bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Fostering equity, diversity, and inclusion in large, first‐year classes: Using reflective practice questions to promote universal design for learning in ecology and evolution lessons
Authors: Super Laura , Hofmann Analise , Leung Connie , Ho Mabel , Harrower Emma , Adreak Najah , Rezaie Manesh Zohreh 
Published: November 2020

AbstractInstructors can deliberately design for equity, diversity, and inclusion, including for large first‐year classes, and now instructors have added challenges given COVID‐19. Our paper explores the question: How do we integrate equity, diversity, and inclusion and universal design for learning (UDL) into first‐year, undergraduate ecology and evolution introductory lessons given the COVID‐19 pandemic? Given the large field exploring equity, diversity, and inclusion, we chose to focus on developing reflective practice question rubrics for before, during, and after lessons to encourage UDL for instructors, teaching assistants, and learners. We conducted a focus group within our team and discussed ideas related to online learning, including related pitfalls and solutions. Lastly, we created a figure to illustrate ideas and end with a general discussion. Our reflective practice questions for UDL rubrics, figure, focus group, and discussion aim to increase positive action for equity, diversity, and inclusion in the classroom and beyond.
Differential responses to fertilization and competition among invasive, noninvasive alien, and nativeBidensspecies
Authors: Woo Sunghyun , Lee Dongyeob , Cho Yong‐Chan , Lee Sangsun , Kim Eunsuk 
Published: November 2020

AbstractComparative studies of invasive, noninvasive alien, and native congenic plant species can identify plant traits that drive invasiveness. In particular, functional traits associated with rapid growth rate and high fecundity likely facilitate invasive success. As such traits often exhibit high phenotypic plasticity, characterizing plastic responses to anthropogenic environmental changes such as eutrophication and disturbance is important for predicting the invasive success of alien plant species in the future. Here, we compared trait expression and phenotypic plasticity at the species level among invasive, noninvasive alien, and nativeBidensspecies. Plants were grown under nutrient addition and competition treatments, and their functional, morphological, and seed traits were examined. InvasiveB. frondosaexhibited higher phenotypic plasticity in most measured traits than did the alien noninvasiveB. pilosaor nativeB. bipinnata. However, differential plastic responses to environmental treatments rarely altered the rank of trait values among the threeBidensspecies, except for the number of inflorescences. The achene size ofB. frondosawas larger, but its pappus length was shorter than that ofB. pilosa. Two species demonstrated opposite plastic responses of pappus length to fertilization. These results suggest that the plasticity of functional traits does not significantly contribute to the invasive success ofB. frondosa. The dispersal efficiency ofB. frondosais expected to be lower than that ofB. pilosa, suggesting that long‐distance dispersal is likely not a critical factor in determining invasive success.
Deep phenotypical characterization of human CD3+CD56+ T cells by mass cytometry
Authors: Romero‐Olmedo Addi J. , Schulz Axel R. , Huber Magdalena , Brehm Corinna U. , Chang Hyun‐Dong , Chiarolla Cristina M. , Bopp Tobias , Skevaki Chrysanthi , Berberich‐Siebelt Friederike , Radbruch Andreas , Mei Henrik E. , Lohoff Michael 
Published: November 2020

AbstractCD56+ T cells are a group of pro‐inflammatory CD3+ lymphocytes with characteristics of natural killer cells, being involved in antimicrobial immune defense. Here, we performed deep phenotypic profiling of CD3+CD56+ cells in peripheral blood of normal human donors and individuals sensitized to birch‐pollen or/and house dust mite by high‐dimensional mass cytometry combined with manual and computational data analysis. A co‐regulation between major conventional T‐cell subsets and their respective CD3+CD56+ cell counterparts appeared restricted to CD8+, MAIT, and TCRγδ+ T‐cell compartments. Interestingly, we find a co‐regulation of several CD3+CD56+ cell subsets in allergic but not in healthy individuals. Moreover, using FlowSOM, we distinguished a variety of CD56+ T‐cell phenotypes demonstrating a hitherto underestimated heterogeneity among these cells. The novel CD3+CD56+ subset description comprises phenotypes superimposed with naive, memory, type 1, 2, and 17 differentiation stages, in part represented by a phenotypical continuum. Frequencies of two out of 19 CD3+CD56+ FlowSOM clusters were significantly diminished in allergic individuals, demonstrating less frequent presence of cells with cytolytic, presumably protective, capacity in these donors consistent with defective expansion or their recruitment to the affected tissue. Our results contribute to defining specific cell populations to be targeted during therapy for allergic conditions.
Valorization of waste waxed corrugated cardboard via pyrolysis for recovering wax
Authors: Sotoudehnia Farid , Mengistie Endalkachew , Alayat Abdulbaset , McDonald Armando G. 
Published: November 2020

