bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Regional and gender differences in population-based oral health insurance data
Authors: Stamm Tanja , Ritschl Valentin , Platzer Alexander , Omara Maisa , Mosor Erika , Reichardt Berthold , Schmitl Lina , Behanova Martina , Bekes Katrin 
Published: October 2019

AbstractObjectiveEarly dental monitoring contributes substantially to good oral health in children. However, little is known on whether children from different geographical regions and gender are equally reached with current preventive and curative oral health strategies. The aim of our study therefore was to explore regional and gender differences in a population-based oral health dataset of Austrian children up to the age of 14.Materials and methodsWe extracted the first electronically available health insurance data of children aged up to 14 years on dental services within a 4-year observation period in Austria and performed a separate analysis in up to 6-year-old children. In addition, we used a smaller randomly selected sample dataset of 3000 children as the large numbers would result in significant, but very small effects.ResultsIn a total of 130,895 children, of whom 77,173 children (59%) were up to the age of six, we detected an east-west gradient: The eastern regions of Austria showed an older age at first contact and a higher number of dental services. A child aged up to 6 years who needed more than four dental services had a likelihood of 40% to be from Vienna, Austria’s capital city located in the east. The smaller random sample did not show significant gender differences.ConclusionsEven in regions with a high density of dentists, such as Vienna, we obviously did not reach young children in the same extent as in other regions.Clinical relevanceStratified interventions could be developed to overcome regional inequalities.
Long-Term Steady-State Dry Boreal Forest in the Face of Disturbance
Authors: Carcaillet Christopher , Desponts Mireille , Robin Vincent , Bergeron Yves 
Published: October 2019

AbstractWe used bioproxies from paleosoils buried within two aeolian dunes to test hypotheses concerning the origin of dry sandy boreal forests in Canada. These forests are dominated today byPinus banksianaLamb. One hypothesis is that too frequent Holocene stand-replacing fires would have transformed the original vegetation through extirpation of susceptible species to fire in water stress habitat. Alternatively, the ecosystem would have not changed since the dunes stabilized enough to support forest establishment. The vegetation composition and richness were determined by identification of charcoal and macroremains and radiocarbon dating for the chronology. Both sites revealed a similar history covering 6400 years. Half of the charcoal layers were less than 2500 years old in both sites, indicating that they had been subjected to the same fire history. Data indicated a stable plant composition and richness, although the percentage ofPinusdecreased slightly over 4000 years (decreasing rate 1% per century). The fungusCenococcum geophilumwas consistently present, with a stochastic abundance. The vegetation grew under natural fire conditions and soil dryness since 6000 years. The ecosystem was probably not stressed by late-Holocene fires or climate changes, as the multi-millennial steady state reveals a resistant and resilient ecosystem.
Risky Alcohol Consumption and Associated Health Behaviour Among HIV-Positive and HIV-Negative Patients in a UK Sexual Health and HIV Clinic: A Cross-Sectional Questionnaire Study
Authors: Suonpera Emmi , Matthews Rebecca , Milinkovic Ana , Arenas-Pinto Alejandro 
Published: October 2019

Abstract
Alcohol misuse has been associated with negative consequences among HIV-positive patients. Data on real prevalence of risky alcohol consumption among the HIV-positive population in the UK are lacking. A cross-sectional questionnaire study using standardised validated instruments among HIV-positive (n = 227) and HIV-negative (n = 69) patients was performed. The prevalence of risky alcohol consumption (AUDIT) and associations with depressive symptoms (PHQ-9), problematic drug use (DUDIT), adherence to ART (CASE Adherence Index), sexual behaviour and demographic characteristics were assessed among both patient groups independently. A quarter (25.1%) of HIV-positive patients and 36.1% of HIV-negative patients reported risky alcohol consumption (AUDIT-score ≥ 8). In the multivariable analysis among HIV-positive patients depressive symptoms (p = 0.03) and problematic drug use (p = 0.007) were associated with risky alcohol consumption. Among HIV-negative patients these associations were not present. Risky alcohol consumption among HIV-positive patients is prevalent, and together with depressive symptoms and problematic drug use, may influence HIV-disease progression and patients’ wellbeing.
Human ageing as a dynamic, emergent and malleable process: from disease-oriented to health-oriented approaches
Authors: Chmielewski Piotr Paweł 
Published: October 2019

