bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Blood Pressure in the First 6 Hours Following Endovascular Treatment for Ischemic Stroke Is Associated With Outcome
Authors: Samuels Noor , van de Graaf Rob A. , van den Berg Carlijn A.L. , Uniken Venema Simone M. , Bala Kujtesa , van Doormaal Pieter Jan , van der Steen Wouter , Witvoet Elbert , Boiten Jelis , den Hertog Heleen , Schonewille Wouter J. , Hofmeijer Jeannette , Schreuder Floris , Schreuder Tobien A.H.C.M.L. , van der Worp H. Bart , Roos Yvo B.W.E.M. , Majoie Charles B.L.M. , Burke James F. , van Es Adriaan C.G.M. , van der Lugt Aad , Roozenbeek Bob , Lingsma Hester F. , Dippel Diederik W.J. ,   on behalf of the MR CLEAN Registry Investigators
Published: September 2021

Background and Purpose:

Optimal blood pressure (BP) management in the acute phase of ischemic stroke remains an unresolved issue. It is uncertain whether guidelines for BP management during and after intravenous alteplase can be extrapolated to endovascular treatment (EVT) for stroke due to large artery occlusion in the anterior circulation. We evaluated the associations between systolic BP (SBP) in the first 6 hours following EVT and functional outcome as well as symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage.

Methods:

Patients of 8 MR CLEAN (Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial of Endovascular Treatment for Acute Ischemic Stroke in the Netherlands) Registry centers, with available data on SBP in the 6 hours following EVT, were analyzed. We evaluated maximum, minimum, and mean SBP. Study outcomes were functional outcome (modified Rankin Scale) at 90 days and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. We used multivariable ordinal and binary regression analysis to adjust for important prognostic factors and studied possible effect modification by successful reperfusion.

Results:

Post-EVT SBP data were available for 1161/1796 patients. Higher maximum SBP (per 10 mm Hg increments) was associated with worse functional outcome (adjusted common odds ratio, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.88–0.98]) and a higher rate of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (adjusted odds ratio, 1.17 [95% CI, 1.02–1.36]). The association between minimum SBP and functional outcome was nonlinear with an inflection point at 124 mm Hg. Minimum SBP lower and higher than the inflection point were associated with worse functional outcomes (adjusted common odds ratio, 0.85 per 10 mm Hg decrements [95% CI, 0.76–0.95] and adjusted common odds ratio, 0.81 per 10 mm Hg increments [95% CI, 0.71–0.92]). No association between mean SBP and functional outcome was observed. Successful reperfusion did not modify the relation of SBP with any of the outcomes.

Conclusions:

Maximum SBP in the first 6 hours following EVT is positively associated with worse functional outcome and an increased risk of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. Both lower and higher minimum SBP are associated with worse outcomes. A randomized trial to evaluate whether modifying post-intervention SBP results in better outcomes after EVT for ischemic stroke seems justified.
Pleasing Enhances Indirect Reciprocity-Based Cooperation Under Private Assessment
Authors: Krellner Marcus , Han The Anh
Published: September 2021

Indirect reciprocity is an important mechanism for promoting cooperation among self-interested agents. Simplified, it means “you help me; therefore somebody else will help you” (in contrast to direct reciprocity: “you help me; therefore I will help you”). Indirect reciprocity can be achieved via reputation and norms. Strategies, such as the so-called leading eight, relying on these principles can maintain high levels of cooperation and remain stable against invasion, even in the presence of errors. However, this is only the case if the reputation of an agent is modeled as a shared public opinion. If agents have private opinions and hence can disagree as to whether somebody is good or bad, even rare errors can cause cooperation to break apart. We show that most strategies can overcome the private assessment problem by applying pleasing. A pleasing agent acts in accordance with others' expectations of their behaviour (i.e., pleasing them) instead of being guided by their own, private assessment. As such, a pleasing agent can achieve a better reputation than previously considered strategies when there is disagreement in the population. Pleasing is effective even if the opinions of only a few other individuals are considered and when it bears additional costs. Finally, through a more exhaustive analysis of the parameter space than previous studies, we show that some of the leading eight still function under private assessment, i.e., that cooperation rates are well above an objective baseline. Yet, pleasing strategies supersede formerly described ones and enhance cooperation.
The Dammed Body: Thinking Historically about Water Security & Public Health
Authors: Derr Jennifer L.
Published: September 2021

This essay traces the historical relationship between the construction of the Nile River and the prevalence of disease in Egypt in the long twentieth century, with an eye to the relevance of this history to other regions on the African continent impacted by the construction of large dams. Beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century and stretching through the 1970s, the Nile River underwent a dramatic process of transformation. Two large dams–the 1902 Khazan Aswan and the Aswan High Dam–were constructed on the river. Networks of perennial irrigation canals facilitated the practice of year-round agricultural production and the High Dam provided electricity. The remaking of Egypt's riparian ecologies also had important implications for the health of Egypt's population as these ecologies were associated with new landscapes of disease and approaches to biomedical treatment.
Africa's Living Rivers: Managing for Sustainability
Authors: King Jackie , Brown Cate
Published: September 2021

