bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Good Enough?
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2024

What basic minimum, if any, do we owe to co-citizens or members of the larger global community? Does it suffice if a young mother can find shelter from an abusive partner or must society also help her secure food, job training, or even a job? Should we have public works programs to help people in times of emergency? This chapter defends the book’s new way of answering this question. It argues that its minimally good life account has some advantages over the main alternatives and that neither the first- nor third-person perspective can help us arrive at an adequate account. Rather, it employs the second-person perspective of free, reasonable care. So, if subsequent chapters’ arguments that we have reason to help everyone secure a basic minimum go through, we have reason to ensure that everyone lives well enough.
The Minimally Good Life and Basic Justice
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2024

What do we owe to others as a matter of basic justice? What can we claim for ourselves? This chapter suggests the minimally good life account provides a plausible new explanation of what we owe and can demand as a basic minimum. The chapter explains why the account plausibly generates significant, yet limited, demands that leave significant room for pure charity or altruism. It acknowledges the importance of basic rights as well as freedom and responsibility for human lives. It argues that this account (1) carves out a path between socialism and social democracy on the left, and traditional forms of luck egalitarianism and libertarianism on the right, (2) can inform theories of what we owe to people in our personal as well as political lives, and (3) differs from many other major accounts of basic justice.
Advantages of the Minimally Good Life Account
Authors: Hassoun Nicole
Published: July 2024

The previous chapter defended the minimally good life account of what we owe to others and can justifiably demand as a matter of basic justice. Moreover, it explained where the account fit into the broader literature on social justice and political obligation. However, many more specific accounts of what we owe to others as a basic minimum exist in the literature. This chapter argues that the main contenders either demand too much or cannot demand enough (and sometimes that they both demand too much and not enough). Moreover, it argues that the most plausible alternatives fail to leave sufficient room for altruism or recognize the importance of freedom, rights, and responsibility for human lives.
Introduction
Authors: Knoppers Laura L
Published: July 2024

After beginning with a challenge to the traditional literary historical break at 1660, this chapter traces the European and global ‘crises’ of the seventeenth century before turning to the British Isles. Literature in the Jacobean, Caroline, revolutionary, and Restoration periods is introduced formally and in historical context. The chapter then examines the wide range of poets, print culture alongside manuscript circulation, and the various milieux in which poetry was produced, including the archipelagic context. Having considered throughout the ways in which poetry adapts, changes, and transforms in response to political, cultural, and religious upheaval and change, the chapter points to ways in which the full-century purview challenges traditional assumptions, before concluding with a summary account of the organisational form and contents of the volume.
Sixteenth-Century European Influences
Authors: Welch Anthony
Published: July 2024

Even as they strove to build a distinct and vibrant English literary culture, seventeenth-century poets were deeply aware of their literary inheritance from continental Europe. English authors from Donne to Dryden were foreign travellers, diplomats, exiles, armchair tourists, translators, imitators, and canon builders, their poetry often inspired (or provoked) by continental literary models and traditions. This chapter surveys a range of European influences that shaped these poets’ art, with an emphasis on Petrarchan and libertine lyric poetry, the rise of neoclassical literary genres such as the epic and the ode, and the emergence of satirical counter-discourses such as the Petrarchan anti-blazon and the mock-heroic tradition.
Classical Influences and Innovations
Authors: Brammall Sheldon
Published: July 2024

The study of ancient Latin and Greek literature was central to the education of seventeenth-century poets, much as it was for their sixteenth-century predecessors. Fuelled by poetic, political, religious, and philosophical revolutions, seventeenth-century poets revised both the ancient past and the ways in which previous English poets had recreated that past. This chapter focuses on seventeenth-century English poets’ revisionary approaches to the classics, and their de- and re-mythologisations of classical myth. Two case studies show how these poets found models for their revisionary stances within the ancient poems themselves: Jonson’s scatological mock epic ‘On the Famous Voyage’, which turns back to Martial to satirise Spenserian poetry; and Hutchinson’s biblical epic Order and Disorder, which draws on Lucretius’s revisionary treatment of earlier myths for her own retelling of Genesis. The classics thus provide models for creative renewals of English poetic culture.
Biblical Translation and Inspiration
Authors: Fulton Thomas
Published: July 2024

Along with their prefaces and marginal notes, English translations of the Bible played a significant cultural role in early modernity. Before the appearance in 1611 of the King James Version, which slowly asserted its dominance over the course of the century, the Geneva and the Bishops’ Bibles represented forms of English Protestantism, while the Douay-Rheims Bible provided English Catholics with different readings. Meanwhile, translations of biblical poetry from the Book of Psalms proliferated in separate volumes. As this chapter shows, this translation history had a profound impact on English literary production, which often imitated, drew from, and even participated in its own biblical translations, particularly from the Psalms. The chapter investigates how poets such as Aemilia Lanyer, George Herbert, John Milton, and Richard Crashaw wrote and translated biblical poetry, often with a sharp eye to the different texts and paratexts of the English Bible.
Poetry in Scribal Publication and Circulation
Authors: Burke Victoria E
Published: July 2024

