bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A novel method to assess data quality in large medical registries and databases
Authors: Perren Andreas , Cerutti Bernard , Kaufmann Mark , Rothen Hans Ulrich ,   Swiss Society of Intensive Care Medicine
Published: December 2018

Abstract

Background
There is no gold standard to assess data quality in large medical registries. Data auditing may be impeded by data protection regulations.

Objective
To explore the applicability and usefulness of funnel plots as a novel tool for data quality control in critical care registries.

Method
The Swiss ICU-Registry from all 77 certified adult Swiss ICUs (2014 and 2015) was subjected to quality assessment (completeness/accuracy). For the analysis of accuracy, a list of logical rules and cross-checks was developed. Type and number of errors (true coding errors or implausible data) were calculated for each ICU, along with noticeable error rates (>mean + 3 SD in the variable’s summary measure, or >99.8% CI in the respective funnel-plot).

Results
We investigated 164 415 patient records with 31 items each (37 items: trauma diagnosis). Data completeness was excellent; trauma was the only incomplete item in 1495 of 9871 records (0.1%, 0.0%–0.6% [median, IQR]). In 15 572 patients records (9.5%), we found 3121 coding errors and 31 265 implausible situations; the latter primarily due to non-specific information on patients’ provenance/diagnosis or supposed incoherence between diagnosis and treatments. Together, the error rate was 7.6% (5.9%–11%; median, IQR).

Conclusions
The Swiss ICU-Registry is almost complete and data quality seems to be adequate. We propose funnel plots as suitable, easy to implement instrument to assist in quality assurance of such a registry. Based on our analysis, specific feedback to ICUs with special-cause variation is possible and may promote such ICUs to improve the quality of their data.
Just the Tip: Resection of a Narcotic Catheter-Tip Granuloma: 2-Dimensional Operative Video
Authors: Gernsback Joanna Elizabeth , Kolcun John Paul G , Manzano Glen 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
The catheter tip “granuloma” is a rare inflammatory mass that forms in about 3% of patients with an intradural catheter, most commonly from a morphine pump. It has also been seen with other narcotic pumps, narcotic-non-narcotic combinations, and baclofen pumps. Mass formation is associated with increased opioid dose and concentration. It typically presents with increasing pain requiring increasing doses of medication, with minimal improvement, although it may present with neurologic deficits or be asymptomatic. On MRI, it appears as a round, rim-enhancing lesion that is low intensity with a hypointense rim on both T1 and T2. In the absence of neurologic deficits, there are many treatment options, ranging from a temporary stopping of the pump to catheter replacement. When the lesion presents with neurologic deficits, surgical intervention, beyond catheter replacement or repositioning, is indicated. A laminectomy is performed, with intradural exploration and careful resection of the mass, which is likely adherent to the spinal cord. Postoperative worsening of symptoms is common due to the mass being densely adherent to the spinal cord, requiring spinal cord manipulation. This worsening is usually temporary, and many patients make excellent recoveries. We present a case of a hydromorphone pump inflammatory mass, which initially presented with increasing pain, then progressive neurologic deficits, requiring referral and mass resection. We achieved only a partial resection due to the lesion's adherent nature. This surgical video demonstrates our intradural technique for resection of this rare and technically difficult mass, with 6-mo patient follow-up. The patient has consented to this case report.
Contested Meanings of Equality
Authors: Moran Rachel F. 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Many people take for granted that the antidiscrimination principle and an equality norm are one and the same. In fact, there are significant differences that should not be overlooked. Education law offers unique insights into the distinctions because school desegregation cases both concretized demands to be free of discrimination and cultivated aspirations to be equal. In the years since 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that racially separate schools are inherently unequal in Brown v. Board of Education, the antidiscrimination principle has evolved into a requirement that the government be colorblind; that is, public officials must refrain from all consideration of race in their decision-making. A colorblindness requirement can have perverse consequences for equality. Most notably, local school districts today cannot weigh race in making student assignments to promote voluntary integration. Faced with constraints like these, reformers have sought to capitalize on an antidiscrimination principle without sacrificing their goals for equality. For example, federal civil rights statutes designed to protect children with disabilities and English language learners mandate meaningful access to the curriculum as well as protection from discrimination. In school finance litigation, advocates have moved even further away from an antidiscrimination focus. They have demanded recognition of a right to education, an interest that acknowledges every child’s right to flourish. New strategies that push beyond the antidiscrimination principle to promote equal educational opportunity have not been uniformly successful, but they can deepen our understanding of a fair and inclusive educational system.
Business Organization in American Economic History
Authors: Hilt Eric 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
This chapter presents a history of the organization of American enterprise, from the first corporations to the emergence of large, vertically integrated conglomerates. It begins with a discussion of the monopolistic privileges of early corporations, and efforts to reform the process by which corporations were created. It then presents a discussion of the alternative organizational forms that became available to entrepreneurs. Finally, it analyzes the rise of “big business” in the late nineteenth century, and the legal and institutional context within which those enterprises began to emerge. The discussion of each is focused on the changing nature of the problems faced by entrepreneurs, and the changing legal and institutional environment in which they operated. Among the topics discussed are the evolution of corporation law, the choice of organizational form, recurring problems in corporate governance, the role of financiers in corporate governance, and the emergence of pyramidal holding company structures.
Lying and Certainty
Authors: Marsili Neri 
Published: December 2018