Africa's human population is growing rapidly and is set to account for 40 percent of global numbers by 2100. Further development of its inland waters, to enhance water and energy security, is inevitable. Will it follow the development pathway of industrialized countries, often destructive of ecosystems, biodiversity, and river-dependent social structures, or can it chart a new way into the future based on global lessons of equity and sustainability? This essay tracks the global and African growth of the benefits and costs of water resource developments, explores the reasons for the costs, and offers insights on new scientific thinking that can help guide Africa to a more sustainable future.
Climate & Water in a Changing Africa: Uncertainty, Adaptation & the Social Construction of Fragile Environments
Authors: Verhoeven Harry
Published: September 2021

Discussions of climate change and water security in Africa are often simplistic and indeed deterministic. They overlook not only ecological complexities but also the multitude of ways in which various population groups across the continent approach climatological variability, thereby challenging positivist modeling and external adaptation agendas. The current state of affairs for many often-silenced citizens is already one of hunger, uncertainty, and marginalization; the self-appointed lead actors on climate adaptation–states, markets, NGOs–have, from their vantage point, deeply troubling track records of dealing with people and their environments. For plenty of communities around Africa, it might therefore not so much be only the worsening climate that is increasingly exposing people to disease, displacement, and water insecurity, but the very policies adopted in the name of preparing for, and living with, worsening weather. This essay explores how understanding climate adaptation as a fundamentally social and political process points to possibilities for imagining and working toward futures with greater emancipatory potential. There is no scenario in which African societies adapt successfully to climatic change and do not simultaneously radically reimagine both their relationship with the outside world and with each other, including institutions of control and mechanisms of exclusion at home.
Context-aware Adversarial Training for Name Regularity Bias in Named Entity Recognition
Authors: Ghaddar Abbas , Langlais Philippe , Rashid Ahmad , Rezagholizadeh Mehdi
Published: September 2021

In this work, we examine the ability of NER models to use contextual information when predicting the type of an ambiguous entity. We introduce NRB, a new testbed carefully designed to diagnose Name Regularity Bias of NER models. Our results indicate that all state-of-the-art models we tested show such a bias; BERT fine-tuned models significantly outperforming feature-based (LSTM-CRF) ones on NRB, despite having comparable (sometimes lower) performance on standard benchmarks.

To mitigate this bias, we propose a novel model-agnostic training method that adds learnable adversarial noise to some entity mentions, thus enforcing models to focus more strongly on the contextual signal, leading to significant gains on NRB. Combining it with two other training strategies, data augmentation and parameter freezing, leads to further gains.
Strong Equivalence of TAG and CCG
Authors: Schiffer Lena Katharina , Maletti Andreas
Published: September 2021

Tree-adjoining grammar (TAG) and combinatory categorial grammar (CCG) are two well-established mildly context-sensitive grammar formalisms that are known to have the same expressive power on strings (i.e., generate the same class of string languages). It is demonstrated that their expressive power on trees also essentially coincides. In fact, CCG without lexicon entries for the empty string and only first-order rules of degree at most 2 are sufficient for its full expressive power.
Classifying Argumentative Relations Using Logical Mechanisms and Argumentation Schemes
Authors: Jo Yohan , Bang Seojin , Reed Chris , Hovy Eduard
Published: September 2021

While argument mining has achieved significant success in classifying argumentative relations between statements (support, attack, and neutral), we have a limited computational understanding of logical mechanisms that constitute those relations. Most recent studies rely on black-box models, which are not as linguistically insightful as desired. On the other hand, earlier studies use rather simple lexical features, missing logical relations between statements. To overcome these limitations, our work classifies argumentative relations based on four logical and theory-informed mechanisms between two statements, namely, (i) factual consistency, (ii) sentiment coherence, (iii) causal relation, and (iv) normative relation. We demonstrate that our operationalization of these logical mechanisms classifies argumentative relations without directly training on data labeled with the relations, significantly better than several unsupervised baselines. We further demonstrate that these mechanisms also improve supervised classifiers through representation learning.
Soloist: BuildingTask Bots at Scale with Transfer Learning and Machine Teaching
Authors: Peng Baolin , Li Chunyuan , Li Jinchao , Shayandeh Shahin , Liden Lars , Gao Jianfeng
Published: September 2021

We present a new method, Soloist,1 that uses transfer learning and machine teaching to build task bots at scale. We parameterize classical modular task-oriented dialog systems using a Transformer-based auto-regressive language model, which subsumes different dialog modules into a single neural model. We pre-train, on heterogeneous dialog corpora, a task-grounded response generation model, which can generate dialog responses grounded in user goals and real-world knowledge for task completion. The pre-trained model can be efficiently adapted to accomplish new tasks with a handful of task-specific dialogs via machine teaching, where training samples are generated by human teachers interacting with the system. Experiments show that (i)Soloist creates new state-of-the-art on well-studied task-oriented dialog benchmarks, including CamRest676 and MultiWOZ; (ii) in the few-shot fine-tuning settings, Soloist significantly outperforms existing methods; and (iii) the use of machine teaching substantially reduces the labeling cost of fine-tuning. The pre-trained models and codes are available at https://aka.ms/soloist.
Neural Event Semantics for Grounded Language Understanding
Authors: Buch Shyamal , Fei-Fei Li , Goodman Noah D.
Published: September 2021

