bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Concomitant Anterior Shoulder Dislocation and Ipsilateral Humeral Pallet Fracture in the Athlete: Case Report and Review of the Literature
Authors: Elghoul Naoufal , Elantri Ismail , Elghazoui Amine , Benchakroun Mohammed , Jaafar Abdeloihab
Published: June 2020

To the best of our knowledge, the case presented here is among the rare cases of simultaneous shoulder dislocation and ipsilateral pallet humeral fracture, and we discuss its mechanism and best management. We report a case of a 26-year-old male patient with a history of dislocation of the right shoulder 2 months prior to trauma, managed conservatively with a good outcome. The patient fell from a height of 2 m, which caused concomitant shoulder dislocation and ipsilateral humeral fracture, prompting him to undergo surgery. First, the shoulder dislocation was reduced, and second, a V-shaped olecranon osteotomy was performed. The fracture was then fixed using two compressing plates followed by adequate rehabilitation, which led to a good outcome. This rare combination, if it occurs, requires urgent management to save the functional prognosis of the limb.
Renal Involvement in Systemic Sclerosis: An Update
Authors: Chrabaszcz Magdalena , Małyszko Jolanta , Sikora Mariusz , Alda-Malicka Rosanna , Stochmal Anna , Matuszkiewicz-Rowinska Joanna , Rudnicka Lidia
Published: June 2020

Background: Systemic sclerosis is an immune-mediated rheumatic disease characterized by vascular abnormalities, tissue fibrosis and autoimmune phenomena. Summary: Renal disease occurring in patients with systemic sclerosis may have a variable clinicopathological picture. The most specific renal condition associated with systemic sclerosis is scleroderma renal crisis, characterized by acute onset of renal failure and severe hypertension. Although the management of scleroderma renal crisis was revolutionized by the introduction of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, there is still a significant proportion of patients with poor outcomes. Therefore, research on establishing disease markers (clinical, ultrasonographical and serological) and clear diagnostic criteria, which could limit the risk of developing scleroderma renal crisis and facilitate diagnosis of this complication, is ongoing. Other forms of renal involvement in systemic sclerosis include vasculitis, an isolated reduced glomerular filtration rate in systemic sclerosis, antiphospholipid-associated nephropathy, high intrarenal arterial stiffness and proteinuria. Key Messages: Scleroderma renal crisis is the most specific and life-threatening renal presentation of systemic sclerosis, albeit with declining prevalence. In patients with scleroderma renal crisis, it is mandatory to control blood pressure early with increasing doses of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, along with other antihypertensive drugs if necessary. There is a strong association between renal involvement and patients’ outcomes in systemic sclerosis; consequently, it becomes mandatory to find markers that may be used to identify patients with an especially high risk of scleroderma renal crisis.
Cluster-Like Headache Revealing Polycythemia Vera: A Case Report
Authors: Popescu Cyprian
Published: June 2020

Herein, we report on a 44-year-old man who presented with cluster headache (CH)-like pain triggered by polycythemia vera (PV). He had severe unilateral head pain attacks lasting about 30 min not associated with cranial autonomic symptoms. After the exclusion of secondary etiologies, the patient was screened for a neoplastic process through biological markers, and the diagnosis of PV was established. The results of the initial laboratory examination showed hemoglobin at 18.1 g/L and Hct at 54%. JAK2 mutation analysis was positive at 54%, and marrow biopsy confirmed the hematopoietic clonal expansion, without myelofibrosis. He was treated with aspirin and ruxolitinib due to intolerance to interferon and the ineffectiveness of hydroxyurea. The treatment by venesection improved substantially the headaches. Oxygen inhalation was very effective in treating the CH attacks. In contrast, sumatriptan was inefficient at the very beginning of the disease. Among the pathophysiological mechanisms that we can propose to explain these cluster-like headaches are the prolonged hypoxia involving nitric oxide and calcitonin gene-related peptide release.
Enoxaparin-Induced Liver Injury
Authors: Mehershahi Shehriyar , Mantri Nikhitha , Kumar Aneesh , Danial Shaikh , Harish Patel
Published: June 2020

Enoxaparin, a form of low-molecular-weight heparin, can cause a rare, underreported, and often reversible form of hepatocellular injury. This report describes a case of enoxaparin-induced hepatotoxicity in a 61-year-old male diagnosed with pulmonary embolism. Elevations of liver enzymes were noted within 1 week of starting the drug, followed by a dramatic improvement upon its discontinuation, with subsequent normalization in the following days.
Use of a Polygenic Risk Score Improves Prediction of Myocardial Injury After Non-Cardiac Surgery
Authors: Douville Nicholas J. , Surakka Ida , Leis Aleda , Douville Christopher B. , Hornsby Whitney E. , Brummett Chad M. , Kheterpal Sachin , Willer Cristen J. , Engoren Milo , Mathis Michael R.
Published: June 2020

Background:

While postoperative myocardial injury remains a major driver of morbidity and mortality, the ability to accurately identify patients at risk remains limited despite decades of clinical research. The role of genetic information in predicting myocardial injury after noncardiac surgery (MINS) remains unknown and requires large scale electronic health record and genomic data sets.

