bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Can societal and ethical implications of precision microbiome engineering be applied to the built environment? A systematic review of the literature
Authors: Hardwick Andrew , Cummings Christopher , Graves Joseph , Kuzma Jennifer
Published: February 2024

The goal of engineering the microbiome of the built environment is to create places and spaces that are better for human health. Like other emerging technologies, engineering the microbiome of the built environment may bring considerable benefits but there has been a lack of exploration on its societal implication and how to engineer in an ethical way. To date, this topic area has also not been pulled together into a singular study for any systematic review or analysis. This study fills this gap by providing the first a systematic review of societal and ethical implications of engineering microbiomes and the application of this knowledge to engineering the microbiome of the built environment. To organize and guide our analysis, we invoked four major ethical principles (individual good/non-maleficence, collective good/beneficence, autonomy, and justice) as a framework for characterizing and categorizing 15 distinct themes that emerged from the literature. We argue that these different themes can be used to explain and predict the social and ethical implications of engineering the microbiome of the built environment that if addressed adequately can help to improve public health as this field further develops at global scales.
Moral sensitivity and the limits of artificial moral agents
Authors: Graff Joris
Published: February 2024

Machine ethics is the field that strives to develop ‘artificial moral agents’ (AMAs), artificial systems that can autonomously make moral decisions. Some authors have questioned the feasibility of machine ethics, by questioning whether artificial systems can possess moral competence, or the capacity to reach morally right decisions in various situations. This paper explores this question by drawing on the work of several moral philosophers (McDowell, Wiggins, Hampshire, and Nussbaum) who have characterised moral competence in a manner inspired by Aristotle. Although disparate in many ways, these philosophers all emphasise what may be called ‘moral sensitivity’ as a precondition for moral competence. Moral sensitivity is the uncodified, practical skill to recognise, in a range of situations, which features of the situations are morally relevant, and how they are relevant. This paper argues that the main types of AMAs currently proposed are incapable of full moral sensitivity. First, top-down AMAs that proceed from fixed rule-sets are too rigid to respond appropriately to the wide range of qualitatively unique factors that moral sensitivity gives access to. Second, bottom-up AMAs that learn moral behaviour from examples are at risk of generalising from these examples in undesirable ways, as they lack embedding in what Wittgenstein calls a ‘form of life’, which allows humans to appropriately learn from moral examples. The paper concludes that AMAs are unlikely to possess full moral competence, but closes by suggesting that they may still be feasible in restricted domains of public morality, where moral sensitivity plays a smaller role.
Oil or geopolitical issues? : Quantitative rethinking of political instability in the Middle East and North Africa
Authors: Fukutomi Mitsuhisa
Published: February 2024

The Middle East and North Africa are one of the most conflict-prone regions. Due to its geopolitical position and oil production, the Middle East has always been the trump card in the game, both before World War II and during the Cold War, still today. Why do wars persist in the Middle East? Why has the situation in the Middle East deteriorated to this extent? Is rentier economics always a vital variable explaining political instability in the Middle East? After empirically analyzing the causes of political instability in the Middle East using various data, the study suggests that the experience of being a colony of Britain, France, and Italy hurt society and that the critical geographic location between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War suffered various harmful effects. On the other hand, the result also shows that manufacturing weakness due to the oil economy, high unemployment rates, and lack of democracy are all critical explanatory variables for political instability. Since the 2000s, the United States has increased its energy self-sufficiency rate through the shale oil and gas revolution. The Middle East is an option for the United States to buy oil. On the other hand, the Middle East is essential for the United States to export weapons. The Middle East has faced a geopolitical crisis in recent years due to these factors.
Inhibition of Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Improves Chronic Ischemic Hippocampal Damage Associated with Suppression of IRE1α/TRAF2/ASK1/JNK-Dependent Apoptosis
Authors: Kang Kai , Chen Shu-Hui , Wang Da-Peng , Chen Feng
Published: February 2024

Chronic cerebral ischemia is a complex form of stress, of which the most common hemodynamic characteristic is chronic cerebral hypoperfusion (CCH). Lasting endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress can drive neurological disorders. Targeting ER stress shows potential neuroprotective effects against stroke. However, the role of ER stress in CCH pathological processes and the effects of targeting ER stress on brain ischemia are unclear. Here, a CCH rat model was established by bilateral common carotid artery occlusion. Rats were treated with 4-PBA, URB597, or both for 4 weeks. Neuronal morphological damage was detected using hematoxylin–eosin staining. The expression levels of the ER stress–ASK1 cascade-related proteins GRP78, IRE1α, TRAF2, CHOP, Caspase-12, ASK1, p-ASK1, JNK, and p-JNK were assessed by Western blot. The mRNA levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, and iNOS were assessed by RT-PCR. For oxygen–glucose deprivation experiments, mouse hippocampal HT22 neurons were used. Apoptosis of the hippocampus and HT22 cells was detected by TUNEL staining and Annexin V-FITC analysis, respectively. CCH evoked ER stress with increased expression of GRP78, IRE1α, TRAF2, CHOP, and Caspase-12. Co-immunoprecipitation experiments confirmed the interaction between TRAF2 and ASK1. ASK1/JNK signaling, inflammatory cytokines, and neuronal apoptosis were enhanced, accompanied by persistent ER stress; these were reversed by 4-PBA and URB597. Furthermore, the ASK1 inhibitor GS4997 and 4-PBA displayed synergistic anti-apoptotic effects in cells with oxygen–glucose deprivation. In summary, ER stress-induced apoptosis in CCH is associated with the IRE1α/TRAF2/ASK1/JNK signaling pathway. Targeting the ER stress–ASK1 cascade could be a novel therapeutic approach for ischemic cerebrovascular diseases.
Investigating Methods for ASPmT-Based Design Space Exploration in Evolutionary Product Design
Authors: Müller Luise , Wanko Philipp , Haubelt Christian , Schaub Torsten
Published: February 2024