AbstractCorrugated cardboard (CCB) comprises a substantial portion of municipal solid waste, of which ~5% is wax coated CCB (WCCB) to enhance its performance. WCCB cannot be recycled, making it a suitable resource to recover wax and produce char. The WCCB was characterized for its extractable wax, lignin, and carbohydrate contents and by thermogravimetric analysis to study its thermal degradation behavior. WCCB was preliminarily examined by pyrolysis‐gas chromatography–mass spectrometry to determine product composition. WCCB samples were then pyrolyzed in auger and tube reactors at 450, 500, and 550°C, and their pyrolysis wax‐oil and char products characterized. WCCB and char were subjected to proximate, ultimate, surface area, analyses. The highest char yield was 36% at 450°C, and the highest wax‐oil yield was 53% at 550°C in the tube reactor. The wax‐oil fraction contained mainly alkanes, alkenes, and dienes (C9–C36), and chain length decreased with pyrolysis temperature. This wax fraction could be recovered and used as bunker fuel (C12–C40) or further converted to diesel (C10–C20).
Honeycomb like copper‐cobalt nanostructures and their synergy with carbon supports for electrooxidation of carbinol
Authors: Sesu Divya C. , Swami Anita , Kakade Bhalchandra 
Published: November 2020

SummaryFabricating the significant electrocatalysts with enriched activity and stability is necessary due to the increasing demands of the fuel cell industries for its commercialization. This report provides a widespread impact on fabrication of a suitable and significant porous bimetallic nanocatalyst for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). Here, we have developed nanofoams of Cu‐Co alloys/oxides with varied carbon supports using simple combustion method, where graphite oxide (GO) shows synergistic “catalyst‐support” effect than other substrates. The morphological studies reveal a honeycomb‐like structure with dense porous nature of Cu‐Co nanofoam (CuCo@rGO). X‐ray diffraction and spectroscopic studies reveal the formation of spinel structure of CuCo2O4 with active {110} facets in case of CuCo@rGO, exhibiting higher methanol electrooxidation activity of 198 mA/cm2, which is found to be improved than that of the previous reports. The optimized composition, CuCo@rGO shows the slow decrease in the current in chronoamperometric studies with 40% retention of its activity even after 10 hours. The CoCu@rGO nanofoam shows improved Brunauer‐Emmett‐Teller surface area of ~50 m2/g due to the addition of GO. In addition, the composite shows an excellent electrochemical surface area value of 7.75 m2/g over other compositions of different carbon supports. The intrinsic effect of better conductivity of Co75Cu25@rGO has also been confirmed using impedance spectroscopy. The porous honeycomb structure of Co75Cu25@rGO composite synergistically impacts methanol oxidation and also forbids the formation of CO intermediate, maintaining the activity.
Diagnostic Fragmentation Filtering for Cyanopeptolin Detection
Authors: McDonald Kimberlynn , Renaud Justin B. , Pick Frances R. , Miller J. David , Sumarah Mark W. , McMullin David R. 
Published: November 2020

