bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Visual statistical learning in children with and without DLD and its relation to literacy in children with DLD
Authors: Lammertink Imme , Boersma Paul , Rispens Judith , Wijnen Frank 
Published: January 2020

AbstractVisual statistical learning (VSL) has been proposed to underlie literacy development in typically developing (TD) children. A deficit in VSL may thus contribute to the observed problems with written language in children with dyslexia. Interestingly, although many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) exhibit problems with written language similar to those seen in children with dyslexia, few studies investigated the presence of a VSL deficit in DLD, and we know very little about the relation between VSL and literacy in this group of children. After testing 36 primary-school-aged children (ages 7;8–10;4) with DLD and their TD peers on a self-paced VSL task, two reading tasks and a spelling task, we find no evidence for or against a VSL deficit in DLD, nor for associations between VSL and literacy in DLD. We discuss the implications for our understanding of language (and literacy) difficulties in children with DLD.
Internalisation of Relations
Authors: Rojek Paweł 
Published: January 2020

AbstractThe discussion about internal and external relations usually concerns what kind of relations exist. In this paper, I take up another question, namely whether external relations can become internal and internal relations become external. My starting point is the concept of a “relational collapse” formulated by the Soviet and Ukrainian philosopher Avenir Uemov. I try to develop his idea, distinguishing two senses of internal relation, based on the concepts of ground and essence. As I argue, internalisation may consist either on groundation or essentialisation of relations. Contrary to Uemov, both of these processes seem to be reversible, so we should also introduce the concepts of ungroundation and accidentalisation of relations. These four concepts form a framework for the general theory of internalisation and externalisation of relations. This framework seems to be particularly useful in analysis of some problems in social ontology.
Thymus Regeneration and Future Challenges
Authors: Shichkin Valentin P. , Antica Mariastefania 
Published: January 2020

AbstractThymus regenerative therapy implementation is severely obstructed by the limited number and expansion capacity in vitro of tissue-specific thymic epithelial stem cells (TESC). Current solutions are mostly based on growth factors that can drive differentiation of pluripotent stem cells toward tissue-specific TESC. Target-specific small chemical compounds represent an alternative solution that could induce and support the clonal expansion of TESC and reversibly block their differentiation into mature cells. These compounds could be used both in the composition of culture media designed for TESC expansion in vitro, and in drugs development for thymic regeneration in vivo. It should allow reaching the ultimate objective - autologous thymic tissue regeneration in paediatric patients who had their thymus removed in the course of cardiac surgery.
A duration approach for the measurement of biometric risks in life insurance
Authors: Radermacher Marius , Recht Peter 
Published: January 2020

AbstractDuration concepts are standard methods for measuring interest rate risks of portfolios, liabilities or other cash flows. Macaulay duration, effective duration and key-rate duration are widely used in practice according to different types of yield curves. In this paper, we will present a formulation for a forward rate duration measure by using multi-dimensional Taylor series approximation. It allows to measure the interest rate risk based on arbitrary forward rates. This approach can easily be adopted for biometric risk management, allowing the definition of a biometric duration. The biometric duration will be applied to actuarial present values of premiums and benefits as well as the actuarial reserve to quantify the corresponding biometric risk. It proves to be an easy-to-use tool in the actuarial practise.
Bridging the disciplinary gap in conservation agriculture research, in Malawi. A review
Authors: Hermans Thirze D. G. , Whitfield Stephen , Dougill Andrew J. , Thierfelder Christian 
Published: January 2020

