bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Climate and extreme weather independently affect population growth, but neither is a consistently good predictor
Authors: Matter Stephen F. , Roland Jens 
Published: May 2017

AbstractClimate change involves changes in mean temperature and precipitation as well as increases in extreme weather events; thus, determining how species will respond to climate change requires understanding how organisms respond to change in both mean and extreme conditions. Previously, we have shown that the growth of 21 interconnected populations of the alpine butterfly, Parnassius smintheus, is affected by prevailing climatic conditions during its overwintering period. More recently, we have shown that population growth is affected by extreme weather events during early overwintering. Here, we compare the descriptive and predictive abilities of models based on climate, weather, and their combination. We found that both climate‐ and weather‐based models explain significant, but independent, variation in year‐to‐year changes in population abundance; the combination of both was not better than either individual model. None of the models showed consistently good predictive ability. The climate model was accurate in predicting relatively small changes in year‐to‐year abundance, but not large changes. In contrast, the weather model was poor at predicting small changes in abundance, but accurately predicted large changes. Our results indicate that a more mechanistic approach, linking specific conditions to vital rates and population growth, will be needed to predict population responses to changing abiotic conditions.
Ask and you might receive: The actor–partner interdependence model approach to estimating cultural and gender variations in social support
Authors: Zhou Biru , Heather Dara , Cesare Alessia Di , Ryder Andrew G. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractAs an essential part of close relationships, social support is a dynamic interactive process. This paper aims to simultaneously investigate social support‐seeking and provision behaviours using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (APIM). Ninety‐two friendship dyads participated in this study. Supportive versus negative friendship qualities were used to predict different support‐seeking and support‐provision behaviours during an experimental task. Cultural and gender variations were also examined. Results showed that self‐reported friendship qualities influence support‐seeking and provision behaviours intrapersonally and interpersonally. Female participants were more likely to provide emotion‐focused support than were male participants. After accounting for friendship qualities in the dyads, there was no evidence of cultural group differences on support‐seeking or provision behaviours among same‐sex friends. These results demonstrate the conceptual and empirical advantages of using APIM to unpack cultural and gender variations in social support processes.
Social psychology circa 2016: A field on steroids
Authors: Kruglanski Arie W. , Chernikova Marina , Jasko Katarzyna 
Published: May 2017

AbstractThis paper considers the current state of the field in social psychology. On the one hand, we have made enormous progress in integrating our research with other disciplines, reaching out to general public and using our knowledge toward addressing major societal ills. On the other hand, social psychology has been recently mired in a crisis of confidence concerning the appropriateness of our methods and the robustness of our findings. We propose that shifting our attention to theory, method, and application, as well as away from a pervasive “outcome focus,” can extricate social psychology from its current doldrums and allow it to realize its potential as an indispensable social science.
Nickel Hydroxide Nanoparticles on Screen‐printed Electrodes as an Impedimetric Non‐enzymatic Glucose Sensor
Authors: Rinaldi Ana Laura , Sobral Santiago , Carballo Romina 
Published: May 2017

AbstractIn this study, the electrodeposition of nickel hydroxide nanoparticles onto a screen‐printed electrode (Ni(OH)2/SPE) is described. Ni(OH)2/SPE is proposed as an alternative non‐enzymatic glucose sensor based on Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) measurements.The SPEs were modified by the cathodic electrodeposition of nickel, from a solution containing 0.010 M Ni(NO3)2 and 1 M NH4Cl, at −1.3 V for 60 seconds. The SEM images show a uniform distribution of nickel spherical nanoparticles, with 60 nm average particle size. However, such morphology is not observed when the electrodeposition occurs in the absence of NH4Cl. The electrochemical properties of the sensor were carefully evaluated by Cyclic Voltammetry. Ni(OH)2/SPE shows a remarkable electrocatalytic behavior towards the oxidation of glucose in 0.1 M KOH. EIS measurements were carried out for Ni(OH)2/SPE and a single‐frequency impedance method is proposed as transduction principle for glucose determination. The analysis of each parameter of complex impedance was performed. The best linear response was obtained for the module of impedance (|Z|) in the range of 0–2 mM of glucose at 0.1 Hz (R2=0.992) with a slope of 0.137 KΩ−1⋅mM−1 of glucose. Finally, Ni(OH)2/SPE was utilized for quantification of glucose in blood samples.
A review of blood sample handling and pre‐processing for metabolomics studies
Authors: Hernandes Vinicius Veri , Barbas Coral , Dudzik Danuta 
Published: May 2017

