bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The veterinary anti-parasitic selamectin is a novel inhibitor of the mycobacterial DprE1 enzyme
Authors: Ezquerra-Aznárez José Manuel , Degiacomi Giulia , Gašparovič Henrich , Stelitano Giovanni , Sammartino José Camilla , Korduláková Jana , Governa Paolo , Manetti Fabrizio , Pasca Maria Rosalia , Chiarelli Laurent Roberto , Ramón-García Santiago 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAvermectins are macrocyclic lactones with anthelmintic activity. Recently, they were found to be effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which accounts for one third of the worldwide deaths from antimicrobial resistance. However, their anti-mycobacterial mode of action remains to be elucidated. The activity of selamectin was determined against a panel of M. tuberculosis mutants. Two strains carrying mutations in DprE1, the decaprenylphosphoryl-β-D-ribose oxidase involved in the synthesis of mycobacterial arabinogalactan, were more susceptible to selamectin. Biochemical assays against the Mycobacterium smegmatis DprE1 protein confirmed this finding, and docking studies predicted a binding site in a loop that included Leu275. Sequence alignment revealed variants in this position among mycobacterial species, with the size and hydrophobicity of the residue correlating with their MIC values; M. smegmatis DprE1 variants carrying these point mutations validated the docking predictions. However, the correlation was not confirmed when M. smegmatis mutant strains were constructed and MIC phenotypic assays performed. Likewise, metabolic labeling of selamectin-treated M. smegmatis and M. tuberculosis cells with 14C-labeled acetate did not reveal the expected lipid profile associated with DprE1 inhibition. Together, our results confirm the in vitro interactions of selamectin and DprE1 but suggest that selamectin could be a multi-target anti-mycobacterial compound.
Does extracellular DNA mask microbial responses to a pulse disturbance?
Authors: Kittredge HA , Dougherty KM , Glanville K , Evans SE 
Published: December 2021

AbstractA major goal in microbial ecology is to predict how microbial communities will respond to global change. However, DNA-based sequencing that is intended to characterize live microbial communities includes extracellular DNA (exDNA) from non-viable cells. This could obscure relevant microbial responses, particularly to pulse disturbances which kill bacteria and have disproportionate effects on ecosystems. Here, we characterize bacterial communities before and after a drying-rewetting pulse disturbance, using an improved method for exDNA exclusion. We find that exDNA removal is important for detecting subtle yet significant changes in microbial abundance, diversity, and community composition across the disturbance. However, inclusion of exDNA did not obscure results to a large extent, only sometimes altering statistical significance but rarely changing the direction of the response or general conclusions about bacterial disturbance dynamics. Although there may be instances where exDNA removal is essential for accurate representation of microbial communities, our study suggests these scenarios will be difficult to predict a priori. Overall, we found no evidence that certain time points across the distrubance were more affected by exDNA inclusion, nor did the size or composition of exDNA pools accurately predict when exDNA would alter significance levels. However, exDNA dynamics did vary strongly across the two soil types tested.
Unsupervised clustering of track-weighted dynamic functional connectivity reveals white matter substrates of functional connectivity dynamics
Authors: Basile Gianpaolo Antonio , Bertino Salvatore , Nozais Victor , Bramanti Alessia , Ciurleo Rosella , Anastasi Giuseppe Pio , Milardi Demetrio , Cacciola Alberto 
Published: December 2021

AbstractThe contribution of structural connectivity to functional connectivity dynamics is still far from being fully elucidated. Herein, we applied track-weighted dynamic functional connectivity (tw-dFC), a model integrating structural, functional, and dynamic connectivity, on high quality diffusion weighted imaging and resting-state fMRI data from two independent repositories. The tw-dFC maps were analyzed using independent component analysis, aiming at identifying spatially independent white matter components which support dynamic changes in functional connectivity. Each component consisted of a spatial map of white matter bundles that show consistent fluctuations in functional connectivity at their endpoints, and a time course representative of such functional activity. These components show high intra-subject, inter-subject, and inter-cohort reproducibility. We provided also converging evidence that functional information about white matter activity derived by this method can capture biologically meaningful features of brain connectivity organization, as well as predict higher-order cognitive performance.
Mental sequelae of the Covid-19 pandemic: Well-being one year into the crisis in children with and without complex medical histories and their parents
Authors: Ehrler Melanie , Hagmann Cornelia F. , Kretschmar Oliver , Landolt Markus A. , Latal Beatrice , Wehrle Flavia M. 
Published: December 2021

