bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Bayesian analysis of two methods MALDI‐TOF‐MS system and culture test in otomycosis infection
Authors: Rath Sibanarayan , Das Saumya Ranjan , Padhy Rabindra Nath 
Published: January 2019

ObjectiveIdentification of otomycotic fungi using matrix‐assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) time of flight (TOF) mass spectroscopy (MS) and to quantify pervasive errors with Bayes rule; values of sensitivity and specificity of culture test and MALDI‐TOF‐MS method are quantified.MethodFungi cultured ear discharge samples were identified with culture test and MALDI‐TOF‐MS system. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) or MEC (minimum effective concentration) for 6 antifungals were determined by antifungal susceptibility testing in vitro. With Bayes rule, sensitivity and specificity of both MALDI‐TOF MS and culture test methods were computed.ResultsCultures yielded 42 fungal isolates which were confirmed as species (specified against each species) belonging to 8 genera, A. niger 22, Candida sp. 7, A. fumigatus 3, A. flavus 3, mixed Aspergillus sp. 3, Mucor sp. 2, Rhizopus sp. 1, and Scopulariopsis sp.1; and MALDI‐TOF‐MS system also confirmed those isolates. In vitro antifungal susceptibility testing with terms of MIC 50 and MIC 90, isolates fungi were highly susceptible to 6 antifungals; and caspofungin was the most active antifungal. The high value of specificity 84.6%, suggested a limited loss of confidence on the culture test at the absence of an infection, in comparison to MALDI‐TOF‐MS. Sensitivity of the culture test was 87.5%; this high figure strongly approves the culture test to be the dependable method for the otomycosis diagnosis, when the infection is stable.ConclusionBased on sensitivity and specificity together the culture test could be done in face of the gold‐standard MALDI‐TOF‐MS system the estimating both methods.
Effect of Forage Kochia on Seedling Growth of Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and Perennial Grasses
Authors: Aryal Parmeshwor , Islam M. Anowarul 
Published: January 2019

AbstractForage kochia [Bassia prostrata(L.) A. J. Scott] is competitive with annual weeds and has potential for use in reclamation of disturbed land. However, land managers are reluctant to use forage kochia in revegetation programs due to lack of understanding of its compatibility with or invasiveness in the native plant community. We conducted two greenhouse experiments, one to compare the competitive effect of forage kochia versus perennial grasses on growth of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorumL.) and one to study the effect of forage kochia on growth of native perennial grasses. In the first experiment, a single seedling ofB. tectorumwas grown with increasing neighbor densities (0 to 5 seedlings pot−1) of either forage kochia, crested wheatgrass [Agropyron cristatum(L.) Gaertner ×A. desertorum(Fisch. ex Link) Schultes; nonnative perennial grass], or thickspike wheatgrass [Elymus lanceolatus(Scribn. & J. G. Sm.) Gould; native perennial grass].Bromus tectorumgrowth was reduced moderately by all three perennial neighbors, butA. cristatumandE. lanceolatushad more effect onB. tectorumwhen compared with forage kochia. This experiment was repeated and similar results were observed. In the second experiment, forage kochia was grown with each of four native cool-season grass species: basin wildrye [Leymus cinereus(Scribn. & Merr.) Á. Löve], bluebunch wheatgrass [Pseudoroegneria spicata(Pursh) Á. Löve],E. lanceolatus, and western wheatgrass [Pascopyrum smithii(Rydb.) Á. Löve]. Forage kochia had no effect on height, tiller number, and aboveground biomass of native grasses. Similarly, native grasses did not show a significant effect on forage kochia seedlings. This experiment was also repeated, and forage kochia somewhat reduced the aboveground biomass ofL. cinereusandP. spicata. However, all native grasses significantly reduced change in height, branching, and aboveground biomass of forage kochia. These results suggest that forage kochia interfered withB. tectorumseedling growth, but it showed little competitive effect on native grass seedlings.
Improving Ecological Restoration to Curb Biotic Invasion—A Practical Guide
Authors: Guo Qinfeng , Brockway Dale G. , Larson Diane L. , Wang Deli , Ren Hai 
Published: January 2019

