bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Inference to the Best Explanation, Relative Plausibility, and Probability
Authors: Allen Ronald J. , Pardo Michael S.
Published: November 2021

In many areas of life, from hard science to managing one’s everyday affairs, explanatory considerations help to guide inference. From the fact that some proposition would explain a given phenomenon we infer that the proposition is true. And when several propositions may explain a given phenomenon we infer the one that best explains it. Inferences all share the same structure, typically referred to as “abduction” or “inference to the best explanation.” Because legal proof falls somewhere between science and managing one’s everyday affairs, it should perhaps not be surprising that the juridical proof process involves similar inferential practices. This chapter juxtaposes an explanation-based account of juridical proof against different probability accounts, develops an argument about the descriptive superiority of the explanation-based account over its competitors, and sets forth the theoretical and practical implications of this argument.
Generalizations and Reference Classes
Authors: Pardo Michael S. , Allen Ronald J.
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the implications of the reference-class problem for attempts to model the probative value of evidence in mathematical terms. This examination makes three distinct contributions to evidence scholarship. First, and most importantly, it articulates and explains the problematic relationship between algorithmic tools and legal decision-making. Second, it points out serious pitfalls to be avoided for analytical or empirical studies of juridical proof. Third, it indicates when algorithmic tools may be more or less useful in the evidentiary process. As such, the chapter offers yet another demonstration of the very complex set of relationships involving human knowledge and rationality, on the one hand, and attempts to reduce either to a set of formal concepts, on the other.
Images, Text, and Emotions
Authors: Castelló Itziar , Barberá-Tomás David , de Bakker Frank G. A.
Published: November 2021

Organizations are increasingly communicating online with their key stakeholders. Chats on social media platforms, videos, and online meetings constitute key spaces for strategy communication and for the legitimation of organizations and their activities. In these digital spaces, emotions play an important role in conveying messages and convincing people to enact change. This chapter explains how strategic communication in multimodal spaces such as online communication platforms could be enhanced through emotion-symbolic work. Emotion-symbolic work involves using both text and visuals to transform negative emotions into positive ones in order to facilitate the enactment of a strategy. The chapter also discusses how multimodality, that is textual discourse to accompany visual images, can guide emotion-symbolic work and then reviews the characteristics of social media and communication platforms and the challenges and opportunities of studying emotion-symbolic work in online platforms The chapter concludes by discussing opportunities for further research.
After Vanity Metrics
Authors: Rogers Richard
Published: November 2021

‘Vanity metrics,’ as they are critically termed, measure the performative work an individual carries out on social media. Posting on social media and subsequently displaying and maintaining like, view, and follow counts have been critiqued as both distracting modes of engagement as well as performance in a ‘success theater’. The notion of vanity metrics additionally implies how one may consider reworking the metrics. In an undertaking he calls ‘critical analytics’, the author proposes an alternative metrics project akin to altmetrics in science but utilized instead to measure actor activity around social issues and causes in social media. Critical analytics are means to analyse dominant voice, concern, commitment, positioning, and alignment of actors using social media to work on social issues and causes, seeking to contribute a conceptual and applied research agenda to orient the study of social media use and activity metrics.
Cat Thinking
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

Cat Thinking explains our love of all things digital. Our hormone-driven love of technology overrides objective thinking. Thinking computers are wonderful, we feel we don’t need to worry about looking for rigorous evidence that they are safe and effective.
Swiss Cheese
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

Swiss Cheese famously has holes, which can represent the holes and oversights that lead to harm. The Swiss Cheese Model has become a powerful way to help think more clearly about errors and harm.
Victims and second victims
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

When patients are harmed, staff often get blamed — especially when nobody realizes how digital systems go wrong and create the problems.
Medical apps and bug blocking
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

Medical apps are very popular, but they are as prone to bugs as any other digital system. This chapter gives some typical examples and begins to suggest solutions. Like all digital healthcare, apps could be designed to block bugs and avoid the harms that follow.
Human Factors
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

Understanding how humans make mistakes in predictable ways is the first step towards making fewer mistakes. This applies to clinicians, and most especially to programmers — whose mistakes end up as bugs affecting thousands of users.
The pivotal pandemic?
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

The horrific COVID-19 pandemic has forced healthcare systems to innovate in digital health. Some changes have been amazing, liberating patients and protecting healthcare staff — but some have been rather worrying. What can we learn?
Healthcare Openness and Acknowledgments
Authors: Thimbleby Harold
Published: November 2021

Traditional healthcare views of confidentiality are challenged by digital healthcare. This chapter also includes heart-felt thanks to all the patients and healthcare staff and others who’ve told their stories and brought this book to life.
International Human Rights Litigation in the United States
Authors: Hoffman Paul
Published: November 2021

