bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Social Network Influence on Political Behavior in Religious Contexts
Authors: Ladam Christina , Shapiro Ian , Sokhey Anand
Published: October 2019

As the most common form of voluntary association in America, houses of worship remain an unquestionably critical component of American civil society. Major approaches to studying religion and politics in the United States are described, and the authors present an argument for focusing more attention on the organizational experience provided by religious contexts: studying how individuals’ social networks intersect with their associational involvements (i.e., studying religion from a “interpersonal” perspective) may actually shed new light on intrapersonal, psychological constructs like identity and religiosity.

Evidence is presented from two nationally representative data sets that suggests considerable variance in the degree to which individuals’ core social networks overlap with their houses of worship. This variance exists within and between individuals identifying with major religious traditions, and such networks are not characterized solely by agreement (as theories of self-selection might suggest).
Religious Regulation in Ireland
Authors: Malešević Vesna
Published: October 2019

While three-quarters of the population in Ireland still declare to be Catholic in census data collection, the position and role of the Catholic Church has changed dramatically. A fruitful relationship between the state, church, and nation that developed in the 19th century became meaningfully embedded in social and political relations from the 1920s. Involvement of the church in the running of education, health, and welfare meant that its “moral monopoly” extended into both the institutional and individual spheres of life. The Irish Republic relied on the church organizations and personnel to provide education and guidance in absence of the state’s infrastructure and Will to consolidate the new political entity around a state-building project based on inclusivity, reciprocity, and diversity. The confessional state that emerged with its own constitution favored one religion over others, economic stagnation over progress, and patriarchal social values over equality. The internal processes of social change and the external impetus for economic development sent Ireland into modernization and changes in attitudes and behaviors. It became obvious that the church did not hold a monopoly on truth and that accountability of the relations between the state and the church should be called into question. Economic prosperity propelled Ireland into the world of consumerism, materialism, and instant gratification, teaching a new generation that religion helps keep your parents appeased and at times can provide solace, and that the Catholic Church is just an institution that seems to be around but nobody is quite sure what its role is. The vicariousness of the church coupled with cultural Catholicism makes the Ireland of today more open to change.
The Representativeness Heuristic in Political Decision Making
Authors: Stolwijk Sjoerd
Published: October 2019

The representativeness heuristic was defined by Kahneman and Tversky as a decision-making shortcut in which people judge probabilities “by the degree to which A is representative of B, that is, by the degree to which A resembles B.” People who use this cognitive shortcut bypass more detailed processing of the likelihood of the event in question but instead focus on what (stereotypic) category it appears to fit and the associations they have about that category. Simply put: If it looks like a duck, it probably is a duck. The representativeness heuristic usually works well and provides valid inferences about likelihood. This is why political scientists saw it as an important part of a solution to an enduring problem in their field: How can people make political decisions when so many studies show they lack even basic knowledge about politics? According to these scholars, voters do not need to be aware of all actions and opinions of a political candidate running for office. To make up their mind on who to vote for, they can rely on cues that represent the performance and issue position of candidates, such as the party they are affiliated with, their ranking in the polls, and whether (for instance) they act/appear presidential. In other words, they need to answer the question: Does this candidate fit my image of a successful president? The resulting low-information rationality provides voters with much confidence in their voting decision, even though they do not know all the details about the history of each candidate. Using heuristics allows relatively uninformed citizens to act as if they were fully informed.

Despite this optimistic view of heuristics at their introduction to the discipline, they originated from research showing how heuristic use is accompanied by systematic error. Tversky and Kahneman argue that using the representativeness heuristic leads to an overreliance on similarity to a category and a neglect of prior probability, sample size, and the reliability and validity of the available cue. Kuklinsky and Quirk first warned about the potential effect of these biases in the context of political decision-making. Current research often examines the effects of specific cues/stereotypes, like party, gender, race, class, or more context-specific heuristics like the deservingness heuristic. Another strand of research has started exploring the effect of the representativeness heuristic on decision-making by political elites, rather than voters. Future studies can integrate these findings to work toward a fuller understanding of the effects of the representativeness heuristic in political decision-making, more closely consider individual differences and the effects of different contexts, and map the consequences that related systematic biases might have.
Organization Change
Authors: Huber George P. , Bartunek Jean M.
Published: October 2019

A “change” is a difference in an entity’s state, condition, or property that occurs across an interval of time and can take place in multiple ways. The scope and variety of organization changes make evident that organization change is a familiar and crucial feature of society’s ecosystem. In this chapter we explore multiple types of changes that occur in and among organizations.