Nowadays, product development is challenged by increasing system complexity and stringent time-to-market. To handle the demanding market requirements, knowledge from prior product generations is used to derive new, but partially similar product versions. The concept of product generation engineering, hence, allows manufacturers to release high-quality products within short development times. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel approach to evaluate the similarity of two product implementations based on the concept of the Hamming distance. This allows the usage of similarity information in various heuristics as well as in strategies and thus, to improve the product design process. In a wide set of cases, we investigate the quality and similarity of design points. In the experiments, the use of strategies leads to significantly short searching times, but also tends to be too restrictive in certain cases. Simultaneously, the quality of the solutions found in the heuristic design space exploration has been shown to be as good or better than for the search from scratch and considerably closer solutions as part of the non-dominated solution front have been found.
Live storage of kelp under stressful conditions led to higher iodine reductions during subsequent blanching
Authors: Blikra Marthe Jordbrekk , Skipnes Dagbjørn
Published: February 2024

Kelp growers and the food industry, as well as food researchers, are currently finding methods for controlling the iodine content of kelp intended for food as this is one of the major obstacles to entering a profitable market. Kelps are rich sources of dietary iodine since iodine is up-concentrated in algal tissue and utilized as an inorganic antioxidant during exposure to stress. As kelp contains much more iodine than any other food source, it is warranted to reduce the amount of iodine in the biomass prior to consumption, since both iodine deficiency and excess can cause health problems. Iodine is typically removed post-harvest using traditional methods such as blanching. In the present work, we attempted to utilize inherent stressors, i.e., intermediate storage (3 days) with high light exposure and low turnover of water, to reduce the iodine content prior to processing. Furthermore, we assessed the effect on subsequent blanching, comparing samples stored in tanks and not stored samples. The iodine content was slightly reduced when comparing storage to no storage, but in most cases not significantly so. However, after subsequent blanching, there was a pronounced added reduction for stored samples (87 % reduction) compared to not stored samples (80 % reduction). Although the differences are smaller than we expected, our research shows that using post-harvest intermediate storage of kelp may alter the iodine content post-processing. Fine-tuning the stressors and conditions could lead to new possibilities for iodine reduction.
Strands of connection: unraveling livestock grazing effects on orb-weaver spiders
Authors: Oyarzabal Guilherme , Guimarães Murilo
Published: February 2024

Studies on the effects of grazing disturbances in grasslands have shown mixed results for spider diversity, mainly regarding their guilds. While ungrazing, low, and moderate grazing potentially enhance the diversity of orb-weavers in spider communities, heavy grazing seems to reduce species’ richness. On the population level though, studies of orb-weavers are scarce, and the effects of grazing in natural grasslands are unknown. In this way, we investigated the effects of different grazing levels on population persistence of orb-weaver spiders, hypothesizing that low to intermediate disturbances benefit populations. We predict that high grazing, due to the removal of vegetation structure, will negatively affect the occupancy and abundance of orb-weavers. For that, we experimentally controlled grazing pressure and obtained population occurrence and counts of two orb-weaver spider species, Argiope argentata and Alpaida quadrilorata. We found that A. argentata was negatively affected by grazing, as it relies on higher vegetation for web-building. In contrast, A. quadrilorata, which occurs in cattle-resistant rosette plants, showed no effects of grazing. Implications for insect conservation: Our study emphasizes the need for balanced grazing practices and habitat conservation to protect orb-weaver spiders and other arthropods, as well as species-specific effects for species from the same guild, underscoring their ecological significance in maintaining ecosystem stability.
Technical language processing for Prognostics and Health Management: applying text similarity and topic modeling to maintenance work orders
Authors: Sundaram Sarvesh , Zeid Abe
Published: February 2024

