bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marius and Sulla
Authors: Santangelo Federico
Published: August 2020

Gaius Marius (b. 158/157–d. 86 bce) and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (b. 138–d. 78 bce) were the most prominent, and in several respects defining, figures of a phase of Roman Republican history that lasted roughly three decades: from 107, when Marius was elected to his first consulship, to 78 bce, the year of Sulla’s death. Much of that period was marked by the relationship between the two men, who first cooperated very effectively and then engaged in a fierce struggle for power that eventually led to years of civil strife and political violence on an unprecedented scale. Marius held the consulship on seven occasions, while Sulla did so twice, as well as holding a dictatorship that enabled him to enact a set of wide-ranging, far-reaching, and controversial measures. This bibliography seeks to achieve a workable balance between chronological and thematic approaches, and between narrative and interpretation. Speaking of an “age of Marius and Sulla” risks failing to do justice to the complexity of a period that was marked by other major developments, such as the initiatives of Saturninus and Glaucia (104–100 bce); the Social War (91–88 bce), which ended with the inclusion of the Italian communities south of the Po River into the Roman citizen body; and the first war against King Mithridates in the Greek East (88–85 bce). These events are covered in what follows only insofar as they are relevant to the study of Marius and Sulla; yet these two men are central to any of the main developments of this historical period, and readers who seek general guidance on these topics will find some orientation in this bibliography.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Authors: Noble Bonnie
Published: August 2020

Lucas Cranach the Elder, painter, printmaker, politician, and confidante of the Electors of Saxony, is famously credited with inventing pictorial vocabulary suited to the theological and social changes catalyzed by the Lutheran Reformation. Approximately 1,000 images from Cranach and his enormous workshop survive. Cranach spent most of his professional life in the city of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther was professor of theology at the new university. In the course of Luther’s attempts to reform the Catholic Church starting in 1517, the artist supported the theologian personally and professionally by inventing new types of pictures with propagandistic or pedagogical rather than devotional functions. To suit the new faith, Cranach invented the quintessential Lutheran subject, Law and Gospel, which mapped out the principles of Lutheran salvation by faith alone. This subject, first painted in 1529, became the basis for subsequent Lutheran imagery by Cranach as well as other artists. Cranach’s most famous Lutheran paintings include the monumental altarpieces in Schneeberg (1539), Wittenberg (1547), and Weimar (1553–1555). Cranach and his son Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586) found a niche for Lutheran patrons by painting epitaphs. Before going to Wittenberg to become court painter to Elector Frederick the Wise, Cranach, who is named for his Franconian home town of Kronach, served the intellectual elite in Vienna, painting what are considered two of his most accomplished paintings, a pair of portraits of the young professor Johannes Cuspinian and his wife Anna, c. 1502–1503. Compared with his later work, produced in a factory-like workshop with assistants, these early works are some of his most beautiful. Despite his association with Luther, Cranach also continued to serve other patrons, including powerful members of the Catholic clergy, such as Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg. He also produced theologically neutral pictures that were likely acceptable to believers of different confessions, for instance Madonna panels that emphasize the Virgin’s humanity rather than her role as a Catholic intercessor. In his capacity as painter to Electors Frederick the Wise, John the Constant, and John Frederick the Magnanimous, Cranach’s workshop provided mythological subjects such as Venus and Cupid, legendary subjects such as the Suicide of Lucretia, and allegorical paintings of Melancholia. Though scholars have observed a decreased quality of Cranach’s art as his workshop grew and the role of assistants increased, the efficiency of his workshop and the scale of production represented a calculated risk for this man, whose art propelled him to power and wealth.
Race and Violence
Authors: Aldama Arturo , Malaver Laura , O'Neal Shawn , Portillos Alejandra Benita
Published: August 2020

White-supremacist violence; theft of land and resources; the genocide of indigenous peoples and the horrors of violence of stolen and enslaved human beings to build wealth for their colonial overlords, countries, and empires in the United States, the Caribbean, and the Americas; and xenophobic and racialized exploitations of labor produced by people of color are core aspects of US history. The issues, spectacles, histories, and lived experiences of race, racism, and racial, gender, and sexual violence drive the structural oppression of nonwhite communities in the United States and have unique trajectories while also developing unevenly and relationally within shared histories of racial, gender, and sexual violence and economic exploitation. Violence toward people of color started with first contact between European colonizing forces and indigenous communities in the late 15th century. From the late 15th century to the 21st century, the spectacles of lynching; vigilantism; Jim Crow / Juan Crow segregation practices; the imposition of boarding schools and the documented physical, psychological, and sexual violence inflicted on indigenous children; and the extreme anti-Chinese violence of vigilante race riots and xenophobic immigration laws are all legacies continuing into the 2020s. In the 20th century, a range of organized systems and acts of violence continued and emerged, from white-supremacist and patriarchal authority on communities of color; race riots; lynching; massacres; and unlawful imprisonments to the 1943 zoot suit riots, deportation, other acts of state-driven violence, and the rise of mass incarceration. Acts of domestic terrorism by white-supremacist individuals who see Latinx, Muslims, Jews, and other non-Anglo-Saxon communities as threats and invaders to the US body politic are a central feature of the 21st century. Along with vigilante violence toward communities of color, police brutality and deadly force with impunity continue to traumatize communities of color and foments the racial biopower politics of the 21st century, not to mention the ongoing crisis of domestic and gender-driven violence. This article summarizes a range of sources that speak both to empire- and state-driven and vigilante violence in different time frames toward varying communities in the United States and beyond.
Scaling Up Research-based Educational Practices
Authors: Wylie Cathy , MacDonald Jo
Published: August 2020

