bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genome wide association mapping for cadmium tolerance and accumulation in an Aus population
Authors: Adeosun Ayotunde A. , Price Adam H. , Norton Gareth J.
Published: September 2024

Rice consumption is a major exposure route of humans to cadmium, and cadmium also causes toxicity to rice plants. In this study the Bengal and Assam Aus Panel (BAAP) of rice was screened in hydroponics for cadmium tolerance and cadmium accumulation. Across the population, there were significant cultivar, treatment, and cultivar by treatment interactions for root and shoot length, and root, shoot and total dry weights. For treatment effects, the mean reductions caused by the cadmium treatment compared to control were 15%, 21%, 32%, 23% and 24% for root length, shoot length, root dry weight, shoot dry weight, and total dry weight respectively. Cultivars in the BAAP population displayed shoot cadmium concentrations in the range of 22–187 mg kg−1, with most of the rice cultivars having a cadmium concentration between 40 and 85 mg kg−1. GWA mapping identified 49 quantitative trait loci (QTL) across all traits, with 13 detected for more than one trait. Thirty-nine QTLs detected in this study were found to co-localise with previously identified QTLs for cadmium traits. A number of candidate genes for cadmium tolerance and accumulation were identified in these QTL regions. The QTL on chromosome 7 between 8.59 and 9.04 Mb contained both the candidate genes OsNRAMP1 and OsNRAMP5. The QTL on chromosome 6 at 29.20–29.73 Mb contained the candidate gene OsHMA2, while the QTL on chromosome 4 at 19.03 – 19.53 Mb contained the candidate gene OsHIPP29. The haplotype variation of these candidate genes is further explored in this study.
“Green guidance”: which interventions for which problems?
Authors: Rochat Shékina
Published: September 2024

Recently, career practitioners have been encouraged to help clients make career choices that are both environmentally and socially sustainable. However, to date, the career difficulties associated with this “green guidance” process have not been delineated. On the basis of the career development obstacles identified in the relevant literature, this article introduces a nonexhaustive typology of issues specific to the consideration of ecological and human factors in the context of career counseling. For each category of difficulty, examples are provided and practical suggestions are proposed. The contributions and limitations of this exercise are discussed, especially regarding its clarification of the role of career practitioners in promoting sustainability.
The environmental rule of law and the protection of human rights defenders: law, society, technology, and markets
Authors: Oral Elif
Published: September 2024

Environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) play a key role in the realization of the environmental rule of law and in strengthening social and ecological sustainability. States have the duty to protect and empower the EHRDs, while businesses, investors, and financial institutions also have responsibilities to respect human rights. Although the literature on human rights defenders is comprehensive, the article offers a theoretical analysis of the challenges facing the EHRDs by using Lawrence Lessig’s New Chicago School approach to explore the opportunities for bridging the gap between the theory and practice concerning the protection of EHRDs. The article endeavors to contribute to the literature by methodologically explaining the importance of legal regulation and State intervention for creating a safe and just space for the activities of the EHRDs. It demonstrates the effects of the four modalities in Lessig’s theory—i.e. the law, the social norms (culture), the architecture (technology), and the market—on the behavior of EHRDs, and ultimately on democracies while emphasizing the power of law as one of these modalities and being one of the imperative elements of the environmental rule of law. It argues that the adoption of international agreements, laws and policies regulating culture, technology, and markets, would empower civil society and encourage broad participation in the decision-making processes both within the States and the businesses to ensure accountable, transparent, and inclusive governance. It concludes that strengthened legal protection mechanisms for the rights of the rights’ defenders is an urgent need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the environmental rule of law.
Induction and the Principles of Love in Francis Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature
Authors: Belkind Ori
Published: September 2024

This paper presents a reading of Bacon’s Novum Organum and the inductive method he offers therein. According to this reading, Bacon’s induction is the search for forms that are necessary and sufficient for making simple natures present. Simple natures are observable qualities. However, in the paper we argue that forms can best be understood via Bacon’s appetitive physics, according to which particles and bodies are endowed with appetites or inclinations that lead to bodily transformations. We argue that this conceptual elaboration of the notion of form changes our understanding of Bacon’s inductive method. In fact, his inductive method is a reductive program designed to find, for each observable quality (or simple nature), the transformation or combination of transformations associated with its coming to being. The paper considers the textual evidence for this reading and argues for the benefits of this reading in relation to other, traditional interpretations.
New Chaotic Reality: Creative Writing Workshops for Long COVID Patients
Authors: Garland Ed
Published: September 2024