AbstractConservation Agriculture has emerged as a popular form of climate smart agriculture aimed at enhancing climate change resilience for smallholder farmers across Africa. Despite positive biophysical results, adoption rates remain low. It has been acknowledged that improved understanding of farmer decision-making is needed due to the variation in socio-economic and agro-ecological contexts which drives the research agenda to answer the question ‘what forms of Conservation Agriculture work, where, and why?’. To fully understand this question, we need to approach the study of Conservation Agriculture within complex farming systems by collating and integrating different forms of knowledge. In this paper, we discuss (1) a comparison of disciplinary approaches to evaluating Conservation Agriculture in Malawi, (2) the identification of the knowledge gaps that persist at the intersection of these disciplines and (3) recommendations for alternative and interdisciplinary approaches in addressing these knowledge gaps. With a focus on published studies from Malawi, we show that the Conservation Agriculture literature represents two distinct approaches to addressing the question ‘what forms of Conservation Agriculture work, where, and why?’, namely agro-ecological and socio-economic and that neither of these approaches can address the full scope of this question, in particular its ‘why’ component. To overcome these challenges, there is a need for access to compatible, comprehensive data sets, methodological approaches including farmer participation and ethnography, through on-farm trial research as a middle ground between disciplinary approaches.
A multivariate regression parametric study on DEM input parameters of free-flowing and cohesive powders with experimental data-based validation
Authors: El-Kassem Bilal , Salloum Nizar , Brinz Thomas , Heider Yousef , Markert Bernd 
Published: January 2020

AbstractOne of the key challenges in the implementation of discrete element method (DEM) to model powder’s flow is the appropriate selection of material parameters, where empirical approaches are mostly applied. The aim of this study is to develop an alternative systematic numerical approach that can efficiently and accurately predict the influence of different DEM parameters on various sought macroscopic responses, where, accordingly, model validation based on experimental data is applied. Therefore, design of experiment and multivariate regression analysis, using an optimized quadratic D-optimal design model and new analysis tools, i.e., adjusted response and Pareto graphs, are applied. A special focus is laid on the impact of six DEM microscopic input parameters (i.e., coefficients of static and rolling friction, coefficient of restitution, particle size, Young’s modulus and cohesion energy density) on five macroscopic output responses (i.e., angle of repose, porosity, mass flow rate, translational kinetic energy and computation time) using angle of repose tests applied to free-flowing and cohesive powders. The underlying analyses and tests show, for instance, the substantial impact of the rolling friction coefficient and the minor role of the static friction coefficient or the particle size on the angle of repose in cohesive powders. In addition, in both powders, the porosity parameter is highly influenced by the static and rolling friction coefficients.
Effects of rumen-protected folic acid and betaine supplementation on growth performance, nutrient digestion, rumen fermentation and blood metabolites in Angus bulls
Authors: Wang C. , Liu C. , Zhang G. W. , Du H. S. , Wu Z. Z. , Liu Q. , Guo G. , Huo W. J. , Zhang J. , Pei C. X. , Chen L. , Zhang S. L. 
Published: January 2020

AbstractThis study evaluated the effects of rumen-protected folic acid (RPFA) and betaine (BT) on growth performance, nutrient digestion and blood metabolites in bulls. Forty-eight Angus bulls were blocked by body weight and randomly assigned to four treatments in a 2 × 2 factorial design. BT of 0 or 0·6 g/kg DM was supplemented to diet without or with the addition of 6 mg/kg DM of folic acid from RPFA, respectively. Average daily gain increased by 25·2 and 6·29 % for addition of BT without RPFA and with RPFA, respectively. Digestibility and ruminal total volatile fatty acids of neutral-detergent fibre and acid-detergent fibre increased, feed conversion ratio and blood folate decreased with the addition of BT without RPFA, but these parameters were unchanged with BT addition in diet with RPFA. Digestibility of DM, organic matter and crude protein as well as acetate:propionate ratio increased with RPFA or BT addition. Ruminal ammonia-N decreased with RPFA addition. Activity of carboxymethyl cellulase, cellobiase, xylanase, pectinase and protease as well as population of total bacteria, protozoa,Fibrobacter succinogenesandRuminobacter amylophilusincreased with RPFA or BT addition. Laccase activity and total fungi,Ruminococcus flavefaciensandPrevotella ruminicolapopulation increased with RPFA addition, whereasRuminococcus albuspopulation increased with BT addition. Blood glucose, total protein, albumin, growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor-1 increased with RPFA addition. Addition of RPFA or BT decreased blood homocysteine. The results indicated that addition of BT stimulated growth and nutrient digestion in bulls only when RPFA was not supplemented.
Landscape Narratives: the South East Cheviots Project
Authors: Topping Peter , Blood Keith , Bowden Mark , Carter Anne , Fenner Vickie , Mackay Donnie , McOmish David , Pearson Trevor , Sainsbury Iain , Sinton Philip , Welfare Humphrey 
Published: January 2020

