bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Seneca’s Natural Questions
Authors: Glauthier Patrick 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
Seneca’s Natural Questions configures meteorology as a turbulent adventure that potentially strengthens the mind, ennobles the spirit, and reveals the greatness of the cosmos, which is identical with god; it is an experience of the sublime. Amidst the theatrical duplicity of Nero’s Rome, this journey is full of false starts, and Phaethon remains an important model. Since certain knowledge is often elusive, Seneca embraces aporia and dares to think the unthinkable—perhaps comets are planets with unfathomable orbits. Similarly, Stoicism’s promise of moral progress can appear deceptive—we might briefly attain the sage’s serenity, but the best outcome for which the proficiens can hope is a paradoxical state of vital calmness. Worse still, competing sources of sublimity, including unrestrained eros and political power, threaten to derail the project. Against such degradations of sublimity, Seneca hopes that the quickening thrill of the scientific sublime will act as a bulwark.
Exiles, Students, and the Growth of Anti-Apartheid Sports Protest
Authors: Llewellyn Matthew P , Rider Toby C 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
The infusion of exile and radical student politics during the 1960s marked a crucial turning point in the transnational anti-apartheid sport campaign. The arrival of two South African exiles in London—Dennis Brutus, the non-racial sport leader formerly incarcerated on Robben Island, and Peter Hain, a nineteen-year-old Kenyan-born, student activist—shifted the protest landscape in Britain. Under Brutus’ and Hain’s direction, British anti-apartheid sport campaigners jettisoned private meetings, letters to the editors, and the submission of public petitions in favour of a confrontational repertoire of direct-action protest tactics. Civil disobedience forms of student protest proved highly disruptive, threatening the ability of British sporting bodies to facilitate sporting relations with apartheid South Africa. Even in the face of exile and student-led protest British governing bodies displayed an unrelenting willingness to preserve contact. South African Prime Minister Johan Vorster’s ‘outward’ policy reform initiatives during the late 1960s, a deliberate scheme aimed at quelling international opposition to apartheid, fired British idealism and heightened the British sporting establishments desire to maintain the status quo.
The Stop the Seventy Tour Campaign
Authors: Llewellyn Matthew P , Rider Toby C 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
The student-led disruption of the 1969/1970 South African rugby union tour and its parallel efforts to force the cancellation of the 1970 cricket tour marked the violent and chaotic high point of anti-apartheid protests in Britain. Together, these anti-apartheid sport protests read as a ‘moral panic’, one in a succession of interrelated moral panics that gripped postcolonial British society. The themes of student unrest, radicalism, youth permissiveness, decolonization, Black Commonwealth immigration, and domestic race relations coalesced to form one undifferentiated threat against British culture, the rule of law, and the authority of the state. Anti-apartheid sport protest reinforced binaries between authority and ‘enemies’. The state, police, media, and defenders of white British cultural and sporting tradition fought a highly divisive and contested battle against those whom they believed threatened British democracy. Alternatively, it is here that the anti-apartheid cause drew strength as it became tethered and interwoven with contemporary domestic issues of racism, human rights, and agitational policing. The authorities depoliticized, delegitimized, and criminalized anti-apartheid sport protest. Yet, it also inspired. The student-led campaign against the South African tours attracted unprecedented levels of support. A large and multiracial band of Britons took to the streets and terraces in protest, and in doing so, transformed an elite, civil society human rights campaign into a mass movement from below, one that joined with powerful transnational and postcolonial forces to drive white South African sport into a deeper state of isolation.
The British Response to South Africa’s ‘Multinational’ Reforms
Authors: Llewellyn Matthew P , Rider Toby C 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
In the aftermath of the cancelled Springbok cricket tour to Britain in 1970, a range of international sporting federations punished white South Africa with a series of suspensions, expulsions, and cancelled tours. Wary of his country’s slide into sporting oblivion, in 1971 Johan Vorster unveiled a new ‘multinational’ sports policy that allowed for some mixed-race ‘international’ events in the Republic, but only under the proviso that athletes and teams from each racial group competed as representatives of their own ‘nation’. Embracing the language of dialogue and contact, the British sporting community collaborated with white South African sports officials by welcoming the opportunity to compete in the first round of ‘multinational’ competitions, and by insisting on games against Black opposition. Instead of turning their backs on Pretoria, they rowed against the currents of the boycott and looked for ways to reintegrate their old imperial ally back into the international sporting fold. Notably, too, Vorster’s reforms coincided with a lull of interest in the boycott in Britain. Tours to South Africa faced precious little opposition. The Anti-Apartheid Movement lost momentum. A decade passed without a major sports campaign. Interest in the British media, such a vital factor in stirring public attention, slowly faded. After reaching its pinnacle from 1969–1970, the boycott movement in Britain entered a phase of struggle and stagnation.