Scaling up innovations whose use has resulted in improvements in teaching and learning has been a growing field in educational research and practice in recent decades. Interest has two main spurs: the evident gap between educational research findings and their take-up and use to improve teaching and learning, and the persistent challenges of ensuring high levels of educational achievement for all. Scaling up was originally conceived in terms of numbers: the spread of proven practice from the original sites to many schools, or across a whole system. Scaling up innovation began with testing research-based designs and evaluating their efficacy, followed by implementation. Successful implementation of research-based practices meant attention to fidelity, and thus to constructing materials, guides, and processes, and to providing support from the original designers. In turn this meant more attention to understanding variations in how well schools implemented an intervention: was it due to school-level factors, district- or system-level factors, the nature of the student population, or factors associated with the intervention? There are some enduring programs or interventions that fit this model, some based on whole-school reform, some on particular curriculum areas or approaches. Other interventions have been less successful. More recently, scaling-up work has also included research-educator-administrator partnerships and networks, using improvement design cycles, learning from variability, and expecting that innovations will evolve and be adapted in different contexts, rather than replicated. There has also been increasing attention paid in this branch of scaling-up work to building in ongoing attention to evidence of efficacy, and plan-do-study-review cycles into professional identity and practice, in order to strengthen teacher, network, and school and administration capability, as well as agency, ownership, and community. Most countries have evaluations of innovative programs or approaches showing gains for teaching and learning that failed to take hold or endure. Often this is because of structural reasons beyond the agency or control of those involved, due to changes of government or system decision makers. Other key obstacles are evident in the lack of change in the constraints around how teachers and schools can work. These constraints include competing calls on time, rigid accountabilities and ways resources can be used, expectations of immediate large gains, and mismatched measures of student achievement. There are too many such evaluations for this bibliography to cover. However, key articles that discuss these core challenges to scaling up well-founded research-based practices are included.
Ernest Chausson
Authors: Hart Brian
Published: August 2020

Amédée-Ernest Chausson (b. 1855–d. 1899) was born in Paris to a wealthy contractor and his wife. Although he obtained a law degree in 1876, music was his true passion. He entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied briefly with Jules Massenet and then with César Franck. Between 1879 and 1883 he made several journeys to Bayreuth and became an ardent Wagnerian. He served as secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique from 1886 until his death. Chausson and his wife, Jeanne, maintained an active salon that drew many prominent figures from all the arts, and he developed close relationships with many of them, most notably the young Claude Debussy. Despite his happy family life (which included five children) and comfortable surroundings, as a composer Chausson was beset with crippling self-doubts. Struggling to express his feelings with as much emotional honesty and satisfying artistry as possible, he continually found himself “erupt[ing] with rage at seeing how what I can do is so far from what I would like to do, from what I seem to hear in my head” (from a letter of 1884). Friends ascribed the melancholy in his music to this obsessive search for what Vincent d’Indy called “the better,” to a profound empathy with the suffering of others, and to deep apprehension that critics would dismiss him merely as a wealthy amateur imitating Franck and Wagner—as indeed many did. Despite his insecurities, Chausson composed notable chamber and orchestral works, a substantial body of mélodies, and one opera, Le roi Arthus. Most observers believed that Chausson finally achieved his own voice in the late 1890s, especially in the Piano Quartet of 1897. Tragically, however, his career ended soon thereafter, on 10 June 1899: riding a bicycle at his country estate, he apparently lost control going down a hill and crashed head-first into a wall. Pierre Louÿs’s eloquent condolence letter to Mme. Chausson summed up the general reaction: “There was never a more excellent man . . . I was struck, each time, by the . . . admirable goodwill that radiated through each gesture. At every moment of his life, he felt compelled to bring happiness to people. Everyone loved him.” As his student Gustave Samazeuilh wrote, Chausson “will occupy an eminent place in the history of French music; a just recompense for a life devoted totally to the good, to work, and to the Ideal.”
Computational Pragmatics
Authors: Bunt Harry
Published: August 2020