We present a new conjunctivist framework, neural event semantics (NES), for compositional grounded language understanding. Our approach treats all words as classifiers that compose to form a sentence meaning by multiplying output scores. These classifiers apply to spatial regions (events) and NES derives its semantic structure from language by routing events to different classifier argument inputs via soft attention. NES is trainable end-to-end by gradient descent with minimal supervision. We evaluate our method on compositional grounded language tasks in controlled synthetic and real-world settings. NES offers stronger generalization capability than standard function-based compositional frameworks, while improving accuracy over state-of-the-art neural methods on real-world language tasks.
Relevance-guided Supervision for OpenQA with ColBERT
Authors: Khattab Omar , Potts Christopher , Zaharia Matei
Published: September 2021

Systems for Open-Domain Question Answering (OpenQA) generally depend on a retriever for finding candidate passages in a large corpus and a reader for extracting answers from those passages. In much recent work, the retriever is a learned component that uses coarse-grained vector representations of questions and passages. We argue that this modeling choice is insufficiently expressive for dealing with the complexity of natural language questions. To address this, we define ColBERT-QA, which adapts the scalable neural retrieval model ColBERT to OpenQA. ColBERT creates fine-grained interactions between questions and passages. We propose an efficient weak supervision strategy that iteratively uses ColBERT to create its own training data. This greatly improves OpenQA retrieval on Natural Questions, SQuAD, and TriviaQA, and the resulting system attains state-of-the-art extractive OpenQA performance on all three datasets.
Biruta Rasiņa’s collection of scale insects (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Coccomorpha) at the Latvian National Museum of Natural History, including type material of several species
Authors: STALAŽS ARTURS
Published: September 2021

Information about the scale insect (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha) fauna of Latvia was first published in the second half of the 18th century, but the most serious and purposeful research on it was carried out between the 1920s and the early 1970s. Biruta Rasiņa, in collaboration with her colleagues, conducted the most extensive research on the scale insect fauna in Latvia in the 20th century. She was active in science from the 1940s until the early 1970s, and described eight new species between 1966 and 1971. According to modern taxonomy, seven names of the taxa she described are now synonyms of the names of other species, but one of her species names is still considered to be valid. Previously it was believed that the type material of the taxa she described, and all the other scale insect material she collected, had been lost. For an indefinite period of time the Latvian National Museum of Natural History had stored a collection of unaudited and still unregistered material, thought to be a collection of plant damages collected by Alfrēds Rasiņš. However, inspection of the material showed that it was in fact Biruta Rasiņa’s collection of scale insects, which contained both dry and ethanol-preserved material as well as microscope slides. The material has now been audited and registered in the museum’s collection. Most of the material was collected in Latvia, but the material also includes samples from other countries (Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Russian Federation and Ukraine). The collection includes samples of 75 species from eight families, of which 50 species were collected in the wild, 20 in greenhouses and indoors, and 5 species were found on imported fruits. Biruta Rasiņa’s collection of scale insects is the only known important collection of scale insects in Latvia, and is of national significance. A catalogue of the collection is therefore provided in this paper.
Studies in Mexican Grasshoppers: Four new species of Reyesacris Fontana, Buzzetti & Mariño-Pérez, 2011 (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Ommatolampidinae)
Authors: MARIÑO-PÉREZ RICARDO , SANABRIA-URBÁN SALOMÓN , POCCO MARTINA E. , FOQUET BERT , SONG HOJUN
Published: September 2021

Four new species of Reyesacris Fontana, Buzzetti & Mariño-Pérez, 2011 are described from Southern Mexico (Guerrero and Oaxaca States). Reyesacris zihua sp. nov., R. atoyacensis sp. nov., R. mephaa sp. nov. and R. tika sp. nov. A dichotomous key to species of Reyesacris and distribution map are provided together with an analysis of external and internal male genitalia to place this genus in the subtribe Vilernina within the tribe Ommatolampidini.
Endogean and cavernicolous Coleoptera of the Balkans. XXIV. Amauropini (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Pselaphinae) from the collection of the Moravian Museum in Brno
Authors: HLAVÁČ PETER , BAŇAŘ PETR , KOUKALOVÁ KATEŘINA
Published: September 2021

The status of Amauropus lobipes Reitter, 1918 and Protamaurops bicarinata (Reitter, 1918) is confirmed based on the holotypes housed at the Moravian Museum in Brno, Czech Republic. Both species are redescribed, photographed, and the aedeagus of Amauropus lobipes is illustrated. A checklist of Amauropini species in the Moravian Museum is given.
Six new braconid wasps of the genus Colastomion Baker, 1917 (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Rogadinae) from Vietnam
Authors: OANH NGUYEN THI , VAN DZUONG NGUYEN , LONG KHUAT DANG , VAN LAM PHAM , NHI PHAM THI , HOA DANG THI
Published: September 2021

