bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Early changes in the circulating T cells are associated with clinical outcomes after PD-L1 blockade by durvalumab in advanced NSCLC patients
Authors: Naidus Elliot , Bouquet Jerome , Oh David Y. , Looney Timothy J. , Yang Hai , Fong Lawrence , Standifer Nathan E. , Zhang Li 
Published: January 2021

AbstractImmune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are designed to activate exhausted tumor-reactive T cells thereby leading to tumor regression. Durvalumab, an ICI that binds to the programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) molecule, is approved as a consolidation therapy for treatment of patients with stage III, unresectable, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Immunophenotypic analysis of circulating immune cells revealed increases in circulating proliferating CD4 + and CD8 + T cells earlier after durvalumab treatment. To examine durvalumab’s mechanism of action and identify potential predictive biomarkers, we assessed the circulating T cells phenotypes and TCR genes of 71 NSCLC patients receiving durvalumab enrolled in a Phase I trial (NCT01693562, September 14, 2012). Next-generation sequencing of TCR repertoire was performed on these NSCLC patients’ peripheral blood samples at baseline and day 15. Though patients’ TCR repertoire diversity showed mixed responses to the treatment, patients exhibiting increased diversity on day 15 attained significantly longer overall survival (OS) (median OS was not reached vs 17.2 months for those with decreased diversity, p = 0.015). We applied network analysis to assess convergent T cell clonotypes indicative of an antigen-driven immune response. Patients with larger TCR clusters had improved OS (median OS was not reached vs 13.1 months for patients with smaller TCR clusters, p = 0.013). Early TCR repertoire diversification after durvalumab therapy for NSCLC may be predictive of increased survival and provides a mechanistic basis for durvalumab pharmacodynamic activity.
A CPW fed two and four element antenna with reduced mutual coupling between the antenna elements for wireless applications
Authors: Saadh A. W. Mohammad , Ramaswamy Poonkuzhali , Ali Tanweer 
Published: January 2021

AbstractMutual coupling between the multiple antenna designs is a critical problem which deteriorates the performance of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system. It affects the antenna efficiency and influences the correlation. In this paper, a study on the isolation between the multiple antenna elements is presented. The antennas are placed on a cost-effective compact dielectric substrate with different orientations to minimize the correlation. A CPW fed antenna is designed using FR4 substrate, using which two and four element antenna structures are developed. The performance parameters are analysed, wherein the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) has to be less than 0.5, diversity gain nearer to 10 dB in the operating bandwidth, mean effective gain (MEG) less than 3 dB, channel capacity loss (CCL) less than 0.4 bits/s/Hz and the isolation between the antenna elements well above 20 dB. Acceptable gain, high radiation efficiency, and stable radiation pattern of the proposed design are analysed and the fabricated prototype of two and four element is measured for its performance parameters. All the necessary simulations are carried out in the EM simulator Ansys HFSS v.14.0 and a detailed comparison study is done based on the existing antennas.
Higher than expected and significantly increasing incidence of upper tract urothelial carcinoma. A population based study
Authors: Almås Bjarte , Halvorsen Ole J. , Johannesen Tom Børge , Beisland Christian 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Purpose
To register all cases of urothelial cancer and renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in Norway during 1999–2018 to obtain the contemporary incidence of UTUC and UTUC incidence relative to other urothelial cancers and RCC. Further to analyse possible changes over time regarding UTUC incidence, UTUC patient characteristics, tumour characteristics and survival.

Methods
3502 cases registered with ICD code C65 and C66 during 1999–2018 at the Norwegian cancer registry were entered into a database. After a selection process 3096 cases were included in the study. The crude incidences of UTUC were calculated for each year adjusting for the corresponding population data. Age-standardized rates adjusting to the European standard population (2013) were calculated. Comparisons were made with other cases of urothelial cancer and RCC. For changes over time, the material was split into 5-year periods. Regression analysis was used to calculate yearly changes and for assessing statistical significance. Survival outcomes were calculated using the Kaplan–Meier method.

