bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Single‐blind clinical trial: Sperm selection based on capacity to pass through cumulus oophorous column improves ICSI outcomes
Authors: Sabet Sara , Najafi Mohammad Hasan , Tavalaee Marziyeh , Sadeghi Niloofar , Nasr‐Esfahani Mohammad H. 
Published: May 2021

AbstractBackgroundSperm selection procedures for future strategies that aim to select normal spermatozoa with intact DNA to improve intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) outcomes are in early developing stage.ObjectivesThe objective is to find out whether the sperm selection procedure based on the ability of spermatozoa to traverse the cumulus cells could improve clinical outcomes of ICSI technique in infertile couples with male factor etiology.Materials and methodsFor this single‐blind clinical trial, mature metaphase II oocytes were retrieved from 150 couples with male factor infertility, male age lower than 45 years and female age under 38 years. These couples were divided into two groups. In control group (n = 75), spermatozoa processed by density gradient centrifugation (DGC) were used to inject the oocytes. In the study group (n = 75), the oocytes were divided into sibling groups. In one sibling group (DGC), the oocytes were inseminated with DGC‐processed spermatozoa while in the other group (DGC‐CC), they were inseminated with DGC‐processed spermatozoa that passed cumulus oophorous column.ResultsMean fertilization and embryo quality were significantly higher in DGC‐CC group compared to DGC and control group. In addition, mean of chemical pregnancy (52.27% vs. 34.14%; p = 0.05), clinical pregnancy based on sac (52.27% vs. 32.92%; p = 0.03), clinical pregnancy with heart beat (52.27% vs. 25.60%; p = 0.003) and ongoing pregnancy (43.18% vs. 21.95%; p = 0.02) rates were significantly higher in DGC‐CC group compared to control group.ConclusionSperm selection based on integrated systems such as DGC and ability to pass through cumulus oophorous column could improve clinical outcomes of ICSI in couples with male factor infertility.
Ratio of torus and equivalent power to refractive cylinder and spherical equivalent in phakic lenses – a Monte‐Carlo simulation study
Authors: Langenbucher Achim , Schrecker Jens , Eppig Timo , Schröder Simon , Cayless Alan , Schwemm Michael , Nagy Zoltán , Szentmáry Nóra 
Published: May 2021

ABSTRACTBackgroundSpherical and astigmatic powers for phakic intraocular lenses are frequently calculated using fixed ratios of phakic lens refractive power to refractive spherical equivalent, and of phakic lens astigmatism to refractive cylinder. In this study, a Monte‐Carlo simulation based on biometric data was used to investigate how variations in biometrics affect these ratios, in order to improve the calculation of implantable lens parameters.MethodsA data set of over sixteen thousand biometric measurements including axial length, phakic anterior chamber depth, and corneal equivalent and astigmatic power was used to construct a multidimensional probability density distribution. From this, we determined the axial position of the implanted lens and estimated the refractive spherical equivalent and refractive cylinder. A generic data model resampled the density distributions and interactions between variables, and the implantable lens power was determined using vergence propagation.Results50 000 artificial data sets were used to calculate the phakic lens spherical equivalent and astigmatism required for emmetropization, and to determine the corresponding ratios for these two values. The spherical ratio ranged from 1.0640 to 1.3723 and the astigmatic ratio from 1.0501 to 1.4340. Both ratios are unaffected by the corneal spherical / astigmatic powers, or the refractive cylinder, but show strong correlation with the refractive spherical equivalent, mild correlation with the lens axial position, and moderate negative correlation with axial length. As a simplification, these ratios could be modelled using a bi‐variable linear regression based on the first two of these factors.ConclusionFixed spherical and astigmatic ratios should not be used when selecting high refractive power phakic IOLs as their variation can result in refractive errors of up to ±0.3 D for a 8 D lens. Both ratios can be estimated with clinically acceptable precision using a linear regression based on the refractive spherical equivalent and the axial position.
Efficacy of ginger as antiemetic in children with acute gastroenteritis: a randomised controlled trial
Authors: Nocerino Rita , Cecere Gaetano , Micillo Maria , De Marco Giulio , Ferri Pasqualina , Russo Mariateresa , Bedogni Giorgio , Berni Canani Roberto 
Published: May 2021