The relatively small genus Colastomion Baker, 1917 is newly recorded for Vietnam’s braconid fauna and six new species are described and fully illustrated, viz. Colastomion asperum Long, sp. n; Colastomion cephonodes Long & PVLam, sp. n.; Colastomion citrum Long, sp. n.; Colastomion neuterum Long, sp. n.; Colastomion nigroconfusum Long & Pham, sp. n. and Colastomion vietnamenese Long, sp. n. Based on both females and males, a key to the new species from Vietnam is given. Diagnostic characters of the new species are also analyzed and compared with other Colastomion species from the Oriental region. Additionally, the first host record for the new species, C. cephonodes sp. n., is provided as this new species is reared from caterpillars of the coffee hawkmoth, Cephonodes hylas (Linnaeus, 1771).
A new species of subgenus Asonicogryllus He, 2019 from Yunnan (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Gryllinae)
Authors: XU JING-YI , LIU YI-JIAO , LI SHI-YU , HE ZHU-QING
Published: September 2021

We studied the relationship of the genera Loxoblemmus Saussure, 1877 and Asonicogryllus He, 2019 by reconstructing the phylogenetic tree based on 2 mitochondrial genes and 2 ribosomal genes. The result shows that Loxoblemmus is paraphyletic. Thus, we place Asonicogryllus as a subgenus of Loxoblemmus. Meanwhile, we report a new species of Asonicogryllus, L. (A.) bronzus He sp. nov. The new species is similar to L. (A.) kwanghua, but it has well developed forewings and hindwings. The type specimens are deposited in the Museum of Biology, East China Normal University (ECNU).
“Hey! Mr Prime Minister!”: The Simpsons Against the Liberals, Anti-fandom and the “Politics of Against”
Authors: Barnes Renee , Middlemost Renée
Published: September 2021

Memes and popular culture have become central to our understanding of contemporary politics. Recent fan scholarship has shown how popular culture encourages audiences into discussion, participation, creativity, intervention, and evaluation in politics. In this article, we build on existing scholarship analysing political meme creation and distribution, which to date has primarily focused primarily on American politics. Using a case study of the Facebook group The Simpsons Against the Liberals (the conservative ruling party in Australia), we examine how the anti-fannish behaviors of appropriating and remixing content, affective investment, and community collective identity formation is activated through othering or a “politics of against” (Sandvoss, 2019). The Simpsons Against the Liberals page features memes which insert current Australian political issues, scandals, and controversies into the fictional world of The Simpsons. As we argue, the community is bound by its anti-fandom of the Australian Liberal party, rather than a specific unifying feature. While anti-fandom is driven from hate and dislike, this case study demonstrates that a form of anti-fandom exists in which pleasure is derived from the use of humor to perform acts of citizenship and imagined community. Specifically, this article will examine the flurry of creative production during the 2019/20 Australian bushfire crisis—centered around the controversial behavior of Prime Minister Scott Morrison—as a form of contemporary civic action and activism rooted in anti-fan practices.
Traumatic Pediatric Tracheal Rupture After Blunt Force Sporting Injury: Case Report and Review of the Literature
Authors: Taylor Alon , Menon Seema , Grant Peter , Currie Bruce , Soma Marlene
Published: September 2021

Objective:

This paper presents the case of a traumatic tracheal rupture in a pediatric patient. The body of literature of the clinical features, evaluation, and management of this uncommon presentation is discussed.

Case:

A 13-year-old boy sustained an intrathoracic tracheal rupture whilst playing Australian Rules football. He developed hallmark clinical features of air extravasation and was intubated prior to transfer to a tertiary pediatric center for further management. After a short trial of conservative management, his respiratory status deteriorated and he was taken to the operating theater for open surgical repair of the defect.

Conclusion:

Traumatic rupture of the trachea is a rare injury in children. This case demonstrates the dynamic nature of this serious injury and the need for multidisciplinary care in achieving the optimal outcome.
Mode over Matter: Response to Hughes, From Seminary to University
Authors: Simmons K Merinda
Published: September 2021

The story Aaron Hughes tells in From Seminary to University (2020) is at once archival and timely, not because it presumes to transport the past into the present or mine for prescriptive insights from thinkers long gone but because it “provide[s] a historical work that accounts for ‘how’ as opposed to ‘what’” (13). In presenting a narrative arc for the study of religion in Canada, the book offers a model of how nuanced historiography might attend to contemporary questions (both field-specific and more broadly) without making the past “about” or “for” us. Avoiding the trappings of recovery work as well as retrospective projection, Hughes considers the archive on its own terms while remaining cognizant of the fact that it never speaks for itself. This brief response essay greets the occasion the book provides to think about the structural framework that shapes the “how” of an academic discourse.
Police Officers’ Best Friend?: An Exploratory Analysis of the Effect of Service Dogs on Perceived Organizational Support in Policing
Authors: Quick Kenneth M , Piza Eric L
Published: September 2021