Paul Hoffman reviews the position in the United States regarding the imposition of liability on multinationals for human rights abuses occurring overseas. He focuses on corporate complicity cases brought under the Alien Tort Statute over the past 25 years. By reference to key decisions, he charts the development of the law which had had initially held out considerable promise for human rights victims but which has been gradually whittled away by decisions such as Kiobel in 2012 and Jesner in 2018. The scope of the statute and the concepts of aiding and abetting liability, the presumption against extraterritoriality, ‘touch and concern test’ and ‘foreign sovereign immunity’ are explained. The decision in Doe v. Nestle has resolved many of the uncertainties. Potential liability under various statutes to protect victims of torture, trafficking, terrorism, and corruption are outlined as is the experience of common law tort claims and forum non conveniens.
Foreign Direct Liability of Multinational Corporations in the Dutch Legal Order
Authors: Samkalden Channa
Published: November 2021

Channa Samkalden reviews the position in the Netherlands regarding the imposition of liability on multinationals for human rights abuses overseas. She explains the potential basis for, the process, and the advantages of seeking corporate criminal liability under the provisions of the Criminal Code. Regarding civil liability, she outlines the rules on jurisdiction, applicable law and the interplay with the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure, including forum necessitates. She outlines jurisdictional decisions in Milieudefensie v. Shell and Kiobel v. Shell and the principle for establishing foreign direct civil liability on a parent company based on the breach of a tort law duty of care and alternative grounds and the potential relevance of soft law and the European Convention on Human Rights. She outlines the rules on admissibility of claims by representative organisations, collective actions, limitation, assessment of damages, discovery, witness protection, and costs and funding.
Proceedings Preparatory to a Final Hearing
Authors: Law European
Published: November 2021

This chapter assesses the provisions on the proceedings preparatory to a final hearing under the European Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 61 provides that ‘to prepare for a final hearing, the court may hold an early case management hearing and if necessary further ones as the case progresses’. Rule 62(1) in connection with Rules 49(1) and (3) – (6) addresses the means of case management that are to be employed in or after the early management hearing. They are designed to ensure that the court takes such organisational measures as are necessary to facilitate the effective conduct of preparatory proceedings, including settlement endeavours, determination of the type and form of on-going proceedings, the procedural calendar or timetable, any limitation in terms of the number and/or length of submissions, the consolidation or separation of proceedings, or the order in which issues are to be tried. The chapter then considers the provisions on the closing of preparatory proceedings; the final hearing; early final judgments; judgments on preliminary procedural issues or on legal issues on the merits; and provisional measures and interim payment orders.
Original String and Bead Assemblages
Authors: Swift Ellen , Stoner Jo , Pudsey April
Published: November 2021

The chapter provides a chronological and regional overview of trends in bead jewellery in Egypt from the Roman to late antique periods, and provides both a social interpretation of this material, and insights into wider topics such as trade connections, and the social transformations that occurred in late antiquity. It first sets out the material to be studied. Important data include a substantial number of tomb assemblages from Qau el-Kebir, which are newly context-dated. The chapter then provides an overview of trends, drawing on evidence from individual items, including those preserved exceptionally well through the survival of their original string. A chronological trend from more homogenous to more diverse assemblages is documented, which together with increasing levels of reuse of earlier bead types, and the much greater proportions of non-glass beads seen in the latest assemblages, suggests economic disruptions to production processes. Evidence of trade contacts between Egypt and other areas is documented, including links with Germanic areas, Iran, and the wider Indo-Pacific region. Two more specific investigations follow, first a consideration of ancient coloured string, especially red string, presenting evidence of its apotropaic function, and second an examination of evidence for curation, reuse, and heirloom status in bead assemblages and its interpretation from a social archaeology perspective, in which beads are shown to be important in constructing life course identities and affirming family lineages. It is also demonstrated through bead assemblages and pendants how the cultural lives of people in late antique Egypt show many similarities with other communities across the Byzantine world.
Concluding Discussion to Part II
Authors: Swift Ellen , Stoner Jo , Pudsey April
Published: November 2021

The chapter draws together themes in the material studied in Part II; as well as summarizing some of the principal findings from the individual chapters, it examines in particular how the artefacts studied, and the activities associated with them, related to life course stages, and how they contributed to wider aspects of social practice and social experience. The consideration of objects in relation to the life course illustrates that everyday objects were important as a means to inhabit and perform particular roles, especially socialization into roles at the thresholds between different life course stages such as the transition between adolescence and adulthood. Domestic artefact evidence is also shown to illuminate wider aspects of social practice and experience, developing understanding of the social functions and values of the objects, their multiple roles including status display, and the experiences to which they contributed, and achieving insights through the comparison of the different activities under study. The sensory qualities of the objects, and how sensation was important to particular activities, are also explored briefly, as well as the amuletic properties of functional and other artefacts, which may have protected processes and products, as well as users. It is suggested that amuletic qualities included the sounds of objects, as well as their appearance. In this chapter, it is also considered how the dress objects examined in Part I, and the functional material considered in Part II, were integrated together into the wider social context.
Formula and Molecular Mass
Authors: Oriakhi Christopher O.
Published: November 2021