AbstractCommon practices for invasive species control and management include physical, chemical, and biological approaches. The first two approaches have clear limitations and may lead to unintended (negative) consequences, unless carefully planned and implemented. For example, physical removal rarely completely eradicates the targeted invasive species and can cause disturbances that facilitate new invasions by nonnative species from nearby habitats. Chemical treatments can harm native, and especially rare, species through unanticipated side effects. Biological methods may be classified as biocontrol and the ecological approach. Similar to physical and chemical methods, biocontrol also has limitations and sometimes leads to unintended consequences. Therefore, a relatively safer and more practical choice may be the ecological approach, which has two major components: (1) restoration of native species and (2) biomass manipulation of the restored community, such as selective grazing or prescribed burning (to achieve and maintain viable population sizes). Restoration requires well-planned and implemented planting designs that consider alpha-, beta-, and gamma-diversity and the abundance of native and invasive component species at local, landscape, and regional levels. Given the extensive destruction or degradation of natural habitats around the world, restoration could be most effective for enhancing ecosystem resilience and resistance to biotic invasions. At the same time, ecosystems in human-dominated landscapes, especially those newly restored, require close monitoring and careful intervention (e.g., through biomass manipulation), especially when successional trajectories are not moving as intended. Biomass management frequently uses prescribed burning, grazing, harvesting, and thinning to maintain overall ecosystem health and sustainability. Thus, the resulting optimal, balanced, and relatively stable ecological conditions could more effectively limit the spread and establishment of invasive species. Here we review the literature (especially within the last decade) on ecological approaches that involve biodiversity, biomass, and productivity, three key community/ecosystem variables that reciprocally influence one another. We focus on the common and most feasible ecological practices that can aid in resisting new invasions and/or suppressing the dominance of existing invasive species. We contend that, because of the strong influences from neighboring areas (i.e., as exotic species pools), local restoration and management efforts in the future need to consider the regional context and projected climate changes.
Deep learning of mixing by two ‘atoms’ of stratified turbulence
Authors: Salehipour Hesam , Peltier W. R. 
Published: January 2019

Current global ocean models rely on ad hoc parameterizations of diapycnal mixing, in which the efficiency of mixing is globally assumed to be fixed at 20 %, despite increasing evidence that this assumption is questionable. As an ansatz for small-scale ocean turbulence, we may focus on stratified shear flows susceptible to either Kelvin–Helmholtz (KHI) or Holmboe wave (HWI) instability. Recently, an unprecedented volume of data has been generated through direct numerical simulation (DNS) of these flows. In this paper, we describe the application of deep learning methods to the discovery of a generic parameterization of diapycnal mixing using the available DNS dataset. We furthermore demonstrate that the proposed model is far more universal compared to recently published parameterizations. We show that a neural network appropriately trained on KHI- and HWI-induced turbulence is capable of predicting mixing efficiency associated with unseen regions of the parameter space well beyond the range of the training data. Strikingly, the high-level patterns learned based on the KHI and weakly stratified HWI are ‘transferable’ to predict HWI-induced mixing efficiency under much more strongly stratified conditions, suggesting that through the application of appropriate networks, significant universal abstractions of density-stratified turbulent mixing have been recognized.
Do natural experiments have an important future in the study of mental disorders?
Authors: Thapar Anita , Rutter Michael 
Published: January 2019

AbstractThere is an enormous interest in identifying the causes of psychiatric disorders but there are considerable challenges in identifying which risks are genuinely causal. Traditionally risk factors have been inferred from observational designs. However, association with psychiatric outcome does not equate to causation. There are a number of threats that clinicians and researchers face in making causal inferences from traditional observational designs because adversities or exposures are not randomly allocated to individuals. Natural experiments provide an alternative strategy to randomized controlled trials as they take advantage of situations whereby links between exposure and other variables are separated by naturally occurring events or situations. In this review, we describe a growing range of different types of natural experiment and highlight that there is a greater confidence about findings where there is a convergence of findings across different designs. For example, exposure to hostile parenting is consistently found to be associated with conduct problems using different natural experiment designs providing support for this being a causal risk factor. Different genetically informative designs have repeatedly found that exposure to negative life events and being bullied are linked to later depression. However, for exposure to prenatal cigarette smoking, while findings from natural experiment designs are consistent with a causal effect on offspring lower birth weight, they do not support the hypothesis that intra-uterine cigarette smoking has a causal effect on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct problems and emerging findings highlight caution about inferring causal effects on bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Not all posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms are equal: fear, dysphoria, and risk of developing hypertension in trauma-exposed women
Authors: Sumner Jennifer A. , Kubzansky Laura D. , Roberts Andrea L. , Chen Qixuan , Rimm Eric B. , Koenen Karestan C. 
Published: January 2019

AbstractBackgroundPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with higher risk of incident hypertension, but it is unclear whether specific aspects of PTSD are particularly cardiotoxic. PTSD is a heterogeneous disorder, comprising dimensions of fear and dysphoria. Because elevated fear after trauma may promote autonomic nervous system dysregulation, we hypothesized fear would predict hypertension onset, and associations with hypertension would be stronger with fear than dysphoria.MethodsWe examined fear and dysphoria symptom dimensions in relation to incident hypertension over 24 years in 2709 trauma-exposed women in the Nurses’ Health Study II. Posttraumatic fear and dysphoria symptom scores were derived from a PTSD diagnostic interview. We used proportional hazards models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each symptom dimension (quintiles) with new-onset hypertension events (N = 925), using separate models. We also considered lower-order symptom dimensions of fear and dysphoria.ResultsHigher levels of fear (P-trend = 0.02), but not dysphoria (P-trend = 0.22), symptoms were significantly associated with increased hypertension risk after adjusting for socio-demographics and family history of hypertension. Women in the highest v. lowest fear quintile had a 26% higher rate of developing hypertension [HR = 1.26 (95% CI 1.02–1.57)]; the increased incidence associated with greater fear was similar when further adjusted for biomedical and health behavior covariates (P-trend = 0.04) and dysphoria symptoms (P-trend = 0.04). Lower-order symptom dimension analyses provided preliminary evidence that the re-experiencing and avoidance components of fear were particularly associated with hypertension.ConclusionsFear symptoms associated with PTSD may be a critical driver of elevated cardiovascular risk in trauma-exposed individuals.
Perché le politiche cambiano: il caso dei trasporti
Authors: Tebaldi Mauro 
Published: January 2019

IntroduzioneIl tema delpolicy changeè da tempo al centro di un articolato dibattito intorno al quale si confrontano gli argomenti di chi, come l'autore di queste note, ritiene che il problema vada ben inquadrato in sede teorica avanti qualsivoglia indagine sui processi evolutivi delle politiche pubbliche. Sebbene assai poco frequentato dai cultori della scienza politica, il settore delle politiche dei trasporti richiama un campo di attività pubblica oltremodo rilevante, la cui esplorazione sistematica, alla luce degli studi sinora condotti, solleva questioni di ordine teorico e metodologico particolarmente salienti per l'analisi comparativa delpolicy change.
LO STATO SOCIALE NELL'ERA DELL'AUSTERITÀ PERMANENTE
Authors: Pierson Paul 
Published: January 2019

IntroduzioneDa tempo riconosciuto come un elemento caratterizzante delle democrazie industriali avanzate, il welfare state reclama oggi più attenzione che mai. Malgrado l'incremento delle disuguaglianze in molti paesi, le domande di tagli alla spesa sociale si sono intensificate. I tentativi in tale senso hanno provocato un acceso dibattito e diffuse proteste e ciò pone il welfare al centro del dibattito politico e del conflitto sociale.
OPINIONE PUBBLICA E POLITICA ESTERA IN ITALIA: IL CASO DELLA BOSNIA
Authors: Bellucci Paolo , Isernia Pierangelo 
Published: January 2019

