telluric region, most of this colonial area was prone to earthquakes. However, colonial society’s understanding of earthquakes, and other natural events, influenced its reactions and how authorities responded to disaster. Learning about earthquakes in colonial Peru unveils early modern strategies of crisis management, which included both material and spiritual assistance. Furthermore, it reminds us of human communities’ vulnerability, which may increase when faced with monumental challenges during post-disaster periods.
Typological Diversity Within the Romance Languages
Authors: Ricca Davide
Published: March 2021

The Romance languages, despite their overall similarity, display interesting internal diversity which can be captured only very partially by looking at the six major standard languages, as typological databases often do. This diversity spans over all the levels of linguistic analysis, from phonology to morphology and syntax. Rather than making a long list of features, with no space to go much beyond their mere mention, the article focusses on just four main areas in a little more detail, trying to develop, if minimally, a discussion on their theoretical and methodological import.

The comparison with the full-world typological background given by the WALS Online shows that the differences within Romance may reach the level of general typological relevance. While this is probably not the case in their rather mainstream segmental phonology, it surely holds regarding nominal pluralization and the syntax of negation, which are both areas where the Romance languages have often distanced themselves quite significantly from their common ancestor, Latin. The morphological marking of nominal plural displays four values out of the seven recorded in WALS, adding a further one unattested there, namely subtraction; the negation strategies, although uniformly particle-like, cover all the five values found in WALS concerning linear order. Finally, Romance languages suggest several intriguing issues related with head-marking and dependent-marking constructions, again innovating against the substantially dependent-marking uniformity characteristic of Latin.
Economics of the Genuine Progress Indicator
Authors: Garcia Junior Ruiz
Published: March 2021

The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is an interesting alternative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of society’s development. Historically, GDP has been used by policymakers, media analysts, and economists as the main indicator of development, even though economics textbooks often state that it is not a measure of social welfare. Strictly speaking, GDP is only an indicator of the production of economic goods and services, not an index of well-being or development. It does not include the environmental, social, or economic costs of producing goods and services. The theoretical basis of GDP is conventional macroeconomics, which adopts an isolated economic system as the object of analysis. In this approach, there is no flow of matter and energy to produce economic goods and services. The economy is considered a perpetual motion machine that does not need material and energy to produce and which consequently does not generate waste. However, the economy is a subsystem open to the flow of matter and energy, supported by a closed, natural subsystem—the global environmental system. In practice, the production of economic goods and services is dependent on the continuous flow of matter and energy from the environment, and inherently, the result of GDP is also the generation of waste. The GPI adopts this perspective. In the 1990s, Daly and Cobb created the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), hereafter termed GPI. The objective was to incorporate environmental, social, and economic costs associated with GDP growth, and to generate an indicator that reflected a genuine development of society. The GPI has been estimated for several countries, including the United States, Australia, China, and Brazil. This indicator is neither perfect nor complete for assessing development or human well-being, but it is superior to GDP. Despite technological development, there has been an unequivocal increase in environmental degradation, contrary to the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The result of environmental degradation has been an increase in the environmental, social, and economic costs of GDP growth. However, these costs have been ignored by policymakers, companies, and society in their production and consumption decisions. Improving the GPI and its estimates can provide better information for decision making by economic and political agents.
Trends in “Deaths of Despair” Among Working-Aged White and Black Americans, 1990–2017
Authors: Tilstra Andrea M , Simon Daniel H , Masters Ryan K
Published: March 2021

Life expectancy for US White men and women declined between 2013 and 2017. Initial explanations for the decline focused on increases in “deaths of despair” (i.e., deaths from suicide, drug use, and alcohol use), which have been interpreted as a cohort-based phenomenon afflicting middle-aged White Americans. There has been less attention on Black mortality trends from these same causes, and whether the trends are similar or different by cohort and period. We complement existing research and contend that recent mortality trends in both the US Black and White populations most likely reflect period-based exposures to 1) the US opioid epidemic and 2) the Great Recession. We analyzed cause-specific mortality trends in the United States for deaths from suicide, drug use, and alcohol use among non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White Americans, aged 20–64 years, over 1990–2017. We employed sex-, race-, and cause-of-death–stratified Poisson rate models and age-period-cohort models to compare mortality trends. Results indicate that rising “deaths of despair” for both Black and White Americans are overwhelmingly driven by period-based increases in drug-related deaths since the late 1990s. Further, deaths related to alcohol use and suicide among both White and Black Americans changed during the Great Recession, despite some racial differences across cohorts.
Variation in climatic tolerance, but not stomatal traits, partially explains Pooideae grass species distributions
Authors: Das Aayudh , Prakash Anoob , Dedon Natalie , Doty Alex , Siddiqui Muniba , Preston Jill C
Published: March 2021

Background and Aims

Grasses in subfamily Pooideae live in some of the world’s harshest terrestrial environments, from frigid boreal zones to the arid windswept steppe. It is hypothesized that the climate distribution of species within this group is driven by differences in climatic tolerance, and that tolerance can be partially explained by variation in stomatal traits.

