bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
On the structural complexity of central European agroforestry systems: a quantitative assessment using terrestrial laser scanning in single-scan mode
Authors: Seidel Dominik , Stiers Melissa , Ehbrecht Martin , Werning Maik , Annighöfer Peter 
Published: April 2021

AbstractAgroforestry systems provide important ecosystem functions and services. They have the potential to enrich agricultural monocultures in central Europe with structural elements otherwise absent, which is expected to be accompanied by a surplus of ecosystem functions. Here we used quantitative measures derived from terrestrial laser scanning in single-scan mode to describe the structural complexity, the canopy openness, the foliage height diversity and the understory complexity of four common agroforest systems in central Europe. We accessed silvopasture systems with grazing ponies and cattle as well as fellow deer, short rotation forests with agricultural use between the tree rows, tree orchards with grazing sheep and Christmas tree plantations on which chickens forage. As a reference, we used data for 65 forest sites across Germany, representing different forest types, various dominant tree species, stand ages and management systems. We found that overall stand structural complexity is ranked as follows: forest > silvopasture systems > short rotation forest > tree orchard > Christmas tree plantation. Consequently, if overall structural complexity of an agricultural landscape shall be enriched, there is now strong evidence on how this may be achieved using agroforests. However, if the focus lies on selected structures that serve specific functions, e.g. dense understory to provide animal shelter, specific types of agroforests may be chosen and the ranking in overall structural complexity may be less important.
Early Literacy Skills and Later Reading and Writing Performance Across Countries: The Effects of Orthographic Consistency and Preschool Curriculum
Authors: Majorano Marinella , Bastianello Tamara , Bodea-Hategan Carolina , Fantuzzi Patrizia , Fontana Giulia , Hoste Eddy , Lombardi Marco , Standaert An , Talas Dorina , Trifu Raluca , Vescogni Lisa , Persici Valentina 
Published: April 2021

Abstract
Background
Studies have reported a strong association between children's early literacy skills at preschool and their reading and writing skills at primary school. However, it is unclear whether this association is affected by language and curriculum practices.

Objective
The study investigates (i) whether early literacy skills are influenced by orthographic consistency and by preschool curriculum, and (ii) how early skills are related to later literacy skills across countries.

Method
Three countries, Italy (n = 73), Romania (n = 65), and Belgium (n = 109) were involved in the study, for a total of 247 children. Language and early literacy in preschool were assessed using a novel assessment tool (the ‘Talk’). Early visual-phonological and manual aspects integration were investigated using rapid automatized naming and grapho-motor tasks. The children’s reading and writing skills nine months later were assessed using standardized tests.

Results
Results showed higher early literacy scores for the groups of children speaking languages with more transparent orthographic systems and for the group taking part in preschool activities designed to enhance literacy acquisition. Later reading and writing skills were predicted by early competences, albeit with differences across countries.

Conclusions
Findings suggest that literacy acquisition trajectories are not only associated with early skills but are also influenced by language characteristics and curriculum practices. The study also presents preliminary findings relative to the ‘Talk’, an assessment tool that may have important implications for early identification and intervention of language and literacy difficulties, as well as for improving cross-country curriculum practices.
Soccer Scores, Short-Term Mood and Fertility
Authors: Bernardi Fabrizio , Cozzani Marco 
Published: April 2021

AbstractPrevious research has shown that seemingly irrelevant events such as unexpected outcomes in sporting events can affect mood and have relevant consequences for episodes of crime and violence, investing behavior and political preferences. In this article, we test whether mood shocks associated with unexpected results in soccer matches in Spain affect fertility. We use data on betting odds and actual scores to define mood shocks and link them to births by month and province in Spain, between 2001 and 2015. We find that unexpected losses of local teams lead to a small decrease in the number of births nine months thereafter. The effect is larger for more unexpected losses, in those provinces with the largest amount of support for the local team and robust to a number of placebo tests. We argue that these results are consistent with the gain–loss asymmetry predicted by prospect theory.
Effect of Pavement Thickness and Width on Liquefaction-Induced Settlements and the Contribution of Sand Ejecta in Total Settlement
Authors: Mohsan Muhammad , Kiyota Takashi , Umar Muhammad , Katagiri Toshihiko 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThis paper investigates the settlement in a pavement due to soil liquefaction. Four 1-g shaking table tests were performed on saturated sand bed-pavement model to understand the factors affecting the liquefaction-induced settlements and their relation to the pavement thickness and width. All the tests were performed with a base acceleration of 320 gal in a laminar box. The shaking table tests revealed that the total settlement reduced with the increase in the pavement thickness. The pavement with the same thickness but different width showed that the total settlement reduced with the increase in the pavement width. The co-seismic settlement and post-seismic settlement depend upon the thickness and width of the pavement, and the maximum contribution of the sand ejecta is around 7.7% in the total settlement.
Evaluating Free Rides and Observational Advantages in Set Visualizations
Authors: Blake Andrew , Stapleton Gem , Rodgers Peter , Touloumis Anestis 
Published: April 2021