In a widely cited 2017 study, Robinson et al. (2017) found that ‘emotionally expressive’ writing makes physical wounds heal faster when compared to writing that did not engage the emotions. The Writing Long COVID project at Aberystwyth University engaged similar territory in a recent pilot study. Participants’ writing activities explored how literary production can affect a person’s experience of this new chronic condition, as well as contribute to our understanding of its symptoms. In this short essay, I show how we designed a course of short-duration online workshops that increased accessibility for people with Long COVID-related fatigue. I also argue that future Long COVID creative activities should let their timing, venue, content, and structure be influenced by the preferences of the Long COVID patient. The preliminary study suggests that the traditional parameters of the writing workshop, including its duration, could deter participation in potentially beneficial creative activities.
Calibration of a gamma ray Compton camera for radioactivity measurements
Authors: Chen-Mayer H. Heather , Sahin Dagistan , Remley Bryan , Brown Steven , Goodman David
Published: September 2024

A dual-plane Compton imaging detector previously developed for prompt gamma imaging has been further tested and calibrated for quantitative radioactivity determination, specifically to assess radioactive debris from a reactor fuel element. The debris piece contains uranium isotopes and several long-lived fission products, including cesium-137 (Cs-137). The detector consists of two pixelated planes of cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) crystals which record gamma ray events interacting within these volumes. In addition to the energy spectrum obtained by pulse height analysis, the time-stamped events from each detector pixel are sorted by location into 3 categories for post-processing: intra-plane, inter-plane, and coincidence. An image reconstruction software enables spatial localization of the select gamma ray peak(s) from the spectrum, thereby separating the gamma ray by specific isotopes. We used the camera to image a small piece of debris for demonstration purposes. A measurement was performed alongside a high purity germanium (HPGe) detector, which could determine the isotopes' absolute activities and be used as a reference for the camera. In addition, a known isotopic point source was used to calibrate the camera’s energy detection efficiency in the same measurement geometry, correlating the image pixel intensity to the isotopic activity.
Electrochemically assisted sol-gel deposition of bioactive gels for biomedical applications
Authors: Yoshioka Tomohiko , Miyamoto Naoki , Hayakawa Satoshi
Published: September 2024

So far, the sol-gel process has been available to prepare precursor gels of bioactive glasses with various compositions. In this report, we described a novel coating method of bioactive gels on a titanium substrate where the sol-gel transition is controlled by applying external electric fields. The application of a constant current of 10 mA/cm2 in an acidic sol containing pre-hydrolyzed tetraethoxysilane, calcium nitrate, and ammonium dihydrogen phosphate led to the deposition of gels on the titanium cathodes due to the generation of OH– by water electrolysis as a catalyst of the sol-gel transition. The obtained gels, which were characterized to be amorphous and consisted of Si, Ca, and P, covered the titanium substrates as a coating. The bioactivity of the gels deposited was confirmed by soaking in a simulated body fluid (SBF) up to 7 days, suggesting that the electrochemically assisted sol-gel process is promising for providing bioactive coatings on metallic implants.

Graphical Abstract
On an inequality of Lin, Kim and Hsieh and strong subadditivity
Authors: Carlen Eric A. , Loss Michael P.
Published: September 2024

We give an elementary proof of an inequality of Lin, Kim and Hsieh that implies strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy.
Binary act consequentialism
Authors: Gustafsson Johan E.
Published: September 2024

According to Act Consequentialism, an act is right if and only if its outcome is not worse than the outcome of any alternative to that act. This view, however, leads to deontic paradoxes if the alternatives to an act are all other acts that can be done in the situation. A typical response is to only apply this rightness criterion to maximally specific acts and to take the alternatives to a maximally specific act to be the other maximally specific acts that can be done in the situation. (This view can then be supplanted by a separate account for the rightness of acts that are not maximally specific.) This paper defends a rival view, Binary Act Consequentialism, where, for any voluntary act, that act is right if and only if its outcome is not worse than the outcome of not doing that act. Binary Act Consequentialism, which dates back to Jeremy Bentham, has few supporters. A number of seemingly powerful objections have been considered fatal. In this paper, I rebut these objections and put forward a positive argument for the view.
GLP-1 receptor agonists may enhance the effects of desmopressin in individuals with AVP deficiency: a case series and proposed mechanism
Authors: Nakhleh Afif , Shehadeh Naim , Mansour Bshara
Published: September 2024

Background

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) have diverse effects on sodium and water homeostasis. They decrease thirst perception, potentially inhibit arginine vasopressin (AVP) production, and induce natriuresis. We present three cases of AVP deficiency (AVP-D) where GLP-1 RA initiation led to desmopressin dose reduction.

Cases

Three patients with AVP-D on stable desmopressin therapy started GLP-1 RAs for type 2 diabetes mellitus or obesity. Following weight loss and decreased thirst, all patients reduced their desmopressin dose while maintaining normal thirst and urine output.

