bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Fine-scale co-ocurrence patterns in grasslands reflect competition for space rather than broad plant strategies
Authors: Génin Alexandre , Devresse Louis , Garnier Eric , Coq Sylvain 
Published: December 2024

AbstractEstimating the sign and strength of interactions among plants is central to understand the dynamics and functioning of communities, but is challenging to do for species-rich communities. Instead, spatial relationships between plants (clustering or spatial segregation) are sometimes used as a surrogate for the net effect of interactions ocurring between plants (positive or negative, respectively). However, this approach remains poorly tested outside of arid and alpine ecosystems, the ecological settings it originated from.In experimental rangelands, we explored how management intensification, sheep exclusion and a natural soil depth gradient control the level of plant spatial segregation, or ‘negative co-occurrence’, usually considered as a measurement of competition intensity. We link these spatial patterns to classical broad plant strategies defined by 11 locally measured functional traits, and to the realized vegetation height and cover.Plant segregation was highest when both grazing and fertilization were applied. Unexpectedly, general plant strategies (competitive, and acquisitive strategies) had little relationship with plant spatial patterns. Instead, spatial constraints increased segregation wherever cover was high and free bare ground was limited, or where plant growth is restricted by grazing to a few centimeters above ground.These results show that fine-scale spatial patterns appear to capture competition for space, rather than for light or resources, as suggested by broad plant strategies. This may explain discrepancies in conclusions drawn from spatial patterns in grasslands, and clarifies the way towards a mechanistic understanding of spatial patterns.Synthesis. The fine scale spatial organization of plant communities has been thought to reflect the intensity of competition among plants, but this approach has struggled to provide consistent results in grasslands. We show here that spatial patterns reflect competition for space rather than broad plant strategies captured by plant functional traits, helping us read observed plant spatial patterns to map interactions among plants in the field.
Phylogenomics of the sigmodontine rodents: Cloud forests and Pliocene extinction explain timing and spread of the radiation of South American mice and rats
Authors: Bangs Max R. , Percequillo Alexandre R. , Pacheco Víctor , Steppan Scott J. 
Published: December 2024

AbstractStudies of radiations after invasion often overlook the potential role of climatic, biotic, and geologic triggers, instead focusing largely on the conduit for invasion. For example, studies of the rodent subfamily Sigmodontinae, a clade of over 500 species that radiated throughout South America during the Great American Biotic Interchange, have historically focused more on invasion than potential triggers or subsequent environmental change. Here, we put the timing and transitions of this radiation in context of changing climatic, biotic, and geologic factors by reconstructing the biogeography of the radiation. To accomplish this, we generated the largest genomic phylogeny of Sigmodontinae that include over 80% of the genera and 40% of the known species, including allincertae sedistaxa and produced a fossil-calibrated chronogram. Results indicate a single invasion of South America at the base of Sigmodontinae (∼ 10.46 million years ago [mya]) with two waves of increased lineage generation and biogeographic transition rates, the first of which occurred after a four-million-year lag following invasion. The timing and location of this initial radiation (6.61 - 5.78 mya) coincided with the spread of montane cloud forest during the Late Miocene Cooling and sigmodontines did not spread throughout the continent until the Mid-Pliocene Faunal Turnover (4.5 – 3.0 mya), a period of high extinction of South American mammals. A comprehensive classification for the subfamily is provided that accounts for the new results.
Increasing the acquisition speed in oblique plane microscopy via Aliasing
Authors: Mcfadden Conor , Manton James , Fiolka Reto 
Published: December 2024