‘The huts are now roofless, the fires of the hearths quenched for ever, the fortifications levelled; yet these ruins have out-lasted the erections of more civilized times, and they still remain to tell us something of the busy population who hunted, tended flocks, tilled the ground, and quarrelled and fought, at a very distant period (in the valley of the Breamish)’. George Tate (1863, 302)This paper describes the results of the South East Cheviots Project undertaken by the former Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME; now part of English Heritage) during the 1980s. An area of 66 square kilometres was analytically recorded, ranging from the Breamish Valley in the north to Alnham in the south and from Brandon in the east to Schill Moor in the west. The project recorded with metrical accuracy all forms of cultivation remains, field systems, and settlements of all periods (only the prehistoric evidence will be reviewed in this paper). This landscape approach has led to a greater understanding of settlement histories in these remarkably well-preserved uplands. Recent excavations undertaken by the Northumberland Archaeological Group (NAG) and Durham University, under the auspices of the Northumberland National Park Authority (NNPA), have helped to clarify and contextualise further aspects of the chronology of settlement and landscape change recorded by the SECP.
Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction
Authors: Sutton Rebecca 
Published: January 2020

AbstractThe civilian-combatant frame persists as the main legal lens through which lawyers organize the relationships of conflict zone actors. As a result, little attention has been paid in international legal scholarship to different gradations of ‘civilianness’ and the ways in which some civilians might compete to distinguish themselves from each other. Drawing attention to international humanitarian actors – particularly those working for NGOs – this article explores the micro-strategies these actors engage in to negotiate their relative status in war. Original qualitative empirical findings from South Sudan illuminate the way in which humanitarians struggle over distinction with individuals working for the UN peacekeeping mission, UNMISS. As is shown, humanitarian actors are doing away with a static civilian-combatant binary in their daily practice. A more fluid logic informs both their self-conceptualization and their interactions with others who share the operational space. Humanitarian actors envision civilianness as a contingent concept, and they operate according to a continuum along which everything is a matter of degree and subtle gradation. As civilianness is detached from the civilian, any given actor might acquire or shed civilian-like, or combatant-like, characteristics at any moment. The distinction practices that humanitarian actors enact can be understood as a bid for legibility, so that they might be rendered intelligible in international law and in the eyes of other actors as a special kind of civilian – the ‘civilian plus’.
Hydraulic Fracturing Induced Seismicity in the Southern Sichuan Basin Due to Fluid Diffusion Inferred From Seismic and Injection Data Analysis
Authors: Tan Yuyang , Hu Jun , Zhang Haijiang , Chen Yukuan , Qian Jiawei , Wang Quanfeng , Zha Huasheng , Tang Pan , Nie Zhou 
Published: January 2020

AbstractIn the southern Sichuan Basin, China, the recent increase in the seismic activity has been suspected to be related to hydraulic fracturing stimulation for producing the shale gas. In this study, we used the monitoring data from a local seismic network within the shale gas blocks to study the earthquakes near the shale gas production wells that have detailed injection data. Comparison of the timing of earthquakes and stimulation schedule of the studied well pads indicates an apparent correlation between the seismic activity and hydraulic fracturing. The results of seismic velocity tomography reveal that the reactivation of preexisting faults due to fluid diffusion is the primary cause of the observed earthquakes. Focal mechanism analysis combined with geomechanical modeling indicates that the increased pore pressures resulted from hydraulic fracturing are sufficient to trigger seismic slip on the faults.
On the Impacts of El Niño Events: A New Monitoring Approach Using Complex Network Analysis
Authors: Lu Zhenghui , Yuan Naiming , Chen Lin , Gong Zhiqiang 
Published: January 2020