Discussion

GLP-1 RAs influence sodium and water homeostasis through various mechanisms. In individuals with intact AVP systems, GLP-1 RAs may directly suppress AVP production and induce natriuresis in the kidney leading to increased water excretion. In AVP-D, with exogenous desmopressin replacing endogenous AVP, the osmotic permeability of collecting ducts is primarily influenced by desmopressin dose. Thus, increased distal fluid delivery may allow for lower desmopressin doses to maintain water balance.

Conclusion

Our findings indicate a potential interaction between GLP-1 RAs and desmopressin in AVP-D. Clinicians should reassess desmopressin dosage upon initiating GLP-1 RA therapy.
Integrating NDVI and agronomic data to optimize the variable-rate nitrogen fertilization
Authors: Silvestri Nicola , Ercolini Leonardo , Grossi Nicola , Ruggeri Massimiliano
Published: September 2024

The success of Variable Rate Application (VRA) techniques is closely linked to the algorithm used to calculate the different fertilizer rates. In this study, we proposed an algorithm based on the integration between some estimated agronomic inputs and crop radiometric data acquired by using a multispectral sensor. Generally, VRA algorithms are evaluated by comparing the yields, but they can often be affected by factors acting in the final phase of the crop cycle and not dependent on the fertilization treatments. Therefore, we decided to compare our algorithm (ALG) versus the traditional application of fertilizer (TRD) by evaluating the crop growth 1.5 months after the fertilization time. The algorithm was tested on a sorghum crop under organic farming, managed with or without manure. The saving of N obtained with ALG was equal to 14 and 5 kg ha− 1 (-14 and − 10% for the non-manure and fertilized treatments, respectively). The NDVI values acquired after fertilization showed a remarkable reduction of relative standard deviation for ALG system (from 22 to 9% and from 34 to 14% for manured and not manured, respectively), which was not found for TRD system (from 16 to 17% and from 29 to 18% for manured and not manured, respectively). The above ground biomass produced was statistically equivalent for the two systems in the manured plots and significant higher for ALG in not-manured plots (+ 0.74 t ha− 1 of dm, equal to + 23%). Finally, the indices calculated to evaluate the Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) were consistently better in the ALG theses.
X-Phi and Theory Acceptance in Political Philosophy
Authors: Midtgaard Søren Flinch
Published: September 2024

What is the relevance of experimental philosophy (X-Phi) to theory acceptance in political philosophy? To answer this question, the paper distinguishes between four views, to wit: (i) X-Phi as a systematic method to avoid or reduce biases in our moral intuitions—The De-Biasing View; (ii) X-Phi as a tool for assessing the fruitfulness or consequences of various concepts—The Fruitfulness View; (iii) X-Phi as the best way to unearth the kind of moral principles we are interested in as political philosophers—The Unearthing Principles View; and (iv) X-Phi as a way of testing the coherence of principles with folk intuitions—The Defeasible Reason (or Squatters’ Rights) View. The paper argues that the first two views and the last—subject to some clarifications—describe important X-Phi contributions to theory acceptance as this is traditionally understood within contemporary political philosophy. In contrast, the third view goes too far in suggesting that X-Phi can supplant more traditional, in part non-empirical, methods.
Democratic Innovation Beyond Contestation: The Realist Case for Authorial Empowerment
Authors: Austrup Dominik
Published: September 2024

Liberal democracies face the challenge of elite capture. Mounting empirical evidence indicates that a small socioeconomic elite has vastly more influence on policy outcomes than ordinary citizens. In this essay, I explore how political reformers should address this issue by harnessing insights from the realist tradition in political theory. By placing empirics front and centre, I extrapolate two normative heuristics to guide democratic innovation. First, I maintain that reformers must increase the capacity of ordinary citizens to contest elite-biased political decisions—call this editorial empowerment. Second, ordinary citizens must be vested with additional law-making capacity to offset elite bias—call this authorial empowerment. While institutional innovations to advance the editorial power of ordinary citizens have been central to the realist debate on democratic innovation, authorial empowerment has not received adequate consideration. To address this shortcoming, I explore institutional mechanisms aimed at increasing the authorial capacity of ordinary citizens and assess their alignment with the broader realist vision of a new mixed regime.
Do research universities specialize in disciplines where they hold a competitive advantage?
Authors: Abramo Giovanni , Apponi Francesca , D’Angelo Ciriaco Andrea
Published: September 2024

Enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of national research systems is a top priority on the policy agendas of many countries. This study focuses on one aspect of the macroeconomic efficiency of research systems: whether research institutions specialize in scientific domains where they have a competitive advantage. To evaluate this, we developed a novel methodology. This methodology measures the scientific specialization indices of each organization in various research fields and assesses their relative research productivity. It then examines the correlation between these scores and between the resulting rankings. We applied this methodology to Italian universities. We found that a significant rank correlation between universities’ field specialization and their performance appears only in a few areas, and overall, the rankings are completely unrelated. Providing such data to research managers and policymakers can help inform strategies to enhance both micro- and macro-level efficiency.
Navigating Complexity: Potentials and Paradoxes Within Governance Strategies for Public and Third Sector Collaboration
Authors: Olvik Jannita
Published: September 2024