Modern manufacturing paradigms have incorporated Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) to implement data-driven methods for fault detection, failure prediction, and assessment of system health. The maintenance operation has similarly benefitted from these advancements, and predictive maintenance is now being used across the industry. Despite these developments, most of the approaches in maintenance rely on numerical data from sensors and field devices for any sort of analysis. Text data from Maintenance Work Orders (MWOs) contain some of the most crucial information pertaining to the functioning of systems and components, but are still regarded as ‘black holes’, i.e., they store valuable data without being used in decision-making. The analysis of this data can help save time and costs in maintenance. While Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods have been very successful in understanding and examining text data from non-technical sources, progress in the analysis of technical text data has been limited. Non-technical text data are usually structured and consist of standardized vocabularies allowing the use of out-of-the-box language processing methods in their analysis. On the other hand, records from MWOs are often semi-structured or unstructured; and consist of complicated terminologies, technical jargon, and industry-specific abbreviations. Deploying traditional NLP to such data can result in an imprecise and flawed analysis which can be very costly. Owing to these challenges, we propose a Technical Language Processing (TLP) framework for PHM. To illustrate its capabilities, we use text data from MWOs of aircraft to address two scenarios. First, we predict corrective actions for new maintenance problems by comparing them with existing problems using syntactic and semantic textual similarity matching and evaluate the results with cosine similarity scores. In the second scenario, we identify and extract the most dominant topics and salient terms from the data using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Using the results, we are able to successfully link maintenance problems to standardized maintenance codes used in the aviation industry.
Microstructure evolution, dielectric response, and conduction mechanism of La1–xYxFeO3, (0 < x < 0.3) annealed perovskites synthesized via a sol–gel combustion technique
Authors: Ibrahim Ahmed H. , Mosaad S. , Elesh E.
Published: February 2024

The structural and dielectric characteristics of nano-crystalline La1−xYxFeO3, (0 < x < 0.3) perovskite samples synthesized through the citrate auto-combustion route were investigated. The findings of X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed that the synthesized perovskites exhibited a polycrystalline orthorhombic structure with a space group Pnma. Furthermore, the tolerance factor was indicative of the phase stability of the orthoferrite series. Based on the refined XRD data, the size of the crystallites was estimated to be between 11.9 and 18.5 nm using size-strain plots (SSP). To gain more insight into the crystal structure, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) was employed. The estimated size based on HRTEM calculations agreed with the XRD findings. The influence of annealing temperature on the frequency dependence of the dielectric response was thoroughly investigated for nano-crystalline La1−xYxFeO3 perovskites. The investigation took place at room temperature as well as different annealing temperatures, with a comprehensive frequency range of 50 Hz to ~ 2 MHz. The incorporation of Y3+ ions into LaFeO3 (LFO) has resulted in a significant enhancement of the dielectric constant values. This improvement is attributed to the successful integration of Y3+ ions, which have effectively modified the electrical properties of LFO. Furthermore, the annealing has been shown to enhance both the values of the dielectric constant, ε1(ω) and ε2(ω), which are critical parameters for electronic devices. Based on a power law response, the AC conductivity displays an increase with dopant concentration and frequency. Additionally, it has been noted that the activation energy value for LFOY30 is slightly reduced by 0.01 eV in comparison to pure LFO. The AC conductivity of LFOY30 was observed to increase with thermal annealing over the temperature range of 333 K to 463 K. This result confirms the occurrence of thermally activated conduction in the material. Based on this finding, LFOY30 is deemed appropriate for use in applications that require effective heat dissipation. The frequency exponent, s, decreases with increasing temperature from 0.87 to 0.56 for LFO and from 0.488 to 0.42 for LFOY30, respectively, which is associated with the correlated barrier hopping (CBH) model. The maximum barrier height (WM) was around 0.26 eV. The loss tangent (tanδ) variation was estimated as a function of frequency at different dopant concentrations and temperatures. Doping and annealing have been identified as appropriate measures for enhancing the electrical properties of the La1−xYxFeO3 system, thereby making it a useful material for electronic devices.
Anticipated Motives for Gambling Treatment in Adults from the U.S.
Authors: Grant Weinandy Jennifer T. , Connolly Alexander , Floyd Christopher , Kraus Shane W. , Grubbs Joshua B.
Published: February 2024

Prior works note that identifying problematic play is a leading barrier to treatment seeking, contributing to low treatment rates in those with gambling problems (e.g., Bijker et al., 2022; Suurvali et al., 2012a). While research has looked at treatment seekers’ motives for treatment (Gainsbury et al., 2014; Suurvali et al., 2012b), the situations or signs (anticipated motives) individuals look for that suggest they would need treatment in the future remains unknown. Participants were gamblers (N = 1,791) from a census-matched U.S. sample of adults who reported no concerns about their gambling. Participants completed questions assessing how much money they would have to lose while gambling to think they might have a problem and what factors might motivate them to pursue treatment for gambling problems in the future. Participants reported a wide range of financial loss that would suggest they had a problem, and higher income men who gambled more frequently reported higher necessary losses. There was little variation in endorsement (40–60%) of 14 situations that may lead them to seek treatment in the future (e.g., felt guilty). However, income, gender identity, and problem gambling behavior were linked to the endorsement of some of these anticipated motives, with some differences in endorsement between those engaging in high- and low-level problem gambling. Collectively, results are consistent with the inference that many individuals may not be aware of what problematic gambling would look like for them, though income, gender identity, and problem gambling behavior may impact their consideration of anticipated motives.
Reciprocal Relations Between Meaning in Life, Beneficence, and Psychological Needs for Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness: Evidence from a Three-Wave Longitudinal Study
Authors: Martela Frank , Unanue Jesús , Gómez Marcos , Unanue Wenceslao
Published: February 2024