SummaryBackgroundGinger is a spice with a long history of use as a traditional remedy for nausea and vomiting. No data on the efficacy of ginger are presently available for children with vomiting associated with acute gastroenteritis (AGE).AimTo test whether ginger can reduce vomiting in children with AGE.MethodsDouble‐blind, randomised placebo‐controlled trial in outpatients aged 1 to 10 years with AGE‐associated vomiting randomised to ginger or placebo. The primary outcome was the occurrence of ≥1 episode of vomiting after the first dose of treatment. Severity of vomiting and safety were also assessed.ResultsSeventy‐five children were randomised to the ginger arm and 75 to the placebo arm. Five children in the ginger arm and 4 in the placebo arm refused to participate in the study shortly after randomisation, leaving 70 children in the ginger arm and 71 in the placebo arm (N = 141). At intention‐to‐treat analysis (N = 150), assuming that all children lost to follow‐up had reached the primary outcome, the incidence of the main outcome was 67% (95% CI 56 to 77) in the ginger group and 87% (95% CI 79 to 94) in the placebo group, corresponding to the absolute risk reduction for the ginger versus the placebo group of −20% (95% CI −33% to −7%, P = 0.003), with a number needed to treat of 5 (95% CI 3 to 15).ConclusionOral administration of ginger is effective and safe at improving vomiting in children with AGE.Trial registration: The trial was registered on https://clinicaltrials.gov/ with the identifier NCT02701491.
Effects of a topical treatment with spleen tyrosine kinase inhibitor in healthy subjects and patients with cold urticaria or chronic spontaneous urticaria: Results of a phase 1a/b randomised double‐blind placebo‐controlled study
Authors: Dickson Marion C. , Walker Alexandra , Grattan Clive , Perry Hayley , Williams Nicola , Ratia Nirav , Dewit Odile , Gisbert Sophie , Metz Martin , Maurer Marcus 
Published: May 2021

AimsTo explore the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PD) of GSK2646264 using skin challenge models.MethodsHealthy volunteers (HV) with a positive allergen skin prick test received GSK2646264 (0.5% or 1% ww) and placebo creams on up to 10% body surface area (BSA). Cold (ColdU) or chronic spontaneous (CSU) urticaria patients received 1% GSK2646264 or placebo on up to 10% BSA. PD assessments included weal characteristics after skin allergen challenge, critical temperature threshold (CTT) in ColdU patients and defined area urticaria activity score in CSU patients.ResultsThirty‐four patients were randomised (17 HV, 12 ColdU, 5 CSU). Topical application of GSK2646264 and placebo was well tolerated. Systemic pharmacokinetics (AUC [0–24] h*ng/mL) was similar between HVs (Geomean 97.9 [%CV 37]) and ColdU patients (Geomean 68.2 [%CV 14; 3.5% BSA] or 167 [%CV 120; 10% BSA]). Whilst in HVs a similar reduction in skin allergen challenge weal area was observed following 3 applications of GSK2646264 and placebo, a trend towards a greater reduction was seen in ColdU with GSK2646264 compared to placebo. A clinically meaningful reduction in CTT, in ColdU patients treated with GSK2646264, was observed in 4 of 9 patients, who demonstrated either a complete inhibition of ColdU to ≤4°C (n = 2) or partial response (reduction by >4°C, n = 2). Due to the small number of CSU patients recruited, no meaningful conclusions could be drawn from the defined area urticaria activity score PD endpoint.ConclusionThis Phase 1/1b study confirms that GSK2646264 cream applied topically penetrates the skin and some reduction in CTT was observed.(NCT02424799)
The Staufen1‐dependent cell cycle regulon or how a misregulated RNA‐binding protein leads to cancer
Authors: Bonnet‐Magnaval Florence , DesGroseillers Luc 
Published: May 2021

ABSTRACTIn recent years, an increasing number of reports have linked the RNA‐binding protein Staufen1 (STAU1) to the control of cell decision making. In non‐transformed cells, STAU1 balances the expression of messenger RNA (mRNA) regulons that regulate differentiation and well‐ordered cell division. Misregulation of STAU1 expression and/or functions changes the fragile balance in the expression of pro‐ and anti‐proliferative and apoptotic genes and favours a novel equilibrium that supports cell proliferation and cancer development. The misregulation of STAU1 functions causes multiple coordinated modest effects in the post‐transcriptional regulation of many RNA targets that code for cell cycle regulators, leading to dramatic consequences at the cellular level. The new tumorigenic equilibrium in STAU1‐mediated gene regulation observed in cancer cells can be further altered by a slight increase in STAU1 expression that favours expression of pro‐apoptotic genes and cell death. The STAU1‐dependent cell cycle regulon is a good model to study how abnormal expression of an RNA‐binding protein promotes cell growth and provides an advantageous selection of malignant cells in the first step of cancer development.
Large tree species composition, not growth rates, is affected by topography in a Bornean tropical forest
Authors: Limin Army , Slik Ferry , Sukri Rahayu Sukmaria , Chen Sheng‐Bin , Ahmad Joffre Ali 
Published: May 2021

