bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Contribution of climate/meteorology to winter haze pollution in the Fenwei Plain, China
Authors: Zhao Zhijun , Liu Shaw Chen , Liu Run , Zhang Ziyin , Li Yanzi , Mo Huisi , Wu Yanxing 
Published: March 2021

AbstractIn recent years, anthropogenic emissions in the Fenwei Plain (FWP) have decreased; however, haze pollution remains a serious issue. This study explored the possible reasons for this enduring problem in terms of climate and meteorology. Firstly, the contribution of climate and meteorology to haze pollution in the FWP was quantified using a best fit model and differences in key meteorological parameters were analysed over several time periods. Key climate factors were identified using a relative importance test and correlation analysis, and the adjusted optimal subset model (AOSM) was used to predict the number of winter haze days for the entire winter and for individual winter months, respectively. Results showed that the average minimum contribution (CONave) of climate/meteorology to winter haze pollution was 24.3% from 1984 to 2016 and the modulating role of climate and meteorological conditions increased significantly after 2010 (CONave = 55.8%). This was attributed to a significant decrease (increase) in sea level pressure and surface wind speed (500 hPa geopotential height and surface temperature) in the FWP. The explained variance (R2) and mean absolute error (MAE) of the models for the entire winter period were 88% and 3.54 days, respectively. For predictions in November, December, January, and February, the R2 was above 71% and the MAE was below 1.83 days. Furthermore, independent predictions for 2018 showed that the bias in the monthly models was lower by 5 days compared to the entire winter model. The results of a recycling independent test indicated that all the models evaluated had excellent stability, proving that the climate factors chosen by the AOSM do affect haze pollution in the FWP.
Olfaction in Neuropathologically Defined Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
Authors: Shill Holly A. , Zhang Nan , Driver‐Dunckley Erika , Mehta Shyamal , Adler Charles H. , Beach Thomas G. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractBackgroundHyposmia is characteristic of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLBs), whereas progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) typically has normal sense of smell. However, there is a lack of pathologically confirmed data.ObjectiveThe objective is to study hyposmia in pathologically confirmed PSP patients and compare to PD patients and nondegenerative controls.MethodsWe studied autopsied subjects in the Arizona Study of Aging and Neurodegenerative Disorders who had antemortem olfactory testing and a neuropathological diagnosis of either PD, PSP, or control.Results: This study included 281 cases. Those with neuropathologically confirmed PSP (N = 24) and controls (N = 174) had significantly better sense of smell than those with PD (N = 76). Although most PSP patients had normal olfaction, there were some with hyposmia, resulting in an overall reduced sense of smell in PSP compared to controls. The sensitivity of having PSP pathologically in those presenting with parkinsonism and normosmia was 93.4% with a specificity of 64.7%. Cases with both PSP and PD pathologically had reduced sense of smell similar to PD alone (N = 7). Hyposmic PSP patients had significantly higher Lewy body burden not meeting criteria for additional PD/DLB diagnosis.ConclusionsPathologically confirmed PD had reduced olfaction compared with PSP or controls. In the setting of parkinsonism in this sample, the presence of normosmia had high sensitivity for PSP. Hyposmia in PSP suggests the presence of additional Lewy body pathology. © 2021 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Methods of tunable diode laser absorption saturation spectroscopy to gas sensing under optically thick conditions
Authors: Nie Wei , Xu Zhenyu , Rao Gangfu , Lin Xiao , Lu Jidong , Dong Meirong , Kan Ruifeng 
Published: March 2021