AbstractFree rides and observational advantages occur in visualizations when they reveal facts that must be inferred from an alternative representation. Understanding whether these concepts correspond to cognitive advantages is important: do they facilitate information extraction, saving the ‘deductive cost’ of making inferences? This paper presents the first evaluations of free rides and observational advantages in visualizations of sets compared to text. We found that, for Euler and linear diagrams, free rides and observational advantages yielded significant improvements in task performance. For Venn diagrams, whilst their observational advantages yielded significant performance benefits over text, this was not universally true for free rides. The consequences are two-fold: more research is needed to establish when free rides are beneficial, and the results suggest that observational advantages better explain the cognitive advantages of diagrams over text. A take-away message is that visualizations with observational advantages are likely to be cognitively advantageous over competing representations.
Source identification and exposure assessment to PM10 in the Eastern Carpathians, Romania
Authors: Boga Réka , Keresztesi Ágnes , Bodor Zsolt , Tonk Szende , Szép Róbert , Micheu Miruna Mihaela 
Published: April 2021

AbstractObservations of particulate matter less than 10 µm (PM10) were conducted from January to December in 2015 in the Ciuc basin, Eastern Carpathians, Romania. Daily concentrations of PM10 ranged from 10.90 to 167.70 µg/m3, with an annual mean concentration of 46.31 µg/m3, which is higher than the European Union limit of 40 µg/m3. Samples were analyzed for a total of 21 elements. O, C and Si were the most abundant elements accounting for about 85% of the PM10 mass. Source identification showed that the elemental composition of PM10 is represented by post volcanic activity, crustal origin, and anthropogenic sources, caused by the resuspension of crustal material, sea salt and soil dust. The average PM10 composition was 72.10% soil, 20.92% smoke K, 13.84% salt, 1.53% sulfate and 1.02% organic matter. The back-trajectory analysis showed that the majority of PM10 pollution comes from the West, Southwest and South.
Positive Emotions Boost Enthusiastic Responsiveness to Capitalization Attempts. Dissecting Self-Report, Physiology, and Behavior
Authors: Kaczmarek Lukasz D. , Kashdan Todd B. , Behnke Maciej , Dziekan Martyna , Matuła Ewelina , Kosakowski Michał , Enko Jolanta , Guzik Przemysław 
Published: April 2021

AbstractWhen individuals communicate enthusiasm for good events in their partners' lives, they contribute to a high-quality relationship; a phenomenon termed interpersonal capitalization. However, little is known when individuals are more ready to react enthusiastically to the partner's success. To address this gap, we examined whether positive and negative emotions boost or inhibit enthusiastic responses to partner's capitalization attempts (RCA). Participants (N = 224 individuals) responded to their partner's success. Before each capitalization attempt (operationalized as responses following the news that their partner won money in a game), we used video clips to elicit positive (primarily amusement) or negative (primarily anger) or neutral emotions in the responder. We recorded emotional valence, smiling intensity, verbal RCA, and physiological reactivity. We found indirect (but not direct) effects such that eliciting positive emotions boosted and negative emotions inhibited enthusiastic RCA (smiling intensity and enthusiastic verbal RCA). These effects were relatively small and mediated by emotional valence and smiling intensity but not physiological reactivity. The results offer novel evidence that positive emotions fuel the capitalization process.
Robust Optimization and Data Classification for Characterization of Huntington Disease Onset via Duality Methods
Authors: Woolnough Daniel , Jeyakumar Niroshan , Li Guoyin , Loy Clement T , Jeyakumar Vaithilingam 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThe features that characterize the onset of Huntington disease (HD) are poorly understood yet have significant implications for research and clinical practice. Motivated by the need to address this issue, and the fact that there may be inaccuracies in clinical HD data, we apply robust optimization and duality techniques to study support vector machine (SVM) classifiers in the face of uncertainty in feature data. We present readily numerically solvable semi-definite program reformulations via conic duality for a broad class of robust SVM classification problems under a general spectrahedron uncertainty set that covers the most commonly used uncertainty sets of robust optimization models, such as boxes, balls, and ellipsoids. In the case of the box-uncertainty model, we also provide a new simple quadratic program reformulation, via Lagrangian duality, leading to a very efficient iterative scheme for robust classifiers. Computational results on a range of datasets indicate that these robust classification methods allow for greater classification accuracies than conventional support vector machines in addition to selecting groups of highly correlated features. The conic duality-based robust SVMs were also successfully applied to a new, large HD dataset, achieving classification accuracies of over 95% and providing important information about the features that characterize HD onset.
OptBand: optimization-based confidence bands for functions to characterize time-to-event distributions
Authors: Chen T. , Tracy S. , Uno H. 
Published: April 2021

