bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Communicating science: epigenetics in the spotlight
Authors: Dyke Stephanie O M , Ennis Catherine A , Joly Yann , Walter Jörn , Siebert Reiner , Pastinen Tomi 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Given the public interest in epigenetic science, this study aimed to better understand media representations of epigenetics in national newspaper coverage in various regions in North America, Europe, and Asia. Content analysis was used to study media messages about epigenetics, their policy focus, and the balance of the reporting. We identified several recurring themes in the news reports, including policy messages relating to individual and societal responsibilities. We also found shortcomings in the media’s portrayal of epigenetic science, and sought to identify potential causes by considering the underlying scientific evidence that the media reported on. A case study analysis showed that the results of epigenetic studies were often overstated in academic research publications due to common experimental limitations. We suggest that defining standardized criteria with which to evaluate epigenetic studies could help to overcome some of the challenges inherent in translating complex epigenetic research findings for non-technical audiences, and present a Press Kit template that researchers can adapt and use to aid in the development of accurate and balanced press releases.
New and old echographic parameters in heart failure
Authors: La Canna Giovanni , Scarfo’ Iside 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Echography (ECHO) is a first-line technology for diagnostic evaluation and prognostic stratification of patients with heart failure (HF). Recognizing specific diseases or conditions amenable to specific treatment is a crucial step in the work-up of patients with HF. Left ventricular ejection fraction (EF) measurement, despite its pathophysiological and methodological limitations, is the primary parameter for the HF classification, incorporating forms with reduced, moderately reduced, and preserved ejection fraction. The cardiac filling parameters could characterize the haemodynamic profile of the various forms of HF and guide different clinical therapeutic strategies. Besides the conventional parameters, widely validated by the clinical practice (old parameters), ECHO provides new information on cardiac function (deformation index), which prospectively could refine our phenotypic classification, beyond EF, thus opening new prospects in the pre-clinical identification, and in the selection of the appropriate treatment for HF patients Stemming from the recent technologic improvements, it is possible to analyse conventional parameters with innovative and automatic approaches, which are quickly available, and able to open new perspectives in the treatment of patients with HF.
Relapse of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and myocardial infarction: what is the connection?
Authors: Terrosu Pierfranco 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Albeit largely underappreciated, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) constitutes a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases in general and for coronary disease in particular. The incidence of myocardial infarction, in fact increases rapidly, after relapse of COPD, with a peak event rate during the first week in the worst forms (those requiring hospitalization). Even though the precise mechanism is not completely defined, it is likely derived from two pathogenetic causes: (i) mismatch between myocardial demand and offer of O2 (not fully demonstrated and limited to few cases); (ii) acute coronary thrombosis, probably due to a systemic inflammatory reaction, brought upon by multiple interaction between the infective agent and the host immune system.
Renal arteries denervation with second generation systems: a remedy for resistant hypertension?
Authors: Versaci Francesco , Sciarretta Sebastiano , Scappaticci Massimiliano , Calcagno Simone , di Pietro Riccardo , Sbandi Francesca , Dei Giudici Angela , Del Prete Armando , de Angelis Stefano , Biondi-Zoccai Giuseppe 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Initial studies on renal denervation (RDN) for the treatment of non-controlled arterial hypertension (HTN) through radiofrequency ablation of renal arteries demonstrated that RDN is an effective therapeutic strategy to reduce arterial blood pressure (BP). Nonetheless, the first randomized study, SYMPLICITY-HTN-3, failed to demonstrate a clear benefit for RND over the control group. Technologic evolution, with the introduction of new second generation multi-electrode devices, allowed deep energy delivery along the full circumference of the vessel. Two recent randomized studies involving patients assuming (SPYRAL HTN-ON MED) or not (SPYRAL HTN-OFF MED) antihypertensive pharmacologic treatment, demonstrated the efficacy and safety of RDN using second generation systems for radiofrequency ablation. Another recent randomized study demonstrated that RDN with ultrasounds (RADIANCE-HTN SOLO) of the main renal arteries led to a significant BP reduction compared to the control group. These studies have once again raised the interest of the scientific community towards attempting to define the appropriate role of RDN in the treatment of hypertension. Nonetheless, larger and longer clinical trials will be necessary to draw further conclusions.
Genetic Adaptation in New York City Rats
Authors: Harpak Arbel , Garud Nandita , Rosenberg Noah A , Petrov Dmitri A , Combs Matthew , Pennings Pleuni S , Munshi-South Jason 
Published: November 2020