This chapter analyses how poets used various modes of scribal publication to transmit their verse and how readers circulated and responded to that verse. Poems often moved from individual separates to quires or gatherings to larger compilations, sometimes from sources close to the author and sometimes to and through wider networks. The chapter explores some of the reasons that poems could find popularity in manuscript, related to genre and topic, and the ways that communal and collaborative structures—such as the spaces found in universities, the Inns of Court, the royal court, taverns, households, and Parliament—led to the writing and distribution of different kinds of verse. Considering the examples of Sir Walter Raleigh, Katherine Philips, Andrew Marvell, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and the notorious distributor of lampoons, Captain Robert Julian, among others, the chapter traces the main forms of manuscript transmission of verse across the entire seventeenth century.
Poetry on the Stage
Authors: Solomon Diana
Published: July 2024

Poetry in seventeenth-century plays augments communication between actors, characters, and the audience. Through the deft application of such poetic devices as rhyme and triplets, versified dramatic prologues and epilogues conditioned the audience to receive the play favourably. Intertextual poetry can enlarge the interpretive scope and serve as dramatic irony for well-versed audiences. And couplets that close soliloquies and scenes convey key interpretive material, such as philosophical musings, sympathetic readings of otherwise blameworthy characters, or premonitions of doom. Through close readings of George Etherege’s The Man of Mode, Aphra Behn’s The Rover, and William Congreve’s The Way of the World, this article illustrates how performed verse enables communication while also enriching literary interpretation.
Speaker and Voice
Authors: Dodds Lara
Published: July 2024

This chapter explores prosopopoeia and apostrophe as the most significant rhetorical figures of voice in early modern English poetry. In written poetry, voice is a metaphor, yet it remains a crucial source of critical terms. While ostensibly describing the same phenomenon, the terms ‘speaker’ and ‘voice’ highlight distinct critical affordances. With its connection to the body, ‘voice’ highlights personal expression, presence, and authenticity, while ‘speaker’, which came to prominence with the New Criticism and as a tool of mid-twentieth century literary pedagogy, privileges the rhetorical and fictive aspects of poetry even as it concentrates discursive authority in a single source. Using examples of lyric poems by authors such as Milton, Pulter, Donne, Herbert, and Cavendish, this chapter shows how authors use apostrophe and prosopopoeia to reconcile the desire for an autonomous and singular speaker with the multiple voices that inhabit all poetry.
Rhyme, Metre, Sound, Form
Authors: Lynch Jack
Published: July 2024

This chapter is based on the observation that around the year 1600, an astonishing diversity of poetic forms flourished, but by 1700 only a small number of forms were in widespread use. Experimental forms such as the shaped poems of Herbert and Herrick, along with staples such as the sonnet sequence, declined in popularity throughout the century as literary tastes increasingly favoured verse that was smooth, sweet, and structured. The iambic pentameter couplet came to reign supreme, and blank verse’s association with Milton afforded it a new level of prestige as well. The contraction in formal possibilities was not total, especially among female poets, but by 1700, many kinds of formal inventiveness had gone into hibernation, waiting for reawakening by the poets of Romanticism.
Elegy
Authors: Ross Sarah C E
Published: July 2024

The history of English elegy in the seventeenth century is broadly a movement away from affiliations with the amatory erotics of Ovid, Catullus, and Propertius, and towards a more emphatic association with the funeral elegy, on the death of a person, with an internal poetic movement from mourning to consolation and praise. But across amorous and funereal versions of the elegy, there is a persistent and at times visceral fixation on the body of the elegiac subject and on the potential and challenges of its translation into poetic form. This essay surveys the history of seventeenth-century English elegy, focusing on its erotic, mourning, and political functions, and considering the figuration of the elusive body in its consolatory and memorialising schemas. It pays attention the most influential elegists of the century, including John Donne, John Milton, and Henry King; to women writers who engaged extensively in elegy, including Anne Southwell, Anne Bradstreet, Hester Pulter, and Lucy Hutchinson; and to the English revolution and its aftermath as historical events defining the use and form of elegy in the seventeenth century.
Songs, Ballads, and Broadsides
Authors: McIlvenna Una
Published: July 2024

Ballads were a ubiquitous product of seventeenth-century British popular culture. Cheaply printed, broadside ballads were hawked by street singers, who were associated with criminality. Topics varied from natural disasters to politics, from religious moralising to bawdry, making them an excellent tool for understanding seventeenth-century British society. White-letter ballads were political and usually high-brow, while black-letter ballads, which used simple language, could be on any topic. Set to familiar tunes, the songs were easy to learn and sing. The melodies were consciously chosen by composers because of their emotional and social connotations which added extra meaning to the new lyrics. The melody also dictated their structure, providing multiple kinds of metre rather than a single ‘ballad metre’. Ballads could use a variety of narrative voices, from the first-person voice of the condemned criminal to dialogue between two singers or could use invented regional accents to mock non-English people as ‘Other’.
Translation
Authors: Caldwell Tanya M
Published: July 2024

