bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Engaging Asian States on Combating IUU Fishing: The Curious Case of the State of Nationality in EU Regulation and Practice
Authors: Honniball Arron Nicholas 
Published: March 2021

AbstractGlobal common concerns – including combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing – necessitate effective global action to avoid displacing illegal practices to under-regulated jurisdictions. The response in international law has therefore included the obligation upon all states to exercise jurisdiction, albeit with varying clarity regarding the existence and scope of duties for each jurisdictional basis. This article argues that, through its non-cooperating third country identification procedure, the European Union (EU) has sought unilaterally to crystalize and promote the implementation of an obligation upon states to exercise extraterritorial active personality-based jurisdiction over their own nationals engaged in IUU fishing. This is demonstrated through an analysis of EU practice relating to Asian states and remains true despite the EU's non-cooperating third country identification procedure only formally targeting flag, port, coastal, and market states. The EU and Asian states have improved their laws governing nationals engaged in IUU fishing, but concerns over legal certainty arise.
Off-Cycle and Out of Sync: How Election Timing Influences Political Representation
Authors: Hartney Michael T. , Hayes Sam D. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractStates exert significant control over many different types of electoral institutions that influence the tone and direction of political representation in American democracy. Yet almost nothing is known about the consequences of the institution that has the greatest singular impact on the turnout and composition of the electorate: election timing. We argue that off-cycle elections will tend to produce governments that are not well-aligned with the political preferences of their median constituent. To empirically test this expectation, we examine the relationship between election timing and mass–elite congruence across local school district governments. Leveraging variation in election timing across districts within the same state, we find that board members are more likely to hold political preferences that are aligned with their constituents when boards are elected in on- versus off-cycle races. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of representation and election timing, suggesting some possible avenues for future research.
Over a Century of Sinking in Mexico City: No Hope for Significant Elevation and Storage Capacity Recovery
Authors: Chaussard E. , Havazli E. , Fattahi H. , Cabral‐Cano E. , Solano‐Rojas D. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractMany areas worldwide are known to experience land subsidence due to groundwater extraction. It is traditionally assumed that subsidence extent and rates are controlled by groundwater extraction locations and volumes. Here, we reevaluate this assumption in the Mexico City metropolitan area by combining stratigraphic, hydrologic, geodetic, and demographic datasets. Integration of 115 years of leveling with 24 years of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and 14 years of GPS data reveals that subsidence rates have been mostly constant in Mexico City since at least 1950 and reach 50 cm/year. Analysis of InSAR and GPS data shows that no significant elastic deformation exists, demonstrating that the subsidence is almost fully irreversible. In Mexico City, no direct relationships exist between groundwater level fluctuations and subsidence rates or between pumping rates and subsidence rates. In contrast, a strong positive linear relationship is isolated between subsidence rates and the thickness of the upper aquitard. Through the integration of these long‐term datasets, we forecast that it will take ∼150 years to reach total compaction of the upper aquitard, which may lead to additional subsidence up to 30 m. With the potentiometric surface now deeper than most of the aquitard, clay's porewater rich in salts, chemical constituents, and pollutants is now flowing downward into the productive aquifer, hence decreasing water quality. Finally, our work shows that the consequences of land subsidence greatly influence the socioeconomic landscape in the Mexico City metropolitan area.
Algorithmic Improvements to Finding Approximately Neutral Surfaces
Authors: Stanley Geoffrey J. , McDougall Trevor J. , Barker Paul M. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractInterior oceanic motions occur predominantly along, rather than across, the neutral tangent plane. These planes do not link together to form well‐defined surfaces, so oceanographers use approximately neutral surfaces. To date, the most accurate such surface is the ω‐surface, but its practical utility was limited because its numerical implementation was slow and sometimes unstable. This work upgrades the speed, robustness, and utility of ω‐surfaces. First, we switch from solving an overdetermined matrix problem by minimal least squares, to solving an exactly determined matrix problem, obtained either by the normal equations (multiplication by the matrix's transpose) or by discretizing Poisson's equation derived from the original optimization problem by the calculus of variations. This reduces the computational complexity, roughly from to , where N is the number of grid points in the surface. Second, we update the surface's vertical position by solving a nonlinear equation in each water column, rather than assuming the stratification is vertically uniform. This reduces the number of iterations required for convergence by an order of magnitude and eliminates the need for a damping factor that stabilized the original software. Additionally, we add “wetting” capacity, whereby incrops and outcrops are reincorporated into the surface should they become neutrally linked as iterations proceed. The new algorithm computes an ω‐surface in a 1,440 by 720 gridded ocean in roughly 15 s, down from roughly 11 h for the original software. We also provide two simple methods to label an ω‐surface with a (neutral) density value.
Dynamic Bayesian Networks for Evaluation of Granger Causal Relationships in Climate Reanalyses
Authors: Harries Dylan , O'Kane Terence J. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractWe apply a Bayesian structure learning approach to study interactions between global climate modes, so illustrating its use as a framework for developing process‐based diagnostics with which to evaluate climate models. Homogeneous dynamic Bayesian network models are constructed for time series of empirical indices diagnosing the activity of major tropical, Northern and Southern Hemisphere modes of climate variability in the NCEP/NCAR and JRA‐55 reanalyses. The resulting probabilistic graphical models are comparable to Granger causal analyses that have recently been advocated. Reversible jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo is employed to provide a quantification of the uncertainty associated with the selection of a single network structure. In general, the models fitted from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and the JRA‐55 reanalysis are found to exhibit broad agreement in terms of associations for which there is high posterior confidence. Differences between the two reanalyses are found that involve modes for which known biases are present or that may be attributed to seasonal effects, as well as for features that, while present in point estimates, have low overall posterior mass. We argue that the ability to incorporate such measures of confidence in structural features is a significant advantage provided by the Bayesian approach, as point estimates alone may understate the relevant uncertainties and yield less informative measures of differences between products when network‐based approaches are used for model evaluation.
Capillary, Film, and Vapor Flow in Transient Bare Soil Evaporation (1): Identifiability Analysis of Hydraulic Conductivity in the Medium to Dry Moisture Range
Authors: Iden Sascha C. , Blöcher Johanna R. , Diamantopoulos Efstathios , Durner Wolfgang 
Published: March 2021