AbstractIn the philosophical literature on the definition of lying, the analysis is generally restricted to cases of flat-out belief. This chapter considers lies involving partial beliefs (beliefs ranging from mere uncertainty to absolute certainty). The first section analyses graded-belief lies: lies uttered while holding a graded belief in the falsity of the assertion. A revised insincerity condition is introduced to deal with these cases, requiring that the liar believes the assertion to be more likely to be false than true. The second section analyses assertions that express graded beliefs, exploring how epistemic modals affect the insincerity conditions of a given utterance. The last section considers the case of lies that attack certainty (knowledge lies), understood as attempts to alter the hearer’s graded beliefs.
Is Anopheles gambiae a natural host of Wolbachia?
Authors: Chrostek Ewa , Gerth Michael 
Published: December 2018

AbstractWolbachia (Alphaproteobacteria, Rickettsiales) is an intraovarially-transmitted symbiont of insects able to exert striking phenotypes, including reproductive manipulations and pathogen blocking. These phenotypes make Wolbachia a promising tool to combat mosquito-borne diseases. Although Wolbachia is present in the majority of terrestrial arthropods, including many disease vectors, it was considered absent from Anopheles gambiae mosquitos, the main vectors of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, Wolbachia sequences were detected in A. gambiae samples collected in Burkina Faso. Subsequently, similar evidence came from collections all over Africa, revealing a high Wolbachia 16S sequence diversity, low abundance, and a lack of congruence between host and symbiont phylogenies. Here, we reanalyze and discuss recent evidence on the presence of Wolbachia sequences in A. gambiae. We find that although detected at increasing frequencies, the unusual properties of these Wolbachia sequences render them insufficient to diagnose natural infections in A. gambiae. Future studies should focus on uncovering the origin of Wolbachia sequence variants in Anopheles and seeking sequence-independent evidence for this new symbiosis. Understanding the ecology of Anopheles mosquitos and their interactions with Wolbachia will be key in designing successful, integrative approaches to limit malaria spread. Although the prospect of using Wolbachia to fight malaria is intriguing, the newly discovered strains do not bring it closer to realization.SignificanceAnopheles gambiae mosquitos are the main vectors of malaria, threatening around half of the world’s population. The bacterial symbiont Wolbachia can interfere with disease transmission by other important insect vectors, but until recently it was thought to be absent from natural A. gambiae populations. Here, we critically analyze the genomic, metagenomic, PCR, imaging and phenotypic data presented in support of the presence of natural Wolbachia infections in A. gambiae. We find that they are insufficient to diagnose Wolbachia infections and argue for the need of obtaining robust data confirming basic Wolbachia characteristics in this system. Determining Wolbachia infection status of Anopheles is critical due to its potential to influence Anopheles population structure and Plasmodium transmission.
CaptureSeq: Hybridization-based enrichment of cpn60 gene fragments reveals the community structures of synthetic and natural microbial ecosystems
Authors: Links Matthew G. , Dumonceaux Tim J. , McCarthy Luke , Hemmingsen Sean M. , Topp Edward , Town Jennifer R. 
Published: December 2018

AbstractBackgroundMolecular profiling of complex microbial communities has become the basis for examining the relationship between the microbiome composition, structure and metabolic functions of those communities. Microbial community structure can be partially assessed with universal PCR targeting taxonomic or functional gene markers. Increasingly, shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing is providing more quantitative insight into microbiomes. However, both amplicon-based and shotgun sequencing approaches have shortcomings that limit the ability to study microbiome dynamics.MethodsWe present a novel, amplicon-free, hybridization-based method (CaptureSeq) for profiling complex microbial communities using probes based on the chaperonin-60 gene. Molecular profiles of a commercially available synthetic microbial community standard were compared using CaptureSeq, whole metagenome sequencing, and 16S universal target amplification. Profiles were also generated for natural ecosystems including antibiotic-amended soils, manure storage tanks, and an agricultural reservoir.ResultsThe CaptureSeq method generated a microbial profile that encompassed all of the bacteria and eukaryotes in the panel with greater reproducibility and more accurate representation of high G/C content microorganisms compared to 16S amplification. In the natural ecosystems, CaptureSeq provided a much greater depth of coverage and sensitivity of detection compared to shotgun sequencing without prior selection. The resulting community profiles provided quantitatively reliable information about all three Domains of life (Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya) in the different ecosystems. The applications of CaptureSeq will facilitate accurate studies of host-microbiome interactions for environmental, crop, animal and human health.
Low acetylcholine during early sleep is important for motor memory consolidation
Authors: Inayat Samsoon , Qandeel  , Nazariahangarkolaee Mojtaba , Singh Surjeet , McNaughton Bruce L. , Whishaw Ian Q. , Mohajerani Majid H. 
Published: December 2018

