bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Antibiotic fate in an artificial‐constructed urban river planted with the algae Microcystis aeruginosa and emergent hydrophyte
Authors: Zhou Haidong , Cui Jinyu , Li Xin , Wangjin Yadan , Pang Lidan , Li Mengwei , Chen Xiaomeng 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe behavior and removal of six antibiotics, that is, azithromycin, clarithromycin, sulfathiazole, sulfamethoxazole, ciprofloxacin, and tetracycline, in an artificial‐controllable urban river (ACUR) were investigated. The ACUR was constructed to form five artificial eco‐systems by planting three emergent hydrophytes and Microcystis aeruginosa: (1) Control; (2) MA: M. aeruginosa only; (3) MA‐J‐C: M. aeruginosa combined with Juncus effusus and Cyperus alternifolius; (4) MA‐C‐A: M. aeruginosa combined with C. alternifolius and Acorus calamus L.; (5) MA‐A‐J: M. aeruginosa combined with A. calamus L. and J. effusus. The MA‐C‐A system achieved the best removal of azithromycin and clarithromycin after 15‐day test with the final concentrations 0.92 and 0.83 μg/L. The contents of ciprofloxacin and tetracycline in sediment were highest, up to 1453 and 1745 ng/g. The antibiotic plant bioaccumulation was higher in roots rather than the shoots (stem and leaves). No target antibiotics were detected in algae cells. The combination of hybrid hydrophytes had a certain effect on the removal of antibiotics, and thus selecting appropriate hydrophytes in urban rivers could greatly improve water quality. The overall removal of six antibiotics was greatly improved by the ACUR containing the hybrid hydrophytes and the algae, indicating a synergistic effect on antibiotic removal.Practitioner points
Controllable‐mobile artificial eco‐systems were developed with emergent hydrophytes and M. aeruginosa.
The M. aeruginosa + Cyperus alternifolius + Acorus calamus L. system removed azithromycin and clarithromycin most at the end of tests.
Emergent hydrophytes and M. aeruginosa have a synergistic effect on the removal of antibiotics.
The combination of emergent hydrophytes did play an important role in the removal of antibiotics.
The artificial eco‐systems containing the hybrid hydrophytes and the algae could greatly improve the overall removal of antibiotics.
Deepfake attribution: On the source identification of artificially generated images
Authors: Khoo Brandon , Phan Raphaël C.‐W. , Lim Chern‐Hong 
Published: December 2021

AbstractSynthetic media or "deepfakes" are making great advances in visual quality, diversity, and verisimilitude, empowered by large‐scale publicly accessible datasets and rapid technical progress in deep generative modeling. Heralding a paradigm shift in how online content is trusted, researchers in digital image forensics have responded with different proposals to reliably detect AI‐generated images in the wild. However, binary classification of image authenticity is insufficient to regulate the ethical usage of deepfake technology as new applications are developed. This article provides an overview of the major innovations in synthetic forgery detection as of 2020, while highlighting the recent shift in research towards ways to attribute AI‐generated images to their generative sources with evidence. We define the various categories of deepfakes in existence, the subtle processing traces and fingerprints that distinguish AI‐generated images from reality and each other, and the different degrees of attribution possible with current understanding of generative algorithms. Additionally, we describe the limitations of synthetic image recognition methods in practice, the counter‐forensic attacks devised to exploit these limitations, and directions for new research to assure the long‐term relevance of deepfake forensics. Reliable, explainable, and generalizable attribution methods would hold malicious users accountable for AI‐enabled disinformation, grant plausible deniability to appropriate users, and facilitate intellectual property protection of deepfake technology.This article is categorized under:
Commercial, Legal, and Ethical Issues > Security and Privacy
Algorithmic Development > Multimedia
Military Workforce Analytics
Authors: Straver Michelle C. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAs a consequence of the closed, hierarchical nature of military organizations, good planning is key to ensuring that a military workforce will be well-situated to meet future demands. This chapter explores the role of data-driven decision support (referred to as analytics) in military workforce planning. As an applied research field, analytics aims to provide actionable insights and practical solutions to questions posed by decision-makers. Since data underlie all analytics, this chapter touches on the challenges of data-related issues such as accessibility, integration, and completeness, highlighting the importance of understanding the data and the context around it. Next, several areas where analytics are used to solve military workforce planning problems are discussed. This will give the reader a sense of the breadth of the domain, as well as the various approaches that can be employed by a practitioner.
Introduction
Authors: Sweet Ryan 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThis introductory chapter sets out the book’s argument that nineteenth-century prosthesis narratives, though presented in a predominantly ableist and sometimes disablist manner, challenge the dominance of physical completeness as they question the logic of prostheticization or present non-normative subjects in threateningly powerful ways. The chapter positions this argument in relation to various scholarly fields, including disability studies, Victorian studies, the history of science and technology, and literature and science. It addresses several methodological questions, including those pertaining to the prosthetic devices, historical period, and specific sources selected for investigation. In responding to these questions, the chapter provides potted histories of the technological developments of nineteenth-century artificial limbs, eyes, teeth, and hair. It also explains the author’s decision to use terms such as wholeness and incompleteness.
“The Infurnal Thing”: Autonomy and Ability in Narratives of Disabling, Self-acting, and Weaponized Prostheses
Authors: Sweet Ryan 
Published: December 2021