International Sanctions, the Commonwealth, and the Gleneagles Agreement
Authors: Llewellyn Matthew P , Rider Toby C 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
Pressure on British sport to change course in the 1970s came not from a struggling boycott movement within Britain, but from a more militant and determined international opposition. The culmination of this came in 1977, when statesmen from over thirty countries, representing around a quarter of the world’s population, gathered for the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. At the conference retreat, held at the Gleneagles Hotel and Resort in Scotland, Commonwealth leaders, including the British Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, brokered an agreement to ‘actively discourage’ sporting contacts with the apartheid state. For the next decade or more, supporters of the boycott would speak of any sporting encounter involving Britain and South Africa as a violation of the ‘Gleneagles Agreement’, often referencing or directly citing the language of the document. It also signalled a significant shift in the nature and scope of the boycott movement. Whereas previously the global anti-apartheid movement had focused purely on South Africa’s expulsion from international federations, and from stopping certain tours or interactions, they now expanded their arsenal to include third-party boycotts—i.e., to boycott nations who competed against South Africa—and increasingly relied on state actors to lead from the front. Not long after Gleneagles, even the most ardent British bridge-builders began to cancel sporting transactions with the Republic, fearing the impact it could have on all of British sport.
Conclusion
Authors: Llewellyn Matthew P , Rider Toby C 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
The conclusion summarizes the resumption of official sporting contacts between Britain and South Africa in the early 1990s, and how this new era was received by both bridge-builders and the leaders of the boycott movement. In so doing, we also summarize and revisit the main aims of the book and seek to put British sporting relations with apartheid South Africa in historical perspective. Finally, the epilogue will cast forward to the present day and consider how many of the same arguments that underpinned the bridge-builder thesis have been reactivated over the past few years in reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) and the protests undertaken by high-profile Black British athletes. Evoking the words of Enoch Powell, far-right groups such as the British National Party (BNP) interpreted such protests as the work of an unwanted and anti-British minority. Apartheid may have collapsed, the world may have moved on, but even in 2020, British sporting culture still stirred fears of lost authority, of the enemies within.
Physiology of vitamin B12: a study on its molecular mechanisms using a Caenorhabditis elegans model
Authors: Bito Tomohiro 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
Vitamin B12 (B12) is a water-soluble substance that is a member of the B-vitamin family. Its recommended daily dose in adult men and women is 2.4 µg, which is the lowest among the 13 vitamins. B12 deficiency causes megaloblastic anemia and neurological disorders. It is also associated with cognitive decline, growth retardation, infertility, and other symptoms. Nevertheless, the detailed mechanisms of which remain unclear. Caenorhabditis elegans is a small organism, with a length of approximately 1 mm and a lifespan of approximately 3 weeks. It has similar fundamental biological structures, such as the muscles, nervous system, and digestive tract, with mammals. Previous studies have shown that B12 is required for the normal development of C. elegans, similar to that of mammals. The current study aimed to perform a detailed investigation of the mechanisms underlying the development of B12 deficiency using a dietary B12-deficient C. elegans model.
Repun: an accurate small variant representation unification method for multiple sequencing platforms
Authors: Zheng Zhenxian , Ren Yingxuan , Chen Lei , Wong Angel On Ki , Li Shumin , Yu Xian , Lam Tak-Wah , Luo Ruibang 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
Ensuring a unified variant representation aligning the sequencing data is critical for downstream analysis as variant representation may differ across platforms and sequencing conditions. Current approaches typically treat variant unification as a post-step following variant calling and are incapable of measuring the correct variant representation from the outset. Aligning variant representations with the alignment before variant calling has benefits like providing reliable training labels for deep learning-based variant caller model training and enabling direct assessment of alignment quality. However, it also poses challenges due to the large number of candidates to handle. Here, we present Repun, a haplotype-aware variant-alignment unification algorithm that harmonizes the variant representation between provided variants and alignments in different sequencing platforms. Repun leverages phasing to facilitate equivalent haplotype matches between variants and alignments. Our approach reduced the comparisons between variant haplotypes and candidate haplotypes by utilizing haplotypes with read evidence to speed up the unification process. Repun achieved &gt;99.99% precision and &gt; 99.5% recall through extensive evaluations of various Genome in a Bottle Consortium samples encompassing three sequencing platforms: Oxford Nanopore Technology, Pacific Biosciences, and Illumina. Repun is open-source and available at (https://github.com/zhengzhenxian/Repun).
Chrysippus’ lullaby: the early Stoics on the benefits of mousikē
Authors: Čelkytė Aistė 
Published: November 2024