Pragmatics as a branch of linguistics can be characterized as the study of the relations between linguistic properties of utterances on the one hand, and aspects of the context in which a given utterance is used on the other. Computational pragmatics is pragmatics with computational means, which include models of dialogue management processes, collections of language use data, annotation schemes and standards, software tools for corpus creation, annotation and exploration, process models of language generation and interpretation, context representations, and inference methods for context-dependent utterance generation and interpretation processes. The linguistic side of the relations that are studied in pragmatics is formed primarily by utterances in a conversation or sentences in a written text. In the case of written text the context side consists of the surrounding text and the setting in which the text is meant to function. In spoken or multimodal dialogue, the context of an utterance is formed by what has been said before and the interactive setting, but additionally by other perceptual, social, and mutual epistemic information (see Context Modeling). Much of this information is dynamic, as it changes during a dialogue and, more importantly, as a result of the dialogue, since the participants in a conversation influence each other’s state of information when they understand each other. Dialogue contexts are thus updated continuously as an effect of communication. Central to computational pragmatics is the development and use of computational tools and models for studying the relations between utterances and their context of use. Essential for understanding these relations are the use of inference and the description of language in terms of actions that are inspired by the context and that are intended to change the context. This bibliography therefore focuses on publications concerned with the computational modeling of dialogue in terms of communicative actions including the use of inference for utterance interpretation. It also considers the more static analysis of discourse coherence and semantic relations in text, and concludes with references to recent activities concerning the construction and use of resources in computational pragmatics, in particular annotation schemes, annotated corpora, and tools for corpus construction and use. The popularity of probabilistic approaches to natural language processing can also be seen in studies of pragmatic aspects of language use, although these approaches are so far not as important as in some other areas of language processing. The so-called rational speech acts (RSA) model treats language use as a recursive process in which probabilistic speaker and listener agents reason about each other’s intentions to enrich the literal semantics of their language along broadly Gricean lines. The core references for this approach are also included in this biography under Inference in Language Processing.
Saturday Night Live
Authors: Kunze Peter
Published: August 2020

Since the 1970s, Saturday Night Live has proven itself to be one of television’s most influential programs. Lorne Michaels created the show and served as executive producer from 1975 to 1980, then again from 1985 until the present; during his absence, Jean Doumanian oversaw the 1980–1981 season and Dick Ebersol produced the show from 1981 until Michaels’ return. Drawing on the variety format, Saturday Night Live provides a unique window into contemporary US culture with its popular guest hosts and musical guests, topical humor, and live presentation. Its wealth of characters and catchphrases has made its way into the popular lexicon, while its impact can be detected in live comedy performances, film, and new media, as well as other television programs. This bibliography loosely organizes the major critical works of Saturday Night Live scholarship and journalism into seven categories: studies of the show’s structure and style; critiques of how it has represented various identities; firsthand accounts by former performers and writers; historical analyses of the show’s development, production, and place within the television industry; examinations of its response to and influence on the news media; critical studies of key performers during the show’s run; and, finally, discussions of the show’s effect on US political discourse. The scholarship in this bibliography crosses many areas within communication and media studies, revealing the ongoing importance of the show to our understanding of comedy, politics, and television. Using satire and sketch comedy to both scrutinize and send up American society and culture, the show remains an enduring institution.
Single-Case Experimental Designs
Authors: Garbacz S. Andrew , Kratochwill Thomas R.
Published: August 2020

Single-case experimental designs are a family of experimental designs that are characterized by researcher manipulation of an independent variable and repeated measurement of a dependent variable before (i.e., baseline) and after (i.e., intervention phase) introducing the independent variable. In single-case experimental designs a case is the unit of intervention and analysis (e.g., a child, a school). Because measurement within each case is conducted before and after manipulation of the independent variable, the case typically serves as its own control. Experimental variants of single-case designs provide a basis for determining a causal relation by replication of the intervention through (a) introducing and withdrawing the independent variable, (b) manipulating the independent variable across different phases, and (c) introducing the independent variable in a staggered fashion across different points in time. Due to their economy of resources, single-case designs may be useful during development activities and allow for rapid replication across studies.
Mathematical Psychology
Authors: Smith Parker , Liu Yanjun , Townsend James T. , van Zandt Trish
Published: August 2020

Mathematical psychology is that branch of psychology focusing on the use of mathematical and computational models to explain and predict human behavior. Typical areas of interest are memory, attention, problem solving, perception, decision making, and motor control. The field developed from the measurement problems encountered in psychophysics with a focus on behavioral responses. It has evolved with improvements in technology such as advanced computer systems and brain imaging systems, which have spurred the growth of neuroscience. As the number of tools for research in the field grows, the sophistication and complexity of models have grown. However, a unique characteristic of mathematical psychology is its potential role in all branches of psychology. All “substantive” areas of psychology (e.g., clinical, social, and developmental) could have both empirical and mathematical foundations. As the field grows in complexity and nuance, it is making more and more contributions in these wider areas.
Science Fiction
Authors: Mousoutzanis Aris
Published: August 2020