Methods:

In this retrospective observational study of adult patients undergoing noncardiac surgery, we defined MINS as new troponin elevation within 30 days following surgery. To determine the incremental value of polygenic risk score (PRS) for coronary artery disease, we added the score to 3 models of MINS risk: revised cardiac risk index, a model comprised entirely of preoperative variables, and a model with combined preoperative plus intraoperative variables. We assessed performance without and with PRSs via area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and net reclassification index.

Results:

Among 90 053 procedures across 40 498 genotyped individuals, we observed 429 cases with MINS (0.5%). PRS for coronary artery disease was independently associated with MINS for each multivariable model created (odds ratio=1.12 [95% CI, 1.02–1.24],
P
=0.023 in the revised cardiac risk index-based model; odds ratio, 1.19 [95% CI, 1.07–1.31],
P
=0.001 in the preoperative model; and odds ratio, 1.17 [95% CI, 1.06–1.30],
P
=0.003 in the preoperative plus intraoperative model). The addition of clinical risk factors improved model discrimination. When PRS was included with preoperative and preoperative plus intraoperative models, up to 3.6% of procedures were shifted into a new outcome classification.

Conclusions:

The addition of a PRS does not significantly improve discrimination but remains independently associated with MINS and improves goodness of fit. As genetic analysis becomes more common, clinicians will have an opportunity to use polygenic risk to predict perioperative complications. Further studies are necessary to determine if PRSs can inform MINS surveillance.
Cigarette Smoking and Incident Stroke in Blacks of the Jackson Heart Study
Authors: Oshunbade Adebamike A. , Yimer Wondwosen K. , Valle Karen A. , Clark Donald , Kamimura Daisuke , White Wendy B. , DeFilippis Andrew P. , Blaha Michael J. , Benjamin Emelia J. , O'Brien Emily C. , Mentz Robert J. , Fox Ervin R. , O'Mara Charles S. , Butler Javed , Correa Adolfo , Hall Michael E.
Published: June 2020

Background

Blacks are disproportionately affected by stroke compared with whites; however, less is known about the relationship between stroke and cigarette smoking in blacks. Therefore, we evaluated the relationship between cigarette smoking and all incident stroke in the JHS (Jackson Heart Study).

Methods and Results

JHS participants without a history of stroke (n=4410) were classified by self‐reported baseline smoking status into current, past (smoked at least 400 cigarettes/life), or never smokers at baseline (2000–2004). Current smokers were further classified by smoking intensity (number of cigarettes smoked per day [1–19 and ≥20]) and followed up for incident stroke (through 2015). Hazard ratios (HRs) for incident stroke for current and past smoking compared with never smoking were estimated with adjusted Cox proportional hazard regression models. After adjusting for cardiovascular risk factors, the risk for stroke in current smokers was significantly higher compared with never smokers (HR, 2.48; 95% CI, 1.60–3.83) but there was no significant difference between past smokers and never smokers (HR, 1.10; 95% CI, 0.74–1.64). There was a dose‐dependent increased risk of stroke with smoking intensity (HR, 2.28 [95% CI, 1.38–3.86] and HR, 2.78 [95% CI, 1.47–5.28] for current smokers smoking 1–19 and ≥20 cigarettes/day, respectively).

Conclusions

In a large cohort of blacks, current cigarette smoking was associated with a dose‐dependent higher risk of all stroke. In addition, past smokers did not have a significantly increased risk of all stroke compared with never smokers, which suggests that smoking cessation may have potential benefits in reducing the incidence of stroke in blacks.
Patient-based quality control for glucometers using the moving sum of positive patient results and moving average
Authors: Yee Lim Chun , Badrick Tony , Ping Loh Tze
Published: June 2020

Introduction:
The capability of glucometer internal quality control (QC) in detecting varying magnitude of systematic error (bias), and the potential use of moving sum of positive results (MovSum) and moving average (MA) techniques as potential alternatives were evaluated.
Materials and methods:
The probability of error detection using routine QC and manufacturer’s control limits were investigated using historical data. Moving sum of positive results and MA algorithms were developed and optimized before being evaluated through numerical simulation for false positive rate and probability of error detection.
Results:
When the manufacturer’s default control limits (that are multiple times higher than the running standard deviation (SD) of the glucometer) was used, they had 0-75% probability of detecting small errors up to 0.8 mmol/L. However, the error detection capability improved to 20-100% when the running SD of the glucometer was used. At a binarization threshold of 6.2 mmol/L and block sizes of 200 to 400, MovSum has a 100% probability of detecting a bias that is greater than 0.5 mmol/L. Compared to MovSum, the MA technique had lower probability of bias detection, especially for smaller bias magnitudes; MA also had higher false positive rates.
Conclusions:
The MovSum technique is suited for detecting small, but clinically significant biases. Point of care QC should follow conventional practice by setting the control limits according to the running mean and SD to allow proper error detection. The glucometer manufacturers have an active role to play in liberalizing QC settings and also enhancing the middleware to facility patient-based QC practices.
Verification of the Canadian Laboratory Initiative on Paediatric Reference Intervals (CALIPER) reference values in Croatian children and adolescents
Authors: Zrinski Topić Renata , Leniček Krleža Jasna
Published: June 2020