To appreciate organizational change, it is necessary to understand organizations per se. Thus, we begin by summarizing pertinent literature that defines central characteristics of organizations. Following conventional usage, the term “organization” refers to a purposeful hierarchical human system whose members contribute their efforts or other resources to the system in order to acquire valued resources, such as their livelihood. Organizations are created for multiple types of purposes. Our emphasis is primarily on business organizations, which are created for the purpose of generating wealth for their creators and owners.

After discussing organizations, we then turn to our main focus, organizational change. This refers, not only to changes at the organization level of analysis but also at other levels of analysis, ranging from individuals such as the organization’s chief executive officer to populations of organizations. We present topics that address contemporary understandings of organizational change.

That is, we discuss sources of change in external organizational environments and organizational responses to such change. We then discuss varieties of organizational change, including population level changes, and changes within individual organizations, including changes initiated by middle managers, organizational learning and unlearning and top management change. Next we move to planned organizational change. This includes changes in culture as well as forms of organization development and forms of whole systems changes, as well as multiple dimensions, of these types of changes.

Finally, we describe emerging topics in organizational change, including temporal dimensions, radical and continuous change, dialectical and paradoxical change, emergence, and decline, death and rebirth. Taken together, these topics suggest what organizational change research has explored up to the present. The topics also suggest agendas for new exploration.
Structure and Function of Attitudes
Authors: Briñol Pablo , Petty Richard E. , Stavraki Maria
Published: October 2019

Attitudes refer to general evaluations people have regarding people, places, objects, and issues. Attitudes serve a number of important functions such as guiding choices and actions and giving people a sense of identity and belonging. Attitudes can differ in the extent to which they come from affect, cognition, and behavior. These bases of attitudes can be appraised objectively and subjectively. Attitudes can also differ in their strength, with some attitudes being more impactful and predictive of behavior than others. Some indicators of attitude strength have been viewed as relatively objective in nature (e.g., stability, resistance, accessibility, spreading) whereas other strength indicators are more subjective in nature (e.g., attitude certainty, subjective ambivalence, perceived moral basis of attitudes). Attitudes can be stored in memory in different ways, including an attitude structure in which attitude objects are linked to both positivity and negatively separately, tagging these evaluations with varying degrees of validity. Finally, after a long tradition of assessing attitudes using people’s responses to self-report measures (explicit measures of attitudes), more recent work has also assessed attitude change with measures that tap into people’s more automatic evaluations (implicit measures of attitudes). Implicit and explicit measures can be useful in predicting behavior separately and also in combination.
A History of Qualitative Research in Education in China
Authors: Li Manli
Published: October 2019

Since the early 2000s, qualitative research (QR) emerged as an interpretive approach and has gained increasing interest in education in China, while it is deeply rooted in Chinese intellectual history. Indigenously, the concept of QR methodology sought to explore the richness, depth, and complexity of phenomena, which was a way to gain insights through discovering meanings by improving the comprehension of the whole overall.

In the 1920s, pioneering intellectuals promoted Western education or new education in the New Culture Movement (around the time of the May 4 Movement in 1919), led by Hu Shih, Chen Tuhsiu, Li Tachao, and others. They actively advocated democracy and science. The May 4th Campaign dealt a heavy blow to the traditional rituals that ruled China for more than 2,000 years. It has inspired people’s democratic consciousness and promoted the development of modern science in China.

Quantitative research, like statistical methods, was introduced in the field of education. With the development of theories and methods of probabilistic statistics for studying randomness, small sample theory, statistical estimation, and statistical tests were widely introduced in the 1940s. In the upcoming decades, for many, quantitative research evoked a strong allegiance in academia, particularly in education, since it was considered to be based on a belief in science, perhaps more so than what many considered qualitative research in China. Actually, the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research in education has been fraught with misunderstanding, confusion, and tension in China.

After the 1990s, QR, which has been primarily advocated by Western researchers, has also grown in importance in educational and cultural studies in China as a methodological approach to research that aligns in important ways with quantitative research. Thus, internal tensions within the field of education have also emerged. Yet, though both approaches vary and have distinct genealogies and commitments, QR may be seen as a broad methodological genre in which open-ended interviews, participatory and non-participation observation, literature analysis, case studies, and other methods of social phenomena engage in long-term, in-depth, and meticulous studies. Such critically oriented QR has important implications for educational research.
Literacy, Basic Processes, and Interventions for Struggling Readers
Authors: Savage Robert
Published: October 2019

Literacy is a gateway to education, and yet universal literacy remains an aspiration rather than a reality. The science of reading has, however, made significant progress in understanding the key factors that impact development. Five relevant factors can be identified. The first factor is the developmental focus of models. Here the richness and dynamic nature of development is central. Models must clearly explain change and phenomena such as bi- and multilingualism. A second factor concerns bioecological influences on development. Stronger models include understandings of the complexity of gene–environment interactions in development. A third pertinent factor concerns the precise nature of the learning task facing the beginner reader, and in particular the influence of distinct orthographies. A fourth factor concerns the coherent exposition of the cognitive processes involved in “word-level” and “text-level” reading processes. Finally, contextual effects on literacy are profound. Historical and politicoeconomic forces are often linked to wide country- and region-based differences in literacy.

