bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Automatic adjustment of harrowing intensity in cereals using digital image analysis
Authors: Gerhards Roland , Späth Michael , Sökefeld Markus , Peteinatos Gerassimos G. , Nabout Adnan , Rueda Ayala Victor 
Published: November 2020

AbstractPrecision farming technologies were implemented into a commercial harrow to increase selectivity of weed harrowing in spring cereals. Digital cameras were mounted before and after the harrow measuring crop cover. Crop soil cover (CSC) was computed out of these two images. Eight field experiments were carried out in spring cereals. Mode of harrowing intensity was changed in four experiments by speed, number of passes and tine angle. Each mode was varied in five intensities. In four experiments, only intensity of harrowing was changed. Weed control efficacy (WCE) and CSC were measured immediately after harrowing. Crop recovery was assessed 14 days after harrowing. Modes of intensity were not significantly different. However, intensity had significant effects on WCE and CSC. Cereals recovered from 10% CSC, and selectivity was in the constant range at 10% CSC. Therefore, 10% CSC was the threshold for the decision algorithm. If the actual CSC was below 10% CSC, intensity was increased. If the actual CSC was higher than 10%, intensity was decreased. Image analysis, decision support system and automatic control of harrowing intensity by hydraulic adjustment of tine angle were installed on a controller mounted on the harrow. The new system was tested in an additional field study. Threshold values for CSC were set at 10%, 30% and 60%. Automatic tine angle adjustment precisely realised the three different CSC values with variations of 1.5% to 3%. This development contributes to selective weed control and supports farmers during harrowing.
Statin treatment and hypertrophic scarring after cardiac surgery
Authors: Chello Camilla , Nenna Antonio , Chello Massimo , Satriano Umberto Maria , Cardetta Francesco , Lusini Mario , Nappi Francesco , Dianzani Caterina 
Published: November 2020

AbstractWound healing process after surgical procedure plays a crucial role to prevent blood loss and infections. Hypertrophic scars might occur after surgery and are generally associated with an inflammatory burden. Cardiac surgery is intrinsically related to a strong systemic inflammatory state that might favor hypertrophic scarring. Besides lipid‐lowering effects, statins are known for their pleiotropic and anti‐inflammatory activity. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of statins in the healing process after median sternotomy in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. All patients undergoing major cardiac surgery with median sternotomy and cardiopulmonary bypass, and subsequently evaluated in the outpatient clinic after discharge, were included in this study. A total of 930 Caucasian patients were retrospectively reviewed. At outpatient visit, 276 patients (29.7%) showed the formation of hypertrophic scars. Patients with hypertrophic scars tended to be younger (P = .001) and nonstatin users (P = .001). Logistic regression analysis confirmed the protective role of statins (odds ratio 0.39, 95% confidence interval 0.29‐0.53, P = .001), after adjustment for age. A dose‐dependent effect was confirmed, showing a more intensive protective effect for higher doses of statins. Statin use might be correlated with reduced hypertrophic scars after cardiac surgery through median sternotomy. A dose‐dependent effect has been shown, and statin effect seems to be independent of age in a selected population undergoing surgery with an elevated inflammatory burden. Although further studies are warranted to elucidate the biologic mechanisms, the concept of using statins as anti‐scarring agents is novel and should be investigated with tailored studies.
Comparison of growth models to describe growth from birth to 6 years in a Beninese cohort of children with repeated measurements
Authors: Ahmadi Shukrullah , Bodeau-Livinec Florence , Zoumenou Roméo , Garcia André , Courtin David , Alao Jules , Fievet Nadine , Cot Michel , Massougbodji Achille , Botton Jérémie 
Published: November 2020

ObjectiveTo select a growth model that best describes individual growth trajectories of children and to present some growth characteristics of this population.SettingsParticipants were selected from a prospective cohort conducted in three health centres (Allada, Sekou and Attogon) in a semirural region of Benin, sub-Saharan Africa.ParticipantsChildren aged 0 to 6 years were recruited in a cohort study with at least two valid height and weight measurements included (n=961).Primary and secondary outcome measuresThis study compared the goodness-of-fit of three structural growth models (Jenss-Bayley, Reed and a newly adapted version of the Gompertz growth model) on longitudinal weight and height growth data of boys and girls. The goodness-of-fit of the models was assessed using residual distribution over age and compared with the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). The best-fitting model allowed estimating mean weight and height growth trajectories, individual growth and growth velocities. Underweight, stunting and wasting were also estimated at age 6 years.ResultsThe three models were able to fit well both weight and height data. The Jenss-Bayley model presented the best fit for weight and height, both in boys and girls. Mean height growth trajectories were identical in shape and direction for boys and girls while the mean weight growth curve of girls fell slightly below the curve of boys after neonatal life. Finally, 35%, 27.7% and 8% of boys; and 34%, 38.4% and 4% of girls were estimated to be underweight, wasted and stunted at age 6 years, respectively.ConclusionThe growth parameters of the best-fitting Jenss-Bayley model can be used to describe growth trajectories and study their determinants.
Antiplatelet therapy is associated with a high rate of intracranial hemorrhage in patients with head injuries
Authors: Alter Scott M , Mazer Benjamin A , Solano Joshua J , Shih Richard D , Hughes Mary J , Clayton Lisa M , Greaves Spencer W , Trinh Nhat Q , Hughes Patrick G 
Published: November 2020