Methods

We determined the aridity index (AI) and minimum temperature of the coldest month (MTCM) for 22 diverse Pooideae accessions and one outgroup, and used comparative methods to assess predicted relationships for climate traits versus fitness traits, stomatal diffusive conductance to water (gw) and speed of stomatal closure following drought and/or cold.

Key Results

Results demonstrate that AI and MTCM predict variation in survival/regreening following drought/cold, and gw under drought/cold is positively correlated with δ 13C-measured water use efficiency (WUE). However, the relationship between climate traits and fitness under drought/cold was not explained by gw or speed of stomatal closure.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that Pooideae distributions are at least partly determined by tolerance to aridity and above-freezing cold, but that variation in tolerance is not uniformly explained by variation in stomatal traits.
A Bayesian optimal escape model reveals bird species differ in their capacity to habituate to humans
Authors: Sutton Nicholas M , Weston Michael A , Guay Patrick J , Tregoweth Jenna , O’Dwyer James P
Published: March 2021

The capacity to habituate to, or tolerate, the close proximity of humans varies among wildlife species and may mediate population and species viability. Some species readily habituate to human proximity while others remain sensitive. These differences are important for predicting human impact on wildlife, but can be difficult to quantify given wildlife responses are highly idiosyncratic and are often context dependent. A general method for assimilating multiple sources of information and variation in individual responses is needed to extract meaningful descriptors of population- and species-level behavior. We apply a previously verified Bayesian optimal escape model to quantify differences in the perceived risk of seven species of waterbird, and generate a metric for species-specific sensitivity by estimating the relative change in risk perception of each species across an environmental gradient from low to high prevailing human activity level. We found that, in general, birds are the least habituated (evidently perceived the highest level of risk from humans) in sites with low human activity and the most habituated (evidently perceived lower levels of risk from humans) in sites with high human activity. Species varied in the degree of these differences, with some insensitive to human activity level, while others were highly sensitive. Aside from improving our ability to study the habituation of wild populations, this method for quantifying risk perception at population and species scales has broad applications in the management and monitoring of wildlife, and may aid in environmental impact assessments and identifying populations/species susceptible to disturbance.
A community-supported metaproteomic pipeline for improving peptide identifications in hydrothermal vent microbiota
Authors: Chang Yafei , Fan Qilian , Hou Jialin , Zhang Yu , Li Jing
Published: March 2021

Microorganisms in deep-sea hydrothermal vents provide valuable insights into life under extreme conditions. Mass spectrometry-based proteomics has been widely used to identify protein expression and function. However, the metaproteomic studies in deep-sea microbiota have been constrained largely by the low identification rates of protein or peptide. To improve the efficiency of metaproteomics for hydrothermal vent microbiota, we firstly constructed a microbial gene database (HVentDB) based on 117 public metagenomic samples from hydrothermal vents and proposed a metaproteomic analysis strategy, which takes the advantages of not only the sample-matched metagenome, but also the metagenomic information released publicly in the community of hydrothermal vents. A two-stage false discovery rate method was followed up to control the risk of false positive. By applying our community-supported strategy to a hydrothermal vent sediment sample, about twice as many peptides were identified when compared with the ways against the sample-matched metagenome or the public reference database. In addition, more enriched and explainable taxonomic and functional profiles were detected by the HVentDB-based approach exclusively, as well as many important proteins involved in methane, amino acid, sugar, glycan metabolism and DNA repair, etc. The new metaproteomic analysis strategy will enhance our understanding of microbiota, including their lifestyles and metabolic capabilities in extreme environments. The database HVentDB is freely accessible from http://lilab.life.sjtu.edu.cn:8080/HventDB/main.html.
siGCD: a web server to explore survival interaction of genes, cells and drugs in human cancers
Authors: Cui XiuLiang , Han Lu , Liu Yang , Li Ying , Sun Wen , Song Bin , Zhou Wenxia , Zhang Yongxiang , Wang Hongyang
Published: March 2021