This study explored the effectiveness of a novel technique for police departments to support their officers and promote wellness: the use of service dogs. We evaluated officer perceptions in two mid-sized, municipal police departments that have wellness programs with a service dog that is permanently assigned to a full-time police officer handler: Groton and Naugatuck, Connecticut. We assessed six factors believed to influence police officer wellness including: operational and organizational stress using the Police Stress Questionnaire; topical stressors including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic, police use of force and community relations, and police reform efforts; Perceived Organizational Support (POS); receptivity to service dogs; and willingness to seek assistance for mental health issues. We found evidence that exposure to service dogs is significantly linked to both POS and receptivity to service dogs in policing. We also found that officer willingness to seek their department’s assistance regarding mental health approaches significance with greater exposure to the service dog ( p = .07). Although we found no significant evidence that exposure to service dogs is linked to stress reduction, we found that police reforms pose a substantial perceived stress on officers in the study. This finding presents a serious challenge for reformers that risks undermining officer wellness. Implications of our findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.
In Memoriam: Thaddeus H. Spratlen
Authors: Bradford William D.
Published: September 2021

In Memoriam—Thaddeus H. Spratlen.
Civic engagement and self-empowerment of second-generation Vietnamese in Czechia
Authors: Freidingerová Tereza , Nováková Barbora
Published: September 2021

The first cohort of Czech second-generation Vietnamese has only recently reached adulthood. Raised by Czech nannies, they received early socialization into Czech society, while Vietnamese culture remained unfamiliar. With this childhood experience, the generation grew into young adulthood questioning their identity/identities. Caught between social and normative pressures from both the Vietnamese community and Czech society, the formation of associations by second-generation Vietnamese can be a means to respond to their disadvantaged position. Based on in-depth interviews with leaders of these associations and participant observation of their activities, the article examines the goals and activities of second-generation associations (SGAs) and compares them with first-generation immigrant organizations. SGAs are shown to fill the gap of parents as key role models of socialization in Czech society and as platforms to enhance the self-confidence and sense of social responsibility of second-generation Vietnamese in Czechia.
Countering the Furor Around Critical Race Theory
Authors: Kaplan Leslie S. , Owings William A.
Published: September 2021

National right-wing media and their viewers are alleging that critical race theory (CRT) is “infecting” public school classrooms, fueling an assault on how schools should discuss race, racism, and our nation's history. This turmoil over curriculum and teaching “sensitive” topics is deeply upsetting to teachers. Principals can strengthen their school's climate, shared leadership, and improve instruction and academic success for all students by helping their teachers manage and respond appropriately to parental and community questions about CRT.
Not So Much Societal: The Catholic Church in Poland as a Veto Player
Authors: Zuba Krzysztof
Published: September 2021

George Tsebelis distinguished two forms of veto players’ actions: institutional and partisan. In a democracy, the Church is not able to play either role because it is not an element of the state’s institutional structure. This was the source for Simon Fink’s proposal to look at the Church as a societal veto player (VP). The case of Poland shows, however, that such an approach becomes inadequate in numerous situations. The Church’s influence on political parties, and particularly the state’s institutions, may be exerted outside society. Performed on the basis of the existing literature and political debates conducted since 1989, the analysis of the social and political reality of Poland allows us to indicate the following four issues with respect to which the role of the Church as a VP The Church acted most often as a quasi-institutional VP (five cases), and once as a quasi-partisan VP. It never took actions based primarily on mobilizing society. This undermines the universality of findings and indicates the necessity of reconsidering the role of churches as societal veto players.
Thermal and Entropy generation analysis of magnetohydrodynamic tangent hyperbolic slip flow towards a stretching sheet
Authors: Ahmad Shafiq , Khan Zafar H , Zeb Salman , Hamid Muhammad
Published: September 2021

This article examined the effects of boundary layer flow and heat transport of a two-dimensional incompressible magnetohydrodynamic tangent hyperbolic fluid under slip boundary conditions and variable thermal conductivity. The entropy generation model is also analysed for the said fluid. Non-similarity transformations transformed the governing equations of the fluid and entropy generation model into dimensionless form. Maple software is used to solve the transformed equations numerically. Effects of different dimensionless parameters on entropy generation rate, Bejan number, velocity and temperature fields are studied thoroughly through graphs. It is observed that for higher values of velocity slip parameter and power-law index, the entropy generation rate decreases while the Bejan number increases. Also, for the Hartmann number, Weissenberg number and Brinkman number, we found an increase in the entropy generation rate, and reverse behaviour is observed for the Bejan number. Nusselt number, temperature profile and Bejan’s number increase with an increase in variable thermal conductivity.
Parametric study of heat transfer performance including entropy generation of microchannel heat sink with fan cavity and different rib structure
Authors: Subrahmanyam K. Bala , Datta Aparesh , Das Pritam
Published: September 2021