Formula and Molecular Mass are presented as two values that express the size of a molecule. Differences between formula and molecular mass are discussed.
Stoichiometry
Authors: Oriakhi Christopher O.
Published: November 2021

Stoichiometry is the quantitative relation between the amounts of reactants and products involved in a chemical reaction. The various types of stoichiometric problems are described, and a step-by-step approach for calculating the amounts of reactants and products in a reaction is provided. Further types of calculations include limiting reagents, theoretical yields, and percent yields.
Volumetric Analysis
Authors: Oriakhi Christopher O.
Published: November 2021

Volumetric Analysis describes the general process of quantifying acid-base reactions by titration in which the known concentration of one solution (often a standard solution) is used to determine the unknown concentration of another. Common terms are defined, and calculations involving acid-base titration based on the concept of reaction stoichiometry, number of moles, mole ratio and molarity are discussed. The treatment is then broadened to include calculations involving mass and percentage of substance titrated. Back (or indirect) titration, a method to determine the concentration of a volatile substance or an unknown solid that is insoluble or only partly soluble in water, is described. The Kjeldahl method of determining the nitrogen content in organic and inorganic samples is used to illustrate back titration.
Introduction: Writing a War of Words
Authors: Mugglestone Lynda
Published: November 2021

This chapter introduces Clark as a writer and historian of Home Front life in World War One, alongside the distinctive approaches of his work on language. It focusses on his decision to make a set of language scrapbooks, and looks at his early interest in the incidental and ephemeral as artefacts of time. Drawing on both history and language history, it examines the liberal inclusivity that characterizes his work, not least in his attentive pursuit of many words which still remain unrecorded in formal lexicography.
Reading into Words
Authors: Mugglestone Lynda
Published: November 2021

This chapter considers World War 1 as a high point for reading as a way of understanding events, alongside Clark’s own role as a particularly dedicated reader of war-time use. Newspapers – often given a bad press in writing on WWI – were, for Clark, to be exploited as multi-genre spaces, offering a marked diversity of forms. Letters from the Front, diaries, advertising, accounts of war, politics, fashion, and cookery, often appeared across their pages. Clark’s reading deliberately spanned a social, political, and geographical spectrum, while revealing a process of attentive scrutiny, collection and annotation in a documentary excursus into a world in flux.
‘Doing One’s Bit’
Authors: Mugglestone Lynda
Published: November 2021

This chapter focusses on the war-time discourse of the volunteer, recruiting, and the eventual move to conscription, while exploring the rhetorical patterns of patriotism and identity (and identity politics) which result. As Clark records, in war-time use, to do one’s bit was to be both prominent and remarkably polysemous, spanning collective and individual agency on the Home Front (a new collocation in its own right) alongside the diction of recruiting and active service. The volunteer and voluntary enlistment (and the conflicted semantics that these and related words reveal) were, on one level, presented as a prime means by which one’s bit was done in the early years of war. Nevertheless, the diction of identity, hegemonic masculinity (and its failure or rejection) were further key elements, evident in the over-lexicalisation and gendered usage of the stay-at-home, slacker, Cuthbert, or knut (and the targeted semantic shifts that these and other words reveal). The shift to conscription, and the stigmatization of those who chose not to fight, presents, as Clark records, still other conflicted forms.
English in a Time of Total War
Authors: Mugglestone Lynda
Published: November 2021

This chapter focusses on the language of total war, and its consequences, in Britain. Total war is marked by the explicit renegotiation of the boundaries of conflict, alongside the participants it claims; as contemporary comment stressed, the people were, in effect, now to be the new front line. For Clark, the language of aerial attack, and domestic response, was, by extension, to be another area of marked lexical and semantic shift, whether in the rise of distinctive collocations such as Zeppelin nights and Zeppelin barometers, or in the domestic diction of gas warfare (and gas marks) alongside the emergence of dug-outs on the Home Front. Time itself, via British Summer Time or artificial time, changed too, as – at least intentionally — did the language of key British institutions such as ‘buying a round’.
The Past as Practice or Parable?
Authors: Schenk Catherine R.
Published: November 2021

The 2008 crisis was a boon to the discipline of economic history and created an appetite for ‘lessons from the past’ by academics as well as policy-makers as they sought to respond to the failure of economic theory to anticipate the crisis. But beyond this intense example, can we make conclusions about the pathway to impact for historical treatments? Is there something especially inspiring or impactful about the 1930s? Does the widespread awareness that there was an interwar Great Depression and that it was terrible and that it may have contributed to the Second World War mean that it has particular resonance when it is invoked by policy-makers? How has the past been used in anticipation of (rather than reaction to) financial crises? Examining two episodes, this chapter demonstrates the use of the past as a parable for current and future policy and as a rehearsal for a future crisis.
The 1987 Stock Exchange Crash in Historical Perspective
Authors: Quennouëlle-Corre Laure
Published: November 2021