A detailed treatment of what is known about effective interventions for struggling readers can be built on the basis of this theorizing. Here, evidence from meta-analysis suggests that both the word-level decoding and text-level comprehension aspects of reading development can be measurably improved through evidence-based interventions. For word-level interventions studies focusing on phonics currently furnish the most secure evidence of impact. For text-level comprehension, interventions focusing on oral language development and text-based meta-cognitive strategy appear the most efficacious. Measure of treatment effects for such interventions show modest but reliable impacts on development and form the basis of ongoing efforts to optimize interventions.
Nomads and the State in Soviet Kazakhstan
Authors: Pianciola Niccolò
Published: October 2019

After the military conquest of the Kazakh Steppe in 1920, Russian and Kazakh Bolsheviks implemented policies of hard decolonization (1921–1922): tens of thousands of Slavic settlers were expropriated and land was distributed to nomads. During the period of 1923–1927, soft decolonization prevailed: Kazakhstan was created as an ethnonational administrative region and agricultural immigration was prohibited. Kazakhs were given priority in access to land and water and they were included in the state and party administrations. No sedentarization plans were drafted. With the Soviet economic policy turn of 1928, Kazakhstan became the object of plans for expansion of grain cultivation (to this end, peasant colonization from Russia was made legal again) and of industrialization. Moscow lunched an offensive in order both to subjugate and to incorporate Kazakh society: Kazakh pastoral elites and former Tsarist administrators were expropriated and deported; and young Kazakh men were drafted into the Red Army for the first time. In 1929, plans for the total sedentarization of Kazakh nomadic pastoralists were suddenly proclaimed, then rapidly became of secondary concern as they were merged with the total collectivization drive. Policies toward nomadic pastoralists were dependent and auxiliary to grain production policies from 1928 to early 1930. Then, from late 1930 to 1932, Kazakh livestock was requisitioned in order to feed Moscow, Leningrad, and the army, as the Soviet peasants had slaughtered their animals during collectivization. Procurements turned an ongoing starvation crisis into a calamitous famine that killed one-third of the Kazakhs. When no livestock were left, procurements were discontinued in Kazakhstan. Private ownership of animals and pastoral nomadic ways were explicitly allowed again. Kazakh mobile pastoralism had been transformed: pastoral routes were shortened; pastoralists were a smaller share of the population; and their work was organized within state and collective farms. The famine turned the Kazakhs into a minority in Kazakhstan and forced them into Soviet state institutions.
Water Management in East Africa
Authors: Bender Matthew V.
Published: October 2019

East Africa is among the most environmentally diverse regions of the continent, and this diversity is reflected in its hydrology. The steppe plains, home to much of the region’s great wildlife, are defined by scarcity of rainfall and surface water resources. Within this sea of aridity, mountain peaks such as Kilimanjaro, Kenya, and Meru induce large amounts of rainfall and give rise to rivers that reach out into the grasslands. To the west, the forest–savannah mosaic and the shorelines of the Great Lakes likewise feature plentiful precipitation and surface water, giving rise to abundant vegetation and marine life. The Indian Ocean coast falls between in terms of rain, but its fate has been shaped by oceanic trade. In short, East Africa is a hydrological mosaic that has long influenced the social, cultural, and economic diversity of its human populations.

The peoples of East Africa have long depended on the region’s water resources for their livelihoods. They have made sense of the region’s waterscapes, and developed strategies to manage them, in ways that reflected their own needs. Water management consisted not just of hydrological and technological expertise, but also cultural, spiritual, and political expertise. These in turn shaped economic as well as social relationships and hierarchies. With the onset of European colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries, water management became a focal point of struggles between local communities and various colonial actors—government officers, scientists, missionaries, and settlers—who developed very different impressions of the region’s waterscapes. These struggles involved not only conflict over the physical control of water resources, but also debates over what constituted useful and relevant water-management knowledge. Colonial actors described their water management in terms of science and modernity, while existing knowledge and practice were framed as primitive, wasteful, and destructive. Over the 20th century, conflicts intensified as users, African as well as European, demanded larger shares of increasingly scarce water resources. The post-colonial period did not spell an end to these struggles. Since the late 20th century, water management has emerged as a key aspect of national strategies for economic and social development. Yet decades of emphasis and millions of dollars spent have not led to sufficient progress in providing water to everyday people. Today, millions of East Africans lack access to clean, reliable water, a problem that is likely to worsen in the future.
Women and Domesticity in the 1950s
Authors: Gamber Wendy
Published: October 2019