This numerical study investigates the simultaneous application of axial wall conduction effect and entropy generation minimization as two principles to identify heat transfer performance in a microchannel heat sink with fan cavity and ribs. In this conjugate analysis, three different materials for a microchannel heat sink considered are silicon, aluminium, and copper. In addition to the fan cavity (F), effects of different rib configurations arranged symmetrically inside the fan cavity, that is, backward triangle rib (FB), rectangular rib (FR), forward triangle rib (FF), and diamond rib (FD) with Reynolds numbers ranging from 136 to 588 are studied. The comparative study between silicon and copper in terms of local wall and bulk fluid temperatures, increment in solid wall to fluid thermal conductivity ratio within the range (247.07 <  ksf < 669.44), local Nusselt number (Nu x), axial conduction number (M), and entropy generation number ( Ns, a) were furnished and examined. Structural optimization is performed on diamond rib configuration geometrical parameters to observe entropy generation number and wall conduction effects trend as thermal performance is greatly improved to 2.49, at the lowest Ns, a to 0.31 at Re 391.47, with copper in the back to back cavities case. However based on the numerical results, comparative importance of axial wall conduction effect consideration in the present design of microsink, silicon is showing best results in overcoming at Re 588.4, consistently in all optimization cases.
Psychometric Curves Reveal Three Mechanisms of Vigilance Decrement
Authors: McCarley Jason S. , Yamani Yusuke
Published: September 2021

The vigilance decrement is a decline in signal detection rate that occurs over time on a sustained-attention task. The effect has typically been ascribed to conservative shifts of response bias and losses of perceptual sensitivity. Recent work, though, has suggested that sensitivity losses in vigilance tasks are spurious, and other findings have implied that attentional lapses contribute to vigilance failures. To test these possibilities, we used Bayesian hierarchical modeling to compare psychometric curves for the first and last blocks of a visual vigilance task. Participants were a convenience sample of 99 young adults. Data showed evidence for all three postulated mechanisms of vigilance loss: a conservative shift of response bias, a decrease in perceptual sensitivity, and a tendency toward more frequent attentional lapses. Results confirm that sensitivity losses are possible in a sustained-attention task but indicate that mental lapses can also contribute to the vigilance decrement.
Optimum sizing and simulation of hybrid renewable energy system for remote area
Authors: Masih Animesh , Verma HK
Published: September 2021

In current scenario, people tend to move towards outskirts and like to settle in places that are close to nature. But, due to urban lifestyle and to fulfill the basic needs, demand of electricity remains the same as in urban areas. This demand of electricity can be only fulfilled by using hybrid renewable energy resources, which is easily available in outskirts. Renewable energy resources are unreliable and more expensive. Researchers are working to make, it more reliable and economic in terms of utilization. This article proposes a metaheuristic grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA) for the optimal sizing of hybrid PV/wind/battery energy system located in remote areas. The proposed algorithm finds the optimal sizing and configuration of remote village load demand that includes house electricity and agriculture. The optimization problem is solved by minimization of total system cost at a desirable level of loss of power supply’s reliability index (LPSRI). The results of GOA are compared with particle swarm optimization (PSO), genetic algorithm (GA) and hybrid optimization of multiple energy resources (HOMER) software. In addition, results are also validated by modeling and simulation of the hybrid energy system and its configurations at different weather conditions-based results. Hybrid PV/wind/battery is found as an optimal system at remote areas and sizing are[Formula: see text] with cost of energy (COE) (0.3473$/kWh) and loss of power supplies reliability index (LPSRI) (0%). It is clear from the results that GOA based methods are more efficient for selection of optimal energy system configuration as compared to others algorithms.
Effects of dry needling on gait and muscle tone in Parkinson’s disease: a randomized clinical trial
Authors: Brandín-de la Cruz Natalia , Calvo Sandra , Rodríguez-Blanco Cleofás , Herrero Pablo , Bravo-Esteban Elisabeth
Published: September 2021

Background:

Alterations in gait and muscular rigidity are common and disabling in persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Objective:

The aim of this study was to determine whether a single dry needling (DN) session can promote changes in gait and muscle tone in the lower extremities as well as in the evolution of the disease in persons with PD.

Methods:

A randomized double-blind clinical trial was designed. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (IG) that received a session of DN over the semitendinosus, medial gastrocnemius, soleus and rectus femoris muscles, or to a control group (CG) that received a session of sham DN in the same muscles. The effects of DN were assessed using the timed up and go test (TUG), 10 meter walk test (10MWT), 6 minute walk test (6MWT) and myotonometry before, immediately after, and 7 days after the intervention.

Results:

Thirty-three participants were analyzed aged 69.9 ± 7.2 years (mean ± SD; 39% female). There were no significant differences between the IG and CG for any outcomes. Significant differences were observed when comparing the Pre and Follow-up values in the IG for functional mobility of gait in the TUG (p = 0.049), gait speed in the 10MWT (p = 0.041) and muscle tone in the lower extremities by myotonometry (frequency (p = 0.027) and stiffness (p = 0.013)). By comparison, there were no significant within-group differences in the CG.

