bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Brain MRI in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia patients with newly developed neurological manifestations suggestive of brain involvement
Authors: Alonazi Batil , Farghaly Ahmed M. , Mostafa Mohamed A. , Al-Watban Jehad A. , Zindani Salah A. , Altaimi Feras , Fagiry Moram A. , Mahmoud Mustafa Z. 
Published: October 2021

AbstractThe increased frequency of neurological manifestations, including central nervous system (CNS) manifestations, in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is consistent with the virus's neurotropic nature. In most patients, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a sensitive imaging modality in the diagnosis of viral encephalitides in the brain. The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of brain lesion patterns on brain MRI in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia patients who developed focal and non-focal neurological manifestations. In addition, it will compare the impact of the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) as an index of deteriorating cerebral function on positive brain MRIs in both neurological manifestations. This retrospective study included an examination of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia patients with real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) confirmation, admitted with clinicoradiologic evidence of COVID-19 pneumonia, and who were candidates for brain MRI due to neurological manifestations suggesting brain involvement. Brain imaging acquired on a 3.0 T MRI system (Skyra; Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) with a 20-channel receive head coil. Brain MRI revealed lesions in 38 (82.6%) of the total 46 patients for analysis and was negative in the remaining eight (17.4%) of all finally enclosed patients with RT-PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. Twenty-nine (63%) patients had focal neurological manifestations, while the remaining 17 (37%) patients had non-focal neurological manifestations. The patients had a highly significant difference (p = 0.0006) in GCS, but no significant difference (p = 0.4) in the number of comorbidities they had. Brain MRI is a feasible and important imaging modality in patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia who develop neurological manifestations suggestive of brain involvement, particularly in patients with non-focal manifestations and a decline in GCS.
Relationship between stereopsis and vision-related quality of life following intravitreal ranibizumab injections for central retinal vein occlusion
Authors: Okamoto Fumiki , Tomioka Mizuki , Murakami Tomoya , Morikawa Shohei , Sugiura Yoshimi , Hiraoka Takahiro , Oshika Tetsuro 
Published: October 2021

AbstractThe study aimed to evaluate changes in stereopsis and vision-related quality of life (VR-QOL) in patients with central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) following intravitreal ranibizumab injection (IVR) and investigate the relationship between stereopsis and VR-QOL. This study included 23 treatment-naïve patients with non-ischemic CRVO and 13 age-matched normal controls. Stereopsis, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), VR-QOL, and retinal microstructures were examined pre-treatment and 12 months post-treatment. The Titmus Stereo Test (TST) and TNO stereotest (TNO) were used to evaluate stereopsis. VR-QOL was evaluated using the 25-item National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (VFQ-25). IVR immediately and significantly improved the TST values, TNO values, composite VFQ-25 score, BCVA, and central foveal thickness in patients with CRVO. The 12-month post-treatment TST and TNO values were significantly worse in the CRVO group compared to those in the normal group. At the baseline, the composite VFQ-25 score significantly correlated only with the TST value. Multivariate analysis revealed significant associations between the 12-month post-treatment composite VFQ-25 score and the baseline and 12-month post-treatment TNO values. In conclusion, IVR immediately improved stereopsis in CRVO, albeit below normal levels. Stereopsis (not visual acuity) was associated with pre- and post-treatment VR-QOL in patients with CRVO.
Coral-like silicone nanofilament coatings with extremely low ice adhesion
Authors: Bottone Davide , Donadei Valentina , Niemelä Henna , Koivuluoto Heli , Seeger Stefan 
Published: October 2021

AbstractPassive icephobic surfaces can provide a cost and energy efficient solution to many icing problems that are currently handled with expensive active strategies. Water-repellent surface treatments are promising candidates for this goal, but commonly studied systems, such as superhydrophobic surfaces and Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS), still face challenges in the stability and durability of their properties in icing environments. In this work, environmental icing conditions are simulated using an Icing Wind Tunnel, and ice adhesion is evaluated with a Centrifugal Adhesion Test. We show that superhydrophobic coral-like Silicone Nanofilament (SNF) coatings exhibit extremely low ice adhesion, to the point of spontaneous ice detachment, and good durability against successive icing cycles. Moreover, SNFs-based SLIPS show stably low ice adhesion for the whole duration of the icing test. Stability of surface properties in a cold environment is further investigated with water wettability at sub-zero surface temperature, highlighting the effect of surface chemistry on superhydrophobicity under icing conditions.
Thermally activated intermittent dynamics of creeping crack fronts along disordered interfaces
Authors: Vincent-Dospital Tom , Cochard Alain , Santucci Stéphane , Måløy Knut Jørgen , Toussaint Renaud 
Published: October 2021

