bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Hemodialysis Clinics in Flood Zones: A Case Study of Hurricane Harvey
Authors: Kaiser Rebecca , Karaye Ibraheem M. , Olokunlade Temitope , Hammond Tracy Anne , Goldberg Daniel W. , Horney Jennifer A. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIntroduction:Hurricane Harvey (2017) forced the closure of hemodialysis centers across Harris County, Texas (USA) disrupting the provision of dialysis services. This study aims to estimate the percentage of hemodialysis clinics flooded after Harvey, to identify the proportion of such clinics located in high-risk flood zones, and to assess the sensitivity of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) for estimation of flood risk.Methods:Data on 124 hemodialysis clinics in Harris County were extracted fromMedicare.govand geocoded using ArcGIS Online. The FIRMs were overlaid to identify the flood zone designation of each hemodialysis clinic.Results:Twenty-one percent (26 of 124) of hemodialysis clinics in Harris County flooded after Harvey. Of the flooded clinics, 57.7% were in a high-risk flood zone, 30.8% were within 1km of a high-risk flood zone, and 11.5% were not in or near a high-risk flood zone. The FIRMs had a sensitivity of 58%, misidentifying 42% (11 of 26) of the clinics flooded.Conclusion:Hurricanes are associated with severe disruptions of medical services, including hemodialysis. With one-quarter of Harris County in the 100-year floodplain, projected increases in the frequency and severity of disasters, and inadequate updates of flood zone designation maps, the implementation of new regulations that address the development of hemodialysis facilities in high-risk flood areas should be considered.
A machine translation mechanism of Brazilian Portuguese to Libras with syntactic-semantic adequacy
Authors: Lima Manuella Aschoff C. B. , de Araújo Tiago Maritan U. , Costa Rostand E. O. , Oliveira Erickson S. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDeaf people communicate naturally using visual-spatial languages, called sign languages (SL). Although SLs are recognized as a language in many countries, the problems faced by Deaf people for accessing information remain. As a result, they have difficulties exercising their citizenship and access information in SLs, which usually leads to linguistic and knowledge acquisition delays. Some scientific works have been developed to address these problems related to the machine translation of spoken languages to sign languages. However, the existing machine translation platforms have some limitations, especially in syntactic and lexical nature. Thus, this work aims to develop a mechanism for machine translation to Libras, the Brazilian Sign Language, with syntactic-semantic adequacy. It consists of an automatic translation component for Libras based on syntactic-semantic translation rules and a formal syntactic-semantic rule description language. As proof of concept of the proposed approach, we created a specific grammar for Libras translation exploring these aspects and integrating these elements into VLibras Suite, a service for machine translation of digital content in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) to Libras. We performed several tests using this modified version of VLibras to measure the level of comprehension of the output generated by the new translator mechanism. In the computational experiments, as well as in the actual tests with Deaf and hearing users, the proposed approach was able to improve the results of the current VLibras version.
Disentangling food insecurity and maternal depression: which comes first?
Authors: Reesor-Oyer Layton , Cepni Aliye B , Lee Che Young , Zhao Xue , Hernandez Daphne C 
Published: February 2021

AbstractObjective:To determine the temporal directionality of the association between food insecurity and maternal depression.Design:Food insecurity was measured at two time points using the eighteen-item USDA Food Security Scale. Maternal depression was measured at two time points using the fifteen-item Composite International Diagnostic Interview-Short Form. Two structural equation models were utilised to evaluate the impact of food insecurity on maternal depression (model 1) and the impact of maternal depression on food insecurity (model 2). Both models controlled for socio-demographic and parenting characteristics and child behaviour problems, along with prior measures of the dependent variable and concurrent measures of the independent variable.Setting:Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) study, twenty cities across the USA.Participants:4897 mothers who participated in two waves of the FFCW study.Results:On average, 17 % (time 1) and 15 % (time 2) of mothers experienced food insecurity and 21 % (time 1) and 17 % (time 2) of mothers experienced depression over time. Maternal depression at time 1 was associated with 53 % increased odds (OR = 1·53; B = 0·43;P< 0·001) of food insecurity at time 2, controlling for time 1 food insecurity, concurrent depression and covariates. Food insecurity at time 1 was associated with 36 % increased odds (OR = 1·36; B = 0·31;P< 0·001) of maternal depression at time 2, controlling for time 1 depression, concurrent food insecurity and covariates.Conclusions:We found a bidirectional relationship between food insecurity and maternal depression. A holistic approach that combines food assistance and mental health services may be an efficacious approach to reducing both depressive symptoms and food insecurity among low-income mothers.
