bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Multiple macroecological laws do characterize various aspects of microbiota dynamics
Authors: Tchourine Konstantine , Carballo-Pacheco Martin , Vitkup Dennis 
Published: August 2021

AbstractIn this letter we address the potential confusion related to our recent demonstration that multiple macroecological laws describe short- and long-term dynamics of microbial communities. Specifically, we clarify that these laws, similarly to many other relationships observed in nature, are characterized not just by the existence of scaling, but also by certain characteristic values of the scaling exponents. By performing proper statistical analysis, we demonstrate that the relationships sensitive to temporal bacterial dynamics are not reproduced in the shuffled data. We also discuss that there is no clear evidence in the data that macroecological relationships in microbiota are primarily driven by external or environmental factors. Proper statistical analyses of the data suggest that the dynamics of gut microbiota, even on a constant diet, contains rich temporal structure. Therefore, it is likely that complex and non-linear internal dynamics may be primarily responsible for the observed macroecological laws in microbiota and other ecological communities.
Arap1 Loss Causes RPE Phagocytic Dysfunction and Subsequent Photoreceptor Death
Authors: Shao Andy , Lopez Antonio Jacobo , Chen JiaJia , Tham Addy , Javier Seanne , Quiroz Alejandra , Frick Sonia , Levine Edward M. , Kent Lloyd K.C. , Leonard Brian C. , Murphy Christopher J. , Glaser Thomas M. , Moshiri Ala 
Published: August 2021

ABSTRACTPurposeArap1 is an Arf-directed GTPase-activating protein (GAP) shown to modulate actin cytoskeletal dynamics by regulating Arf and Rho family members. We have previously shown that Arap1-/- mice develop photoreceptor degeneration similar to the human condition retinitis pigmentosa (RP), corroborated by fundus examination, histopathology, and ERG analysis. However, Arap1 expression was not detected in photoreceptors, but in Müller Glia and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), suggesting a non-cell-autonomous mechanism for degeneration. The aim of this study was to elucidate the role of retinal Arap1 in photoreceptor maintenance.MethodsAlbino Arap1-/- mice were generated via breeding pigmented Arap1-/- mice onto a Tyr-/- C57BL/6J background. Conditional knockout (cKO) mice were generated for Müller Glia/RPE, Müller Glia, and RPE via targeting Cralbp, Glast, and Vmd2 promoters, respectively, to drive Cre recombinase expression to knock out Arap1. Mice were analyzed by fundus photography, optical coherence tomography (OCT), histology, and immunohistochemistry. Arap1 binding partners were assayed by affinity purification mass spectrometry.ResultsVmd2-Cre Arap1tm1c/tm1c and Cralbp-Cre Arap1tm1c/tm1c mice, but not Glast-Cre Arap1tm1c/tm1c mice, recapitulated the photoreceptor degeneration phenotype originally observed in germline Arap1−/− mice. These findings were corroborated by fundus exam, OCT, and histological analysis. Mass spectrometry analysis of ARAP1 co-immunoprecipitation identified putative binding partners of ARAP1, revealing numerous interactants involved in phagocytosis, cytoskeletal composition, intracellular trafficking, and endocytosis. Quantification of rod outer segment (OS) phagocytosis in vivo demonstrated a clear phagocytic defect in Arap1−/− mice compared to Arap1+/+ littermate controls while cone phagocytosis was preserved.ConclusionsArap1 expression, specifically in RPE, is necessary for photoreceptor survival due to its indispensable function in RPE phagocytosis. We propose a model in which Arap1 regulates G-protein function for nonmuscle myosin II targeting during phagocytosis. This novel role of Arap1 is important for further understanding of both the diversity of its functions and the complex molecular regulation of RPE phagocytosis.
Engineering site-selective incorporation of fluorine into natural product analogs
Authors: Sirirungruang S. , Ad O. , Privalsky T. M. , Ramesh S. , Sax J. L. , Dong H. , Baidoo E. E. K. , Amer B. , Khosla C. , Chang M. C. Y. 
Published: August 2021