AbstractObjectivesTo understand the long-term mental sequelae for families over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the well-being of children with and without complex medical histories and their parents was investigated longitudinally.MethodsWell-being of 200 school-aged children (73 typically-developing, 46 born very preterm, 73 with complex congenital heart disease) and 175 of their parents was assessed prior to and during the first (April–May 2020), second (October–November 2020), and third waves (April–May 2021) of the pandemic with standardized questionnaires. Social and COVID-19-specific determinants were investigated as predictors of impaired well-being.ResultsChild proxy-reported well-being was lower than before the pandemic during the first (P<0.001) and third waves (P=0.01) but not the second (P=0.13). Child self-reported well-being was not lower during the pandemic (all P>0.10). Parent well-being dropped during the first wave (P<0.001) and remained low during the first year (P<0.01). One year into the pandemic, 18/25% of children (self-/proxy-report) and 27% of parents scored below the normal range compared to 11%/10%, and 16%, respectively, before the pandemic. Parents of typically-developing children reported lower well-being than parents of children born very preterm (P=0.006) or with a complex congenital heart disease (P=0.03). Child and parent well-being was lower in families with sparse social support (P<0.001) and poor family functioning (P<0.01).ConclusionThe pandemic continues to impact family well-being one year after its outbreak. Families with sparse social support and poor family functioning are particularly at risk for compromised well-being and support should be provided to them.
Comparison of different sequencing techniques with multiplex real-time PCR for detection to identify SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern
Authors: Ranasinghe Diyanath , Pramanayagam Jayadas Tibutius Thanesh , Jayathilaka Deshni , Jeewandara Chandima , Dissanayake Osanda , Guruge Dinuka , Ariyaratne Dinuka , Gunasinghe Dumni , Gomes Laksiri , Wijesinghe Ayesha , Wijayamuni Ruwan , Malavige Gathsaurie Neelika 
Published: December 2021

AbstractAs different SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge and with the continuous evolution of sub-lineages of the delta and other variants, it is crucial that all countries carry out sequencing of at least >1% of their infections, in order to detect emergence of variants with higher transmissibility and with ability to evade immunity. However, as many resource-poor countries are unable to sequence adequate number of viruses, we compared to usefulness of a commercially available multiplex real-time PCR assay to detect important single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with the variants and compared the sensitivity, accuracy and cost effectiveness of the Illumina sequencing platform and the Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ (ONT) platform. 138/143 (96.5%) identified as the alpha and 36/39 (92.3%) samples identified as the delta variants due to the presence of lineage defining SNPs by the multiplex real time PCR, were assigned to the same lineage by either of the two sequencing platforms. 34/37 of the samples sequenced by ONT had <5% ambiguous bases, while 21/37 samples sequenced using the Illumina generated <15% ambiguous bases. However, the mean PHRED scores averaged at 32.35 by Illumina reads but 10.78 in ONT. Sub-consensus single nucleotide variations (SNV) were highly correlated between both platforms (R2=0.79) while indels showed a weaker correlation (R2=0.13).Although the ONT had a slightly higher error rate compared to the Illumina technology, it achieved higher coverage with a lower number of reads, generated less ambiguous bases and was significantly cheaper than Illumina sequencing technology.
Effect of environmental factors on electrochemical corrosion of galvanized steel wires for bridge cables
Authors: Li Rou , Miao Changqing , Wei Tinghua 
Published: December 2021

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the electrochemical corrosion rate of galvanized steel wires for bridge cables.

Design/methodology/approach
The electrochemical corrosion test and response surface analysis of galvanized steel wires were carried out, and the variety of polarization curves of galvanized steel wires under different corrosion parameters was discussed. The expression of corrosion rate of galvanized steel wires under the action of single and multi-factor coupling was established.

Findings
The polarization curves of galvanized steel wires under different Cl- concentrations, pH value and temperature were basically similar, but all show different degrees of deviation and some anodic polarization curves had inflection points. For example, when the Cl- concentration reached 3.5%, the corrosion rate of galvanized steel wire was four times that of pure water.