Abstract
Cyanobacteria are ubiquitous photosynthetic prokaryotes that produce structurally diverse bioactive metabolites. Although microcystins are extensively studied, other cyanopeptides produced by common bloom-forming species have received little attention. Cyanopeptolins are a large cyanopeptide group that contain a characteristic 3-amino-6-hydroxy-2-piperidone (Ahp) moiety. In the present study we used diagnostic fragmentation filtering (DFF), a semitargeted liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) product ion filtering approach, to investigate cyanopeptolin diversity from 5 Microcystis strains and 4 bloom samples collected from lakes in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. Data processing by DFF was used to search MS/MS data sets for pairs of diagnostic product ions corresponding to cyanopeptolin partial sequences. For example, diagnostic product ions at m/z 150.0912 and 215.1183 identified cyanopeptolins with the NMe-Tyr–Phe–Ahp partial sequence. Forty-eight different cyanopeptolins, including 35 new variants, were detected from studied strains and bloom samples. Different cyanopeptolin profiles were identified from each sample. We detected a new compound, cyanopeptolin 1143, from a bloom and elucidated its planar structure from subsequent targeted MS/MS experiments. Diagnostic fragmentation filtering is a rapid, easy-to-perform postacquisition metabolomics strategy for inferring structural features and prioritizing new compounds for further study and dereplication. More work on cyanopeptolin occurrence and toxicity is needed because their concentrations in freshwater lakes after blooms can be similar to those of microcystins. Environ Toxicol Chem 2021;40:1087–1097. © 2020 SETAC
Abstract
Diagnostic fragmentation filtering metabolomic data processing was applied to search tandem mass spectometry data sets for product ions corresponding to specific cyanopeptolin partial sequences. Diverse cyanopeptolin profiles were identified from bloom samples and cyanobacteria cultures. DFF = diagnostic fragmentation filtering; LC-MS/MS = liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.
Fusion of blockchain and artificial intelligence for secure drone networking underlying 5G communications
Authors: Gupta Rajesh , Kumari Aparna , Tanwar Sudeep 
Published: November 2020

AbstractNowadays, the exponential increase in the usage of drones in various realms of societal and military applications necessitates advancements and stability in drone communication. Drones have proven their potential in providing real‐time cost‐efficient solutions for several applications like healthcare, smart grid surveillance, smart city monitoring, and border surveillance. Though it has many security and privacy issues, researchers across the globe have given numerous solutions to protect drone communication from cyber‐attacks. Most of these solutions were based on cryptographic techniques and are highly compute extensive. There exist few blockchain‐based solutions, which suffer from high transaction storage costs with communication reliability, latency, and bandwidth issues. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we present a comprehensive survey to secure drone communication and propose a blockchain‐based secure and intelligent drone communication architecture underlying 5G communication network and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. The proposed architecture uses an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) as a platform for data storage, which ensures improved network performance, communication security and privacy, and reduces transaction storage cost. Further, it facilitates efficient drone communication in providing dynamic, flexible, and on‐the‐fly decisions competencies through 5G and AI technologies. Then, we incorporate a healthcare‐based case study using the proposed architecture. At last, future research challenges and directions are emphasized for improvement in this research area.
How high‐resolution mass spectrometry can help for the accurate quantification of difficult fragrance allergens
Authors: Remy Pierre‐Alain , Pérès Christophe , Dugay José , Corbi Elise , David Nathalie , Vial Jérôme 
Published: November 2020

AbstractTwo high‐resolution mass spectrometers (HRMS) with different analyzer technology, Orbitrap and hybrid quadrupole time‐of‐flight (QTOF), were compared with a low‐resolution mass spectrometer, quadrupole, to analyse a set of 35 difficult allergens. These difficult allergens are commonly coeluted fragrance allergens with matrix compounds, using standard gas chromatography‐mass spectrometer conditions, from the extended list of the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS). Although the fundamental role of chromatographic separation has been demonstrated many times, the aim of this work is to demonstrate the benefits of high‐resolution. The added value of high‐resolution was illustrated in both a qualitative and a quantitative way. For qualitative aspect, the high resolution extracted ion signals of these two detectors were compared with the low‐resolution extracted ion signals. About 50% of the coeluted cases observed with the low‐resolution detector are easily resolved by the two high‐resolution detectors. For the quantitative aspect, an accuracy profile methodology and a performance metric were used to propose an overall evaluation. The Orbitrap mass spectrometer demonstrated a better overall performance, while the QTOF presented similar or even lower quantification performances than the quadrupole on the set of analysed fragrances.
Melanins as Sustainable Resources for Advanced Biotechnological Applications
Authors: Galeb Hanaa A. , Wilkinson Emma L. , Stowell Alison F. , Lin Hungyen , Murphy Samuel T. , Martin‐Hirsch Pierre L. , Mort Richard L. , Taylor Adam M. , Hardy John G. 
Published: November 2020

