bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Molecular signature and colony morphology affect in vitro pluripotency of porcine induced pluripotent stem cells
Authors: Setthawong Piyathip , Phakdeedindan Praopilas , Techakumphu Mongkol , Tharasanit Theerawat 
Published: May 2021

AbstractOverall efficiency of cell reprogramming for porcine fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is currently poor, and few cell lines have been established. This study examined gene expression during early phase of cellular reprogramming in the relationship to the iPSC colony morphology and in vitro pluripotent characteristics. Fibroblasts were reprogrammed with OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and c‐MYC. Two different colony morphologies referred to either compact (n = 10) or loose (n = 10) colonies were further examined for proliferative activity, gene expression and in vitro pluripotency. A total of 1,697 iPSC‐like colonies (2.34%) were observed after gene transduction. The compact colonies contained with tightly packed cells with a distinct‐clear border between the colony and feeder cells, while loose colonies demonstrated irregular colony boundary. For quantitative expression of genes responsible for early phase cell reprogramming, the Dppa2 and EpCAM were significantly upregulated while NR0B1 was downregulated in compact colonies compared with loose phenotype (p < .05). Higher proportion of compact iPSC phenotype (5 of 10, 50%) could be maintained in undifferentiated state for more than 50 passages compared unfavourably with loose morphology (3 of 10, 30%). All iPS cell lines obtained from these two types of colony morphologies expressed pluripotent genes and proteins (OCT4, NANOG and E‐cadherin). In addition, they could aggregate and form three‐dimensional structure of embryoid bodies. However, only compact iPSC colonies differentiated into three germ layers. Molecular signature of early phase of cell reprogramming coupled with primary colony morphology reflected the in vitro pluripotency of porcine iPSCs. These findings can be simply applied for pre‐screening selection of the porcine iPSC cell line.
Sperm subpopulations influence the pregnancy rates in cattle
Authors: Hidalgo Myrian Megumy Tsunokawa , Almeida Ana Beatriz Marques de , Moraes Fábio Lucas Zito de , Marubayashi Rodrigo Yudi Palhaci , Souza Fabiana Ferreira de , Barreiros Thales Ricardo Rigo , Martins Maria Isabel Mello 
Published: May 2021

AbstractThis study aimed to study the characteristics and subpopulations of spermatozoa from bulls with low and high reproductive performance based on pregnancy rates. Based on historical records of pregnancy rate from four farms, 24 bulls were selected. Two groups were established, with low pregnancy rates (n = 12; LOW), including bulls that presented pregnancy rates <52.27% (33.33% to 51.81%); and a group with high pregnancy rates (n = 12; HIGH), with pregnancy rates >52.27% (52.27% to 69.64%), after fixed‐time artificial insemination (FTAI). The thawed sperm straws were analysed to sperm kinetics, morphology, plasma membrane integrity and sperm subpopulations. The LOW group exhibited a higher proportion of static cells (p < .05). In contrast, the HIGH group showed greater percentages for membrane integrity and total and progressive motility, and cells with fast and medium velocity (p < .05). In the cluster procedures, four sperm subpopulations were established. The low‐fertility bulls presented the highest percentage of subpopulation 2 (41.46%), characterized by slow and progressive spermatozoa. The high‐fertility bulls exhibited the highest percentage of subpopulation 3 (37.17%), characterized by fast and nonlinear spermatozoa. Results from this study indicated that bulls with greater percentages of fast and nonlinear spermatozoa seem to have greater fertilization capacity and the subpopulations analysis can be considered a tool to identify ejaculates with high fertility.
Between Film and the World: Roma Ways of Seeing and Perceiving Persons
Authors: Bonini Baraldi Filippo 
Published: May 2021

ABSTRACTIn a Roma village of Transylvania (Romania), Western ways of distinguishing visual products in categories such as fiction, ethnographic documentary, and scientific image do not make any sense. Far from being trivial, this dissolution of Western visual categories reveals the particular way Roma conceive of the ontological categories of person, person‐image (actor), and person‐skeleton (phantom), rooted in a strong ambiguity between “being oneself” and “playing a role.” This is an ambiguity that may fade away in some ephemeral moments, when the “true” person manifests.
Satirical Antiracism: Digital Protest Images in Afro‐Brazilian Media
Authors: Gillam Reighan 
Published: May 2021

AbstractThis article presents satire, irony, and parody as a means to contest racist structures through media production. I specifically examine the Is That OK With You? YouTube Series as it presents a break from traditional relationships between humor and race in Brazil by turning attention toward systemic racism. I theorize “satirical antiracism” as a way to understand how Afro‐Brazilians deploy satire to make visible the contradictions and inconsistencies of the racial order. Satirical antiracism is a form of activism that invokes the tension of contradictory subjects, such as humor and racism in communicating its message.
Decrypting species in the Nacobbus aberrans (Nematoda: Pratylenchidae) complex using integrative taxonomy
Authors: Lax Paola , Gonzalez‐Ittig Raúl E. , Rondan Dueñas Juan C. , Andrade Alberto J. , Gardenal Cristina N. , Franco Javier , Doucet Marcelo E. 
Published: May 2021

