bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The “New” Virtual Consumer: Exploring the Experiences of New Users
Authors: Wetsch Lyle R 
Published: August 2018

The development of virtual worlds began long before the invention of computers; the minds of children at play would create fantasy or virtual worlds in which to explore or interact. However, the development of the computer provided an opportunity for these
worlds to expand from within an individual’s mind to fixed video game environments and shared, interactive communities co-created by the users. The high growth of various virtual worlds globally that has occurred in recent years has prompted a number of Fortune 2000 companies to either enter the virtual space, or at least monitor the
development and potential of avatar-based marketing.
Although the current number of participants in virtual worlds is growing, in comparison to the overall consumer population, these numbers still represent just a very small percentage. To maximize the value that can be achieved and enhance the return on investment in a virtual world presence, organizations need to not only successfully
market to the existing members of the virtual world, but they also need to effectively recruit real world consumers into the virtual world and retain them through positive interactions.
Following the experiences of 40 undergraduate business students and 10 MBA graduate students as they enter the virtual world of Second Life for the first time, their 12 week journey is documented through weekly personal blog entries, online discussion groups, and exit interviews. The students’ comments and discussions provide insight into the mind of the new entrant to the virtual world. These insights guide suggestions for improving the experience of new virtual consumers in order to create long-term consumer relationships with an organization’s virtual presence.
eLab City: A Platform for Academic Research on Virtual Worlds
Authors: Novak Thomas P. 
Published: August 2018

The eLab City project in Second Life is a laboratory environment for the study of user behavior in virtual worlds. This paper describes the origin and development of the eLab City project, which includes virtual infrastructure constructed in Second Life, a panel of Second Life users who have agreed to participate in research studies, tools for observational data collection, and procedures for fielding research projects. The eLab City panel is described in detail, with discussion of the panel signup process, recruitment, and panelist demographics. A series of research studies have been fielded with eLab City panelists, and cooperation rates for these studies are presented, together with comparison to Web-based studies. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and next steps for this research project.
Virtual Assisted Self Interviewing (VASI): An Expansion of Survey Data Collection Methods to Virtual Worlds by Means of VDCI
Authors: Bell Mark W. , Castronova Edward , Wagner Gert G. 
Published: August 2018

Changes in communication technology have allowed for the expansion of data collection modes in survey research. The proliferation of the computer has allowed the creation of web and computer assisted auto-interview data collection modes. Virtual worlds are a new application of computer technology that once again expands the data collection modes by VASI (Virtual Assisted Self Interviewing). The Virtual Data Collection Interface (VDCI) developed at Indiana University in collaboration with the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) allows survey researchers access to the population of virtual worlds in fully immersive Heads-up Display (HUD)-based survey instruments. This expansion needs careful consideration for its applicability to the researcher’s question but offers a high level of data integrity and expanded survey availability and automation. Current open questions on the VASI method concern the optimal sampling frame and sampling procedures within a virtual world like Second Life (SL). Further multimodal studies are proposed to aid in evaluating the VDCI and placing it in the context of other data collection modes.
Investigation of the influence of earthquakes on the water level in the geothermal reservoir of Waiwera (New Zealand)
Authors: Kühn Michael , Schöne Tim 
Published: August 2018

Abstract. The water level of the Waiwera geothermal reservoir is mainly governed by the
production operations due to a commonly strong pumping signal. However, in
the hours and days after the Kaikoura earthquake on 14 November 2016, it
increased by more than 0.5 m, indicating that seismic events can have an
influence as well. In a continuous time series consisting of monthly means of
water level data and pumping rates starting in 1986, we tried to determine if
events above a certain strength alter groundwater dynamics at Waiwera in
general. We applied an empirical equation and calculated the on-site seismic
energy density from earthquake magnitudes and distances. All recorded
earthquakes with a magnitude above 4 within a radius of about 1500 km around
New Zealand have been taken into account. A clear correlation cannot be
proven but none of the recorded earthquakes led to such a high energy density
in Waiwera as the Kaikoura event did. For the future, it is recommended to
increase the resolution of the metred water production rates to daily
averages to improve the detectability of water level changes following
earthquakes.
A Psychometric Analysis of the Greek Career Adapt-Abilities Scale in University Students
Authors: Sidiropoulou-Dimakakou Despina , Mikedaki Katerina , Argyropoulou Katerina , Kaliris Andronikos 
Published: August 2018