Poetic translation in seventeenth-century Britain reflects major cultural shifts as poets negotiated the relationship of the past to the present in the face of monarchical crisis, questions of national identity, women’s increasing leverage over literary production, and an emerging literary marketplace. The first part of this chapter focuses on early Stuart translations, in particular George Chapman’s Ovid. The second part addresses royalist nostalgia at mid-century as expressed through translation of Virgil, Ovid, and Lucretius. At the heart of this section is Lucy Hutchinson’s translation of Lucretius, which ultimately transcends traditional associations of politics, class, and gender. The final section considers the post-Restoration decades and surveys the organic changes in literary production over the century. The miscellany collections that juxtapose translations and original poems embody new practices in poetic composition and production. The key figure here is John Dryden, who developed English literary criticism through his prefatory essays on translation and whose Fables marks the end of an age.
Devotional Lyric
Authors: Wilcox Helen
Published: July 2024

The seventeenth century is regarded as one of the greatest eras of devotional lyrics in the history of English poetry; this chapter celebrates the variety and skilfulness of early modern poetic writing in the devotional mode. Following a discussion of what defines the devotional lyric and how poets faced the dual challenges of their own uncertain agency and the limits of language, the first section explores the nature of devotional lyrics by identifying them with the range of kinds of prayer practised by early modern believers. The second section discusses the secular poetic genres which devotional lyrics appropriate and transform, including the sonnet, song, epigram, dialogue, elegy, complaint, and emblem. The final section considers contextual factors that may have affected early modern devotional poetry, from the influence of the Bible and of music, to the gender and religious affiliation of the individual poets. Building on this, the conclusion suggests a redefinition of the genre.
Epic and Mock Epic
Authors: Venturo David
Published: July 2024

This chapter examines how John Milton redefined epic, and then how John Dryden reshaped aspects of heroism and employed mock epic, before he returned, after losing his public posts, to translate the great Virgilian epic, The Aeneid. Over the course of the seventeenth century, epic evolved in the crucible of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘zone of . . . contact’ of civil war, regicide, the republic, and the Restoration from an idealised genre into a vehicle for confronting the reality of martial violence and political subterfuge. Despite Milton’s scorn for Augustan theories of language, he, along with the Augustans, including Dryden and Samuel Butler, transformed epic from a genre celebrating war and martial heroism into something that looks more forthrightly at such violence and its causes.
George Herbert
Authors: Kuchar Gary
Published: July 2024

The immediate success of George Herbert’s The Temple (1633) was partly a function of timing. Coinciding with the emergence of a fully mature English Protestant literary culture, Herbert’s collection builds on three remarkable, but controversial, achievements: the English Bible, especially the purposefully non-polemical King James Version, the Book of Common Prayer, and the ongoing development and maintenance of church architecture. To understand the forms and themes of Herbert’s English poetry is to understand them as a response to the spiritual and ideological exigencies to which these three interrelated achievements were themselves an answer. In developing his response to the shifting contexts of early modern Protestantism, Herbert answered to the needs of both a private Bible-centred spirituality as well as a public spirituality rooted in common prayer. The result of his effort is a biblical poetics responsive to the embodied and emplaced nature of religious life as lived in (variously contested forms of) sacred space.
John Milton
Authors: Kilgour Maggie
Published: July 2024

This chapter argues that the revolutionary transformation of poetic forms marked Milton’s verse throughout his career and, in turn, catalysed future literary developments as diverse as the novel, Romantic poetry, gothic, and science fiction. In his early poetry, Milton experimented with many popular genres: elegies, sonnets, verse letters, hymns, pastoral poems, mock epic, and drama. This period of poetical growth was interrupted by the civil war and Protectorate, and complicated by Milton’s blindness. Yet his last years were aesthetically creative and generically daring, including not just the epic Paradise Lost, but the brief epic Paradise Regain’d and closet drama, Samson Agonistes. Most influentially, Milton rethought a traditional model of epic heroism in a post-war world, replacing war and the male hero with love and the couple as the centre of the epic. Milton’s verse form and characters, especially his loving couple, the compellingly complicated Satan, and the narrator himself, continue to shape poetic innovations today.
Margaret Cavendish and Lucy Hutchinson
Authors: Zimmern Arnaud
Published: July 2024

In their respective reimaginings of the Epicurean master-epic De Rerum Natura by the first-century bc poet-philosopher Lucretius, Margaret Cavendish and Lucy Hutchinson challenged seventeenth-century verse innovations such as the single-author anthology and the cavalier poets’ neo-Augustan style to handle tough new inquiries into metaphysics, natural philosophy, and theology. Their lifelong engagements with Lucretius testify not only to the pertinence of his epic across the political and religious divides that fissured late Stuart England, but also to its persistent appeal for ambitious women writers seeking to achieve poetic fame. A rich study in formal and philosophical contrasts that will provide food for thought for generations of scholarship, Cavendish and Hutchinson also expose a common investment in poetic voice, revealing how readily voices of fancy and prophecy could intertwine in a period of growing scepticism.
Aphra Behn and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Authors: Wright Gillian
Published: July 2024