Contemporary governance increasingly emphasizes cross-sector collaboration to address complex societal challenges. This article examines how state strategies approach cross-sector collaborations involving the third sector, and delves into the interplay of authoritative, competitive, and collaborative governance strategies within these policies. Motivated by concerns about child poverty and social exclusion, the Declaration on Leisure Activities exemplifies Norway's reliance on partnerships between government, municipalities, and third sector organizations in the leisure and culture policy field. Employing a qualitative document analysis, the study reveals both potentials and paradoxes inherent in these approaches, offering valuable insights for designing effective cross-sector policies and navigating the complexities of cross-sector collaboration.
Variation in soil water content and groundwater levels across three land cover types in a floodplain of the Kromme catchment, South Africa
Authors: Jumbi Faith , Glenday Julia , Mazvimavi Dominic
Published: September 2024

Invasions of floodplains and riparian areas by alien woody species replacing predominantly herbaceous indigenous vegetation have altered the hydrological and ecosystem functioning in catchments. Although existing studies have examined changes in river flows following the establishment or clearing of alien woody vegetation, our understanding of impacts on soil water content and groundwater remains poor. Limited process knowledge restricts our capacity to reliably model and predict the impacts of land cover changes. As such, this work compared temporal variations in soil water content (SWC) and groundwater levels at three locations with different vegetation types: black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) trees, palmiet (Prionium serratum), and grass (dominated by Pennisetum clandestinum spp), within a floodplain site in the Kromme Catchment in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Soil water content and shallow groundwater levels (< 4 m below ground) were monitored from August 2017 to December 2019 using soil moisture probes and piezometers. Rainfall, vegetation type and antecedent conditions were identified as the major factors controlling observed responses. On average, soil water content and water retention were significantly higher (p < 0.05) at the palmiet site, whilst the wattle site had the lowest SWC among the three sites. Shallow groundwater levels were also higher at the palmiet and grass sites and lowest at the wattle site. Results showed the negative impacts of black wattle trees on SWC and groundwater levels. These results are crucial for improved quantitative predictive capacity which would allow for better catchment management, for example, informing water supply planning and guiding restoration programs focusing on alien plant clearing.
Enhanced Remediation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Soil Through Fungal Delignification Strategy and Organic Waste Amendment: A Review
Authors: Omoni Victor Taghoghor , Bankole Paul Olusegun , Semple Kirk Taylor , Ojo Adesola Samson , Ibeto Cynthia , Okekporo Stephen Efe , Harrison Idorenyin Ambrose
Published: September 2024

Nutrient-limited soils from growing global contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the massive organic waste generation from agro-based and food industries have raised more demand for exploring and recycling the latter as sustainable, cost-effective, and green nutrient-rich sources for soil amendment. To further enhanced the potentials of these substrates in soil, immobilisation or biological pre-treatment techniques using fungi are employed. The white-rot fungi- basidiomycetes, are the most widely researched and efficient organisms to perform these functions because of their high lignin-degrading ability for organic materials, such as corn cob, straws, spent brewery grains, sugarcane bagasse, etc. This review addresses the importance of organic amendment to enhance the biodegradation efficiency of PAH from contaminated soils and it also highlights various biological techniques for improving PAH biodegradation using organic waste materials and white-rot basidiomycetes. This review will also show a better understanding of the concepts of fungal immobilisation and pre-treatment for PAH degradation in soil and show their insights as feasible and optimise techniques for developing remedial strategies for contaminated soils.
Isotropic Growth on Cartesian Voxel Grids with von Neumann Neighborhoods for Rapid Generation of Synthetic Microstructures
Authors: Payton E. J. , Coutinho Y. A. , Gerlt A. R. C. , Simmons J. P. , Gonzales M. , Semiatin S. L.
Published: September 2024

Randomized instantiations of synthetic microstructures are needed to assess the statistical significance of microstructure variability. Algorithms that use Voronoi tessellations of random points produce synthetic polycrystalline microstructures with a less realistic appearance than random packing of spheroidal particles followed by growth-until-impingement. Additionally, Voronoi tessellations offer limited control of morphological parameters and are challenging to implement when the desired volume fraction is less than unity. However, unless additional physics-based constraints are applied, growth on a Cartesian voxel grid utilizing a von Neumann neighborhood element results in anisotropic growth that is generally not observable along the primary axes. The present work describes both analytical and empirically optimized corrections for directional growth rates and a framework for their inclusion in a synthetic microstructure generation algorithm. The presented algorithm can produce synthetic microstructures similar to those produced by random seed Monte Carlo techniques in a fraction of the computational time.
Changing Medical Student Perceptions of Mental Illness Through a Psychiatry Clinical Clerkship: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study
Authors: Manley Amy E. , Biddle Lucy , Savović Jelena , Moran Paul
Published: September 2024

Objective

This study sought to understand whether perceptions of mental illness change during the course of students’ psychiatry clerkships, and what facilitates such change.