Development and testing of the Sustainable Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for retail stores in Ontario
Authors: Mollaei Sadaf , Dias Goretty M , Minaker Leia M 
Published: February 2021

AbstractObjective:To develop and test a tool to assess the price and availability of low-carbon footprint and nutritionally balanced dietary patterns in retail food environments in Ontario, Canada.Design:Availability and price of selected food from discount and regular grocery stores (n 23) in urban/rural areas of northern/southern Ontario were assessed with the Sustainable Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in 2017.Setting:Ontario, Canada.Results:Inter-rater reliability was high for price (intra-class correlation coefficients = 0·819) and for availability (Cohen’s κ = 0·993). The tool showed 78 % of the selected food items were available in all stores. Overall, price differences were small between urban and rural locations, and northern and southern Ontario. The greatest price difference was between discount and regular stores.Conclusions:The tool showed excellent inter-rater agreement. Researchers and public health dietitians can use this tool for research, practice and policy to link consumer-level health outcomes to the retail environment.
Targets missed: three case studies exploiting the linked SHARE-RV data
Authors: Börsch-Supan Axel , Bucher-Koenen Tabea , Goll Nicolas , Hanemann Felizia 
Published: February 2021

AbstractTargeting is an important aim of social policy. Three case studies in this paper reflect typical short-comings in the targeting design of pension reforms. The first case study examines how well work disability and receipt of disability insurance match in Germany. We show that the 2001 reform has not systematically improved target quality. The second case study examines whether the 2014 introduction of a new pathway of early retirement without actuarial adjustments has reached individuals who are less healthy because they have worked a long time in an arduous job. We find that the target population is actually healthier than the comparison group. Third, a much discussed supplemental pension benefit for households in the risk of poverty will miss its target population in both relevant directions: Regarding the first, 23% of those pensioners who are not eligible are nevertheless poor in the sense of the new law. Regarding the other direction, 21% of the eligible pensioners belong to the wealthier half of German pensioners. Since similar reforms are currently debated in many European countries, the three German case studies may serve as examples of how to better target public pension policies.
THEBODY, THESTRANGER, ANDCORDON MINORITAIRE
Authors: Asey Farid 
Published: February 2021

AbstractCanada is touted as a diverse, tolerant, and multicultural country where the prevailing understanding is that racial injustices emanating from structural oppression are not widespread. Analysing lived experiences of racialized participants who worked in publicly funded places of employment in British Columbia (BC), this qualitative study offers a phenomenological exploration of a particular manifestation of racial discrimination: that of quarantine-like containment of mobility at work. Examining undue restrictions and mobility limitations imposed on participants, this article will use three metaphors—strangerfor racialized individuals,bodyfor workplaces, andcordon minoritaireas the process of containing the mobility of strangers within the body—to present and discuss findings on: 1) excessive targeted scrutiny; 2) wrongful seating arrangements; 3) cold and transactional interactions; and, 4) bad faith references. In this regard,cordon minoritaireis presented as a novel analytical framework to illustrate the ways in which racialized workers were cordoned off, with their professional freedoms and career mobilities restricted, in order to quarantine White ecosystems of employment. Consequently,cordon minoritairemachinations created perniciously unequal conditions that fundamentally and unjustly constrained participants into working under discriminatory conditions—depravities that are at odds with whimsical notions of Canada as tolerant, multicultural, and morally superior to its neighbour south of the border.