This chapter discusses and compares two poets often regarded as representing male and female literary perspectives on late seventeenth-century libertine culture. While Aphra Behn and the Earl of Rochester had much in common, not least their permissive attitudes towards sexuality, they differed in many ways, including their generic preferences, their investment in contemporary politics, their use of print and manuscript, and the degree of control each sought to exercise over their literary works. Famously obscene, Rochester’s poetry is characterised by its use of strong narrative voices, variously and always problematically identifiable with the poet himself. The many innovative aspects of Behn’s poetry include her exploration of diverse forms of female sexual experience and her outspoken engagement in royalist politics.
An In-Depth Analysis of 1370 Consecutive Abdominoplasties: Fascial Plication Increases Risk of Venous Thromboembolism, and Scoring for Plication Improves the Caprini Risk Assessment Model
Authors: Restifo Richard J
Published: July 2024

Background

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is the most dangerous complication of abdominoplasty. One relatively undefined risk factor is plication, which in theory increases VTE risk.

Objectives

The aim of this study was to assess the thromboembolic risk of plication.

Methods

A retrospective review of 1370 consecutive abdominoplasties by 1 surgeon was undertaken. Two groups were considered, plicated (n = 1089) and nonplicated (n = 281) patients, and VTE rates were compared between these groups.

Results

There were 25 of 1089 cases of VTE (2.3%) in plicated patients and 1 of 281 cases of VTE (0.36%) in nonplicated patients, which was statistically significant (Fisher's exact test, P = .028) despite the nonplicated group being a higher-risk population. Case-control matching yielded 225 pairs which differed statistically only by the presence or absence of plication; there were 12 of 225 (5.3%) VTE events in the plicated group and 0 of 225 in the nonplicated group (McNemar's test, P = .0015). Logistic regression demonstrated increased VTE risk with increasing age (odds ratio [OR] 1.08, P < .001), BMI (OR 1.34, P = .002), Caprini score (OR 2.17, P < .001), and especially plication (OR 16.76, P = .008). Adding 2 points for plication to Caprini scores offered better risk stratification at a level of 7, with an improved combination of sensitivity and specificity (0.31/0.98 vs 0.69/0.96) and a 27% improvement over the 2005 Caprini risk assessment model (RAM) in the area under a receiver operating characteristic curve (0.826 vs 0.651, Z value −3.596, P = .003).

Conclusions

Plication was shown to be a powerful risk factor for the development of VTE in abdominoplasty. Abdominal wall plication should be considered in risk assessment, and scoring for plication may improve the performance of the Caprini RAM.

Level of Evidence: 3
Neuronal A2A receptor exacerbates synapse loss and memory deficits in APP/PS1 mice
Authors: Gomez-Murcia Victoria , Launay Agathe , Carvalho Kévin , Burgard Anaëlle , Meriaux Céline , Caillierez Raphaëlle , Eddarkaoui Sabiha , Kilinc Devrim , Siedlecki-Wullich Dolores , Besegher Mélanie , Bégard Séverine , Thiroux Bryan , Jung Matthieu , Nebie Ouada , Wisztorski Maxence , Déglon Nicole , Montmasson Claire , Bemelmans Alexis-Pierre , Hamdane Malika , Lebouvier Thibaud , Vieau Didier , Fournier Isabelle , Buee Luc , Lévi Sabine , Lopes Luisa V , Boutillier Anne-Laurence , Faivre Emilie , Blum David
Published: July 2024

Early pathological upregulation of adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs), one of the caffeine targets, by neurons is thought to be involved in the development of synaptic and memory deficits in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) but mechanisms remain ill-defined. To tackle this question, we promoted a neuronal upregulation of A2AR in the hippocampus of APP/PS1 mice developing AD-like amyloidogenesis.

Our findings revealed that the early upregulation of A2AR in the presence of an ongoing amyloid pathology exacerbates memory impairments of APP/PS1 mice. These behavioural changes were not linked to major change in the development of amyloid pathology but rather associated with increased phosphorylated tau at neuritic plaques. Moreover, proteomic and transcriptomic analyses coupled with quantitative immunofluorescence studies indicated that neuronal upregulation of the receptor promoted both neuronal and non-neuronal autonomous alterations, i.e. enhanced neuroinflammatory response but also loss of excitatory synapses and impaired neuronal mitochondrial function, presumably accounting for the detrimental effect on memory.

Overall, our results provide compelling evidence that neuronal A2AR dysfunction, as seen in the brain of patients, contributes to amyloid-related pathogenesis and underscores the potential of A2AR as a relevant therapeutic target for mitigating cognitive impairments in this neurodegenerative disorder.
Eczematous dermatitis of knees after bilateral total knee replacement: a rare cause
Authors: Mathews Jerene
Published: July 2024