AbstractOblique plane microcopy (OPM), a variant of light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM), enables rapid volumetric imaging without mechanically scanning the sample or an objective. In an OPM, the sample space is mapped to a distortion free image space via remote focusing, and the oblique light-sheet plane is mapped via a tilted tertiary imaging system onto a camera. As a result, the 3D point-spread function and optical transfer function are tilted to the optical axis of the tertiary imaging system. To satisfy Nyquist sampling, small scanning steps are required to encompass the tilted 3D OTF, slowing down acquisition and increasing sample exposure. Here we show that a judicious amount of under-sampling can lead to a form of aliasing in OPM that can be recovered without a loss of spatial resolution or introducing artifacts. The resulting speed gain depends on the optical parameters of the system and can reach 2-4-fold in our demonstrations. We leverage this speed gain for rapid subcellular 3D imaging of mitochondrial dynamics.
Wafer-scale integration of α-quartz thin films towards super high frequency piezoelectric bioNEMS for arbovirus detection
Authors: Rathar R. , Ding S. , Sanchez-Fuentes D. , Jolly C. , André-Arpin C. , Desgarceaux R. , Garcia-Bermejo R. , Gazquez J. , Plana-Ruiz S. , Picas L. , Carretero-Genevrier A. 
Published: December 2024

AbstractMicro and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), especially piezoelectric resonators, offer a promising strategy for the manufacturing of point-of-care devices providing rapid, sensitive, and field-deployable tests with minimal user training for the diagnostic of viral infections. High-frequency (HF) MEMS/NEMS have the potential for ultrasensible mass-loading devices. Yet, their use for biomedical applications requires challenging manufacturing qualities. Here, we develop a large-scale chemical integration of epitaxial α-quartz (100) thin films on silicon wafers up to 4-inches. This methodology allows the microfabrication of wafer-scale piezoelectric α-quartz/silicon bioMEMS using a recognition layer capable of selectively detecting emerging arboviruses over other viral loads. Using contact-free vibrometry, we show a mass sensitivity of the bioMEMS device of 22.4 pg/Hz in liquid conditions and a Chikungunya virus limit of detection of 9 ng/ml. To reach piezoelectric transduction for compact quartz sensor devices, we develop NEMS resonators at super HF, i.e., 17.8 GHz with a quality factor of 280 which represents a QxF product of 4.98·1012. These α-quartz NEMS can reach thicknesses between 100 and 800 nm and lateral dimensions up to 9 mm2. Our work opens the door for cost-efficient single-chip epitaxial piezoelectric α-quartz/Si ultrasensitive NEMS sensors manufactured exclusively by soft-chemistry for biomedical applications and many other fields.
Chronic infection ofCaenorhabditis elegansby Orsay virus induces age-dependent immunity and superinfection exclusion
Authors: Castiglioni Victoria G. , Villena-Giménez Ana , González-Sánchez Antonio , Toft Christina , Gómez Gustavo G. , Elena Santiago F. 
Published: December 2024

ABSTRACTOrsay virus (OrV) is a natural pathogen ofC. elegans, which mounts an antiviral response upon infection and enables the investigation of the mechanisms governing infection and immunity. Here, we focus on two of these features, namely the effect of life-long infections and superinfection dynamics. By following the course of an infection throughout the lifespan of a synchronous wild-type population, we describe several viral load peaks followed by sharp decreases in viral load, suggesting that the infection is chronic and that animals manage to suppress viral replication successfully throughout most of their lives. Moreover, we show that animals that have been previously exposed to the virus are able to control viral replication upon a subsequent inoculation, indicative of superinfection exclusion. Primary infections produced transcriptomic and small RNA alterations, whose extent was highly dependent on the developmental stage of the worm at the time of infection and the time until sampling. Superinfection, in turn, had little impact on the overall transcriptome, but showed a misregulation of piRNAs, rRNAs, and tsRNAs. Superinfection exclusion was robust throughout larval development and adulthood, providing protection against various OrV isolates. However, the protective effect of the initial infection diminished over time, suggesting different mechanisms of action and ultimately favoring the primary infecting virus. This phenomenon was dependent on a functional RNA interference pathway.
Efficient quantum algorithm to simulate open systems through a single environmental qubit
Authors: Di Bartolomeo Giovanni , Vischi Michele , Feri Tommaso , Bassi Angelo , Donadi Sandro 
Published: December 2024