AbstractIt is well known that El Niño events can induce worldwide impacts. However, the fact that strong El Niño events do not necessarily induce strong impacts raises a new research question: how to estimate the impacts of El Niño events in advance? To address this question, we studied the El Niño impacts from the perspective of complex network. By comparing the results from five El Niño events with distinct impacts, we found that the phase transition of the surface air temperature network over tropical Pacific is closely related to the El Niño impacts. This phenomenon was used to explain the less‐than‐expected impacts of the strong 2015/2016 El Niño, which is suggested more like a Central Pacific‐Eastern Pacific mixed El Niño. To monitor the impacts objectively, we further proposed an index, which can be used in real‐time operations.
Flow‐to‐Sliding Transition in Crystal‐Bearing Magma
Authors: Qin Zhipeng , Suckale Jenny 
Published: January 2020

AbstractThe presence of crystals in magmatic flows introduces spatial heterogeneity, which can build up to the degree that the flow behavior of the crystal‐bearing magma becomes substantially different from that of a pure melt. One example is the transition from flow to sliding, in which the deformation in the crystalline magma is concentrated almost entirely in a thin interfacial layer as opposed to being distributed in a typical flow profile throughout the domain. In this study, we use numerical reproductions of existing laboratory experiments of Fuji basalt in a rotational viscometer to identify when the flow‐to‐sliding transition is likely to occur in crystal‐bearing magma. We utilize a direct numerical method to resolve the interactions between the crystals and the magmatic melt at the scale of individual interfaces in 2‐D. All phase interactions and their aggregate effects on the flow emerge self‐consistently from the simulation itself. We find that the long‐range hydrodynamic interactions between crystals create nonlinear flow behavior even at low crystal fractions. By performing simulations in different geometries, we show that the formation and stability of force chains in crystal‐bearing magma depend sensitively not only on the crystal shape and size but also on the geometry of the experimental apparatuses. Our simulations are consistent with the observed discrepancies in previous laboratory measurements of shear thinning behavior, highlighting the delicacies of using point measurements in experiments to constrain the bulk rheology of crystal‐bearing magma.
The life cycle of cancer-associated fibroblasts within the tumour stroma and its importance in disease outcome
Authors: D’Arcangelo Elisa , Wu Nila C. , Cadavid Jose L. , McGuigan Alison P. 
Published: January 2020

AbstractThe tumour microenvironment (TME) determines vital aspects of tumour development, such as tumour growth, metastases and response to therapy. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are abundant and extremely influential in this process and interact with cellular and matrix TME constituents such as endothelial and immune cells and collagens, fibronectin and elastin, respectively. However, CAFs are also the recipients of signals—both chemical and physical—that are generated by the TME, and their phenotype effectively evolves alongside the tumour mass during tumour progression. Amid a rising clinical interest in CAFs as a crucial force for disease progression, this review aims to contextualise the CAF phenotype using the chronological framework of the CAF life cycle within the evolving tumour stroma, ranging from quiescent fibroblasts to highly proliferative and secretory CAFs. The emergence, properties and clinical implications of CAF activation are discussed, as well as research strategies used to characterise CAFs and current clinical efforts to alter CAF function as a therapeutic strategy.
Differential Repair Protein Recruitment at Sites of Clustered and Isolated DNA Double-Strand Breaks Produced by High-Energy Heavy Ions
Authors: Jakob Burkhard , Dubiak-Szepietowska Monika , Janiel Ellen , Schmidt Alina , Durante Marco , Taucher-Scholz Gisela 
Published: January 2020