SKINTED (surgery of the knee, injury to the infrapatellar branch of the saphenous nerve, traumatic eczematous dermatitis) is a form of denervation dermatitis that occurs after total knee replacement. It is characterized by delayed onset, localization lateral to the surgical scar and associated hypoaesthesia. It is important to distinguish SKINTED from hypersensitivity to the implant that can also cause delayed eczematous reactions close to the implant site. SKINTED has a good prognosis with resolution in a few months, whereas hypersensitivity to the implant material has been associated with persistent eczema, systemic contact dermatitis and implant failure.
Anaemia and quality of life in chronic kidney disease: a consensus document from the European Anaemia of CKD Alliance
Authors: Dasgupta Indranil , Bagnis Corinne Isnard , Floris Matteo , Furuland Hans , Zurro Daniel Gallego , Gesualdo Loreto , Heirman Nathalie , Minutolo Roberto , Pani Antonello , Portolés José , Rosenberger Christian , Alvarez José Emilio Sánchez , Torres Pablo Ureña , Vanholder Raymond C , Wanner Christoph ,   European Anaemia of aCKD Alliance, Dasgupta Indranil , Bagnis Corinne Isnard , Floris Matteo , Furuland Hans , Zurro Daniel Gallego , Gesualdo Loreto , Minutolo Roberto , Pani Antonello , Portolés José , Rosenberger Christian , Sánchez Alvarez José Emilio , Torres Pablo Ureña , Vanholder Raymond C , Wanner Christoph
Published: July 2024

Anaemia is common in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and has a significant impact on quality of life (QoL), work productivity and outcomes. Current management includes oral or intravenous iron and erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), to which hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitors (HIF-PHIs) have been recently added, increasing the available therapeutic options. In randomised controlled trials, only intravenous iron improved cardiovascular outcome, while some ESAs were associated with increased adverse cardiovascular events. Despite therapeutic advances, several challenges and unmet needs remain in the current management of anaemia of CKD. In particular, clinical practice does not include an assessment of QoL, which prompted a group of European nephrologists and representatives of patient advocacy groups to revisit the current approach. In this consensus document, the authors propose a move towards a more holistic, personalised and long-term approach, based on existing evidence. The focus of treatment should be on improving QoL without increasing the risk of adverse cardiovascular events, and tailoring management strategies to the needs of the individual. In addition, the authors discuss the suitability of a currently available anaemia of CKD–specific health-related QoL measure for inclusion in the routine clinical management of anaemia of CKD. The authors also outline the logistics and challenges of incorporating such a measure into electronic health records and how it may be used to improve QoL for people with anaemia of CKD.
Long-term survival analysis of robotic esophagectomy for esophageal cancer
Authors: Kang Chang Hyun , Yun Tae Young , Park Ji Hyeon , Na Bubse , Na Kwon Joong , Park Samina , Lee Hyun Joo , Park In Kyu , Kim Young Tae
Published: July 2024

Robotic esophagectomy has improved early outcomes and enhanced the quality of lymphadenectomy for esophageal cancer surgery. This study aimed to determine risk factors for long-term survival following robotic esophagectomy and the causes of long-term mortality. We included patients who underwent robotic esophagectomy at our institute between 2010 and 2022. Robotic esophagectomy was defined as a surgical procedure performed robotically in both the abdomen and thorax. Robotic esophagectomy was performed in patients at all stages, including advanced stages, even in patients with stage IV and supraclavicular lymph node metastasis. A total of 340 patients underwent robotic esophagectomy during the study period. Ivor−Lewis operation and McKeown operation were performed on 153 (45.0%) and 187 (55.0%) patients, respectively. The five-year survival rates based on clinical stages were as follows: 85.2% in stage I, 62.0% in stage II, 54.5% in stage III, and 40.3% in stage IV. Risk factors for long-term survival included body mass index, Charlson comorbidity index, clinical stages, and postoperative complications of grade 4 or higher. Among the cases of long-term mortality, recurrence accounted for 42 patients (61.7%), while non-cancer-related death occurred in 26 patients (38.2%). The most common cause of non-cancer-related death was malnutrition and poor general condition, observed in 11 patients (16.2%). Robotic esophagectomy has demonstrated the ability to achieve acceptable long-term survival rates, even in patients with cervical lymph node metastasis. However, addressing high-grade postoperative complications and long-term malnutrition remains crucial for further improving the long-term survival outcomes of patients with esophageal cancer.
Strain assessment in patients with aortic regurgitation undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation: case series
Authors: Bartkowiak Joanna , Agarwal Vratika , Lebehn Mark , Nazif Tamim M , George Isaac , Kodali Susheel K , Vahl Torsten P , Hahn Rebecca T
Published: July 2024

Background

Limited data exist on strain changes after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) in patients with aortic regurgitation (AR).

Case summary

Three patients with AR undergoing TAVI showed an initial reduction in global longitudinal strain (GLS), followed by sustained GLS improvement within the first year.