AbstractBrown rats (Rattus norvegicus) thrive in urban environments by navigating the anthropocentric environment and taking advantage of human resources and by-products. From the human perspective, rats are a chronic problem that causes billions of dollars in damage to agriculture, health, and infrastructure. Did genetic adaptation play a role in the spread of rats in cities? To approach this question, we collected whole-genome sequences from 29 brown rats from New York City (NYC) and scanned for genetic signatures of adaptation. We tested for 1) high-frequency, extended haplotypes that could indicate selective sweeps and 2) loci of extreme genetic differentiation between the NYC sample and a sample from the presumed ancestral range of brown rats in northeast China. We found candidate selective sweeps near or inside genes associated with metabolism, diet, the nervous system, and locomotory behavior. Patterns of differentiation between NYC and Chinese rats at putative sweep loci suggest that many sweeps began after the split from the ancestral population. Together, our results suggest several hypotheses on adaptation in rats living in proximity to humans.
Development of physical activity and food built environment quality indicators for chronic diseases in Argentina
Authors: Seijo Mariana , Spira Cintia , Chaparro Martín , Elorriaga Natalia , Rubinstein Adolfo , García-Elorrio Ezequiel , Irazola Vilma 
Published: November 2020

SummaryAlthough obesity and non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention efforts to-date have focused mainly on individual level factors, the social and physical environments in which people live are now widely recognized as important social determinants of health. Obesogenic environments promote higher dietary energy intakes and sedentary behaviors, thus contributing to the obesity/NCD burden. To develop quality indicators (QIs) for measuring food and physical activity (PA)-built environments in municipalities. A literature review was conducted. Based on the best practices identified from this review, a draft set of candidate QI was retrieved. The initial 67 QIs were then evaluated by a modified Delphi panel of multidisciplinary health professionals (n = 40) to determine their relevance, validity, and feasibility in 3 rounds of voting and threaded discussion using a modified RAND/University of California, Los Angeles Appropriateness Methodology. Response rate for the panel was 89.4%. All final 42 QIs were rated as highly relevant, valid, and feasible (median rating ≥ 7 on a 1–9 scale), with no significant disagreement. The final QI set addresses for the PA domain: (i) promotion of PA; and (ii) improvements in the environment to strengthen the practice of PA; and for Food environment domain: (i) promotion of healthy eating; (ii) access to healthy foods; and (iii) promotion of responsible advertising. We generated a set of indicators to evaluate the PA and food built environment, which can be adapted for use in Latin American and other low- and middle-income countries.
Paediatric surgery and COVID-19: urgent lessons to be learned
Authors: TURNER Alexander M , ALBOLINO Sara , MORABITO Antonino 
Published: November 2020

Abstract

Background
The dissemination of scientific data on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continually builds but, in April 2020, could not keep up with the spread of the disease. Through technology, surgeons in Italy and the UK, representing both peak and pre-peak infective time zones, were able to communicate so that the urgent lessons on the huge expected demands of care learned in Italy could be brought to the UK in advance. This paper specifically discusses the issues related to paediatric surgery, currently under-reported in the literature.

Methods
The aim of this paper is to conjoin experience from the field to provide a framework for a safe assessment and treatment of paediatric patients by adopting a systemic approach aimed at reducing the risk of contamination. We reviewed the processes and good practices that were undertaken in contexts of emergency such as in Italy and the UK and then adapted them within the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) framework to provide an assessment of how to reorganize the services in order to cope with an unexpected situation. The SEIPS model is the adopted theoretical framework, which allows to analyse the system in its main components with a human factors and ergonomics (HFE) perspective.

Results
The results introduce some of the good practices and recommendations developed during the emergency in the surgical scenario with a focus on the paediatric patients. They represent the lessons learned from the combination of the little existing evidence of literature and the experience from surgical teams who responded in an impromptu and unrehearsed way.

Conclusions
Lessons learned from the frontline ‘on the fly’ during COVID-19 emergency should be consolidated and taken into the future. In order to prepare proactively for the next phases and get ahead of the curve of these hospital accesses, there is a need for a risk assessment of the new clinical pathways with a multidisciplinary approach centred on HFE with the adoption of the SEIPS model and an involvement of all the surgical teams.
Transmission of Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae: the role of infection control
Authors: Tsioutis Constantinos , Eichel Vanessa M , Mutters Nico T 
Published: November 2020

Abstract

Background
The worldwide spread of carbapenemase-producing Gram-negative bacteria (GNB) in healthcare settings is worrying. Of particular concern is the occurrence of Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP). In recent years, several guidelines and recommendations have focused on the control of carbapenem-resistant GNB. It remains, however, unknown to what extent individual infection control measures are effective. Our aim was to critically review the recent evidence regarding the effectiveness of measures to control KPC-KP spread in healthcare settings.

Methods
Critical review of the literature aiming to evaluate, in accordance with published recommendations, all available studies reporting infection control (IC) measures to control KPC-KP published in the past 5 years.