Based upon substantial research on career adaptability, and on specific cross-cultural validation research of the Career Adapt-abilities Scale (CAAS) (Savickas &amp; Porfeli, 2012) we recruited a sample of Greek university students (Ν = 452) in order to test further the Greek form of the scale. Confirmatory Factor Analysis models showed that the four-factor structure was supported for the Greek form, comprising four dimensions: concern, control, curiosity, and confidence. The original six items per dimension structure was also maintained. Internal consistency estimates were satisfactory, and test-retest reliability reached acceptable levels. Indications of convergent validity were found as CAAS positively correlated with self-esteem. To further explore for the construct validity of the scale score differences by gender and year of studies were also examined. Overall, the observed differences were found to be in the expected direction. This validity study indicates that CAAS may be safely applied to the Greek students.
Challenges in using CellTracker Green on foraminifers that host algal endosymbionts
Authors: Ross Benjamin J. , Hallock Pamela 
Published: August 2018

The uses of fluorescent microscopy and fluorescent probes, such as the metabolically activated probe CellTracker™ Green CMFDA (CTG), have become common in studies of living Foraminifera. This metabolic requirement, as well as the relatively quick production of the fluorescent reaction products, makes CTG a prime candidate for determining mortality in bioassay and other laboratory experiments. Previous work with the foraminiferAmphistegina gibbosa, which hosts diatom endosymbionts, has shown that the species is capable of surviving both acute chemical exposure and extended periods of total darkness by entering a low-activity dormant state. This paper explores the use of CTG and fluorescent microscopy to determine mortality in such experiments, as well as to explore the physiology of dormant foraminifers. The application of CTG was found to be complicated by the autofluorescence of the diatom symbionts, which masks the signal of the CTG, as well as by interactions between CTG and propylene glycol, a chemical of interest known to cause dormancy. These complications necessitated adapting methods from earlier studies using CTG. Here we present observations on CTG fluorescence and autofluorescence inA. gibbosafollowing both chemical exposure and periods of total darkness. While CTG can indicate vital activity in dormant foraminifers, complications include underestimates of total survival and recovery, and falsely indicating dead individuals as live due to rapid microbial colonization. Nonetheless, the brightness of the CTG signal in dormant individuals exposed to propylene glycol supports previously published results of survival patterns inA. gibbosa. Observations of CTG fluorescence in individuals kept for extended periods in aphotic conditions indicate uptake of CTG may begin within 30 min of exposure to light, suggesting darkness-induced dormancy and subsequent recovery can occur on short time scales. These results suggest that CTG accurately reflects changes associated with dormancy, and can be useful in laboratory experiments utilizing symbiont-bearing foraminifers.
Flooding Stress in Plants
Authors: Mustroph Angelika 
Published: August 2018

Abstract

As sessile organisms, plants cannot run away from unfavourable growth conditions. In order to survive stress conditions, for example flooding stress, they have evolved multiple adaptational mechanisms. Flooding stress restricts gas diffusion in and out of the plant cells, and subsequently leads to oxygen deficiency inside the plants. Plants can react to flooding with two strategies. On one hand, they can avoid the occurrence of oxygen deficiency inside by anatomical and morphological adaptations. These adaptations are mainly mediated by the gaseous plant hormone ethylene. On the other hand, they can also survive with oxygen deficiency, at least for some time. This adaptation includes the rearrangement of primary metabolism, for example through induction of fermentation. This transcriptional rearrangement is mediated by a set of transcription factors whose protein abundance directly depends on the oxygen concentration inside the plant cells.