There has been a trend for introductory texts on science fiction (SF) criticism to start by announcing that SF is now an increasingly respected genre within academia, with its own canonical texts, major scholars, historical traditions, and theoretical perspectives. An increasing influx of publications, conferences, academic courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, doctorate dissertations, and annual awards would seem to testify to this claim. Even further indications of the recognition of the genre’s respectability, the argument goes, lies in the fact that “mainstream” authors now adopt motifs and conventions of the genre within their own writing, when not embracing it wholeheartedly, including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Kazuo Ishiguro, to name a few. But it is now time to move beyond this approach to introducing SF that, even unconsciously, reproduces dominant assumptions about cultural value, generic integrity, and canon formation that encourage an almost apologetic tone or the need to justify “Why SF?” in academia. The wide range of sources included in this bibliography demonstrate a complex, diverse, multilayered and ever-expanding corpus of critical work extending across numerous academic disciplines, whose emergence and expansion over the last few decades has been so rapid that it has caught up with or even surpassed other established areas of academic inquiry with a much longer history within the university. To use a concept much favored within the field over the last couple of decades, the singularity of science fiction criticism has already happened. This annotated bibliography is aimed at both the uninitiated scholar or student and the academic who specializes in the area, as it provides a list of introductory works, textbooks, and readers—a publication format that witnessed a sudden upsurge during the 2000s. The list will also attract the attention of readers with an interest in historicist approaches or theorizations from the perspective of cultural studies of identity, specifically gender and race.
Where is the western part of the Galactic Center Lobe located really?
Authors: Tsuboi Masato , Tsutsumi Takahiro , Kitamura Yoshimi , Miyawaki Ryosuke , Miyazaki Atsushi , Miyoshi Makoto
Published: August 2020

The Galactic Center Lobe (GCL) is a peculiar object widely protruding from the Galactic plane toward the positive Galactic latitude, which had been found toward the Galactic Center (GC) in the early days of the radio observation. The peculiar shape has suggested a relation with historical events, star burst, large explosion, and so on in the GC. However, the issue of whether the GCL is a single large structure located in the GC region is not yet settled conclusively. In the previous observations, the silhouette against the low-frequency emission was found in the western part of the GCL (WPGCL); this suggests that the part is located in front of the GC region. On the other hand, the Local Standard of Rest (LSR) velocity of the radio recombination line toward it was found to be as low as 0 km s−1. However, these observations cannot determine the exact position on the line-of-sight. There is still another possibility that it is in the near-side area of the GC region. In this analysis, we compare these results with the visual extinction map toward the GC. We found that the distribution of the visual extinction larger than 4 mag clearly corresponds to the silhouette of the WPGCL. The WPGCL must be located at most within a few kpc from us and not in the GC region. This would be a giant H ii region in the Galactic disk.
Revisiting the epoch of the earliest Chinese star catalog titled “Shi Shi Xing Jing”
Authors: Ahn Sang-Hyeon
Published: August 2020

The Shi Shi Xing Jing (SSXJ) is known to be the earliest star catalog in Chinese history. Its epoch of observation has long been a matter of debate. In recent studies, Sun Xiaochun pointed out that the observations must have been made using meridian instruments and developed a so-called Fourier method to determine the epoch, while Tsuko Nakamura developed a χ2 method to determine the epoch and showed that the measurement error can be estimated using bootstrap resamplings. However, they did not take both meridian measurements and bootstrap resamplings into consideration simultaneously. Hence, in this paper we determine the epoch and its uncertainty by applying the two methods and performing the bootstrap resamplings in a careful manner. We adopt identifications of the reference stars of 116 asterisms with stars in modern catalogs, including the determinative stars or the reference stars for the 28 lunar lodges. We find that the stars can be divided into four groups. Twenty-five of the 28 determinative stars are estimated to have been observed around 65 ± 28 BCE, corresponding to either Xianyu Wangren’s observation in 78–76 BCE or Geng Shouchang’s observation in 52 BCE. The other stars make three groups: the main group composed of 63 reference stars has an observation epoch of 108 ± 16 BCE corresponding to Luoxia Hong’s observation in 104 BCE; another group of eight reference stars including two determinative stars has an observation epoch of 200 ± 45 BCE, corresponding to the establishment of the Former Han dynasty; and the other group of 13 reference stars including one determinative star has an observation epoch of approximately 100 ± 35 CE, corresponding to the observations by ecliptic instruments in 103 CE following Gia Kui’s suggestion of 92 CE. In conclusion, the SSXJ has a few temporal strata of observations made through the Han dynasty.
Alterations in structure of biomolecules using ATR-FTIR and histopathological variations in brain tissue of Channa punctatus exposed to 2Naphthalene sufonate
Authors: Mehra Sukanya , Chadha Pooja
Published: August 2020