Meaning in life has been established as a key factor of human well-being and flourishing. Beneficence and the three psychological needs of self-determination theory—﻿autonomy, competence, and relatedness—have all been individually studied as antecedents of meaningfulness. Yet, no previous research has examined them neither longitudinally nor simultaneously as predictors of meaning over time. In a three-wave longitudinal study in Chile (n: T1 = 1477, T2 = 820, T3 = 487) we examined the reciprocal relations between autonomy, competence, relatedness, beneficence, and meaning, using cross-lagged panel analysis. Taken individually, each of the four factors predicted meaning, and when entered simultaneously into the same model, competence, relatedness, and beneficence predicted meaning over time. Furthermore, we found that meaning predicted all four factors over time. Our results thus advance research on meaning in life by examining key predictors of it and showing that meaning itself predicts the same factors dynamically over time.
A minimal physiologically based pharmacokinetic model to study the combined effect of antibody size, charge, and binding affinity to FcRn/antigen on antibody pharmacokinetics
Authors: Patidar Krutika , Pillai Nikhil , Dhakal Saroj , Avery Lindsay B. , Mavroudis Panteleimon D.
Published: February 2024

Protein therapeutics have revolutionized the treatment of a wide range of diseases. While they have distinct physicochemical characteristics that influence their absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties, the relationship between the physicochemical properties and PK is still largely unknown. In this work we present a minimal physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (mPBPK) model that incorporates a multivariate quantitative relation between a therapeutic’s physicochemical parameters and its corresponding ADME properties. The model’s compound-specific input includes molecular weight, molecular size (Stoke’s radius), molecular charge, binding affinity to FcRn, and specific antigen affinity. Through derived and fitted empirical relationships, the model demonstrates the effect of these compound-specific properties on antibody disposition in both plasma and peripheral tissues using observed PK data in mice and humans. The mPBPK model applies the two-pore hypothesis to predict size-based clearance and exposure of full-length antibodies (150 kDa) and antibody fragments (50–100 kDa) within a onefold error. We quantitatively relate antibody charge and PK parameters like uptake rate, non-specific binding affinity, and volume of distribution to capture the relatively faster clearance of positively charged mAb as compared to negatively charged mAb. The model predicts the terminal plasma clearance of slightly positively and negatively charged antibody in humans within a onefold error. The mPBPK model presented in this work can be used to predict the target-mediated disposition of a drug when compound-specific and target-specific properties are known. To our knowledge, a combined effect of antibody weight, size, charge, FcRn, and antigen has not been incorporated and studied in a single mPBPK model previously. By conclusively incorporating and relating a multitude of protein’s physicochemical properties to observed PK, our mPBPK model aims to contribute as a platform approach in the early stages of drug development where many of these properties can be optimized to improve a molecule’s PK and ultimately its efficacy.
Forest fire, thinning, and flood in wildland-urban interface: UAV and lidar-based estimate of natural disaster impacts
Authors: Sankey Temuulen Ts. , Tango Lauren , Tatum Julia , Sankey Joel B.
Published: February 2024

Context

Wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas are facing increased forest fire risks and extreme precipitation events due to climate change, which can lead to post-fire flood events. The city of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, USA experienced WUI forest thinning, fire, and record rainfall events, which collectively contributed to large floods and damages to the urban neighborhoods and city infrastructure.

Objectives

We demonstrate multi-temporal, high resolution image applications from an unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) and terrestrial lidar in estimating landscape disturbance impacts within the WUI. Changes in forest vegetation and bare ground cover in WUIs are particularly challenging to estimate with coarse-resolution satellite images due to fine-scale landscape processes and changes that often result in mixed pixels.

Methods

Using Sentinel-2 satellite images, we document forest fire impacts and burn severity. Using 2016 and 2021 UAV multispectral images and Structure-from-Motion data, we estimate post-thinning changes in forest canopy cover, patch sizes, canopy height distribution, and bare ground cover. Using repeat lidar data within a smaller area of the watershed, we quantify geomorphic effects in the WUI associated with the fire and subsequent flooding.