“RECONSTRUCTION HAS STOPPED THE NONSENSE”
Authors: Price-Spratlen Townsand , Guzman Joseph , Patton Charles , Goldsby William 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIncreasing research attention is being given to former felons, or returning citizens, after their release from prison. This paper contributes to that dialogue by exploring the documentary-making process of a grassroots organization founded by and for returning citizens and their families, and the contributions it made when it was completed in 1996, and continues to make today. Little is known about how community organizations can use the making of an organizational documentary to build the capacities of the organization, its affiliates, a neighborhood, and social change. By exploring the collaborations and challenges that took place during the local reintegration process back into family and community, the start and completion of the documentary in the mid-1990s was quite innovative. This article analyzes reciprocal tensions of service (Simmel 1908) reflected in the documentary when it was completed in 1996, and its continuing relevance to the growth of returning citizenship today.
Why we need to face up to the ageing population?
Authors: Dixon Anna 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDr Anna Dixon, Chief Executive at the Centre for Ageing Better, examines the issues around an ageing population, how we have reached this stage and offers potential solutions to the problems it presents. Her book, The Age of Ageing Better? turns the misleading and depressing narrative of burden and massive extra cost of people living longer on its head and shows how our society could thrive if we started thinking differently. She presents a refreshingly optimistic vision for the future that could change the way we value later life in every sense.
Physician behaviour, malpractice risk and defensive medicine: an investigation of cesarean deliveries
Authors: Mushinski David , Zahran Sammy , Frazier Aanston 
Published: February 2021

AbstractAnalyzing whether physicians use cesarean sections (c-sections) as defensive medicine (DM) has proven difficult. Using natural experiments arising out of Oregon court decisions overturning a state legislative cap on non-economic damages in tort cases, we analyze the impact of patient conditions on estimates of DM. Consistent with theory, we find heterogeneous impacts of tort laws across patient conditions. When medical exigencies dictate a c-section, tort laws have no impact on physician decisions. When physicians have latitude in their decision making, we find evidence of DM. When we estimate a model combining all women and not accounting for patient conditions (such as models estimated in previous studies) we obtain a result which is the opposite of DM, which we call offensive medicine (OM). The OM result appears to arise out of a bias in the difference-in-differences estimator associated with changes in the marginal distributions of patient conditions in control and treatment groups. The changes in the marginal distributions appear to arise from the impact of tort law on the market for midwives (substitutes for physicians for low-risk women). Our analysis suggests that not accounting for theoretically expected heterogeneity in physician reactions to changes in tort laws may produce biased estimates of DM.
Modulation of αVβ6 integrin in osteoarthritis-related synovitis and the interaction with VTN(381–397 a.a.) competing for TGF-β1 activation
Authors: Ciregia Federica , Deroyer Céline , Cobraiville Gaël , Plener Zelda , Malaise Olivier , Gillet Philippe , Fillet Marianne , Malaise Michel G. , de Seny Dominique 
Published: February 2021

AbstractOsteoarthritis is characterized by structural alteration of joints. Fibrosis of the synovial tissue is often detected and considered one of the main causes of joint stiffness and pain. In our earlier proteomic study, increased levels of vitronectin (VTN) fragment (amino acids 381–397) were observed in the serum of osteoarthritis patients. In this work, the affinity of this fragment for integrins and its putative role in TGF-β1 activation were investigated. A competition study determined the interaction of VTN(381–397 a.a.) with αVβ6 integrin. Subsequently, the presence of αVβ6 integrin was substantiated on primary human fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs) by western blot and flow cytometry. By immunohistochemistry, β6 was detected in synovial membranes, and its expression showed a correlation with tissue fibrosis. Moreover, β6 expression was increased under TGF-β1 stimulation; hence, a TGF-β bioassay was applied. We observed that αVβ6 could mediate TGF-β1 bioavailability and that VTN(381–397 a.a.) could prevent TGF-β1 activation by interacting with αVβ6 in human FLSs and increased α-SMA. Finally, we analyzed serum samples from healthy controls and patients with osteoarthritis and other rheumatic diseases by nano-LC/Chip MS–MS, confirming the increased expression of VTN(381–397 a.a.) in osteoarthritis as well as in lupus erythematosus and systemic sclerosis. These findings corroborate our previous observations concerning the overexpression of VTN(381–397 a.a.) in osteoarthritis but also in other rheumatic diseases. This fragment interacts with αVβ6 integrin, a receptor whose expression is increased in FLSs from the osteoarthritic synovial membrane and that can mediate the activation of the TGF-β1 precursor in human FLSs.