Abstract
Over the decades, biogerontology has matured as a scientific discipline. Currently, a number of theoretical frameworks are available to researchers when interpreting empirical data. Despite the great progress that has been made, a comprehensive understanding of biological processes that shape ageing is lacking. Senescence is a dynamic, plastic and highly complex metaphenomenon whose aetiology remains unclear. The paucity of information notwithstanding, some researchers promote ‘anti-ageing’ drugs and formulae every now and again. The rationale behind this concept is that ageing can be reduced to a mixture of biochemical reactions. Furthermore, the distinction between ageing and disease has been questioned on the grounds that ageing is the root of age-related diseases. It has been claimed that disease-oriented approaches can help delay ageing and prevent age-related diseases. Although these methods seem incongruous from an evolutionary standpoint, they become popular amongst the public. Moreover, if ageing is classified as a disease, this situation is likely to be exacerbated. Therefore, it is important to recognise the limitations of these reductionist and disease-oriented approaches. Only holistic and evidence-based strategies might be useful in slowing down ageing and preventing age-related diseases in the future.
A Note on the Issue of Cohesiveness in Canonical Models
Authors: Pascucci Matteo 
Published: October 2019

AbstractIn their presentation of canonical models for normal systems of modal logic, Hughes and Cresswell observe that some of these models are based on a frame which can be also thought of as a collection of two or more isolated frames; they call such frames ‘non-cohesive’. The problem of checking whether the canonical model of a given system is cohesive is still rather unexplored and no general decision procedure is available. The main contribution of this article consists in introducing a method which is sufficient to show that canonical models of some relevant classes of normal monomodal and bimodal systems are always non-cohesive.
Production of selectable marker gene-free Cavendish banana (Musa spp.) using a steroid-inducible recombinase platform
Authors: Kleidon Jennifer , Brinin Anthony , Paul Jean-Yves , Harding Robert , Dale James , Dugdale Benjamin 
Published: October 2019

Abstract
Genetic improvement of commercially accepted banana cultivars is strongly reliant on the ability to introduce genes that encode important agro-traits such as disease resistance. In most cases this can only be achieved using a transgenic approach. Public and regulatory acceptance of these events would greatly increase with “clean” single copy integration events free of the selectable marker gene and extraneous vector backbone. This would also allow for the successive addition of new genes and traits as they become available. In this study, we used the pMarker Free 1 (pMF1) vector containing the green fluorescent protein (gfp) reporter gene to assess the effectiveness of steroid-inducible recombination and positive/negative dual selection to regenerate transgenic Cavendish banana plants that were potentially free of the selectable marker gene. By examining the interaction of two different Agrobacterium strains with two different cultivars of Cavendish banana, namely Williams and Grand Naine, we describe a transformation and regeneration strategy that successfully produced marker-free, single transgene copy, gfp-expressing events. The system will provide a useful means of serially improving banana into the future.
Isotopic composition of precipitation in Poland: a 44-year record
Authors: Duliński Marek , Różański Kazimierz , Pierchała Anna , Gorczyca Zbigniew , Marzec Michał 
Published: October 2019

AbstractIsotopic composition of precipitation (2H/1H and18O/16O isotope ratios, tritium content) is nowadays widely used in numerous applications of environmental isotopes—most notably in hydrology, climatology and biogeochemistry. Here we present a long record (44 years) of stable isotope composition and tritium content in monthly precipitation available for the Krakow station (southern Poland). Krakow is the only site in Poland for which long-term record of the isotopic composition of monthly precipitation is available. The tritium data are discussed here in the context of generally declining levels of bomb tritium in the global atmosphere and growing influence of technogenic emissions of this isotope. Two aspects of temporal variability of stable isotope composition of precipitation collected in Krakow are discussed here: (i) seasonality and (ii) interannual changes of δ18O and δ2H signal. Whereas the seasonality of stable isotope signal is generated mainly by seasonally varying the degree of rainout of air masses bringing moisture from the source regions (subtropical Atlantic Ocean) to the centre of the European continent, the North Atlantic Oscillation seems to govern interannual changes of δ18O and δ2H on the decadal timescale. Progressing warming of the local atmosphere, in the order of 1.8 °C in the past four decades, leaves its imprint in stable isotope signal measured in Krakow precipitation; the slope of isotope–temperature relationship is in the order of 0.50‰/°C for δ18O and 3.5‰/°C for δ2H.
The Reflection Map and Infinitesimal Deformations of Sphere Mappings
Authors: Reiter Michael 
Published: October 2019

AbstractThe reflection map introduced by D’Angelo is applied to deduce simpler descriptions of nondegeneracy conditions for sphere maps and to the study of infinitesimal deformations of sphere maps. It is shown that the dimension of the space of infinitesimal deformations of a nondegenerate sphere map is bounded from above by the explicitly computed dimension of the space of infinitesimal deformations of the homogeneous sphere map. Moreover a characterization of the homogeneous sphere map in terms of infinitesimal deformations is provided.
Notes on Mucuna (Leguminosae: Papilionoideae) in Thailand: fruits of M. oligoplax re-assessed, and a revised key to species with lamellate fruits
Authors: Wilmot-Dear C. M. , Hopkins H. C. F. , Leeratiwong C. 
Published: October 2019

