bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Long-term mortality and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with atrial flutter after catheter ablation
Authors: Yugo Dony , Chen Yun Yu , Lin Yenn Jiang , Chien Kuo Liong , Chang Shih Lin , Lo Li Wei , Hu Yu Feng , Chao Tze Fan , Chung Fa Po , Liao Jo Nan , Chang Ting Yung , Lin Chin Yu , Tuan Ta Chuan , Kuo Ling , Wu Cheng I , Liu Chih Min , Liu Shin Huei , Li Cheng Hung , Hsieh Yu Cheng , Chen Shih Ann 
Published: December 2021

Abstract

Aims
For patients with typical and atypical atrial flutter (AFL) but without history of atrial fibrillation (AF), the long-term cardiovascular (CV) outcomes after catheter ablation for AFL remain unclear. We compared the long-term all-cause mortality and CV outcomes in patients with AFL receiving catheter ablation compared with the results with medical therapy.

Methods and results
Atrial flutter patients receiving catheter ablation for typical AFL were identified using the Health Insurance Database, and constituted the ‘AFL ablation group’. Patients with typical and atypical AFL but without ablation (AFL without ablation group) were propensity matched to the AFL ablation group. Patients with prior AF diagnosis were excluded. Primary outcomes included all-cause and CV mortality, heart failure (HF) hospitalization, and stroke. The multivariable cox hazards regression model was used to evaluate the hazard ratio (HR) for study outcomes. A total of 3784 AFL patients (1892 patients in each group) was studied. Their mean follow-up durations were 7.85 ± 2.57 years (AFL without ablation group) and 8.31 ± 4.53 years (AFL ablation group). Atrial flutter with ablation patients had lower risks of all-cause mortality (HR: 0.68, P &lt; 0.001), CV deaths (HR: 0.78, P = 0.001), HF hospitalization (HR: 0.84, P = 0.01), and stroke (HR: 0.80, P = 0.01).

Conclusions
Catheter ablation for AFL in patients without prior AF was associated with lower risks of all-cause mortality and CV events compared with AFL patients without ablation during long-term follow-ups.
La Cité de demain: French urbanism in war and reconstruction, 1914–1928
Authors: Purseigle Pierre 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Urbanists have long condemned the reconstruction of France after the Great War as a failure. Articulated in the 1920s, this distorted view has largely gone unchallenged and continues to frame the historiography. This article revisits dominant assessments of the post-1918 urban reconstruction and positions the mobilization of French urbanists in the wider transition from war to peace. Urban reconstruction underlined the uncertain nature of the aftermath of the conflict and proved both contested and uneven. While French urbanists imputed its failure to the local populations, this article argues that, if failure there was, it should be laid at their feet. Urbanists proved unable to apprehend the specificities of the post-war reconstruction and of the political economy in which they, as well as the devastated cities, had to operate. As those practitioners floundered, key tenets of urbanist thinking nonetheless prevailed.
Exploring public concerns for sharing and governance of personal health information: a focus group study
Authors: McCormick Jennifer B , Hopkins Margaret A 
Published: December 2021

Abstract

Objective
Researchers are increasingly collecting large amounts of deidentified data about individuals to address important health-related challenges and answer fundamental questions. Current US federal regulations permit researchers to use already collected and stored deidentified health-related data from a variety of sources without seeking consent from patients. The objective of this study was to investigate public views on the policies and processes institutions have in place for accessing, using, and sharing of data.

Materials and Methods
We conducted 5 focus groups with individuals living within a 20-mile radius of the local academic medical center. We also held a focus group with undergraduates at a local university.

Results
A total of 37 individuals participated, ages 18–76. Most participants were not surprised that researchers accessed and used deidentified personal information for research, and were supportive of this practice. Transparency was important. Participants wanted to know when their data were accessed, for what purpose, and by whom. Some wanted to have some control over the use of their data valuing the chance to opt-out. Finally, participants supported establishment of an advisory council or group with responsibility for deciding what data were used, who was accessing those data, and whether data could be shared.

Discussion and Conclusions
The trust people have in their local institutions should be considered fragile, and institutions should not take that trust for granted. How institutions choose to govern patients’ data and what voices are included in decisions about use and access are critical to maintaining the trust of the public.
Enhancing research informatics core user satisfaction through agile practices
Authors: Post Andrew R , Luther Jared , Loveless J Maxwell , Ward Melanie , Hewitt Shirleen 
Published: December 2021

Abstract

Objective
The Huntsman Cancer Institute Research Informatics Shared Resource (RISR), a software and database development core facility, sought to address a lack of published operational best practices for research informatics cores. It aimed to use those insights to enhance effectiveness after an increase in team size from 20 to 31 full-time equivalents coincided with a reduction in user satisfaction.