Two images dominated popular portrayals of American women in the 1950s. One was the fictional June Cleaver, the female lead character in the popular television program, “Leave It to Beaver,” which portrayed Cleaver as the stereotypical happy American housewife, the exemplar of postwar American domesticity. The other was Cleaver’s alleged real-life opposite, described in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) as miserable, bored, isolated, addicted to tranquilizers, and trapped in look-alike suburban tract houses, which Friedan termed “comfortable concentration camps.” Both stereotypes ignore significant proportions of the postwar female population, both offer simplistic and partial views of domesticity, but both reveal the depth of the influence that lay behind the idea of domesticity, real or fictional. Aided and abetted by psychology, social science theory, advertising, popular media, government policy, law, and discriminatory private sector practices, domesticity was both a myth and a powerful ideology that shaped the trajectories of women’s lives.
The Safavids
Authors: Mitchell Colin
Published: October 2019

The Safavids (1501–1722) controlled a land-based empire that comprised the modern-day nation of Iran, with extensions into Iraq, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan. The family of the Safavids originated as Sufi mystical sheikhs based in the region of Azerbaijan but were later imperialized thanks to the dynastic founder, Shah Ismaʿil (r. 1501–1524). The transition from Sufi tariqa to imperial polity was not smooth, and Ismaʿil faced external threats from the Ottoman Empire to the west, as well as internal pressure from his popular base, the Qizilbash tribal Turks who revered their shah as both a Sufi sheikh as well as a manifestation of the millenarian figure Mahdi who was popularly understood as the Muslim agent of the Apocalypse. The success of the Safavids was partly based on their ability to distance their family from such decentralized, tribal elements and seek out those constituencies that could help with regard to establishing and building legitimacy: orthodox Twelver Shiʿite jurists and scholars as well as urban Persian administrators and bureaucrats. It was Ismaʿil and his successor, Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524–1576), who proclaimed and enforced Twelver Shiʿism as the new state doctrine, thus contributing to a stark Sunni-Shiʿite division between themselves and their neighboring rival empires of the Ottomans and the Uzbeks. The apogee of the Safavid Empire took place during the reign of Shah ʿAbbas (r. 1589–1629) who, among other things, transformed Isfahan into a city of international stature with fantastic architectural patronage while at the same time enticing European merchants and traders to trade in textiles, silk, and other manufactured goods. Following the reign of Shah ʿAbbas, the Safavid Empire became less stable and more susceptible to outside elements, namely those Caucasian nobles and landed gentry who had been previously incorporated into the Safavid state as court officials, provincial governors, and ranking military officers. Concurrently, there was a rise in conservative orthodoxy among the Shiʿite religious scholars, and the previous era of open trade and strong international relations began to wane as Christians, Jews, and other minorities became increasingly targeted and persecuted. By the end of the 17th century, the Safavid court was politically isolated from the other provinces, so much so that the imperial capital was easily besieged and conquered in 1722 by an invading conglomerate of Afghan tribes.
African American Boxer Billy Clarke in Modernizing Guatemala
Authors: Dunn Alvis E.
Published: October 2019

In the final decades of the 19th century the Central American nation of Guatemala represented some intriguing employment and entrepreneurial possibilities from the point of view of US citizens. The lure of coffee cultivation, mahogany harvesting, even mining was real. Additionally, the promise of employment building an inter-oceanic railroad resulted in significant numbers of African Americans journeying to Guatemala. The relocation offered good pay and many apparently believed that it would also take them to a place where Jim Crow racism was not the predominant and limiting factor that it was in the United States. For at least one of those men however, railroad work was not the primary enticement to the region. By 1893, such alleged opportunities in Guatemala had attracted the black athlete, entrepreneur, and entertainer Billy A. Clarke. During his two years in the country, with his sometime business partner and sparring mate, Rod Lewis, also an African American, Clarke operated a gymnasium where he taught the “Art of Pugilism,” staged several prize fights, and, for a time, captured the imagination of the capital city with the example of modern, imported entertainment and professional sports.