AbstractThe absorption saturation under optically thick conditions will bring difficulties to laser spectroscopy gas sensing. We report the spectrum two wings reconstruction method and the transmitted laser intensity fitting method for tunable diode laser absorption saturation spectroscopy gas absolute measurements under optically thick conditions, and used the modified Lambert Beer's law to calculate methane concentration based on the incomplete spectrum of absorption saturation. The maximum deviation between the experimental measurement results and the standard methane concentration is about 4.7%, which verifies the feasibility of these new methods and also show that they have great potential for expanding the gas sensing range of a single absorption line.
Development, spread and impact of primary care and musculoskeletal communities of practice to assist rapid translation of evidence into practice
Authors: Stevenson Kay , Sarigiovannis Panos , Finney Andrew G. , Cottrell Elizabeth , Lewis Rachael , Edwards John James , Hadley‐Barrows Tina , Thomson Kirsty , Reay Hannah , Dziedzic Krysia S. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractBackgroundEmbedding research into practice is challenging. Barriers include: a shortage of time, lack of understanding of the evidence and a poor support in the clinical setting. A community of practice (CoP) model has been used to address these issues. Three ‘Evidence into Practice’ groups use a CoP model to assist the rapid translation of evidence into practice in primary and secondary care settings. We describe how a CoP model supports the functions, operations and outputs of three ‘Evidence into Practice Groups’.MethodA CoP model is used to engage a broad range of clinicians, researchers, managers, patients and librarians in the complex process of acquiring research knowledge and then translating knowledge into practice. The CoP principles of Domain, Community and Practice are used to describe three ‘Evidence into Practice Groups’ who cater for different elements of the care and academic sector and engage a range of professional groups. This includes primary and secondary care engaging professionals such as general practitioners (GP), practice nurses, allied health professionals, researchers and librarians. All groups are clinically led, academically supported and follow similar processes to identify the best evidence and translate it into practice. As the groups reflect the context in which they work they have different operational arrangements for example frequency and time of meetings.ResultsThe CoP model enabled three ‘Evidence into Practice Groups’ over time to: engage over 180 clinical and academic staff; answer 130 clinical questions; improve clinical care, gain funding for two randomised controlled trials (enrolled over n = 7000 participants) and identify areas for further research, quality improvement audit and training.ConclusionThe CoP model encourages the rapid translation of evidence into practice by engaging staff to identify areas of clinical concern in their own context, thereby stimulating their interest and involvement. This creates a meaningful link between research and practice. Clinical leadership and the CoP model ensure that practice change is quick and efficient. This model can be replicated at scale. Consideration needs to be given to the key ingredients to achieve impact.
Field study of audience experience in contemporary circus: An exploratory study on the impact of audience's expertise
Authors: Szubielska Magdalena , Ho Robbie 
Published: March 2021

AbstractThis study took place during a contemporary circus festival to investigate the audience experience of contemporary circus street performances. Specifically, we explored the impact of expertise on audience experience (emotion, intellect, novelty, place, interaction, and technique) and performance evaluation (liking and self‐perceived understanding). Based on the participants’ self‐report frequency of previous attendance of contemporary circus and current skill level in contemporary circus, we divided a sample of 349 adult audience members into three groups: low expertise, medium expertise, and high expertise. Expertise had a significant effect on audience experience; the high‐expertise participants were more intellectually stimulated than both the medium‐ and low‐expertise participants. Expertise had negligible effect on performance evaluation, but we note that performance reception could have been based on different interpretation styles; that is, more literal in participants lower in expertise and more metaphoric in participants higher in expertise. Finally, we found a clear positive association between audience experience and performance evaluation.
A novel method based on unbiased correlations tests for covariate selection in nonlinear mixed effects models: The COSSAC approach
Authors: Ayral Géraldine , Si Abdallah Jean‐François , Magnard Claude , Chauvin Jonathan 
Published: March 2021