AbstractMelanins are a class of biopolymers that are widespread in nature and have diverse origins, chemical compositions, and functions. Their chemical, electrical, optical, and paramagnetic properties offer opportunities for applications in materials science, particularly for medical and technical uses. This review focuses on the application of analytical techniques to study melanins in multidisciplinary contexts with a view to their use as sustainable resources for advanced biotechnological applications, and how these may facilitate the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Statistical methods with exhaustive search in the identification of gene–gene interactions for colorectal cancer
Authors: Kafaie Somayeh , Xu Ling , Hu Ting 
Published: November 2020

AbstractThough additive forms of heritability are primarily studied in genetics, nonlinear, non‐additive gene–gene interactions, that is, epistasis, could explain a portion of the missing heritability in complex human diseases including cancer. In recent years, powerful computational methods have been introduced to understand multivariable genetic factors of these complex human diseases in extremely high‐dimensional genome‐wide data. In this study, we investigated the performance of three powerful methods, BOolean Operation‐based Screening and Testing (BOOST), FastEpistasis, and Tree‐based Epistasis Association Mapping (TEAM) to identify interacting genetic risk factors of colorectal cancer (CRC) for genome‐wide association studies (GWAS). After quality‐control based data preprocessing, we applied these three algorithms to a CRC GWAS data set, and selected the top‐ranked 100 single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) pairs identified by each method (251 SNPs in total), among which 74 pairs were common between FastEpistasis and BOOST. The identified SNPs by BOOST, FastEpistasis, and TEAM mapped to 58, 57, and 62 genes, respectively. Some genes highlighted by our study, including MACF1, USP49, SMAD2, SMAD3, TGFBR1, and RHOA, have been detected in previous CRC‐related research. We also identified some new genes with potential biological relevance to CRC such as CCDC32. Furthermore, we constructed the network of these top SNP pairs for three methods, and the patterns identified in the networks show that some SNPs including rs2412531, rs349699, and rs17142011 play a crucial role in the classification of disease status in our study.
Super‐variants identification for brain connectivity
Authors: Li Ting , Hu Jianchang , Wang Shiying , Zhang Heping 
Published: November 2020

AbstractIdentifying genetic biomarkers for brain connectivity helps us understand genetic effects on brain function. The unique and important challenge in detecting associations between brain connectivity and genetic variants is that the phenotype is a matrix rather than a scalar. We study a new concept of super‐variant for genetic association detection. Similar to but different from the classic concept of gene, a super‐variant is a combination of alleles in multiple loci but contributing loci can be anywhere in the genome. We hypothesize that the super‐variants are easier to detect and more reliable to reproduce in their associations with brain connectivity. By applying a novel ranking and aggregation method to the UK Biobank databases, we discovered and verified several replicable super‐variants. Specifically, we investigate a discovery set with 16,421 subjects and a verification set with 2,882 subjects, where they are formed according to release date, and the verification set is used to validate the genetic associations from the discovery phase. We identified 12 replicable super‐variants on Chromosomes 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, and 19. These verified super‐variants contain single nucleotide polymorphisms that locate in 14 genes which have been reported to have association with brain structure and function, and/or neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders in the literature. We also identified novel loci in genes RSPO2 and TMEM74 which may be upregulated in brain issues. These findings demonstrate the validity of the super‐variants and its capability of unifying existing results as well as discovering novel and replicable results.
Myeloid‐Cell–Specific IL‐6 Signaling Promotes MicroRNA‐223‐Enriched Exosome Production to Attenuate NAFLD‐Associated Fibrosis
Authors: Hou Xin , Yin Shi , Ren Ruixue , Liu Siqi , Yong Liang , Liu Yuxiao , Li Yu , Zheng Ming‐Hua , Kunos George , Gao Bin , Wang Hua 
Published: November 2020

Background ands Aims
NAFLD is associated with elevation of many cytokines, particularly IL‐6; however, the role of IL‐6 in NAFLD remains obscure. The aim of this study was to examine how myeloid‐specific IL‐6 signaling affects NAFLD by the regulation of antifibrotic microRNA‐223 (miR‐223) in myeloid cells.