It is pivotal and remains challenge for cancer precision treatment to identify the survival outcome interactions between genes, cells and drugs. Here, we present siGCD, a web-based tool for analysis and visualization of the survival interaction of Genes, Cells and Drugs in human cancers. siGCD utilizes the cancer heterogeneity to simulate the manipulated gene expression, cell infiltration and drug treatment, which overcomes the data and experimental limitations. To illustrate the performance of siGCD, we identified the survival interaction partners of EGFR (gene level), T cells (cell level) and sorafenib (drug level), and our prediction was consistent with previous reports. Moreover, we validate the synergistic effect of regorafenib and glyburide, and found that glyburide could significantly improve the regorafenib response. These results demonstrate that siGCD could benefit cancer precision medicine in a wide range of advantageous application scenarios including gene regulatory network construction, immune cell regulatory gene identification, drug (especially multiple target drugs) response biomarker screening and combination therapeutic design.
Subtle environmental variation affects phenotypic differentiation of shallow divergent treefrog lineages in Amazonia
Authors: Rainha Raíssa N , Martinez Pablo A , Moraes Leandro J C L , Castro Kathleen M S A , Réjaud Alexandre , Fouquet Antoine , Leite Rafael N , Rodrigues Miguel T , Werneck Fernanda P
Published: March 2021

Amazonia harbours a vast biotic and ecological diversity, enabling investigation of the effects of microevolutionary processes and environmental variation on species diversification. Integrative approaches combining phenotypic and genetic variation can improve our knowledge on diversification processes in megadiverse regions. Here, we investigate the influence of environmental and geographic variation on the genetic and morphological differentiation in the Amazonian Boana calcarata-fasciata (Anura: Hylidae) species complex. We analysed the variation of one mtDNA gene from individuals of different forest environments, and assessed their phylogenetic relationships and species limits to define the lineages to perform a phenotypic-environmental approach. We collected morphological data (head shape and size) using 3D models and investigated the phylogenetic signal, evolutionary model and influence of environmental variables on morphology. We verified associations between environmental and geographical distances with morphological and genetic variation using distance-based redundancy analyses and Mantel tests. We found an even higher cryptic diversity than already recognized within the species complex. Body size and head shape varied among specimens, but did not present phylogenetic signal, diverging under a selective evolutionary model. Our results show that diverse factors have influenced morphological and genetic variation, but environmental conditions such as vegetation cover, precipitation and climate change velocity influenced morphological diversification. Possible population-level mechanisms such as parallel morphological evolution or plastic responses to similar environments could account for such patterns in these typical Amazonian treefrogs.
Opening of ATP sensitive potassium channels causes migraine attacks with aura
Authors: Al-Karagholi Mohammad Al-Mahdi , Ghanizada Hashmat , Nielsen Cherie Amalie Waldorff , Hougaard Anders , Ashina Messoud
Published: March 2021

Migraine afflicts more than one billion individuals worldwide and is a leading cause of years lived with disability. In about a third of individuals with migraine aura occur in relation to migraine headache. The common pathophysiological mechanisms underlying migraine headache and migraine aura are yet to be identified. Based on recent data, we hypothesized that levcromakalim, an ATP-sensitive potassium channel opener, would trigger migraine attacks with aura in patients. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study, 17 patients aged 21–59 years and diagnosed with migraine with aura exclusively were randomly allocated to receive an infusion of 0.05 mg/min levcromakalim or placebo (isotonic saline) on two different days (ClinicalTrials.gov, ID: NCT04012047). The primary end points were the difference in incidence of migraine attacks with or without aura, headache and the difference in the area under the curve for headache intensity scores (0–12 h). Seventeen patients completed the study. Fourteen of 17 (82%) patients developed migraine attacks with and without aura after levcromakalim compared with 1 of 17 (6%) after placebo (P < 0.001). Ten patients (59%) developed migraine with aura after levcromakalim compared with none after placebo (P = 0.002). One additional patient reported ‘possible’ aura, only partially fulfilling the criteria. Levcromakalim is likely a novel migraine aura-inducing substance in humans. These findings highlight the ATP-sensitive potassium channel as a shared target in migraine aura and migraine headache. Likely, ATP-sensitive potassium channel opening leads to triggering of aura and headache, respectively, via distinct mechanisms.
Regional Variation in Captures of Male Paralobesia viteana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) in Monitoring Traps in Michigan Is Not Due to Geographical Variation in Male Response to Pheromone
Authors: Mason Keith , Isaacs Rufus
Published: March 2021