AbstractEvaporation experiments are frequently used to determine soil hydraulic properties. We simulated laboratory evaporation experiments with a coupled water, vapor, and heat flow model which includes the surface energy balance. The simulations are performed with different parametrizations of soil hydraulic properties with a focus on soil hydraulic conductivity in medium to dry soil. In previous studies, conductivity in this moisture range has been shown to be influenced not only by water flow in completely filled capillaries (“capillary flow”) but also by film and corner flow (“film flow”). Our forward simulations highlight the strong influence of an increased conductivity caused by film flow on evaporation rate, cumulative water loss, soil temperature, and soil water pressure head during evaporation. Film flow extends the duration of stage‐1 evaporation and increases the evaporation rate during stage‐2 even if all other physical material properties are the same. The simulated data were used in inverse simulations with the Richards equation to test whether soil hydraulic properties can be identified without bias. This is a priori questionable because the Richards equation is an isothermal flow model and simplifies the true physics considerably, by ignoring thermal liquid and thermal vapor fluxes, as well as temperature effects on the hydraulic properties. Our results show that the identification of the water retention and hydraulic conductivity curves is bias‐free for media with and without film flow. We conclude that the Richards equation can be safely used to identify hydraulic properties from evaporation experiments by inverse modeling.
The key roles of cancer stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles
Authors: Su Chaoyue , Zhang Jianye , Yarden Yosef , Fu Liwu 
Published: March 2021

AbstractCancer stem cells (CSCs), the subpopulation of cancer cells, have the capability of proliferation, self-renewal, and differentiation. The presence of CSCs is a key factor leading to tumor progression and metastasis. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nano-sized particles released by different kinds of cells and have the capacity to deliver certain cargoes, such as nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids, which have been recognized as a vital mediator in cell-to-cell communication. Recently, more and more studies have reported that EVs shed by CSCs make a significant contribution to tumor progression. CSCs-derived EVs are involved in tumor resistance, metastasis, angiogenesis, as well as the maintenance of stemness phenotype and tumor immunosuppression microenvironment. Here, we summarized the molecular mechanism by which CSCs-derived EVs in tumor progression. We believed that the fully understanding of the roles of CSCs-derived EVs in tumor development will definitely provide new ideas for CSCs-based therapeutic strategies.
Attentive brain states in infants with and without later autism
Authors: Gui Anna , Bussu Giorgia , Tye Charlotte , Elsabbagh Mayada , Pasco Greg , Charman Tony , Johnson Mark H. , Jones Emily J. H. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractEarly difficulties in engaging attentive brain states in social settings could affect learning and have cascading effects on social development. We investigated this possibility using multichannel electroencephalography during a face/non-face paradigm in 8-month-old infants with (FH, n = 91) and without (noFH, n = 40) a family history of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An event-related potential component reflecting attention engagement, the Nc, was compared between FH infants who received a diagnosis of ASD at 3 years of age (FH-ASD; n = 19), FH infants who did not (FH-noASD; n = 72) and noFH infants (who also did not, hereafter noFH-noASD; n = 40). ‘Prototypical’ microstates during social attention were extracted from the noFH-noASD group and examined in relation to later categorical and dimensional outcome. Machine-learning was used to identify the microstate features that best predicted ASD and social adaptive skills at three years. Results suggested that whilst measures of brain state timing were related to categorical ASD outcome, brain state strength was related to dimensional measures of social functioning. Specifically, the FH-ASD group showed shorter Nc latency relative to other groups, and duration of the attentive microstate responses to faces was informative for categorical outcome prediction. Reduced Nc amplitude difference between faces with direct gaze and a non-social control stimulus and strength of the attentive microstate to faces contributed to the prediction of dimensional variation in social skills. Taken together, this provides consistent evidence that atypical attention engagement precedes the emergence of difficulties in socialization and indicates that using the spatio-temporal characteristics of whole-brain activation to define brain states in infancy provides an important new approach to understanding of the neurodevelopmental mechanisms that lead to ASD.
Astrocytic atrophy as a pathological feature of Parkinson’s disease with LRRK2 mutation
Authors: Ramos-Gonzalez Paula , Mato Susana , Chara Juan Carlos , Verkhratsky Alexei , Matute Carlos , Cavaliere Fabio 
Published: March 2021