Introduction: The aim of this study was to examine whether the Canadian Laboratory Initiative on Paediatric Reference Intervals (CALIPER) could
be applied to Croatian children and adolescents.
Materials and methods: A total of 295 outpatient healthy children and adolescents of age 1 to 18 were selected using the direct a posteriori
sampling method. According to current guidelines, 20 samples were tested for each of a total of 51 reference intervals for ferritin, cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone
sulfate, follicle stimulating hormone, lutein stimulating hormone, prolactin, progesterone, sex hormone binding globulin, thyroid
stimulating hormone, total testosterone, total thyroxine and total triiodothyronine. Serum samples were analysed on the Beckman Coulter DxI600
immunoassay analyser by chemiluminescence immunoassay method. A reference interval was adopted if < 10% of the results fall outside CALIPER
reference interval range. For analytes in which this criterion is not met in the first set of samples, a new set of 20 samples were collected.
Results: After the first set of measurements, 96% of all tested reference intervals were adopted for use. The additional sets of 20 reference subjects
were tested for only two reference intervals; follicle stimulating hormone for female aged 1 to 9 years, and irrespective of the gender, sex hormone
binding globulin for children aged 8 to 11 years. All results of additional samples were within the specified interval limits.
Conclusions: CALIPER reference intervals for ferritin and 11 hormones defined for Beckman Coulter DxI600 immunoassay analyser can be implemented
into the Croatian laboratories and clinical practice.
A case of severe pseudohyperkalaemia due to muscle contraction
Authors: Van Elslande Jan , Dominicus Toon , Toelen Jaan , Frans Glynis , Vermeersch Pieter
Published: June 2020

Introduction:
Severe hyperkalaemia is a serious medical condition requiring immediate medical attention. Before medical treatment is started, pseudohyperkalaemia has to be ruled out.
Case description:
A 10-month old infant presented to the emergency department with fever and coughing since 1 week. Routine venous blood testing revealed a severe hyperkalaemia of 6.9 mmol/L without any indication of haemolysis. Reanalysis of the plasma sample confirmed the hyperkalaemia (7.1 mmol/L). Based on these results, the clinical pathologist suggested to perform a venous blood gas analysis and electrocardiogram (ECG) which revealed a normal potassium of 3.7 mmol/L and normal ECG, ruling out a potentially life-treating hyperkalaemia. The child was diagnosed with pneumonia. The paediatrician had difficulty to perform the first venous blood collection due to excessive movement of the infant during venipuncture. The muscle contractions of the child in combination with venous stasis most probably led to a local increase of potassium in the sampled limbs. The second sample collected under optimal preanalytical circumstances had a normal potassium. Since muscle contraction typically does not cause severe hyperkalaemia, other causes of pseudohyperkalaemia were excluded. K3-EDTA contamination and familial hyperkalaemia were ruled out and the patient did not have extreme leucocytosis or thrombocytosis. By exclusion a diagnosis of pseudohyperkalaemia due to intense muscle movement and venous stasis was made.
Conclusion:
This case suggests that intense muscle contraction and venous stasis can cause severe pseudohyperkalemia without hemolysis. Once true hyperkalemia has been ruled out, a laboratory work-up can help identify the cause of pseudohyperkalaemia.
Inference of a Mesoscopic Population Model from Population Spike Trains
Authors: René Alexandre , Longtin André , Macke Jakob H.
Published: June 2020

Understanding how rich dynamics emerge in neural populations requires models exhibiting a wide range of behaviors while remaining interpretable in terms of connectivity and single-neuron dynamics. However, it has been challenging to fit such mechanistic spiking networks at the single-neuron scale to empirical population data. To close this gap, we propose to fit such data at a mesoscale, using a mechanistic but low-dimensional and, hence, statistically tractable model. The mesoscopic representation is obtained by approximating a population of neurons as multiple homogeneous pools of neurons and modeling the dynamics of the aggregate population activity within each pool. We derive the likelihood of both single-neuron and connectivity parameters given this activity, which can then be used to optimize parameters by gradient ascent on the log likelihood or perform Bayesian inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. We illustrate this approach using a model of generalized integrate-and-fire neurons for which mesoscopic dynamics have been previously derived and show that both single-neuron and connectivity parameters can be recovered from simulated data. In particular, our inference method extracts posterior correlations between model parameters, which define parameter subsets able to reproduce the data. We compute the Bayesian posterior for combinations of parameters using MCMC sampling and investigate how the approximations inherent in a mesoscopic population model affect the accuracy of the inferred single-neuron parameters.
The WIPO-WTO Relationship
Authors: Gagliani Gabriele
Published: June 2020