AbstractWe present a subcritical fracture growth model, coupled with the elastic redistribution of the acting mechanical stress along rugous rupture fronts. We show the ability of this model to quantitatively reproduce the intermittent dynamics of cracks propagating along weak disordered interfaces. To this end, we assume that the fracture energy of such interfaces (in the sense of a critical energy release rate) follows a spatially correlated normal distribution. We compare various statistical features from the obtained fracture dynamics to that from cracks propagating in sintered polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) interfaces. In previous works, it has been demonstrated that such an approach could reproduce the mean advance of fractures and their local front velocity distribution. Here, we go further by showing that the proposed model also quantitatively accounts for the complex self-affine scaling morphology of crack fronts and their temporal evolution, for the spatial and temporal correlations of the local velocity fields and for the avalanches size distribution of the intermittent growth dynamics. We thus provide new evidence that an Arrhenius-like subcritical growth is particularly suitable for the description of creeping cracks.
Elevated wildlife-vehicle collision rates during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Abraham Joel O. , Mumma Matthew A. 
Published: October 2021

AbstractWildlife-vehicle collisions threaten both humans and wildlife, but we still lack information about the relationship between traffic volume and wildlife-vehicle collisions. The COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to investigate the effects of traffic volume on wildlife-vehicle collisions in the United States. We observed decreased traffic nationwide, particularly in densely populated states with low or high disease burdens. Despite reduced traffic, total collisions were unchanged; wildlife-vehicle collisions did decline at the start of the pandemic, but increased as the pandemic progressed, ultimately exceeding collisions in the previous year. As a result, nationwide collision rates were higher during the pandemic. We suggest that increased wildlife road use offsets the effects of decreased traffic volume on wildlife-vehicle collisions. Thus, decreased traffic volume will not always reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions.
Global gene expression analysis of systemic sclerosis myofibroblasts demonstrates a marked increase in the expression of multiple NBPF genes
Authors: Abignano Giuseppina , Hermes Heidi , Piera-Velazquez Sonsoles , Addya Sankar , Del Galdo Francesco , Jimenez Sergio A. 
Published: October 2021

AbstractMyofibroblasts are the key effector cells responsible for the exaggerated tissue fibrosis in Systemic Sclerosis (SSc). Despite their importance to SSc pathogenesis, the specific transcriptome of SSc myofibroblasts has not been described. The purpose of this study was to identify transcriptome differences between SSc myofibroblasts and non-myofibroblastic cells. Alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) expressing myofibroblasts and α-SMA negative cells were isolated employing laser capture microdissection from dermal cell cultures from four patients with diffuse SSc of recent onset. Total mRNA was extracted from both cell populations, amplified and analyzed employing microarrays. Results for specific genes were validated by Western blots and by immunohistochemistry. Transcriptome analysis revealed 97 differentially expressed transcripts in SSc myofibroblasts compared with non-myofibroblasts. Annotation clustering of the SSc myofibroblast-specific transcripts failed to show a TGF-β signature. The most represented transcripts corresponded to several different genes from the Neuroblastoma Breakpoint Family (NBPF) of genes. NBPF genes are highly expanded in humans but are not present in murine or rat genomes. In vitro studies employing cultured SSc dermal fibroblasts and immunohistochemistry of affected SSc skin confirmed increased NBPF expression in SSc. These results indicate that SSc myofibroblasts represent a unique cell lineage expressing a specific transcriptome that includes very high levels of transcripts corresponding to numerous NBPF genes. Elevated expression of NBPF genes in SSc myofibroblasts suggests that NBPF gene products may play a role in SSc pathogenesis and may represent a novel therapeutic target.
The flowering of Atlantic Forest Pleroma trees
Authors: Wagner Fabien H. 
Published: October 2021

AbstractMapping the spatial distribution of a plant is a current challenge in ecology. Here, a convolutional neural network (CNN) and 33,798 Sentinel-2 satellite images were used to detect and map forest stands dominated by trees of the genusPleromaby their magenta-to-deep-purple blossoms in the entire Brazilian Atlantic Forest domain, from June 2016 to July 2020. ThePleromagenus, known for its pioneer behaviour, was detected in an area representing 10.8% of the Atlantic Forest, associated negatively with temperature and positively with elevation, slope, tree cover and precipitation. The detection of another genus by the model, 18% of all the detections contained only pink bloomingHandroanthustrees, highlighted that botanical identification from space must be taken with caution, particularly outside the known distribution range of the species. ThePleromablossom seasonality occurred over a period of ~5–6 months centered on the March equinox and populations with distinct blossom timings were found. Our results indicate that in the Atlantic Forest, the remaining natural forest is less diverse than expected but is at least recovering from degradation. Our study suggests a method to produce ecological-domain scale maps of tree genera and species based on their blossoms that could be used for tree studies and biodiversity assessments.
Effects of government policies on the spread of COVID-19 worldwide
Authors: Chung Hye Won , Apio Catherine , Goo Taewan , Heo Gyujin , Han Kyulhee , Kim Taehyun , Kim Hakyong , Ko Yeonghyeon , Lee Doeun , Lim Jisun , Lee Seungyeoun , Park Taesung 
Published: October 2021