AbstractFocusing on the themes of agency and ability, this chapter examines the power play at work between person and prosthetic part in various nineteenth-century imaginaries. The chapter draws from mechanical and materialist understandings of the human body and attitudes to automatic machines to place literary and cultural representations within wider historical contexts pertaining to ability, autonomy, and wholeness. Exploring the extent to which artificial body parts were seen to enhance or assume the agency of the user, the chapter argues that a range of prosthesis narratives produce transgressive prosthesis users or false body parts that threaten the dominance of the physically whole. It investigates three key tropes: narratives of disabling, self-acting, and weaponized prostheses.
Conclusion
Authors: Sweet Ryan 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThis concluding chapter uses British free-to-air television broadcasting network Channel 4’s “Superhumans Return” advertising campaign for its coverage of the 2016 Paralympic Games as a case study with which to explore the overlaps between nineteenth-century and contemporary cultural representations of prosthesis users. It highlights the way that contemporary sources, including Channel 4’s campaign, interrogate a privileging of normalcy while remaining encoded by ableist inclinations. The chapter draws together the various strands of the book’s argument to make the case that the literary history of prosthesis is rich, complicated, and conflicted.
Environment-Friendly Energy Research in Norway
Authors: Silvast Antti , Foulds Chris 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe Research Council of Norway established the Centres for Environment-Friendly Energy Research in 2009. These are long-term national centres that are meant to integrate academics with industries, private companies, regulating bodies, governmental organisations, and research institutes, to trigger a clean-energy transition and pursue environmental innovations. Increasingly, addressing energy issues through the integration of technological and Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines has become expected in these Centres. This chapter draws from interviews with the project participants and fieldwork to demonstrate how different academics and professionals experienced these interdisciplinary collaborations, including what consequences and dynamics such collaborations generated. We round up by interpreting the findings along with the traits of interdisciplinarity that have been emerging in this book.
Multimodal Multi-tasking for Skin Lesion Classification Using Deep Neural Networks
Authors: Carvalho Rafaela , Pedrosa João , Nedelcu Tudor 
Published: December 2021