2Naphthalene sulfonate (2NS) is an intermediate compound used in textile industries. Being nonbiodegradable, the concerns regarding its biotoxicity have risen. In the present investigation the toxic effects of 2NS were analyzed with the help of Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR), which was used to monitor changes in the vibrational modes of functional groups within the biomolecules. After calculating LD 50, one half of LD 50 i.e. 0.33 mg/15 g b.w. was intraperitoneally administrated and the brain tissue was collected for investigation after 96 h of exposure. The spectra observed revealed the significant differences in absorbance and areas between control and treated groups reflecting the change in proteins, lipids and nucleic acid due to toxicity induced by 2NS. In addition, protein secondary structure analysis was focused in this study, which reveals alterations in α helix and β sheet structure after 2NS intoxication. Histopathology of brain was also studied, which reveals changes in the histology of brain in group treated with 2NS. In conclusion, the study highlighted the application of ATR-FTIR and histopathology for toxicity assessment.
Targeting the gut microbiota by Asian and Western dietary constituents: a new avenue for diabetes
Authors: Conteh Abdul Rahman , Huang Ruixue
Published: August 2020

Increasing numerous diabetes annually is a great concern in public health globally. Gut microbiota recently has been suggested to be an emerging organ acting as a critical regulator in diabetes. Notably, gut microbiota is closely affected through an individual’s nutrient intake and dietary pattern. Moreover, the metabolites of diets through gut microbiota are closely associated with the development of diabetes. Increasing evidence has established the association of different dietary pattern with alterations of the gut microbiota profile, in particular, the Asian diet and Western diet are typically as essential components linked to the interactions between gut microbiota and induction of obesity which is a significant risk factor for diabetes. In addition, some bacteria-related therapeutic methods including probiotics, dietary short-chain fatty acids immunotherapy, and gut microbiome transfer would be applied in the clinical prevention and control diabetes. Taken together, based on current published observations, the gut microbiota may serve as regulator or targets by the Asian diet and Western diet, contributing to the prevention or induction of diabetes eventually. In general, in the upcoming future, one of the emerging strategies for the prevention and control of diabetes may modulate gut microbiota through precise dietary strategies.
The evolutionary history and global spatio-temporal dynamics of potato virus Y
Authors: Gao Fangluan , Kawakubo Shusuke , Ho Simon Y W , Ohshima Kazusato
Published: August 2020

Potato virus Y (PVY) is a destructive plant pathogen that causes considerable losses to global potato and tobacco production. Although the molecular structure of PVY is well characterized, the evolutionary and global transmission dynamics of this virus remain poorly understood. We investigated the phylodynamics of the virus by analysing 253 nucleotide sequences of the genes encoding the third protein (P3), cylindrical inclusion protein (CI), and the nuclear inclusion protein (NIb). Our Bayesian phylogenetic analyses showed that the mean substitution rates of different regions of the genome ranged from 8.50 × 10−5 to 1.34 × 10−4 substitutions/site/year, whereas the time to the most recent common ancestor of PVY varied with the length of the genomic regions and with the number of viral isolates being analysed. Our phylogeographic analysis showed that the PVY population originated in South America and was introduced into Europe in the 19th century, from where it spread around the globe. The migration pathways of PVY correlate well with the trade routes of potato tubers, suggesting that the global spread of PVY is associated with human activities.
Grapefruit Field Trial Evaluation of Citrus Tristeza Virus T68-Strain Sources
Authors: Cook Glynnis , Breytenbach Johannes H. J. , Steyn Chanel , de Bruyn Rochelle , van Vuuren Stephanus P. , Burger Johan T. , Maree Hans J.
Published: August 2020

Determination of virus genomes and differentiation of strains and strain variants facilitate the linkage of biological expression to specific genetic units. For effective management of stem pitting disease of citrus tristeza virus (CTV) by cross-protection, an understanding of these links is necessary. The deliberate field application of a biological agent such as a virus first requires a thorough assessment of the long-term impact before it can be applied commercially. Three CTV sources were genetically characterized as different variants of the T68 strain, and their long-term effects on stem pitting and production were investigated. The different CTV sources were inoculated to ‘Star Ruby’ grapefruit trees and evaluated for a number of biological parameters in a field trial in the Limpopo Province of South Africa over a 10-year period. Significant differences were observed in stem pitting severity, impact on tree growth, yield, and the percentage of small fruit produced. These T68 variants were also associated with different stem pitting phenotypes. The variants differed in only 44 nucleotide positions across their genomes, and these minor genetic differences can therefore be used to identify possible genome regions affecting stem pitting.
Forecasting Risk of Crop Disease with Anomaly Detection Algorithms
Authors: Skelsey Peter
Published: August 2020