Between 1892 and 1898, Guatemala was ruled by, first president, and later, dictator, General José María Reina Barrios. A globalizer enamored of modernization, European architecture, and North American technology, the environment fostered by Reina Barrios attracted not only contractors and African American workers from the United States to build railroads but also other foreigners who made for the Central American nation, bringing the outside world to the mile-high capital of Guatemala City. Into this setting came Billy A. Clarke, drawn by the same baseline possibilities of solid work and the prospect of less Jim Crow as his African American railroad compatriots, but with the additional promise that his individual skills as a fighter and promoter might reap even bigger rewards. The story of Clarke in Guatemala is one of race, identity, and creative self-promotion. Building an image that combined ideas of the exotic and powerful African with ideas of the North American armed with “know-how” and scientific fighting skills, Clarke became a Guatemala City celebrity and was eventually known as the “Champion of Central America.”
Cartography in the Administration of Portuguese America from the 16th to 18th Centuries
Authors: Ferreira Furtado Júnia
Published: October 2019

Cartography in the administration of Portuguese America can be related to three major processes—first, to allow the exploration and occupation of territory from the coast to the interior; second, to improve the organization of the colonial administration system; and third, as a basis for diplomatic negotiations of territory with other European nations. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, during the Atlantic maritime expansion through which new lands and new worlds were unveiled to Europeans, the Portuguese constructed a solid cartographic mapping of Brazil—a process in which they were the pioneers. The objective was to allow their vessels to cross the ocean and afterward to guarantee their dominion over the newly discovered lands, which resulted in a progressive increase of geographic knowledge of the world that was being unveiled to the Europeans. For these reasons, maps produced during these two centuries showed the increasing expectations and knowledge of the New World and reflected the manner of how the Americas, particularly Brazil, were gaining visibility among the European public; the maps satisfied the public’s curiosity about the recently discovered lands, with information related to geography and nature.

Initially, as Spanish, Portuguese, and even French explorers began to reach the west coast of the continent, parts of the coastline began to appear on Portolan charts, which were used at that time for maritime sailing and are very rare today. Later the cartographers started portraying the interior of Brazil. Representations of local geography began to progressively replace images of natives and local flora and fauna. It became common on 17th-century maps to design a chain of rivers that allowed Brazil to be portrayed as an island. It was not by chance that this representation appeared in Portuguese maps at the same time as the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were unified, from 1580 to 1640. In the 17th and 18th centuries administrative cartography was mostly performed and supervised from Portugal by the Portuguese Crown or the Overseas Council, which handled all colonial policy.

Two features characterized this activity: the impact of Portuguese colonization as it moved toward the western and central regions of the continent; and technical changes to cartographic practice that began at this time, characterized by Enlightenment rationality. The discovery of gold in the southeastern and central-west regions of Brazil, the Portuguese exploration of the Amazon basin, and the incessant disputes between the Spanish and Portuguese over Colonia del Sacramento in the south demanded better definition of both internal and external frontiers. Internal frontiers included divisions between captaincies, comarcas (a subdivision of captaincies originally of an ecclesiastical nature), bishoprics, and various other administrative divisions. External frontiers, by contrast, usually represented borders with Spanish American colonies.
History of the Sardinian Lexicon
Authors: Putzu Ignazio
Published: October 2019

Ever since the fundamental studies carried out by the great German Romanist Max Leopold Wagner (b. 1880–d. 1962), the acknowledged founder of scientific research on Sardinian, the lexicon has been, and still is, one of the most investigated and best-known areas of the Sardinian language.

Several substrate components stand out in the Sardinian lexicon around a fundamental layer which has a clear Latin lexical background. The so-called Paleo-Sardinian layer is particularly intriguing. This is a conventional label for the linguistic varieties spoken in the prehistoric and protohistoric ages in Sardinia. Indeed, the relatively large amount of words (toponyms in particular) which can be traced back to this substrate clearly distinguishes the Sardinian lexicon within the panorama of the Romance languages. As for the other Pre-Latin substrata, the Phoenician-Punic presence mainly (although not exclusively) affected southern and western Sardinia, where we find the highest concentration of Phoenician-Punic loanwords.

On the other hand, recent studies have shown that the Latinization of Sardinia was more complex than once thought. In particular, the alleged archaic nature of some features of Sardinian has been questioned.