AbstractWhile bioactive compounds are commonly derived both by human design as well as from living organisms, man-made and natural products typically display very different structural characteristics. As such, a longstanding goal in the discovery of new molecular function is to develop approaches to incorporate the advantageous elements of both groups of molecules, thereby expanding the molecular space accessible for this purpose. In this work, we report the engineering a fluorine-selective enzyme that can complement mutated acyltransferase (AT) domains of a modular polyketide synthase, which are the main determinants of the identity and location of substituents on polyketides, to produce different fluorinated regioisomers of the erythromycin precursor in vitro. We further show that by engineering cell uptake of fluorinated building blocks, we can control fluorine selectivity in vivo to produce selectively fluorinated polyketides using engineered E. coli. These results demonstrate that it is possible to introduce fluorine, a key synthetic design element for drug development, selectively into the scaffold of a complex natural product and produce these analogs by microbial fermentation.
SteadyCellPhenotype: A web-based tool for the modeling of biological networks with ternary logic
Authors: Knapp Adam C. , Vieira Luis Sordo , Laubenbacher Reinhard , Chifman Julia 
Published: August 2021

AbstractSummaryWe introduce SteadyCellPhenotype, a browser based interface for the analysis of ternary biological networks. It includes tools for deterministically finding all steady states of a network, as well as the simulation and visualization of trajectories with publication quality graphics. Stochastic simulations allow us to approximate the size of the basin for attractors and deterministic simulations of trajectories nearby specified points allow us to explore the behavior of the system in that neighborhood.Availabilityhttps://github.com/knappa/steadycellphenotypeMITLicenseContactchifman@american.edu
Antibodies control metabolism by regulating insulin homeostasis
Authors: Amendt Timm , Allies Gabriele , Nicolò Antonella , El Ayoubi Omar , Young Marc , Röszer Tamás , Setz Corinna S. , Warnatz Klaus , Jumaa Hassan 
Published: August 2021

SummaryHomeostasis of metabolism by hormone production is crucial to maintain physiological integrity and disbalance can cause severe metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus. Here, we show that antibodies recognizing insulin are key regulators of blood glucose and metabolism controlling insulin concentrations. In fact, antibody-deficient mice and immunodeficiency patients show sub-physiological blood glucose, which becomes normal after total IgG injection. We show that insulin-specific IgG antibodies found in the serum of wildtype mice or healthy individuals are responsible for this regulation. Interestingly, we identify two fractions of anti-insulin IgM which differ in their affinity to insulin. The low affinity IgM fraction (anti-insulin IgMlow) neutralizes insulin and leads to increased blood glucose while the high affinity IgM fraction (anti-insulin IgMhigh) protects insulin from neutralization by anti-insulin IgG thereby preventing blood glucose dysregulation. In contrast to anti-insulin IgMhigh, anti-insulin IgMlowbinds to dsDNA suggesting that it is multi-specific. This multi-specificity mediates the formation of larger immune complexes containing insulin which results in increased uptake and degradation of insulin by macrophages in the presence of anti-insulin IgMlowas compared to anti-insulin IgMhigh. To demonstrate that high affinity anti-insulin IgM acts as protector of insulin and counteracts insulin neutralization by anti-insulin IgG, we expressed the variable regions of the same anti-insulin antibody as IgG or IgM. Strikingly, only the anti-insulin IgM regulated insulin function and prevented IgG-mediated neutralization of insulin and subsequent blood glucose dysregulation. Since anti-insulin IgMhighis generated in the course of an immune response and affinity maturation, its protective role suggests that preventing autoimmune damage and maintaining physiological homeostasis requires adaptive tolerance mechanisms that generate protective IgM antibodies during memory responses.
Research on workpiece location algorithm based on improved SSD
Authors: Li Lin , Fu Mingheng , Zhang Tie , Ying Wu He 
Published: August 2021