Results
Among 11 included studies, the majority consisted of outbreak reports, where application of measures was reported in the absence of control groups. Variability was observed related to the frequency of application of recommended measures for control of KPC-KP. Additional measures were recorded, such as environmental sampling and staff screening, whereas compliance with hand hygiene was measured in relatively few studies. Finally, mortality in patients harbouring KPC-KP was notable, reaching 42.9% of included patients.

Conclusions
Despite successful control of KPC-KP spread during outbreaks, the impact of individual IC measures is difficult to assess, as the quality of published evidence is low and controlled intervention studies are lacking. The distribution of studies, the number of reported cases and the high mortality rates, clearly show that KPC-KP remains a major healthcare problem worldwide.
Surgical antibiotic prophylaxis in patients colonized with multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria: practical and conceptual aspects
Authors: Temkin Elizabeth , Margalit Ili , Nutman Amir , Carmeli Yehuda 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Antibiotic resistance threatens the effectiveness of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis (SAP) regimens aimed at preventing surgical site infection (SSI). With a focus on procedures in which Gram-negative bacteria (GNB) are the main pathogens causing SSI, this review summarizes the evidence and describes how SAP must evolve in response to carriage of MDR GNB among surgical patients. Randomized controlled trials of SAP for carriers of resistant GNB require prohibitively large sample sizes. No professional guidelines address the topic of adapting SAP for known carriers of resistant GNB. For patients whose carrier status is unknown, the effects of different SAP strategies have been studied for transrectal ultrasound-guided prostate biopsy and colorectal surgery. The four possible strategies for SAP in the era of antibiotic resistance are: no SAP; universal standard SAP; pre-surgical screening for carriage of antibiotic-resistant pathogens before surgery and targeted SAP (i.e. broad-spectrum antibiotics only for those who screen positive); and universal broad-spectrum SAP. The prevalence of carriage determines the efficiency of each strategy. Decolonization is a potential adjunct to SAP.
How to build a catalogue of linearly evolving cosmic voids
Authors: Stopyra Stephen , Peiris Hiranya V , Pontzen Andrew 
Published: November 2020

ABSTRACT
Cosmic voids provide a powerful probe of the origin and evolution of structures in the Universe because their dynamics can remain near-linear to the present day. As a result, they have the potential to connect large-scale structure at late times to early Universe physics. Existing ‘watershed’-based algorithms, however, define voids in terms of their morphological properties at low redshift. The degree to which the resulting regions exhibit linear dynamics is consequently uncertain, and there is no direct connection to their evolution from the initial density field. A recent void definition addresses these issues by considering ‘anti-haloes’. This approach consists of inverting the initial conditions of an N-body simulation to swap overdensities and underdensities. After evolving the pair of initial conditions, anti-haloes are defined by the particles within the inverted simulation that are inside haloes in the original (uninverted) simulation. In this work, we quantify the degree of non-linearity of both anti-haloes and watershed voids using the Zel’dovich approximation. We find that non-linearities are introduced by voids with radii less than $5\, \mathrm{Mpc}\, h^{-1}$, and that both anti-haloes and watershed voids can be made into highly linear sets by removing these voids.
The Hubble constant from eight time-delay galaxy lenses
Authors: Denzel Philipp , Coles Jonathan P , Saha Prasenjit , Williams Liliya L R 
Published: November 2020