AbstractClassical simultaneous confidence bands for survival functions (i.e., Hall–Wellner, equal precision, and empirical likelihood bands) are derived from transformations of the asymptotic Brownian nature of the Nelson–Aalen or Kaplan–Meier estimators. Due to the properties of Brownian motion, a theoretical derivation of the highest confidence density region cannot be obtained in closed form. Instead, we provide confidence bands derived from a related optimization problem with local time processes. These bands can be applied to the one-sample problem regarding both cumulative hazard and survival functions. In addition, we present a solution to the two-sample problem for testing differences in cumulative hazard functions. The finite sample performance of the proposed method is assessed by Monte Carlo simulation studies. The proposed bands are applied to clinical trial data to assess survival times for primary biliary cirrhosis patients treated with D-penicillamine.
A Two-Dimensional Model of Potassium Signaling and Oscillatory Growth in a Biofilm
Authors: Ford Noah , Fisher Garth , Prindle Arthur , Chopp David 
Published: April 2021

AbstractBiofilms are complex communities of bacteria that exhibit a variety of collective behaviors. These behaviors improve their ability to survive in many different environments. One of these collective behaviors seen in Bacillus subtilis is the ability for starving cells to stop the growth of other cells using potassium signaling and voltage changes. This signaling produces an oscillatory growth pattern so that during periods of low growth the nutrients diffuse deeper into the biofilm and reach the nutrient-starved, interior regions of the biomass. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model to describe this oscillatory behavior, and we use this model to develop a two-dimensional simulation that reproduces many of the important features seen in the experimental data. This simulation allows us to examine the spatial patterning of the oscillatory behavior to better understand the relationships between the various regions of the biofilm. Studying the spatial components of the metabolic and voltage oscillations could allow for the development of new control techniques for biofilms with complex shapes.
Dialectics of Technical Emancipation—Considerations on a Reflexive, Sustainable Technology Development
Authors: Jochum Georg 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThe modern idea of emancipation is linked to the goal of overcoming dependencies and domination. However, as argued in the article, negative dialectics of emancipation must also be problematized. The project of emancipation, as it was formulated in the Age of Enlightenment, was often particular and was associated with the establishment of new forms of domination. Especially the project of liberation from the constraints of nature through technical development led to the domination of nature. In view of the ecological crisis, the dark side of this project is becoming apparent today. The ecological base of human development is at risk. It is therefore necessary to pursue the idea of a reflexive emancipation, which also takes nature into account in order to enable a sustainable technology development. Emancipatory Technology Studies should therefore support an emancipatory technology policy which promotes a positive dialectical movement that overcomes the contrast between submission to nature and technical mastery of nature.
Computational Assessment of Novel Predicted Compounds in Ni-Re Alloy System
Authors: Zhu Siya , van de Walle Axel 
Published: April 2021

AbstractAb initio high-throughput efforts are continuously identifying new intermetallic compounds in a wide range of alloy systems that were previously thought to be well-characterized. While such predictions are likely valid near absolute zero, they carry the risk that such phases become unstable at the higher temperature relevant to typical synthesis conditions. We illustrate how this possibility can be rapidly tested by integrating Calphad modeling into the high-throughput loop. As an example, we investigate the Ni-Re system, in which D019 and D1a phases were predicted as possible intermetallic compounds. We confirm that these phases are indeed stable at practical synthesis temperatures and explain how they could have been overlooked in prior assessments.
Update on Histological Reporting Changes in Neuroendocrine Neoplasms
Authors: Bräutigam Konstantin , Rodriguez-Calero Antonio , Kim-Fuchs Corina , Kollár Attila , Trepp Roman , Marinoni Ilaria , Perren Aurel 
Published: April 2021

Abstract
Purpose of Review
Classification and nomenclature of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN) have frequently changed over the last years. These changes reflect both increasing knowledge and international standardisation.

Recent Findings
The most recent changes in the Gastro-Entero-Pancreatic system induced the concept of well-differentiated NET with high proliferation rate (NET G3), explaining partially the heterogeneity of G3 NEN. Even if the nomenclature in pulmonary NEN is still different, the terms ‘carcinoid’ and ‘atypical carcinoid’ are widely overlapping with NET G1 and NET G2. Molecular data shows an additional heterogeneity both in well-differentiated NET and poorly differentiated NEC. However, no studies are available demonstrating clinical usefulness yet.