Methods

Using a longitudinal qualitative study design, the authors followed up 14 medical students, interviewing them before, during, and after their psychiatric clerkship.

Results

Prior to clerkships, students perceived psychiatric patients to be dangerous, fragile, hard to treat, and to exert a disproportionate emotional toll on clinicians. Stigma was reinforced by safety measures including the provision of alarms, but this improved following “real life” engagement with patients. Students experienced little emotional distress from clinical contacts, particularly those where they led the consultation. Pre-existing beliefs about mental illness being hard to “fix” showed less change over time. Although uncommon, when staff referred to patients using pejorative language, students emulated these negative attitudes.

Conclusions

Among medical students, direct patient contact plays an important role in counteracting pre-existing negative attitudes towards mental illness. This can be facilitated by supportive supervisors, clinical teams allocating students a clear practical role, involving patients in teaching, and roleplay to alleviate potential concerns about seeing patients.
Dual-Mode Colorimetric and Fluorescent Detection of Tumor Cells Based on Gold Nanoparticles-Loaded Phosphine Covalent Organic Frameworks
Authors: Li Bilian , Zhou Min , Zhao Chun , Xiao Lin , Qi Tianle , Xu Hanbin , Guo Linjiang , Ning Guobao , Lu Xiaokang , Zhu Keming , Zhao Hui , Li Can-Peng
Published: September 2024

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are important markers for cancer. The part of tumor cells that are detached from the primary tumor or metastatic tumor and enter the blood circulation is called CTCs. It is crucial to develop a rapid, accurate, and easy-to-implement diagnostic system for CTCs for early tumor diagnosis and for monitoring progression of the disease. In this work, we reported a colorimetric and fluorescent dual-mode assay for the detection of CTCs. Our assay used magnetic nanoparticles and aptamer for CTCs capture and gold nanoparticles-loaded covalent organic frameworks (Au@COFs) for signal amplification, respectively. The magnetic nanoparticles were modified with folic acid to capture CTCs by interaction between folic acid and the folate receptor overexpressed on the surface of tumor cells. The covalent organic frameworks were engineered to have both nitro-reductase-like and glucose–oxidase-like activities. The nitro-reductase-like activity converted the substrate p-nitrophenol to p-nitroaniline for colorimetric detection, and the glucose-oxidase-like activity enabled fluorescence detection. Specifically, Au@COFs catalyzed glucose oxidation and generated hydrogen peroxide to oxidize Fe2+ to Fe3+, which converted MIL(Al)-MOF to MIL(Fe)-MOF through ion exchange, resulting in the fluorescence quenching of MIL(Al)-MOF. Our assay showed high sensitivity with a detection limit of 17 cells/mL using MCF-7 cells as model cancer cells. This work provided an efficient and ultrasensitive strategy for CTCs detection and has potential applications in cancer identification and diagnosis. Dual-mode detection system, combining colorimetric and fluorescent signals, integration of magnetic nanoparticles and aptamers for CTC capture, and utilization of covalent organic frameworks loaded with gold nanoparticles for signal amplification can improve sensitivity and accuracy.
Leaders’ perceptions of digitalisation in K–12 education: influencing arrangements for leading the expansion of digital technologies
Authors: Reis-Andersson Jussara
Published: September 2024

This paper aims to contribute knowledge about the influences of leaders’ perceptions of digitalisation on arrangements for leading the expansion of access to and application of digital technologies in K–12 education. Supporting the digitalisation of K–12 education requires digital competence. School organisers’ and school leaders’ digital competence and perceptions of digitalisation contribute to how digital technologies are employed in schools. Survey and participant observations were used to investigate leaders’ perceptions of digitalisation in K–12 education. The data were analysed using thematic analysis and theory of practice architecture. The results show that perceptions of digitalisation in K–12 education influence arrangements by allowing opportunities for enhanced quality in teaching and equality within and among schools. Further, collaborations between leaders, sharing ideas and experiences, and enhancing leadership are elements that contribute to the shaping of leaders’ perceptions of digitalisation in schools. This paper contributes to the knowledge of leaders’ perceptions of expanding the access to and application of digital technologies in schools.
Antibiotic utilization trends in Veterans Affairs patients with Stenotrophomonas maltophilia bloodstream infections
Authors: Lee Clara H. , Patel Ursula C. , Vivo Amanda , Cao Lishan , Evans Charlesnika T.
Published: September 2024

Objective:

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is a multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacillus that can cause serious infections but has limited treatment options. This study aims to establish trends in the treatment of S. maltophilia bloodstream infections (BSI) across the United States in Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities.