Information from crop disease surveillance programs and outbreak investigations provides real-world data about the drivers of epidemics. In many cases, however, only information on outbreaks is collected and data from surrounding healthy crops are omitted. Use of such data to develop models that can forecast risk/no risk of disease is therefore problematic, as information relating to the no-risk status of healthy crops is missing. This study explored a novel application of anomaly detection techniques to derive models for forecasting risk of crop disease from data composed of outbreaks only. This was done in two steps. In the training phase, the algorithms were used to learn the envelope of weather conditions most associated with historic crop disease outbreaks. In the testing phase, the algorithms were used for hindcasting of historic outbreak events. Five different anomaly detection algorithms were compared according to their accuracy in forecasting outbreaks: robust covariance, one-class k-means, Gaussian mixture model, kernel density estimation, and one-class support vector machine. A case study of potato late blight survey data from across Great Britain was used for proof of concept. The results showed that Gaussian mixture model had the highest forecast accuracy at 97.0%, followed by one-class k-means at 96.9%. There was added value in combining the algorithms in an ensemble to provide a more accurate and robust forecasting tool that can be tailored to produce region-specific alerts. The techniques used here can easily be applied to outbreak data from other crop pathosystems to derive tools for agricultural decision support.
Long-Term Mortality Among ICU Patients With Stroke Compared With Other Critically Ill Patients
Authors: van Valburg Mariëlle K. , Termorshuizen Fabian , Brinkman Sylvia , Abdo Wilson F. , van den Bergh Walter M. , Horn Janneke , van Mook Walther N. K. A. , Siegerink Bob , Slooter Arjen J. C. , Wermer Marieke J. H. , Geerts Bart F. , Arbous M. Sesmu
Published: August 2020

Objectives:

Assessment of all-cause mortality of intracerebral hemorrhage and ischemic stroke patients admitted to the ICU and comparison to the mortality of other critically ill ICU patients classified into six other diagnostic subgroups and the general Dutch population.

Design:

Observational cohort study.

Setting:

All ICUs participating in the Dutch National Intensive Care Evaluation database.

Patients:

All adult patients admitted to these ICUs between 2010 and 2015; patients were followed until February 2017.

Interventions:

None.

Measurements and Main Results:

Of all 370,386 included ICU patients, 7,046 (1.9%) were stroke patients, 4,072 with ischemic stroke, and 2,974 with intracerebral hemorrhage. Short-term mortality in ICU-admitted stroke patients was high with 30 days mortality of 31% in ischemic stroke and 42% in intracerebral hemorrhage. In the longer term, the survival curve gradient among ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage patients stabilized. The gradual alteration of mortality risk after ICU admission was assessed using left-truncation with increasing minimum survival period. ICU-admitted stroke patients who survive the first 30 days after suffering from a stroke had a favorable subsequent survival compared with other diseases necessitating ICU admission such as patients admitted due to sepsis or severe community-acquired pneumonia. After having survived the first 3 months after ICU admission, multivariable Cox regression analyses showed that case-mix adjusted hazard ratios during the follow-up period of up to 3 years were lower in ischemic stroke compared with sepsis (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.06–1.36) and severe community-acquired pneumonia (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.39–1.77) and in intracerebral hemorrhage patients compared with these groups (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.98–1.33 and adjusted hazard ratio, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.28–1.73).

Conclusions:

Stroke patients who need intensive care treatment have a high short-term mortality risk, but this alters favorably with increasing duration of survival time after ICU admission in patients with both ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage, especially compared with other populations of critically ill patients such as sepsis or severe community-acquired pneumonia patients.
Use of Angiotensin II in Severe Vasoplegia After Left Pneumonectomy Requiring Cardiopulmonary Bypass: A Renin Response Analysis
Authors: Trethowan Brian , Michaud Christopher J. , Fifer Sarah
Published: August 2020

Objective:

Describe a case of post-pneumonectomy vasoplegia managed with angiotensin II. Plasma renin activity was measured at specific time intervals to describe the relationship between endogenous renin activity and exogenous angiotensin II supplementation.

Design:

Case report.

Setting:

Spectrum Health Cardiothoracic Critical Care Unit.

Patients:

Fifty-seven-year-old male.

Interventions:

None.

Measurements and Main Results:

Plasma renin activity at five pre-determined time points. Angiotensin II caused a significant increase in mean arterial pressure and a rapid reduction in catecholamine vasopressor doses from 0.75 to 0.31 mcg/kg/min norepinephrine equivalents. Plasma renin activity drawn immediately before angiotensin II initiation was 40 ng/mL/hr (normal, 0.6–3.0 ng/mL/hr) with resultant drop to 22 and 12 ng/mL/hr at 2 and 6 hours after angiotensin II initiation, respectively. The patient suffered no end-organ damage and achieved a positive outcome, discharging home on postoperative day 11.

Conclusion:

Exogenous angiotensin II reduced catecholamine vasopressor doses and had an apparent effect in reducing endogenous renin production in this case. Prospective research is warranted to determine the utility of angiotensin II and to better understand it effects on the dysfunctional renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system during vasoplegic shock.
Critical Care for Coronavirus Disease 2019: Perspectives From the PICU to the Medical ICU
Authors: Joyce Christine L. , Howell Joy D. , Toal Megan , Wasserman Emily , Finkelstein Robert A. , Traube Chani , Killinger James S. , Joashi Umesh , Greenwald Bruce M. , Nellis Marianne E.
Published: August 2020

Objectives:

To describe the unique perspective of pediatric intensivists caring for critically ill adults during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Design:

Observational study.