AbstractThe plant‐parasitic nematode Nacobbus aberrans s.l. is a major agricultural pest of quarantine importance worldwide and is one of the top 10 nematodes in plant pathology because it causes significant losses in several crops. There are evidences of the existence of a species complex, with species being difficult to discriminate using only morphological characters. In this study, we aimed at resolving the taxonomic situation from a multi‐disciplinary approach, based on morphometric data and molecular analyses. The results supported the identification of three nominal species in the complex: N. aberrans s.s., N. bolivianus and a new taxon, Nacobbus celatus sp. n. This new species, described based on the revision of published and new data, is widely distributed in the lowlands of Argentina. Our results also evidence the possible existence of a new taxon native to the Andean region of the same country. For the first time, the utility of cytochrome oxidase c subunit 1 barcoding for Nacobbus species identification is corroborated. This study also includes the estimation of divergence time among Nacobbus spp.; the possible geographical origin of the genus and colonization pattern are discussed. The present work shows the usefulness of an integrated approach to the resolution of systematic problems.
Exploring the contribution of case study research to the evidence base for occupational therapy practice: a scoping review protocol
Authors: McQuaid Leona , Thomson Katie , Bannigan Katrina 
Published: May 2021

ABSTRACT

Objective:
This scoping review will explore the range and characteristics of case study research within the occupational therapy evidence base. It will examine how case study research is defined, the methodologies adopted, and the context in which it is applied. Most importantly, it will consider the viability of case study research for contributing to the evidence base for occupation and health.

Introduction:
Occupational therapists report barriers to conducting research due to the complexities of clinical practice, and lack of knowledge, time, and resources. Case study research is generating interest as a potentially manageable and practical solution to increase research engagement. However, it is not clear how this is being utilized by occupational therapists or how feasible it is to contribute to the evidence base.

Inclusion criteria:
Opinion, text, and empirical studies that explicitly use or discuss case study research methodology within an occupational therapy context will be included. Studies will be excluded where the occupational therapy context cannot be clearly defined, for example, where they are multi-disciplinary focused or where a case study research design is not explicit (eg, a descriptive case report without data collection). All countries and practice settings will be included.

Methods:
A three-step search following JBI methodology will be conducted across databases and websites for English-language, published peer-reviewed and gray literature from 1990. Study selection will be completed by two independent reviewers. A data extraction table developed and piloted by the authors will be used and data charted to align with the research questions.
Occupational therapy services provided to populations in non-urban areas: a scoping review protocol
Authors: Hayes Karen , Morante Danielle , Costigan Moses , Dos Santos Vagner 
Published: May 2021

ABSTRACT

Objective:
The objective of this review is to complete a global synthesis of the evidence on occupational therapy services provided in non-urban areas.

Introduction:
Worldwide, non-urban populations experience higher levels of disease, mortality, and disease risk factors, yet most health services, including occupational therapy, are disproportionately located in urban areas. Research has predominantly focused on attracting therapists to non-urban practice by exploring generalized expressed needs from existing non-urban therapists, such as access to professional development, backfilling of jobs, peer and other practice supports, or enticing occupational therapy students through placement experiences. However, the types of service that non-urban occupational therapists routinely provide remains unclear. Clarifying the scope of occupational therapy services in non-urban areas will support educators and policy makers to plan curricula and services to support non-urban clinicians and communities.

Inclusion criteria:
This scoping review will consider qualitative and quantitative research studies and opinion pieces about occupational therapy services provided to any individuals or groups living in rural (non-urban) areas across the world.

Methods:
The search will be conducted in MEDLINE (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), Emcare, and ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health, and limited to studies published from 2010 in English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish. Titles and abstracts will be screened by two independent reviewers against predefined inclusion criteria, followed by detailed assessment and appraisal by two independent reviewers. Reasons for including or excluding studies will be recorded. Data will be extracted using a charting table and presented in tabular form with a narrative summary describing how the results relate to the review question.
Soft Robot Based on Hyperelastic Buckling Controlled by Discontinuous Magnetic Field
Authors: Xu Yingdong , Yan Dongze , Zhang Kai , Li Xuequan , Xing Yufeng , Shao Li-Hua 
Published: May 2021