Key Concepts

Flooding reduces gas diffusion and thus oxygen and carbon dioxide availability within plant tissues.

Several plant species have adapted to flooding conditions and can survive and even grow under water.

One strategy to survive flooding is the avoidance of oxygen deficiency within plant tissues by morphological changes.

Morphological changes include aerenchyma formation, adventitious roots, leaf hyponasty and shoot elongation.

Morphological changes are largely mediated by the gaseous plant hormone ethylene that naturally accumulates in plant parts under water.

A second strategy to survive flooding is the adaptation to oxygen deficiency by metabolic rearrangements.

Metabolic rearrangements include induction of fermentation, glycolysis and starch degradation.

Metabolic rearrangements are partially mediated by a group of oxygen‐labile transcription factors that accumulate under oxygen deficiency.
Bioinformatics
Authors: Makałowski Wojciech , Shabardina Victoria , Makałowska Izabela 
Published: August 2018

AbstractMolecular biologists generate data at an unparalleled pace, and the demands and opportunities for interpreting such data are expanding more than ever. In this context, bioinformatics has emerged as a strategic frontier involving molecular biology, molecular evolution, information technology and statistics. Bioinformatics may be defined as the research, development or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological data, including those to acquire, store, organise, archive, analyse or visualise such data. Its goal is to enable biological discovery based on existing data, or in other words to transform biological data into information, and eventually into knowledge.Key ConceptsBiological data grow faster than Moore's law predicts, which means that information technology might be a bottleneck of the data analyses.The amount of data produced by biologists triggered a boom of specialised databases.Nucleotide sequences are read in small stretches that need to be assembled computationally into whole molecules.Searching sequence databases with the unknown sequence as a query, the so‐called similarity search, is most likely the most frequent bioinformatic activity.Translational bioinformatics is a key for successful precision medicine.
Cystic Fibrosis Gene: Identification
Authors: Rommens Johanna M 
Published: August 2018

Abstract

With the realisation that some diseases exhibit defined patterns of inheritance in families, it was apparent that careful investigation of the genetic material of these family members should reveal clues to underlying disease cause. For cystic fibrosis (CF), a debilitating disease that affects many organs with progressive lung morbidity, deficiencies in the gene known as
CFTR
lead to impaired anion channel function in epithelial tissues. Early genetic and physical mapping studies of chromosome 7 led to the identification of this CF causal gene, providing impetus for the Human Genome Project and the refined chromosome maps that are now available at chromosome function and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence levels.

Key Concepts

Cystic fibrosis displays autosomal recessive inheritance.

Genetic and physical marker maps converge to yield a scaffold of chromosome 7.

Only small segments of human chromosomes correspond to genes that encode proteins.

Refined chromosome and genome DNA sequence maps provide resources for disease gene discovery.

Causal gene discovery enables molecular diagnostics.
Cancer: Therapeutic Approaches Targeting Stress Pathways
Authors: Zuehlke Abbey D , Neckers Leonard 
Published: August 2018

Abstract

Cell stress is a ubiquitous term covering vast forms of perturbations to the homeostatic state of the cell. The response mechanisms to these types of stresses are aimed at protecting the cells and allowing them to recover from the inflicted damage. Before reaching the critical level of stress resulting in stress‐induced cell death, cells utilise these survival strategies to protect themselves from the exposed insult. Tumour cells similarly utilise these survival strategies to continue replication despite their extreme surrounding environment. Survival responses to stress also allow tumour cells to overcome additional challenges presented by treatment regiments such as chemotherapy and radiation, resulting in resistance. These survival pathways, therefore, are being targeted in addition to standard treatment to force the stressed oncogenic cells into their death pathways. Use of these survival pathway inhibitors has markedly increased tumour sensitivity to chemotherapy and radiation, suggesting an alternative approach to cancer therapeutics.