AbstractThe synaptic homeostasis theory of sleep proposes that low neurotransmitter activity in sleep is optimal for memory consolidation. We tested this theory by asking whether increasing acetylcholine levels during early sleep would disrupt motor memory consolidation. We trained separate groups of adult mice on the rotarod walking and skilled reaching for food tasks, and after training, administered physostigmine, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, to increase cholinergic tone in subsequent sleep. Post-sleep testing suggested that physostigmine impaired motor skill acquisition. Home-cage video monitoring and electrophysiology revealed that physostigmine disrupted sleep structure, delayed non-rapid-eye-movement sleep onset, and reduced slow-wave power in the hippocampus and cortex. The impaired motor performance with physostigmine, however, was not solely due to its effects on sleep structure, as one hour of sleep deprivation after training did not impair rotarod performance. A reduction in cholinergic tone by inactivation of cholinergic neurons during early sleep also affected rotarod performance. Administration of agonists and antagonists of muscarinic and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors revealed that activation of muscarinic receptors during early sleep impaired rotarod performance. The experiments suggest that the increased slow wave activity and inactivation of muscarinic receptors during early sleep due to reduced acetylcholine contribute to motor memory consolidation.
CHANging Consciousness Epistemically (CHANCE): An empirical method to convert the subjective content of consciousness into scientific data
Authors: Tanaka Daisuke H. , Tanabe Tsutomu 
Published: December 2018

AbstractThe content of consciousness (cC) constitutes an essential part of human life and is at the very heart of the hard problem of consciousness. The cC of a person (e.g., study participant) has been examined indirectly by evaluating the person’s behavioral reports, bodily signs, or neural signals. However, the measures do not reflect the full spectrum of the person’s cC. In this paper, we define a method, called “CHANging Consciousness Epistemically” (CHANCE), to consciously experience a cC that would be identical to that experienced by another person, and thus directly know the entire spectrum of the other’s cC. In addition, the ontologically subjective knowledge about a person’s cC may be considered epistemically objective and scientific data. The CHANCE method comprises two empirical steps: (1) identifying the minimally sufficient, content-specific neural correlates of consciousness (mscNCC) and (2) reproducing a specific mscNCC in different brains.
Separate Compartments for Chromosome Entrapment and DNA Binding during SMC translocation
Authors: Nunez Roberto Vazquez , Avila Laura B. Ruiz , Gruber Stephan 
Published: December 2018

SummaryMulti-subunit SMC ATPase complexes translocate on chromosomal DNA. They control chromosome structure and DNA topology, presumably by acting as DNA extrusion motors. The SMC-kleisin ring entraps chromosomal DNA. The ring lumen is strongly reduced in size by alignment of the SMC arms and upon ATP binding is divided in two by engagement of SMC head domains. Here, we provide evidence for DNA binding in the SMC compartment and chromosome entrapment in the Kleisin compartment of B. subtilis Smc/ScpAB. We show that DNA binding at the Smc hinge is dispensable and identify an essential DNA binding site at engaged heads which faces the S compartment. Mutations interfering with DNA binding do not prevent ATP hydrolysis but block DNA translocation by Smc/ScpAB. Our findings are consistent with the notion that Smc/DNA contacts stabilize looped DNA segments in the S compartment, while the base of a chromosomal DNA loop is enclosed in the K compartment. Transfer of DNA double helices between S and K compartments may support DNA translocation.
Predicting phenotype using morphological cell responses to nanotopography
Authors: Cutiongco Marie F.A. , Jensen Bjørn S. , Reynolds Paul M. , Gadegaard Nikolaj 
Published: December 2018