Methods:

Data was evaluated over a 10-year timeframe (2012 to 2021) in this retrospective cohort study. Veterans with ≥ 1 blood culture with S. maltophilia within a VA medical encounter were included. Microbiology, pharmacy, and patient information were collected through national VA data sources and chart review. Descriptive statistics and Poisson regression were used to summarize patient demographics, facility characteristics, microbiologic data, and treatment trends.

Results:

A total of 374 blood cultures positive for S. maltophilia were identified across 75 VA facilities. Of 282 unique patients with BSI, the majority were male (93.6%), white (67.4%), with a mean age of 64 ± 13.1 years. Of those patients, 78% received treatment, 12.8% had a polymicrobial blood culture, and 5.3% had a documented sulfa allergy. Susceptibility results were most reported for trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX), levofloxacin, and ceftazidime, with 4.5%, 4.3%, and 44.4% resistant isolates, respectively. Antibiotics most prescribed included TMP-SMX (41.5%) and levofloxacin (39.4%), followed by ciprofloxacin (13.8%) and ceftazidime (12.4%). Combination therapy was prescribed in 33% of patients. No significant trends were found with antibiotic utilization over time.

Conclusions:

TMP-SMX and levofloxacin were the most prescribed antibiotics for S. maltophilia BSI treatment. No significant changes were seen with antibiotic prescribing trends in Veterans from 2012 to 2021.
Procedural risk factors for deep and organ/space surgical site infection post-coronary artery bypass graft surgery
Authors: Pearl Abarna , Gordon Patrick S. , Feeser Baevin S. , Pepe Dana E. , Mehrotra Preeti , Wright Sharon B.
Published: September 2024

In this study, we examined the impact of the number and type of arterial grafts, and surgical dressing type, on deep and organ/space surgical site infection following coronary artery bypass graft procedures. Bilateral internal mammary artery grafts and negative pressure wound therapy were associated with higher odds of infection.
When Is it Right to Speak of Animal Rights?
Authors: McConnell Lee
Published: September 2024

This article examines the ways in which the language of legal rights is invoked by those seeking to improve the treatment of animals. Drawing from a range of analytical, realist, and critical legal and social theorists, it argues that certain argumentative techniques commonly employed to justify the extension of legal rights to animals may serve to strengthen and reproduce the very forms of exploitation they seek to challenge. The article begins by identifying and critiquing the binary characterisation of rights/welfare and property/personality in liberal animal law scholarship. It then employs the insights of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin to expose and critique various appeals to an ‘exterior’ or ‘extra-legal’ domain which functions to stabilise the meaning of these doctrinal categories. In doing so, it explores the strategic viability of rights discourse in the animal advocacy movement with a view to highlighting the limitations of liberal constructions of animal rights.
Moral Pluralism and Constitutional Horizontality
Authors: Kohavi Tom
Published: September 2024

Despite the growing influence of constitutional rights over the regulation of horizontal (private) relations, many aspects of this trend remain under-theorized. This article criticizes four ideal-typical constitutional horizontality models for failing to accommodate moral reasons that must shape this regulatory practice: the state action model ignores basic consequentialist aspects of political morality; the direct application model ignores basic relational aspects of interpersonal morality; the strong indirect model recognizes both but subordinates the latter to the former; and the partitioned indirect model recognizes both but separates them too strongly. This article claims that a composite indirect model, which reflects basic features of the common law, can better realize constitutional rights through private law in conditions of moral pluralism: it can expose private law to constitutional rights-based and reform-oriented scrutiny without ignoring, eroding, or distorting the unique normativity of private relations and practices or their underlying values.
Bishop–Jones’ theorem and the ergodic limit set
Authors: CAVALLUCCI NICOLA
Published: September 2024

For a proper, Gromov-hyperbolic metric space and a discrete, non-elementary, group of isometries, we define a natural subset of the limit set at infinity of the group called the ergodic limit set. The name is motivated by the fact that every ergodic measure which is invariant for the geodesic flow on the quotient metric space is concentrated on geodesics with endpoints belonging to the ergodic limit set. We refine the classical Bishop–Jones theorem proving that the packing dimension of the ergodic limit set coincides with the critical exponent of the group.
Bounds on multiplicities of symmetric pairs of finite groups
Authors: Aizenbud Avraham , Avni Nir
Published: September 2024

Let

$\Gamma $

be a finite group, let

$\theta $

be an involution of

$\Gamma $

and let

$\rho $

be an irreducible complex representation of

$\Gamma $

. We bound

${\operatorname {dim}} \rho ^{\Gamma ^{\theta }}$

in terms of the smallest dimension of a faithful

$\mathbb {F}_p$

-representation of

$\Gamma /\operatorname {\mathrm {Rad}}_p(\Gamma )$

, where p is any odd prime and

$\operatorname {\mathrm {Rad}}_p(\Gamma )$

is the maximal normal p-subgroup of

$\Gamma $

.