Moreover, research carried out in recent decades has underlined the importance of the Greek Byzantine superstrate, which has actually left far more evident lexical traces than previously thought. Finally, from the late Middle Ages onward, the contributions from the early Italian, Catalan, and Spanish superstrates, as well as from modern and contemporary Italian, have substantially reshaped the modern-day profile of the Sardinian lexicon. In these cases too, more recent research has shown a deeper impact of these components on the Sardinian lexicon, especially as regards the influence of Italian.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Authors: Fusaro Vincent A.
Published: October 2019

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal block grant program with a state contribution requirement that supports the provision of state aid to low-income families with children in the United States, including but not limited to cash assistance. Created by the 1996 welfare reform law, which ended entitlement to cash benefits under TANF’s predecessor Aid to Families with Dependent Children, TANF cash aid includes time limits and work requirements. States are also free to set their own program rules and may use funds for purposes other than direct poverty relief and services for cash assistance clients. Consequently, TANF varies widely across states in generosity of benefits, behavioral rules to which clients must adhere, and in the uses of program resources, with only about one-quarter of all state and federal TANF funds used for traditional cash assistance. Other priorities funded under TANF include work supports and child care, programming to promote two-parent families, refundable tax credits, and support of state child welfare systems.

The end of entitlement to cash assistance under TANF was associated with a sharp decline in welfare caseloads and increases in employment in single-mother families nationwide. The initial implementation of TANF also coincided with a boom economy in the mid- to late-1990s and was immediately preceded by a large expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-wage workers. Studies disagree on the relative role each of these factors played in both caseload and employment trends, and women who moved off of welfare and into the labor force are often in unstable, low-paying jobs.

The defining characteristic of cash-assistance receiving families is deep economic deprivation, and benefits do not bring a household above official income poverty in any state. In most states, they do not even bring a family to 50% of poverty. Cash assistance under TANF nonetheless remains an important backstop for families in extremely difficult circumstances.
“Thick Section” Gram Stain Yields Improved Detection of Organisms in Tissue Sections of Cystic Neutrophilic Granulomatous Mastitis
Authors: Sangoi Ankur R
Published: October 2019

Objectives

Cystic neutrophilic granulomatous mastitis (CNGM) is an uncommon subtype of granulomatous mastitis featuring epithelioid histiocytes/neutrophils rimming discrete cystic spaces. When present, gram-positive bacteria (typically Corynebacterium species) are identified within these cystic spaces, although they can be difficult to appreciate on tissue sections.

Methods

Based on pilot gram-stained tissue sections of CNGM cases cut on 6 μm thickness (in which bacterial organisms were more readily identifiable) instead of the traditional 4 μm, a formal comparative analysis of 19 CNGM cases was performed on parallel 6-μm (“thick”) vs 4-μm sections from one representative block per case.

Results

Biopsies (n = 17) and excisional specimens (n = 2) from 19 CNGM cases were included. Gram-positive palisaded rods were identified in seven cases using 4-μm sections and in 11 cases using 6-μm sections (sensitivity of 37% vs 58% in identifying organisms). Among all seven cases of organisms seen on the 4-μm section Gram stain, the paired 6-μm section Gram stain showed a higher number of and more readily identifiable bacteria.

Conclusions

Thick section Gram stain of representative tissue blocks performed at 6 μm improves both detection rate and ease of identification of gram-positive organisms in CNGM.
Evidence-based development of a nephrotoxic medication list to screen for acute kidney injury risk in hospitalized children
Authors: Goswami Elizabeth , Ogden Richard K , Bennett William E , Goldstein Stuart L , Hackbarth Richard , Somers Michael J G , Yonekawa Karyn , Misurac Jason
Published: October 2019

Purpose

Medications are commonly associated with acute kidney injury (AKI). However, in both clinical practice and research, consideration of specific medications as nephrotoxic varies widely. The Nephrotoxic Injury Negated by Just-in-time Action quality improvement collaborative was formed to focus on prevention or reduction of nephrotoxic medication-associated AKI in noncritically ill hospitalized children. However, there were discrepancies among institutions as to which medications should be considered nephrotoxic. The collaborative convened a Nephrotoxic Medication (NTMx) Subcommittee to develop a consensus for the classification of nephrotoxic medications.

The NTMx Subcommittee initially included pediatric nephrologists, a pharmacist, and a pediatric intensivist. The committee reviewed NTMx lists from the collaborative and identified changes from the initial NTMx list. The NTMx Subcommittee conducted a literature review of the disputed medications and assigned an evidence grade based on the reported association with nephrotoxicity and the quality of the data. The association between medication exposure and AKI was also determined using administrative data from the Pediatric Health Information Systems database. The NTMx Subcommittee then came to a majority consensus regarding which medications should be included on the list. The subcommittee’s recommendations were presented to the larger collaborative for approval, and consensus was achieved. The list continues to be reviewed and updated annually.