Key Concepts

Eukaryotic cells are able to activate multiple stress response pathways when exposed to environmental stress.

In cancer cells, these stress response pathways are frequently upregulated to cope with nutrient deprivation, hypoxia, abundance of misfolded proteins, and other stresses common to cancer cells.

Many cancer drugs induce cell stress and stimulate one or more cell stress response pathways.

Thus, cancer cells use multiple cell stress response pathways to support drug resistance, particularly to cytotoxic agents.

Cancer cell sensitivity to cytotoxic drugs may be enhanced by simultaneously blocking cell stress response pathways.
Flexible and Anisotropic Strain Sensor Based on Carbonized Crepe Paper with Aligned Cellulose Fibers
Authors: Chen Sheng , Song Yijia , Ding Dayong , Ling Zhe , Xu Feng 
Published: August 2018

AbstractHere, a highly flexible and anisotropic strain sensor based on sustainable biomass‐derived materials is fabricated through a facile, low‐cost, and scalable approach. The commercially available crepe paper made of the abundant and renewable cellulose is converted into a conductive network by carbonization. The fabricated strain sensor based on this carbonized crepe paper (CCP) exhibits high flexibility, fast response time (<115 ms), high durability (>10 000 cycles), and negligible hysteresis. Especially, the CCP strain sensor shows dramatically different gauge factors (10.10 and 0.14, respectively) between tensile bending perpendicular and parallel to the fibers direction. This anisotropic sensing performance is inherited from the crepe paper's unique anisotropic structure, i.e., aligned cellulose fibers and a corrugated surface, which is well maintained in the CCP. In addition, the CCP strain sensors' practical use in detecting complex human motions and controlling a 2‐degree‐of‐freedom machine is demonstrated, indicating their potential applications in multidimensional wearable electronics and smart robots.
Architecture and Preparation of Hollow Catalytic Devices
Authors: Li Bowen , Zeng Hua Chun 
Published: August 2018

AbstractSince pioneering work done in the late 1990s, synthesis of functional hollow materials has experienced a rapid growth over the past two decades while their applications have been proven to be advantageous across many technological fields. In the field of heterogeneous catalysis, the development of micro‐ and nanoscale hollow materials as catalytic devices has also yielded promising results, because of their higher activity, stability, and selectivity. Herein, the architecture and preparation of these catalysts with tailorable composition and morphology are reviewed. First, synthesis of hollow materials is introduced according to the classification of template mediated, template free, and combined approaches. Second, different architectural designs of hollow catalytic devices, such as those without functionalization, with active components supported onto hollow materials, with active components incorporated within porous shells, and with active components confined within interior cavities, are evaluated respectively. The observed catalytic performances of this new class of catalysts are correlated to structural merits of individual configuration. Examples that demonstrate synthetic approaches and architected configurations are provided. Lastly, possible future directions are proposed to advance this type of hollow catalytic devices on the basis of our personal perspectives.
Halide‐Perovskite Resonant Nanophotonics
Authors: Makarov Sergey , Furasova Aleksandra , Tiguntseva Ekaterina , Hemmetter Andreas , Berestennikov Alexander , Pushkarev Anatoly , Zakhidov Anvar , Kivshar Yuri 
Published: August 2018

AbstractHalide perovskites have emerged recently as promising materials for many applications in photovoltaics and optoelectronics. Recent studies of optical properties of halide perovskites suggest many novel opportunities for a design of advanced nanophotonic devices due to their low‐cost fabrication, relatively high values of the refractive index, existence of excitons at room temperatures, broadband bandgap tunability, high optical gain, and strong nonlinear response, as well as simplicity of their integration with other types of optical and electronic structures. This paper provides an overview of the recent progress in the study of optical effects originating from nanostructured perovskites, and it also oversees a range of potential applications of resonant nanophotonics with halide perovskites.
Chiral Amine‐Catalyzed Stereoselective [4+2] Annulations of Alkenyl Thiazolones and Aliphatic Aldehydes via a Step‐Wise Mechanism
Authors: Dai Qing‐Song , Zhang Xiang , Yang Kai‐Chuan , Li Mao‐Hua , Yang Jie , Li Qing‐Zhu , Feng Xin , Han Bo , Li Jun‐Long 
Published: August 2018