Results
The overall age-standardized incidence rate was 3.88, increasing from 3.21 to 4.70 from first to last 5-year periods. The increase affected all ages except those < 60 years of age, and were observed regardless of gender or anatomical location. UTUC constituted 11.8% of all urothelial cancers, increasing from 9.9 to 12.8%. Mean patient age at diagnosis increased from 71.5 to 73.4 years. The 5-years Cancer-specific survival improved from 57.4 to 65.4%.

Conclusion
The incidence of UTUC was higher than expected and increasing. Patient age at diagnosis was increasing.
Decadal change and inter-annual variability of net primary productivity on the Tibetan Plateau
Authors: Cuo Lan , Zhang Yongxin , Xu-Ri  , Zhou Bingrong 
Published: January 2021

AbstractNet primary productivity (NPP) is an important indicator of plant dynamics and the net carbon exchange between the terrestrial ecosystem and atmosphere. Both the long-term shifts in climate mean (climate change) and short-term variations around the climate mean (climate variability) have impacts on NPP but studies examining both aspects of climate variations are rare especially in the data-scarce regions such as the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Here, we used a dynamic vegetation model to investigate the impacts of the changes and variabilities in temperature, precipitation, cloud cover and CO2on NPP on the TP. The simulated NPP was evaluated using field and Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer NPP and was found to be reasonable. At monthly time scale, NPP significantly correlated concurrently and at 1-month lag with temperature, precipitation and cloud cover (coefficient of determination, R2, in 0.52–0.77). Annual NPP variability was high (low) where mean annual NPP was low (high). The effects of annual precipitation, cloud cover and temperature variability on annual NPP variability were spatially heterogeneous, and temperature variability appeared to be the dominant factor (R2of 0.74). Whereas, NPP changes were very similar to CO2increases across the TP (spatial correlation of 0.60), indicating that long-term changes in NPP were dominated by CO2increases. For both variability and long-term changes in NPP, temperature was the major factor of influence (highest spatial correlation of 0.67). These findings could assist in making informed mitigation policies on the impacts of climate change and variability on ecosystem and local nomadic communities.
Corridor quality affects net movement, size of dispersers, and population growth in experimental microcosms
Authors: Li Dongbo , Clements Christopher F. , Shan Isobel L. G. , Memmott Jane 
Published: January 2021

AbstractCorridors are expected to increase species dispersal in fragmented habitats. However, it remains unclear how the quality of corridors influences the dispersal process, and how it interacts with corridor length and width. Here we investigate these factors using a small-scale laboratory system where we track the dispersal of the model organism Collembola Folsomia candida. Using this system, we study the effects of corridor length, width, and quality on the probability of dispersal, net movement, body size of dispersers, and the rate of change in population size after colonization. We show that corridor quality positively affected dispersal probability, net movement, and the rate of change in population size in colonised patches. Moreover, corridor quality significantly affected the size of dispersers, with only larger individuals dispersing through poor quality corridors. The length and width of corridors affected both the rate at which populations increased in colonised patches and the net number of individuals which dispersed, suggesting that these physical properties may be important in maintaining the flow of individuals in space. Our results thus suggest that corridor quality can have an important role in determining not only the probability of dispersal occurs but also the phenotypes of the individuals which disperse, with concomitant effects on the net movement of individuals and the rate of change in population size in the colonised patches.
The power of informal cancer caregivers’ writings: results from a thematic and narrative analysis
Authors: Suter Nicoletta , Ardizzone Giulia , Giarelli Guido , Cadorin Lucia , Gruarin Nicolas , Cipolat Mis Chiara , Michilin Nancy , Merighi Alessandra , Truccolo Ivana 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Background
Cancer is a disease that disrupts not only the patient’s life, but that of the entire family as well, from a care, organizational, and emotional perspective. Patients share their experience of illness frequently with their informal caregiver (IC), a partner, son/daughter, friend, volunteer, or any other person in the family or social network who offers to support them during their clinical journey. The purpose of this study was to investigate ICs’ still unknown cancer experiences through the stories of IC participants in a Literary Artistic Competition the Centro di Riferimento Oncologico di Aviano (CRO) IRCSS organized, and understand the themes that emerged from their texts and hence, the power of expressive writing.