Results

We document that thinning significantly reduced forest canopy cover, patch size, tree density, and mean canopy height resulting in substantially reduced active crown fire risks in the future. However, the thinning equipment ignited a forest fire, which burned the WUI at varying severity at the top of the watershed that drains into the city. Moderate-high severity burns occurred within 3 km of downtown Flagstaff threatening the WUI neighborhoods and the city. The upstream burned area then experienced 100-year and 200–500-year rainfall events, which resulted in large runoff-driven floods and sedimentation in the city.

Conclusion

We demonstrate that UAV high resolution images and photogrammetry combined with terrestrial lidar data provide detailed and accurate estimates of forest thinning and post-fire flood impacts, which could not be estimated from coarser-resolution satellite images. Communities around the world may need to prepare their WUIs for catastrophic fires and increase capacity to manage sediment-laden stormwater since both fires and extreme weather events are projected to increase.
Epigenetic modulation of myeloid cell functions in HIV and SARS-CoV-2 infection
Authors: Krause Carolyn , Bergmann Eva , Schmidt Susanne Viktoria
Published: February 2024

Myeloid cells play a vital role in innate immune responses as they recognize and phagocytose pathogens like viruses, present antigens, produce cytokines, recruit other immune cells to combat infections, and contribute to the attenuation of immune responses to restore homeostasis. Signal integration by pathogen recognition receptors enables myeloid cells to adapt their functions by a network of transcription factors and chromatin remodelers. This review provides a brief overview of the subtypes of myeloid cells and the main epigenetic regulation mechanisms. Special focus is placed on the epigenomic alterations in viral nucleic acids of HIV and SARS-CoV-2 along with the epigenetic changes in the host’s myeloid cell compartment. These changes are important as they lead to immune suppression and promote the progression of the disease. Finally, we highlight some promising examples of ‘epidrugs’ that modulate the epigenome of immune cells and could be used as therapeutics for viral infections.
Differential impact of high-salt levels in vitro and in vivo on macrophage core functions
Authors: Müller Linda , Nasr Aya Rafea , Jux Bettina , Makdissi Nikola , Trowbridge Justin Wayne , Schmidt Susanne V. , Schultze Joachim L. , Quast Thomas , Schulte-Schrepping Jonas , Kolanus Waldemar , Mass Elvira
Published: February 2024

The consumption of processed food is on the rise leading to huge intake of excess dietary salt, which strongly correlates with development of hypertension, often leading to cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart attack, as well as activation of the immune system. The effect of salt on macrophages is especially interesting as they are able to sense high sodium levels in tissues leading to transcriptional changes. In the skin, macrophages were shown to influence lymphatic vessel growth which, in turn, enables the transport of excess salt and thereby prevents the development of high blood pressure. Furthermore, salt storage in the skin has been linked to the onset of pro-inflammatory effector functions of macrophages in pathogen defence. However, there is only little known about the mechanisms which are involved in changing macrophage function to salt exposure. Here, we characterize the response of macrophages to excess salt both in vitro and in vivo. Our results validate and strengthen the notion that macrophages exhibit chemotactic migration in response to salt gradients in vitro. Furthermore, we demonstrate a reduction in phagocytosis and efferocytosis following acute salt challenge in vitro. While acute exposure to a high-salt diet in vivo has a less pronounced impact on macrophage core functions such as phagocytosis, our data indicate that prolonged salt challenge may exert a distinct effect on the function of macrophages. These findings suggest a potential role for excessive salt sensing by macrophages in the manifestation of diseases related to high-salt diets and explicitly highlight the need for in vivo work to decipher the physiologically relevant impact of excess salt on tissue and cell function.
LIGHT regulated gene expression in rheumatoid synovial fibroblasts
Authors: Fukuda Koji , Miura Yasushi , Maeda Toshihisa , Hayashi Shinya , Kikuchi Kenichi , Takashima Yoshinori , Matsumoto Tomoyuki , Kuroda Ryosuke
Published: February 2024

Background

Synovial hyperplasia caused by rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune inflammatory disease, leads to the destruction of the articular cartilage and bone. A member of the tumor necrosis factor superfamily, Lymphotoxin-related inducible ligand that competes for glycoprotein D binding to herpes virus entry mediator on T cells (LIGHT) has been shown to correlate with the pathogenesis of RA.

Methods

We used cDNA microarray analysis to compare the expression of genes in rheumatoid fibroblast-like synoviocytes with and without LIGHT stimulation.

Results

Significant changes in gene expression (P-values < 0.05 and fold change ≥ 2.0) were associated mainly with biological function categories of glycoprotein, glycosylation site as N-linked, plasma membrane part, integral to plasma membrane, intrinsic to plasma membrane, signal, plasma membrane, signal peptide, alternative splicing, and topological domain as extracellular.