This chapter aims to explore the different facets of the collective memory of the 1987 Crash in the US, which represented an unprecedented collapse of prices on the global stock markets. The 22.3% fall of the Dow Jones on Black Monday (19 October 1987) represents the biggest single-day stock market collapse in history—even greater than that of 24 October 1929. The crash spread to other major financial markets over the world, but was quickly resolved thanks to the central banks’ intervention on the capital markets. In the context of Reaganomics, the crash can be seen as the first financial crisis of the second globalization wave in the strictest sense of the term ‘financial’, without taking into consideration the banking crises of the 1970s and the debt crisis in the early 1980s. However, unlike other financial crises, memories of this market break remained either vague or inexistent in public opinion, or fragmented and partial for economists and historians—until the subprime crisis. Since then, the 1987 warning and the potential dangers of uncontrolled markets were brought to light. The final lesson to be learned from this example of an evolving memory is about using the past.
The changing electoral market in Britain
Authors: Webb Paul , Bale Tim
Published: November 2021

The underlying purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that the country’s electoral marketplace is more open than it once was and that, consequently, the competition for votes between parties is also more extensive. We begin with a consideration of how the electoral marketplace came to be relatively ‘closed’ in the first place, which entails an account of the historically derived linkages between parties and social groups in Britain, as well as the social psychology of fixed political identities. Following this, we examine how the electoral market began to open up after 1970, through a review of the widespread evidence of growing electoral instability since then. In truth, there never was an entirely closed electoral market in the UK, but since 1970 the evidence of significant electoral change suggests that the scope of competition has increased in line with an expansion of the market for ‘available’ votes.
Understanding electoral change
Authors: Webb Paul , Bale Tim
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the contributions of realignment and dealignment to electoral change. Realignment is particularly apparent in the emergence of sociopolitical centre-periphery cleavages. Post-materialism and attitudes to European integration have clearly served to realign electoral support, while there are also growing signs of electoral differences based on age, education, and gender. Dealignment is evident principally in the weakening of partisan attachments, which in turn can be traced largely to the factors which underlie the decline of class voting, such as the strategic behaviour of parties themselves and also, to some extent, the erosion of distinctive and cohesive social classes, which is itself partly a consequence the changing shape of the socio-economic structure.
How parties compete (2)
Authors: Webb Paul , Bale Tim
Published: November 2021

This chapter argues that ideological strategy provides us with a useful baseline in understanding party competition, although it is far from the whole story. Using manifesto data, we demonstrate that parties have carved out enduring core ideological territories for themselves, and although they move within these territories, there is seldom any leapfrogging past each other. We also show that the main parties tend to emphasize and vary their appeals more in respect of the main left-right dimension than any other, but looking at British party competition in two dimensions is also useful in so far as it shows the curvilinear space in which the bulk of the electoral market is situated and within which the main parties generally compete. We confirm the importance of ideological appeals in a series of multivariate models of voting behaviour.
Members, leaders, and the distribution of power within parties
Authors: Webb Paul , Bale Tim
Published: November 2021

This chapter explores intra-party power. How far are British political parties elitist top-down institutions? What roles do grassroots members play and how much power do they wield? How much do leaders and members have in common ideologically, and does that matter in the competition for votes? In reviewing a wealth of empirical evidence that bears on these questions, the chapter draws on various classic models of party organization from cadre party to cartel party and finds that, notwithstanding their analytical usefulness, none of these models truly captures the complex reality of contemporary British party politics.
Parties and the Political System
Authors: Webb Paul , Bale Tim
Published: November 2021

Political parties in the UK today are widely seen as disappointing. This chapter examines the nature and causes of the present popular discontent by assessing how well parties perform political functions on behalf of the wider democratic system. It identifies shortcomings in this performance, for instance in parties’ roles in fostering representational and participatory linkage, and in the persistent policy problems which confront party governments. Equally, however, it is starkly apparent that they remain vital to the political system. Nevertheless, it is plain that there is considerable need and scope for reform. Although none is a panacea, important reforms might be made in the areas of party finance, the electoral system, and deliberative democracy.
Language, Thought, and the Linguistics Wars
Authors: Harris Randy Allen
Published: November 2021