Paralobesia viteana (Clemens), grape berry moth, is a major pest of grapes in Eastern North America. There is substantial regional variation in the response of male P. viteana to sex pheromone-baited monitoring traps in Michigan vineyards. Males are readily captured in traps in the southwest region, whereas in the northwest very few males are captured, despite larval infestation in grapes in both regions. Y-tube olfactometers and field experiments determined the response of male moths from northern and southern populations to the pheromone blend used in monitoring lures and to females from both regions. In Y-tube choice tests, males responded similarly to the standard pheromone blend, and males did not preferentially choose females from either region. In field trials, traps baited with unmated females were deployed to test the preference of resident males for females from the two regions and for standard pheromone lures. In southwest Michigan vineyards, significantly more males were caught in traps with a 1.0-µg standard pheromone lure than in traps with captive females collected from vineyards in both regions or in traps with a blank lure control. A similar pattern of male captures among lure treatments was observed in northwest vineyards, although many fewer males were trapped and differences among treatments were not significant. We conclude that the observed regional differences in male response to pheromone traps are not caused by variation in pheromone-mediated behavioral responses, suggesting that other biotic and/or abiotic differences determine the regional variation in captures of this species.
Comprehensive echocardiographic evaluation of the right heart in patients with pulmonary vascular diseases: the PVDOMICS experience
Authors: Jellis Christine L , Park Margaret M , Abidov Aiden , Borlaug Barry A , Brittain Evan L , Frantz Robert , Hassoun Paul M , Horn Evelyn M , Jaber Wael A , Jiwon Kim , Karas Maria G , Kwon Deborah , Leopold Jane A , Maron Bradley , Mathai Stephen C , Mehra Reena , Rischard Franz , Rosenzweig Erika B , Tang W H Wilson , Vanderpool Rebecca , Thomas James D ,   the PVDOMICS Study Group
Published: March 2021

Aims

There is a wide spectrum of diseases associated with pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary vascular remodelling, and right ventricular dysfunction. The NIH-sponsored PVDOMICS network seeks to perform comprehensive clinical phenotyping and endophenotyping across these disorders to further evaluate and define pulmonary vascular disease.

Methods and results

Echocardiography represents the primary non-invasive method to phenotype cardiac anatomy, function, and haemodynamics in these complex patients. However, comprehensive right heart evaluation requires the use of multiple echocardiographic parameters and optimized techniques to ensure optimal image acquisition. The PVDOMICS echo protocol outlines the best practice approach to echo phenotypic assessment of the right heart/pulmonary artery unit.

Conclusion

Novel workflow processes, methods for quality control, data for feasibility of measurements, and reproducibility of right heart parameters derived from this study provide a benchmark frame of reference. Lessons learned from this protocol will serve as a best practice guide for echocardiographic image acquisition and analysis across the spectrum of right heart/pulmonary vascular disease.
Bicuspid aortic valve repair: outcomes after 17 years of experience
Authors: Jasinski Marek J , Kosiorowska Kinga , Gocol Radoslaw , Jasinski Jakub , Nowicki Rafal , Bielicki Grzegorz , Berezowski Mikolaj , Przybylski Roman , Obremska Marta , Lukaszewski Marceli , Larysz Anna , Kansy Andrzej , Deja Marek A
Published: March 2021

OBJECTIVES

This study presents the results of 17 years of experience with bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) repair and the analysis of factors associated with repair failure and early echocardiographic outcome.

METHODS

Between 2003 and 2020, a total of 206 patients [mean age: 44.5 ± 15.2 years; 152 males (74%)] with BAV insufficiency with or without aortic dilatation underwent elective aortic valve repair performed by a single surgeon with a mean follow-up of 5 ± 3.5 years. The transthoracic echocardiography examinations were reported.

RESULTS

There were no deaths during the hospital stay, and all but 1 patient survived the follow-up period (99.5%). Overall, 10 patients (5%) developed severe insufficiency and 2 (1%) developed aortic dilatation requiring reoperation. Freedom from reoperation at 7 years reached 91.8%. Type 2 BAV configuration [hazard ratio (HR) 3.9; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01–60; P = 0.049], no sinotubular junction remodelling (HR 7; 95% CI: 1.7–23; P = 0.005), no circumferential annuloplasty (HR 3.9; 95% CI: 1.01–64; P = 0.047) and leaflet resection (HR 5.7; 95% CI 1.2–13. P = 0.017) have been identified as a risk factor of redo operation. Parameters of the postoperative left ventricle reverse remodelling improved significantly early after the operation and later at 2 years evaluation.

CONCLUSIONS

The repair of BAV offers good short- and mid-term results providing a significant reverse left ventricular remodelling. Type 0 BAV preoperative configuration, circumferential annuloplasty and sinotubular junction remodelling are associated with better repair durability.