AbstractLarge trees (diameter at breast height ≥50 cm) play a vital role in providing ecological services in tropical forests and can store up to 50% of aboveground biomass. We expected that topography (as a nutrient and drought proxy) would affect large tree dynamics, biomass, diversity, and composition patterns. To test this, we established a 15‐ha permanent plot at Andulau Forest Reserve (Brunei Darussalam, Borneo) with an elevation ranging from 42 m (swamp) to 92 m (ridge tops). All 559 large trees (131 species) were labeled, identified, and fitted with dendrometers. Stem density, basal area (BA), soil and litter properties, absolute diameter growth rate (AGR), and recruitment and mortality rates of large trees were determined for five elevational zones for the period 2016–2019. Stem density and BA of large trees were significantly higher in the upslope and ridge areas of the plot, and a clear shift in large tree species composition was found across the elevational zones, with the swampy area differing most from all others. However, AGR did not differ between elevational zones. Large tree mortality was balanced by recruitment, but sample size was too low to detect topographical patterns. Our findings suggest that the large tree community retained similar growth rates across soil water and nutrient gradient via a shift in species composition. If so, predicted declines in large tree productivity with climate change may, over time, also be offset by changes in species composition.
Probing Lexical Ambiguity: Word Vectors Encode Number and Relatedness of Senses
Authors: Beekhuizen Barend , Armstrong Blair C. , Stevenson Suzanne 
Published: May 2021

AbstractLexical ambiguity—the phenomenon of a single word having multiple, distinguishable senses—is pervasive in language. Both the degree of ambiguity of a word (roughly, its number of senses) and the relatedness of those senses have been found to have widespread effects on language acquisition and processing. Recently, distributional approaches to semantics, in which a word's meaning is determined by its contexts, have led to successful research quantifying the degree of ambiguity, but these measures have not distinguished between the ambiguity of words with multiple related senses versus multiple unrelated meanings. In this work, we present the first assessment of whether distributional meaning representations can capture the ambiguity structure of a word, including both the number and relatedness of senses. On a very large sample of English words, we find that some, but not all, distributional semantic representations that we test exhibit detectable differences between sets of monosemes (unambiguous words; N = 964), polysemes (with multiple related senses; N = 4,096), and homonyms (with multiple unrelated senses; N = 355). Our findings begin to answer open questions from earlier work regarding whether distributional semantic representations of words, which successfully capture various semantic relationships, also reflect fine‐grained aspects of meaning structure that influence human behavior. Our findings emphasize the importance of measuring whether proposed lexical representations capture such distinctions: In addition to standard benchmarks that test the similarity structure of distributional semantic models, we need to also consider whether they have cognitively plausible ambiguity structure.
Correlations Between Handshape and Movement in Sign Languages
Authors: Napoli Donna Jo , Ferrara Casey 
Published: May 2021

AbstractSign language phonological parameters are somewhat analogous to phonemes in spoken language. Unlike phonemes, however, there is little linguistic literature arguing that these parameters interact at the sublexical level. This situation raises the question of whether such interaction in spoken language phonology is an artifact of the modality or whether sign language phonology has not been approached in a way that allows one to recognize sublexical parameter interaction. We present three studies in favor of the latter alternative: a shape‐drawing study with deaf signers from six countries, an online dictionary study of American Sign Language, and a study of selected lexical items across 34 sign languages. These studies show that, once iconicity is considered, handshape and movement parameters interact at the sublexical level. Thus, consideration of iconicity makes transparent similarities in grammar across both modalities, allowing us to maintain certain key findings of phonological theory as evidence of cognitive architecture.
Expanding Echo: Coordinated Head Articulations as Nonmanual Enhancements in Sign Language Phonology
Authors: Loos Cornelia , Napoli Donna Jo 
Published: May 2021

AbstractEcho phonology was originally proposed to account for obligatory coordination of manual and mouth articulations observed in several sign languages. However, previous research into the phenomenon lacks clear criteria for which components of movement can or must be copied when the articulators are so different. Nor is there discussion of which nonmanual articulators can echo manual movement. Given the prosodic properties of echoes (coordination of onset/offset and of dynamics such as speed) as well as general motoric coordination of various articulators in the human body, we expect that the mouth is not the only nonmanual articulator involved in echo phonology. In this study, we look at a fixed set of lexical items across 36 sign languages and establish that the head can echo manual movement with respect to timing and to the axis/axes of manual movement. We propose that what matters in echo phonology is the visual percept of temporally coordinated movement that repeats a salient movement property in such a way as to give the visual impression of a copy. Our findings suggest that echoes are not obligatory motor couplings of two or more articulators but may enhance phonological distinctions that are otherwise difficult to see.
Concept Appraisal
Authors: Thorne Sapphira R. , Quilty‐Dunn Jake , Smortchkova Joulia , Shea Nicholas , Hampton James A. 
Published: May 2021