This chapter provides brief overviews of the role that language plays in culture and thought, of the job that linguists do to investigate the roles that language plays, and of the dispute among linguists that forms the narrative core of this book, as well as introducing the linguists who drove that dispute: Noam Chomsky, Ray Jackendoff, Robin and George Lakoff, Jim McCawley, Paul Postal, and Haj Ross. That dispute hinged on the relative significance of linguistic structure and linguistic meaning for the way we understand language and its relation to thought.
The Aftermath: Twenty-First Century Linguistics
Authors: Harris Randy Allen
Published: November 2021

This chapter revisits the major linguists of the Generative/Interpretive Semantics dispute (except Noam Chomsky, who fittingly gets his own chapter): Robin Lakoff, George Lakoff, Haj Ross, Paul Postal, and Jim McCawley, noting both their contributions and their post-dispute trajectories. It also charts out two broad legacies of the Generative Semantics movement: a number of technical proposals that arose in that framework which found themselves in other formal linguistic models, prominently including those associated with Chomsky; and the general “Greening of Linguistics”: a range of functional, cognitive, and usage-based approaches whose origins trace to the Generative Semanticists’ rejection of defining Chomskyan values.
Memories of Empire
Authors: Vasunia Phiroze
Published: November 2021

Numerous studies attest to the pride, melancholia, nostalgia, guilt, and shame felt by the French or the British after the loss of their colonies in the twentieth century: such feelings were prompted, in part, by recollections of empires that once existed. National traditions, ceremonies, and archives are frequently built around such memories of the imperial past. But construe the genitive in a subjective rather than an objective sense and you grasp a different implication of the term “memories of empire,” and in this meaning, empire itself is said to have memories. What memories does empire have? Empire has a memory of empire. Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the French and British empires all looked back to older empires and recalled them in distinctive ways. These traces and recollections are worth exploring in order to understand how empires affect the lives of those who lived through them or came after.
Dendrite-free lithium electrodeposition enabled by 3D porous lithiophilic host toward stable lithium metal anodes
Authors: Xu Linghong , Yu Zhihao , Zheng Junrong
Published: November 2021

Lithium metal is a promising anode utilized in cutting-edge high-energy batteries owing to the low density, low electrochemical potential, and super high theoretical capacity. Unfortunately, continuous uncontrollable lithium dendrite growth and ‘dead’ lithium result in capacity decay, low coulombic efficiency and short circuit, severely hindering the practical utilization of lithium anode. Herein, we propose a three-dimensional porous lithiophilic current collector for lithium storage. The conductive 3D structure constructed by carbon fiber (CF) can well accommodate the deposited lithium, eliminating volume change between the lithium depositing/stripping process. Moreover, the polydopamine (PDA) coating on the CF surface possesses a large number of polar groups, which can homogenize Li+ ions distribution and apply as the sites for lithium deposition, decreasing nucleation overpotential. As a result, under the 1 mA cm−2 current density, the PDA coated CF (PDA@CF) electrode exhibits high CE (∼98%) for 1000 cycles. Galvanostatic measurements demonstrate that the Li anode using PDA@CF achieves 1000 h cycling life under 1 mA cm−2 with a low overpotential (<15 mV). The LiFePO4 full cell shows enhanced rate performance and stable long-term cycling.
Evidence for conifer sucrose transporters’ functioning in the light-dependent adjustment of sugar allocation
Authors: Han Xiaoyu , Gao Chen , Liang Buyou , Cui Jingxuan , Xu Qiyu , Schulz Alexander , Liesche Johannes
Published: November 2021

Sucrose is the central unit of carbon and energy in plants. Active intercellular transport of sucrose is mediated by sucrose transporters (SUTs), genes for which have been found in the genomes of all land plants. However, they have only been assigned functions in angiosperm species. Here, we cloned two types of SUTs from two gymnosperms, the conifers Cedrus deodara (Roxb. G. Don) and Pinus massoniana Lambert, and analyzed their sucrose transport activities. Uptake of the fluorescent sucrose-analog esculin into tobacco epidermis cells expressing the conifer SUT confirmed their transport ability. To determine their function in planta, we investigated their mRNA abundance in relation to photosynthesis and sugar levels in leaves, inner bark, wood and roots. Combined with measurements of protein abundance and immunolocalization of C. deodara SUTs, our results suggest a role for CdSUT1G and CdSUT2 in supporting phloem transport under varying environmental conditions. The implications of these findings regarding conifer physiology and SUT evolution are discussed.
Role of Sexual Reproduction in the Evolution of the Wheat Stripe Rust Fungus Races in China
Authors: Wang Jierong , Zhan Gangming , Tian Yuan , Zhang Ying , Xu Yiwen , Kang Zhensheng , Zhao Jing
Published: November 2021

