bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Dynamic interspecies interactions and robustness in a four‐species model biofilm
Authors: Baliarda Aurélie , Winkler Michèle , Tournier Laurent , Tinsley Colin R. , Aymerich Stéphane 
Published: December 2021

AbstractInterspecific interactions within biofilms determine relative species abundance, growth dynamics, community resilience, and success or failure of invasion by an extraneous organism. However, deciphering interspecific interactions and assessing their contribution to biofilm properties and function remain a challenge. Here, we describe the constitution of a model biofilm composed of four bacterial species belonging to four different genera (Rhodocyclus sp., Pseudomonas fluorescens, Kocuria varians, and Bacillus cereus), derived from a biofilm isolated from an industrial milk pasteurization unit. We demonstrate that the growth dynamics and equilibrium composition of this biofilm are highly reproducible. Based on its equilibrium composition, we show that the establishment of this four‐species biofilm is highly robust against initial, transient perturbations but less so towards continuous perturbations. By comparing biofilms formed from different numbers and combinations of the constituent species and by fitting a growth model to the experimental data, we reveal a network of dynamic, positive, and negative interactions that determine the final composition of the biofilm. Furthermore, we reveal that the molecular determinant of one negative interaction is the thiocillin I synthesized by the B. cereus strain, and demonstrate its importance for species distribution and its impact on robustness by mutational analysis of the biofilm ecosystem.
The usage of different types of food outlets was not significantly associated with body mass index during the third COVID‐19 national lockdown in the United Kingdom
Authors: Albalawi Ahmad , Hambly Catherine , Speakman John R. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractBackgroundThe United Kingdom (UK) implemented several national lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic during which restaurants were closed and people were advised to stay at home if possible. These restrictions were eased and reapplied multiple times between March 2020 and May 2021. The change in restaurant access and prolonged restriction of activity may have an impact on body weight.AimThe aim of this study was to examine the impact of multiple lockdowns on body mass index (BMI) change from pre‐pandemic till during the third lockdown and on the use of different types of food outlets and their association with BMI change.Materials and MethodSurveys of usage of different types of food outlets were distributed online before the lockdown between 06 January and 12 December 2019 and during the third national lockdown between 29 March and 25 April 2021. The food outlet usage surveys were filled out for seven consecutive days. Self‐reported BMI was reported before the pandemic and during the third phase of the lockdown. The total number of individuals who started the study before the pandemic was 681, and 60 participants completed the surveys during the third phase of lockdown.ResultsFor the 60 participants in both surveys mean BMI was significantly higher during the third lockdown (28.6 ± 5.9 kg.m2) in comparison with the mean BMI before the pandemic 2019 (28.0 ± 5.5 kg.m2) (paired T = 3.09, p < 0.003). There was a significant positive association between BMI change, total number of days spent in lockdown (β = 0.05, p < 0.01, R2 = 9.99), and age (β = 0.06, p < 0.007, R2 = 11.8). There was no significant association between change in BMI and change in the frequency of using fast food restaurants (FFRs), full‐service restaurants (FSRs), and delivery and takeaways.ConclusionBMI was increased significantly during the lockdown in comparison with prior to the pandemic. Individuals gained more weight the longer they stayed at home during lockdowns, and physical activity was reduced to approximately half. However, the BMI change was not related to the change in use of different types of food outlets. This pattern does not support the widespread belief that visiting restaurants or using delivery and takeaway services has a significant impact on body weight.
Significant Change of Metal Cations in Geometric Sites by Magnetic‐Field Annealing FeCo2O4 for Enhanced Oxygen Catalytic Activity
Authors: Zhang Zhengmei , Li Junfu , Qian Jinmei , Li Zhiwei , Jia Lei , Gao Daqiang , Xue Desheng 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe application of magnetic fields in the oxygen reduction/evolution reaction (ORR/OER) testing for electrocatalysts has attracted increasing interest, but it is difficult to characterize on‐site surface reconstruction. Here, a strategy is developed for annealing‐treated FeCo2O4 nanofibers at a magnetic field of 2500 Oe, named FeCo2O4‐M, showing a right‐shifted half‐wave potential of 20 mV for the ORR and a left‐shifted overpotential of 60 mV at 10 mV cm−2 for the OER as compared with its counterpart. Magnetic characterizations indicate that FeCo2O4‐M shows the spin‐state transition of cations from a low‐spin state to an intermediate‐spin state compared with FeCo2O4. Mössbauer spectra show that the Fe3+ ion in the octahedral site (0.76) of FeCo2O4‐M is more than that of FeCo2O4 (0.71), indicating the effective stimulus of metal cations in geometric sites by magnetic‐field annealing. Furthermore, theoretical calculations demonstrate that the d‐band centers (εd) of Co 3d and Fe 3d in the tetrahedral and octahedral sites of the FeCo2O4‐M nanofibers shift close to the Fermi level, revealing the enhanced mechanism of the ORR/OER activity.