Conclusions

Our results indicate that LIGHT may regulate the expression in RA-FLS of genes which are important in the differentiation of several cell types and in cellular functions.
Conv-Attention: A Low Computation Attention Calculation Method for Swin Transformer
Authors: Lou Zhehang , Luo Suyun , Huang Xiaoci , Wei Dan
Published: February 2024

Transformer networks have excellent performance in various different vision tasks, especially object detection. However, in practical applications, Transformer is difficult to use on-board due to its large computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a new approach for reducing the computation of self-attention, which is called conv-attention. Different from the work of self-attention, conv-attention is inspired by NetVLAD and adopts the probability obtained by soft classification to replace the similarity calculation between query and key. Moreover, we combine the three convolution operations for computing the attention matrix in order to reduce the computational effort. Using the Swin Transformer as a comparison, experiments show that the parameters and FLOPs are reduced by 15% and 16%. Meanwhile, MAP is improved in vehicle object detection, including both FILR and Nuscenses datasets.
Mycorrhizal fungi respiration dynamics in relation to gross primary production in a Hungarian dry grassland
Authors: De Luca Giulia , Papp Marianna , Fóti Szilvia , Posta Katalin , Mészáros Ádám , Pintér Krisztina , Nagy Zoltán , Péli Evelin Ramóna , Fekete Sándor , Balogh János
Published: February 2024

Aims

Soil respiration (Rs) is a complex process including a wide range of soil biota and pathways of carbon cycling, all being under the control of various drivers. The most important biotic driver is the photosynthetic activity of the vegetation providing supply mainly for the autotrophic component of Rs: roots and their symbiotic partners. The objective of this study was to describe the time-lagged relationship between gross primary production (GPP) and the mycorrhizal Rs component in order to determine the amount of carbon derived from GPP appearing as mycorrhizal respiration (Rmyc).

Methods

Measurements of Rs were conducted in three treatments - (i) undisturbed, root and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)-included (Rs), (ii) root-excluded (Rhet+myc) and (iii) root- and AMF-excluded (Rhet) plots - for three consecutive years in a Central-Hungarian dry sandy grassland. GPP data were derived from eddy-covariance measurements, while an automated system was used for continuous measurements of Rs. We analysed the relationship between Rmyc and GPP by using cross-correlation and by fitting sine wave models on the diel datasets.

Results

GPP was found to be the main driver of Rmyc, responding with an average time lag of 18 h. The greatest lags were detected during periods characterized by minimal photosynthetic activity, while lags were the smallest during active periods.

Conclusion

Based on the seasonal changes in the delay, we concluded that GPP and soil temperature had simultaneous effects on the diel pattern of CO2 emission of the different autotrophic components depending on the vegetation activity and environmental conditions.
The car-free journey to, and through, parenthood
Authors: Kent Jennifer L.
Published: February 2024

In the context of increasing urgency and interest in the need to reduce private car dependence, it is surprising that we know very little about people who choose to live without cars. This is particularly so for those living through life-stages, and in structural and cultural contexts, generally associated with private car use. Parenting children is one such life-stage. The common understanding is that the vulnerabilities and complexities associated with parenting are best attenuated by the autonomy, security and seclusion of the private car. Others, by choice or circumstance, parent by ‘altermobility’ – without the private car. Using data from in-depth interviews with car-free parents of young children in Sydney, Australia, this paper records how parents come to live without private cars in a city that is dominated by structures, cultures and expectations of private car use. It proposes travel trajectories based on past and present events, experiences and inclinations. In doing so, the paper exposes the sheer complexity of influences of the past on present and future mobility practices, calling into question linear understandings of travel socialisation and mobility biography research. Automobile childhoods, for example, do not necessarily produce car-dependent adults. And the onset of parenthood is not necessarily a time of increased private car attachment. In conclusion, the findings query assumptions about the impact of the early years of parenting on private car dependence, proposing that it is the child, not the infant, that cements the seemingly intractable bond between parenting and private car use.
How transformative are transformative agreements? Evidence from Germany across disciplines
Authors: Schmal W. Benedikt
Published: February 2024

Research institutions across the globe attempt to change the academic publishing system as digitization opens up new opportunities, and subscriptions to the large journal bundles of the leading publishers put library budgets under pressure. One approach is the negotiation of so-called transformative agreements. I study the ‘DEAL’ contracts between nearly all German research institutions and Springer Nature and Wiley. I investigate 6.1 million publications in 5,862 journals covering eight fields in the years 2016–2022 and apply a causal difference-in-differences design to identify whether the likelihood of a paper appearing in an eligible journal increases. The effect strongly depends on the discipline. While material science, chemistry, and economics s tend to hift towards these journals, all other disciplines in my sample do not react. Suggestive evidence hints at the market position of the encompassed publishers before the ‘DEAL’ was established: Springer Nature and Wiley appear to benefit more from the contracts in disciplines in which they possessed a higher market share ex ante. The transformative vigor of these agreements in terms of publication behavior seems to be limited. It and highlights that the developments in this intertwined market require further examination.
Positive Semiotics Construction: The Intersectionality of Fat Black Women, from fatphobia, Through Fat Appraisal to fat praise
Authors: Letouze Patrick , Mendes Dorkas Brandão
Published: February 2024