Purpose
To improve production efficiency, industrial robots are expected to replace humans to complete the traditional manual operation on grasping, sorting and assembling workpieces. These implementations are closely related to the accuracy of workpiece location. However, workpiece location methods based on conventional machine vision are sensitive to the factors such as light intensity and surface roughness. To enhance the robustness of the workpiece location method and improve the location accuracy, a workpiece location algorithm based on improved Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach
The proposed algorithm integrates a weighted bi-directional feature pyramid network into SSD. A feature fusion architecture is structured by the combination of low-resolution, strong semantic features and high-resolution, weak semantic features. The architecture is built through a top-down pathway, bottom-up pathway, lateral connections and skip connections. To avoid treating all features equally, learnable weights are introduced into each feature layer to characterize its importance. More detailed information from the low-level layers is injected into the high-level layers, which could improve the accuracy of workpiece location.

Findings
It is found that the maximum location error at the center point calculated from the proposed algorithm is decreased by more than 22% compared with that of the SSD algorithm. Besides, the average location error evolves a decrease by at least 5%. In the trajectory prediction experiment of the workpiece center point, the results of the proposed algorithm demonstrate that the average location error is below 0.13 mm and the maximum error is no more than 0.23 mm.

Originality/value
In this work, a workpiece location algorithm based on improved SSD is developed to extract the center point of the workpiece. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is beneficial for workpiece location. The proposed algorithm can be readily used in a variety of workpieces or adapted to other similar tasks.
Forecasting stock price movement: new evidence from a novel hybrid deep learning model
Authors: Zhao Yang , Chen Zhonglu 
Published: August 2021

PurposeThis study explores whether a new machine learning method can more accurately predict the movement of stock prices.Design/methodology/approachThis study presents a novel hybrid deep learning model, Residual-CNN-Seq2Seq (RCSNet), to predict the trend of stock price movement. RCSNet integrates the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, convolutional neural network (CNN) and the sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) long–short-term memory (LSTM) model.FindingsThe hybrid model is able to forecast both linear and non-linear time-series component of stock dataset. CNN and Seq2Seq LSTMs can be effectively combined for dynamic modeling of short- and long-term-dependent patterns in non-linear time series forecast. Experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms baseline models on S&P 500 index stock dataset from January 2000 to August 2016.Originality/valueThis study develops the RCSNet hybrid model to tackle the challenge by combining both linear and non-linear models. New evidence has been obtained in predicting the movement of stock market prices.
Cultural differences in gift recipients’ attitude and behavior toward disliked gifts
Authors: Pusaksrikit Theeranuch , Chinchanachokchai Sydney 
Published: August 2021

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of cultural differences and the types of relationship closeness involved in recipients’ emotional and behavioral reactions after receiving disliked gifts.

Design/methodology/approach
Collecting data from Thailand and the USA, two experiments were conducted in a 2 (self-construal: independent/interdependent) × 2 (relationship closeness: close/distant) between-subjects design. Study 1 explores the recipients’ feelings and reactions upon receipt of a disliked gift. Study 2 explores the disposition process for a disliked gift.

Findings
The results show that a recipient’s emotions, reaction and disposition process can be affected by cultural differences and relationship closeness: specifically that close and distant relationships moderate the relationship between self-construal and gift-receiving attitudes and behaviors.

Research limitations/implications
Future research can investigate representative groups from other countries to broaden the generalizability of the findings.

Practical implications
This understanding can guide gift-givers when selecting gifts for close or distant recipients across cultures. Additionally, it can help retailers develop and introduce new marketing strategies by applying self-construal as a marketing segmentation tool for gift purchase and disposition.

