bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Individual Stability of Pain- and Touch-Related Neuronal Gamma Oscillations
Authors: Valentini Elia , Shindy Alina , Witkovsky Viktor , Stankewitz Anne , Schulz Enrico 
Published: November 2021

AbstractBackgroundThe processing of brief pain and touch stimuli has been associated with an increase of neuronal oscillations in the gamma range (40-90 Hz). However, some studies report divergent gamma effects across single participants.MethodsIn two repeated sessions we recorded gamma responses to pain and touch stimuli using EEG. Individual gamma responses were extracted from EEG channels and from ICA components that contain a strong gamma amplitude.ResultsWe observed gamma responses in the majority of the participants. If present, gamma synchronisation was always bound to a component that contained a laser-evoked response. We found a broad variety of individual cortical processing: some participants showed a clear gamma effect, others did not exhibit any gamma. For both modalities, the effect was reproducible between sessions. In addition, participants with a strong gamma response showed a similar time-frequency pattern across sessions.ConclusionsOur results indicate that current measures of reproducibility of research results do not reflect the complex reality of the diverse individual processing pattern of applied pain and touch. The present findings raise the question of whether we would find similar quantitatively different processing patterns in other domains in neuroscience: group results would be replicable but the overall effect is driven by a subgroup of the participants.
A novel mutation (E83Q) unlocks the pathogenicity of human alpha-synuclein fibrils and recapitulates its pathological diversity
Authors: Kumar Senthil T. , Mahul-Mellier Anne-Laure , Hegde Ramanath Narayana , Moons Rani , Magalhães Pedro , de Opakua Alain Ibáñez , Rivière Gwladys , Rostami Iman , Donzelli Sonia , Zweckstetter Markus , Sobott Frank , Lashuel Hilal A. 
Published: November 2021

AbstractA novel mutation (E83Q), the first in the NAC domain of alpha-synuclein (aSyn), was recently identified in a patient with dementia with Lewy bodies. We investigated the effects of this mutation on the aggregation of aSyn monomers and the structure, morphology, dynamic, and seeding activity of the aSyn fibrils in neurons. We found that it dramatically accelerates aSyn fibrillization and results in the formation of fibrils with distinct structural and dynamic properties. In cells, this mutation is associated with higher levels of aSyn, accumulation of pS129, and increased toxicity. In a neuronal seeding model of Lewy bodies (LB) formation, the E83Q mutation significantly enhances the internalization of fibrils into neurons, induce higher seeding activity and results in the formation of diverse aSyn pathologies, including the formation of LB-like inclusions that recapitulate the immunohistochemical and morphological features of brainstem LBs observed in PD patient brains.TeaserA novel mutation (E83Q) exacerbates alpha-synuclein aggregation and toxicity and reproduces PD pathological diversity.
Best practices for multi-ancestry, meta-analytic transcriptome-wide association studies: lessons from the Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative
Authors: Bhattacharya Arjun , Hirbo Jibril B. , Zhou Dan , Zhou Wei , Zheng Jie , Kanai Masahiro ,   the Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative, Pasaniuc Bogdan , Gamazon Eric R. , Cox Nancy J. 
Published: November 2021

SUMMARYThe Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative (GBMI), through its genetic and demographic diversity, provides a valuable opportunity to study population-wide and ancestry-specific genetic associations. However, with multiple ascertainment strategies and multi-ethnic study populations across biobanks, the GBMI provides a distinct set of challenges in implementing statistical genetics methods. Transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) are a popular tool to boost detection power for and provide biological context to genetic associations by integrating single nucleotide polymorphism to trait (SNP-trait) associations from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with SNP-based predictive models of gene expression. TWAS presents unique challenges beyond GWAS, especially in a multi-biobank and meta-analytic setting like the GBMI. In this work, we present the GBMI TWAS pipeline, outlining practical considerations for ancestry and tissue specificity and meta-analytic strategies, as well as open challenges at every step of the framework. Our work provides a strong foundation for adding tissue-specific gene expression context to biobank-linked genetic association studies, allowing for ancestry-aware discovery to accelerate genomic medicine.
Gut metabolites predict Clostridioides difficile recurrence
Authors: Dawkins Jennifer J. , Allegretti Jessica R. , Gibson Travis E. , McClure Emma , Delaney Mary , Bry Lynn , Gerber Georg K. 
Published: November 2021

AbstractBackgroundClostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is the most common hospital acquired infection in the U.S., with recurrence rates >15%. Although primary CDI has been extensively linked to gut microbial dysbiosis, less is known about the factors that promote or mitigate recurrence. Moreover, previous studies have not shown that microbial abundances in the gut measured by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing alone can accurately predict CDI recurrence.ResultsWe conducted a prospective, longitudinal study of 53 non-immunocompromised participants with primary CDI. Stool sample collection began pre-CDI antibiotic treatment at the time of diagnosis, and continued up to eight weeks post-antibiotic treatment, with weekly or twice weekly collections. Samples were analyzed using: (1) 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, (2) liquid chromatography/mass-spectrometry metabolomics measuring 1387 annotated metabolites, and (3) short-chain fatty acid profiling. The amplicon sequencing data showed significantly delayed recovery of microbial diversity in recurrent participants, and depletion of key anaerobic taxa at multiple time-points, including Clostridium cluster XIVa and IV taxa. The metabolomic data also showed delayed recovery in recurrent participants, and moreover mapped to pathways suggesting distinct functional abnormalities in the microbiome or host, such as decreased microbial deconjugation activity, lowered levels of endocannabinoids, and elevated markers of host cell damage. Further, using predictive statistical/machine learning models, we demonstrated that the metabolomic data, but not the other data sources, can accurately predict future recurrence at one week (AUC 0.77 [0.71, 0.86; 95% interval]) and two weeks (AUC 0.77 [0.69, 0.85; 95% interval]) post-treatment for primary CDI.ConclusionsThe prospective, longitudinal and multi-omic nature of our CDI recurrence study allowed us to uncover previously unrecognized dynamics in the microbiome and host presaging recurrence, and, in particular, to elucidate changes in the understudied gut metabolome. Moreover, we demonstrated that a small set of metabolites can accurately predict future recurrence. Our findings have implications for development of diagnostic tests and treatments that could ultimately short-circuit the cycle of CDI recurrence, by providing candidate metabolic biomarkers for diagnostics development, as well as offering insights into the complex microbial and metabolic alterations that are protective or permissive for recurrence.
Changes in antidepressant use in Australia: A nationwide analysis prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2015-2021)
Authors: de Oliveira Costa Juliana , Gillies Malcolm B. , Schaffer Andrea L. , Peiris David , Zoega Helga , Pearson Sallie-Anne 
Published: November 2021

AbstractBackgroundDepression and anxiety affect 4% to 14% of Australians every year; symptoms may have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined recent patterns of antidepressant use in Australia in the period 2015 to 2021, which includes the first year of the pandemic.MethodsWe used national dispensing claims for people aged ≥10 years to investigate annual trends in prevalent and new antidepressant use (no antidepressants dispensed in the year prior). We conducted stratified analyses by sex, age group and antidepressant class. We report outcomes from 2015 to 2019 and used time series analysis to quantify changes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020 to February 2021).ResultsIn 2019 the annual prevalence of antidepressant use was 170.4 per 1,000 women and 101.8 per 1,000 men, an increase of 7.0% and 9.2% from 2015, respectively. New antidepressant use also increased for both sexes (3.0% for women and 4.9% for men) and across most age groups, particularly among adolescents (aged 10-17 years; 46%-57%). During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed higher than expected prevalent use (+2.2%, 95%CI 0.3%, 4.2%) among females, corresponding to a predicted excess of 45,217 (95%CI 5,819, 84,614) females dispensed antidepressants. The largest increases during the first year of the pandemic occurred among female adolescents for both prevalent (+11.7%, 95%CI 4.1%, 20.5%) and new antidepressant use (+15.6%, 95%CI 8.5%, 23.7%).ConclusionAntidepressant use continues to increase in Australia overall and especially among young people. We found a differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in treated depression and anxiety, greater among females than males, and greater among young females than other age groups, suggesting an increased mental health burden in populations already on a trajectory of increased use of antidepressants prior to the pandemic. Reasons for these differences require further investigation.
Population density and plant availability interplay to shape browsing intensity by roe deer in a deciduous forest
Authors: Gaudry William , Gaillard Jean-Michel , Saïd Sonia , Mårell Anders , Baltzinger Christophe , Rocquencourt Agnès , Bonenfant Christophe 
Published: November 2021