The intersectionality of fat black women has been in the cultural spotlight in recent years and a significant amount of them might feel invisible or even ask themselves why to exist. When one feels self-inexistence, an imagined reality reinforced by the world, sadness, depression, and anger install within a person. The imaginary inexistence is induced by the unaware shamelessness that others project in the ignored person, who feels being invisible, and being invisible in a digital world is to not exist. In this paper, we answer why they should exist. We approach the issue with Positive Semiotics on desirability based on Positive Psychology, which focuses on understanding and facilitating well-being. We propose a semiotic framework for the construction of positive meaning paving the way from fatphobia to fat praise, passing by fat appraisal, to promote the well-being of fat black women. The proposed framework is the Positive Semiotics Construction, which is simultaneously an individual and collective construction of meaning for well-being, with a Sign-System Functional Model applicable to the digital world. Furthermore, a semiotic approach to Law and Social Norms may understand norms as the ability to send and receive signals for cooperation, which derives from moral appraisals of and reactions to the behavior of others and ourselves, consequently forming the normative underpinning of Law. Hence, the Positive Semiotics Construction might impact normative values and influence Law affecting the language of a society.
Coordinated and uncoordinated punishment in a team investment game
Authors: Calabuig Vicente , Jiménez-Jiménez Natalia , Olcina Gonzalo , Rodriguez-Lara Ismael
Published: February 2024

Coordinated punishment occurs when punishment requires a specific number of punishers to be effective, otherwise, no damage will be inflicted on the target. While societies often rely on this punishment device, its benefits are unclear compared to uncoordinated punishment, where punishment decisions are substitutes. In this paper, we compare the efficacy of coordinated and uncoordinated punishment in a team investment game with two investors and one allocator. Our findings indicate that coordinated punishment results in higher levels of cooperation and reciprocity, as measured by the levels of joint investment and the return by allocators. Importantly, this does not translate into higher payoffs: investors use punishment more frequently when this is coordinated, which destroys the efficiency gains generated by the highest investment. In fact, our results suggest that the highest level of efficiency would be achieved if investors were not allowed to punish.
How Public Statues Wrong: Affective Artifacts and Affective Injustice
Authors: Archer Alfred
Published: February 2024

In what way might public statues wrong people? In recent years, philosophers have drawn on speech act theory to answer this question by arguing that statues constitute harmful or disrespectful forms of speech. My aim in this paper will be add a different theoretical perspective to this discussion. I will argue that while the speech act approach provides a useful starting point for thinking about what is wrong with public statues, we can get a fuller understanding of these wrongs by drawing on resources from recent work in situated affectivity. I will argue that public statues can be understood as affective artifacts and that this can both help us understand both the deep affective wrongs caused by public statues and offer a possible explanation as to why some people are so strongly opposed to their removal.
Evidencing the importance of the functional unit in comparative life cycle assessment of organic berry crops
Authors: Pérez Reina , Argüelles Fernando , Laca Amanda , Laca Adriana
Published: February 2024

LCA methodology provides the best framework to evaluate environmental impacts in agriculture systems. However, the interpretation of LCA results, in particular when the objective was to compare different production systems, could be affected by the selection of the functional unit (FU). That is why an accurate definition of the FU, in agreement with the function considered for the systems analysed, is essential. In this work, the organic production at small scale of blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and cape gooseberry in North Spain has been analysed following LCA methodology. Although a different distribution of environmental loads was obtained for each crop, in all cases, the main contributions to most of the considered environmental categories were electric and fertiliser consumptions. The different production systems have been compared on the basis of the environmental impacts associated considering different FUs, i.e. based on fruit mass, cultivated area, farm-gate price and nutritional quality of fruits. Carbon footprints (CF) have been also calculated. It was observed that the order of the crops with respect to their environmental performances was the same for the blueberry and raspberry crops (with the lowest and the highest CF, respectively), independently of the selected FU, whereas the order of the blackberry and cape gooseberry crops was interchanged, depending on the FU used. This work supports the need of being aware of the final objective of the orchards when choosing the FU (i.e. producing fruits, cultivating an area, economic benefits or nourishing people), so that valid conclusions can be achieved from the environmental comparison, even for different agricultural products.
Current trends and future directions of global research on wastewater to energy: a bibliometric analysis and review
Authors: Shi Zhining , Xing Ke , Rameezdeen Rameez , Chow Christopher W. K.
Published: February 2024