AbstractBuilding a covariate model is a crucial task in population pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in order to understand the determinants of the interindividual variability. Identifying a good covariate model usually requires many runs. Several procedures have been proposed in the past to automatize this task. The most commonly used is Stepwise Covariate Modeling (SCM). Here, we present a novel stepwise method based on statistical tests between individual parameters sampled from their conditional distribution and the covariates. This strategy, called the COnditional Sampling use for Stepwise Approach based on Correlation tests (COSSAC), makes use of the information contained in the current model to choose which parameter‐covariate relationship to try next. This strategy greatly reduces the number of covariate models tested, while retaining on its search path the models improving the log‐likelihood (LL). In this article, we detail the COSSAC method and its implementation in Monolix, and evaluate its performance. The performance was assessed by comparing COSSAC to the traditional SCM method on 17 representative data sets. For the large majority of cases (15 out of 17), the final covariate model is identical (11 cases) or very similar (4 cases with LL differences less than 3.84) with both procedures. Yet, COSSAC requires between 2 to 20 times fewer runs than SCM. This represents a decisive speed up, especially for models that take long to run and would not be tractable using the SCM method.
Theaflavin alleviates oxidative injury and atherosclerosis progress via activating microRNA‐24‐mediated Nrf2/HO‐1 signal
Authors: Zeng Jie , Deng Zhihui , Zou Yixin , Liu Chang , Fu Hongjuan , Gu Yi , Chang Hui 
Published: March 2021

Theaflavin (TF) in black tea has been shown to have significant antioxidant and anti‐inflammatory capacity; however, the effects and the underlying mechanism of TF on atherosclerosis (AS) remain unclear. Herein, we investigated the effects and the potential mechanism of TF on AS progression in vivo and in vitro. ApoE−/− mice were administrated with high fat diet (HFD) or HFD + TF (5 or 10 mg, i.g.) for 12 weeks. The results indicated that TF administration effectively decreases the serum lipid levels and the production of MDA in HFD‐fed mice. Meanwhile, TF promotes the activities of antioxidant enzymes (SOD, CAT, and GSH‐Px) and inhibits the formation of atherosclerotic plaque and the process of histological alterations in the aorta. In vitro, TF pretreatment could protect against cholesterol‐induced oxidative injuries in HUVEC cells, decreasing the level of ROS and MDA, maintaining the activities of antioxidant enzymes. Further study revealed that TF upregulates Nrf2/HO‐1 signaling pathway in vascular endothelial cells. Moreover, TF increases the level of microRNA‐24 (miR‐24), and miR‐24 inhibition markedly compromises TF‐induced Nrf2 activation and protective effects. In conclusion, the present study indicated that theaflavins may achieve the anti‐atherosclerotic effect via activating miR‐24‐mediated Nrf2/HO‐1 signaling pathway.
Optimization of the parallel semi‐Lagrangian scheme based on overlapping communication with computation in the YHGSM
Authors: Jiang Tao , Wu Jianping , Liu Zhaoyang , Zhao Wenpeng , Zhang Yongshun 
Published: March 2021

AbstractThe Yi‐he global spectral model (YHGSM) is a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model developed by the National University of Defense Technology, China. The YHGSM has two optimization techniques that have recently been adopted for the on‐demand communication version of the semi‐Lagrangian scheme: one‐sided communication and an adaptive strategy for the maximum wind speed. However, the limitation of the original model is that the computation and communication cannot be performed simultaneously, resulting in a waste of resources. This article addresses this limitation by dividing the array to be interpolated into three independent subarrays. The communication and interpolation operations for each subarray are rearranged into three groups. This allows the overlap of the communication with computation between different groups. In addition, by adjusting the synchronization operations, the degree of overlap is further increased. In the optimized scheme, the per‐step overhead of the interpolation phase is greatly reduced, and its speedup decreases first and increases afterwards with the increase of the number of cores. Therefore, when the number of cores is large, the benefits from overlapping the communication with computation will be more substantial.
Distributed auditing protocol for blockchain‐based transactions using a distributed signature
Authors: Banaeian Far Saeed , Imani Rad Azadeh 
Published: March 2021