Materials and methods
A qualitative study was carried out on literary texts using Mishler’s three levels of narrative analysis: thematic (to detect themes and subthemes); structural (to support the thematic level), and performative (to understand the narratives’ meaning). In addition, the narratives were classified based on Kleinman and Frank’s models. A particular focus was placed on the language of the narratives to identify figures of speech, e.g., metaphors related to cancer.

Results
Seven main themes emerged from the 40 stories’ thematic analysis: perceptions of the disease; biographical breakdown; relationships; transformation of the sick body; IC’s role; encounter with death; and strength of memory. The ICs’ stories also highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the patient’s clinical pathway. ICs are a resource not only for the patient, who, thanks to them, is assured of continuous assistance but also for the healthcare organization, above all because they serve a relational role as a “bridge” between patients and healthcare workers. ICs have important messages to offer to healthcare organizations. If involved adequately, they can provide a strategic strength in supporting patients and healthcare workers themselves. The in-depth analysis of the themes and subthemes in this study led the authors to hypothesize that expressive writing benefit ICs with respect to the possibility of sharing their experiences with others and giving evidence of their role. Their stories are a testimony that can help those who face a similar experience.
Selection of optimal wavelet features for epileptic EEG signal classification with LSTM
Authors: Aliyu Ibrahim , Lim Chang Gyoon 
Published: January 2021

AbstractEpilepsy remains one of the most common chronic neurological disorders; hence, there is a need to further investigate various models for automatic detection of seizure activity. An effective detection model can be achieved by minimizing the complexity of the model in terms of trainable parameters while still maintaining high accuracy. One way to achieve this is to select the minimum possible number of features. In this paper, we propose a long short-term memory (LSTM) network for the classification of epileptic EEG signals. Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is employed to remove noise and extract 20 eigenvalue features. The optimal features were then identified using correlation and P value analysis. The proposed method significantly reduces the number of trainable LSTM parameters required to attain high accuracy. Finally, our model outperforms other proposed frameworks, including popular classifiers such as logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) and decision tree (DT).
Bacterial adhesion characteristics on implant materials for intervertebral cages: titanium or PEEK for spinal infections?
Authors: Krätzig Theresa , Mende Klaus Christian , Mohme Malte , von Kroge Simon , Stangenberg Martin , Dreimann Marc , Westphal Manfred , Weisselberg Samira , Eicker Sven Oliver 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Purpose
Surgical intervention with intercorporal stabilisation in spinal infections is increasingly needed. Our aim was to compare titanium and polyetheretherketon (PEEK) cages according to their adhesion characteristics of different bacteria species in vitro.

Methods
Plates made from PEEK, polished titanium (Ti), two-surface-titanium (TiMe) (n = 2–3) and original PEEK and porous trabecular structured titanium (TiLi) interbody cages (n = 4) were inoculated in different bacterial solutions, S.aureus (MSSA, MRSA), S.epidermidis and E.coli. Growth characteristics were analysed. Biofilms and bacteria were visualised using confocal- and electron microscopy.

Results
Quantitative adherence of MSSA, MRSA, S.epidermidis and E.coli to Ti, TiMe and PEEK plates were different, with polished titanium being mainly advantageous over PEEK and TiMe with significantly less counts of colony forming units (CFU) for MRSA after 56 h compared to TiMe and at 72 h compared to PEEK (p = 0.04 and p = 0.005). For MSSA, more adherent bacteria were detected on PEEK than on TiMe at 32 h (p = 0.02). For PEEK and TiLi cages, significant differences were found after 8 and 72 h for S.epidermidis (p = 0.02 and p = 0.008) and after 72 h for MSSA (p = 0.002) with higher bacterial counts on PEEK, whereas E.coli showed more CFU on TiLi than PEEK (p = 0.05). Electron microscopy demonstrated enhanced adhesion in transition areas.