AbstractSkin cancer is one of the most common types of cancer and, with its increasing incidence, accurate early diagnosis is crucial to improve prognosis of patients. In the process of visual inspection, dermatologists follow specific dermoscopic algorithms and identify important features to provide a diagnosis. This process can be automated as such characteristics can be extracted by computer vision techniques. Although deep neural networks can extract useful features from digital images for skin lesion classification, performance can be improved by providing additional information. The extracted pseudo-features can be used as input (multimodal) or output (multi-tasking) to train a robust deep learning model. This work investigates the multimodal and multi-tasking techniques for more efficient training, given the single optimization of several related tasks in the latter, and generation of better diagnosis predictions. Additionally, the role of lesion segmentation is also studied. Results show that multi-tasking improves learning of beneficial features which lead to better predictions, and pseudo-features inspired by the ABCD rule provide readily available helpful information about the skin lesion.
What is Happiness? Why is Happiness Important?
Authors: Ng Yew-Kwang 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe (net) happiness (or welfare) of an individual is the excess of her positive affective feelings over negative ones. This subjective definition of happiness is more consistent with common usage and analytically more useful. Over the past century or so, both psychology and economics has gone through the anti-subjectivism revolution (behaviorism in psychology and ordinalism in economics) but has come back to largely accept subjectivism (cognitive psychology and recent interest of economists on happiness issues).
The East-Asian Happiness Gap: Causes and Implications
Authors: Ng Yew-Kwang 
Published: December 2021

AbstractDespite spectacular economic growth, most East Asian countries (especially those with the Confucian cultures) score relatively low in happiness surveys. This chapter discusses the reasons for this East-Asian happiness gap, including environmental disruption, excessive competitiveness, repressive education, excessive conformity, negative attitudes towards enjoyment, and the emphasis on outward appearance. Implications on the desired direction of future growth especially regarding the relative importance of public spending on the environment and research and the non-material aspects of life are also briefly touched on.
Happiness Versus Preference
Authors: Ng Yew-Kwang 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe preference of an individual may differ from her happiness due to imperfect information, a true concern for the welfare of others (non-affective altruism), and imperfect rationality. In some exceptional circumstances, such as the traditional Chinese custom of giving the deceased parent a decent burial and not to disturb them by re-burial, some measures (like banning slavery and using a cemetery for essential developments) may improve social welfare, even if against the preferences of most, and perhaps all, people.
Does Money Buy Happiness?
Authors: Ng Yew-Kwang 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAfter a relatively low level of survival and comfort, additional consumption does not increase happiness significantly, especially at the social level. At the individual level, people want more due to the relative competition effect which cancels out at the social level. In addition, the adaptation effects and environmental disruption effects also work to limit the contributions of higher consumption and enlarge the gap between expectation and actuality.
The tadpole problem
Authors: Bena Iosif , Blåbäck Johan , Graña Mariana , Lüst Severin 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
We examine the mechanism of moduli stabilization by fluxes in the limit of a large number of moduli. We conjecture that one cannot stabilize all complex-structure moduli in F-theory at a generic point in moduli space (away from singularities) by fluxes that satisfy the bound imposed by the tadpole cancellation condition. More precisely, while the tadpole bound in the limit of a large number of complex-structure moduli goes like 1/4 of the number of moduli, we conjecture that the amount of charge induced by fluxes stabilizing all moduli grows faster than this, and is therefore larger than the allowed amount. Our conjecture is supported by two examples: K3 × K3 compactifications, where by using evolutionary algorithms we find that moduli stabilization needs fluxes whose induced charge is 44% of the number of moduli, and Type IIB compactifications on $$ \mathbbm{CP} $$
CP
3, where the induced charge of the fluxes needed to stabilize the D7-brane moduli is also 44% of the number of these moduli. Proving our conjecture would rule out de Sitter vacua obtained via antibrane uplift in long warped throats with a hierarchically small supersymmetry breaking scale, which require a large tadpole.
Patient age affects sex-based differences in post-traumatic mortality: a national trauma registry study in Japan
Authors: Umemura Yutaka , Katayama Yusuke , Kitamura Tetsuhisa , Kiyohara Kosuke , Hirose Tomoya , Kiguchi Takeyuki , Tachino Jotaro , Nakao Shunichiro , Nakagawa Yuko , Shimazu Takeshi 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Purpose
Sex-based differences in post-traumatic mortality have been widely discussed for quite some time. We hypothesized that age-related pathophysiologic changes would affect sex-based differences in post-traumatic mortality and aimed to verify the hypothesis using a nationwide trauma registry in Japan.