Approach and Results
Patients with NAFLD or NASH and healthy controls were recruited, and serum IL‐6 and soluble IL‐6 receptor α (sIL‐6Rα) were measured. Compared to controls, serum IL‐6 and sIL‐6Rα levels were elevated in NAFLD/NASH patients. IL‐6 levels correlated positively with the number of circulating leukocytes and monocytes. The role of IL‐6 in NAFLD was investigated in Il6 knockout (KO) and Il6 receptor A (Il6ra) conditional KO mice after high‐fat diet (HFD) feeding. HFD‐fed Il6 KO mice had worse liver injury and fibrosis, but less inflammation, compared to wild‐type mice. Hepatocyte‐specific Il6ra KO mice had more steatosis and liver injury, whereas myeloid‐specific Il6ra KO mice had a lower number of hepatic infiltrating macrophages (IMs) and neutrophils with increased cell death of these cells, but greater liver fibrosis (LF), than WT mice. Mechanistically, the increased LF in HFD‐fed, myeloid‐specific Il6ra KO mice was attributable to the reduction of antifibrotic miR‐223 and subsequent up‐regulation of the miR‐223 target gene, transcriptional activator with PDZ‐binding motif (TAZ), a well‐known factor to promote NASH fibrosis. In vitro, IL‐6 treatment up‐regulated exosome biogenesis‐related genes and subsequently promoted macrophages to release miR‐223‐enriched exosomes that were able to reduce profibrotic TAZ expression in hepatocytes by exosomal transfer. Finally, serum IL‐6 and miR‐223 levels were elevated and correlated with each other in NAFLD patients.

Conclusions
Myeloid‐specific IL‐6 signaling inhibits LF through exosomal transfer of antifibrotic miR‐223 into hepatocytes, providing therapeutic targets for NAFLD therapy.
Corporate bonds, exchange rates and memorandum: Evidence from Greece and Ireland
Authors: Vartholomatou Konstantina , Pendaraki Konstantina , Tsagkanos Athanasios 
Published: November 2020

AbstractIn this article, we examine the success rate of the memorandum in two peripheral eurozone countries (Ireland and Greece) that had significant differences in organisational structures and their development models. For this reason, we measure the quantile dependence between the returns of corporate bond investors and exchange rates employing a novel econometric methodology, the cross‐quantilogram. In Ireland, our key findings exhibit a higher rate of absorbing of structural reforms which contributes to more steady reinforcement of the enterprises, whether the European economy is stronger than the US or not. In contrast, Greece where the structural reforms are more intense, show a similar picture over a period longer than that of Ireland and only when the European economy goes beyond the US economy.
Automatic COVID‐19 CT segmentation using U‐Net integrated spatial and channel attention mechanism
Authors: Zhou Tongxue , Canu Stéphane , Ruan Su 
Published: November 2020

AbstractThe coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic has led to a devastating effect on the global public health. Computed Tomography (CT) is an effective tool in the screening of COVID‐19. It is of great importance to rapidly and accurately segment COVID‐19 from CT to help diagnostic and patient monitoring. In this paper, we propose a U‐Net based segmentation network using attention mechanism. As not all the features extracted from the encoders are useful for segmentation, we propose to incorporate an attention mechanism including a spatial attention module and a channel attention module, to a U‐Net architecture to re‐weight the feature representation spatially and channel‐wise to capture rich contextual relationships for better feature representation. In addition, the focal Tversky loss is introduced to deal with small lesion segmentation. The experiment results, evaluated on a COVID‐19 CT segmentation dataset where 473 CT slices are available, demonstrate the proposed method can achieve an accurate and rapid segmentation result on COVID‐19. The method takes only 0.29 second to segment a single CT slice. The obtained Dice Score and Hausdorff Distance are 83.1% and 18.8, respectively.