The current, prevailing narrative on the WIPO-WTO relationship refers to “forum-shifting”. The idea is that developed countries moved from WIPO to WTO in order to obtain stronger IP protection at the international level by joining trade talks with IP negotiations. As a result, WTO would have become the main international forum for trade-related IP issues. This paper argues that the forum-shifting narrative, despite its merits, may fail to catch the complexity of WIPO-WTO relationship. Moreover, long-standing issues, as well as recent developments in trade and IP, demonstrate that the two Organizations have been characterized by continuity and constitute in reality interdependent, complementary fora. This is not to deny the differences existing between WIPO and WTO nor to discard the merits of the forum-shifting theory. Nonetheless, it is argued, it is time to move beyond it in order to grasp the implications of the WIPO-WTO relationship towards future international economic governance.
A 250-item list of Old Chinese vocabulary in the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction
Authors: SAGART Laurent , MA Kun
Published: June 2020

A 250-concept list was established for the purposes of an ongoing lexically-based study of Sino-Tibetan. This paper supplies the Old Chinese version of the list, in the Old Chinese reconstruction of Baxter and Sagart 2014. Chinese words attested in pre-Han times were selected based on their meaning as given in major lexica such as the Hànyǔ Dà Zìdiǎn. At times more than one OC item was found to match a concept in the list without it being clear which of the terms was the oldest. In such cases all the candidates were retained. As a result, the Old Chinese version of the list contains 301 words.
Penstemon dugesii (Plantaginaceae), a new species from Guanajuato, Mexico

Authors: ZACARÍAS-CORREA ANA GABRIELA , PÉREZ-CALIX EMMANUEL , SAMAIN MARIE-STÉPHANIE
Published: June 2020

Penstemon dugesii is described from the central region of the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. This species belongs to Penstemon subg. Penstemon sect. Fasciculus. Here, we describe this new species and compare it with P. coriaceus, to which it is morphologically most similar. We also propose its conservation status and provide a distribution map of both species.
Revision of the Hycleus sexmaculatus species group (Coleoptera: Meloidae, Mylabrini)
Authors: SERRI SAYEH , BOLOGNA MARCO A. , RICCIERI ALESSANDRA
Published: June 2020

In this study, the blister beetles belonging to the Hycleus sexmaculatus species group are revised. Morphological characters are described and figured for each species and keys to both male and female are provided. Hycleus hayki new species from Southwest Iran is described and the following new synonymies are proposed: Mylabris triangulifera ab. reitterioides Mader 1929 = Hycleus bipunctatus (Olivier, 1811) new synonymy; Mylabris triangulifera ab. bushirensis Mader 1929 = Hycleus bipunctatus (Olivier, 1811) new synonymy; Mylabris javeti Marseul, 1870 = Hycleus colligatus (Redtenbacher, 1850) new synonymy; Mylabris javeti umbilicatus Kaszab, 1958 = Hycleus colligatus (Redtenbacher, 1850) new synonymy; Hycleus amrishi Makhan, 2012 = Hycleus cingulatus (Faldermann, 1837) new synonymy. Additional remarks which rectify previous errors in the identification of the species are provided. The taxonomic positions of Zonabris soumacovi Pic, 1930 and Zonabris sialanus Pic, 1929 are also discussed. Phylogenetic relationships of the species, based on a subset of available species inferred from molecular data are proposed, and some morphologically defined subgroups of species are distinguished with the molecular support. The geographic and ecological distributions of all the species are defined, and a detailed list of localities is provided. The ecological information including phenology, elevation and host plants of the species are summarized in a table. Based on literature records, collections and recently collected data, the distribution of the sexmaculatus species and their biogeographic characteristics are discussed.
A new species and new records of Pseudolebinthus crickets from Malawi (Orthoptera, Gryllidae, Eneopterinae)
Authors: ROBILLARD TONY , MURPHY RAYMOND J.
Published: June 2020

Recent studies have suggested that the diversity of orthopteran insects in the Eastern African region is largely undersampled and understudied, resulting in numerous new species and genera awaiting discovery, while many species are known from only one or few records, preventing precise assessment of the threat to them. In this paper we describe the new species Pseudolebinthus ntchisi sp. nov. from Central Malawi and present new records about two other Pseudolebinthus species from Malawi, with biological information and illustrations of this genus based on field observations.
Two new species of Sphaerodoridae (Annelida) from the Gulf of Thailand
Authors: PLATHONG JINTANA , PLATHONG SAKANAN , CAPA MARÍA
Published: June 2020