Discussion

Findings align with those of surgically treated patients with AR. There is a possible superiority of GLS to left ventricular end-diastolic diameter ratio in assessing patients with severe volume overload.
Intravascular ultrasound-guided drug-coated balloon angioplasty for femoropopliteal artery disease: a clinical trial
Authors: Ko Young-Guk , Lee Seung-Jun , Ahn Chul-Min , Lee Sang-Hyup , Lee Yong-Joon , Kim Byeong-Keuk , Hong Myeong-Ki , Jang Yangsoo , Kim Tae-Hoon , Park Ha-Wook , Jang Ji Yong , Lee Jae-Hwan , Park Jae-Hyeong , Kim Su Hong , Im Eui , Park Sang-ho , Choi Donghoon ,   IVUS-DCB investigators, Ko Young-Guk , Choi Donghoon , Lee Seung-Jun , Ahn Chul-Min , Lee Sang-Hyup , Lee Yong-Joon , Kim Byeong-Keuk , Hong Myeong-Ki , Jang Yangsoo , Kim Tae-Hoon , Park Ha-Wook , Jang Ji Yong , Lee Jae-Hwan , Park Jae-Hyung , Kim Su Hong , Im Eui , Park Sang-ho , Shin Dong Ho , Ryu Sung Kee , Byun Young Sup , Kim Jung-Sun , Hong Sung-Jin , Jeon Hyuk , Kim Jung-Sun , Baik Sung Il
Published: July 2024

Background and Aims

Drug-coated balloons (DCBs) have demonstrated favourable outcomes following endovascular therapy for femoropopliteal artery (FPA) disease. However, uncertainty remains whether the use of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) can improve the outcomes of DCBs.

Methods

This prospective, multicentre, randomized trial, conducted at seven centres in South Korea, compared the outcomes of IVUS-guided vs. angiography-guided angioplasty for treating FPA disease with DCBs. Patients were assigned to receive IVUS-guided (n = 119) or angiography-guided (n = 118) angioplasty using DCBs. The primary endpoint was 12-month primary patency.

Results

Between May 2016 and August 2022, 237 patients were enrolled and 204 (86.0%) completed the trial (median follow-up; 363 days). The IVUS guidance group showed significantly higher primary patency [83.8% vs. 70.1%; cumulative difference 19.6% (95% confidence interval 6.8 to 32.3); P = .01] and increased freedom from clinically driven target lesion revascularization [92.4% vs. 83.0%; difference 11.6% (95% confidence interval 3.1 to 20.1); P = .02], sustained clinical improvement (89.1% vs. 76.3%, P = .01), and haemodynamic improvement (82.4% vs. 66.9%, P = .01) at 12 months compared with the angiography guidance group. The IVUS group utilized larger balloon diameters and pressures for pre-dilation, more frequent post-dilation, and higher pressures for post-dilation, resulting in a greater post-procedural minimum lumen diameter (3.90 ± 0.59 vs. 3.71 ± 0.73 mm, P = .03).

Conclusions

Intravascular ultrasound guidance significantly improved the outcomes of DCBs for FPA disease in terms of primary patency, freedom from clinically driven target lesion revascularization, and sustained clinical and haemodynamic improvement at 12 months. These benefits may be attributed to IVUS-guided optimization of the lesion before and after DCB treatment.
Digest: Morphological diversity in urban dark-eyed juncos
Authors: Magland Abigail E
Published: July 2024

Populations living in cities face challenges from these novel environments that are expected to drive evolutionary adaptation. Do separate populations of a species living in different cities show similar adaptations to the selection pressures imposed by urban environments? Diamant and Yeh (2024) address this question by comparing the morphological characteristics of dark-eyed juncos in 3 California cities to non-urban junco morphologies. They find that wing size is consistently smaller in more urbanized environments regardless of the population, but bill size tends to vary between urban populations.
q-discretization of the Kostant–Toda equation and its asymptotic analysis
Authors: Watanabe Ryoto , Shinjo Masato , Yamamoto Yusaku , Iwasaki Masashi
Published: July 2024

The famous Toda equation is an integrable system related to similarity transformations of tridiagonal matrices. The discrete Toda equation, which is a time-discretization of the Toda equation, is essentially the recursion formula of the quotient-difference (qd) algorithm for computing eigenvalues of tridiagonal matrices. Another time-discretization of the Toda equation is the $q$-discrete Toda equation, which is derived by replacing standard derivatives with the so-called $q$-derivatives that involves a parameter $q$ such that $0<q<1$. In a prior work, we related the $q$-discrete Toda equation to implicit-shift $LR$ transformations (which are similarity transformations) of tridiagonal matrices. Furthermore, we developed the determinantal solution to clarify the convergence as discrete-time goes to infinity. In this paper, we propose an extension of the $q$-discrete Toda equation as a time-discretization of the Kostant–Toda equation and then show the convergence as discrete-time goes to infinity from the perspective of implicit-shift $LR$ transformations of Hessenberg matrices. We also present numerical examples to verify the convergence as discrete-time goes to infinity in the proposed $q$-discrete Kostant–Toda equation.
Hirzebruch–Milnor Classes of Hypersurfaces with Nontrivial Normal Bundles and Applications to Higher du Bois and Rational Singularities
Authors: Maxim Laurenţiu G , Saito Morihiko , Yang Ruijie
Published: July 2024