Setting:

Academic medical center in New York City.

Patients:

Coronavirus disease 2019 positive adults requiring admission to an ICU.

Interventions:

None.

Measurements and Main Results:

In late March 2020, New York Presbyterian Hospital centralized all of its inpatient pediatric units (n = 4) from across the network to a single center, in order to create space to accommodate the increasing number of critically ill adults with coronavirus disease 2019. Within 1 week, the PICU at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medicine transferred or discharged all inpatients, underwent a transformation of the physical space, and began admitting adults of all ages with coronavirus disease 2019 related acute respiratory failure. The New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medicine PICU physician group continued to lead this unit. PICU nurses, respiratory therapists, social workers, and child life specialists joined their PICU physician colleagues to care for these critically ill adults.

Conclusions:

In the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, PICU physicians are well poised to care for adult patients in a surge capacity, and bring a unique perspective to the experience.
A cohort study on long-term exposure to air pollution and incidence of liver cirrhosis
Authors: Orioli Riccardo , Solimini Angelo G. , Michelozzi Paola , Forastiere Francesco , Davoli Marina , Cesaroni Giulia
Published: August 2020

Background:

Cirrhosis is an advanced liver disease affecting millions of people worldwide, involving high healthcare costs. Despite experimental evidence suggesting a possible role of airborne pollutants in liver diseases, epidemiological studies are lacking. We aimed at investigating the association between exposure to air pollutants and incidence of cirrhosis in a large population-based cohort in Rome.

Methods:

We used an administrative cohort established from the 2001 census. We included all adults of 30 years of age or older who were free of cirrhosis, resulting in a study population of over 1.2 million subjects. Follow-up of the subjects ended on 31 December 2015. We ascertained incident cases of cirrhosis from regional mortality and hospital discharge registries using a validated algorithm. We assessed exposure of the subjects to PM10, PM coarse, PM2.5, PM2.5 absorbance, NO2, NOx, and PM metal components at their residential address using Land Use Regression models. We used Cox regression models, adjusted for relevant covariates, to estimate the association between air pollution exposure and cirrhosis incidence.

Results:

We observed 10,111 incident cases of cirrhosis, with a crude incidence rate of 67 × 100,000 person-years. Long-term exposure to all pollutants tested was significantly associated with cirrhosis, e.g., PM10 (hazard ratios [HR], 1.05; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01–1.09, per 10 µg/m3 increments), PM coarse (HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.05–1.17, per 10 µg/m3 increments), PM2.5 (HR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.03–1.13, per 5 µg/m3 increments), and NO2 (HR, 1.03; 95% CI, 1.02–1.05, per 10 µg/m3 increments). The associations were robust in secondary analyses.

Conclusions:

Our findings suggest a possible contribution of air pollution to the development of cirrhosis.
Long-term beneficial effects of an online mind-body training program on stress and psychological outcomes in female healthcare providers
Authors: Lee Dasom , Lee Won Joon , Choi Soo-Hee , Jang Joon-Hwan , Kang Do-Hyung
Published: August 2020

Mind-body training (MBT) programs are effective interventions for relieving stress and improving psychological capabilities. To expand our previous study which demonstrated the short-term effects of an 8-week online MBT program, the present study investigated whether those short-term effects persist up to a month after the end of the intervention.

Among previous participants, 56 (64%) participated in this follow-up study, 25 in the MBT group and 31 in the control group. Outcome measures included the stress response, emotional intelligence, resilience, coping strategies, positive and negative affect, and anger expression of both groups at baseline, at 8 weeks (right after the training or waiting period), and at 12 weeks (a month after the training or waiting period).

The MBT group showed a greater decrease in stress response at 8 weeks, and this reduction remained a month after the end of the intervention. The effect of MBT on resilience and effective coping strategies was also significant at 8 weeks and remained constant a month later. However, the improvement to emotional intelligence and negative affect did not persist a month after training.

These findings suggest that the beneficial short-term effects of MBT may last beyond the training period even without continuous practice, but the retention of these benefits seems to depend on the outcome variables. Through a convenient, affordable, and easily accessible online format, MBT may provide cost-effective solutions for employees at worksites.
A systematic review and meta-analysis protocol of clinical characteristics and prognostic significance of mammalian target of rapamycin for gastric cancer patients
Authors: Wang Hua , Li Juan
Published: August 2020

Background:

The high morbidity and mortality of Gastric cancer (GC) is seriously endangered human health. Owing to the low rate of early diagnosis and human body can resistant to the anti-tumor drugs, so an early diagnostic biology marker is essential. However, recently studies indicated that Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is usually frequently deregulated in many cancers, especially in GC. And the efficacy of mTOR inhibitor was promising in a phase II clinical trial which could inhibited the proliferation of GC cells and delayed tumor progression. Therefore, mTOR were identified as a potential prognosis biomarker for GC, and its inhibitor will be promising in anti-GC therapy. The main aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to investigate the relationships between the expression level and prognostic value of mTOR in patients with GC.