Conclusion
For S.epidermidis, MSSA and MRSA PEEK cages showed a higher adherence in terms of CFU count, whereas for E.coli PEEK seemed to be advantageous. Electron microscopic visualisation shows that bacteria did not adhere at the titanium mesh structure, but at the border zones of polished material to rougher parts.
MRI pelvimetry-based evaluation of surgical difficulty in laparoscopic total mesorectal excision after neoadjuvant chemoradiation for male rectal cancer
Authors: Chen Jianhua , Sun Yanwu , Chi Pan , Sun Bin 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Purpose
Laparoscopic total mesorectal excision (LaTME) is technically demanding in rectal cancer after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT). This study aimed to predict the surgical difficulty of LaTME after NCRT based on pelvimetric parameters.

Methods
This study enrolled 147 patients who underwent LaTME after NCRT. The surgical difficulty was graded as high or low according to the operative time, estimated blood loss, conversion to open surgery, postoperative hospital stay, and postoperative complications. Pelvimetry parameters were collected based on preoperative MRI. A logistic regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of high surgical difficulty, and a nomogram was developed.

Results
Totally, 18 (12.2%) patients were graded as high surgical difficulty. High surgical difficulty was correlated with a shorter interspinous distance (P = 0.014), a small angle α and γ (P = 0.008, P = 0.008, respectively), and a larger mesorectal area and mesorectal fat area (P = 0.041, P = 0.046, respectively). Tumor distance from the anal verge (OR = 0.619, P = 0.024), tumor diameter (OR = 3.747, P = 0.004), interspinous distance (OR = 0.127, P = 0.007), and angle α (OR = 0.821, P = 0.039) were independent predictors of high surgical difficulty. A predictive nomogram was developed with a C-index of 0.867.

Conclusion
A shorter tumor distance from the anal verge, larger tumor diameter, shorter interspinous distance, and smaller angle α could help to predict high surgical difficulty of LaTME in male LARC patients after NCRT.
Can cryoprevention of oral mucositis be obtained at a higher temperature?
Authors: Mahdi A. , Stübner J. , Bergling M. , Jontell M. , Walladbegi J. 
Published: January 2021

Abstract
Objectives
Ice chips (IC) have successfully been used to prevent the development of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis (OM). Although effective, IC entails several shortcomings and may open avenues for systemic infections as the water used may be contaminated by microorganisms, which may jeopardise the medical rehabilitation of an already immunosuppressed patient. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy and tolerability profile of a novel intraoral cooling device (ICD).

Subjects and methods
In total, 20 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this randomised crossover study. Intraoral temperatures were registered using an IR camera, at baseline and following 30 and 60 min of cooling with the ICD, set to 8 °C or 15 °C. Following each cooling session, tolerability was assessed using a questionnaire.

Results
A statistically significant difference in the intraoral temperature was observed using 8 °C compared with 15 °C, following both 30 (1.87 °C, p < 0.001) and 60 min (2.48 °C, p < 0.001) of cooling. Thus, the difference of the intraoral temperatures was less than the 7 °C difference between 8 °C and 15 °C. Furthermore, 60 min of cooling with 15 °C compared with 8 °C was better tolerated and preferred by 15 out of 20 participants (p < 0.001).

Conclusion
Cooling was better tolerated when the ICD was set to 15 °C compared with 8 °C, although the difference in reduction of the intraoral mucosal temperature was marginal and may not affect cryoprevention of oral mucositis.