Extending the resolution limits of nanoshape imprint lithography using molecular dynamics of polymer crosslinking
Authors: Cherala Anshuman , Pandya Parth N. , Liechti Kenneth M. , Sreenivasan S. V. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractEmerging nanoscale applications in energy, electronics, optics, and medicine can exhibit enhanced performance by incorporating nanoshaped structures (nanoshape structures here are defined as shapes enabled by sharp corners with radius of curvature < 5 nm). Nanoshaped fabrication at high-throughput is well beyond the capabilities of advanced optical lithography. Although the highest-resolution e-beams and large-area e-beams have a resolution limit of 5 and 18 nm half-pitch lines or 20 nm half-pitch holes, respectively, their low throughput necessitates finding other fabrication techniques. By using nanoimprint lithography followed by metal-assisted chemical etching, diamond-like nanoshapes with ~3 nm radius corners and 100 nm half-pitch over large areas have been previously demonstrated to improve the nanowire capacitor performance (by ~90%). In future dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) nodes (with DRAM being an exemplar CMOS application), the implementation of nanowire capacitors scaled to <15 nm half-pitch is required. To scale nanoshape imprint lithography down to these half-pitch values, the previously established atomistic simulation framework indicates that the current imprint resist materials are unable to retain the nanoshape structures needed for DRAM capacitors. In this study, the previous simulation framework is extended to study improved shape retention by varying the resist formulations and by introducing novel bridge structures in nanoshape imprinting. This simulation study has demonstrated viable approaches to sub-10 nm nanoshaped imprinting with good shape retention, which are matched by experimental data.
Desialylation of Atg5 by sialidase (Neu2) enhances autophagosome formation to induce anchorage-dependent cell death in ovarian cancer cells
Authors: Satyavarapu Eswara Murali , Nath Shalini , Mandal Chitra 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIncreased sialylation is one of the hallmarks of ovarian cancer (OC) but its relation with programmed cell death is not known. Here we explored the molecular interplay between autophagy, apoptosis/anoikis, and aberrant-expression of the PI3K-Akt/mTOR pathway in the context of sialidase. OC is accompanied by low expression of cytosolic sialidase (Neu2) and ~10-fold more α2,6- than α2,3-linked sialic acids found through qPCR, western blot, and flow cytometry. Interestingly, Neu2 overexpression cleaved α2,6- and α2,3-linked sialic acids and reduced cell viability. Several autophagy-related molecules like LC3B/Atg3/Atg5/Atg7/Atg12/Atg16L1/Beclin1 were upregulated upon Neu2 overexpression. Atg5, a crucial protein for autophagosome formation, was desialylated by overexpressed Neu2. Desialylated Atg5 now showed enhanced association both with Atg12 and Atg16L1 leading to more autophagosome formation. Neu2-overexpressing cells exhibited extrinsic pathway-mediated apoptosis as reflected the in activation of Fas/FasL/FADD/Bid/caspase 8/caspase 6/caspase 3/PARP cleavage. There was also increased Bax, reduced Bcl2, and several cell-cycle molecules (CDK2/CDK4/CDK6/cyclin-B1/cyclin-E). Inhibition of autophagy using bafilomycin A1 or Beclin1 siRNA leads to reversal of Neu2-induced apoptosis suggesting their possible relationship. Additionally, overexpressed Neu2 inhibited growth factor-mediated signaling molecules involved in the PI3K/Akt-mTOR pathway probably through their desialylation. Furthermore, overexpressed Neu2 inhibited epithelial (ZO-1/Claudin1), mesenchymal (snail/slug), and cell-adhesion (integrin-β3/focal-adhesion kinase) molecules suggesting anchorage-dependent cell death (anoikis). Such changes were absent in the presence of bafilomycin A1 indicating the involvement of autophagy in Neu2-induced anoikis. The physiological relevance of our in vitro observations was further confirmed in the OC xenograft model. Taken together, it is the first report demonstrating that Atg5 is a sialoglycoprotein having α2,6- and α2,3-linked sialic acids and its desialylation by overexpressed Neu2 leads to its activation for autophagosome formation, which induced apoptosis/anoikis in OC.