We present an efficient algorithm for simulating open quantum systems dynamics described by the Lindblad master equation on quantum computers, addressing key challenges in the field. In contrast to existing approaches, our method achieves two significant advancements. First, we employ a repetition of unitary gates on a set of n system qubits and, remarkably, only a single ancillary bath qubit representing the environment. It follows that, for the typical case of m locality of the Lindblad operators, we reach an exponential improvement of the number of ancilla in terms of m and up to a polynomial improvement in ancilla overhead for large n with respect to other approaches. Although stochasticity is introduced, requiring multiple circuit realizations, the sampling overhead is independent of the system size. Second, we show that, under fixed accuracy conditions, our algorithm enables a reduction in the number of Trotter steps compared to other approaches, substantially decreasing circuit depth. These advancements hold particular significance for near-term quantum computers, where minimizing both width and depth is critical due to inherent noise in their dynamics.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Generation of relativistic polarized electron beams via collective beam-target interactions
Authors: Zhu Xing-Long , Chen Min , Wang Wei-Min , Sheng Zheng-Ming 
Published: December 2024

Relativistic polarized electron beams can find applications in broad areas of fundamental physics. Here, we propose that electron spin polarization can be realized efficiently via collective beam-target interactions. When a relativistic unpolarized electron beam is incident onto the surface of a solid target with a grazing angle, strong magnetic fields are induced at the target surface due to the formation of a high reflux of plasma electrons. This results in violent beam self-focusing and corresponding beam density increase via magnetic pinching. The pinched dense beam in turn further enhances the magnetic fields to the level of a few giga-Gauss, which is high enough to trigger strong synchrotron radiation of ultrarelativistic electrons. During the interaction, electron spin polarization develops along the magnetic field direction, which is achieved via radiative spin flips in the quantum radiation-dominated regime. As a consequence, the incident electron beam can be effectively polarized via the spin-dependent radiation reaction, for example, the mean polarization of electrons with energy less than 2 GeV can reach above 50% for an initial 5 GeV beam. This provides a robust way for the development of polarized electron sources.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Hopping of the Center-of-Mass of Single G Centers in Silicon-on-Insulator
Authors: Durand Alrik , Baron Yoann , Udvarhelyi Péter , Cache Félix , V. R. Krithika , Herzig Tobias , Khoury Mario , Pezzagna Sébastien , Meijer Jan , Hartmann Jean-Michel , Reboh Shay , Abbarchi Marco , Robert-Philip Isabelle , Gali Adam , Gérard Jean-Michel , Jacques Vincent , Cassabois Guillaume , Dréau Anaïs 
Published: December 2024

Among the wealth of single fluorescent defects recently detected in silicon, the G center catches interest for its telecom single-photon emission that could be coupled to a metastable electron spin triplet. The G center is a unique defect where the standard Born-Oppenheimer approximation used in solid-state physics breaks down as one of its atoms, a silicon atom in interstitial position Si(i), can move between six sites. The impact of its displacement, due either to coherent tunneling or to random jumps from one site to another, on the optical properties of G centers is still largely unknown, especially in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) samples. Here, we investigate the displacement of the center of mass of the G center in silicon. By performing photoluminescence experiments at single-defect scale, we show that individual G defects in SOI exhibit several emission dipoles and zero-phonon line fine structures with splittings up to approximately 1 meV, both indicating a motion of the defect central atom over time. Combining polarization and spectral analysis at the single-photon level, we evidence that the reconfiguration dynamics is drastically different from the one of the unperturbed G center in bulk silicon where the mobile atom is fully delocalized over all six sites through tunneling. The SOI structure freezes the Si(i) delocalization of the G defect and, as a result, enables one to isolate linearly polarized optical lines. Under above-band-gap optical excitation, the central atom of G centers in SOI behaves as if it were in a six-slot roulette wheel, randomly alternating between localized crystal sites at each optical cycle. Comparative measurements in a bulk silicon sample and calculations highlight that strain is likely the dominant perturbation impacting the G center geometry. These results shed light on the importance of the atomic reconfiguration dynamics to understand and control the photoluminescence properties of the G center in silicon. More generally, these findings emphasize the impact of strain fluctuations inherent to SOI wafers for future quantum integrated photonics applications based on color centers in silicon.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
The impact of social development on the architecture of early medical infrastructure in Gilan, Iran, in the 20th century
Authors: Gharipour Mohammad , Masoud Ehsan , Esmaeilzadeh Vafaei Jamal , Jahani Sadatmahalle Fateme 
Published: December 2024