AbstractMetabolomics has been found to be applicable to a wide range of clinical studies, bringing a new era for improving clinical diagnostics, early disease detection, therapy prediction and treatment efficiency monitoring. A major challenge in metabolomics, particularly untargeted studies, is the extremely diverse and complex nature of biological specimens. Despite great advances in the field there still exist fundamental needs for considering pre‐analytical variability that can introduce bias to the subsequent analytical process and decrease the reliability of the results and moreover confound final research outcomes. Many researchers are mainly focused on the instrumental aspects of the biomarker discovery process, and sample related variables sometimes seem to be overlooked. To bridge the gap, critical information and standardized protocols regarding experimental design and sample handling and pre‐processing are highly desired. Characterization of a range variation among sample collection methods is necessary to prevent results misinterpretation and to ensure that observed differences are not due to an experimental bias caused by inconsistencies in sample processing. Herein, a systematic discussion of pre‐analytical variables affecting metabolomics studies based on blood derived samples is performed. Furthermore, we provide a set of recommendations concerning experimental design, collection, pre‐processing procedures and storage conditions as a practical review that can guide and serve for the standardization of protocols and reduction of undesirable variation.
Are International and Product Diversification Substitutes or Complements? Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives
Authors: Bowen Harry P. , Sleuwaegen Leo 
Published: May 2017

Research summaryExtant research offers conflicting evidence on the nature and performance implications of a relationship between a firm's decision to expand (diversify) into new geographic and product markets; this article views that as being due to the lack of a consistent conceptual framework that incorporates and links both types of diversification. Accordingly, this article presents a consistent theoretical framework to identify and characterize alternative relationships between these two types of diversification strategies and what it might mean to characterize a particular relationship as evidencing substitution or complementarity. We show that the interplay between a firm's unique but limited resources and its particular market environment implies alternative and idiosyncratic relationships between these two diversification strategies, and we offer guidance on empirical approaches for investigating the identified relationships.Managerial summaryThis article presents a consistent theoretical framework to identify and characterize alternative relationships between a firm's decision to expand (diversify) into new geographic and product markets and what it might mean to characterize a given relationship as being one of substitutes for complements. Such characterization implies alternative performance outcomes when jointly engaging in these types of diversification strategies. We show that a firm's unique but limited resources and its particular market environment give rise to alternative and idiosyncratic relationships between these two types of diversification strategies, and we provide guidance on empirical approaches for investigating the identified relationships. Copyright © 2017 Strategic Management Society.
International Capacity‐Building Initiatives for National Bioethics Committees
Authors: Gefenas Eugenijus , Lukaseviciene Vilma 
Published: May 2017

AbstractDuring the last two decades, national bioethics committees have been established in many countries all over the world. They vary with respect to their structure, composition, and working methods, but the main functions are similar. They are supposed to facilitate public debate on controversial bioethical issues and produce opinions and recommendations that can help inform the public and policy‐makers. The dialogue among national bioethics committees is also increasingly important in the globalized world, where biomedical technologies raise ethical dilemmas that traverse national borders. It is not surprising, therefore, that the committees are established and active in the technologically advanced countries. There have also been a few international capacity‐building initiatives in bioethics that have had a dual task: networking among existing national bioethics committees and helping establish such committees in those countries that still lack them. The problem is that, due to a lack of information, it is not clear what problems and challenges committees face in the transitioning societies often characterized as low‐ and middle‐income countries.
A Broader Bioethics: Topic Selection and the Impact of National Bioethics Commissions
Authors: Schwartz Jason L. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractComparative assessments of national bioethics commissions in the United States commonly look at the differences among these groups over their forty‐year history. A particular focus has been differences in the membership, mission, methods, and reports of the President's Council on Bioethics, which was active from 2001 until 2009, compared to those of its predecessors and the recent Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, active from 2009 until 2016. The differences are real, but disproportionate attention to them can obscure the substantial similarities in commissions’ structure and function throughout the history of expert bioethics advice to government. As the Trump administration considers what role, if any, a bioethics commission will play in its work, it would be well served to consider how choices regarding the design of such a group and the topics it examines can best facilitate the unique contributions it can make to the government and to the country.
Reflections on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and Models of Public Bioethics
Authors: Childress James F. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractThe National Bioethics Advisory Commission, of which I was a member, was established by a 1995 executive order that identified its “first priority” as “the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects.” Not surprisingly, then, most of NBAC's work focused on research involving human subjects or participants. A second priority concerned “issues in the management and use of genetics information, including but not limited to, human gene patenting.” NBAC's charter (in contrast to the executive order) listed this charge as “part B” of the “first priority.” Nonetheless, NBAC never fully developed it. In addition to responding to requests and recommendations from the National Science and Technology Council, NBAC could accept suggestions from Congress and the public for bioethical issues it should consider, and it could also identify other issues to consider and set priorities among them. From its first meeting on October 4, 1996, until its charter expired on October 3, 2001, NBAC produced six reports, with 120 recommendations. In this essay, I make a few observations about principles and moral reasoning in NBAC's deliberations and about NBAC's attention to religious beliefs in the context of two bioethical controversies, provide a rough evaluation of NBAC's impact, and consider three possible models for future public bioethics directed at federal public policy.
National Bioethics Commissions as Educators
Authors: Lee Lisa M. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractAs has become tradition, executive directors of United States’ presidential bioethics committees offer reflections about their experience shortly after the orderly shutdown of the commission staff. After the records are filed according to government records regulations; after all the staff members, who are hired into temporary positions that must be renewed every two years, have secured permanent employment; after preparations are made to ensure that the next commission staff (should there be one) has a budget and standard operating procedures in order to begin its work in a timely manner; after the lights are turned out for the last time, the executive director makes the final climb up the stairs into the sunlight and reflects on the whirlwind. There is much about my work with the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues that deserves comment, but one aspect of the commission that has been especially valuable to me is its work to educate the nation on bioethical issues. This is, moreover, a contribution in which the commission staff was central, and it is one that, as an ethics educator myself, I will cherish deeply.
Making the Choices Necessary to Make a Difference: The Responsibility of National Bioethics Commissions
Authors: Grady Christine 
Published: May 2017