Despite being a great species-rich area, the Gulf of Thailand has been relatively poorly studied and new species are awaiting to be described. In the present study two new species of Sphaerodoridae (Annelida), Geminofilum thailandica sp. nov. and Sphaerodoridium songkhlaensis sp. nov. were collected in shallow soft bottoms at Songkhla Sea. Geminofilum thailandica sp. nov. is characterised by bearing sessile and elongated dorsal macrotubercles, arranged in two transverse rows per segment, lacking other dorsal papillae, having parapodia with a single papilla at the base and compound chaetae with blades 4–6 times as long as wide and serration showing variation within fascicles. Sphaerodoridium songkhlaensis sp. nov. can be distinguished from other congeners by the singular morphology of the short stalked dorsal macrotubercles as inverted cones, with a conspicuous rim encircling the flattened distal surface, and two longitudinal rows of smaller sessile tubercles, as inverted cones, along ventrum, with four pairs of tubercles per segment. Chaetae show variation in the serration within fascicles. The present study highlights the need for further biodiversity studies on benthic communities in this area.
Aquatic dance flies of Czech Republic (Empididae: Clinocerinae and Hemerodromiinae): new records and updated species list
Authors: IVKOVIĆ MARIJA , ČORKALO MARKO , TKOČ MICHAL
Published: June 2020

New records are provided for aquatic dance flies from Czech Republic, with new distribution records for 19 species in six different genera. Four species are newly recorded from Czech Republic: Dolichocephala ocellata (Costa, 1854), Kowarzia tenella (Wahlberg, 1844), Wiedemannia insularis Collin, 1927 and Wiedemannia wachtli (Mik, 1880). There are now 43 species of aquatic dance flies recorded from Czech Republic.
Using Infrared Thermal Imaging to Study the Response of Athletes to Overload Training
Authors: Wang Jingfei , Grant Laurence
Published: June 2020

Objective: To study the changes of body surface temperature of Taekwondo athletes during overload training, and provide new ideas and means for athletes to evaluate their body response after overload training. Methods: The infrared thermography technique was used to monitor
the body surface temperature of the chest and abdomen of the Taekwondo athletes, and the changes of body surface temperature were observed. The experiment used Beckman automatic biochemical analyzer to determine creatine kinase (CK) index. The experiment used the RPE scale to test the self-fatigue
sensation. On the training day, the training starts at 9:00 am every day and the training is completed in 2 hours. The training starts at 14:00 in the afternoon and the training is completed in 2 hours. The morning training requires a minimum heart rate of 130 beats/min, and keeps it for more
than 30 minutes. The training end time is 11:00; afternoon training requires a minimum heart rate of 170 beats/min, and maintained for more than 30 minutes, the training end time is 16:00. Results: The athletes’ sports injury parts increased significantly after exercise, which
can indirectly reflect the athlete’s physical fatigue reaction state after overload training. Body surface temperature has a good consistency with creatine kinase (CK), heart rate, and body function response, indicating that body surface temperature values can replace creatine kinase
(CK), heart rate, and self-physiological response, indicating that infrared thermography can be accurate. The physiological response status after overload training was assessed. Conclusion: The thermal imaging camera can accurately identify and analyze the injury and physiological response
status of athletes. Infrared thermography studies show that the body surface temperature of athletes has a certain correlation with (CK); the body surface temperature and physiological fatigue response of athletes have certain Correlation law; the body surface temperature of the athlete has
a correlation with the heart rate; the body surface temperature of the athlete’s sports injury site after the sports injury is significantly increased, which indirectly reflects the physical fatigue response of the athlete after overload training.
Relationship Between Exercise and 18-Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography Imaging of Brain in the Elderly
Authors: Kang Pengfei
Published: June 2020

CT were analyzed. The subjects were elderly people aged 55–75 who volunteered for brain 18F of the FDG CT and PET scanning. The elderly who maintained exercise were divided into exercise group and non-exercise group into control group. The images obtained by CT examination showed
that the brain of the elderly who insisted on exercise showed a significant increase in glucose metabolism, which indicated that exercise had a preventive effect on brain diseases of the elderly, and reduced the risk of cerebral vascular occlusion and brain atrophy.
Diagnostic Value of Spectral CT Parameters in Differentiating Different Types of Lung Cancer
Authors: Chen Mai-Lin , Li Xiao-Ting , Wei Yi-Yuan , Qi Li-Ping , Sun Ying-Shi
Published: June 2020

Background: This study proposed to quantitatively assess the value of spectral CT imaging parameters in differentiating different pathological types of lung cancer. Methods: Eighty five patients with lung cancer (66 non-mucinous adenocarcinomas, 7 Squamous cell carcinomas,
8 small cell carcinomas, 1 mucinous adenocarcinoma, 1 sarcomatoid carcinoma, 1 carcinoid, 1 large cell carcinoma) underwent CT plain scan, contrast enhanced CT scans in arterial phase (a) and venous phase (v) with spectral imaging mode on a GE Revolution Xtream CT scanner. The Spectral CT
Imaging parameters: Iodine concentrations (IC) of lesion in arterial phase (ICLa) and venous phase (ICLv), Normalized IC (NICa/NICv)-normalized to the IC in the aorta, slope of the spectral HU curve (λHUa/λHUv) and monochromatic CT number (CT40keVa/CT40keVv, CT70keVa/CT70keVv)
enhancement on 40 keV and 70 keV images were calculated. The One-way ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare quantitative parameters among lung squamous carcinoma, small cell carcinoma and lung adenocarcinoma groups, Bonferroni method was used to correct P value for multiple comparisons.
Results: Among the different pathological types of lung cancers, these quantitative parameters of spectral CT imaging CT70keVa has significant difference. The CT70keVa of lung adenocarcinoma was lower than small cell carcinoma (P = 0.048) and squamous cell carcinoma (P
= 0.039), respectively. And these CT40keVa, CT70keVa/CT70keVv parameters of lung adenocarcinoma was lower than non-adenocarcinomas (P < 0.05). However, there was no significant difference in spectral CT parameters between small cell lung cancer and squamous cell lung cancer, small
cell lung cancer and non-small cell carcinoma (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Spectral CT parameters may be of value in distinguishing different pathological types of lung cancer.
Contrast Enhancement of Low-Contrast Medical Images Using Modified Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization
Authors: Khan Sajid Ali , Hussain Shariq , Yang Shunkun
Published: June 2020

