bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The calcium‐binding site of human glutamate carboxypeptidase II is critical for dimerization, thermal stability, and enzymatic activity
Authors: Ptacek Jakub , Nedvedova Jana , Navratil Michal , Havlinova Barbora , Konvalinka Jan , Barinka Cyril 
Published: August 2018

AbstractCalcium ions are required for proper function of a wide spectrum of proteins within cells. X‐ray crystallography of human glutamate carboxypeptidase II (GCPII) revealed the presence of a Ca2+‐binding site, but its importance for the structure and function of this metallopeptidase has not been elucidated to date. Here, we prepared a panel of mutants targeting residues that form the Ca2+ coordination sphere of GCPII and analyzed their structural and enzymatic properties using an array of complementary biophysical and biochemical approaches. Our data unequivocally show that even a slight disruption of the Ca2+‐binding site destabilizes the three‐dimensional fold of GCPII and is associated with impaired secretion, a high propensity to form nonphysiological oligomers, and an inability to bind active site‐targeted ligands. Additionally, the Ca2+‐binding site is critical for maintenance of the native homodimeric quaternary arrangement of GCPII, which is indispensable for its enzymatic activity. Overall, our results offer a clear picture of the importance of Ca2+ for the structural integrity and hydrolytic activity of human GCPII and by extension homologous members of the M28 zinc‐dependent metallopeptidase family.
Explicit fiber element and its application to piers under multipulse near‐fault earthquake motion
Authors: Xia Chunxu , Liu Chunguang 
Published: August 2018

SummaryThe time delay effect is prominent for the slender structures under the action of near‐fault pulse‐like earthquake excitation. It takes time for the earthquake motion to transfer from the base to other portions of the structure. This paper proposes an explicit‐based fiber line element with its analytical framework to capture the time delay effect when excitated by earthquake motion. The object‐oriented technique (C++) is used to code the integrated analysis framework. Newly designed classes are integrated to perform the explicit analysis parallelly. The nonlinear material model is also incorporated into the proposed element. The verification of the proposed element shows the time delay effect can be spotted inside the structure. The proposed element can provide a reasonable transient dynamic response under both static and dynamic loadings. The basic and higher vibration model can be aroused if the proper frequency is inputted. A slender reinforced concrete bridge pier is numerically modeled by the proposed element, and its seismic response characteristic under the action of the qualified multipulse near‐fault earthquake motion is analyzed. The results show the seismic response within the pier is transferred from bottom to top in a distinct time delay. In a statistical sense, the typical increasing ratio of relative displacement for S/R and P/S is 4.9% and 8.1%, respectively. Directly using the earthquake motion recorded at the seismic station may underestimate the seismic demand.
Meta‐analysis of the influence of age on symptom change following cognitive‐behavioural treatment for anxiety disorders
Authors: Barry Tom J. , Yeung Sui P. , Lau Jennifer Y.F. 
Published: August 2018

ABSTRACTIntroductionAdolescents, relative to adults, show impairments in learning to reduce or extinguish fear. Furthermore, they may struggle with the use of reappraisal techniques to regulate affect. Both learning and reappraisals are critical to cognitive‐behavioural treatments (CBT) for anxiety disorders leading to the hypothesis that adolescents may respond more poorly to CBT than adults.MethodsWe use meta‐regression to explore whether variability in the mean age of participants in trials of CBT for anxiety predicted variability between studies in symptom change effect sizes. PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Embase databases were searched with the terms exposure and each of anxiety, phobia, or panic disorder diagnostic terms and cognitive behav* therapy with each of the diagnostic terms. Data were pooled from CBT trials for anxiety disorders (excluding anxiety‐related disorders – obsessive compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder) where participants’ mean age was 11 years or older.149 studies were selected and data on change in symptoms from pre‐treatment to post‐treatment (k = 195), pre‐treatment to follow‐up (k = 108) and post‐treatment to follow‐up (k = 107) were extracted.ResultsSeveral possible confounding variables were also accounted for (e.g., proportion of females, number of sessions). Younger age was associated with smaller improvement in anxious symptoms from pre‐to post‐treatment. However, younger age was also associated with greater improvement in symptoms from post‐treatment to follow‐up.ConclusionsCBT is effective at reducing anxious symptoms, however, younger people may respond more slowly to treatment than older people.
Penile Size Restoration With Nondegloving Approach for Peyronie’s Disease: Initial Experience
Authors: Clavell-Hernández Jonathan , Wang Run 
Published: August 2018

Abstract

Introduction
The sliding technique (ST), commonly done with a subcoronal circumcising incision with penile degloving, has been used to restore penile size in patients with severe Peyronie’s disease (PD) and erectile dysfunction, but with a potential risk of ischemic injury to the glans penis.

Aim
To provide detailed surgical techniques regarding the nondegloving ventral incision and report our initial experience with this approach to perform the ST and penile prosthesis placement in patients with severe PD.