AbstractDNA double-strand break (DSB) repair is crucial to maintain genomic stability. The fidelity of the repair depends on the complexity of the lesion, with clustered DSBs being more difficult to repair than isolated breaks. Using live cell imaging of heavy ion tracks produced at a high-energy particle accelerator we visualised simultaneously the recruitment of different proteins at individual sites of complex and simple DSBs in human cells. NBS1 and 53BP1 were recruited in a few seconds to complex DSBs, but in 40% of the isolated DSBs the recruitment was delayed approximately 5 min. Using base excision repair (BER) inhibitors we demonstrate that some simple DSBs are generated by enzymatic processing of base damage, while BER did not affect the complex DSBs. The results show that DSB processing and repair kinetics are dependent on the complexity of the breaks and can be different even for the same clastogenic agent.
Three-dimensional water mapping of succulent Agave victoriae-reginae leaves by terahertz imaging
Authors: Singh Abhishek K. , Pérez-López Arely V. , Simpson June , Castro-Camus Enrique 
Published: January 2020

AbstractWhile terahertz imaging has been used before for the determination of water content in vegetative tissue, most studies have either presented measurements of the temporal evolution of water content at a single-point of the plant or have presented two-dimensional images of leaves, demonstrating the potential of the technique, but relatively little of such information has been used to support biologically relevant conclusions. In this article we introduce terahertz time-domain spectroscopic imaging as a technique for the determination of the three-dimensional distribution of water in succulent plant tissues. We present the first three-dimensional water mapping of an agave leaf, which demonstrates an unprecedented capability to study the water retention mechanisms within succulent plants. We found that agave leaves are composed of a low-hydration outer tissue layer, defined by the outermost layer of vascular tissue that surrounds a high-hydration tissue, the carbohydrate rich hydrenchyma. The findings are supported by histological images and the correlation between the water content and carbohydrate presence is consistent with recently published findings of a remarkably large hydration shell associated with agave fructans.
Machine learning-based prediction of glioma margin from 5-ALA induced PpIX fluorescence spectroscopy
Authors: Leclerc Pierre , Ray Cedric , Mahieu-Williame Laurent , Alston Laure , Frindel Carole , Brevet Pierre-François , Meyronet David , Guyotat Jacques , Montcel Bruno , Rousseau David 
Published: January 2020

AbstractGliomas are infiltrative brain tumors with a margin difficult to identify. 5-ALA induced PpIX fluorescence measurements are a clinical standard, but expert-based classification models still lack sensitivity and specificity. Here a fully automatic clustering method is proposed to discriminate glioma margin. This is obtained from spectroscopic fluorescent measurements acquired with a recently introduced intraoperative set up. We describe a data-driven selection of best spectral features and show how this improves results of margin prediction from healthy tissue by comparison with the standard biomarker-based prediction. This pilot study based on 10 patients and 50 samples shows promising results with a best performance of 77% of accuracy in healthy tissue prediction from margin tissue.
Gas transport across the low-permeability containment zone of an underground nuclear explosion
Authors: Carrigan Charles R. , Sun Yunwei , Hunter Steven L. , Ruddle David G. , Simpson Matthew D. , Obi Curtis M. , Huckins-Gang Heather E. , Prothro Lance B. , Townsend Margaret J. 
Published: January 2020

AbstractUnderstanding the nature of gas transport from an underground nuclear explosion (UNE) is required for evaluating the ability to detect and interpret either on-site or atmospheric signatures of noble gas radionuclides resulting from the event. We performed a pressure and chemical tracer monitoring experiment at the site of an underground nuclear test that occurred in a tunnel in Nevada to evaluate the possible modes of gas transport to the surface. The site represents a very well-contained, low gas-permeability end member for past UNEs at the Nevada National Security Site. However, there is very strong evidence that gases detected at the surface during a period of low atmospheric pressure resulted from fractures of extremely small aperture that are essentially invisible. Our analyses also suggest that gases would have easily migrated to the top of the high-permeability collapse zone following the detonation minimizing the final distance required for migration along these narrow fractures to the surface. This indicates that on-site detection of gases emanating from such low-permeability sites is feasible while standoff detection of atmospheric plumes may also be possible at local distances for sufficiently high fracture densities. Finally, our results show that gas leakage into the atmosphere also occurred directly from the tunnel portal and should be monitored in future tunnel gas sampling experiments for the purpose of better understanding relative contributions to detection of radioxenon releases via both fracture network and tunnel transport.