Abstract
This article explores the scope and significance of the Stoic commitment to the view that mousikē is morally beneficial. The idea that mousikē can have such a purpose, which I call aesthetic functionalism, is not uniquely Stoic, but I argue that the Stoics do have a distinctive formulation of this view. It is a weak kind of functionalism that approaches mousikē not as a cause but as an instrument of moral improvement, wielded by a willing agent who is the actual cause. The article begins with a discussion of the evidence for the Stoic views. Then, by employing the Epicurean attack on all functionalists as a foil, it spells out the commitments of the Stoic stance in particular. The discussion has two parts: a theoretical and a practical one. The former determines the extent to which the soul could be affected by music (given Stoic materialism), while the latter explores how the extant evidence presents the Stoics’ lifelong engagement with mousikē, with different benefits at different stages of life.
blast2galaxy: a CLI and Python API for BLAST+ and DIAMOND searches on Galaxy servers
Authors: König Patrick , Fiebig Anne , Münch Thomas , Grüning Björn , Scholz Uwe 
Published: November 2024

Abstract

Motivation
The Galaxy workflow system is an open-source platform supporting data-intensive research in life sciences, featuring a user-friendly web interface for complex analyses without extensive programming. It also offers a representational state transfer based API, enabling remote execution of specific tools. Galaxy supports similarity searches for nucleotide and amino acid sequences, with integrated tools like NCBI BLAST+ and DIAMOND. However, no specialized software currently exists for convenient use of NCBI BLAST+ and DIAMOND via the Galaxy API.

Results
blast2galaxy is a Python package that uses the Galaxy API to run sequence alignments with NCBI BLAST+ and DIAMOND as Galaxy-wrapped tools on compatible servers. It includes a command-line interface that mirrors the CLI of BLAST+ and DIAMOND and a high-level Python API for direct alignments from Python applications. The package relies on bioblend for communication with the Galaxy API.

Availability and implementation
blast2galaxy is available as open-source software under the MIT license. The source code is available on Github: https://github.com/IPK-BIT/blast2galaxy. It can be installed from the Python Package Index using “pip install blast2galaxy” or from the Bioconda channel using “conda install -c bioconda blast2galaxy”. Docker and Apptainer images are available and referenced in the documentation which is available under https://blast2galaxy.readthedocs.io.
CVR-BBI: an open-source VR platform for multi-user collaborative brain to brain interfaces
Authors: Liu Di , Wei Yina 
Published: November 2024

Abstract

Summary
As brain imaging and neurofeedback technologies advance, the brain-to-brain interface (BBI) has emerged as an innovative field, enabling in-depth exploration of cross-brain information exchange and enhancing our understanding of collaborative intelligence. However, no open-source virtual reality (VR) platform currently supports the rapid and efficient configuration of multi-user, collaborative BBIs. To address this gap, we introduce the Collaborative Virtual Reality Brain-to-Brain Interface (CVR-BBI), an open-source platform consisting of a client and server. The CVR-BBI client enables users to participate in collaborative experiments, collect electroencephalogram (EEG) data, and manage interactive multisensory stimuli within the VR environment. Meanwhile, the CVR-BBI server manages multi-user collaboration paradigms, and performs real-time analysis of the EEG data. We evaluated the CVR-BBI platform using the SSVEP paradigm and observed that collaborative decoding outperformed individual decoding, validating the platform’s effectiveness in collaborative settings. The CVR-BBI offers a pioneering platform that facilitates the development of innovative BBI applications within collaborative VR environments, thereby enhancing the understanding of brain collaboration and cognition.

Availability and implementation
CVR-BBI is released as an open-source platform, with its source code being available at https://github.com/DILIU1/CVR-BBI.
Detection, measurement, and diagnosis of lung nodules by ultra-low-dose CT in lung cancer screening: a systematic review
Authors: Pan Zhijie , Zhang Yaping , Zhang Lu , Wang Lingyun , Zhao Keke , Li Qingyao , Wang Ai , Hu Yanfei , Xie Xueqian 
Published: November 2024

Abstract

Objective
There is a lack of recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews on the use of ultra-low-dose CT (ULDCT) for the detection, measurement, and diagnosis of lung nodules. This review aims to summarize the latest advances of ULDCT in these areas.

Methods
A systematic review of studies in PubMed and Web of Science was conducted, using search terms specific to ULDCT and lung nodules. The included studies were published in the last 5 years (January 2019-August 2024). Two reviewers independently selected articles, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias and concerns using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-II (QUADAS-II) tool. The standard-dose, low-dose, or contrast-enhanced CT served as the reference-standard CT to evaluate ULDCT.