AbstractThis paper reports the first empirical investigation of the hypothesis that epistemic appraisals form part of the structure of concepts. To date, studies of concepts have focused on the way concepts encode properties of objects and the way those features are used in categorization and in other cognitive tasks. Philosophical considerations show the importance of also considering how a thinker assesses the epistemic value of beliefs and other cognitive resources and, in particular, concepts. We demonstrate that there are multiple, reliably judged, dimensions of epistemic appraisal of concepts. Four of these dimensions are accounted for by a common underlying factor capturing how well people believe they understand a concept. Further studies show how dimensions of concept appraisal relate to other aspects of concepts. First, they relate directly to the hierarchical organization of concepts, reflecting the increase in specificity from superordinate to basic and subordinate levels. Second, they predict inductive choices in category‐based induction. Our results suggest that epistemic appraisals of concepts form a psychologically important yet previously overlooked aspect of the structure of concepts. These findings will be important in understanding why individuals sometimes abandon and replace certain concepts; why social groups do so, for example, during a “scientific revolution”; and how we can facilitate such changes when we engage in deliberate “conceptual engineering” for epistemic, social, and political purposes.
The Sound of Smell: Associating Odor Valence With Disgust Sounds
Authors: Speed Laura J. , Atkinson Hannah , Wnuk Ewelina , Majid Asifa 
Published: May 2021

AbstractOlfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence.
Assessment of human fetal cardiac autonomic nervous system development using color tissue Doppler imaging
Authors: Zwanenburg Fleur , Jongbloed Monique R. M. , van Geloven Nan , ten Harkel Arend D. J. , van Lith Jan M. M. , Haak Monique C. 
Published: May 2021

AbstractObjectivesFunctional development of the fetal cardiac autonomic nervous system (cANS) plays a key role in fetal maturation and can be assessed through fetal heart rate variability (fHRV)‐analysis, with each HRV parameter representing different aspects of cANS activity. Current available techniques, however, are unable to assess the fHRV parameters accurately throughout the whole pregnancy. This study aims to test the feasibility of color tissue Doppler imaging (cTDI) as a new ultrasound technique for HRV analysis. Secondly, we explored time trends of fHRV parameters using this technique.Methods18 healthy singleton fetuses were examined sequentially every 8 weeks from 10 weeks GA onwards. From each examination, 3 cTDI recordings of the four‐chamber view of 10 seconds were retrieved to determine accurate beat‐to‐beat intervals. The fHRV parameters SDNN, RMSSD, SDNN/RMSSD, and pNN10, each representing different functional aspects of the cANS, were measured, and time trends during pregnancy were explored using spline functions within a linear mixed‐effects model.ResultsIn total, 77% (95% Cl 66–87%) of examinations were feasible for fHRV analysis from the first trimester onwards, which is a great improvement compared to other techniques. The technique is able to determine different maturation rates of the fHRV parameters, showing that cANS function, presumably parasympathetic activity, establishes around 20 weeks GA and matures rapidly until 30 weeks GA.ConclusionsThis is the first study able to assess cANS function through fHRV analysis from the first trimester onwards. The use of cTDI to determine beat‐to‐beat intervals seems feasible in just 3 clips of 10 seconds, which holds promise for future clinical use in assessing fetal well‐being.
Myeloid sarcoma of the heart: Extramedullary relapse of acute myeloblastic leukemia, presenting with complete heart block and atrial flutter after second allogeneic stem cell transplantation
Authors: Babaoğlu Kadir , Azizoğlu Mehmet , Başar Eviç Zeynep , Zengin Emine , Usta Emre , Sarper Nazan 
Published: May 2021

AbstractWe report isolated extramedullary relapse in a 14‐year‐old boy, sequentially presenting with intestinal and cardiac myeloid sarcoma (MS). Acute myeloblastic leukemia M5 was diagnosed 41 months ago. On the 14th month of the second HSCT, he presented with ileus and underwent surgical treatment. After 2 weeks, arrhythmia, bradycardia, complete heart block, and atrial flutter developed and echocardiography revealed multiple cardiac masses. There was no bone marrow relapse but pathology of the intestinal biopsy showed leukemic infiltration. Patient was successfully treated with a permanent pacemaker and salvage chemotherapy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first pediatric cardiac MS developed after HSCT.