Conclusion

Formation of a multicenter quality-improvement initiative exposed current limitations as to which medications are considered nephrotoxic in clinical and research settings and presented an opportunity to approach this problem using an evidence-based process. A consensus definition of nephrotoxic-medication exposure was achieved.
Higher naloxone dosing may be required for opioid overdose
Authors: Bardsley Russell
Published: October 2019

Purpose

Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid with an estimated potency that is 10,000 times more than that of morphine and 100 times more than that of fentanyl. Although there is a paucity of evidence, when considering the potency of carfentanil, it is reasonable to speculate that larger doses of naloxone may be required to resuscitate patients after carfentanil ingestion. This case report discusses the use of high-dose naloxone in 2 patients with suspected carfentanil overdose presenting to a small community hospital.

Two patients with suspected carfentanil overdose presented to a 30-bed emergency department at a community hospital in New Hampshire. Cyanosis and respiratory distress were noted in both instances, and airway intervention was ultimately deemed necessary. Patient 1 required a total of 12 mg of naloxone to be successfully resuscitated, while patient 2 required a total of 10 mg for resuscitation.

Both patients were successfully resuscitated with high doses of naloxone. The use of high-dose naloxone prevented the need for intubation in these patients.

Conclusion

While more robust studies should be considered, emergency personnel should be comfortable using higher-than-standard doses of naloxone in appropriate cases.
Jasmine: a Java pipeline for isomiR characterization in miRNA-Seq data
Authors: Zhong Xiangfu , Pla Albert , Rayner Simon
Published: October 2019

Motivation

The existence of complex subpopulations of miRNA isoforms, or isomiRs, is well established. While many tools exist for investigating isomiR populations, they differ in how they characterize an isomiR, making it difficult to compare results across different tools. Thus, there is a need for a more comprehensive and systematic standard for defining isomiRs. Such a standard would allow investigation of isomiR population structure in progressively more refined sub-populations, permitting the identification of more subtle changes between conditions and leading to an improved understanding of the processes that generate these differences.

Results

We developed Jasmine, a software tool that incorporates a hierarchal framework for characterizing isomiR populations. Jasmine is a Java application that can process raw read data in fastq/fasta format, or mapped reads in SAM format to produce a detailed characterization of isomiR populations. Thus, Jasmine can reveal structure not apparent in a standard miRNA-Seq analysis pipeline.

Availability and implementation

Jasmine is implemented in Java and R and freely available at bitbucket https://bitbucket.org/bipous/jasmine/src/master/.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Influenza classification from short reads with VAPOR facilitates robust mapping pipelines and zoonotic strain detection for routine surveillance applications
Authors: Southgate Joel A , Bull Matthew J , Brown Clare M , Watkins Joanne , Corden Sally , Southgate Benjamin , Moore Catherine , Connor Thomas R
Published: October 2019

Motivation

Influenza viruses represent a global public health burden due to annual epidemics and pandemic potential. Due to a rapidly evolving RNA genome, inter-species transmission, intra-host variation, and noise in short-read data, reads can be lost during mapping, and de novo assembly can be time consuming and result in misassembly. We assessed read loss during mapping and designed a graph-based classifier, VAPOR, for selecting mapping references, assembly validation and detection of strains of non-human origin.

Results

Standard human reference viruses were insufficient for mapping diverse influenza samples in simulation. VAPOR retrieved references for 257 real whole-genome sequencing samples with a mean of >99.8% identity to assemblies, and increased the proportion of mapped reads by up to 13.3% compared to standard references. VAPOR has the potential to improve the robustness of bioinformatics pipelines for surveillance and could be adapted to other RNA viruses.

Availability and implementation

VAPOR is available at https://github.com/connor-lab/vapor.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Generalized Born radii computation using linear models and neural networks
Authors: Mahmoud Saida Saad Mohamed , Esposito Gennaro , Serra Giuseppe , Fogolari Federico
Published: October 2019

Motivation

Implicit solvent models play an important role in describing the thermodynamics and the dynamics of biomolecular systems. Key to an efficient use of these models is the computation of generalized Born (GB) radii, which is accomplished by algorithms based on the electrostatics of inhomogeneous dielectric media. The speed and accuracy of such computations are still an issue especially for their intensive use in classical molecular dynamics. Here, we propose an alternative approach that encodes the physics of the phenomena and the chemical structure of the molecules in model parameters which are learned from examples.