AbstractThe outbreak of novel COVID-19 disease elicited a wide range of anti-contagion and economic policies like school closure, income support, contact tracing, and so forth, in the mitigation and suppression of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, a systematic evaluation of these policies has not been made. Here, 17 implemented policies from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker dataset employed in 90 countries from December 31, 2019, to August 31, 2020, were analyzed. A Poisson regression model was applied to analyze the relationship between policies and daily confirmed cases using a generalized estimating equations approach. A lag is a fixed time displacement in time series data. With that, lagging (0, 3, 7, 10, and 14 days) was also considered during the analysis since the effects of policies implemented on a given day may affect the number of confirmed cases several days after implementation. The countries were divided into three groups depending on the number of waves of the pandemic observed in each country. Through subgroup analysis, we showed that with and without lagging, contact tracing and containment policies were significant for countries with two waves, while closing, economic, and health policies were significant for countries with three waves. Wave-specific analysis for each wave showed that significant health, economic, and containment policies varied across waves of the pandemic. Emergency investment in healthcare was consistently significant among the three groups of countries, while the Stringency index was significant among all waves of the pandemic. These findings may help in making informed decisions regarding whether, which, or when these policies should be intensified or lifted.
Interindividual differences in environmentally relevant positive trait affect impacts sustainable behavior in everyday life
Authors: Doell Kimberly C. , Conte Beatrice , Brosch Tobias 
Published: October 2021

AbstractEmotions are powerful drivers of human behavior that may make people aware of the urgency to act to mitigate climate change and provide a motivational basis to engage in sustainable action. However, attempts to leverage emotions via climate communications have yielded unsatisfactory results, with many interventions failing to produce the desired behaviors. It is important to understand the underlying affective mechanisms when designing communications, rather than treating emotions as simple behavioral levers that directly impact behavior. Across two field experiments, we show that individual predispositions to experience positive emotions in an environmental context (trait affect) predict pro-environmental actions and corresponding shifts in affective states (towards personal as well as witnessed pro-environmental actions). Moreover, trait affect predicts the individual behavioral impact of positively valenced emotion-based intervention strategies from environmental messages. These findings have important implications for the targeted design of affect-based interventions aiming to promote sustainable behavior and may be of interest within other domains that utilize similar intervention strategies (e.g., within the health domain).
Influence of PICALM and CLU risk variants on beta EEG activity in Alzheimer’s disease patients
Authors: Maturana-Candelas Aarón , Gómez Carlos , Poza Jesús , Rodríguez-González Víctor , Pablo Vìctor Gutiérrez-de , Lopes Alexandra M. , Pinto Nadia , Hornero Roberto 
Published: October 2021

AbstractPICALMandCLUgenes have been linked to alterations in brain biochemical processes that may have an impact on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) development and neurophysiological dynamics. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and thePICALMandCLUalleles described as conferring risk or protective effects on AD patients and healthy controls. For this purpose, EEG activity was acquired from: 18 AD patients and 12 controls carrying risk alleles of bothPICALMandCLUgenes, and 35 AD patients and 12 controls carrying both protective alleles. Relative power (RP) in the conventional EEG frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) was computed to quantify the brain activity at source level. In addition, spatial entropy (SE) was calculated in each band to characterize the regional distribution of the RP values throughout the brain. Statistically significant differences in global RP and SE at beta band (p-values < 0.05, Mann–WhitneyU-test) were found between genotypes in the AD group. Furthermore, RP showed statistically significant differences in 58 cortical regions out of the 68 analyzed in AD. No statistically significant differences were found in the control group at any frequency band. Our results suggest thatPICALMandCLUAD-inducing genotypes are involved in physiological processes related to disruption in beta power, which may be associated with physiological disturbances such as alterations in beta-amyloid and neurotransmitter metabolism.
A trajectory-based loss function to learn missing terms in bifurcating dynamical systems
Authors: Vortmeyer-Kley Rahel , Nieters Pascal , Pipa Gordon 
Published: October 2021