AbstractThe principal hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the selective neurodegeneration of dopaminergic neurones. Mounting evidence suggests that astrocytes may contribute to dopaminergic neurodegeneration through decreased homoeostatic support and deficient neuroprotection. In this study, we generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-derived astrocytes from PD patients with LRRK2(G2019S)mutation and healthy donors of the similar age. In cell lines derived from PD patients, astrocytes were characterised by a significant decrease in S100B and GFAP-positive astrocytic profiles associated with marked decrease in astrocyte complexity. In addition, PD-derived astrocytes demonstrated aberrant mitochondrial morphology, decreased mitochondrial activity and ATP production along with an increase of glycolysis and increased production of reactive oxygen species. Taken together, our data indicate that astrocytic asthenia observed in patient-derived cultures with LRRK2(G2019S)mutation may contribute to neuronal death through decreased homoeostatic support, elevated oxidative stress and failed neuroprotection.
Myo1g is required for efficient adhesion and migration of activated B lymphocytes to inguinal lymph nodes
Authors: Cruz-Zárate D. , López-Ortega O. , Girón-Pérez D. A. , Gonzalez-Suarez A. M. , García-Cordero J. L. , Schnoor M. , Santos-Argumedo L. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractCell migration is a dynamic process that involves adhesion molecules and the deformation of the moving cell that depends on cytoskeletal remodeling and actin-modulating proteins such as myosins. In this work, we analyzed the role of the class I Myosin-1 g (Myo1g) in migratory processes of LPS + IL-4 activated B lymphocytes in vivo and in vitro. In vivo, the absence of Myo1g reduced homing of activated B lymphocytes into the inguinal lymph node. Using microchannel chambers and morphology analysis, we found that the lack of Myo1g caused adhesion and chemotaxis defects. Additionally, deficiency in Myo1g causes flaws in adopting a migratory morphology. Our results highlight the importance of Myo1g during B cell migration.
Identification of variation in nutritional practice in neonatal units in England and association with clinical outcomes using agnostic machine learning
Authors: Greenbury Sam F. , Ougham Kayleigh , Wu Jinyi , Battersby Cheryl , Gale Chris , Modi Neena , Angelini Elsa D. 
Published: March 2021

AbstractWe used agnostic, unsupervised machine learning to cluster a large clinical database of information on infants admitted to neonatal units in England. Our aim was to obtain insights into nutritional practice, an area of central importance in newborn care, utilising the UK National Neonatal Research Database (NNRD). We performed clustering on time-series data of daily nutritional intakes for very preterm infants born at a gestational age less than 32 weeks (n = 45,679) over a six-year period. This revealed 46 nutritional clusters heterogeneous in size, showing common interpretable clinical practices alongside rarer approaches. Nutritional clusters with similar admission profiles revealed associations between nutritional practice, geographical location and outcomes. We show how nutritional subgroups may be regarded as distinct interventions and tested for associations with measurable outcomes. We illustrate the potential for identifying relationships between nutritional practice and outcomes with two examples, discharge weight and bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). We identify the well-known effect of formula milk on greater discharge weight as well as support for the plausible, but insufficiently evidenced view that human milk is protective against BPD. Our framework highlights the potential of agnostic machine learning approaches to deliver clinical practice insights and generate hypotheses using routine data.
Development of a novel transcription factors-related prognostic signature for serous ovarian cancer
Authors: Li He , Wu Nayiyuan , Liu Zhao-Yi , Chen Yong-Chang , Cheng Quan , Wang Jing 
Published: March 2021