AbstractAn efficient diastereo‐ and enantioselective formal oxo‐Diels‐Alder reaction of enolizable aliphatic aldehydes and 5‐alkenyl thiazolones was developed through chiral amine catalysis. With a robust enamine activation strategy, both simple aliphatic aldehydes and a challenging aqueous acetaldehyde could participate well as competent dienophiles in the reaction. A variety of thiazole‐fused dihydropyran derivatives were facilely produced in up to 99% yield with up to >99:1 e.r. under mild conditions. Interestingly, a high dosage of the inexpensive aqueous acetaldehyde in a similar catalytic system could lead to a densely functionalized thiazolone product through a three‐component cascade reaction, suggesting a step‐wise mechanism for the established [4+2] annulation process.magnified image
Textured Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3‐BaTiO3 Lead‐Free Films with Enhanced Piezoelectric Property and Depolarization Temperature
Authors: Zhou Zhen , Zhang Su‐Wei , Zhang Yao , Luo Jin , Sun Wei , Wang Xuping , Li Jing‐Feng 
Published: August 2018

AbstractFuture microelectromechanical systems will need environmentally friendly lead‐free piezoelectrics in the form of thin films, like Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3 (BNT); however, its application is limited due to the relatively low depolarization temperature (Td). In this work, not only enhanced piezoelectric properties, but also higher Td, are achieved in (001)‐textured 0.94Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3‐0.06BaTiO3 (BNT‐BT6) thin films on widely used platinized Si wafers with a LaNiO3 buffer layer. The piezoelectric coefficient a33,eff is increased by 65% to 43 pm V−1 in the textured films from 26 pm V−1 in the nontextured counterparts. The texturing also raises the Td to ≈140 °C, about 40 °C higher than that in nontextured films. The increase of Td is attributed to the in‐plane tensile thermal stress and the (001)‐textured structure. The present work provides a guideline to improve piezoelectric properties and the thermal stability of BNT‐based lead‐free piezoelectric thin films.
First genome‐wide analysis of the endangered, endemic lichen Cetradonia linearis reveals isolation by distance and strong population structure
Authors: Allen Jessica L. , McKenzie Sean K. , Sleith Robin S. , Alter S. Elizabeth 
Published: August 2018

Premise of the StudyLichenized fungi are evolutionarily diverse and ecologically important, but little is known about the processes that drive their diversification and genetic differentiation. Distributions are often assumed to be wholly shaped by ecological requirements rather than dispersal limitations. Furthermore, although asexual and sexual reproductive structures are observable, the lack of information about recombination rates makes inferences about reproductive strategies difficult. We investigated the population genomics of Cetradonia linearis, a federally endangered lichen in the southern Appalachians of eastern North America, to test the relative contributions of environmental and geographic distance in shaping genetic structure, and to characterize the mating system and genome‐wide recombination.MethodsWhole‐genome shotgun sequencing was conducted to generate data for 32 individuals of C. linearis. A reference genome was assembled, and reads from all samples were aligned to generate a set of single‐nucleotide polymorphisms for further analyses.Key ResultsWe found evidence for low rates of recombination and for isolation by distance, but not for isolation by environment. The species is putatively unisexual, given that only one mating‐type locus was found. Hindcast species distribution models and the distribution of genetic diversity support C. linearis having a larger range during the Last Glacial Maximum in the southern portion of its current extent.ConclusionsOur findings contribute to the understanding of factors that shape genetic diversity in C. linearis and in fungi more broadly. Because all populations are highly genetically differentiated, the extirpation of any population would mean the loss of unique genetic diversity; therefore, our results support the continued conservation of this species.