Conclusion:

A single session of DN had no measurable benefit compared to a single session of sham DN. Within-group changes in the IG suggested improvements in functional mobility of gait and gait speed, as well as changes in the muscle tone in the lower extremities of PD patients, which could be worthy of further exploration by future research.
Moral distress in midwifery practice: A concept analysis
Authors: Foster Wendy , McKellar Lois , Fleet Julie , Sweet Linda
Published: September 2021

Research suggests that the incidence of moral distress experienced by health professionals is significant and increasing, yet the concept lacks clarity and remains largely misunderstood. Currently, there is limited understanding of moral distress in the context of midwifery practice. The term moral distress was first used to label the psychological distress experienced following complex ethical decision-making and moral constraint in nursing. The term is now used across multiple health professions including midwifery, nursing, pharmacy and medicine, yet is used cautiously due to confusion regarding its theoretical and contextual basis. The aim of this study is to understand the concept of moral distress in the context of midwifery practice, describing the attributes, antecedents and consequences. This concept analysis uses Rodgers’ evolutionary framework and is the first stage of a sequential mixed-methods study. A literature search was conducted using multiple databases resulting in eight articles for review. Data were analysed using NVivo12©. Three core attributes were identified: moral actions and inactions, conflicting needs and negative feelings/emotions. The antecedents of clinical situations, moral awareness, uncertainty and constraint were identified. Consequences of moral distress include adverse personal professional and organisational outcomes. A model case depicting these aspects is presented. A midwifery focused definition of moral distress is offered as ‘a psychological suffering following clinical situations of moral uncertainty and/or constraint, which result in an experience of personal powerlessness where the midwife perceives an inability to preserve all competing moral commitments’. This concept analysis affirms the presence of moral distress in midwifery practice and provides evidence to move towards a consistent definition of moral distress.
Beyond renovation: Addressing Europe’s long housing crisis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Delclós Carlos , Vidal Lorenzo
Published: September 2021

This commentary reflects on the potential of European Union institutions to address the continent’s crisis of housing affordability, which was well underway before the COVID-19 pandemic and has been exacerbated in its wake. Despite having no direct competencies in housing policy, European Union norms and policies shape housing conditions in significant ways. The greater level of public spending on housing renovation enabled by the 2021–2027 multiannual financial framework and NextGeneration European Union funding signals a welcome shift away from austerity. However, investment alone is not enough to advance the right to housing and may even reinforce existing inequalities. Plans like the Renovation Wave and the Affordable Housing Initiative must strive not only for climate neutrality but also for housing cost and tenure neutrality. Beyond pandemic recovery plans, this commentary argues that a more thorough departure from the market-based approach underlying the European Union’s institutionality is needed to tackle the roots of the current housing problematic.
Attitudes and practices of veterinarians in Australia to acute pain management in cats
Authors: Rae Louise , MacNab Natalie , Bidner Sarah , Davidson Cameron , McDonagh Phillip
Published: September 2021

Objectives

Up-to-date information on the current practices and attitudes of veterinarians in Australia to acute pain management in cats was sought in 2017–2018 in the first nationwide survey in over 20 years.

Methods

An online survey was created, consisting of 54 questions in four sections, with 18 feline-specific questions. Veterinarians throughout Australia were invited to participate in the survey through advertisements in the veterinary press, electronic and regular mail, and through in-clinic visits and promotional materials.

Results

A total of 614 veterinarians completed the survey, with 513 (83.6%) completing the feline-specific section. The demographics of the respondents of this survey were an accurate representation of the registered veterinarians in Australia at the time. Multiple different opioids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were widely available in practices to manage pain, with analgesic efficacy reported as the primary factor influencing drug selection. Opioids were most commonly used in the preoperative period and NSAIDs were most commonly used postoperatively. Despite the wide availability in clinic (>99%), only 55% of respondents reported regularly using local anaesthetic techniques in cats. Pain assessment of hospitalised patients was primarily performed by veterinarians (91.1%); however, 84.7% of respondents did not routinely use a validated pain scale.

Conclusions and relevance

Veterinary practitioners in Australia are adequately equipped with analgesic medication to treat pain in their patients. In the management of acute pain in cats, they frequently use a multimodal approach and practice a variety of analgesic protocols. Based on the results of this survey, potential areas for improvement in feline pain management include an increase in duration of postoperative analgesia and more routine use of validated pain scales, performed by nurses and veterinarians alike, to assess individual analgesic needs.
Time for return to sport following total hip arthroplasty: a meta-analysis
Authors: Magan Ahmed A , Radhakrishnan Ganan T , Kayani Babar , Ronca Flaminia , Khanduja Vikas , Meek Robert M D , Haddad Fares S
Published: September 2021

Introduction:

Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) is being increasingly undertaken in younger and more active patients, with many of these patients wanting to return to sport (RTS) after surgery. However, the percentage of patients RTS and time at which they are able to get back to sport following surgery remains unknown. The objective of this meta-analysis was to determine the time patients RTS after THA.