IntroduzioneLa guerra contro la Repubblica Federale di Jugoslavia ha evidenziato i problemi della politica estera italiana degli anni '90. Con non più del 40% dell'opinione pubblica stabilmente a favore dei raid aerei contro la Serbia ed il Kosovo, una veemente opposizione del Vaticano e del Papa in prima persona ed una maggioranza di governo divisa al suo interno tra negoziatori ad oltranza ed auspici di una immediataescalationterrestre, si riproponeva, con maggiore evidenza del passato, il ridotto margine di autonomia dell'esecutivo nel settore della politica di sicurezza. A poco meno di due anni dalla crisi albanese, la leadership politica italiana si è trovata così ad affrontare l'ennesima prova di politica estera, per giunta sul terreno delle armi, un terreno sul quale nell'ultimo quarantennio repubblicano raramente un governo si era avventurato. Rispetto all'ambiente tut to sommato «placido» nel quale la politica estera italiana ha operato nel secondo dopoguerra, gli anni '90, con un ininterrotto susseguirsi di crisi (dal Golfo alla Somalia, dall'Albania alla Bosnia, per finire con il Kosovo) hanno prodotto un maggior numero di sfide, in aree molto più vicine e rilevanti per gli interessi nazionali italiani e in un quadro di minore possibilità di far ricorso al proprio tradizionale alleato, gli Stati Uniti, per risolvere i propri fondamentali problemi di sicurezza. Da qui la necessità di costruire un consenso nazionale intorno alle scelte del governo e, di conseguenza, il crescente interesse per il ruolo che l'opinione pubblica assume nella politica estera italiana. Il Kosovo tuttavia non è il primo caso in cui l'opinione pubblica entra nei calcoli dei decisori nazionali. In questo saggio intendiamo esplorare questo ruolo in un'altra recente crisi che ha visto coinvolta l'Italia, quella relativa al dissolvimento della ex-Jugoslavia, con particolare riferimento alla crisi in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Come diremo nelle conclusioni, da questa esperienza è possibile trarre alcune considerazioni che sembrano dimostrarsi valide anche nel caso del Kosovo.
GLI ITALIANI E IL VOTO EUROPEO: MOLTE CONFERME, POCHE SMENTITE
Authors: Natale Paolo 
Published: January 2019

IntroduzioneCome da molte parti è stato sottolineato, e come confermano puntualmente i sondaggi d'opinione, Fattuale fase politica nazionale è marcata da una profonda e crescente disaffezione dei cittadini nei confronti del mondo della politica in generale e di quello partitico in particolare.Tutti i giudizi che vengono formulati dagli italiani in merito alle più rilevanti istituzioni politiche o agli attori politici occupano - nel ranking complessivo delle «fiducie» (riportate in tab. 1) - le posizioni decisamente più basse. Senza particolari distinzioni tra elettori di sinistra o di destra, la popolazione italiana appare unanime nel considerare gravemente insufficienti sia i partiti che i principali organi di rappresentanza politica.
The Political Science 400: With Citation Counts by Cohort, Gender, and Subfield
Authors: Kim Hannah June , Grofman Bernard 
Published: January 2019

ABSTRACTThis article updates the Masuoka, Grofman, and Feld 2002 dataset that identified the then-3,719 faculty in political science PhD-granting departments in the United States. That dataset contained information about each faculty member, including date and PhD-granting department, lifetime citation counts, fields of interest, and school of employment. We similarly create a database with the 4,089 currently tenured or tenure-track faculty, along with emeritus faculty, at US PhD-granting departments ca. 2017–2018. Using Google Scholar Profiles, along with manual counts for those who do not have a profile, we sort the dataset by citation count, PhD cohort, field of interest, and gender. This article identifies the 100 currently most-cited scholars, the 25 most-cited in each PhD cohort and subfield, the 40 most-cited women scholars, and the 25 most-cited emeriti. The full list of The Political Science 400 is available in an online appendix.
Evolution of a Mesospheric Bore in a Duct Observed by Ground‐Based Double‐Layer Imagers and Satellite Observations Over the Tibetan Plateau Region
Authors: Li Qinzeng , Xu Jiyao , Yue Jia , Liu Xiao , Yuan Wei 
Published: January 2019