Summary
The heterogeneity of NEN regarding the organ of origin, differentiation and molecular subtypes make development of personalised therapy a challenge needing more international and interdisciplinary collaborations and clinical trials allowing stratification according to biological subgroups.
Targeted sequencing and integrative analysis to prioritize candidate genes in neurodevelopmental disorders
Authors: Zhang Yi , Wang Tao , Wang Yan , Xia Kun , Li Jinchen , Sun Zhongsheng 
Published: April 2021

AbstractNeurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) are a group of diseases characterized by high heterogeneity and frequently co-occurring symptoms. The mutational spectrum in patients with NDDs is largely incomplete. Here, we sequenced 547 genes from 1102 patients with NDDs and validated 1271 potential functional variants, including 108 de novo variants (DNVs) in 78 autosomal genes and seven inherited hemizygous variants in six X chromosomal genes. Notably, 36 of these 78 genes are the first to be reported in Chinese patients with NDDs. By integrating our genetic data with public data, we prioritized 212 NDD candidate genes with FDR < 0.1, including 17 novel genes. The novel candidate genes interacted or were co-expressed with known candidate genes, forming a functional network involved in known pathways. We highlighted MSL2, which carried two de novo protein-truncating variants (p.L192Vfs*3 and p.S486Ifs*11) and was frequently connected with known candidate genes. This study provides the mutational spectrum of NDDs in China and prioritizes 212 NDD candidate genes for further functional validation and genetic counseling.
Personality type matters: Perceptions of job demands, job resources, and their associations with work engagement and mental health
Authors: Herr Raphael M. , van Vianen Annelies E. M. , Bosle Catherin , Fischer Joachim E. 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThis three-wave study examined whether the pattern of associations of job demands and job resources with work engagement and mental health depends on personality types. In a representative sample of the German workforce (N = 13,665), the Big Five personality traits could be used to cluster participants into five personality types: ordinary, resilient, strained, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled. As predicted, job demands were associated with mental health and job resources were primarily associated with work engagement. However, these relationships differed across personality types. We conclude that research and practice could take a more personality-driven stance towards employee perceptions of job demands and job resources and their associations with work engagement and mental health.
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student teachers: how the shift to online collaborative learning affects student teachers’ learning and future teaching in a Chinese context
Authors: Lei Man , Medwell Jane 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn March 2020, universities in China transitioned to online education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and intensified the focus on collaboration in online learning. However, little is known about the impact of undertaking online collaborative learning (OCL) on student teachers’ views about the process and about their own teaching and learning. This qualitative study examined 18 student teachers’ views about their experience of OCL and the way it affected them as learners and future teachers. The participants reported that OCL helped them develop varied views of learning and had a positive effect on their views about the future use of OCL. They saw their personal experience of OCL as an important aspect of their development as teachers. These findings highlight ways that online learning can shape the views and professionalism of student teachers. Future teacher training programs can provide OCL as a teaching experience at an early stage to help transform student teachers’ self-understanding from that of a student to that of a teacher. The findings of this study further reveal that online collaborative teacher training offers student teachers an opportunity to collaborate, discuss, and reflect on their professional development as teachers. This encourages teacher educators to reconsider how new forms of practice and teaching theories can be woven together more effectively in post-COVID teacher training.
Using efficiency frontier to inform operational decision-making
Authors: Benchener Matthew , Li Lingfeng 
Published: April 2021

Abstract
In this study, we introduce Efficiency Frontier, an economic assessment framework for business operations. The proposed framework emphasizes efficiency and sustainability. It aims to help organizations translate a complex metric system into a value index, conduct performance evaluation, and determine efficient resource planning strategies. Unlike the traditional methods that majorly focus on the achievement of performance targets, the proposed framework also accounts for the amount of resource that is invested in the achievement, which encourages managers to implement sustainable strategies that aim for long-term success. To validate the new framework, we systematically study the case of the City of Chicago’s 311 contact center with a base case analysis and a sensitivity analysis. In the base case, an Efficiency Frontier architected by a set of efficient solutions from 2013 to 2016 is used to identify outperforming scenarios given resource constraints. In the sensitivity analysis, we demonstrate the application of Efficiency Frontier in determining optimal resource planning strategies in conservative, moderate, and aggressive business investment scenarios. The base case Efficiency Frontier reveals that the marginal return on investment in improving the performance may diminish as investment increases. The sensitivity study suggests that optimal resource planning strategies should be adjusted according to value propositions. This work builds a framework for business leaders to economically assess their operational decision-making.

Article highlights

Efficient strategies can be identified by exploring the maximum value increase per unit of resource given cost scenarios

The fund of a strategy should be reduced when the marginal return of the strategy begins to diminish.

The framework’s ability to suggest cost-saving strategies is especially informative in resource-limited settings.