Methods
This was a retrospective analysis of trauma patients registered in The Japanese Trauma Data Bank. We stratified the study population into the following three subsets based on age: (1) pediatric subset (age ≤ 14), (2) adult subset (age 15–50) and (3) senior adult subset (age ≥ 51). We evaluated both sex-based differences in mortality in each subset separately using multivariate logistic regression analysis and the two-way interaction effect for predicted survival between the continuous increase of age and the sexes using a nonlinear multivariate regression model.

Results
We included 122,819 trauma patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria and classified them into the 3 subsets according to age. Male patients were more likely to die compared to female patients only in the senior adult subset (adjusted odds ratio: 1.26; 95% confidence interval: 1.18–1.36), whereas there were no statistically significant differences in the other two subsets. Furthermore, non-linear logistic regression analysis revealed that predicted survival probability in male patients decreased more sharply in accordance with the increase of age compared to that in female patients (p for interaction: 0.051).

Conclusion
Age-related change in post-traumatic mortality was significantly different between males and females, and male patients had a relatively higher risk of death in the older population.
The role of the SLC6A3 3’ UTR VNTR in nicotine effects on cognitive, affective, and motor function
Authors: Schröder Rebekka , Reuter Martin , Faßbender Kaja , Plieger Thomas , Poulsen Jessie , Lui Simon S. Y. , Chan Raymond C. K. , Ettinger Ulrich 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Rationale
Nicotine has been widely studied for its pro-dopaminergic effects. However, at the behavioural level, past investigations have yielded heterogeneous results concerning effects on cognitive, affective, and motor outcomes, possibly linked to individual differences at the level of genetics. A candidate polymorphism is the 40-base-pair variable number of tandem repeats polymorphism (rs28363170) in the SLC6A3 gene coding for the dopamine transporter (DAT). The polymorphism has been associated with striatal DAT availability (9R-carriers > 10R-homozygotes), and 9R-carriers have been shown to react more strongly to dopamine agonistic pharmacological challenges than 10R-homozygotes.

Objectives
In this preregistered study, we hypothesized that 9R-carriers would be more responsive to nicotine due to genotype-related differences in DAT availability and resulting dopamine activity.

Methods
N=194 non-smokers were grouped according to their genotype (9R-carriers, 10R-homozygotes) and received either 2-mg nicotine or placebo gum in a between-subject design. Spontaneous blink rate (SBR) was obtained as an indirect measure of striatal dopamine activity and smooth pursuit, stop signal, simple choice and affective processing tasks were carried out in randomized order.

Results
Reaction times were decreased under nicotine compared to placebo in the simple choice and stop signal tasks, but nicotine and genotype had no effects on any of the other task outcomes. Conditional process analyses testing the mediating effect of SBR on performance and how this is affected by genotype yielded no significant results.