BackgroundAntiplatelet agents are increasingly used in cardiovascular treatment. Limited research has been performed into risks of acute and delayed traumatic intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in these patients who sustain head injuries. Our goal was to assess the overall odds and identify factors associated with ICH in patients on antiplatelet therapy.MethodsA retrospective observational study was conducted at two level I trauma centers. Adult patients with head injuries on antiplatelet agents were enrolled from the hospitals’ trauma registries. Acute ICH was diagnosed by head CT. Observation and repeat CT to evaluate for delayed ICH was performed at clinicians’ discretion. Patients were stratified by antiplatelet type and analyzed by ICH outcome.ResultsOf 327 patients on antiplatelets who presented with blunt head trauma, 133 (40.7%) had acute ICH. Three (0.9%) had delayed ICH on repeat CT, were asymptomatic and did not require neurosurgical intervention. One with delayed ICH was on clopidogrel and two were on both clopidogrel and aspirin. Patients with delayed ICH compared with no ICH were older (94 vs 74 years) with higher injury severity scores (15.7 vs 4.4) and trended towards lower platelet counts (141 vs 216). Patients on aspirin had a higher acute ICH rate compared with patients on P2Y12 inhibitors (48% vs 30%, 18% difference, 95% CI 4 to 33; OR 2.18, 95% CI 1.15 to 4.13). No other group comparison had significant differences in ICH rate.ConclusionsPatients on antiplatelet agents with head trauma have a high rate of ICH. Routine head CT is recommended. Patients infrequently developed delayed ICH. Routine repeat CT imaging does not appear to be necessary for all patients.Level of evidenceLevel III, prognostic.
Long-term zinc contamination and transport at the abandoned Ore Chimney mine
Authors: Harper C. , Walsh C. , Fong C. , Gammon P.R. , Amos R.T. 
Published: November 2020