PurposeThe advancement of medical care during the late 19th century and the rising importance of public health led to the creation of a healthcare infrastructure in Iran in the early decades of the 20th century. The study focuses on the formation of this infrastructure through the study of historical materials as well as the study of case studies built in the Gilan region in the north of Iran.Design/methodology/approachThis paper begins with a review of medical, sociological and historical resources, then turns to field studies and interviews as methods to focus on the medical transformations in the Gilan region.FindingsThis study offers four key findings: First of all, most studies tend to focus more on traditional medicine in Iran than on the initiation and spread of modern medicine. Secondly, foreign physicians and missionaries played an influential role in shaping the culture of Iranian hospital care. Thirdly, the interactions with and influences coming from Iran’s northern neighbors in Gilan transformed the province into an educated, freedom-seeking society. And finally, in its early stages, hospital construction in Iran followed local architectural traditions.Originality/valueIn the case of Gilan, the core structures of urban hospitals were similar in their pavilion typology to those that had been common in Gilan for centuries.
Mitigating process improvement project failures: leveraging organizational responses and lessons learned
Authors: Bader Mariam , Jayaraman Raja , Antony Jiju , Goonetilleke Ravindra S. , Linderman Kevin , Hoerl Roger 
Published: December 2024

PurposeDespite technological advancements within process improvement (PI) projects, two out of three PI projects failed. This paper aims to identify the critical failure factors (CFFs) linked to PI projects and propose suitable mitigation strategies. It also examines how PI practitioners can leverage unsuccessful projects to stimulate learning from failure, turning them into opportunities for development and growth.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative approach involving semi-structured interviews with 21 PI professionals was utilized to capture the CFFs and their corresponding mitigation best practices.FindingsThe study reveals 14 CFFs spanning from issues at the top-level management, down to challenges at the project level and shortcomings at the individual level. We uncover new evolving factors related to “big data analysis and technology implementations”, “project scope complexity”, “unrealistic goal setting”, “frequent shifts in management priorities”, “unclear problem definition” and “prolonged execution duration”. Moreover, results emphasize the significance of fostering a “culture of learning from failure” and “transparency in failure acknowledgment” to avert failures.Originality/valueThis study is the first to provide real-world solutions and guidelines to proactively mitigate PI failures. It offers insights for PI practitioners and broadens their view on emerging factors to implement preventive strategies, building on learning from failures and those of others.
Strategies for implementing research data management (RDM) services in Tanzania's higher education institutions (HEIs)
Authors: Mosha Neema Florence Vincent , Ngulube Patrick 
Published: December 2024

Purpose
This study aims to explore the strategies for implementing research data management (RDM) services in Tanzania’s higher education institutions (HEIs).

Design/methodology/approach
The study drew upon the technology, organization, people and environment (TOPE) framework. Using a qualitative case study approach, data was collected through semistructured interviews with librarians, lecturers, information and communication technologies (ICT) and research and innovation staff. Data was thematically analyzed.

Findings
Numerous participants recognized the importance of RDM services, such as creating data management plans, enhancing the retrieval and reuse of research data and offering support for data curation and preservation. The study also identified organizational support, including developing policies and guidelines, providing financial assistance and ensuring data security. Furthermore, the study highlighted the importance of ICT infrastructure, including servers, software and hardware. A lack of ICT infrastructure and limited skills and knowledge among those responsible for implementing RDM services were among the challenges identified.