AbstractData privacy is a developing issue in the cyberspace. Users who send something through a public network want their data to be kept confidential. Service providers, in like manner, need to store valid data and avoid storing invalid data. Auditing protocols provide data validity and prevent the storing of invalid data. However, some problems including cooperation with a malicious auditor to register invalid data, deleting registered data, obtaining private data by service providers, and attacks to the network's point of failure still exists. This paper presents a blockchain‐based protocol to audit transactions transferred on a blockchain called theDA‐DSprotocol. The blockchain is applied in theDA‐DSprotocol to provide immutability for stored data and distribute the network's point of failure. A distributed signature based on the ElGamal cryptosystem is applied in this paper for auditors and the ElGamal‐based encryption algorithm to provide transaction confidentiality since the ElGamal cryptosystem does not provide key escrow. Therefore, users join the network have a security against privileged insider adversaries. In theDA‐DSprotocol, each confidential transaction is audited, off‐chain, by all auditors. The audited transaction is then sent to the central authority for verification, and the central authority submits the audited transaction on the blockchain if the verification process is done successfully. Finally, in this paper, a security analysis of theDA‐DSprotocol is provided in the random oracle (RO) model. Subsequently, the performance was compared with other recently proposed auditing protocols, the result of which has shown that it higher efficiency.
A Prototype Insecticide Applicator and Quality Control Monitoring for Plague Management on Prairie Dog Colonies
Authors: Tripp Daniel W. , Emslie Alexis C. , Sack Danielle A. , Zieschang Matt 
Published: March 2021

ABSTRACTPlague causes declines in native wildlife populations including those of prairie dogs (Cynomys sp.) and endangered black‐footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes). The infusion of insecticides into prairie dog burrows is a vector control method regularly used to suppress or prevent plague transmission by fleas. Detailed methods on how insecticide application equipment (dusters) is calibrated or how the quality of application is monitored are not regularly reported. We describe a new prototype duster and compare its performance to commercially available equipment using quality‐control monitoring procedures. We infused 0.05% deltamethrin (dust) into burrows of Gunnison's and black‐tailed prairie dogs (C. gunnisoni, C. ludovicianus) in Colorado in 2014–2017. The prototype and commercial dusters distributed a similar amount of dust ( = 5.39 and 5.29 g/burrow, respectively; t(797) = −0.83, P = 0.4). However, the prototype dusters required less operation time to dispense dust than the commercial dusters ( = 1.0 sec vs. 7.69 sec/burrow; t(481) = 49.2, P ≤ 0.001). If we applied a standard operating time of 5 sec to all commercially available units, 60% (20 of 34) would fail to dispense ≥4 g of dust. The prototype dusters were more consistent in their dust output, with all units (12 of 12) dispensing ≥4 g of dust with an operation time of only 1 sec. Controlled and accurate application of insecticide is difficult to achieve if quality‐control monitoring and equipment calibration are not conducted. The efficacy of vector control is likely only as effective as the quality and precision of the application of the insecticide itself. When evaluating plague management outcomes, it is important to consider if some observed limitations of efficacy are caused by the failure of the management tool or the failure of managers to effectively use the tool. Future work to calibrate the prototype dusters to dispense larger target doses and performance testing with other insecticide formulations is needed. Additional modifications to adapt the prototype dusters for use on ATV‐mounted platforms may increase the utility of the equipment. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.
Fiducial qT resummation of color-singlet processes at N3LL+NNLO
Authors: Becher Thomas , Neumann Tobias 
Published: March 2021

AbstractWe present a framework forqTresummation at N3LL+NNLO accuracy for arbitrary color-singlet processes based on a factorization theorem in SCET. Our implementation CuTe-MCFM is fully differential in the Born kinematics and matches to large-qTfixed-order predictions at relative order$$ {\alpha}_s^2 $$αs2. It provides an efficient way to estimate uncertainties from fixed-order truncation, resummation, and parton distribution functions. In addition toW±,ZandHproduction, also the diboson processesγγ, Zγ, ZHandW±Hare available, including decays. We discuss and exemplify the framework with several direct comparisons to experimental measurements as well as inclusive benchmark results. In particular, we present novel results forγγandZγat N3LL+NNLO and discuss in detail the power corrections induced by photon isolation requirements.
Testing CP properties of extra Higgs states at the HL-LHC
Authors: Antusch Stefan , Fischer Oliver , Hammad A. , Scherb Christiane 
Published: March 2021