Summary
Fruiting material of a Mucuna from Peninsular Thailand with distinctive lamellae proved to be conspecific with M. oligoplax, which was previously thought to have fruit almost lacking lamellae. A revised description and a distribution map for M. oligoplax are presented. This finding also necessitates revision of the key to Mucuna species from the Asian mainland with lamellate pods.
An initial evaluation framework for the design and operational use of maritime STAMP-based safety management systems
Authors: Valdez Banda Osiris A. , Goerlandt Floris , Salokannel Johanna , van Gelder Pieter H. A. J. M. 
Published: October 2019

Abstract
A safety management system (SMS) is the common means used by organizations to assess organizational performance with respect to the safety and well-being of people, property and the natural ecosystem. A SMS provides confidence to diverse stakeholders that organizational safety is at an appropriate level and fulfils the applicable regulatory standards. As a multifaceted system for organizational safety assessment, ensurance and assurance, the evaluation of the design and operational use of SMS is a complex process. An evaluation needs to provide evidence about how well the design and operation of an SMS complies with applicable standards and how well the methods used in the SMS implementation support the organizational policies and practical work. In the maritime domain, SMS is broadly applied. However, there are few theoretically rooted SMS design approaches, and there is a lack of frameworks to evaluate how well the SMS is designed and how effectively it operates. This paper proposes an initial evaluation framework for the design and operational use of a maritime SMS design approach based on Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP), realist evaluation and Bayesian Networks. This framework is applied for a case study of vessel traffic services (VTS) Finland to test its relevance and ability to guide the SMS design. The experiences gained in the case study, and the related discussion on the framework, can guide further research in this area. Ultimately, the work can be used as a basis for developing maritime SMS auditing processes, based on specific theoretical and methodological approaches.
Enhanced Catalytic Activity of Gold@Polydopamine Nanoreactors with Multi-compartment Structure Under NIR Irradiation
Authors: Mei Shilin , Kochovski Zdravko , Roa Rafael , Gu Sasa , Xu Xiaohui , Yu Hongtao , Dzubiella Joachim , Ballauff Matthias , Lu Yan 
Published: October 2019

Abstract
Photothermal conversion (PTC) nanostructures have great potential for applications in many fields, and therefore, they have attracted tremendous attention. However, the construction of a PTC nanoreactor with multi-compartment structure to achieve the combination of unique chemical properties and structural feature is still challenging due to the synthetic difficulties. Herein, we designed and synthesized a catalytically active, PTC gold (Au)@polydopamine (PDA) nanoreactor driven by infrared irradiation using assembled PS-b-P2VP nanosphere as soft template. The particles exhibit multi-compartment structure which is revealed by 3D electron tomography characterization technique. They feature permeable shells with tunable shell thickness. Full kinetics for the reduction reaction of 4-nitrophenol has been investigated using these particles as nanoreactors and compared with other reported systems. Notably, a remarkable acceleration of the catalytic reaction upon near-infrared irradiation is demonstrated, which reveals for the first time the importance of the synergistic effect of photothermal conversion and complex inner structure to the kinetics of the catalytic reduction. The ease of synthesis and fresh insights into catalysis will promote a new platform for novel nanoreactor studies.
Understanding unconventional preprocessors in deep convolutional neural networks for face identification
Authors: Olisah Chollette C. , Smith Lyndon 
Published: October 2019

Abstract
Deep convolutional neural networks have achieved huge successes in application domains like object and face recognition. The performance gain is attributed to different facets of the network architecture such as: depth of the convolutional layers, activation function, pooling, batch normalization, forward and back propagation and many more. However, very little emphasis is made on the preprocessor’s module of the network. Therefore, in this paper, the network’s preprocessing module is varied across different preprocessing approaches while keeping constant other facets of the deep network architecture, to investigate the contribution preprocessing makes to the network. Commonly used preprocessors are the data augmentation and normalization and are termed conventional preprocessors. Others are termed the unconventional preprocessors, they are: color space converters; grey-level resolution preprocessors; full-based and plane-based image quantization, Gaussian blur, illumination normalization and insensitive feature preprocessors. To achieve fixed network parameters, CNNs with transfer learning is employed. The aim is to transfer knowledge from the high-level feature vectors of the Inception-V3 network to offline preprocessed LFW target data; and features is trained using the SoftMax classifier for face identification. The experiments show that the discriminative capability of the deep networks can be improved by preprocessing RGB data with some of the unconventional preprocessors before feeding it to the CNNs. However, for best performance, the right setup of preprocessed data with augmentation and/or normalization is required. Summarily, preprocessing data before it is fed to the deep network is found to increase the homogeneity of neighborhood pixels even at reduced bit depth which serves for better storage efficiency.
Modeling of Energy Efficiency of a Turboprop Engine using Ant Colony Optimisation
Authors: Piskin A. , Baklacioglu T. , Turan O. , Aydin H. 
Published: October 2019