P‐Doped Ni/NiO Heterostructured Yolk‐Shell Nanospheres Encapsulated in Graphite for Enhanced Lithium Storage
Authors: Xu Liqianyun , Zhang Xixue , Chen Renjie , Wu Feng , Li Li 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe development of high‐efficiency lithium‐ion battery electrodes composed of recycled materials is crucial for the commercialization of retired batteries, but it remains a significant barrier. The usage and recycling of spent graphite are encouraged by the huge number of batteries that are going to be dismantled. Here, an anode made of phosphorus‐doped Ni/NiO yolk‐shell nanospheres embedded on wasted graphite is developed. Electroless deposition and a subsequent heat‐treatment procedure are used to make it in a methodical manner. The internal vacuum space of the nanospheres mitigates volume expansion and facilitates Li+ diffusion, whereas the embedded metallic Ni and conductive graphite layer expedite charge transfer. The optimal reusable composite electrode is ecologically benign and has high specific capacities (724 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1) as well as outstanding cycle stability (500 cycles). The unusual 3D sandwich‐like arrangement with strong spent graphite, the yolk‐shell hetero‐structure, continuous electron/ion transport routes, and attractive structure stability all contribute to this degree of performance. Such a nanoscale design and engineering strategy not only provides a green recovery method for anode graphite, but also enlightens other nanocomposites to boost their lithium storage performance.
Capacity of Two Sierra Nevada Rivers for Reintroduction of Anadromous Salmonids: Insights from a High‐Resolution View
Authors: Boughton David A. , Harrison Lee R. , John Sara N. , Bond Rosealea M. , Nicol Colin L. , Legleiter Carl J. , Richardson Ryan T. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractHistorically, anadromous steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss and spring‐run Chinook Salmon O. tshawytscha used high‐elevation rivers in the Sierra Nevada of California but were extirpated in the 20th century by construction of impassable dams. Plans to reintroduce the fish by opening migratory passage across the dams and reservoirs can only succeed if upstream habitats have the capacity to support viable populations of each species. To estimate capacity in the Tuolumne and Merced rivers of the central Sierra Nevada, we used a high‐resolution approach based on remote sensing and dynamic habitat modeling. Our results suggested that for both species in both systems, sediment grain sizes would support widespread spawning and the water temperatures, depths, and velocities would generate ample capacity for fry and juveniles. However, the unregulated Merced River was consistently too warm for adult Chinook Salmon to hold in the dry season prior to spawning, while the regulated Tuolumne River maintained a cooler, more stable thermal regime with a capacity for thousands of holding adults. In our high‐resolution approach, we also discovered several specific physical controls on life history expression, including thermal constraints on the timing of spawning, hydraulic prompts for downstream migration of fry, divergence of the hydraulic niches of steelhead and Chinook Salmon, and a key but uncertain role for thermal tolerance in adult Chinook Salmon. Our results suggested that steelhead reintroduction could succeed in either system and Chinook Salmon could succeed in the Tuolumne River if passage strategies account for large numbers of migrant fry and juveniles driven downstream by winter storms and snowmelt. The Merced River appeared too warm for adult Chinook Salmon, which raises questions about the current limited understanding of thermal tolerance in holding adults. Our study shows how a high‐resolution approach can provide valuable insights on specific limiting factors that must be addressed for reintroduction to succeed.
Observation, practice, and purpose: Recalibrating curriculum to enhance professional development
Authors: Schwab Jacqueline E. , Murowchick Elise , Yaure Robin G. , Cruz Laura 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThis article describes the development and assessment of teaching strategies to enhance student professional identity development by shifting the pedagogical focus from content knowledge to the practice of interpersonal and conflict resolution skills, and reflection to create awareness, observe growth, and find meaning.
GEPSdb: The Gene Expression Database of Poplar under Stress
Authors: Liu Shifan , Wang Zihao , Lan Yangang , He Ting , Xiong Rui , Wu Caijuan , Xiang Yan , Yan Hanwei 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAs a model tree species, poplar (Populus L.) has important economic and ecological value. Here, we constructed the GEPSdb (Gene Expression Database of Poplar under Stress; http://gepsdb.ahau‐edu.cn/), which is an integrated database of poplar gene expression profiles derived from RNA‐seq and microarray library data. This database provides a comprehensive collection of gene expression data from poplar exposed to 14 types of environmental stress from 11 high‐quality RNA‐seq experiments and 51 microarray libraries. The GEPSdb includes 56 genes from previous literature that have been examined in poplar and functionally verified. By incorporating data from numerous expression analyses, GEPSdb provides a user‐friendly web interface for querying, browsing, and visualizing the expression profiles of related genes. Consequently, GEPSdb can be used to link transcription data with phenotypes and can enhance our understanding of important biological processes and mechanisms underlying complex agronomic traits in poplar.