Clinical relevance
The ICD has the potential to improve the care for patients with cancer at high risk of developing OM.
Smooth twin bounded support vector machine with pinball loss
Authors: Li Kai , Lv Zhen 
Published: January 2021

AbstractThe twin support vector machine improves the classification performance of the support vector machine by solving two small quadratic programming problems. However, this method has the following defects: (1) For the twin support vector machine and some of its variants, the constructed models use a hinge loss function, which is sensitive to noise and unstable in resampling. (2) The models need to be converted from the original space to the dual space, and their time complexity is high. To further enhance the performance of the twin support vector machine, the pinball loss function is introduced into the twin bounded support vector machine, and the problem of the pinball loss function not being differentiable at zero is solved by constructing a smooth approximation function. Based on this, a smooth twin bounded support vector machine model with pinball loss is obtained. The model is solved iteratively in the original space using the Newton-Armijo method. A smooth twin bounded support vector machine algorithm with pinball loss is proposed, and theoretically the convergence of the iterative algorithm is proven. In the experiments, the proposed algorithm is validated on the UCI datasets and the artificial datasets. Furthermore, the performance of the presented algorithm is compared with those of other representative algorithms, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
To tell a story, you need a protagonist: how dynamic interactive mediators can fulfill this role and foster explorative participation to mathematical discourse
Authors: Baccaglini-Frank Anna 
Published: January 2021

AbstractThis paper focuses on students’ mathematical discourse emerging from interactions in the digital environment GeoGebra, in which one can construct virtual objects that realize mathematical signifiers and then interact with them. These virtual object realizations can becomedynamic interactive mediators(DIMs) that influence the development of the learners’ mathematical discourse. In this case study, I analyze in fine detail the discourse developed by two dyads of students in response to an unfamiliar interview question. One dyad came from a class in which GeoGebra was not part of classroom practice and included students who, according to the teacher’s evaluation, were standard-to-high achieving. The other dyad was from a generally demotivated and low-achieving class in which GeoGebra had become part of classroom practice. The analyses, focused especially on the low-achieving dyad, are guided by the question of how DIMs shaped these students’ discourse. According to the analysis, these students ended up succeeding where standard-to-high-achieving peers did not. Moreover, the detailed analysis of the ways in which the DIMs supported this dyad’s learning showed mechanisms that may be general rather than specific to this one case. This suggests that appropriate integration of DIMs into the teaching and learning of high school algebra can be beneficial for low-achieving students.
Translation from Three-Valued Quantum Logic to Modal Logic
Authors: Takagi Tsubasa 
Published: January 2021

AbstractWe translate the three-valued quantum logic into modal logic, and prove 3-equivalence between the valuation of the three-valued logic and a kind of Kripke model in regard to this translation. To prove 3-equivalence, we introduce an observable-dependent logic, which is a fragment of the many-valued quantum logic. Compared to the Birkhoff and von Neumann’s quantum logic, some notions about observables, the completeness relation for example, in quantum mechanics can be utilized if the observable-dependent logic is employed.
Improving Early Identification and Access to Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Toddlers in a Culturally Diverse Community with the Rapid Interactive screening Test for Autism in Toddlers
Authors: Choueiri Roula , Lindenbaum Asher , Ravi Manasa , Robsky William , Flahive Julie , Garrison William 
Published: January 2021

AbstractThe objective of this study was to test a screening model that employs the Rapid Interactive Screening Test for Autism in Toddlers (RITA-T), in an underserved community to improve ASD detection. We collaborated with a large Early Intervention (EI) program and trained 4 providers reliably on the RITA-T. Toddlers received the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (MCHAT-R/F), the RITA-T, developmental and autism testing, and a best-estimate clinical diagnosis. Eighty-One toddlers were enrolled: 57 with ASD and 24 with Developmental Delay (DD) non-ASD. Wait-time for diagnosis was on average 6 weeks. The RITA-T correlated highly with autism measures and EI staff integrated this model easily. The RITA-T significantly improved the identification and wait time for ASD in this underserved community.