Abstract
Most untethered magnetic soft robots are controlled by a continuously applied magnetic field. The accuracy of their motion depends completely on the accuracy of external magnetic field, consequently any slight disturbance may cause a dramatic change. Here, we report a new structure and driven method design to achieve a novel magnetic soft robot, denoted as “BUCK”, which can achieve accurate and stable locomotion with weakly dependence on the magnetic field. The robot BUCK consists of functional magnetic composite materials with one central transportation platform and four crawling arms, whose motion is mainly based on hyperelastic buckling and recovering of the arms. BUCK is capable of cargo transportation with multimodal locomotion, such as crawling, climbing, and turning with high adaptability to various surfaces. Due to the applied discontinuous magnetic field, BUCK consumes much less driven energy compared with conventional magnetic robots. Moreover, we develop theoretical and numerical models to rationally design the precisely controlled BUCK. Our study shows applications in terms of transportation functions, such as for optical path adjustments and photographic tasks in complex circumstances. This work also provides new ideas on how to utilize nonlinear deformation more efficiently; one could combine the benefits for both the flexible electronics and actuation applications.
Ground Motion Intensity Measures for Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Steel Storage Tanks With Unanchored Support Conditions
Authors: Phan Hoang Nam , Paolacci Fabrizio , Nguyen Van My , Hoang Phuong Hoa 
Published: May 2021

Abstract
This paper aims to comprehensively evaluate the performance of a series of ground motion intensity measures (IMs) used in the seismic vulnerability assessment of steel storage tanks with unanchored support conditions. Sixteen well-known IMs are thus selected, which are classified into amplitude-, frequency-, and time-based categories. A comparative study is then performed on four different unanchored steel storage tanks subjected to a suite of 140 ground motion records that is comprised of seven different bins of records with different hazard levels. In this regard, the tanks are appropriately modeled based on a simplified approach, whose uplift and sliding nonlinear behaviors are properly implemented based on a three-dimensional nonlinear pushover analysis of the tanks. Four characteristics of the examined IMs including efficiency, practicality, proficiency, and sufficiency are evaluated based on a probabilistic seismic demand model of two critical failure modes of the tanks, i.e., plastic rotation of the shell-to-bottom connection and elephant's foot buckling of the shell plate. According to the comparative study, frequency-based IMs demonstrate their superior performance for all criteria compared with other groups; in particular, the average spectral acceleration gains the highest ranking. Finally, an appropriate range of the upper period considered in the average spectral acceleration IM is then proposed to optimize the efficiency of this IM for the examined tanks.
VEMERS UC: A Clinically Validated Emergency Mechanical Ventilator for COVID-19 and Postpandemic Use in Low Resource Communities
Authors: Chiang Luciano E. , Castro Felipe A. 
Published: May 2021

Abstract
In this article, we present a clinically validated invasive emergency mechanical ventilator developed in Chile called VEMERS UC. It has been clinically tested and validated in intubated Covid-19 patients. Once the pandemic hit Chilean soil in March 2020, it was quite clear that the number of mechanical ventilators available would not be enough. As in other parts of the world many initiatives sprung, most of them naively simple. Chilean medical societies joined engineering specialists and agreed early on in an organized and regulated open process for validating emergency mechanical ventilators, thus allowing for rapid development but with the required functionality, reliability, and safety features. VEMERS UC was one of a few that completed successfully all stages of the validating process, the final test being on five critically ill intubated Covid-19 patients for eight hours each. VEMERS UC is based on an electropneumatic circuit architecture, and its components are all low cost, off-the-shelf pneumatic, and electronic products easily obtained in industrial markets. It works in continuous mandatory volume control mode. The novel technical features of VEMERS UC are discussed here as well as the results obtained in each stage of the validating process. The validating process carried out in Chile is noteworthy by itself, and it could be used as an example in other developing countries. Furthermore, VEMERS UC can be used as a guiding design reference in other countries as well, since this design has already been thoroughly tested in human patients and has proven to work successfully.
Numerical Verifications on Heat Transfer to Supercritical Water Flowing Upward in a 4-m Long Bare Vertical Tube
Authors: Yang Dong , Chen Jiaxiang , Feng Yongchang , Chen Lin 
Published: May 2021

Abstract
Thermal efficiency and safety of generation-IV nuclear-power-reactor concept supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) are largely dependent on the coupled supercritical water (SCW) thermophysical properties and heat transfer performance in the supercritical region. This paper presents the numerical investigation of the heat-transfer characteristics of SCW flow in a 4-m long circular tube (ID = 10 mm) based on computational fluid dynamics. Numerical model for SCW was established in this analysis and forced-convection heat transfer was studied at different operating conditions. The data were collected at pressure of about 24 MPa, inlet temperatures from 320 to 350 °C, mass flux from 1000 to 1500 kg/m2·s, and heat flux up to 1500 kW/m2. Results of numerical simulation predict the experimental data with reasonable accuracy. A dimensional analysis was conducted to derive the general form of an empirical supercritical water heat-transfer correlation. The decrease of turbulent viscosity due to the decrease of density leads to a lower turbulent diffusion and turbulent kinetic energy, which inhibits heat transfer. The increased wall temperature and localized heat transfer deterioration (HTD) would occur as the liquid in the core of the tube is isolated for the low-density fluid adheres to the near-wall region, which is characterized by low thermal capacity.
Experimental Investigation on the Retention of Soluble Particles by Pool Scrubbing
Authors: Vennemann R. , Klauck M. , Allelein H.-J. 
Published: May 2021