Democracy Movement and Alternative Knowledge in Hong Kong
Authors: Chan Kin-man 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThis chapter’s author discusses the role of social movement in producing alternative knowledge based on the case of the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong. This set of knowledge includes at least the definition of a problematic situation, the problem’s causes, and possible solutions. It is alternative/counter knowledge because it involves the unlearning of dominant discourses and the learning of counter-discourses. This learning is particularly intense when people are involved in social actions. Social movements as “repertoires of knowledge practices,” as suggested by della Porta and Pavan, foster the coordination of disconnected personal experiences and rationalities within a shared cognitive system to provide a common orientation for making claims and producing change. In this chapter, the author analyzes the mobilization period (March 2013–September 2014) of the Umbrella Movement to demonstrate how the movement affected public agenda setting, interpretation of law, and formulation of reform proposal.
Civility, Education, and the Embodied Mind—Three Approaches
Authors: Meyer Heinz-Dieter 
Published: December 2021

AbstractIn this paper I explore conceptions of the embodied mind or heart-mind in three major global traditions: the Chinese (Confucian and Daoist) teachings on inner cultivation, especially the integration of hot and cold cognition (Slingerland 2014); the idea ofsophrosyneor self-regulation in accord with wisdom that has long been the chief educational ideal of the Greek cultural cosmos; and the Buddhist-inspired idea of mindfulness which is now finding increasing applications in education. All three, I suggest, agree on a for our contemporary debates crucial point: that the reliably “civil” person is one whose moral development has matured to a point where their intellectual and moral capacities, their heartandmind (or “heart-mind”), achieve a degree of balanced integration. As the commonalities of these traditions are coming into view to a global community of education, we have a perhaps a new opportunity to recover a deeper sense of education that goes beyond the mere technical and instrumental competence that now preoccupies educational thought in many national and international influential reform projects.
The Dialectic of Civil and Uncivil Society—Fragility, Fault Lines, and Countervailing Forces
Authors: Meyer Heinz-Dieter 
Published: December 2021

AbstractIn light of the experience of the past three decades—1989 to 2020—the civil society appears as a fragile institution that seems capable of giving rise to the overthrow of dictators as well as to their ready installation; to engender movements of solidarity and inclusion as well as of hatred and violence. To understand what allows these different tendencies to arise from within the civil society requires that we move past a pre-occupation with the structural and socio-economic dimension of the civil society and recover a conception of the civil society as an inherently moral institution. In this regard, the tradition of social analysis pioneered by Alexis de Tocqueville remains singularly instructive. The cultivation of civility, we can learn, is not an automatic by-product of tamed markets, limited government, and vibrant associational life—necessary and important though these are. The dispositions needed to maintain the civil society do not arise with causal necessity even where associations flourish, markets are tamed, and institutions are well-designed. By facing more squarely the deep moral fault-lines of the civil society we can develop a keener sense of the countervailing forces needed to keep the project of the civil society on track.
Learning from Flint: How Matter Imposes Itself in the Anthropocene and What That Means for Education
Authors: Milne Catherine , Elliott Colin Hennessy , Devitt Adam , Scantlebury Kathryn 
Published: December 2021

AbstractIn this chapter, we explore one aspect of the Anthropocene, the vital, vibrant connections between life and matter (Whatmore, Cultural Geographies 13(4):600–609, 2006.). Drawing on the effectivity of water as a solution and the “Flint water crisis,” we explore how humans tend not to notice matter unless it brings an effect upon them. Our approach follows Melinda Benson, (Natural Resources Journal 59:251–280, 2019) in seeking to decenter human exceptionalism and explore the chemical and biological actors relationally engaged in a system with humans engendering phenomena that are unpredictable as we demonstrate in a case study of the City of Flint and its access to drinking water for humans. As this case highlights, often matter only becomes noticed when it establishes an ontological disturbance forcing itself on human experience and becoming noticed in the process. Important elements of such “noticing” are tied up with the human-material intra-actions engendering phenomena that is shaped by race and geographic history. Rather than constructing Flint and other examples as emergencies or crises that need to be solved, education should explore the dynamic nature of these events and the intra-actions of all elements. This approach offers one strategy for transforming what K–12 science education looks like for both developing scientists and everyday citizens.