We extend the Hirzebruch–Milnor class of a hypersurface $X$ in an ambient complex algebraic manifold to the case where the normal bundle is nontrivial and $X$ cannot be defined by a global function, using the associated line bundle and the graded quotients of the monodromy filtration. The earlier definition requiring a global defining function of $X$ can be applied rarely to projective hypersurfaces with non-isolated singularities. Indeed, it is surprisingly difficult to get a one-parameter smoothing with total space smooth without destroying the singularities by blowing-ups (except certain quite special cases). As an application, assuming the singular locus is a projective variety, we show that the minimal exponent of a hypersurface can be captured by the spectral Hirzebruch–Milnor class, and higher du Bois and rational singularities of a hypersurface are detectable by the unnormalized Hirzebruch–Milnor class. Here the unnormalized class can be replaced by the normalized one in the higher du Bois case, but for the higher rational case, we must use also the decomposition of the Hirzebruch–Milnor class by the action of the semisimple part of the monodromy (which is equivalent to the spectral Hirzebruch–Milnor class). We cannot extend these arguments to the non-projective compact case by Hironaka’s example.
Roots, Trace, and Extendability of Flat Nonnegative Smooth Functions
Authors: Jiang Fushuai
Published: July 2024

Building on the univariate techniques developed by Ray and Schmidt-Hieber, we study the class $\mathcal{F}^{s}(\mathbb{R}^{n})$ of multivariate nonnegative smooth functions that are sufficiently flat near their zeroes, which guarantees that $F^{r}$ has Hölder differentiability $rs$ whenever $F \in \mathcal{F}^{s}$. We then construct a continuous Whitney extension map that recovers an $\mathcal{F}^{s}$ function from prescribed jets. Finally, we prove a Brudnyi–Shvartsman Finiteness Principle for the class $\mathcal{F}^{s}$, thereby providing a necessary and sufficient condition for a nonnegative function defined on an arbitrary subset of $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ to be $\mathcal{F}^{s}$-extendable to all of $\mathbb{R}^{n}$.
Herschel Gould Belt Survey in Taurus – II. A census of dense cores and filaments in the TMC1 region
Authors: Kirk J M , Ward-Thompson D , Di Francesco J , André Ph , Bresnahan D W , Könyves V , Marsh K , Griffin M J , Schneider N , Men’shchikov A , Palmeirim P , Bontemps S , Arzoumanian D , Benedettini M , Pezzuto S
Published: July 2024

We present a catalogue of dense cores and filaments in a $3.8^\circ \times 2.4^\circ$ field around the TMC1 region of the Taurus molecular cloud. The catalogue was created using photometric data from the Herschel SPIRE and PACS instruments in the 70, 160, 250, 350, and 500 μm continuum bands. Extended structure in the region was reconstructed from a Herschel column density map. Power spectra and probability density functions (PDFs) of this structure are presented. The PDF splits into lognormal and power-law forms, with the high-density power-law component associated primarily with the central part of TMC1. The total mass in the mapped region is 2000 M$_\odot$, of which 34 per cent is above an extinction of $A_V\sim 3$ mag – a level that appears as a break in the PDF and as the minimum column density at which dense cores are found. A total of 35 dense filaments were extracted from the column density map. These have a typical full width at half-maximum (FWHM) width of 0.07 pc, but the TMC1 filament itself has a mean FWHM of $\sim 0.13$ pc. The thermally supercritical filaments in the region are aligned orthogonal to the prevailing magnetic field direction. Derived properties for the supercritical TMC1 filament support the scenario of it being relatively young. A catalogue of 44 robust and candidate prestellar cores is created and is assessed to be complete down to 0.1 M$_\odot$. The combined prestellar core mass function for the TMC1 and L1495 regions is well fit by a single lognormal distribution and is comparable to the standard initial mass function.
The DBL Survey I: discovery of 34 double-lined double white dwarf binaries
Authors: Munday James , Pelisoli Ingrid , Tremblay P -E , Marsh T R , Nelemans Gijs , Bédard Antoine , Toonen Silvia , Breedt Elmé , Cunningham Tim , O’Brien Mairi W , Dawson Harry
Published: July 2024

We present the first discoveries of the double-lined double white dwarf (DBL) survey that targets overluminous sources with respect to the canonical white dwarf cooling sequence according to a set of well-defined criteria. The primary goal of the DBL survey is to identify compact double white dwarf binary star systems from a unique spectral detection of both stars, which then enables a precise quantification of the atmospheric parameters and radial velocity variability of a system. Our search of 117 candidates that were randomly selected from a magnitude-limited sample of 399 yielded a 29 per cent detection efficiency with 34 systems exhibiting a double-lined signature. A further 38 systems show strong evidence of being single-lined or potentially DBL binaries and seven single-lined sources from the full observed sample are radial velocity variable. The 45 remaining candidates appear as a single WD with no companion or a non-DA white dwarf, bringing the efficiency of detecting binaries to 62 per cent. Atmospheric fitting of all double-lined systems reveals a large fraction that have two similar mass components that combine to a total mass of 1.0–1.3 $\mathrm{M}_\odot$ – a class of double white dwarf binaries that may undergo a sub-Chandrasekhar mass type Ia detonation or merge to form a massive O/Ne WD, although orbital periods are required to infer on which time-scales. One double-lined system located 49 pc away, WDJ181058.67+311940.94, is super-Chandrasekhar mass, making it the second such double white dwarf binary to be discovered.
Cytosine analogues as DNA methyltransferase substrates
Authors: Wojciechowski Marek , Czapinska Honorata , Krwawicz Joanna , Rafalski Dominik , Bochtler Matthias
Published: July 2024