Experimental and population genetic approaches have reshaped our view of how fungal pathogens reproduce, with consequences for our understanding of fungal invasions. Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici, the causal agent of stripe rust, poses a severe threat to wheat production worldwide. The sexual stage of P. striiformis f. sp. tritici was discovered >10 years ago, but how it affects the evolution of the pathogen, especially the emergence of the new virulent races, remains largely unknown. Here, using population genetic analyses, we demonstrate that sexual reproduction plays an important role in the evolution of P. striiformis f. sp. tritici races in China, specifically the newly emerged and devastating race virulent to resistance gene Yr26, which is widely used in China and exerts strong selective pressure on the pathogen population. Association analysis identified six genes encoding secreted proteins as candidates for virulence on wheat cultivars carrying the Yr26 resistance gene. Our results highlight the important role of sexual reproduction and selection exerted by hosts in the emergence of new virulent races in China.
Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Insurance Status of Spine Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department
Authors: Minetos Paul D. , Karamian Brian A. , Kothari Parth , Jeyamohan Hareindra , Canseco Jose A. , Patel Parthik D. , Thaete Lauren , Singh Akash , Campbell Daniel , Kaye I. David , Woods Barrett I. , Kurd Mark F. , Rihn Jeffrey A. , Anderson D. Greg , Hilibrand Alan S. , Kepler Christopher K. , Vaccaro Alexander R. , Schroeder Gregory D.
Published: November 2021

Although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been shown to broadly affect access to care, there is little data examining the change in insurance status with regard to nonelective spinal trauma, infection, and tumor patients. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the changes in insurance status before and after implementation of the ACA in patients who present to the emergency room of a single, level 1 trauma and regional spinal cord injury center. Patient demographic and hospital course information were derived from consult notes and electronic medical record review. Spinal consults between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2015, were initially included. Consults between January 1 and December 31, 2014, were subsequently removed to obtain two separate cohorts reflecting one calendar year prior to (“pre-ACA”) and following (“post-ACA”) the effective date of implementation of the ACA on January 1, 2014. Compared with the pre-ACA cohort, the post-ACA cohort had a significant increase in insurance coverage (95.0% versus 83.9%, P < 0.001). Post-ACA consults had a significantly shorter length of stay compared with pre-ACA consults (7.94 versus 9.19, P < 0.001). A significantly greater percentage of the post-ACA cohort appeared for clinical follow-up subsequent to their initial consultation compared to the pre-ACA cohort (49.5% versus 35.3%, P < 0.001). Spinal consultation after the implementation of the ACA was found to be a significant positive predictor of Medicaid coverage (odds ratio = 1.96 [1.05, 3.82], P = 0.04) and a significant negative predictor of uninsured status (odds ratio = 0.28 [0.16, 0.47], P < 0.001). Increase in overall insurance coverage, increase in patient follow-up after initial consultation, and decrease in hospital length of stay were all noted after the implementation of the ACA for spinal consultation patients presenting to the emergency department.
The stochastic dynamics of early epidemics: probability of establishment, initial growth rate, and infection cluster size at first detection
Authors: Czuppon Peter , Schertzer Emmanuel , Blanquart François , Débarre Florence
Published: November 2021

Emerging epidemics and local infection clusters are initially prone to stochastic effects that can substantially impact the early epidemic trajectory. While numerous studies are devoted to the deterministic regime of an established epidemic, mathematical descriptions of the initial phase of epidemic growth are comparatively rarer. Here, we review existing mathematical results on the size of the epidemic over time, and derive new results to elucidate the early dynamics of an infection cluster started by a single infected individual. We show that the initial growth of epidemics that eventually take off is accelerated by stochasticity. As an application, we compute the distribution of the first detection time of an infected individual in an infection cluster depending on testing effort, and estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern Alpha detected in September 2020 first appeared in the UK early August 2020. We also compute a minimal testing frequency to detect clusters before they exceed a given threshold size. These results improve our theoretical understanding of early epidemics and will be useful for the study and control of local infectious disease clusters.
The evolution of body size in termites
Authors: Mizumoto Nobuaki , Bourguignon Thomas
Published: November 2021

Termites are social cockroaches. Because non-termite cockroaches are larger than basal termite lineages, which themselves include large termite species, it has been proposed that termites experienced a unidirectional body size reduction since they evolved eusociality. However, the validity of this hypothesis remains untested in a phylogenetic framework. Here, we reconstructed termite body size evolution using head width measurements of 1638 modern and fossil termite species. We found that the unidirectional body size reduction model was only supported by analyses excluding fossil species. Analyses including fossil species suggested that body size diversified along with speciation events and estimated that the size of the common ancestor of modern termites was comparable to that of modern species. Our analyses further revealed that body size variability among species, but not body size reduction, is associated with features attributed to advanced termite societies. Our results suggest that miniaturization took place at the origin of termites, while subsequent complexification of termite societies did not lead to further body size reduction.
Snowball Earth, population bottleneck and
Prochlorococcus
evolution
Authors: Zhang Hao , Sun Ying , Zeng Qinglu , Crowe Sean A. , Luo Haiwei
Published: November 2021