This paper presents a structured bibliometric analysis and review of the research publications recorded in the Web of Science database from 2000 to 2023 to methodically examine the landscape and development of the ‘wastewater to energy’ research field in relation to global trends, potential hotspots, and future research directions. The study highlights three main research themes in ‘wastewater to energy’, which are biogas production through anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge, methane generation from microbial wastewater treatment, and hydrogen production from biomass. The analysis reveals activated sludge, biochar, biomethane, biogas upgrading, hydrogen, and circular economy as key topics increasingly gaining momentum in recent research publications as well as representing potential future research directions. The findings also signify transformation to SDGs and circular economy practices, through the integration of on-site renewables and biogas upgrading for energy self-sufficiency, optimising energy recovery from wastewater treatment systems, and fostering research and innovation in ‘wastewater to energy’ supported by policy incentives. By shedding light on emerging trends, cross-cutting themes, and potential policy implications, this study contributes to informing both knowledge and practices of the ‘wastewater to energy’ research community.
Rational molecular design of efficient yellow-red dendrimer TADF for solution-processed OLEDs: a combined effect of substitution position and strength of the donors
Authors: Si Changfeng , Sun Dianming , Matulaitis Tomas , Cordes David B. , Slawin Alexandra M. Z. , Zysman-Colman Eli
Published: February 2024

The development of high-performance solution-processed red organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) remains a challenge, particularly in terms of maintaining efficiency at high luminance. Here, we designed and synthesized four novel orange-red thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) dendrimers that are solution-processable: 2GCzBP, 2DPACzBP, 2FBP2GCz and 2FBP2DPACz. We systematically investigated the effect of substitution position and strength of donors on the optoelectronic properties. The reverse intersystem crossing rate constant (kRISC) of the emitters having donors substituted at positions 11 and 12 of the dibenzo[a,c]phenazine (BP) is more than 10-times faster than that of compounds substituted having donors substituted at positions 3 and 6. Compound 2DPACzBP, containing stronger donors than 2GCzBP, exhibits a red-shifted emission and smaller singlet-triplet energy splitting, ΔEST, of 0.01 eV. The solution-processed OLED with 10 wt% 2DPACzBP doped in mCP emitted at 640 nm and showed a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQEmax) of 7.8%, which was effectively maintained out to a luminance of 1,000 cd m−2. Such a device∙s performance at relevant display luminance is among the highest for solution-processed red TADF OLEDs. The efficiency of the devices was improved significantly by using 4CzIPN as an assistant dopant in a hyperfluorescence (HF) configuration, where the 2DPACzBP HF device shows an EQEmax of 20.0% at λEL of 605 nm and remains high at 11.8% at a luminance of 1,000 cd m−2, which makes this device one of the highest efficiency orange-to-red HF SP-OLEDs to date.
Effects of tree size and organ age on variations in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus stoichiometry in Pinus koraiensis
Authors: Wang Yanjun , Jin Guangze , Liu Zhili
Published: February 2024

Carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) are of fundamental importance for growth and nutrient dynamics within plant organs and deserve more attention at regional to global scales. However, our knowledge of how these nutrients vary with tree size, organ age, or root order at the individual level remains limited. We determined C, N, and P contents and their stoichiometric ratios (i.e., nutrient traits) in needles, branches, and fine roots at different organ ages (0–3-year-old needles and branches) and root orders (1st–4th order roots) from 64 Pinus koraiensis of varying size (Diameter at breast height ranged from 0.3 to 100 cm) in northeast China. Soil factors were also measured. The results show that nutrient traits were regulated by tree size, organ age, or root order rather than soil factors. At a whole-plant level, nutrient traits decreased in needles and fine roots but increased in branches with tree size. At the organ level, age or root order had a negative effect on C, N, and P and a positive effect on stoichiometric ratios. Our results demonstrate that nutrient variations are closely related to organ-specific functions and ecophysiological processes at an individual level. It is suggested that the nutrient acquisition strategy by younger trees and organ fractions with higher nutrient content is for survival. Conversely, nutrient storage strategy in older trees and organ fractions are mainly for steady growth. Our results clarified the nutrient utilization strategies during tree and organ ontogeny and suggest that tree size and organ age or root order should be simultaneously considered to understand the complexities of nutrient variations.
A systematic approach for simulation-based dimensioning of production systems during the concept phase of factory planning
Authors: Schäfer Louis , Klenk Felix , Maier Tanja , Zehner Marie , Peukert Sina , Linzbach Roman , Treiber Tilman , Lanza Gisela
Published: February 2024

Due to increasing globalization, market penetration, and technological progress, more products are becoming highly standardized and interchangeable. This has led to fierce price competition, forcing companies to compete for declining margins. To remain competitive in the long term, it is essential to consider both changeability and profitability during the early planning phases. The article proposes an approach for simulation studies using discrete-event simulation during the concept phase of factory planning. This approach aims to systematically dimension production resources while considering alternative scaling options, such as a higher degree of automation. By doing so, the approach facilitates the demand-oriented deployment of resources during the ramp-up phase, which helps to control and reduce manufacturing costs. The simulation experiments yield scaling paths that indicate the timing and quantity of resources required to meet changing demands. These paths form the basis for subsequent factory planning steps. For instance, the layout can incorporate the necessary space for a future automation solution that will be profitable, enabling faster adaptation to demand changes and securing competitive advantages. This is demonstrated in a use case where the approach was applied to the factory planning of a new production system for a sensor product family.