Methods:

Four electronic databases were systematically searched as follow: the PubMed, EMbase, Web of Science databases, and the Cochrane Library. All the data will be extracted by independent researchers from the eligible studies with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. And the data will be analyzed through STATA 12.0 software.

Results and conclusion:

This meta-analysis indicated that overexpressed mTOR was significantly in predicting a poorer prognosis for GC patients. The expression level of mTOR should be considered as a potential independent prognostic predictor for GC patients.

Protocol registration number:

CRD42020159690.
Impact of tenofovir antiviral treatment on survival of chronic hepatitis B related hepatocellular carcinoma after hepatectomy in Chinese individuals from Qingdao municipality
Authors: Ge Zhong , Ma Jian , Qiao Bing , Wang Yanling , Zhang Haifeng , Gou Wei
Published: August 2020

The impact of different antiviral regimen on prognosis of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains to be explored.

A total of 479 CHB-related HCC patients after curative liver resection were enrolled receiving tenofovir (TDF, TDF group) or lamivudine, telbivudine, and entecavir (non-TDF group). Both the overall survival and diseases-free survival were analyzed and compared.

A total of 242 patients received TDF treatment and 237 patients received other antiviral regimen. Child-Pugh score, serum α-fetoprotein (AFP) level, total bilirubin level, status of hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg), and cirrhosis were compared between groups. Kaplan–Meier analysis revealed that patients with TDF treatment had significantly longer overall survival than those of patients with other regimen (P = .015). Similarly, compared with patients with non-TDF treatment, disease-free survival time was longer (P = .042) in those with TDF treatment. Multivariate analysis showed that TDF treatment (P = .04), AFP level (P = .03) were significant independent factors associated with overall survival of CHB-related HCC patients. While TDF treatment (P = .04) and serum AFP level (P = .03) were independent factors associated with disease-free survival.

Anti-virus treatment with TDF benefits for both overall survival and disease-free survival of CHB-related patients than other Nucleos(t)ide analogues.
A phase 3 double-blind randomized (CONSORT-compliant) study of azilsartan medoxomil compared to valsartan in Chinese patients with essential hypertension
Authors: Wu Jiahui , Du Xin , Lv Qiang , Li Zhanquan , Zheng Zeqi , Xia Yong , Tang Chengchun , Yao Zhuhua , Zhang Jun , Long Mingzhi , Hisada Michie , Wu Jingtao , Zhou Wei , Ma Changsheng
Published: August 2020

Background:

Azilsartan medoxomil (AZL-M), an angiotensin II receptor blocker, has a well-characterized efficacy and safety profile in patients with hypertension. AZL-M is approved for use in over 40 countries globally; however, it is not yet approved in China. Therefore, a phase 3 registration study to assess the efficacy (antihypertensive effect), safety, and tolerability of AZL-M compared with valsartan in Chinese patients with essential hypertension was undertaken.

Methods:

This multicenter, double-blind, randomized, 8-week phase 3 study compared AZL-M with valsartan in Chinese patients aged ≥18 years with essential hypertension. Endpoints included change from baseline to week 8 in trough sitting clinic systolic blood pressure (scSBP) and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring parameters.

Results:

Overall, 612 patients (mean age, 57.1 years; 57.5% male) were randomized to AZL-M 80 mg (n = 209), AZL-M 40 mg (n = 199), or valsartan 160 mg (n = 204). Baseline mean scSBP was similar in all groups (157.9–158.5 mm Hg). The mean reduction in trough scSBP from baseline to week 8 was significantly greater with AZL-M 80 mg than with valsartan (−24.2 vs −20.6 mm Hg; P = .010), and noninferior with AZL-M 40 mg versus valsartan (−22.5 vs −20.6 mm Hg; P = .184). Mean reduction in 24-hour mean systolic blood pressure (n = 257) was significantly greater with both AZL-M 80 mg (−17.0 mm Hg; P < .001) and AZL-M 40 mg (−14.7 mm Hg; P = .014) than with valsartan (−9.4 mm Hg). Treatment-emergent adverse events had similar incidence (52.8%–56.5%) across the treatment groups and were generally mild or moderate. Dizziness was the most frequent treatment-related treatment-emergent adverse events (AZL-M 80 mg, 1.9%; AZL-M 40 mg, 1.5%; valsartan, 1.0%). The safety and tolerability of AZL-M were comparable with valsartan.

Conclusions:

AZL-M was noninferior to valsartan at the 40-mg dose and superior to valsartan at the 80-mg dose in reducing trough scSBP, and showed acceptable safety—consistent with the AZL-M safety profile in other populations—in Chinese adults with hypertension.

Trial Registration number:

NCT02480764