DNA methyltransferases are drug targets for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML), acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and possibly β-hemoglobinopathies. We characterize the interaction of nucleoside analogues in DNA with a prokaryotic CpG-specific DNA methyltransferase (M.MpeI) as a model for mammalian DNMT1 methyltransferases. We tested DNA containing 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-hydroxycytosine (5OHC), 5-methyl-2-pyrimidinone (in the ribosylated form known as 5-methylzebularine, 5mZ), 5,6-dihydro-5-azacytosine (dhaC), 5-fluorocytosine (5FC), 5-chlorocytosine (5ClC), 5-bromocytosine (5BrC) and 5-iodocytosine (5IC). Covalent complex formation was by far most efficient for 5FC. Non-covalent complexes were most abundant for dhaC and 5mZ. Surprisingly, we observed methylation of 5IC and 5BrC, and to a lesser extent 5ClC and 5FC, in the presence, but not the absence of small molecule thiol nucleophiles. For 5IC and 5BrC, we demonstrated by mass spectrometry that the reactions were due to methyltransferase driven dehalogenation, followed by methylation. Crystal structures of M.MpeI-DNA complexes capture the ‘in’ conformation of the active site loop for analogues with small or rotatable (5mZ) 5-substituents and its ‘out’ form for bulky 5-substituents. Since very similar ‘in’ and ‘out’ loop conformations were also observed for DNMT1, it is likely that our conclusions generalize to other DNA methyltransferases.
Fast clustering and cell-type annotation of scATAC data using pre-trained embeddings
Authors: LeRoy Nathan J , Smith Jason P , Zheng Guangtao , Rymuza Julia , Gharavi Erfaneh , Brown Donald E , Zhang Aidong , Sheffield Nathan C
Published: July 2024

Data from the single-cell assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (scATAC-seq) are now widely available. One major computational challenge is dealing with high dimensionality and inherent sparsity, which is typically addressed by producing lower dimensional representations of single cells for downstream clustering tasks. Current approaches produce such individual cell embeddings directly through a one-step learning process. Here, we propose an alternative approach by building embedding models pre-trained on reference data. We argue that this provides a more flexible analysis workflow that also has computational performance advantages through transfer learning. We implemented our approach in scEmbed, an unsupervised machine-learning framework that learns low-dimensional embeddings of genomic regulatory regions to represent and analyze scATAC-seq data. scEmbed performs well in terms of clustering ability and has the key advantage of learning patterns of region co-occurrence that can be transferred to other, unseen datasets. Moreover, models pre-trained on reference data can be exploited to build fast and accurate cell-type annotation systems without the need for other data modalities. scEmbed is implemented in Python and it is available to download from GitHub. We also make our pre-trained models available on huggingface for public use. scEmbed is open source and available at https://github.com/databio/geniml. Pre-trained models from this work can be obtained on huggingface: https://huggingface.co/databio.
Prescribing patterns and medication costs in patients on maintenance haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis
Authors: Ghimire Anukul , Lloyd Anita M , Bello Aminu K , Battistella Marisa , Ronksley Paul , Tonelli Marcello
Published: July 2024

Background

Polypharmacy is a significant clinical issue for patients on dialysis but has been incompletely studied. We investigated the prevalence and costs of polypharmacy in a population-based cohort of participants treated with haemodialysis (HD) or peritoneal dialysis (PD).

Methods

We studied adults ≥20 years of age in Alberta, Canada receiving maintenance HD or PD as of 31 March 2019. We characterized participants as users of 0–29 drug categories of interest and those ≥65 years of age as users/non-users of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs). We calculated the number of drug categories, daily pill burden, total annual cost and annual cost per participant and compared this to an age- and sex-matched cohort from the general Alberta population.

Results

Among 2248 participants (mean age 63 years; 39% female) on HD (n = 1781) or PD (n = 467), the median number of prescribed drug categories was 6 [interquartile range (IQR) 4–8] and the median daily pill burden was 8.0 (IQR 4.6–12.6), with 5% prescribed ≥21.7 pills/day and 16.5% prescribed ≥15 pills/day. Twelve percent were prescribed at least one drug that is contraindicated in kidney failure. The median annual per-participant cost was ${\$}$3831, totalling ≈${\$}$11.6 million annually for all participants. When restricting to the 1063 participants ≥65 years of age, the median number of PIM categories was 2 (IQR 1–2), with a median PIM pill burden of 1.2 pills/day (IQR 0.5–2.4). Compared with PD participants, HD participants had a similar daily pill burden, higher use of PIMs and higher annual per-participant cost. Pill burden and associated costs for participants on dialysis were >3-fold and 10-fold higher, respectively, compared with the matched participants from the general population.

Conclusion

Participants on dialysis have markedly higher use of prescription medications and associated costs than the general population. Effective methods to de-prescribe in the dialysis population are needed.