The low contrast medical images seriously affect the clinical diagnosis process. To improve the image quality, we propose an effective medical images contrast enhancement technique in this paper. Shear wavelet transformation is used for decomposition of image components into low-frequency
and high-frequency. The low-frequency part contrast is adjusted by applying modified contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE). The resultant image is further processed through technique of fuzzy contrast enhancement to maintain the spectral information of an image. Results
of the experimentation show that our proposed technique enhance the image contrast up to a good degree while preserving the image details.
Feature Selection and Rapid Characterization of Bloodstains on Different Substrates
Authors: Gautam Rekha , Peoples Deandra , Jansen Kiana , O’Connor Maggie , Thomas Giju , Vanga Sandeep , Pence Isaac J. , Mahadevan-Jansen Anita
Published: June 2020

Establishing the precise timeline of a crime can be challenging as current analytical techniques used suffer from many limitations and are destructive to the body fluids encountered at crime scenes. Raman spectroscopy has demonstrated excellent potential in forensic science as it provides direct information about the structural and molecular changes without the need for processing or extracting samples. However, its current applicability is limited to pure body fluids, as signals from the substrate underlying these fluids greatly influence the current models used for age estimation. In this study, we utilized Raman spectroscopy to identify selective spectral markers that delineate the bloodstain age in the presence of interfering signals from the substrate. The pure bloodstains and the bloodstains on the substrate were aged for two weeks at 21 ± 2 ℃ in the dark. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was employed to guide the feature selection in the presence of interference from substrates to accurately predict the bloodstain age. Substrate-specific regression models guided by an automated feature selection algorithm yielded low values of predictive root mean square error (0.207, 0.204, 0.222 h in logarithmic scale) and high R2 (0.924, 0.926, 0.913) on test data consisting of blood spectra on floor tile, facial tissue, and linoleum-polymer substrates, respectively. This framework for an automated feature selection algorithm relies entirely on pure bloodstain spectra to train substrate-specific models for estimating the age of composite (blood on substrate) spectra. The model can thus be easily applied to any new composite spectra and is highly scalable to new environments. This study demonstrates that Raman spectroscopy coupled with LASSO could serve as a reliable and nondestructive technique to determine the age of bloodstains on any surface while aiding forensic investigations in real-world scenarios.
Business and Society Research Drawing on Institutionalism: Integrating Normative and Descriptive Research on Values
Authors: Risi David
Published: June 2020

Business and society (B&S) scholarship that uses the theoretical perspective of institutionalism combines different research approaches to values. Within the B&S literature drawing on institutionalism, we identified and categorized the research on values according to a spectrum of normative and/or descriptive approaches (including both and neither approaches). Primarily, we focused on how the normative and descriptive approaches interrelate and integrate. We argue that drawing on John Dewey’s pragmatism and Philip Selznick’s institutionalism can help further an integrative approach, which holds great potential for advancing theorization in the B&S field while increasing its practical relevance.
The impact of terrorism on international mergers and acquisitions: Evidence from firm-level decisions
Authors: Hogetoorn Babet , Gerritse Michiel
Published: June 2020