This implies, in particular, that if

$\mathbf {G}$

is a group scheme over

$\mathbb {Z}$

and

$\theta $

is an involution of

$\mathbf {G}$

, then the multiplicity of any irreducible representation in

$C^\infty \left( \mathbf {G}(\mathbb {Z}_p)/ \mathbf {G} ^{\theta }(\mathbb {Z}_p) \right)$

is bounded, uniformly in p.
Taxation without Indemnification
Authors: Michney Todd M.
Published: September 2024

Whether by reevaluating previously underappreciated factors or by uncovering new source material, historical scholarship occasionally makes immediate and simultaneous interventions in both academic and public-facing conversations.1 Andrew Kahrl's The Black Tax is one such work, and actually accomplishes these two tasks admirably. In the last two decades, scholars have investigated African American ownership of real property in land and homes, as well as the ways that governmental and private actors, policies, and practices have impaired Black people's ability to acquire and accumulate wealth in this country.2 This body of scholarship, alongside the work of public intellectuals, has served to jumpstart discussion around the issue of reparations.3 Prior to the release of Kahrl's illustrious book, however, no one had identified property taxes as lying at the very center of race-based structural inequality.4
The Problem and the Solution: Centering Taxation in the History of Civil Rights
Authors: Chatelain Marcia
Published: September 2024

When African-American history is done well, it allows us to see the places where inequality hides. Scholars in the areas of the history of capitalism, African-American history, and urban studies have popularized the language of historical phenomena such as white flight, redlining, and privatization, in the process of explaining the origins of contemporary challenges. A reasonably educated person understands that deindustrialization at mid-century led to job losses. Every May, pundits write essays about the failure to equalize schools as the nation memorializes the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Popular journalists Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nicole Hannah-Jones owe their careers to their study of historical work in order to leverage public-facing conversations from reparations for slavery to the politicization of the teaching of civil rights. Essentially, good history helps us search for the state practices and policies that soften the blow of inequality, assault human dignity, and normalize poverty. In his deeply researched and thoughtfully written book The Black Tax, Andrew Kahrl addresses another obscure mechanism that has historically worked to dispossess and disadvantage African Americans across regions and generations, and has ensnarled both landowners and tenants. Kahrl's book forces readers and scholars to think about the ways that a lack of federal authority and will to protect Black citizens allowed states and municipalities to assess, tax, and place liens on Black property—from vacant plots to farm land to family homes.
Localized Racism, Legalized Theft, and the Long Dispossession of U.S. Cities
Authors: Walsh Camille
Published: September 2024

Andrew Kahrl's The Black Tax is a sweeping and insightful history of the local property tax in the United States from Reconstruction onward that speaks eloquently to urban history, tax history, and histories of capitalism and race in the United States. Kahrl exposes the relentless process of dispossession and exploitation, captive taxpayers and fiscal apartheid within the local property tax that has overtaxed Black Americans by over $275 billion, cost $326 billion in land loss, and created a generational wealth difference compounded into trillions. But Kahrl is not focused only on individual loss or even community dispossession, but on entrenched systems of legalized theft built into the local property tax that have reinforced themselves over time through the most localized bureaucratic subjectivity and bias, such that poor cities are now left with few fiscally sustaining options other than preying on their poorest citizens.
Should we stay silent on violence? An ensemble approach to detect violent incidents in Spanish social media texts
Authors: Sharma Deepawali , Gupta Vedika , Singh Vivek Kumar , Pinto David
Published: September 2024

There has been a steep rise in user-generated content on the Web and social media platforms during the last few years. While the ease of content creation allows anyone to create content, at the same time it is difficult to monitor and control the spread of detrimental content. Recent research in natural language processing and machine learning has shown some hope for the purpose. Approaches and methods are now being developed for the automatic flagging of problematic textual content, namely hate speech, cyberbullying, or fake news, though mostly for English language texts. This paper presents an algorithmic approach based on deep learning models for the detection of violent incidents from tweets in the Spanish language (binary classification) and categorizes them further into five classes – accident, homicide, theft, kidnapping, and none (multi-label classification). The performance is evaluated on the recently shared benchmark dataset, and it is found that the proposed approach outperforms the various deep learning models, with a weighted average precision, recall, and F1-score of 0.82, 0.81, and 0.80, respectively, for the binary classification. Similarly, for the multi-label classification, the proposed model reports weighted average precision, recall, and F1-score of 0.54, 0.79, and 0.64, respectively, which is also superior to the existing results reported in the literature. The study, thus, presents meaningful contribution to detection of violent incidents in Spanish language social media posts.
CoAT: Corpus of artificial texts
Authors: Shamardina Tatiana , Saidov Marat , Fenogenova Alena , Tumanov Aleksandr , Zemlyakova Alina , Lebedeva Anna , Gryaznova Ekaterina , Shavrina Tatiana , Mikhailov Vladislav , Artemova Ekaterina
Published: September 2024