Conclusions
Overall, we could not confirm our main hypothesis. Individual differences in nicotine response could not be explained by rs28363170 genotype.
Interaction of proteins and amino acids with iso-α-acids during wort preparation in the brewhouse
Authors: Gänz Nele , Becher Tobias , Drusch Stephan , Titze Jean 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThis paper investigates the binding behavior of iso-α-acids from hops on free wort amino acids and proteins concerning the wort production process in breweries. The studies were carried out with different amino acids, bovine serum albumin and wort. To identify the nature of reaction between iso-α-acids and these substances, analyses of free amino nitrogen, HPLC and isothermal titration calorimetry were performed. According to the results, the iso-α-acids do not form covalent bonds with free amino acids of wort. However, iso-α-acids, especially isohumulone and isoadhumulone, form ionic bonds with wort proteins. A distinction must be made between proteins that are present in the hot trub, and those that are still dissolved in the hot wort. Proteins that are already coagulated and precipitated no longer react with iso-α-acids. Future experiments will investigate whether the established ionic bonds between iso-α-acids and proteins from the wort preparation process are maintained during fermentation until the finished beer or beer foam. If this is the case, which is induced by the experiments, there is a measurable loss of iso-α-acids in the hot wort, but at the same time, a gain for the later beer foam retention, as the iso-α-acids will stabilize it.
Effects of low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in adductor laryngeal dystonia: a safety, feasibility, and pilot study
Authors: Prudente Cecília N. , Chen Mo , Stipancic Kaila L. , Marks Katherine L. , Samargia-Grivette Sharyl , Goding George S. , Green Jordan R. , Kimberley Teresa J. 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Purpose
The effects of neuromodulation are virtually unexplored in adductor laryngeal dystonia (AdLD), a disorder characterized by involuntary contraction of intrinsic laryngeal muscles. Recent findings indicated that intracortical inhibition is reduced in people with AdLD. Low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) induces prolonged intracortical inhibition, but the effects in AdLD are unexplored. This pilot and feasibility study aimed to examine the safety, feasibility, and effects of a single session 1 Hz rTMS over the laryngeal motor cortex (LMC) in people with AdLD and healthy individuals.

Methods
The stimulation location was individualized and determined through TMS-evoked responses in the thyroarytenoid muscles using fine-wire electrodes. 1200 pulses of 1 Hz rTMS were delivered to the left LMC in two groups: Control (n = 6) and AdLD (n = 7). Tolerance, adverse effects, intracortical inhibition, and voice recordings were collected immediately before and after rTMS. Voice quality was assessed with acoustic-based and auditory-perceptual measures.

Results
All participants tolerated the procedures, with no unexpected adverse events or worsening of symptoms. No significant effects on intracortical inhibition were observed. In the AdLD group, there was a large-effect size after rTMS in vocal perturbation measures and a small-effect size in decreased phonatory breaks.

Conclusions
One rTMS session over the LMC is safe and feasible, and demonstrated trends of beneficial effects on voice quality and phonatory function in AdLD. These preliminary findings support further investigation to assess clinical benefits in a future randomized sham-controlled trial.

ClinicalTrials.gov
NCT02957942, registered on November 8, 2016.
Clostridium perfringens Beta2 toxin forms highly cation-selective channels in lipid bilayers
Authors: Benz Roland , Piselli Claudio , Hoxha Cezarela , Koy Cornelia , Glocker Michael O. , Popoff Michel R. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractClostridium perfringens is a potent producer of a variety of toxins. Well studied from these are five toxins (alpha, Beta (CPB), epsilon, iota and CPE) that are produced by seven toxinotype strains (A–G) of C. perfringens. Besides these toxins, C. perfringens produces also another toxin that causes necrotizing enterocolitis in piglets. This toxin termed consensus Beta2 toxin (cCPB2) has a molecular mass of 27,620 Da and shows only little homology to CPB and no one to the other toxins of C. perfringens. Its primary action on cells remained unknown to date. cCPB2 was heterogeneously expressed as fusion protein with GST in Escherichia coli and purified to homogeneity. Although cCPB2 does not exhibit the typical structure of beta-stranded pore-forming proteins and contains no indication for the presence of amphipathic alpha-helices we could demonstrate that cCPB2 is a pore-forming component with an extremely high activity in lipid bilayers. The channels have a single-channel conductance of about 700 pS in 1 M KCl and are highly cation-selective as judged from selectivity measurements in the presence of salt gradients. The high cation selectivity is caused by the presence of net negative charges in or near the channel that allowed an estimate of the channel size being about 1.4 nm wide. Our measurements suggest that the primary effect of cCPB2 is the formation of cation-selective channels followed by necrotic enteritis in humans and animals. We searched in databases for homologs of cCPB2 and constructed a cladogram representing the phylogenetic relationship to the next relatives of cCPB2.