Mine waste-rock piles can release low quality drainage that is harmful to the surrounding environment. Many studies have investigated recently placed waste rock, but fewer have examined geochemical processes within, and downgradient of, old waste rock, even though these processes may be expected to persist for many decades. The Ore Chimney property, in Ontario, Canada, was the site of gold exploration activities that produced a small waste-rock pile; it was abandoned in 1934. Elevated concentrations of Zn are restricted to within 50 m of the waste rock, and pH remains neutral across the site. Water and sediment analyses and geochemical modeling indicate that several processes are involved in pH buffering and contaminant control. Water samples taken at the edge of the waste rock were not acidic, indicating that mechanisms within the waste rock, including carbonate buffering and preferential oxidation of sphalerite over pyrite, are preventing acid mine drainage (AMD). Natural attenuation mechanisms are operating within wetlands at Ore Chimney with the most likely controls for Zn transport in ground and surface water being carbonate mineral precipitation, co-precipitation with Fe and Mn oxides and oxyhydroxide minerals and Al sulphate minerals, and adsorption onto calcite and organic matter. This investigation shows that, after long time frames, natural attenuation mechanisms may act to effectively immobilize metal contaminants.
Amos and the Beyond Aid Agenda: The 0.7% Target, COVID-19, and Reimagining International Development
Authors: Day Benjamin S. 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
This article draws on the Old Testament book of Amos as a lens for thinking about the aid-giving behaviour of ‘traditional donor’ states at a time of international uncertainty. In the emerging ‘beyond aid’ environment, achieving international development outcomes will require much more than the provision of aid. States and individuals that are serious about contributing to international development will need to ‘go deeper’, actively assessing the development impacts that a wide array of their own behaviours may have on individuals beyond their borders. By bringing key themes from Amos into conversation with characteristics of the international development regime, this article demonstrates why moving away from an aid-centric approach to international development—symbolised by the 0.7% spending target—is proving difficult. At the same time, it reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to function as a critical juncture for reimagining international development in line with the message of Amos.
On Religious Skepticism
Authors: Schellenberg J.L. 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
I seek to promote a fuller understanding of religious skepticism by defending five theses. These concern, respectively: its breadth, discussed in relation to theism on the one hand and naturalism on the other; why it should be distinguished from a general metaphysical skepticism; how it is supported by the consequences of recent cultural evolution, which at the same time enable new and stronger arguments for atheism; the relations it bears to non-doxastic religious faith; and, finally, its curious capacity in certain not uncommon circumstances to take the form of a soft irreligion that is widely approvable—even from a religious perspective.
Knowledge and Truth in the Greatest Difficulty Argument: Parmenides 133b4–134b5
Authors: Fine Gail 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
One of Plato’s central tenets is that we can know forms. In Parmenides 133b4–134b5, Plato presents an argument whose sceptical conclusion is that we can’t know forms. Although he indicates that the argument doesn’t succeed, he also says it’s difficult to explain how it fails. Commentators have suggested a variety of flaws. I argue that the argument can be defended against some, though not all, of the alleged flaws. But I also argue that Plato hints at a crucial distinction that hasn’t been brought to bear in this context, and that indeed he is sometimes thought not to draw: that between the content and object of knowledge. Once we are clear about this distinction, we can see that the sceptical argument doesn’t imply that we can’t know forms.
Gorgias’ Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος and Its Relation to Skepticism
Authors: Bett Richard 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
The paper examines whether Gorgias’ On What Is Not should be considered an instance of skepticism. It begins with an analysis of the work as reported by the two sources, Sextus Empiricus and the anonymous author of On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias. It is then argued that the Pyrrhonian skeptics did not regard On What Is Not as skeptical. Nonetheless, it is possible to read the work as offering counter-arguments to Parmenides, with a view to inducing suspension of judgment in Pyrrhonian fashion. However, it is also possible to regard it as skeptical in a sense current in modern philosophy: that is, as posing challenges to our understanding of things with a view to forcing philosophers to come up with better theories. In this light, it can be seen as an important stimulus to the philosophical breakthroughs apparent in Plato’s Sophist.
Moral Realism and the Argument from Skepticism
Authors: Risberg Olle , Tersman Folke 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
A long-standing family of worries about moral realism focuses on its implications for moral epistemology. The underlying concern is that if moral truths have the nature that realists believe, it is hard to see how we could know what they are. This objection may be called the “argument from skepticism” against moral realism. Realists have primarily responded to this argument by presenting accounts of how we could acquire knowledge of moral truths that are consistent with realist assumptions about their nature. Less time has been spent, however, on the question of why it would be a problem for moral realism if it leads to skepticism in the first place, and on the related question of which skeptical conclusions it would be problematic for realists to simply accept. This paper considers several answers to these questions, thereby distinguishing a number of versions of the argument from skepticism, and discusses their prospects.
In the Shadow of the Public: Enlightenment and the Pitfalls of Modernity
Authors: Lilti Antoine 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
The Enlightenment has often been presented as the ideological programme of modernity, the set of ideas and values from which modern, democratic and secularized Western societies have emerged. This reading, however, fails to account for the diversity and polyphony of the Enlightenment. Another reading, that of Michel Foucault, insisted on the ethos of modernity that the Enlightenment would have brought: a critical relationship with the present and current events. Conversely, this interpretation neglects the militant and collective dimension of the Enlightenment that favoured emancipation through knowledge. This article suggests, rather, seeing in the Enlightenment a way of problematizing modernity, of thinking about its contradictions. It develops this argument from a case study: the philosophes’ reflections on the public and its ambivalences. The optimism of the Enlightenment’s fight against prejudice was counterbalanced by a more pessimistic analysis of the new public space and of the media obstacles to the dissemination of knowledge and critical thinking.
Contribution to Britain’s War Efforts in Osun Division of Western Nigeria, 1939–1945
Authors: Ajayi Abiodun 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Although no real battle was fought in Nigeria during the Second World War (1939–1945), the burden of the war was much felt by Nigerians. They made significant contributions to the war effort; a method through which the British shifted the burden of the war onto their colonial subjects. This strategy had caught the attentions of many scholars, and various discussions have centered on its origin, purpose and operation at provincial and Nigeria wide level. Thus, contributions at the Districts and Division levels have always been subsumed into colony-wide studies, and by that fact remained unresearched. This paper focuses the effects of the imperial coping strategy on the Yoruba society with Osun Division as a case study. The study adopts historical approach, which depends on written, oral, and archival sources. However, it is hoped that, with due attention being given to the efforts of the people at a local level, the impact of the Second World War on African social order will be better understood.
Relative Dispersion on the Inner Shelf: Evidence of a Batchelor Regime
Authors: Spydell Matthew S. , Feddersen Falk , Macmahan Jamie 
Published: November 2020