Prochlorococcus
are the most abundant photosynthetic organisms in the modern ocean. A massive DNA loss event occurred in their early evolutionary history, leading to highly reduced genomes in nearly all lineages, as well as enhanced efficiency in both nutrient uptake and light absorption. The environmental landscape that shaped this ancient genome reduction, however, remained unknown. Through careful molecular clock analyses, we established that this
Prochlorococcus
genome reduction occurred during the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth climate catastrophe. The lethally low temperature and exceedingly dim light during the Snowball Earth event would have inhibited
Prochlorococcus
growth and proliferation, and caused severe population bottlenecks. These bottlenecks are recorded as an excess of deleterious mutations accumulated across genomic regions and inherited by descendant lineages.
Prochlorococcus
adaptation to extreme environmental conditions during Snowball Earth intervals can be inferred by tracing the evolutionary paths of genes that encode key metabolic potential. Key metabolic innovation includes modified lipopolysaccharide structure, strengthened peptidoglycan biosynthesis, the replacement of a sophisticated circadian clock with an hourglass-like mechanism that resets daily for dim light adaption and the adoption of ammonia diffusion as an efficient membrane transporter-independent mode of nitrogen acquisition. In this way, the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth event may have altered the physiological characters of
Prochlorococcus
, shaping their ecologically vital role as the most abundant primary producers in the modern oceans.
The stagnation paradox: the ever-improving but (more or less) stationary population fitness
Authors: Kokko Hanna
Published: November 2021

Fisher's fundamental theorem states that natural selection improves mean fitness. Fitness, in turn, is often equated with population growth. This leads to an absurd prediction that life evolves to ever-faster growth rates, yet no one seriously claims generally slower population growth rates in the Triassic compared with the present day. I review here, using non-technical language, how fitness can improve yet stay constant (stagnation paradox), and why an unambiguous measure of population fitness does not exist. Subfields use different terminology for aspects of the paradox, referring to stasis, cryptic evolution or the difficulty of choosing an appropriate fitness measure; known resolutions likewise use diverse terms from environmental feedback to density dependence and ‘evolutionary environmental deterioration’. The paradox vanishes when these concepts are understood, and adaptation can lead to declining reproductive output of a population when individuals can improve their fitness by exploiting conspecifics. This is particularly readily observable when males participate in a zero-sum game over paternity and population output depends more strongly on female than male fitness. Even so, the jury is still out regarding the effect of sexual conflict on population fitness. Finally, life-history theory and genetic studies of microevolutionary change could pay more attention to each other.
Reclassification of four subspecies in the genus Streptomyces to Streptomyces rubradiris sp. nov., Streptomyces asoensis sp. nov., Streptomyces fructofermentans sp. nov. and Streptomyces ossamyceticus sp. nov.
Authors: Komaki Hisayuki , Tamura Tomohiko
Published: November 2021

The genus

Streptomyces

includes, at the time of writing, eight subspecies with validly published names.

Streptomyces thermoviolaceus

subsp.

apingens

NBRC 15459T and

Streptomyces lavendulae

subsp.

grasserius

NBRC 13045T show 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of >99.7% to their parent species

Streptomyces thermoviolaceus

subsp.

thermoviolaceus

NBRC 13905T and

Streptomyces lavendulae

subsp.

lavendulae

NRRL B-2774T, respectively. In contrast, the type strains of the remaining six subspecies,

Streptomyces achromogenes

subsp. rubradiris, Streptomyces albosporeus subsp. labilomyceticus
, Streptomyces cacaoi subsp. asoensis
, Streptomyces chrysomallus subsp. fumigatus
, Streptomyces cinereoruber subsp.

fructofermentans

and

Streptomyces hygroscopicus

subsp.

ossamyceticus

, do not show >99.0% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to that of each parent species. Although

S. chrysomallus

subsp.

fumigatus

and

S. hygroscopicus

subsp.

ossamyceticus

were respectively reclassified to ‘

Kitasatospora fumigata

’ and ‘

Streptomyces ossamyceticus

’, these names have not been validly published yet. In this study, we investigated the taxonomic positions of

S. achromogenes

subsp.

rubradiris

,

S. cacaoi

subsp. asoensis, S. cinereoruber subsp.

fructofermentans

,

S. hygroscopicus

subsp.

ossamyceticus

and

S. thermoviolaceus

subsp.

apingens

given that their whole genome sequences are available. Except for

S. thermoviolaceus

subsp.

apingens

, these subspecies were discriminated from the parent and closely related species based on phylogenetic, genomic and phenotypic differences. Thus, we reclassify S.

achromogenes

subsp. rubradiris, S. cacaoi subsp. asoensis
, S. cinereoruber subsp.

fructofermentans

and

S. hygroscopicus

subsp.