Materials and Methods
RISR migrated from a water-scrum-fall model of software development to agile software development practices, which emphasize iteration and collaboration. RISR’s agile implementation emphasizes the product owner role, which is responsible for user engagement and may be particularly valuable in software development that requires close engagement with users like in science.

Results
All RISR’s software development teams implemented agile practices in early 2020. All project teams are led by a product owner who serves as the voice of the user on the development team. Annual user survey scores for service quality and turnaround time recorded 9 months after implementation increased by 17% and 11%, respectively.

Discussion
RISR is illustrative of the increasing size of research informatics cores and the need to identify best practices for maintaining high effectiveness. Agile practices may address concerns about the fit of software engineering practices in science. The study had one time point after implementing agile practices and one site, limiting its generalizability.

Conclusions
Agile software development may substantially increase a research informatics core facility’s effectiveness and should be studied further as a potential best practice for how such cores are operated.
Budget-constrained coalition strategies with discounting
Authors: Bozzone Lia , Naumov Pavel 
Published: December 2021

AbstractDiscounting future costs and rewards is a common practice in accounting, game theory and machine learning. In spite of this, existing logics for reasoning about strategies with cost and resource constraints do not account for discounting. The article proposes a sound and complete logical system for reasoning about budget-constrained strategic abilities that incorporates discounting into its semantics.
Relentless and complex transits from a planetesimal debris disc
Authors: Farihi J , Hermes J J , Marsh T R , Mustill A J , Wyatt M C , Guidry J A , Wilson T G , Redfield S , Izquierdo P , Toloza O , Gänsicke B T , Aungwerojwit A , Kaewmanee C , Dhillon V S , Swan A 
Published: December 2021

ABSTRACT
This article reports quasi-continuous transiting events towards WD 1054–226 at d = 36.2 pc and V = 16.0 mag, based on simultaneous, high-cadence, multiwavelength imaging photometry using ULTRACAM over 18 nights from 2019 to 2020 March. The predominant period is 25.02 h and corresponds to a circular orbit with blackbody Teq = 323 K, where a planetary surface can nominally support liquid water. The light curves reveal remarkable night-to-night similarity, with changes on longer time-scales, and lack any transit-free segments of unocculted starlight. The most pronounced dimming components occur every 23.1 min – exactly the 65th harmonic of the fundamental period – with depths of up to several per cent, and no evident colour dependence. Myriad additional harmonics are present, as well as at least two transiting features with independent periods. High-resolution optical spectra are consistent with stable, photospheric absorption by multiple, refractory metal species, with no indication of circumstellar gas. Spitzer observations demonstrate a lack of detectable dust emission, suggesting that the otherwise hidden circumstellar disc orbiting WD 1054–226 may be typical of polluted white dwarfs, and detected only via favourable geometry. Future observations are required to constrain the orbital eccentricity, but even if periastron is near the Roche limit, sublimation cannot drive mass loss in refractory parent bodies, and collisional disintegration is necessary for dust production.
Use of mycophenolate mofetil for systemic sclerosis and systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease: Information from a Japanese hospital claims database
Authors: Funatogawa Takashi , Narita Yusuke , Tamura Aya , Mii Kazuma , Sugitani Yasuo , Uchida Tomoaki 
Published: December 2021

ABSTRACT

Objectives
Limited information is available on patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) or SSc-associated interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD) receiving mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) in Japan. The dose, treatment duration, and patient characteristics of SSc and SSc-ILD patients receiving MMF were investigated.

Methods
We used data from a Japanese hospital claims database (2008–2020).

Results
Data on 486 SSc patients ≥18 years old receiving MMF were captured; 314 had SSc complicated with ILD. The most common initial daily doses were 1000 mg (SSc, 39.5%; SSc-ILD, 38.1%) and 500 mg (SSc, 36.6%; SSc-ILD, 34.6%). The most common maximum daily doses were 1000 mg (SSc, 33.3%; SSc-ILD, 34.9%), 1500 mg (SSc, 24.4%; SSc-ILD, 23.1%), and 2000 mg (SSc, 23.8%; SSc-ILD, 24.4%). Doses ranged from 250 to 3000 mg/day and were similar for SSc and SSc-ILD patients. Over 27% of patients received treatment for &gt;1 year. There was a gradual decrease in steroid doses during MMF treatment.