Preparation and properties of silicone rubber materials with foam/solid alternating multilayered structures
Authors: Zhang Wenhuan , Deng Zhaoping , Yuan Hongwei , Luo Shikai , Wen Huayin , Liu Tao 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn this paper, silicone rubber materials with foam/solid alternating multilayered structures were successfully constructed by combining the two methods of multilayered hot-pressing and supercritical carbon dioxide (SCCO2) foaming. The cellular morphology and mechanical properties of the foam/solid alternating multilayered silicone rubber materials were systematically studied. The results show that the growth of the cell was restrained by the solid layer, resulting in a decrease in the cell size. In addition, the introduction of the solid layer effectively improved the mechanical properties of the microcellular silicone rubber foam. The tensile strength and compressive strength of the foam/solid alternating multilayered silicone rubber materials reached 5.39 and 1.08 MPa, which are 46.1% and 237.5% of the pure silicone rubber foam, respectively. Finite element analysis (FEA) was applied and the results indicate that the strength and proportion of the solid layer played important roles in the tensile strength of the foam/solid alternating multilayered silicone rubber materials. Moreover, the small cellular structures in silicone rubber foam can provided a high supporting counterforce during compression, meaning that the microcellular structure of silicone rubber foam improved the compressive property compared to that for the large cellular structure of silicone rubber foam.
The H+-pyrophosphatase IbVP1 regulates carbon flux to influence the starch metabolism and yield of sweet potato
Authors: Fan Weijuan , Zhang Yandi , Wu Yinliang , Zhou Wenzhi , Yang Jun , Yuan Ling , Zhang Peng , Wang Hongxia 
Published: February 2021

AbstractStorage roots of sweet potato are important sink organs for photoassimilates and energy, and carbohydrate metabolism in storage roots affects yield and starch production. Our previous study showed that sweet potato H+-pyrophosphatase (IbVP1) plays a vital role in mitigating iron deficiency and positively controls fibrous root growth. However, its roles in regulating starch production in storage roots have not been investigated. In this study, we found that IbVP1 overexpression in sweet potato improved the photosynthesis ability of and sucrose content in source leaves and increased both the starch content in and total yield of sink tissues. Using 13C-labeled sucrose feeding, we determined that IbVP1 overexpression promotes phloem loading and sucrose long-distance transport and enhances Pi-use efficiency. In sweet potato plants overexpressing IbVP1, the expression levels of starch biosynthesis pathway genes, especially AGPase and GBSSI, were upregulated, leading to changes in the structure, composition, and physicochemical properties of stored starch. Our study shows that the IbVP1 gene plays an important role in regulating starch metabolism in sweet potato. Application of the VP1 gene in genetic engineering of sweet potato cultivars may allow the improvement of starch production and yield under stress or nutrient-limited conditions.