Originality/value
This research is among the first studies to offer insights into how individuals in different cultures manage disliked gifts they receive from people in either close or distant relationships.
Accuracy assessment and performance analysis of raster to vector conversions on LULC data – India
Authors: Auradkar Prafullata Kiran , Raykar Atharva , Agarwal Ishitha , Sitaram Dinkar , R. Manavalan 
Published: August 2021

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to convert real-world raster data into vector format and evaluate loss of accuracy in the conversion process. Open-source Geographic Information System (GIS) is used in this process and system resource utilizations were measured for conversion and accuracy analysis methods. Shape complexity attributes were analyzed in co-relation to the observed conversion errors.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper empirically evaluated the challenges and overheads involved in the format conversion algorithms available in open-source GIS with real-world land use and land cover (LULC) map data of India. Across the different LULC categories, geometric errors of varying density were observed in Quantum GIS (QGIS) algorithm. Area extents of original raster data were compared to the vector forms and the shape attributes such as average number of vertices and shape irregularity were evaluated to explore the possible correlation.

Findings
The results indicate that Geographic Resources Analysis Support System provides near error-free conversion algorithm. At the same time, the overall time taken for the conversion and the system resource utilizations were optimum as compared to the QGIS algorithm. Higher vector file sizes were generalized and accuracy loss was tested.

Research limitations/implications
Complete shape complexity analysis could not be achieved, as the weight factor for the irregularity of the shapes is to be varied based on the demography as well as on the LULC category.

Practical implications
Because of the higher system resource requirements of topological checker tool, positional accuracy checks for the converted objects could not be completed.

Originality/value
This paper addresses the need of accuracy analysis of real-world spatial data conversions from raster to vector format along with experimental setups challenges and impact of shape complexity.
Post-purchase behaviour from customer perceived value of mobile payment services
Authors: Hsiao Ming-Hsiung 
Published: August 2021

Purpose
Mobile payment (MP), near field communication-based particularly, has become one of the future payment tools. This study aims to indicate the difference between consumer users and non-users by examining the effect of MP users’ perceived value on their satisfaction and on MP non-users behavioural intention. Once those MP users’ have achieved satisfaction, the study then investig ates how consumers bring about the need recognition and are more desirable to buy more products.

Design/methodology/approach
This study develops a research model, which examines the effect of consumer perceived value, including utilitarian value, technicality and perceived risk, on MP users’ satisfaction and MP non-users behavioural intention. In methodology, it adopts structural equation modelling to verify the proposed research model for empirical studies. The data set consists of 161 MP users and 277 non-users of consumers.

Findings
The findings show that consumers, both MP users and non-users included, are encouraged to improve utilitarian value if they are favourable to adopt MP services. Relatively, female users emphasize more on perceived risk, whilst male users emphasize more on technicality. Moreover, MP non-users and female users still have much concern about perceived risk such that they are inclined to avoid adopting MP services.

Originality/value
Past research has examined the adoption of MP services from the perspective of consumers with a focus on the perceived value, satisfaction and behavioural intention. However, only limited research examined the post-purchase evaluation of MP users. The study fills this gap by clarifying the difference between consumer users and non-users in the effect of MP users’ perceived value on their satisfaction and on their non-users behavioural intention.
Who is a “Senior”? Looking for a definition in the healthcare system
Authors: Consolandi Monica 
Published: August 2021

Purpose
Seniors are nowadays at the core of important reflections to understand both how to ensure them a proper quality of life and better recognize their social role, providing them services and proper health care to value them as persons and resources. This paper aims to find a through definition about who is a senior, in the author’s opinion the starting point to help them flourishing.

Design/methodology/approach
As an example of definitions, an online dictionary and two geriatric text-books are quoted, highlighting qualities and rights referred to seniors especially in the delicate context of the health-care system.

Findings
The lack of a commonly shared perspective on this delicate kind of patient entails the difficulty to reach a coherent and satisfying definition about who a senior is.

Originality/value
The lack of a commonly shared definition leads to inevitable misunderstandings and could explain the arduousness of considering seniors in all their aspects. Further investigations are suggested.
Defence strategies in an online community of caregivers
Authors: Zummo Marianna Lya 
Published: August 2021

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand caregivers’ discursive constructions and responses to their unwanted (family and social) role as resulting in exchanges on social media. Online group platforms are understood as particularly suitable for the expression of intimate feelings among adults, for meeting and exhibiting stigma issues, and for the circulation of information and support (Suler, 2004; McCormack, 2010; Pounds et al., 2018).

Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws from digital Conversation Analysis (Giles et al., 2015), and considers data after combining quantitative (corpus analysis) and qualitative methods, from a critical discourse analysis perspective. The Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske et al., 2002) is used together with collocation analysis to understand categorisations, which ultimately result in a defence strategy (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017) to negotiate the Self and the Others (Tannen, 1992).

Findings
Considering that the digital environment allows a discursive negotiation of identities, data suggest that these interactions are expressions of membership construction, group solidarity and empowerment, that normalise and legitimise emotions with the ultimate goal of (self-)acceptance.

Originality/value
This study provides a basis for further research on caregivers’ self-positioning in power-relations with others.
Serum syndecan‐4 is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
Authors: Xia Shu Jing , Tang Li Zhong , Li Wen Hua , Xu Zhao Shan , Zhang Li Li , Cheng Feng Gan , Chen Hong Xia , Wang Zi Hua , Luo Yu Cheng , Dai An Na , Fan Jian Gao 
Published: August 2021

ObjectivesThe accelerated shedding of extracellular domains of syndecan‐4 (SDC4) is associated with central obesity and insulin resistance, while the association between serum SDC4 and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is unknown. We aimed to examine the association between SDC4 and NAFLD.MethodsAdults undergoing a health examination from 1 June 2019 to 31 December 2019 were enrolled. A diagnosis of NAFLD was made with an abdominal ultrasound. Logistic regression models and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the role of SDC4 in predicting NAFLD.ResultsIn total, 533 eligible participants were finally enrolled, among them 157 (29.46%) had NAFLD. The proportion of patients with NAFLD increased with the increasing quartiles of serum SDC4. With the increase of serum SDC4 levels, metabolic features including waist circumference, serum triglyceride, total cholesterol, fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance were significantly increased. SDC4 was an independent factor for NAFLD (odds ratio 1.963, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.628‐2.367, P < 0.001). The area under the ROC curve of SDC4 for predicting NAFLD was 0.934 (95% CI 0.910‐0.959). The optimal cut‐off value was 6.575 ng/mL at Youden's index of 0.767. SDC4 had the highest diagnostic sensitivity (84.1%), positive predictive value (82.5%), negative predictive value (93.3%) and positive likelihood ratio (11.356) among all the variables.ConclusionsElevated serum SDC4 level is associated with metabolic disorders and the prevalence of NAFLD among general population. Serum SDC4 may serve as a biomarker of NAFLD.
Behavioural Bias Benefits: Beating Benchmarks By Bundling Bouncy Baskets
Authors: Kashyap Ravi 
Published: August 2021

AbstractWe consider in detail an investment strategy, titled ‘the bounce basket’, designed for someone to express a bullish view on the market by allowing them to take long positions on securities that would benefit the most from a rally in the markets. We demonstrate the use of quantitative metrics and large amounts of historical data towards decision‐making goals. This investment concept combines macroeconomic views with characteristics of individual securities to beat the market returns. The central idea of this theme is to identity securities from a regional perspective that are heavily shorted and yet are fundamentally sound with at least a minimum buy rating from a consensus of stock analysts covering the securities. We discuss the components of creating such a strategy including the mechanics of constructing the portfolio. Using simulations, in which securities lending data is modelled as geometric Brownian motions, we provide a few flavors of creating a ranking of securities to identity the ones that are heavily shorted. An investment strategy of this kind will be ideal in market scenarios when a downturn happens due to unexpected extreme events and the markets are anticipated to bounce back thereafter. This situation is especially applicable to incidents being observed, and relevant proceedings, during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020–2021. This strategy is one particular way to overcome a potential behavioural bias related to investing, which we term the ‘rebound effect’.