AbstractBrowsing damage in forests relies on a complex interaction between herbivore density and both forest understory composition and relative availability. Although variation in the amount of browsed twigs is sometimes used to assess abundance of large herbivores, the potential confounding effect of resource availability on this relationship has not yet been investigated. To fill the gap, we measured how browsing intensity of the woody plants varied in response to changes in both roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) abundance and vegetation availability from an intensive long-term monitoring. We estimated plant availability and consumption by roe deer from a modified Aldous method throughout a 14 yearlong period during which we experimentally manipulated population density. The functional response was strongly non-linear and density-dependent. When plant availability was low (< 12.5%), browsing intensity strongly increased with plant availability with an increasing rate with roe deer density, whereas beyond this threshold, browsing intensity slightly increased with both plant availability and population density in an additive way. Thus, forest susceptibility to browsing increases with increasing competition for food, especially when plant availability is low. Moreover, the interplay between browsing intensity and population density at low plant availability prevents the use of browsing intensity to monitor roe deer abundance when plant availability is low. Our findings provide clear evidence that relying on key ecological concepts such as functional responses improves the accuracy of management tools when monitoring changes of the herbivore-plant system over time.
DeepSpot: a deep neural network for RNA spot enhancement in smFISH microscopy images
Authors: Bouilhol Emmanuel , Lefevre Edgar , Dartigues Benjamin , Brackin Robyn , Savulescu Anca Flavia , Nikolski Macha 
Published: November 2021

AbstractDetection of RNA spots in single molecule FISH microscopy images remains a difficult task especially when applied to large volumes of data. The small size of RNA spots combined with high noise level of images often requires a manual adaptation of the spot detection thresholds for each image. In this work we introduce DeepSpot, a Deep Learning based tool specifically designed to enhance RNA spots which enables spot detection without need to resort to image per image parameter tuning. We show how our method can enable the downstream accurate detection of spots. The architecture of DeepSpot is inspired by small object detection approaches. It incorporates dilated convolutions into a module specifically designed for the Context Aggregation for Small Object (CASO) and uses Residual Convolutions to propagate this information along the network. This enables DeepSpot to enhance all RNA spots to the same intensity and thus circumvents the need for parameter tuning. We evaluated how easily spots can be detected in images enhanced by our method, by training DeepSpot on 20 simulated and 1 experimental datasets, and have shown that more than 97% accuracy is achieved. Moreover, comparison with alternative deep learning approaches for mRNA spot detection (deepBlink) indicated that DeepSpot allows more precise mRNA detection. In addition, we generated smFISH images from mouse fibroblasts in a wound healing assay to evaluate whether DeepSpot enhancement can enable seamless mRNA spot detection and thus streamline studies of localized mRNA expression in cells.
Resolving the time course of visual and auditory object categorization
Authors: Iamshchinina Polina , Karapetian Agnessa , Kaiser Daniel , Cichy Radoslaw M. 
Published: November 2021

AbstractHumans can effortlessly categorize objects, both when they are conveyed through visual images and spoken words. To resolve the neural correlates of object categorization, studies have so far primarily focused on the visual modality. It is therefore still unclear how the brain extracts categorical information from auditory signals. In the current study we used EEG (N=47) and time-resolved multivariate pattern analysis to investigate (1) the time course with which object category information emerges in the auditory modality and (2) how the representational transition from individual object identification to category representation compares between the auditory modality and the visual modality. Our results show that (1) that auditory object category representations can be reliably extracted from EEG signals and (2) a similar representational transition occurs in the visual and auditory modalities, where an initial representation at the individual-object level is followed by a subsequent representation of the objects‘ category membership. Altogether, our results suggest an analogous hierarchy of information processing across sensory channels. However, we did not find evidence for a shared supra-modal code, suggesting that the contents of the different sensory hierarchies are ultimately modality-unique.
Design, implementation and academic perspectives on authentic assessment for applied business higher education in a top performing Asian economy
Authors: Akbari Mohammadreza , Nguyen Hung Manh , McClelland Robert , Van Houdt Kristof 
Published: November 2021

PurposeThe purpose of authentic assessment can enrich students with a set of skills that can have a significant impact on their employability. The key aim of these actions is to equip students with the practical skills to be work ready. The focus here is to demonstrate effects on student satisfaction and observations from teaching staff accrued over several semesters in an educational institution after introducing authentic assessments.Design/methodology/approachThis paper used a set of scaffolded authentic assessments for students in logistics and supply chain management (LSCM). A combination of literature and expert input was used to design and implement the authentic assessment. A multi-phase systematic approach using cyclical model steps articulated the course learning outcomes (CLOs).FindingsReinforced evidence that authentic assessments create options for divergent learners and provide opportunities for applying practical and higher-order cognitive skills in tertiary education system of an emerging economy. With the focus on student ability in doing things, students with diversified backgrounds and abilities in Asia can be encouraged to take an active role in their own learning. The formats of the newly redesigned assessments allow multidimensional cognitive capabilities such as art development (posters and video tasks) and reflective exercises. Importantly, formative types of authentic assessments help to decrease the level of anxiety by emphasising the aspect of doing and lead to better student satisfaction with the courses. All of these effects are shown to be repeatable in an Asian economy.Practical implicationsAuthentic assessments prepare students for the new world of work through a more focused scaffolding of their learning.Originality/valueStimulation of deeper learning in tertiary education students is relevant for a top performing Asian economy.
Dietary composition and overlap among small‐ and medium‐sized carnivores in Flanders, Belgium
Authors: Van Den Berge Koen , van der Veken Timo , Gouwy Jan , Verschelde Pieter , Eeraerts Maxime 
Published: November 2021