ABSTRACTExergy efficiency can be used as an objective function in order to improve systems efficiency. Thus, the most efficient regions for the operation parameters can be searched easily. Exergy efficiency data of a turboprop engine’s components that have been calculated using basic engine parameters in the previous studies are modeled using cubic spline curve fitting methodology. Spline curves are on the two dimensional plane, where x axis is the input parameter and y axis is the exergy efficiency of the component. A spline curve is defined by the points subject to arbitrary selection of number and position. Initially positions of the points are located with two different methods and then in order to obtain better accuracy point positions are improved by ‘Ant colony’ and ‘Goldsection’ optimisation methods. Sum of Squares of the errors between the fitted value and data value was used as the fitness function. Least square error of 5 × 10−9is assumed as acceptable accuracy which yields to a minimum R = 0.9998 linear correlation coefficient. In the optimisation step, independent engine variable versus calculated engine performance parameters were checked against spline fitted values. Improvement of the fitness function is observed as the number of fitting points is increased. Ant colony optimisation in engine exergy efficiency parametric modeling is a new approach in authors’ point of view.
Muslim Personal Laws and the Accommodation of Minorities: The Need to Better Balance Individual Rights and Group Autonomy in Singapore
Authors: Abdul Rahman Noor Aisha 
Published: October 2019

AbstractThe accommodation of religious personal law systems is an issue that has arisen in many countries with significant Muslim minorities. The types of accommodations can range from direct incorporation into the state legal system to mere recognition of religious tribunals as private organs. Different forms of accommodation raise different types of legal, social, and political issues. Focusing on the case of Singapore, I examine one form of accommodation which entails the direct incorporation of this law regulating marriage, divorce, and inheritance for Muslims into the state system. Administered by the Administration of the Muslim Law Act, 1966, the Muslim law binds Muslims unless they abjure Islam. The resulting pluralistic legal system is deemed necessary to realize the aspirations of and give respect to the Muslim minority community, the majority of whom are constitutionally acknowledged as indigenous to the country. This Article examines the ramifications of this arrangement on the rights and well-being of members of this community in the context of change. It argues that, while giving autonomy to the community to determine its personal law and advancing group accommodation, the arrangement denies individuals the right to their choice of law, a problem exacerbated by traditionalism and the lack of democratic process in this domain. Consequently, the Muslim law pales in comparison to the civil law for non-Muslims. The rise of religious resurgence since the 1970s has but compounded the problem. How the system can accommodate the Muslim personal law without compromising the rights of individual Muslims is also discussed.
A Double Conflict of Laws: The Emergence of an EU “Staatskirchenrecht”?
Authors: Tischbirek Alexander 
Published: October 2019

AbstractThe law on state-church relations is no longer exclusively a national concern of the EU Member States. Despite supposedly strict neutrality clauses in the primary law of the EU and rigid statements—inter alia—by the German Federal Constitutional Court, it is safe to assume the formation of a supranational EU law on religion, which also touches upon the status of the churches and religious associations. This becomes obvious when state-church relations in Europe are reconstructed as a double conflict of laws that comprises interlocked conflicts between ecclesiastical law and worldly law, as well as between EU law and national law. Within the triangular relationship of these different legal spheres, EU law steers state-church relations towards the non-discrimination principle. The controversy in German law on religion between the proponents of a collective, institutionalist understanding (classic “Staatskirchenrecht”) and advocates of a rather fundamental rights-centered, individualist reading of the Constitution (“Religionsverfassungsrecht”) hence needs to be reconsidered. EU law calls for including yet a third paradigm into the debate: Equality.
A Tale of Two (Diverse) Countries: Religious Diversity in Canada and Singapore
Authors: Jamal Arif A. , Sheng Jie Daniel Wong 
Published: October 2019

AbstractBoth Canada and Singapore express support for—and have the reality of being—multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious; and both jurisdictions have an avowed commitment to the freedom of religion. Yet, this commitment expresses itself in different ways in these two contexts. Although both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Singaporean Constitution guarantee the freedom of religion, juridical definitions of what this freedom means may differ quite profoundly.This Article explores and analyzes these two different environments that nonetheless share important features. We argue that the approaches of Singapore and Canada do not fall simply into the categories of being “liberal” or “illiberal,” but instead invite reflection and reconsideration on the concepts of pluralism, secularism, and liberalism in interesting ways. This Article thus highlights the significance of contextual factors in understanding the ways in which religious diversity is dealt with, particularly in Canada and Singapore, but also more generally.