Methods:

A search was performed on PUBMED, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library for trials on THA and RTS, in the English language, published from the inception of the database to October 2020. All clinical trials reporting on to RTS following THA were included. Data relating to patient demographics, methodological quality, RTS, clinical outcomes and complications were recorded. The PRISMA guidelines were used to undertake this study.

Results:

The initial literature search identified 1720 studies. Of these, 11 studies with 2297 patients matched the inclusion criteria. 3 studies with 154 patients demonstrated an overall pooled proportion of 40.0% (95% CI, 32.5–47.9%) of patients RTS between 2 and 3 months after surgery. 4 studies with 242 patients demonstrated an overall pooled proportion of 76.9% (95% CI, 71.5–82.0) of patients RTS by 6 months after surgery. Pooled proportion analysis from 7 trials with 560 patients demonstrated 93.9% (95% CI, 82.7–99.5%) of patients RTS between 6 and 12 months after surgery.

Conclusions:

Pooled proportion analysis showed increasingly more patients were able to RTS after THA over the first 1 year after surgery. There remains marked inter and intra-study variations in time for RTS but the pooled analysis shows that over 90% of patients were able to RTS at 6–12 months after THA. These finding will enable more informed discussions between patients and healthcare professionals about time for RTS following THA.
Altmetric Analysis of Skin of Color Articles: A Cross-Sectional Study
Authors: Chang Michelle J. , Lipner Shari R.
Published: September 2021

Background

Publication and dissemination of peer-reviewed articles are essential for delivering up-to-date high-quality care to diverse populations. Online attention and publication trends for skin of color (SOC) articles have not been studied.

Objective

To investigate SOC article online attention and publication trends.

Methods

Terms “skin of colo(u)r”, “ethnic skin”, “dark skin”, and “darker skin” were searched on Altmetric. Abstracts were reviewed to exclude non-SOC articles. Altmetric attention score (AAS), media outlets, citations, page views, and journal impact factor were extracted.

Results

A total of 425 articles, published in 114 journals, were included, with average AAS 13 (0-423), citations 42 (0-1214) and page views 2728 (7-15000). There was a 7.8-fold increase in the number of SOC articles published in the first-half (1993-2006) vs. second-half (2007-2021) of the study period. The number of SOC articles increased by 57%, 2011-2015 to 2016-2020. AAS was significantly correlated with citations ( R = .21), page views ( R = .23) and impact factor ( R = .35) ( P < .05 for all). The top 50 AAS articles had an average AAS 83 (21-423), with 35 (70%) published in the last 5 years (2016-2021) and 47 (94%) published in the second-half of the study period. Top four AAS articles focused on SOC representation in educational resources.

Conclusion

It is promising that increased numbers of SOC articles have been published in recent years and are garnering more attention, however they are less popular than other dermatology articles. Increased efforts are needed to study and publish on skin diseases in diverse populations to build knowledge and practices that improve patient care.
Twists and turns in the 360 deal: Spinning the risks and rewards of artist–label relations in the streaming era
Authors: Kjus Yngvar
Published: September 2021

This article studies the contracts of labels and artists in the 2000s and 2010s in order to understand the conditions for creative work in a predominantly digital environment. It argues that contract negotiation is a key site for the exchange of creative and economic resources which is likely to reflect developments in the technological but also legal frameworks of the music industry. It presents analyses of contract documents from before and after the rise of streaming services, capturing the turn away from the album and towards the smaller project of the single, which, among other things, entails higher royalty rates for the artists but also increases their responsibilities for financing production. The article goes on to discuss the extent to which such shifts in the investments and returns of both creator and company should be accompanied by changes in the legal protections of creative work.
Demystifying Blue Box Support to Agriculture Under the WTO: Implications for Developing Countries
Authors: Sharma Sachin Kumar , Dobhal Adeet , Agrawal Surabhi , Das Abhijit
Published: September 2021

Developing members at the WTO face a shrinkage in policy space for supporting their agricultural sector due to the limited room available under the provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Contrastingly, most developed members can provide high levels of product-specific support without breaching their commitments on account of their support entitlements. For some of these members, the so-called ‘Blue Box’ under the AoA, plays a pivotal role in expanding the policy space with respect to domestic support to agricultural products. Though a lot of scholarship has discussed and examined other support provisions under the AoA, the ‘Blue Box’ remains relatively shrouded in mystery. Testimony to this is the fact that although the Blue Box has found use amongst developed members, no developing member, except for China in 2016, has ever used the Blue Box to support their producers. Given the impasse in the Doha Round of negotiations and limited flexibilities available under the AoA, this paper examines the feasibility and compatibility Blue Box measures with developing members’ socio-economic situation. Findings of this paper bring to fore the variations in member practice and the operational flexibilities available in implementing Blue Box programmes to support agriculture.

JEL: F13, F14, F17, Q17