AbstractThere are increasing concerns about the status and population trends of carnivores around the world. Carnivores play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems, as their interactions influence the composition and function of ecological communities. In the context of global change, it is essential to understand the interactions and resource use of carnivores. In this study, we explore the dietary ecology of six small‐ and medium‐sized carnivores (red fox, European badger, European polecat, stoat, stone marten and least weasel) to determine their main food resources and the degree of food overlap in Flanders, Belgium. The studied species differed in their food consumption pattern with some being generalist and some more specialist. The dietary composition among the species was clearly different, although certain species showed considerable overlap for different food types. We also conclude that the differences and overlap in the dietary habits among the species were consistent across seasons. Understanding these relationships among species' populations and their dietary ecology is essential for biodiversity conservation and nature management.
Too big, too young, too risky: How diagnosis of the foetal body determines trajectories of care for the pregnant woman in pre‐viability second trimester pregnancy loss
Authors: Middlemiss Aimee L. 
Published: November 2021

AbstractWomen in the English National Health Service facing pre‐viability second trimester pregnancy loss through foetal death, premature labour or termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly find themselves in a particular trajectory of care. This usually involves the requirement to labour and birth the foetal body and may involve undergoing feticide in cases of termination. Drawing on ethnographic research investigating women's experiences of second trimester pregnancy loss, I argue that the determining factor affecting care trajectories for the pregnant body is the biomedically diagnosed status of the foetal body. Foetal size, non‐viability and the potential for live birth during terminations all structure the healthcare options for the woman facing pregnancy loss in the second trimester. As such, the diagnostic classification of the foetal body in the context of gestational time determines the medical care afforded to the pregnant body. This results in specific consequences for women, whose experiences of, and choices around, second trimester pregnancy loss are constrained by diagnostic and classificatory decisions around the status of the foetal being before legal viability.
Replacement feeding and the HIV Diaspora: A case of ontological multiplicity and fluid technologies
Authors: McKnight Ulla 
Published: November 2021

AbstractBreastmilk is a transmission source of HIV. Therefore, mothers living with HIV are able to avoid exposing their infants to HIV‐contaminated breastmilk if they replacement feed them. This article draws on an ethnographic study of an acute National Health Service HIV specialist antenatal clinic in London and explores the ontological multiple HIVs that the practice of replacement feeding takes part in enacting within the fluid space of the HIV diaspora. The term articulates the circumstances of racialised people affected by HIV who are originally from countries where access to life sustaining medication, care and resources—that enable a decoupling of the illness from death—are not readily accessible, and who have (temporarily) relocated themselves to geographical places where these resources are on offer. Arguing that Black African and Caribbean migrant women's ability to benefit from the technologies and care that have turned HIV into a chronic illness in England is delimited by race and their diasporic positionality. In so doing, the article contributes to Sociology by showing how race is part of practice–ethnographic research and medical care even when it is seemingly absent.
BOTANIC URBANISM: The Technopolitics of Controlled Environments in Singapore's Gardens by the Bay
Authors: McNeill Donald 
Published: November 2021

AbstractThis article examines the development of Singapore's Gardens by the Bay, a parkland and botanical gardens complex on a reclaimed land platform which opened in 2012. It provides three readings of the development based on different types of technopolitical governance. First, it discusses the significance of the location of the Gardens on one of Singapore's reclaimed land platforms, part of the ‘terraforming’ strategies of the government's land development process. Second, it situates the project within the state's complex botanical relationship with colonial and postcolonial knowledge circuits, and suggests that this is part of the governance challenge of ‘acclimatizing’ to the tropical climate. Third, it suggests that the Gardens are part of an ‘exhibitionary complex’ based on engaging publics with the state's ability to harness science to provide a controlled, ordered polity. To illustrate this, the article brings together the political discourse of two Singaporean prime ministers with a discussion of the architectural design and environmental engineering of the project, and the curatorial practices of the state's National Parks Board. The article demonstrates the complex interplay of environmental, architectural and botanical engineering with state strategies of both citizen engagement and tourist attraction, and the importance of the practice of exhibition within urban megaprojects.