Originality/value
The influence relationship of single and multi-factor coupling on the corrosion rate of galvanized steel wires was as follows: RCl > RT * Cl > RT > RpH > RpH * T > RpH * Cl.
A new approach for task managing in the fog-based medical cyber-physical systems using a hybrid algorithm
Authors: Yu Jiuhong , Wang Mengfei , J.H. Yu , Arefzadeh Seyedeh Maryam 
Published: December 2021

PurposeThis paper aims to offer a hybrid genetic algorithm and the ant colony optimization (GA-ACO) algorithm for task mapping and resource management. The paper aims to reduce the makespan and total response time in fog computing- medical cyber-physical system (FC-MCPS).Design/methodology/approachSwift progress in today’s medical technologies has resulted in a new kind of health-care tool and therapy techniques like the MCPS. The MCPS is a smart and reliable mechanism of entrenched clinical equipment applied to check and manage the patients’ physiological condition. However, the extensive-delay connections among cloud data centers and medical devices are so problematic. FC has been introduced to handle these problems. It includes a group of near-user edge tools named fog points that are collaborating until executing the processing tasks, such as running applications, reducing the utilization of a momentous bulk of data and distributing the messages. Task mapping is a challenging problem for managing fog-based MCPS. As mapping is an non-deterministic pol ynomial-time-hard optimization issue, this paper has proposed a procedure depending on the hybrid GA-ACO to solve this problem in FC-MCPS. ACO and GA, that is applied in their standard formulation and combined as hybrid meta-heuristics to solve the problem. As such ACO-GA is a hybrid meta-heuristic using ACO as the main approach and GA as the local search. GA-ACO is a memetic algorithm using GA as the main approach and ACO as local search.FindingsMATLAB is used to simulate the proposed method and compare it to the ACO and MACO algorithms. The experimental results have validated the improvement in makespan, which makes the method a suitable one for use in medical and real-time systems.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed method can achieve task mapping in FC-MCPS by attaining high efficiency, which is very significant in practice.Practical implicationsThe proposed approach can achieve the goal of task scheduling in FC-MCPS by attaining the highest total computational efficiency, which is very significant in practice.Originality/valueThis research proposes a GA-ACO algorithm to solve the task mapping in FC-MCPS. It is the most significant originality of the paper.
Dynamic linkages among international crude oil, exchange rate and Norwegian stock market: evidence from ARDL bound testing approach
Authors: Singhal Shelly , Choudhary Sangita , Biswal Pratap Chandra 
Published: December 2021

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the long-run association and short-run causality among oil price, exchange rate and stock market in Norwegian context.Design/methodology/approachThis work uses auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound co-integration test to examine the long-run association among international crude oil, exchange rate and Norwegian stock market. Further to test the causality, Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test is used. Daily data ranging from 1 January, 2011 to 31 December, 2018 is used in this study.FindingsFindings of this study suggest the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship among oil price, exchange rate and Norwegian stock market when oil price is taken as dependent variable. Further, this study observes the bi-directional causality between Norwegian stock market and exchange rate and unidirectional causality between oil and Norwegian stock market (from oil to stock market).Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this the first study in context of Norway to explore the long-run association and causal relationships among international crude oil price, exchange rate and stock market index. Particularly, association of exchange rate and stock market largely remains unexplored for Norwegian economy. Further, majority of studies conducted in Norwegian setup have considered the period up to year 2010 and association of these variables is found to be time varying. Finally, this study uses ARDL bound co-integration test and Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test. These methodologies have been used in literature in context of other countries like India and Mexico but not yet applied to study the Norwegian case.
A pervasive health care device computing application for brain tumors with machine and deep learning techniques
Authors: D. Sreelakshmi , Inthiyaz Syed 
Published: December 2021

Purpose
Pervasive health-care computing applications in medical field provide better diagnosis of various organs such as brain, spinal card, heart, lungs and so on. The purpose of this study is to find brain tumor diagnosis using Machine learning (ML) and Deep Learning(DL) techniques. The brain diagnosis process is an important task to medical research which is the most prominent step for providing the treatment to patient. Therefore, it is important to have high accuracy of diagnosis rate so that patients easily get treatment from medical consult. There are many earlier investigations on this research work to diagnose brain diseases. Moreover, it is necessary to improve the performance measures using deep and ML approaches.

Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, various brain disorders diagnosis applications are differentiated through following implemented techniques. These techniques are computed through segment and classify the brain magnetic resonance imaging or computerized tomography images clearly. The adaptive median, convolution neural network, gradient boosting machine learning (GBML) and improved support vector machine health-care applications are the advance methods used to extract the hidden features and providing the medical information for diagnosis. The proposed design is implemented on Python 3.7.8 software for simulation analysis.

Findings
This research is getting more help for investigators, diagnosis centers and doctors. In each and every model, performance measures are to be taken for estimating the application performance. The measures such as accuracy, sensitivity, recall, F1 score, peak-to-signal noise ratio and correlation coefficient have been estimated using proposed methodology. moreover these metrics are providing high improvement compared to earlier models.