AbstractCells respond in complex ways to topographies, making it challenging to identify a direct relationship between surface topography and cell response. A key problem is the lack of informative representations of topographical parameters that translate directly into biological properties. Here, we present a platform to relate the effects of nanotopography on morphology to function. This platform utilizes the ‘morphome’, a multivariate dataset containing single cell measures of focal adhesions, the cytoskeleton, and chromatin. We demonstrate that nanotopography-induced changes in cell phenotype are uniquely encoded by the morphome. The morphome was used to create a Bayesian linear regression model that robustly predicted changes in bone, cartilage, muscle and fibrous tissue gene expression induced by nanotopography. Furthermore, the morphome effectively predicted nanotopography-induced phenotype within a complex co-culture microenvironment. Thus, the morphome enables the cell function-oriented exploration of new topographies, with potential applications in the development of novel surface-patterned biomaterials for tissue implants.
An integrated model of population genetics and community ecology
Authors: Overcast Isaac , Emerson Brent C. , Hickerson Michael J. 
Published: December 2018

AbstractAimQuantifying abundance distributions is critical for understanding both how communities assemble, and how community structure varies through time and space, yet estimating abundances requires considerable investment in field work. Community-level population genetic data potentially offer a powerful way to indirectly infer richness, abundance, and the history of accumulation of biodiversity within a community. Here we introduce a joint model linking neutral community assembly and comparative phylogeography to generate both community-level richness, abundance and genetic variation under a neutral model, capturing both equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics.LocationGlobal.MethodsOur model combines a forward-time individual-based community assembly process with a rescaled backward-time neutral coalescent model of multi-taxa population genetics. We explore general dynamics of genetic and abundance-based summary statistics and use approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) to estimate parameters underlying the model of island community assembly. Finally, we demonstrate two applications of the model using community-scale mtDNA sequence data and densely sampled abundances of an arachnid community on La Réunion. First, we use genetic data alone to estimate a summary of the abundance distribution, ground-truthing this against the observed abundances. Then we jointly use the observed genetic data and abundances to estimate the proximity of the community to equilibrium.ResultsSimulation experiments of our ABC procedure demonstrate that coupling abundance with genetic data leads to improved accuracy and precision of model parameter estimates compared with using abundance-only data. We further demonstrate reasonable precision and accuracy in estimating a metric underlying the shape of the abundance distribution, temporal progress toward local equilibrium, and several key parameters of the community assembly process. For the insular arachnid assemblage, we find the joint distribution of genetic diversity and abundance approaches equilibrium expectations, and that the Shannon entropy of the observed abundances can be estimated using genetic data alone.Main ConclusionsThe framework that we present unifies neutral community assembly and comparative phylogeography to characterize the community-level distribution of both abundance and genetic variation through time, providing a resource that should greatly enhance understanding of both the processes structuring ecological communities and the associated aggregate demographic histories.
Comparison of the DCF and German income approach
Authors: Reinert Jan 
Published: December 2018

Purpose
The majority of institutional investors in Germany use the German income approach (GIA) while investors abroad prefer the discounted cash flow (DCF). The debate around the two methods has been largely theoretical, lacking large-scale empirical evidence. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Design/methodology/approach
The analysis consisted of a performance comparison and hedonic regressions based on ordinary least squares. Fitted GIA and DCF values were obtained for all observations in the data set in order to eliminate distortions caused by different property characteristics in the two valuation sub-samples.

Findings
The research hypothesis, stating that the two methods result in statistically identical estimations of value, was rejected. The performance analysis showed that GIA valuations displayed smoother total return performance due to less volatile capital growth in comparison to DCF valuations. Comparing the fitted values obtained from the regressions showed that GIA valuations were on average lower than their DCF counterparts. The difference was small and both methods resulted in very similar fitted values. The difference between fitted values was not constant over time and decreased toward the end of the analysis period.

Practical implications
The research adds empirical arguments to the ongoing debate between GIA and DCF valuations. So far empirical proof has been scarce or one-sided.

Originality/value
This analysis is the first large-scale empirical comparison of the DCF and the GIA within the same market.
Pay Dispersion and Executive Behaviour: Evidence from Innovation
Authors: Amore Mario Daniele , Failla Virgilio 
Published: December 2018

AbstractCompensation packages are widely used to motivate top executives. Pay dispersion among a firm's executives, however, can be associated with the antithetic effects of social comparison and individual motivation, with unclear implications for the company. We focus on innovation activities, which represent an important channel through which pay dispersion can affect firm performance, and test our predictions by exploring innovative output as a function of executives’ pay dispersion in a panel of US firms. We find that executive pay dispersion acts as a double‐edged sword. On the one hand, the higher the dispersion in variable pay, the higher the innovation. On the other hand, the larger the dispersion in fixed pay, the lower the innovation. Results are robust to a number of tests, such as restricting the analysis to executives with direct responsibility for innovation projects and considering individual incentives in the form of cash pay.