Methods
This was a retrospective review of patient outcomes after penile prosthesis placement with penoplasty for severe PD and erectile dysfunction from January 2015 to December 2017.

Main Outcome Measures
Primary outcomes included straightening rates, penile measurement, along with immediate and late complications. Secondary outcomes include operative time and overall patient satisfaction.

Results
12 Patients had significant penile atrophy and/or curvature &gt;60 degrees and underwent inflatable penile prosthesis placement with grafting procedure. Significant penile atrophy was determined by a combination of the patient’s subjective report and the surgeon’s objective assessment through stretched penile length. 7 (58.3%) of those patients underwent ST, of which the last 5 had the procedure performed through a nondegloving ventral incision. Mean degree of curvature prior to ST was 66 degrees (45–90 degrees). Mean penile length gain was 2.6 cm (2.0–3.0 cm). At a mean follow-up of 15.5 months (3–31 months), only 1 patient had minimal residual curvature of 15 degrees. There were no vascular complications.

Clinical Implications
This nondegloving technique theoretically maintains blood flow continuity to the glans penis by preserving the continuity of the skin, dartos fascia, and neurovascular bundle.

Strengths & Limitations
Strengths of this study include the novel nature of this approach, no incidence of vascular complications, and adaptability to other grafting procedures during penile prosthesis placement. Limitations include the use of 5-item International Index of Erectile Function scores to assess preoperative erectile function on PD, small population, longer incision, and a possible steep learning curve.

Conclusion
While ischemic complications of ST and penile prosthesis implantation are rare, there are reports of ischemic injury in patients undergoing a subcoronal circumcising incision with penile degloving. The non-degloving technique with ventral incision provides for an alternative method for ST and penile prosthesis placement to maintain dartos and skin continuity to the glans penis while still allowing for adequate surgical exposure.
What type of labor lies behind the on-demand economy? New research based on workers’ data
Authors: Melián-González Santiago , Bulchand-Gidumal Jacques 
Published: August 2018

AbstractOn-demand and gig economy are names commonly used when discussing issues related to labor in the collaborative economy. Some of the specific digital platforms in this economy, including Uber and TaskRabbit, and Upwork are quite popular. The term digital labor market has been suggested to distinguish the work mediated by these platforms from that of the traditional labor market. The theoretical work conditions and characteristics of this digital labor market are similar to those of negative nonstandard work arrangements. However, more empirical evidence is required because most of the findings about work conditions are based on anecdotal evidence and the analysis of the platforms’ rules. This study collects the characteristics commonly attributed to the digital labor market and analyzes them based on data about 465 workers extracted from two important digital labor platforms. Our results confirm and refine some of the beliefs found in the literature.
Effects of mass extinction and recovery dynamics on long-term evolutionary trends: a morphological study of Strophomenida (Brachiopoda) across the Late Ordovician mass extinction
Authors: Sclafani Judith A. , Congreve Curtis R. , Krug Andrew Z. , Patzkowsky Mark E. 
Published: August 2018

AbstractMass extinctions affect the history of life by decimating existing diversity and ecological structure and creating new evolutionary and ecological pathways. Both the loss of diversity during these events and the rebound in diversity following extinction had a profound effect on Phanerozoic evolutionary trends. Phylogenetic trees can be used to robustly assess the evolutionary implications of extinction and origination.We examine both extinction and origination during the Late Ordovician mass extinction. This mass extinction was the second largest in terms of taxonomic loss but did not appear to radically alter Paleozoic marine assemblages. We focus on the brachiopod order Strophomenida, whose evolutionary relationships have been recently revised, to explore the disconnect between the processes that drive taxonomic loss and those that restructure ecological communities.A possible explanation for this disconnect is if extinction and origination were random with respect to morphology. We define morphospace using principal coordinates analysis (PCO) of character data from 61 Ordovician–Devonian taxa and their 45 ancestral nodes, defined by a most parsimonious reconstruction in Mesquite. A bootstrap of the centroid of PCO values indicates that genera were randomly removed from morphospace by the Late Ordovician mass extinction, and new Silurian genera were clustered within a smaller previously unoccupied region of morphospace. Diversification remained morphologically constrained throughout the Silurian and into the Devonian. This suggests that the recovery from the Late Ordovician mass extinction resulted in a long-term shift in strophomenide evolution. More broadly, recovery intervals may hold clues to understanding the evolutionary impact of mass extinctions.
Constitutional Choices: Political Parties, Groups, and Prohibition Politics in the United States
Authors: Ley Aaron J. , Clayton Cornell W. 
Published: August 2018