Originality/value
The implemented deep and ML designs get outperformance the methodologies and proving good application successive score.
A web interface for WMN-PSODGA hybrid intelligent simulation system: performance evaluation for different mesh client distributions
Authors: Barolli Admir , Sakamoto Shinji 
Published: December 2021

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to implement a web interface for a hybrid intelligent system. By using the implemented web interface, one can find optimal assignments of mesh routers in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). This study evaluates the implemented system considering three distributions of mesh clients to solve the node placement problem in WMNs.

Design/methodology/approach
The node placement problem in WMNs is well known to be a computationally hard problem. Therefore, intelligent algorithms are used for solving this problem. The implemented system is a hybrid intelligent system based on meta-heuristics algorithms: particle swarm optimization (PSO) and distributed genetic algorithm (DGA). The proposed system is called WMN-PSODGA.

Findings
This study carried out simulations using the implemented simulation system. From the simulations results, it was found that the WMN-PSODGA system performs better for chi-square distribution of mesh clients compared with Weibull and exponential distributions.

Research limitations/implications
For simulations, three different distributions of mesh clients were considered. In the future, other mesh client distributions, number of mesh nodes and communication distance need to be considered.

Originality/value
This research work, different from other research works, implemented a hybrid intelligent simulation system for WMNs. This study also implemented a web interface for the proposed system, which make the simulation system user-friendly.
Footprints in the cloud: the hidden cost of IT infrastructure
Authors: Hirsch Peter Buell 
Published: December 2021

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the hidden carbon footprint of corporate big data infrastructures and provide guidance for communicators responsible for corporate ESG and reputation.

Design/methodology/approach
It is based on a subjective view of the literature on this topic, selecting relevant examples.

Findings
The authors found that consciousness within corporations of the carbon footprint of their own information technology infrastructures is low and only a few companies have a strategy for identifying it.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first treatment of this subject from the perspective of the corporate owner of ESG and reputation.
Research on the impact of online picture contents of agricultural products on consumers' willingness to click
Authors: Tian Wenhui , Li Yanjun , Li Linzhu 
Published: December 2021

PurposeThe paper aims to clarify the influence of different picture contents on consumer's willingness to click pictures when shopping for agricultural products online and examine the intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions of the impact.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for an empirical study based on the cue utilization theory and information processing theory, including three experiments to test the existence, intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions of the impact of online picture contents of agricultural products on consumers' clicking intention.FindingsThe paper provides empirical insights about the influence of picture contents on consumer's willingness to click when shopping for agricultural products online. The picture of product's production environment or grower on the search result page can effectively improve consumer's willingness to click the product under dual systemic information processing modes. Compared with product pictures, pictures displaying products and production environment can stimulate more cognitive system processing, and pictures displaying products and its growers can stimulate more emotional system processing, both resulting in higher click intention. However, the above effects only exist in the context of non-branded agricultural products.Originality/valueThe research results not only provide practical guidance for merchants, but also fill the gap in the research on the impact of picture contents on consumers in the field of agricultural products in online marketing.
Investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) cases and India: affronting regulatory autonomy or indicting capricious state behaviour?
Authors: Ranjan Prabhash 
Published: December 2021

PurposeThe dominant narrative in the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) system is that it enables powerful corporations to encroach upon the regulatory power of developing countries aimed at pursuing compelling public interest objectives. The example of Phillip Morris, the tobacco giant, suing Uruguay’s public health measures is cited as the most significant example to prove this thesis. The other side of the story that States abuse their public power to undermine the protected rights of foreign investors does not get much attention.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reviews all the ISDS cases that India has lost to ascertain the reason why these claims were brought against India in the first place. The approach of the paper is to study these ISDS cases to find out whether these cases arose due to abuse of the State’s public power or affronted India’s regulatory autonomy.FindingsAgainst this global context, this paper studies the ISDS claims brought against India, one of the highest respondent-State in ISDS, to show that they arose due to India’s capricious behaviour. Analysis of these cases reveals that India acted in bad faith and abused its public power by either amending laws retroactively or by scrapping licences without following due process or going back on specific and written assurances that induced investors to invest. In none of these cases, the foreign investors challenged India’s regulatory measures aimed at advancing the genuine public interest. The absence of a “Phillip Morris moment” in India’s ISDS story is a stark reminder that one should give due weight to the equally compelling narrative that ISDS claims are also a result of abuse of public power by States.Originality/valueThe originality value of this paper arises from the fact that this is the first comprehensive study of ISDS cases brought against India and provides full documentation within the larger global context of rising ISDS cases. The paper contributes to the debate on international investment law by showing that in the case of India most of the ISDS cases brought were due to India abusing its public power and was not an affront on India’s regulatory autonomy.