Results

GB radii have been computed using (i) a linear model and (ii) a neural network. The input is the element, the histogram of counts of neighbouring atoms, divided by atom element, within 16 Å. Linear models are ca. 8 times faster than the most widely used reference method and the accuracy is higher with correlation coefficient with the inverse of ‘perfect’ GB radii of 0.94 versus 0.80 of the reference method. Neural networks further improve the accuracy of the predictions with correlation coefficient with ‘perfect’ GB radii of 0.97 and ca. 20% smaller root mean square error.

Availability and implementation

We provide a C program implementing the computation using the linear model, including the coefficients appropriate for the set of Bondi radii, as Supplementary Material. We also provide a Python implementation of the neural network model with parameter and example files in the Supplementary Material as well.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Next generation of power electronic-converter application for energy-conversion and storage units and systems
Authors: Jørgensen Kasper Lüthje , Zhang Zhe , Andersen Michael A E
Published: October 2019

By a rearrangement of the traditional supply-converter-load system connection, partial-power-processing-based converters can be used to achieve a reduction in size and cost, increase in system efficiency and lower device power rating. The concept is promising for different applications such as photovoltaic arrays, electric vehicles and electrolysis. For photovoltaic applications, it can drive each cell in the array to its maximum power point with a relatively smaller converter; for electric-vehicle applications, both an onboard charger with reduced weight and improved efficiency as well as a fast charger station handling higher power can be considered. By showing different examples of partial-power-processing application for energy-conversion and storage units and systems, this paper discusses key limitations of partial-power-processing and related improvements from different perspectives to show the potential in future power electronic systems.
Enhancing Plasticity Mechanisms in the Mouse Motor Cortex by Anodal Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation: The Contribution of Nitric Oxide Signaling
Authors: Barbati Saviana Antonella , Cocco Sara , Longo Valentina , Spinelli Matteo , Gironi Katia , Mattera Andrea , Paciello Fabiola , Colussi Claudia , Podda Maria Vittoria , Grassi Claudio
Published: October 2019

Consistent body of evidence shows that transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary motor cortex (M1) facilitates motor learning and promotes recovery after stroke. However, the knowledge of molecular mechanisms behind tDCS effects needs to be deepened for a more rational use of this technique in clinical settings. Here we characterized the effects of anodal tDCS of M1, focusing on its impact on glutamatergic synaptic transmission and plasticity. Mice subjected to tDCS displayed increased long-term potentiation (LTP) and enhanced basal synaptic transmission at layer II/III horizontal connections. They performed better than sham-stimulated mice in the single-pellet reaching task and exhibited increased forelimb strength. Dendritic spine density of layer II/III pyramidal neurons was also increased by tDCS. At molecular level, tDCS enhanced: 1) BDNF expression, 2) phosphorylation of CREB, CaMKII, and GluA1, and 3) S-nitrosylation of GluA1 and HDAC2. Blockade of nitric oxide synthesis by L-NAME prevented the tDCS-induced enhancement of GluA1 phosphorylation at Ser831 and BDNF levels, as well as of miniature excitatory postsynaptic current (mEPSC) frequency, LTP and reaching performance. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that anodal tDCS engages plasticity mechanisms in the M1 and highlight a role for nitric oxide (NO) as a novel mediator of tDCS effects.
Validation of an UHPLC–MS/MS Method for the Determination of Glaucocalyxin A, a Novel Potent Negative Akt Regulator in Rat Plasma, Lung and Brain Tissues: Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study
Authors: Deng Zhipeng , Liu Qian , He Jixiang , Zhang Sixi , Zhou Wei
Published: October 2019

Glaucocalyxin A, a novel potent negative Akt regulator, is a major active constituent of Rabdosia japonica. A simple, specific and sensitive ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the quantification of glaucocalyxin A in rat plasma, lung and brain tissues after intravenous administration. Sample preparation was carried out through a simple liqiud–liquid extraction with ethyl acetate using bullatine A as internal standard. The chromatographic separation was achieved by using an Agilent ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18 column (3.0 mm × 100 mm, 1.8 μm) with a mobile phase of acetonitrile and water containing 0.1% formic acid in a gradient elution. Mass spectrometry analysis was conducted in positive ionization mode with multiple reaction monitoring transitions at m/z 333.2 → 157.1 for glaucocalyxin A and m/z 344.2 → 128.1 for IS. Calibration curves were linear over the ranges of 20.0–4000 ng/mL for both plasma and tissue samples (r2 > 0.99). The Lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was 0.284 ng/mL. The intra-day and inter-day precision relative standard deviation (RSD%) were <14.9%, while the accuracy ranged from −12.5 to 17.0% for LLOQ and quality control samples. This UHPLC–MS/MS method was successfully applied in the pharmacokinetics, lung and brain tissue distributions of glaucocalyxin A after intravenous administration.