Does terrorism inhibit a country’s ability to attract international direct investment? If so, terrorism may have large costs in terms of employment losses, macroeconomic instability, and missed development opportunities. However, do investors fear terrorism because of direct risks to their assets, or because the opportunities in the host country deteriorate? And how do they adjust investments? We study the impact of terrorism on merger and acquisition decisions of 8,872 firms over 116 countries over 16 years. The firm-level perspective allows the isolation of host-country terrorism from firm-level characteristics such as size or experience as an explanation, by comparing decisions for the same firm across destinations. It also allows separation of investment responses into reductions or entire withholding of investment. A sample standard deviation increase in terrorism reduces merger and acquisition investment by around 30%. Firms do not generally reduce the size of their investment in the face of terrorism – instead, they decide not to enter the country altogether. We find no evidence to suggest that multinational firms are more sensitive to attacks on local business assets. A country-level analysis, which necessarily does not control for firm-level characteristics, yields materially different conclusions.
The medico-legal implications in medical malpractice claims during Covid-19 pandemic: Increase or trend reversal?
Authors: Bilotta Clio , Zerbo Stefania , Perrone Giulio , Malta Ginerva , Argo Antonella
Published: June 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a marked increase in admissions to intensive care units. The critically ill patients’ condition from the infection resulted in their deaths. The healthcare facilities have got into trouble because of the pandemic. In fact, they had to create additional beds in a very short time and to protect health workers with personal protective equipment. Healthcare professionals fear that there will be an increase in complaints and medico-legal malpractice claims and hence they have urged politicians to discuss this. The Italian Parliament recently debated the topic of medical liability and passed the Decree-Law no. 18 of 17 March 2020 (DL – so called Cura Italia) by which they want to extend the concept of “gross negligence” to healthcare facilities. Several Extended Care Units have suffered from outbreaks of Covid-19, so the Prosecutor’s Office of several cities initiated investigations against them. This situation has reached Sicily, where the Prosecutor’s Office of Palermo has opened an inquiry against an Extended Care Unit. Simultaneously, the Covid-19 pandemic may change patients’ attitudes towards healthcare professionals, who are risking their lives daily. So the Italian medico-legal community is debating these questions, with one last pending question remaining: is the number of medico-legal claims likely to increase or trend down?
Online Writing Community: What Can We Learn from Failure?
Authors: Tang Eunice , Cheng Lily , Ng Ross
Published: June 2020

Peer feedback or peer review has been promoted in the English writing classroom as an effective strategy to improve writing skills. With the popularity of adopting technology in learning, our research introduced participants to an online writing community (OWC) which incorporates the concepts of peer feedback and collaborative learning as an innovative pedagogy to improve writing skills in an autonomous environment. The OWC was created for students in an English Education programme in a Hong Kong university. However, the attempt was a failure given its low participation and interaction rates. A study was subsequently conducted to understand participants’ and non- participants’ perception and behaviour towards the learning environment and activity. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and reflective journals. Non-participants claimed that lack of time, heavy workloads, the non-compulsory and non-credit bearing nature of the course deterred them from joining the OWC. While participants in the OWC did not concur with the claims, they identified factors which might have accounted for the low interaction rate in the OWC. These included: i) commitment of the OWC members; ii) rapport among the OWC members; iii) interactiveness and spontaneity of the platform; and, iv) ease of use. The results suggest ways that innovative pedagogy could be implemented and enhanced for effective learning in the future.
Here’s a Good Book: Hints on Writing a Book Review for Academic Journals
Authors: Lewis Marilyn Nesta
Published: June 2020

Book reviews appear in journals for language teachers, alongside research-based articles and state-of-the art reviews. Interestingly, however, although editorial guidelines are usually provided for writers of articles, suggestions to book reviewers on how to write are harder to find. Similarly, in advice about academic writing for publishing, the genre of book reviews has received very little attention.

This short article addresses a number of questions on the topic of writing book reviews.
Schema Association Training: Empowering Students for Speaking Assessments
Authors: Liu Gavin
Published: June 2020

This article describes Schema Association Training (SAT), an enrichment programme designed to develop students’ confidence and ability to sustain discussions during speaking assessments. The author observed that many students had difficulties introducing relevant ideas to prolong discussions during Spoken Interaction, an assessment component of the Singapore-Cambridge GCE O-Level English language oral communication exam. Notably, there appears to be a tendency for students to compartmentalize the content knowledge they possess, often resulting in missed opportunities to surface relevant ideas that could possibly add depth to discussions. This raises a need for classroom preparatory work to move towards encouraging learners to make meaningful connections between related topics. SAT was thus implemented to achieve this. During SAT, students first go through an individual Spoken Interaction exercise which is audio recorded. This audio recording is subsequently utilized during an individual reflective conversation with the teacher. Finally, students consolidate their learning via an online learning module. This article describes the steps involved in carrying out SAT, and also presents preliminary findings that suggest the potential benefits of SAT in helping learners elaborate better during speaking assessments.
Policy mobility, advocacy and problem–potential bridging practices: A review of Scottish city council tax incremental financing business cases
Authors: Henderson Steven R.
Published: June 2020

Globalisation has enormously expanded the availability of urban policy information and prompted the need for policy mobility studies. In contrast to objective evidence and rational forms of place-based adoption, policy mobility studies direct attention to the plethora of actors involved in policy mobility and the contested pathways through which policy is adopted, adapted and mutated. Supportive scholars call for consideration of relational and territorial influences, supply- and demand-side dimensions and the interaction between actor and structural interpretations. Given distended forms of adoption, supply-side perspectives acknowledge how influential intermediary actors may exaggerate evidence and codify best practice to effect desired outcomes. Here recognition is given to the limits of ‘city’ or ‘local’-based autonomy and the importance of considering inter-government relations as part of demand-side perspectives. In particular, significance is attributed to local government advocacy and problem–potential bridging practices. Grounded evidence is presented via the analysis of two Scottish city council tax increment financing business cases constructed to gain Scottish Government approval.
Immigration and economic resilience in the Great Recession
Authors: Huang Xi
Published: June 2020