AbstractIn this essay, I offer some reflections on how the topics were identified and approached by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, on which I had the honor to serve, in the hope that the reflections may be useful to future national bioethics commissions. In the executive order that established the bioethics commission, President Obama explicitly recognized the ethical imperative to responsibly pursue science, innovation, and advances in biomedical research and health care, and the importance of national attention to these issues. The bioethics commission prioritized practicable, actionable, targeted recommendations. Like most earlier U.S. national bioethics commissions, President Obama's commission did not undertake projects on significant and troublesome issues related to health and health care that were not associated with new science or technology. Issues such as health care access, health care delivery, opioid addiction, end‐of‐life care, and physician‐aid‐in‐dying are topical and ethically complex areas of significance to bioethics, and they are also being discussed and debated by the public, the media, and policy‐makers. In my view, there are good reasons to select and prioritize projects as well as a justification for confining commission efforts to issues related to novel science and emerging technologies, when there is only one national‐level bioethics commission that has been established by the Office of the President.
Ethical Principles, Process, and the Work of Bioethics Commissions
Authors: Sulmasy Daniel P. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractShortly after the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues was constituted in 2010 and days before the commission members were to join a conference call to discuss possible topics for their deliberation, Craig Venter held a press conference announcing that his lab had created a synthetic chromosome for a species of mycoplasma and had inserted this genetic material into organisms of another species of mycoplasma (the genes of which had been deactivated), transforming the host species into the donor species. While not overtly claiming to have “created life in the test tube,” Venter's publicity seemed cleverly designed to provoke the media into reporting his discovery in just that way. The resulting uproar caused President Obama to give his new bioethics commission the assignment of investigating the ethics of the emerging field of synthetic biology. The commission went right to work. It formed working groups to deliberate about parts of the report, feeding ideas and language to the staff members who would do the actual writing, and then present the working group suggestions to the commission as a whole for public deliberation at open meetings. One of those working groups was charged with coming up with ethical principles that would guide the analysis. Having served as a member of that working group, I report here on the process by which these principles emerged and reflect upon the suitability of that process for the work of public bioethics commissions.
Ripples: What to Expect When You Serve on a Bioethics Commission
Authors: Murray Thomas H. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractCloning was the issue that put the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on the map, but the first clue that NBAC would address cloning was a terse fax from the White House to each of us who served on the Commission. The fax noted that with the birth of the sheep named Dolly, mammalian cloning was now a reality, and it tasked NBAC with providing advice on the ethics of human cloning and how the nation should respond to it. We were given ninety days to report our findings. That's a very tight deadline for a report written by a committee, but we met it, and along the way, I learned important lessons. My goal in this essay is to share what I learned at the ramparts of what I will call, with apologies to George Lucas, the Cloning Wars and through NBAC's work on five additional reports.
Genome‐wide mediation analysis of psychiatric and cognitive traits through imaging phenotypes
Authors: Bi Xuan , Yang Liuqing , Li Tengfei , Wang Baisong , Zhu Hongtu , Zhang Heping 
Published: May 2017