ABSTRACT
We present a determination of the Hubble constant from the joint, free-form analysis of eight strongly, quadruply lensing systems. In the concordance cosmology, we find $H_0{} = 71.8^{+3.9}_{-3.3}\, \mathrm{km}\, \mathrm{s}^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}{}{}$ with a precision of $4.97{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$. This is in agreement with the latest measurements from supernovae Type Ia and Planck observations of the cosmic microwave background. Our precision is lower compared to these and other recent time-delay cosmography determinations, because our modelling strategies reflect the systematic uncertainties of lensing degeneracies. We furthermore are able to find reasonable lensed image reconstructions by constraining to either value of H0 from local and early Universe measurements. This leads us to conclude that current lensing constraints on H0 are not strong enough to break the ‘Hubble tension’ problem of cosmology.
Identification of genes associated with endometrial cell ageing
Authors: Kawamura Teruhiko , Tomari Hiroyuki , Onoyama Ichiro , Araki Hiromitsu , Yasunaga Masafumi , Lin Cui , Kawamura Keiko , Yokota Natsuko , Yoshida Sachiko , Yagi Hiroshi , Asanoma Kazuo , Sonoda Kenzo , Egashira Katsuko , Ito Takashi , Kato Kiyoko 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Ageing of the uterine endometrium is a critical factor that affects reproductive success, but the mechanisms associated with uterine ageing are unclear. In this study, we conducted a qualitative examination of age-related changes in endometrial tissues and identified candidate genes as markers for uterine ageing. Gene expression patterns were assessed by two RNA-sequencing experiments using uterine tissues from wild type (WT) C57BL/6 mice. Gene expression data obtained by RNA-sequencing were validated by real-time PCR. Genes expressing the pro-inflammatory cytokines Il17rb and chemokines Cxcl12 and Cxcl14 showed differential expression between aged WT mice and a group of mice composed of 5- and 8-week-old WT (young) animals. Protein expression levels of the above-mentioned genes and of IL8, which functions downstream of IL17RB, were analysed by quantitative immunohistochemistry of unaffected human endometrium tissue samples from patients in their 20s and 40s (10 cases each). In the secretory phase samples, 3,3ʹ- diaminobenzidine staining intensities of IL17RB, CXCL12 and CXCL14 for patients in their 40s were significantly higher than that for patients in their 20s, as detected by a Mann–hitney U test. These results suggest that these genes are candidate markers for endometrial ageing and for prediction of age-related infertility, although confirmation of these findings is needed in larger studies involving fertile and infertile women.
Water spines and networks in G-quadruplex structures
Authors: Li Kevin , Yatsunyk Liliya , Neidle Stephen 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Quadruplex DNAs can fold into a variety of distinct topologies, depending in part on loop types and orientations of individual strands, as shown by high-resolution crystal and NMR structures. Crystal structures also show associated water molecules. We report here on an analysis of the hydration arrangements around selected folded quadruplex DNAs, which has revealed several prominent features that re-occur in related structures. Many of the primary-sphere water molecules are found in the grooves and loop regions of these structures. At least one groove in anti-parallel and hybrid quadruplex structures is long and narrow and contains an extensive spine of linked primary-sphere water molecules. This spine is analogous to but fundamentally distinct from the well-characterized spine observed in the minor groove of A/T-rich duplex DNA, in that every water molecule in the continuous quadruplex spines makes a direct hydrogen bond contact with groove atoms, principally phosphate oxygen atoms lining groove walls and guanine base nitrogen atoms on the groove floor. By contrast, parallel quadruplexes do not have extended grooves, but primary-sphere water molecules still cluster in them and are especially associated with the loops, helping to stabilize loop conformations.
Linear Headache: A Novel Entity or a Variant of Nummular Headache? Clinical Characteristics and Treatment Response in a Series of 16 Patients
Authors: Chavarría-Miranda Alba , Guerrero Ángel L , Talavera Blanca , Martínez-Pías Enrique , Trigo-López Javier , Sierra Álvaro , García-Azorín David 
Published: November 2020

Abstract

Objective
Linear headache has been recently described as an episodic or chronic unilateral pain distributed along a fixed linear trajectory, which combines some characteristics of epicrania fugax and nummular headache. The aim of this study was to describe the clinical characteristics and therapeutic response of a series of 16 new patients.

Design
This is an observational study with a series of cases.

Setting
The study period encompassed June 2014 to June 2019. Demographic, clinical, and therapeutic response data were recorded.

Methods
We included all consecutive patients who presented pain with the following characteristics: sharply contoured, fixed in size and shape, with linear shape, without movement along a trajectory, and not circumscribed to the territory of any nerve.

Results
Twelve patients were women, and four were men. The mean age at onset was 40.1 years. Pain was described as pressing in seven patients, burning in five, and electric or stabbing in two each. Symptomatic treatment had been used by 13 patients (81.2%), with analgesics being the most frequent treatment used. Thirteen patients received preventive treatment. The response to oral medications and anesthetic blockade was insufficient. OnabotulinumtoxinA was used in six cases, with an optimal (&gt;75%) response observed in half.

Conclusion
Linear headache appears to be a distinct headache syndrome from epicrania fugax or nummular headache. Preventive treatment is often required. The drug with the best response was onabotulinumtoxinA.
Wounded healers: a call for spiritual care towards healthcare professionals in time of COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Sarmiento Philip Joseph D 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
In recent correspondences and articles published, the role of religious and spiritual interventions has been discussed for the attention of the medical community in the time of COVID-19 pandemic and part of these interventions is to provide spiritual care. Attention has been given to provide spiritual care among COVID-19 patients. However, there is also a dire need to offer spiritual care towards healthcare professionals because they, too, are ‘wounded healers’. This paper discusses the urgent call for the medical and spiritual communities to come up with comprehensive spiritual care programme for healthcare professionals so that they may attain spiritual well-being as they serve in the frontlines, risking their lives and providing spiritual care to patients especially in this trying times of the pandemic as a public health crisis.