With recent advances in natural language generation, risks associated with the rapid proliferation and misuse of generative language models for malicious purposes steadily increase. Artificial text detection (ATD) has emerged to develop resources and computational methods to mitigate these risks, such as generating fake news and scientific article reviews. This paper introduces corpus of artificial texts (CoAT), a large-scale corpus of human-written and generated texts for the Russian language. CoAT spans six domains and comprises outputs from 13 text generation models (TGMs), which differ in the number of parameters, architectural choices, pre-training objectives, and downstream applications. We detail the data collection methodology, conduct a linguistic analysis of the corpus, and present a detailed analysis of the ATD experiments with widely used artificial text detectors. The results demonstrate that the detectors perform well on the seen TGMs, but fail to generalise to unseen TGMs and domains. We also find it challenging to identify the author of the given text, and human annotators significantly underperform the detectors. We release CoAT, the codebase, two ATD leaderboards, and other materials used in the paper.
Dialogue agents 101: a beginner’s guide to critical ingredients for designing effective conversational systems
Authors: Kumar Shivani , Bhatia Sumit , Aggarwal Milan , Chakraborty Tanmoy
Published: September 2024

Sharing ideas through communication with peers is the primary mode of human interaction. Consequently, extensive research has been conducted in the area of conversational AI, leading to an increase in the availability and diversity of conversational tasks, datasets, and methods. However, with numerous tasks being explored simultaneously, the current landscape of conversational AI has become fragmented. Consequently, initiating a well-thought-out model for a dialogue agent can pose significant challenges for a practitioner. Toward highlighting the critical ingredients needed for a practitioner to design a dialogue agent from scratch, the current study provides a comprehensive overview of the primary characteristics of a dialogue agent, the supporting tasks, their corresponding open-domain datasets, and the methods used to benchmark these datasets. We observe that different methods have been used to tackle distinct dialogue tasks. However, building separate models for each task is costly and does not leverage the correlation among the several tasks of a dialogue agent. As a result, recent trends suggest a shift toward building unified foundation models. To this end, we proposeUnit, a Unified dialogue dataset constructed from conversations of varying datasets for different dialogue tasks capturing the nuances for each of them. We then train a Unified dialogue foundation model, GPT-2$^{\textrm{U}}$and present a concise comparative performance of GPT-2$^{\textrm{U}}$against existing large language models. We also examine the evaluation strategies used to measure the performance of dialogue agents and highlight the scope for future research in the area of conversational AI with a thorough discussion of popular models such as ChatGPT.
Reflections on Women in Music
Authors: WOLLENBERG SUSAN
Published: September 2024

Four substantial volumes dedicated to women in music, all published within the past couple of years, give welcome indication of the continuing growth of this area of study.1 Following some general background, I first survey the books, then consider each individually. That I select chapters to discuss in detail does not mean that others would not deserve comparable attention. I can give only a glimpse of the riches these books contain.
Multi-stakeholder identification and prioritization of human–tiger conflict reduction measures in Chitwan National Park, Nepal
Authors: Dhungana Rajendra , Maraseni Tek , Allen Benjamin L. , Kandel Ram Chandra , Koirala Pashupati Nath , Pant Ganesh , Ranabhat Rishi
Published: September 2024

The identification and implementation of conflict reduction measures are necessary to reduce predator attacks on people and livestock and to minimize human encroachment into predator habitats. We identified potential human–tiger conflict reduction measures and prioritized these measures for Chitwan National Park, Nepal. We identified these measures through a literature review, key informant interviews and a local stakeholder workshop. We prioritized the identified measures using a questionnaire survey of victims of tiger attacks (farmers, forest users and fishers), beneficiaries of tiger conservation (tourist guides, Jeep and elephant safari operators, tour and hotel operators and business operators) and National Park managers. We identified 22 measures (12 preventative, five reactive and five mitigative) as having potential for reducing negative interactions between people and tigers. Amongst these, we identified compensation payments, tiger-proof fences and habitat and prey management as high-priority measures. Conflict reduction priorities also varied amongst stakeholder groups. The victims assigned the highest priority to the construction of tiger-proof fences, whereas beneficiaries identified the management of habitat and prey as their highest priority. Compensation payments were the first preference of National Park managers and were amongst the top two priorities of all stakeholder groups. We recommend the adoption of the identified stakeholder priorities for reducing human–tiger conflict around Chitwan National Park and encourage consideration of the variations in priorities between stakeholder groups during policy development and decision-making.