ossamyceticus

as Streptomyces rubradiris sp. nov., Streptomyces asoensis sp. nov., Streptomyces fructofermentans sp. nov. and

Streptomyces ossamyceticus

sp. nov., respectively. Multilocus sequence and 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses suggested that

S. albosporeus

subsp.

labilomyceticus

and

S. lavendulae

subsp.

grasserius

may also be reclassified as independent species.
Algibacter onchidii sp. nov., a symbiotic bacterium isolated from a marine invertebrate
Authors: Yin Qi , Liang Jinyou , Zheng Xiaoli , Wang Yu , Song Zhi-Man , Zhang Yu , Xu Ying
Published: November 2021

A novel symbiotic bacterium, designated strain XY-114T, was isolated from the cerata of an Onchidium marine invertebrate species collected in the South China Sea. Strain XY-114T was an aerobic, Gram-stain-negative, non-motile and short rod-shaped bacterium (0.5–0.8 µm wide and 1.0–1.5 µm long) without flagellum. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain XY-114T belonged to the genus

Algibacter

with the highest similarity of 97.2 % to the closest phylogenetic relative

Algibacter aestuarii

KYW371T. Cells grew at 15–37 °C (optimum, 30 °C), at pH 5.5–9.0 (optimum 7.0–8.0) and at NaCl concentrations of 0.5–5.0 % (w/v; optimum 1.5–3.0 %). The major fatty acids (>10 %) were summed feature 3 (comprising C16 : 1
 ω7c and/or C16 : 1
 ω6c), iso-C15 : 0, iso-C15 : 1 G and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH. The predominant polar lipid was phosphatidylethanolamine. The predominant respiratory quinone was MK-6. Flexirubin-type pigments were absent. The genome size of strain XY-114T was 3.4 Mbp, with 34.9 mol% of DNA G+C content. The average nucleotide identity, digital DNA–DNA hybridization and amino acid identity values between strain XY-114T and

A. aestuarii

KYW371T were 74.5 %, 17.0±1.8 % and 73.9 %. Characterization based on phylogenetic, phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and genomic evidence demonstrated that strain XY-114T represents a novel species of the genus

Algibacter

, for which the name Algibacter onchidii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is XY-114T (=KCTC 72217T=MCCC 1K03606T).
Infection in asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2 can interfere with the achievement of robust immunity on a population scale
Authors: Viana Kelvinson , Zarpelon Luis , Leandro Andre , Terencio Maria , Lopes Renata , Martins Caroline , Silva Isaak , Sibim Alessandra , Marques Fábio , da Silva Rafael , Rivas Açucena , Souza Adrieli , dos-Santos Angelo , Torres Sara , Garcia Maria , Giunchetti Rodolfo , Chiba-de-Castro Wagner
Published: November 2021

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to spread worldwide as a severe pandemic, and a significant portion of the infected population may remain asymptomatic. Given this, five surveys were carried out between May and September 2020 with a total of 3585 volunteers in the municipality of Foz do Iguaçu, State of Paraná, a triple border region between Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay. Five months after the first infection, volunteers were re-analysed for the production of IgG anti-Spike and anti-RBD-Spike, in addition to analyses of cellular immunity. Seroconversion rates ranged from 4.4 % to a peak of 37.21 % followed by a reduction in seroconversion to 21.1 % in September, indicating that 25 % of the population lost their circulating anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies 3 months after infection. Analyses after 5 months of infection showed that only 17.2 % of people still had anti-RBD-Spike antibodies, however, most volunteers had some degree of cellular immune response. The strategy of letting people become naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2 to achieve herd immunity is flawed, and the first contact with the virus may not generate enough immunogenic stimulus to prevent a possible second infection.
Electrochemical biosensors based on peptide-kinase interactions at the kinase docking site
Authors: Joshi Pralhad Namdev , Mervinetsky Evgeniy , Solomon Ohad , Chen Yu-Ju , Yitzchaik Shlomo , Friedler Assaf
Published: November 2021

Kinases are important cancer biomarkers and are conventionally detected based on their catalytic activity. Kinases regulate cellular activities by phosphorylation of motif-specific multiple substrate proteins, resulting in lack of selectivity of activity-based kinase biosensors. We present an alternative approach of sensing kinases based on the interactions of their allosteric docking sites with a specific partner protein. The new approach was demonstrated for the ERK2 kinase and its substrate ELK-1. A peptide derived from ELK-1 was bound to a gold electrode and ERK2 sensing was performed by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The sensors showed high level of target selectivity for ERK2 when compared with p38γ kinase and BSA. ERK2 was detected in its cellular concentration range, 0.2-8.0 μM. Using the flexibility of peptide design, our method is generic for developing sensitive and substrate-specific biosensors and other disease-related enzymes based on their interactions.

Abstract Figure