Abstract:Traditional accounts of the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments to the U.S. Constitution largely ignore the role of the major political parties. We argue that partisan politics was an integral part of the constitutional politics of this period. The need to manage divisions within both parties’ electoral coalitions during the transition from the third to the fourth-party systems led to the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment without support from either national party. While most accounts trace prohibition’s demise to widespread noncompliance and the graft it generated, we argue that elite congressional support for prohibition gave way when civil service reforms removed federal prohibition agents as patronage resources. We also argue that by giving states control of designing state conventions, and thereby risking state malapportionment of conventions, Democrats succeeded in overcoming the traditional fissures that divided their southern and northern wings.
Innovation in the American Era of Industrial Preeminence: The Interaction of Policy, Finance, and Human Capital
Authors: Schuelke-Leech Beth-Anne , Leech Timothy C. 
Published: August 2018

Abstract:It is commonly accepted that innovation and economic prosperity after World War II were really spurred by the tremendous benefits of public investments. While public funding was crucial, a missing component of the historical analysis is a synthesis of the effects of these investments with changes in financial regulations enacted during the Great Depression, specific economic and employment policies, and the infusion of intellectual capital from scientists and engineers fleeing Nazi Germany and the turmoil of the war. The purpose of this article is to synthesize and analyze the effect of these three components—public polices, changes in private financial structures, and highly skilled immigration. This analysis will allow us to explore the broader impact and interdependence of knowledge creation, human and financial capital, and innovation.
Breast intraoperative radiotherapy: a review of available modalities, dedicated machines and treatment procedure
Authors: Baghani Hamid Reza , Moradmand Hajar , Aghamiri Seyed Mahmoud Reza 
Published: August 2018

AbstractBackgroundBreast intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) is a partial irradiation technique that delivers a single fraction of radiation dose to the tumour bed during surgery. The use of this technique is increasing (especially in the Middle East), and therefore, it is essential to have a comprehensive approach to this treatment modality. The aim of this study is to conduct a literature review on available IORT modalities during breast irradiation as well as dedicated IORT machines and associated treatment procedures. The main IORT trials and corresponding clinical outcomes are also studied.Materials and MethodsA computerised search was performed through MEDLINE, PubMed, PubMed Central, ISI web of knowledge and reference list of related articles.ResultsIORT is now feasible through using two main modalities, including low-kilovolt IORT and intraoperative electron radiotherapy (IOERT). The dedicated machines employed and treatment procedure for mentioned modalities are quite different. The outcomes of implemented clinical trials showed that IORT is not inferior to external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) in specifically selected and well-informed patients and can be considered as an alternative to EBRT.ConclusionAlthough the clinical outcomes of introduced IORT methods are comparable, but based on the review results, it could be said that IOERT is the most effective technical method, in view of the treatment time and dose uniformity concepts. The popularity of IORT is mainly due to the distinguished obtained results during breast cancer treatment. Despite the presence of some technical challenges, it is expected that the IORT technique will become more widespread in the immediate future.
MagPySV: A Python Package for Processing and Denoising Geomagnetic Observatory Data
Authors: Cox G. A. , Brown W. J. , Billingham L. , Holme R. 
Published: August 2018

AbstractMeasurements obtained at ground‐based observatories are crucial to understanding the geomagnetic field and its secular variation (SV). However, current data processing methods rely on piecemeal closed‐source codes or are performed on an ad hoc basis, hampering efforts to reproduce data sets underlying published results. We present MagPySV, an open‐source Python package designed to provide a consistent and automated means of generating high‐resolution SV data sets from hourly means distributed by the Edinburgh World Data Centre. It applies corrections for documented baseline changes, and optionally, data may be excluded using the ap index, which removes effects from documented high solar activity periods such as geomagnetic storms. Robust statistics are used to identify and remove outliers. Developing existing denoising methods, we use principal component analysis of the covariance matrix of residuals between observed SV and that predicted by a global field model to remove a proxy for external field contamination from observations. This method creates a single covariance matrix for all observatories of interest combined and applies the denoising to all locations simultaneously, resulting in cleaner time series of the internally generated SV. In our case studies, we present cleaned data in two geographic regions: monthly first differences are used to investigate geomagnetic jerk morphology in Europe, an area previously well‐studied at lower resolution, and annual differences are investigated for northern high latitude regions, which are often neglected due to their high noise content. MagPySV may be run on the command line or within an interactive Jupyter notebook; two notebooks reproducing the case studies are supplied.
Solar Ultraviolet Irradiance Observations of the Solar Flares During the Intense September 2017 Storm Period
Authors: Chamberlin P. C. , Woods T. N. , Didkovsky L. , Eparvier F. G. , Jones A. R. , Machol J. L. , Mason J. P. , Snow M. , Thiemann E. M. B. , Viereck R. A. , Woodraska D. L. 
Published: August 2018