AbstractMissing terms in dynamical systems are a challenging problem for modeling. Recent developments in the combination of machine learning and dynamical system theory open possibilities for a solution. We show how physics-informed differential equations and machine learning—combined in the Universal Differential Equation (UDE) framework by Rackauckas et al.—can be modified to discover missing terms in systems that undergo sudden fundamental changes in their dynamical behavior called bifurcations. With this we enable the application of the UDE approach to a wider class of problems which are common in many real world applications. The choice of the loss function, which compares the training data trajectory in state space and the current estimated solution trajectory of the UDE to optimize the solution, plays a crucial role within this approach. The Mean Square Error as loss function contains the risk of a reconstruction which completely misses the dynamical behavior of the training data. By contrast, our suggested trajectory-based loss function which optimizes two largely independent components, the length and angle of state space vectors of the training data, performs reliable well in examples of systems from neuroscience, chemistry and biology showing Saddle-Node, Pitchfork, Hopf and Period-doubling bifurcations.
Immunodominant linear B cell epitopes in the spike and membrane proteins of SARS-CoV-2 identified by immunoinformatics prediction and immunoassay
Authors: Polyiam Kanokporn , Phoolcharoen Waranyoo , Butkhot Namphueng , Srisaowakarn Chanya , Thitithanyanont Arunee , Auewarakul Prasert , Hoonsuwan Tawatchai , Ruengjitchatchawalya Marasri , Mekvichitsaeng Phenjun , Roshorm Yaowaluck Maprang 
Published: October 2021

AbstractSARS-CoV-2 continues to infect an ever-expanding number of people, resulting in an increase in the number of deaths globally. With the emergence of new variants, there is a corresponding decrease in the currently available vaccine efficacy, highlighting the need for greater insights into the viral epitope profile for both vaccine design and assessment. In this study, three immunodominant linear B cell epitopes in the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) were identified by immunoinformatics prediction, and confirmed by ELISA with sera from Macaca fascicularis vaccinated with a SARS-CoV-2 RBD subunit vaccine. Further immunoinformatics analyses of these three epitopes gave rise to a method of linear B cell epitope prediction and selection. B cell epitopes in the spike (S), membrane (M), and envelope (E) proteins were subsequently predicted and confirmed using convalescent sera from COVID-19 infected patients. Immunodominant epitopes were identified in three regions of the S2 domain, one region at the S1/S2 cleavage site and one region at the C-terminus of the M protein. Epitope mapping revealed that most of the amino acid changes found in variants of concern are located within B cell epitopes in the NTD, RBD, and S1/S2 cleavage site. This work provides insights into B cell epitopes of SARS-CoV-2 as well as immunoinformatics methods for B cell epitope prediction, which will improve and enhance SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development against emergent variants.
Near and long-term perspectives on strategies to decarbonize China’s heavy-duty trucks through 2050
Authors: Khanna Nina , Lu Hongyou , Fridley David , Zhou Nan 
Published: October 2021

AbstractChina needs to drastically reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from heavy-duty trucks (HDTs), a key emitter in the growing transport sector, in order to address energy security concerns and meet its climate targets. We address existing research gaps by modeling feasibility, applicability, and energy and emissions impacts of multiple decarbonization strategies at different points in time. China still relies heavily on coal power, so impacts of new HDT technologies depend on the timing of their introduction relative to progress toward non-fossil power. We use a bottom-up model to simulate HDT energy consumption and CO2 emissions through 2050. Results show that beginning to deploy battery electric and fuel-cell HDTs as early as 2020 and 2035, respectively, could achieve significant and the largest CO2 emissions reduction by 2050 with a decarbonized power sector. However, viable near-term strategies—improving efficiency and logistics, switching to liquefied natural gas—could halve HDTs’ current diesel consumption and CO2 emissions by 2050. Our results underscore the need for a mix of near- and long-term policy and technology options to decarbonize China’s HDTs.
The West Pacific Gradient tracks ENSO and zonal Pacific sea surface temperature gradient during the last Millennium
Authors: Zinke J. , Browning S. A. , Hoell A. , Goodwin I. D. 
Published: October 2021

AbstractSmall changes in Pacific temperature gradients connected with the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influence the Walker Circulation and are related to global climate anomalies. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to develop robust indices of their past behavior. Here, we reconstruct the difference in sea surface temperature between the west and central Pacific during ENSO, coined the West Pacific Gradient (WPG), based on the Last Millennium Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation. We show that the WPG tracks ENSO variability and strongly co-varies with the zonal gradient in Pacific sea surface temperature. We demonstrate that the WPG strength is related to significant atmospheric circulation and precipitation anomalies during historical El Niño and La Niña events by magnifying or weakening droughts and pluvials across the Indo-Pacific. We show that an extreme negative WPG coupled to a strong zonal Pacific temperature gradient is associated with enhanced megadroughts in North America between 1400 CE and the late sixteenth century. The twentieth century stands out in showing the most extreme swings between positive and negative WPG conditions over the past Millennium. We conclude that the WPG is a robust index together with ENSO indices to reveal past changes in Pacific zonal sea surface temperature gradient variability.