Conclusions
Our study suggests that the off-label use of MMF for SSc and SSc-ILD has been increasing annually since 2015 in Japan. The doses used in patients with SSc and SSc-ILD were similar to the approved doses of MMF for lupus nephritis in Japan.
Alpha and theta oscillations are inversely related to progressive levels of meditation depth
Authors: Katyal Sucharit , Goldin Philippe 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Meditation training is proposed to enhance mental well-being by modulating neural activity, particularly alpha and theta brain oscillations, and autonomic activity. Although such enhancement also depends on the quality of meditation, little is known about how these neural and physiological changes relate to meditation quality. One model characterizes meditation quality as five increasing levels of ‘depth’: hindrances, relaxation, concentration, transpersonal qualities and nonduality. We investigated the neural oscillatory (theta, alpha, beta and gamma) and physiological (respiration rate, heart rate and heart rate variability) correlates of the self-reported meditation depth in long-term meditators (LTMs) and meditation-naïve controls (CTLs). To determine the neural and physiological correlates of meditation depth, we modelled the change in the slope of the relationship between self-reported experiential degree at each of the five depth levels and the multiple neural and physiological measures. CTLs reported experiencing more ‘hindrances’ than LTMs, while LTMs reported more ‘transpersonal qualities’ and ‘nonduality’ compared to CTLs, confirming the experiential manipulation of meditation depth. We found that in both groups, theta (4–6 Hz) and alpha (7–13 Hz) oscillations were related to meditation depth in a precisely opposite manner. The theta amplitude positively correlated with ‘hindrances’ and increasingly negatively correlated with increasing meditation depth levels. Alpha amplitude negatively correlated with ‘hindrances’ and increasingly positively with increasing depth levels. The increase in the inverse association between theta and meditation depth occurred over different scalp locations in the two groups—frontal midline in LTMs and frontal lateral in CTLs—possibly reflecting the downregulation of two different aspects of executive processing—monitoring and attention regulation, respectively—during deep meditation. These results suggest a functional dissociation of the two classical neural signatures of meditation training, namely, alpha and theta oscillations. Moreover, while essential for overcoming ‘hindrances’, executive neural processing appears to be downregulated during deeper meditation experiences.
Two decades of suspect evidence for adaptive molecular evolution—negative selection confounding positive-selection signals
Authors: Chen Qipian , Yang Hao , Feng Xiao , Chen Qingjian , Shi Suhua , Wu Chung-I , He Ziwen 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThere has been a large literature in the last two decades affirming adaptive DNA sequence evolution between species. The main lines of evidence are from (i) the McDonald-Kreitman (MK) test, which compares divergence and polymorphism data, and (ii) the phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood (PAML) test, which analyzes multispecies divergence data. Here, we apply these two tests concurrently to genomic data of Drosophila and Arabidopsis. To our surprise, the &gt;100 genes identified by the two tests do not overlap beyond random expectation. Because the non-concordance could be due to low powers leading to high false negatives, we merge every 20–30 genes into a ‘supergene’. At the supergene level, the power of detection is large but the calls still do not overlap. We rule out methodological reasons for the non-concordance. In particular, extensive simulations fail to find scenarios whereby positive selection can only be detected by either MK or PAML, but not both. Since molecular evolution is governed by positive and negative selection concurrently, a fundamental assumption for estimating one of these (say, positive selection) is that the other is constant. However, in a broad survey of primates, birds, Drosophila and Arabidopsis, we found that negative selection rarely stays constant for long in evolution. As a consequence, the variation in negative selection is often misconstrued as a signal of positive selection. In conclusion, MK, PAML and any method that examines genomic sequence evolution has to explicitly address the variation in negative selection before estimating positive selection. In a companion study, we propose a possible path forward in two stages—first, by mapping out the changes in negative selection and then using this map to estimate positive selection. For now, the large literature on positive selection between species has to await reassessment.
Non-bacterial thrombotic endocarditis in pancreatic cancer and other high-risk malignancies: the case for prophylactic treatment
Authors: Spurgeon Laura , Ispoglou Sissi 
Published: December 2021