AbstractGrowing evidence suggest that transcription factors (TFs) play vital roles in serous ovarian cancer (SOC). In the present study, TFs mRNA expression profiles of 564 SOC subjects in the TCGA database, and 70 SOC subjects in the GEO database were screened. A 17-TFs related prognostic signature was constructed using lasso cox regression and validated in the TCGA and GEO cohorts. Consensus clustering analysis was applied to establish a cluster model. The 17-TFs related prognostic signature, risk score and cluster models were effective at accurately distinguishing the overall survival of SOC. Analysis of genomic alterations were used to elaborate on the association between the 17-TFs related prognostic signature and genomic aberrations. The GSEA assay results suggested that there was a significant difference in the inflammatory and immune response pathways between the high-risk and low-risk score groups. The potential immune infiltration, immunotherapy, and chemotherapy responses were analyzed due to the significant difference in the regulation of lymphocyte migration and T cell-mediated cytotoxicity between the two groups. The results indicated that patients with low-risk score were more likely to respond anti-PD-1, etoposide, paclitaxel, and veliparib but not to gemcitabine, doxorubicin, docetaxel, and cisplatin. Also, the prognostic nomogram model revealed that the risk score was a good prognostic indicator for SOC patients. In conclusion, we explored the prognostic values of TFs in SOC and developed a 17-TFs related prognostic signature to predict the survival of SOC patients.
Variations in Schedule III prescription patterns in a Medicaid population pre- and post-policy
Authors: Nagarajan Radhakrishnan , Talbert Jeffery , Miller Craig S. , Ebersole Jeffrey 
Published: March 2021

AbstractThe present study investigated variations in patient movement patterns between prescribers before and after House Bill 1 (HB1) implementation in Kentucky using network abstractions (PPN: prescriber-prescriber networks) from a one-month cross-sectional Schedule III prescription data in a Medicaid population. Network characteristics such as degree centrality distribution of PPN was positively skewed and revealed Dental Practitioners to be the highly connected specialty with opioid analgesic hydrocodone-acetaminophen to be the most commonly prescribed drug. Taxonomy enrichment of the prescriber specialties in PPN using chi-square test revealed a reduction in the enriched taxonomies Post-HB1 compared to Pre-HB1 with Dental practitioners being constitutively enriched (p < 0.05). PPNs were also found to exhibit rich community structure revealing inherent clustering of prescribers as a result of patient movement, and were markedly different from those generated by random graph models. The magnitude of deviation from random graphs decreased Post-HB1 relative to Pre-HB1. The proposed network approach provides system-level insights into prescribers with potential to complement classical reductionist approaches and aggregate statistical measures used in assessing changes in prescription patterns pre- and post- policy implementation. It can provide preliminary cues into drug seeking behavior, and facilitate targeted surveillance of prescriber communities.
Identification and external validation of a prognostic signature associated with DNA repair genes in gastric cancer
Authors: Chen Shimin , Liu Wenbo , Huang Yu 
Published: March 2021

AbstractThe aim of this study was to construct and validate a DNA repair-related gene signature for evaluating the overall survival (OS) of patients with gastric cancer (GC). Differentially expressed DNA repair genes between GC and normal gastric tissue samples obtained from the TCGA database were identified. Univariate Cox analysis was used to screen survival-related genes and multivariate Cox analysis was applied to construct a DNA repair-related gene signature. An integrated bioinformatics approach was performed to evaluate its diagnostic and prognostic value. The prognostic model and the expression levels of signature genes were validated using an independent external validation cohort. Two genes (CHAF1A, RMI1) were identified to establish the prognostic signature and patients ware stratified into high- and low-risk groups. Patients in high-risk group presented significant shorter survival time than patients in the low-risk group in both cohorts, which were verified by the ROC curves. Multivariate analysis showed that the prognostic signature was an independent predictor for patients with GC after adjustment for other known clinical parameters. A nomogram incorporating the signature and known clinical factors yielded better performance and net benefits in calibration plot and decision curve analyses. Further, the logistic regression classifier based on the two genes presented an excellent diagnostic power in differentiating early HCC and normal tissues with AUCs higher than 0.9. Moreover, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis revealed that diverse cancer-related pathways significantly clustered in the high-risk and low-risk groups. Immune cell infiltration analysis revealed that CHAF1A and RMI1 were correlated with several types of immune cell subtypes. A prognostic signature using CHAF1A and RMI1 was developed that effectively predicted different OS rates among patients with GC. This risk model provides new clinical evidence for the diagnostic accuracy and survival prediction of GC.