AbstractOceanographic relative dispersion (based on drifter separations r) has been extensively studied, mostly finding either Richardson–Obukhov () or enstrophy cascade [] scaling. Relative perturbation dispersion (based on perturbation separation r − r0, where r0 is the initial separation) has a Batchelor scaling () for times less than the r0-dependent Batchelor time. Batchelor scaling has received little oceanographic attention. GPS-equipped surface drifters were repeatedly deployed on the Inner Shelf off of Pt. Sal, California, in water depths ≤ 40 m. From 12 releases of ≈18 drifters per release, perturbation and regular relative dispersion over ≈4 h are calculated for 250 ≤ r0 ≤ 1500 m for each release and the entire experiment. The perturbation dispersion is consistent with Batchelor scaling for the first 1000–3000 s with larger r0 yielding stronger dispersion and larger Batchelor times. At longer times, and scale-dependent diffusivities begin to suggest Richardson–Obukhov scaling. This applies to both experiment averaged and individual releases. For individual releases, nonlinear internal waves can modulate dispersion. Batchelor scaling is not evident in as the correlations between initial and later separations are significant at short time scaling as ~t. Thus, previous studies investigating are potentially aliased by initial separation effects not present in the perturbation dispersion . As the underlying turbulent velocity wavenumber spectra is inferred from the dispersion power law time dependence, analysis of both and is critical.
When Uncertainty is Certain: A Nuanced Trust between Emergency Managers and Forecast Information in the Southeastern United States
Authors: Cross Rachael N. , LaDue Daphne S. 
Published: November 2020

AbstractWeather forecasting is not an exact science, and, in regions near the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, the vastly different types of topography and frequency of rapidly forming storms can result in high uncertainty in severe weather forecasts. NOAA created its VORTEX-Southeast (SE) research program to tackle these unique challenges and integrate them with social science research to increase the survivability of southeastern U.S. weather. As part of VORTEX-SE, this study focused on the severe weather preparation and decision-making of emergency management and, in particular, how uncertainty in severe weather forecasts impacted the relationship between emergency managers (EMs) and weather providers. We conducted in-depth, critical incident background interviews with 35 emergency management personnel across 14 counties. An inductive, data-driven analysis approach revealed several factors contributing to an added layer of practical uncertainty beyond the meteorological forecast uncertainty that impacted and helped to explain the nature of trust in the EM–National Weather Service (NWS) relationship. No- or short-notice events, null events, gaps in information, and differences in perspectives when compared with weather forecasters have led emergency managers to modify their procedures in ways that position them to adapt quickly to unexpected changes in the forecast. The need to do so creates a complex, nuanced trust between these groups. This paper explains how EMs developed a nuanced trust of forecast information, how that trust is a recognition of the inherent uncertainty in severe weather forecasts, and how to strengthen the NWS–EM relationship.
Association of higher arterial ketone body ratio (acetoacetate/β-hydroxybutyrate) with relevant nutritional marker in hemodialysis patients
Authors: Inaba Masaaki , Kumeda Yasuro , Yamada Shinsuke , Toi Norikazu , Hamai Chie , Noguchi Koichi , Yasuda Eikichi , Furumitsu Yutaka , Emoto Masanori , Ohno Yoshiteru 
Published: November 2020

AbstractBackgroundAn association of higher levels of β-hydroxybutyrate (β-HB) in serum with greater mortality in hemodialysis (HD) patients has been reported. This study examined the significance of arterial ketone body ratio (AcAc/β-HB), a relevant marker of energy state, in HD patients.MethodsThe levels of arterial AcAc and β-HB, and AcAc/β-HB ratio were determined in 49 HD patients just before undergoing an HD session. Additionally, changes in those levels during the session were examined to investigate their associations with clinical nutritional markers.ResultsArterial β-HB, but not AcAc, was significantly higher at the baseline in 25 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) as compared to 24 non-DM patients, with a significant reduction in arterial AcAc/β-HB ratio seen in those with DM. Although the arterial AcAc/β-HB ratio before the HD session was significantly higher in the non-DM group, it did not differ significantly after the session between the groups, indicating a faster rate of β-HB disappearance from circulation in non-DM HD patients during the interdialytic period. Multiple regression analysis, which included age, gender, presence/absence of DM, log HD duration, log β-HB, and log AcAc/β-HB ratio as independent variables, revealed an independent and significant association of log AcAc/ β-HB ratio, but not log β-HB, with serum albumin and uric acid.ConclusionWe found that a decreased AcAc/β-HB ratio resulting from increased β-HB, but not increased β-HB itself, was a significant factor independently associated with decreased levels of serum albumin and uric acid, known to be related to higher mortality in HD patients. Furthermore, it is possible that higher mortality in DM HD patients can be explained by reduced arterial AcAc/β-HB ratio.