ABSTRACT
Non-bacterial thrombotic endocarditis (NBTE) typically affects patients with underlying adenocarcinoma, often of pancreatic origin. If untreated, it can lead to serious morbidity and mortality, including recurrent ischaemic stroke. NBTE is frequently missed or confused with infective endocarditis, leading to inappropriate management. We present the case of a 54-year-old male with newly diagnosed pancreatic malignancy (CA19–9 &gt;120 000) who suffered recurrent deep-vein-thromboses and multiple ischaemic strokes despite full anticoagulation therapy. Transoesophageal echocardiography was correctly performed, but only after a second stroke was NBTE considered. We recommend early clinical suspicion and investigation for NBTE in patients with known or suspected malignancy presenting with neurological symptoms consistent with stroke. Initial calculations indicate this could also be cost-effective. Further, the patient’s significantly elevated tumour-markers and NBTE-severity raise the possibility of a link; if further research established a reliable relationship, routine surveillance of high-risk malignancies could identify patients who might benefit from earlier echocardiography and anticoagulation management.
A comprehensive review of the pyrolysis process: from carbon nanomaterial synthesis to waste treatment
Authors: Devi Mamta , Rawat Sachin , Sharma Swati 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThermally induced chemical decomposition of organic materials in the absence of oxygen is defined as pyrolysis. This process has four major application areas: (i) production of carbon materials, (ii) fabrication of pre-patterned micro and nano carbon-based structures, (iii) fragmentation of complex organic molecules for analytical purposes and (iv) waste treatment. While the underlying process principles remain the same in all cases, the target products differ owing to the phase and composition of the organic precursor, heat-treatment temperature, influence of catalysts and the presence of post-pyrolysis steps during heat-treatment. Due to its fundamental nature, pyrolysis is often studied in the context of one particular application rather than as an independent operation. In this review article, an effort is made to understand each aspect of pyrolysis in a comprehensive fashion, ensuring that all state-of-the-art applications are approached from the core process parameters that influence the ensuing product. Representative publications from recent years for each application are reviewed and analyzed. Some classical scientific findings that laid the foundation of the modern-day carbon material production methods are also revisited. In addition, classification of pyrolysis, its history and nomenclature and the plausible integration of different application areas are discussed.
Tax policy in the UK post-Brexit
Authors: Freedman Judith , Loutzenhiser Glen 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Tax matters figured prominently in the Brexit debate. Current signs are, however, that the UK government is not planning the creation of a post-Brexit ‘Singapore on Thames’ as some had predicted. In fact, we are seeing increases to the main corporation tax rate in response to broader international tax developments and the fiscal upheaval caused by the pandemic. Prior to Brexit, the UK already enjoyed considerable freedom in respect of direct taxes including income tax and corporation tax, but less so for VAT; it has more freedom to change the VAT now, if desired, and has already introduced some relatively small amendments to reflect the new state of play. At this point, the government has exercised its new-found freedoms on tax in quite limited ways—most notably in creating freeports which will benefit from special advantageous customs and tax rules, refocusing R&D tax relief towards activity conducted in the UK, making relatively minor changes to tonnage tax, alcohol duties, and air passenger duty, and removing some narrow EU-focused corporation tax measures. However, these new-found tax freedoms come with new-found restrictions, costs, and challenges for both taxpayers and the UK government. There are significant changes on the tax administration front, which generally complicates matters for HMRC as it will have to rely on less extensive and less convenient treaty and OECD avenues of cooperation. On VAT, teething issues as well as longer-term complications have arisen post-Brexit for businesses and consumers. Provisions remain to control the extent of fiscal state aid, albeit in a less restrictive way under the new subsidy control mechanism in the UK/EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement. The strong overall message is that financial and international pressures and constraints are more important to the direction of tax policy than the fact that the UK has left the EU.
Long-read sequencing reveals the evolutionary drivers of intra-host diversity across natural RNA mycovirus infections
Authors: Leigh Deborah M , Peranić Karla , Prospero Simone , Cornejo Carolina , Ćurković-Perica Mirna , Kupper Quirin , Nuskern Lucija , Rigling Daniel , Ježić Marin 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Intra-host dynamics are a core component of virus evolution but most intra-host data come from a narrow range of hosts or experimental infections. Gaining broader information on the intra-host diversity and dynamics of naturally occurring virus infections is essential to our understanding of evolution across the virosphere. Here we used PacBio long-read HiFi sequencing to characterize the intra-host populations of natural infections of the RNA mycovirus Cryphonectria hypovirus 1 (CHV1). CHV1 is a biocontrol agent for the chestnut blight fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica), which co-invaded Europe alongside the fungus. We characterized the mutational and haplotypic intra-host virus diversity of thirty-eight natural CHV1 infections spread across four locations in Croatia and Switzerland. Intra-host CHV1 diversity values were shaped by purifying selection and accumulation of mutations over time as well as epistatic interactions within the host genome at defense loci. Geographical landscape features impacted CHV1 inter-host relationships through restricting dispersal and causing founder effects. Interestingly, a small number of intra-host viral haplotypes showed high sequence similarity across large geographical distances unlikely to be linked by dispersal.