The 2007–2009 financial crisis has caused economic disruption in many US cities and has drawn considerable academic attention. Despite abundant evidence of immigrants’ economic and social value to urban areas, little research has examined the relationship between immigration and resilience. This article investigates whether immigration enhanced economic resilience to the Great Recession for metropolitan areas in the US. It uses ordinary least squares and instrumental variable regressions to test the immigration effects between 2007 and 2014. The findings indicate that immigration leads to employment and income resilience. On average, metropolitan areas with a larger immigrant population tended to better preserve their growth paths during the Great Recession and to experience greater levels of employment and per capita income growth following the recession.
Understanding Relations Among Drinking and Hookup Motives, Consequences, and Depressive Symptoms in College Students
Authors: Winkeljohn Black Stephanie , Owen Jesse , Soler Nehemiah , Fincham Frank
Published: June 2020

In this longitudinal study ( N =  98), we examined whether drinking for suppression reasons moderated the relation between depressive symptoms and hooking up for self-affirmation reasons and negative hookup consequences. No moderation was found for hooking up for self-affirmation reasons, but the effect for negative hookup consequences approached significance. When drinking for suppression reasons is low, participants with fewer depressive symptoms reported more negative consequences, and participants with more depressive symptoms reported fewer negative consequences 2 months later. Results are discussed within the context of sex education and mental health programming for young adults.
“Accidental Intimacies”: Reconsidering Bodily Encounters Between Police and Young People Who Use Drugs
Authors: Selfridge Marion , Mitchell Lisa , Greer Alissa , Macdonald Scott , Pauly Bernie
Published: June 2020

Youth who use drugs (YWUD) are likely to encounter the police and experience victimization within those encounters. Negative experiences of police among youth can dramatically undermine youths’ trust in police, making them unlikely to ask for help when they need it. In this article, we use Rance and Fraser’s concept of “accidental intimacies” between staff and people who inject drugs arising in encounters within supervised consumption sites. Their exploration of Sarah Ahmed’s work on the social productivity of emotions argues that new subjectivities that counter or transform stigma and shame surrounding drug use can occur from the space between individuals. For Ahmed “emotions do things, and work to align individuals with collectives—[linking] bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments.” During 2017–2018, 38 youth (aged 16–30 years) who use drugs in three cities in British Columbia, Canada, were interviewed to explore their encounters (both positive and negative) with police and how these influenced their perceptions of police. In this article, we assert that the dynamic of “we” and “them,” of the YWUD and police, is constituted in part through the powerful emotions created and confirmed by negative bodily encounters where the bodies of youth and police collide through physical and/or verbal contact. The repetition of emotions and objectification through stigma within their communities force some youth to repeatedly confront harmful subjectivities. Rance and Fraser’s work provides possibilities for shifting these stigmatizing subjectivities. For change to occur, addressing the historical and present realities that impact YWUD will help facilitate and enhance more respectful communication and interactions between YWUD and police. Bodily encounters may also present opportunities for both YWUD and police to reflect on the subjectivities that reinforce and are shaped by their negative interactions with one another. Incremental change may be possible as we find new meanings in youths’ understanding of and compassion for police and their work.
Into the Cold: Neighborliness, Class, and the Emotional Landscape of Urban Modernism in France and West Germany
Authors: Reinecke Christiane
Published: June 2020

In France and West Germany, public opinion on modernist mass housing switched from positive to negative over a short period of time. The following article explores and compares this disenchantment with urban modernism in both countries. Analyzing TV documentaries, press reports, and sociological studies, as well as inhabitants’ reactions to them, it traces the discursive production of modern high-rise estates as arenas of social and emotional malfunction. It investigates how contemporaries came to contrast the apparent desolation of modernist high-rises on the periphery of French and West German cities with the warmth and solidarity of traditional working-class neighborhoods. Tracing the genesis of this socio-emotional framing, the article foregrounds the influence of psychological discourses and a new left-wing activism on contemporary urbanism and highlights the local repercussions of modern housing’s public denigration in France and West Germany.
Signifying “Americanness”: Narrative Collective Identification Work in the Undocumented Youth Movement
Authors: Cabaniss Emily R. , Gardner Jeffrey A.
Published: June 2020

This article examines the narrative identity work that undocumented youth activists used to shift the boundary of and claim membership in the social category “American.” Despite the seemingly inflexible, legalistic way American is conventionally defined in the United States (as a native-born or naturalized citizen), activists adopted a fluid interpretation that made room for them. Our theoretical contribution centers on articulating how the construction and deployment of identity codes within narrative processes can open spaces for claiming collective identification and belonging in seemingly closed collectivities. However, the use of such codes may unintentionally close access for others seeking to identify as part of the same collective. Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, and our analysis integrates insights from sociological research on identity with interdisciplinary work on storytelling. We outline activists’ three main approaches to signifying Americanness, including constructing American as (1) a subjective feeling, (2) a status that can be earned, and (3) a quality that one can demonstrate through political engagement in the United States. We conclude by discussing the implications of such narrative identity work strategies for other undocumented immigrants who may face challenges presenting themselves as equally fitting “Americans.”