Results
The literature search yielded 15 high-quality articles on a total of 1889 patients, of which 10, 3, and 2 dealt with the detection, measurement, and diagnosis of lung nodules. QUADAS-II showed a generally low risk of bias. The mean radiation dose for ULDCT was 0.22 ± 0.10 mSv (7.7%) against 2.84 ± 1.80 mSv for reference-standard CT. Nodule detection rates ranged from 86.1% to 100%. The variability of diameter measurements ranged from 2.1% to 14.4% against contrast-enhanced CT and from 3.1% to 8.29% against standard CT. The diagnosis rate of malignant nodules ranged from 75% to 91%.

Conclusions
ULDCT proves effective in detecting lung nodules while substantially reducing radiation exposure. However, the use of ULDCT for the measurement and diagnosis of lung nodules remains challenging and requires further research.

Advances in knowledge
When ULDCT reduces radiation exposure to 7.7%, it detects lung nodules at a rate of 86.1%-100%, with a measurement variance of 2.1%-14.4% and a diagnostic accuracy for malignancy of 75%-91%, suggesting the potential for safe and effective lung cancer screening.
The future of peritoneal dialysis
Authors: Davies Simon 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACT
Peritoneal dialysis (PD), long established as the leading form of home dialysis, has comparatively good 5-year outcomes and cost-utility analyses have consistently demonstrated benefits to both patients and payers. Future improvements should still be sought, such as the further development of promising technologies designed to limit PD-associated harm, but given the physical and anatomical constraints of PD, these are unlikely to be transformational through the dialysis process itself. Rather, future focus should be on interventions that are effective across the whole dialysis population, such as mitigating the rate of loss in residual kidney function, pharmacological interventions for symptoms of kidney failure and suppressing inflammation. The greatest future challenge for the modality is inequity of access. In Europe, variation in PD uptake is &gt;10-fold across the continent, with several contributing factors: differing economic drivers, variation in the empowerment of patients, physician attitudes and bias, small centre size, lack of experience, a nursing staff crisis, poor organizational culture and a lack of motivation and educational opportunities. It is time for a collective effort to address this and recently EuroPD convened a policy forum to initiate a multistakeholder approach to the problem, which extends to home haemodialysis. Use of PD worldwide is also highly variable, for some of the same reasons listed above, but with the additional challenges of the high cost of PD fluid and the lack of universal healthcare coverage. In the future, PD could and should play an important part in providing equitable access to dialysis worldwide, but to achieve this—and for the sake of the planet—point-of-care dialysis fluid generation would be transformative.
Clinical implications of mineralocorticoid receptor overactivation
Authors: El Mouhayyar Christopher , Chhikara Monika , Tang Mengyao , Nigwekar Sagar U 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACT
The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) is a nuclear transcription factor that plays a critical role in regulating fluid, electrolytes, blood pressure, and hemodynamic stability. In conditions such as chronic kidney disease (CKD) and heart failure (HF), MR overactivation leads to increased salt and water retention, inflammatory and fibrotic gene expression, and organ injury. The MR is essential for transcriptional regulation and is implicated in metabolic, proinflammatory, and pro-fibrotic pathways. It is widely expressed in various cell types throughout the body, including the gastrointestinal tract, heart, brain, kidneys, immune cells, and vasculature. Animal studies suggest that MR activation induces oxidative stress in the kidneys and mediates renal inflammation and fibrosis. Immune cell-specific deletion of MR has shown protection against cardiac fibrosis, indicating the MR's role in pathological remodeling. In vascular smooth muscle cells, the MR regulates vascular tone and vasoconstriction.
Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs) can be categorized based on their chemical structure as either steroidal or nonsteroidal. Steroidal MRAs (sMRA), such as spironolactone and eplerenone, have demonstrated cardiovascular benefits but are limited by hyperkalemia, gynecomastia, and sexual dysfunction. Nonsteroidal MRAs (nsMRA) have shown promise in preclinical studies and clinical trials. They offer a promising alternative by effectively blocking MR without hormone-like effects, potentially improving cardiovascular and renal disease management.
Further education is necessary regarding the significance of MRA utilization in CKD and HF, balancing benefits with the risk of hyperkalemia. This risk could be mitigated by combining MRAs with potassium-binding agents. Studies are underway to explore the synergistic effects between nsMRAs and other agents, such as SGLT-2i inhibitors and Glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists, to optimize cardiorenal outcomes.
Overall, MR overactivation remains a significant therapeutic target, with nsMRAs showing promise as pivotal therapies in CKD and HF management. This review highlights the evolving landscape of MR-targeted therapies, their molecular mechanisms, and clinical implications in cardiorenal diseases.