AbstractA large outburst of flares occurred between 4–10 September 2017 when new magnetic flux emerged into and strengthened an existing active region, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Region 12673. This intense solar storm period included X9.3 (6 September) and X8.2 (10 September) flares, the largest flares that have occurred during Solar Cycle 24, as well as 39 M‐class flares and three additional X‐class flares. Another X‐class flare from this active region was observed on the farside of the Sun from Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN prior to the September events, along with other large M‐class flares, showing the potential for how farside irradiance monitoring can improve flare prediction at Earth for 1‐ to 13‐day forecasts. This September 2017 flare period is similar to other famous storm periods such as the 18 October to 5 November 2003 Halloween storm that produced 14 X‐class flares and 137 M‐class flares and the 6–10 September 2005 period that had 11 X‐class and 68 M‐class flares. All of these storm periods occurred in the declining phase of the solar cycle when solar activity had decreased significantly from solar maximum levels. This paper focuses on a number of solar irradiance observations at ultraviolet (0–190 nm) wavelengths during the September 2017 storm period and the advantages that an ensemble of measurements and models have for studying solar flares.
The interaction of transcription factors controls the spatial layout of plant aerial stem cell niches
Authors: Gruel Jérémy , Deichmann Julia , Landrein Benoit , Hitchcock Thomas , Jönsson Henrik 
Published: August 2018

AbstractThe plant shoot apical meristem holds a stem cell niche from which all aerial organs originate. Using a computational approach we show that a mixture of monomers and heterodimers of the transcription factors WUSCHEL and HAIRY MERISTEM is sufficient to pattern the stem cell niche, and predict that immobile heterodimers form a regulatory “pocket” surrounding the stem cells. The model achieves to reproduce an array of perturbations, including mutants and tissue size modifications. We also show its ability to reproduce the recently observed dynamical shift of the stem cell niche during the development of an axillary meristem. The work integrates recent experimental results to answer the longstanding question of how the asymmetry of expression between the stem cell marker CLAVATA3 and its activator WUSCHEL is achieved, and recent findings of plasticity in the system.
Reply to ‘Comments on two recent publications on GM maize and Roundup’
Authors: Antoniou Michael N. , Mesnage Robin , Agapito-Tenfen Sarah , Séralini Gilles-Eric 
Published: August 2018

AbstractThe opinion expressed by Eriksson and colleagues’ fails to recognise that there are no standard experimental designs for academic investigations involving omics analyses of genetically modified crops and that the only valid comparator to determine the effect of the process of transgenesis is a near isogenic variety grown at the same time and location, as was the case in our investigation of NK603 maize. Eriksson does not acknowledge that the quality of the rat liver tissues in our chronic Roundup toxicity study has neither been questioned nor branded as unsuitable for further investigation. In addition, Eriksson fails to appreciate that the statistical methods we used to analyse the liver metabolomics dataset are recognised as appropriate as some of a number of approaches that can be taken. Moreover, Eriksson neglects to mention that the proteomics analysis of the liver tissues highlights structural and functional damage from Roundup exposure. Thus our results are sound and the claims by Eriksson and colleagues of experimental flaws are unfounded.Replying to: Eriksson et al. Sci Rep 8 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30440-7.
The diagnostic accuracy of circulating tumor DNA for the detection of EGFR-T790M mutation in NSCLC: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Passiglia Francesco , Rizzo Sergio , Di Maio Massimo , Galvano Antonio , Badalamenti Giuseppe , Listì Angela , Gulotta Leonardo , Castiglia Marta , Fulfaro Fabio , Bazan Viviana , Russo Antonio 
Published: August 2018

AbstractThis pooled analysis aims at evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of circulating tumor (ct) DNA for the detection of EGFR-T790M mutation in NSCLC patients who progressed after EGFR-TKIs. Data from all published studies, reporting both sensitivity and specificity of plasma-based EGFR-T790M mutation testing by ctDNA were collected by searching in PubMed, Cochrane Library, American Society of Clinical Oncology, European Society of Medical Oncology and World Conference of Lung Cancer meeting proceedings. A total of twenty-one studies, with 1639 patients, were eligible. The pooled sensitivity of ctDNA analysis was 0.67 (95% CI: 0.64–0.70) and the pooled specificity was 0.80 (95% CI: 0.77–0.83). The pooled positive predictive value (PPV) was 0.85 (95% CI: 0.82–0.87) and the pooled negative predictive value (NPV) was 0.60 (95% CI: 0.56–0.63). The positive likelihood ratio (PLR) and negative likelihood ratio (NLR) were 2.67 (95% CI: 1.86–3.82) and 0.46 (95% CI: 0.38–0.54), respectively. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) was 7.27 (4.39–12.05) and the area under the curve (AUC) of the summary receiver operating characteristics (sROC) curve was 0.77. The ctDNA analysis represents a promising, non-invasive approach to detect and monitor the T790M mutation status in NSCLC patients. Development of standardized methodologies and clinical validation are recommended.