Abstract
In the late stage of a severe loss-of-coolant accident, the pressure in the containment building of a nuclear power plant could rise beyond the design limits and thus endanger its structural integrity. Therefore, to avoid pressure failure, it may be necessary to perform controlled venting of the containment. During the event of an accident, a large amount of fission and activation products are released into the containment as airborne particles (aerosols). These particles are filtered during the venting process, usually with the help of wet filters, in order to keep risks to the surrounding environment to a minimum. Consequently, the knowledge of the retention processes in a water reservoir (pool scrubbing) is of central importance for such filtered containment venting systems and for reactor concepts in which water reservoirs are used for pressure reduction (e.g., condensation chamber of a boiling water reactor (BWR)). Investigations on pool scrubbing are carried out in the severe accident aerosol behavior (SAAB) test facility at the Juelich Research Center in the framework of a national project (“severe accident aerosol behavior-II”). SAAB is a unique large-scale facility with the ability to perform a great variation of experiments using various measurement tools. The influence of numerous parameters, such as the height of the water pool, solubility of aerosols and concentration on the retention capacity, is investigated by means of separate effect studies on both insoluble and soluble particles. This technical brief gives a detailed overview over the facility and includes example results of the first test series with soluble particles including cesium iodine (CsI).
Spiral morphology in an intensely star-forming disk galaxy more than 12 billion years ago
Authors: Tsukui Takafumi , Iguchi Satoru 
Published: May 2021

Spiral features in the early Universe
The early assembly of galaxies is thought to have produced disturbed and asymmetric objects. Morphological features seen in nearby galaxies, such as stellar disks, bulges, and spiral arms, require time to form and would be disturbed by the frequent galaxy mergers that occurred at early times. Tsukui and Iguchi identified a distant galaxy containing a disk of gas with a spiral morphology. The galaxy also has a compact central mass concentration due to a combination of a supermassive black hole and a possible stellar bulge. These features must have formed within 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang.

Science
, abe9680, this issue p.
1201
Peptide: MHC-based DNA vaccination strategy to activate natural killer cells by targeting killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors
Authors: Rettman Pauline , Blunt Matthew D , Fulton Rebecca J , Vallejo Andres F , Bastidas-Legarda Leidy Y , España-Serrano Laura , Polak Marta E , Al-Shamkhani Aymen , Retiere Christelle , Khakoo Salim I 
Published: May 2021

BackgroundNatural killer (NK) cells are increasingly being recognized as agents for cancer immunotherapy. The killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) are expressed by NK cells and are immunogenetic determinants of the outcome of cancer. In particular, KIR2DS2 is associated with protective responses to several cancers and also direct recognition of cancer targets in vitro. Due to the high homology between activating and inhibitory KIR genes to date, it has been challenging to target individual KIR for therapeutic benefit.MethodsA novel KIR2DS2-targeting therapeutic peptide:MHC DNA vaccine was designed and used to immunize mice transgenic for KIR genes (KIR-Tg). NK cells were isolated from the livers and spleens of vaccinated mice and then analyzed for activation by flow cytometry, RNA profiling and cytotoxicity assays. In vivo assays of NK cell function using a syngeneic cancer model (B16 melanoma) and an adoptive transfer model for human hepatocellular carcinoma (Huh7) were performed.ResultsInjecting KIR-Tg mice with the vaccine construct activated NK cells in both liver and spleens of mice, with preferential activation of KIR2DS2-positive NK cells. KIR-specific activation was most marked on the CD11b+CD27+ mature subset of NK cells. RNA profiling indicated that the DNA vaccine upregulated genes associated with cellular metabolism and downregulated genes related to histone H3 methylation, which are associated with immune cell maturation and NK cell function. Vaccination led to canonical and cross-reactive peptide:MHC-specific NK cell responses. In vivo, DNA vaccination led to enhanced antitumor responses against B16F10 melanoma cells and also enhanced responses against a tumor model expressing the KIR2DS2 ligand HLA-C*0102.ConclusionWe show the feasibility of a peptide-based KIR-targeting vaccine strategy to activate NK cells and hence generate functional antitumor responses. This approach does not require detailed knowledge of the tumor peptidomes nor HLA matching with the patient. It therefore offers a novel opportunity for targeting NK cells for cancer immunotherapy.