Watchmen, Scientific Imaginaries, and the Capitalocene: The Media and Their Messages for Science Educators
Authors: Gough Noel , Gough Simon 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThis chapter explores the generativity of comics/graphic novels and their filmic adaptations as contributions to the “cultural literacy” of science educators by examining: (i) representations of science in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel Watchmen; (ii) the unique capability of sequential art to depict key scientific imaginaries, such as complexity and simultaneity; (iii) the treatment of these imaginaries in Zack Snyder’s (Watchmen. Universal Pictures, 2009) filmic adaptation of Watchmen; and (iv) the shift from the novel’s threats of Cold War nuclear annihilation toward the film’s concern with contemporary fears of a climate crisis. Many science educators treat comics/graphic novels (and much science fiction) with suspicion, tending to focus on their fidelity (or lack thereof) with canonical “textbook science” and the im/plausibility of their narratives. We argue that both versions of Watchmen constitute distinctively generative media resources (with cross-generational relevance) for rethinking science education in the Capitalocene.
Tracing a Black Hole: Probing Cosmic Darkness in Anthropocenic Times
Authors: Beier Jessie 
Published: December 2021

AbstractIn April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project released an unprecedented image of a supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy Messier 87. The image, which shows a dark disc outlined by swirling hot gas circling the black hole’s event horizon, exhibits a 55 million-year-old cosmic event in the Virgo galaxy cluster—a void of stellar mass measuring some 6.5 billion times that of our sun. Situated within today’s (Good) Anthropocene scenario, characterized as it is by both the rise of an inhospitable planet but also a range of good vibes and affirmative mantras, this tracing explores this newly “discovered” black hole in terms of the unthinkable questions and speculative trajectories it raises for education and its futures. Through a series of forays into astrophysics, historical examples of cosmic imaging, and further exploration of the image created by EHT, this tracing outlines the black hole and its apparent horizons in order to propose a strange vantage point from which pedagogical problem-posing might be interrupted, mutated, and relaunched. By turning to that which lies outside of the traditional science classroom—beyond the school, beyond curriculum, indeed, beyond the planet itself—this tracing seeks to probe this black hole event in terms of its weird and weirding pedagogical trajectories so as to speculate on unthought possibilities for resituating (science) education in the age of the Anthropocene.
Technology Innovations in Green Transport
Authors: Bikam Peter Bitta 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe paper uses the case study of Limpopo province to discuss technology innovations in green transport in South Africa with respect to the reduction of global greenhouse emission through technology innovation. South Africa’s emission from fuel combustion is the world’s 15th largest in forms of CO emission because it contributes about 1.2% of global emissions. In a submission from the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) on the impact of greenhouse emissions stated that companies are required to be innovative to reduce the carbon emission levels in South Africa. Literature on road transport in South Africa shows that road transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 19% of global energy consumption. The policy to promote an integrated public transport in municipalities is in line with the National Development Plan and the White Paper on National Climate Change Response. This requires innovative technology that promotes carbon trading markets such as taxi recapitalisation programmes and carbon tax on new vehicles. The study analysed the factors influencing green technology innovations in South Africa with specific reference to Limpopo province green transportation study. The methodology used to unpack innovative technology in South Africa discusses green technology in Limpopo province in the context of greenhouse gases emission reduction innovative technologies in the transport sector with respect to sustainable fuels, energy efficient systems and smart information as well as hybrid technologies. The study advances arguments on technologies for engine and propulsion systems, alternative energy sources, navigation technologies, cargo handling systems, heating and cooling vehicles, road and rail vehicles and maritime transportation with respect to innovations as well as battery charging systems, engine oil disposal etc. The findings shows that no single trajectory of technology innovation in green transport will suffice but technological innovations that improve fuel economy and transition from fossil fuels to cleaner fuel alternatives. The study in Limpopo province showed that green transport innovations must not obscure the role of non-technological innovations in reducing emissions, but the two should be tackled with green transport value chain as a whole.
Markov Perfect Equilibria in Multi-Mode Differential Games with Endogenous Timing of Mode Transitions
Authors: Dawid Herbert , Gezer Serhat 
Published: December 2021

AbstractWe study Markov perfect equilibria (MPE) of two-player multi-mode differential games with controlled state dynamics, where one player controls the transition between modes. Different types of MPE are characterized distinguishing between delay equilibria, inducing for some initial conditions mode switches after a positive finite delay, and now or never equilibria, under which, depending on the initial condition, a mode switch occurs immediately or never. These results are applied to analyze the MPE of a game capturing the dynamic interaction between two incumbent firms among which one has to decide when to extend its product range by introducing a new product. The market appeal of the new product can be influenced over time by both firms through costly investments. Under a wide range of market introduction costs a now or never equilibrium coexists with a continuum of delay equilibria, each of them inducing a different time of product introduction.