AbstractHeritability is well documented for psychiatric disorders and cognitive abilities which are, however, complex, involving both genetic and environmental factors. Hence, it remains challenging to discover which and how genetic variations contribute to such complex traits. In this article, they propose to use mediation analysis to bridge this gap, where neuroimaging phenotypes were utilized as intermediate variables. The Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort was investigated using genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) and mediation analyses. Specifically, 951 participants were included with age ranging from 8 to 21 years. Two hundred and four neuroimaging measures were extracted from structural magnetic resonance imaging scans. GWAS were conducted for each measure to evaluate the SNP‐based heritability. Furthermore, mediation analyses were employed to understand the mechanisms in which genetic variants have influence on pathological behaviors implicitly through neuroimaging phenotypes, and identified SNPs that would not be detected otherwise. Our analyses found that rs10494561, located in the intron region within NMNAT2, was associated with the severity of the prodromal symptoms of psychosis implicitly, mediated through the volume of the left hemisphere of the superior frontal region (
). The gene NMNAT2 is known to be associated with brainstem degeneration, and produce cytoplasmic enzyme which is mainly expressed in the brain. Another SNP rs2285351 was found in the intron region of gene IFT122 which may be potentially associated with human spatial orientation ability through the area of the left hemisphere of the isthmuscingulate region (
). Hum Brain Mapp 38:4088–4097, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Galectin‐1 promotes an M2 macrophage response to polydioxanone scaffolds
Authors: Abebayehu Daniel , Spence Andrew , Boyan Barbara D. , Schwartz Zvi , Ryan John J. , McClure Michael J. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractRegulating soft tissue repair to prevent fibrosis and promote regeneration is central to creating a microenvironment conducive to soft tissue development. Macrophages play an important role in this process. The macrophage response can be modulated using biomaterials, altering cytokine and growth factor secretion to promote regeneration. Electrospun polydioxanone (PDO) fiber scaffolds promoted an M2 phenotype when macrophages were cultured on large diameter, highly porous scaffolds, but an M1 phenotype on smaller diameter fibers. In this study, we investigated whether incorporation of galectin‐1, an immunosuppressive protein that enhances muscle regeneration, could promote the M2 response. Galectin‐1 was incorporated into large and small fiber PDO scaffolds during electrospinning. Galectin‐1 incorporation increased arginase‐1 and reduced iNOS and IL‐6 production in mouse bone‐marrow derived macrophages compared with PDO alone for both scaffold types. Inhibition of ERK mitogen‐activated protein kinase did not alter galectin‐1 effects on arginase‐1 and iNOS expression, but reversed IL‐6 suppression, indicating that IL‐6 is mediated by a different mechanism. Our results suggest that galectin‐1 can be used to modulate macrophage commitment to a pro‐regenerative M2 phenotype, which may positively impact tissue regeneration when using small diameter PDO scaffolds. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 2562–2571, 2017.
Mechanical properties, structure, bioadhesion, and biocompatibility of pectin hydrogels
Authors: Markov Pavel A. , Krachkovsky Nikita S. , Durnev Eugene A. , Martinson Ekaterina A. , Litvinets Sergey G. , Popov Sergey V. 
Published: May 2017

AbstractThe surface structure, biocompatibility, textural, and adhesive properties of calcium hydrogels derived from 1, 2, and 4% solutions of apple pectin were examined in this study. An increase in the pectin concentration in hydrogels was shown to improve their stability toward elastic and plastic deformation. The elasticity of pectin hydrogels, measured as Young's modulus, ranged from 6 to 100 kPa. The mechanical properties of the pectin hydrogels were shown to correspond to those of soft tissues. The characterization of surface roughness in terms of the roughness profile (Ra) and the root‐mean‐square deviation of the roughness profile (Rq) indicated an increased roughness profile for hydrogels depending on their pectin concentration. The adhesion of AU2% and AU4% hydrogels to the serosa abdominal wall, liver, and colon was higher than that of the AU1% hydrogel. The adhesion of macrophages and the non‐specific adsorption of blood plasma proteins were found to increase as the pectin concentration in the hydrogels increased. The rate of degradation of all hydrogels was higher in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) than that in DMEM and a fibroblast cell monolayer. The pectin hydrogel was also found to have a low cytotoxicity. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 2572–2581, 2017.