AbstractA mesospheric bore event was observed in the airglow layers of both OH and OI (557.7 nm) bands by two all‐sky airglow imagers in Lhasa (29.66°N, 90.98°E) on the Tibetan Plateau and the Day Night Band (DNB) of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the Suomi National Polar‐orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite on the night of 16–17 December 2014. Simultaneous temperature and OH intensity observations from the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument onboard the TIMED satellite and wind measurement by a Doppler meteor radar were used to characterize the environment of the bore propagation. A large mesospheric inversion layer was identified from the temperature measured by the SABER instrument. The observed winds in the height range of the OH layer were almost orthogonal to the propagation direction of the mesospheric bore. Both hydraulic jump theory and observations showed that the duct initially shrank followed by an expansion. The duct mainly existed in the OH layer but was weak in the OI layer, as revealed by the double‐layer imaging and satellite observations. The horizontal wavelengths and observed phase speeds of the bore packet decreased as the duct shrank and increased as the duct expanded. The intensity amplitude of the bore packet decreased slowly and then decreased sharply after dissipation. With the variation of the depth of the duct, the bore may have leak out of the duct. The presented study advances the understanding of mesospheric bore evolution and how the ducted environment influences the propagation of the bore.
Revising More Than 20 Years of EPHIN Ion Flux Data—A New Data Product for Space Weather Applications
Authors: Kühl P. , Heber B. 
Published: January 2019

AbstractSolar energetic particle events and galactic cosmic rays are important aspects of space weather. Investigating them requires consistent measurements of electrons and ions over long time periods, that is, over more than a solar cycle. The Electron Proton Helium INstrument onboard the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory is operational since 1995 and was designed to measure electrons in the energy range of 0.3 to 10 MeV as well as protons and helium ions in the energy range from 4 to 50 MeV per nucleon in four different coincidence channels with 1‐min resolution. Early in the mission and in 2017 two of six detectors became noisy and had to be switched of reducing the number of coincidence channels from 4 to 2, and thereby significantly reducing the energy resolution of the instrument. In order to restore the original count rate channels we present here a new data analysis applying the so called dE/dx − dE/dx method. A data set with different temporal resolutions from 1 min to a day has been generated for the whole ongoing SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory mission from 1995 to 2018. The resulting data sets are successfully validated against measurements from instruments close to Earth. Studies with regard to long‐term variation of the measured flux with special emphasis on the contribution of individual solar energetic particle events to the fluence observed over more than two solar cycles are presented here.
Sex-dependent neurobiological features of prenatal immune activation via TLR7
Authors: Missig Galen , Robbins James O. , Mokler Emery L. , McCullough Kenneth M. , Bilbo Staci D. , McDougle Christopher J. , Carlezon William A. 
Published: January 2019

AbstractImmune activation during pregnancy via infection or autoimmune disease is a risk factor for neuropsychiatric illness. Mouse models of prenatal immune activation often involve maternal administration of agents that activate toll-like receptors (TLRs), a class of pattern recognition receptors that initiate innate immune responses. Such studies have focused primarily on activating the TLR3 or TLR4 subtypes, to mimic immune responses to viral or bacterial infections, respectively. Here, we characterize the effects of prenatal activation of TLR7, which is implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune disease. Prenatal TLR7 activation via administration of the selective agonist imiquimod (5.0 mg/kg) induces a phenotype in offspring characterized by reduced anxiety-like behavior, fragmented social behavior, and altered ultrasonic vocalization patterns at 6–12 weeks of age. The characteristics of this phenotype are readily distinguishable from—and in some ways opposite to—those seen following prenatal activation of TLR3 and/or TLR4. Prenatal TLR7-activated mice have normal baseline locomotor activity, but are hyperresponsive to stimuli including social partners, circadian cues, and gonadal hormone fluctuations. These alterations are accompanied by decreases in microglia density but increases in ramifications. RNA-sequencing of dorsal striatum, a region showing profound changes in microglial markers, indicates that prenatal TLR7 activation induces differential expression of hundreds of genes at 13 weeks of age, with virtually no overlap in differentially expressed genes between males and females. Our findings demonstrate that prenatal immune activation can promote a wide range of developmental trajectories, depending on the type and/or pattern of TLR activation and the sex of the offspring.