Abstract
Extra Higgs states appear in various scenarios beyond the current Standard Model of elementary particles. If discovered at the LHC or future colliders, the question will arise whether CP is violated or conserved in the extended scalar sector. An unambiguous probe of (indirect) CP violation would be the observation that one of the extra Higgs particles is an admixture of a CP-even and a CP-odd state. We discuss the possibility to discover scalar CP violation in this way at the high-luminosity (HL) phase of the LHC. We focus on the Two-Higgs Doublet Model of type I, where we investigate its currently allowed parameter region. Considering a benchmark point that is compatible with the current constraints but within reach of the HL-LHC, we study the prospects of determining the CP property of an extra neutral Higgs state H via the angular distribution of final states in the decay H→$$ \tau \overline{\tau} $$
τ

τ
¯

. The analysis is performed at the reconstructed level, making use of a Boosted Decision Tree for efficient signal-background separation and a shape analysis for rejecting a purely CP-even or odd nature of H.
Deep learning jet modifications in heavy-ion collisions
Authors: Du Yi-Lun , Pablos Daniel , Tywoniuk Konrad 
Published: March 2021

AbstractJet interactions in a hot QCD medium created in heavy-ion collisions are conventionally assessed by measuring the modification of the distributions of jet observables with respect to the proton-proton baseline. However, the steeply falling production spectrum introduces a strong bias toward small energy losses that obfuscates a direct interpretation of the impact of medium effects in the measured jet ensemble. Modern machine learning techniques offer the potential to tackle this issue on a jet-by-jet basis. In this paper, we employ a convolutional neural network (CNN) to diagnose such modifications from jet images where the training and validation is performed using the hybrid strong/weak coupling model. By analyzing measured jets in heavy-ion collisions, we extract the original jet transverse momentum, i.e., the transverse momentum of an identical jet that did not pass through a medium, in terms of an energy loss ratio. Despite many sources of fluctuations, we achieve good performance and put emphasis on the interpretability of our results. We observe that the angular distribution of soft particles in the jet cone and their relative contribution to the total jet energy contain significant discriminating power, which can be exploited to tailor observables that provide a good estimate of the energy loss ratio. With a well-predicted energy loss ratio, we study a set of jet observables to estimate their sensitivity to bias effects and reveal their medium modifications when compared to a more equivalent jet population, i.e., a set of jets with similarinitialenergy. Finally, we also show the potential of deep learning techniques in the analysis of the geometrical aspects of jet quenching such as the in-medium traversed length or the position of the hard scattering in the transverse plane, opening up new possibilities for tomographic studies.
The Worldwide Epidemiology of Acute Appendicitis: An Analysis of the Global Health Data Exchange Dataset
Authors: Wickramasinghe Dakshitha P. , Xavier Chrisjit , Samarasekera Dharmabandhu N. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractBackgroundThis study aims to describe the worldwide epidemiology and changing disease trends of acute appendicitis (AA).MethodsEpidemiological data on the incidence of AA and deaths were collected from the Global Health Data Exchange repository from 1990 to 2019. Data were stratified by age, sex and Socio‐Demographic Index (SDI).ResultsIn 2019, there were an estimated 17.7 million cases (incidence 228/100,000) with over 33,400 deaths (0.43/100,000). Both the absolute number and the incidence had increased from 1990 to 2019 (+ 38.8% and + 11.4%, respectively). The number of deaths and deaths per 100,000 declined during this period (− 21.8% and − 46.2%, respectively). These trends were largely similar in all 5 SDI groups. There was a significant difference in the incidence of AA between the SDI groups, with low SDI group having the lowest and high SDI group having the highest. The high SDI group had the lowest mortality rate (Kruskall–Wallis test, p < 0.001). The peak incidence was in the 15–19‐year age group. The mortality rate increased exponentially from the third decade of life.ConclusionsThe mortality rate of AA is declining worldwide, while the incidence is increasing. The peak incidence is in the 15–19‐year group.