Research limitations/implications
This study used the TOPE framework, along with relevant literature, to guide the formulation of research objectives and questions. While the TOPE framework offers a comprehensive view through its four dimensions, there is a need to integrate additional models, such as data curation, to achieve a more holistic understanding.

Practical implications
This study provides valuable insights into strategies for implementing RDM services in HEIs. It highlights the importance of professional development for stakeholders, enabling them to develop and enforce effective strategies supporting a data-driven research agenda.

Originality/value
This study contributes original insights by outlining the necessary strategies for HEIs to consider when implementing RDM services. The study adds value to understanding effective RDM implementation requirements in an academic setting by identifying various strategies for developing RDM activities.
Enhancing infrastructure project outcomes through optimized contractual structures and long-term warranties
Authors: Alshboul Odey , Shehadeh Ali 
Published: December 2024

PurposeThis study delves into the influence of contractual frameworks on infrastructure project timelines and evaluates the role of long-term warranty agreements in maintenance efficacy. It underscores the correlation between construction contract structures and prevalent project delays, advocating for a revision in the allocation of responsibilities to mitigate such delays effectively.Design/methodology/approachWhile previous research has explored individual aspects of construction management, such as contractor incentives and risk allocation, our study uniquely integrates these elements to develop a comprehensive model that includes the effects of long-term warranty agreements and penalty clauses.FindingsThe findings advocate for contract revisions that entail clearly articulated responsibilities and thorough impact assessments, aimed at enhancing the efficiency of project execution and optimizing infrastructure investment returns. Concrete examples are provided from large-scale infrastructure and public works maintenance projects, illustrating the benefits of well-defined penalty clauses in curbing delays and ensuring sustained quality through long-term warranties. Our results demonstrate that optimized contractual structures can significantly reduce project delays and enhance maintenance effectiveness.Originality/valueThis study addresses significant gaps in understanding construction contract management dynamics, especially in transportation infrastructure. It rigorously analyzes how penalty clauses and long-term warranties impact contractor behavior and project outcomes. Key findings show that the benefits of long-term warranties, including social advantages, depend heavily on the strictness of penalty clauses. Innovatively, it employs a First-Price Sealed-Bid Auction framework with empirical data from various case studies, enhancing contract structure optimization for better stakeholder alignment and infrastructure integrity. These insights notably advance construction contract management methodologies.
A triple helix model analysis of China’s regional industry-university-research collaborative innovation in low-carbon technologies
Authors: Wang Tianchong , Suo Baimin , Jiang Jieshu , Jia Wei 
Published: December 2024

Purpose
Conducting innovation in low-carbon technology is vital to boost the low-carbon economy. Collaborative innovation among industry-university-research (IUR) is an effective mode of developing low-carbon technologies. There is a lack of visualization and analysis of the spatial-temporal of such collaboration among the IUR. This paper aims to serve as insights to guide IUR’s collaborative innovation in Chinese universities to promote low-carbon technologies.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses IncoPat to collect patent data. Collaborative patent output on low-carbon technologies was selected as the indicator to measure the effectiveness of IUR collaboration. The temporal evolution trend of the collaborative patent output in Chinese universities is analyzed.

Findings
The collaborative patent output of the Chinese IUR varies greatly among the regions, evolving from stronger in the east and weaker in the west, to stronger in the south and weaker in the north region. The triple helix (TH) innovation system in China’s low-carbon sector is dominated by intraregional collaborative innovation, while there is a weak bilateral synergy between universities and research institutions.

Originality/value
This paper innovatively developed a novel TH model that characterize the regional differences of the IUR collaboration in low-carbon technology innovation of Chinese universities. A new attempt focuses on the spatial-temporal evolution of the collaborative innovation of IUR to promote low-carbon technologies.