bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Respiratory safety of lemborexant in adult and elderly subjects with moderate‐to‐severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Authors: Cheng Jocelyn Y. , Lorch Daniel , Hall Nancy , Moline Margaret 
Published: September 2024

SummaryBecause some hypnotics worsen respiratory conditions, it was important to determine the respiratory safety of lemborexant, a competitive dual orexin‐receptor antagonist approved to treat adults with insomnia, in subjects with moderate‐to‐severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. E2006‐A001‐113 (Study 113; NCT04647383) was a multicentre, multiple‐dose, randomised, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, two‐period crossover study in adult subjects with moderate or severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (per spirometry‐based Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease [GOLD] criteria). Subjects (N = 30) were randomised to two treatment sequences comprising 8‐night treatment periods (washout ≥ 14 days) with lemborexant 10 mg or placebo. Peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2; primary endpoint), apnea–hypopnea index, objective sleep parameters and sleep architecture measures were assessed after single (Day 1) and multiple (Day 8) doses. There was no significant difference in least‐squares mean SpO2 after a single dose of lemborexant (91.1%) versus placebo (91.5%). Although a statistically significant difference in SpO2 was observed after multiple doses (least‐squares mean: lemborexant, 91.3%; placebo, 90.8%) favouring lemborexant, this was not considered clinically meaningful. Apnea–hypopnea index was not significantly different between treatments after single or multiple doses. Total sleep time and total rapid eye movement sleep were significantly greater on Days 1 and 8 with lemborexant versus placebo. Treatment‐emergent adverse events were reported in five (16.7%) subjects when taking lemborexant and four (13.3%) subjects when taking placebo; treatment‐emergent adverse events were mostly mild. Lemborexant was well tolerated and did not adversely impact SpO2 or apnea–hypopnea index after single and multiple doses relative to placebo in subjects with moderate‐to‐severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The relationship between sleep and interoception
Authors: Bynum Louisa G. , Brindle Ryan C. 
Published: September 2024

SummaryThe present study aimed to characterise the relationship between sleep and interoception in two independent studies. Theoretical grounds for such a relationship include a weak relationship between subjectively‐ and objectively‐measured sleep, the covariance of sleep with pain, as well as the mass regulation of a number of visceral biological systems. In addition, such a relationship is often reflected in our language (i.e., ‘feeling’ tired). In both studies (Study 1: N = 118, 73% female, mean age 20.98 years; Study 2: N = 830, 49% female, mean age 38.04 years) sleep over the last month was self‐reported. Confidence in interoceptive accuracy, which is the precision with which a person can monitor visceral signals, was measured using the Interoceptive Accuracy Scale, while interoceptive attention, which is the dispositional tendency to attend to bodily signals, was measured using the Body Perception Questionnaire. Study 1 revealed a relationship between long sleep latency and low confidence in interoceptive accuracy (β = −0.222, p = 0.021) and poor sleep quality and less interoceptive attention (β = −0.226, p = 0.016). Study 2 replicated these results as well as made clear a more general pattern whereby poor sleep—characterised by short duration, poor quality, less efficiency, long latency, and more frequent nighttime awakenings—related to an interoceptive phenotype of less confidence in interoceptive accuracy and more interoceptive attention (all β ≥ 0.047, p ≤ 0.17). In conclusion, results from these two independent studies provide robust cross‐sectional evidence for associations between various dimensions of poor sleep and greater interoceptive attention, but less confidence in interoceptive accuracy.
Will Americans Vote for an Atheist?
Authors: CAMPBELL DAVID E. , LAYMAN GEOFFREY C. , MARSH WAYDE Z. C. 
Published: September 2024

AbstractConventional wisdom holds and previous research confirms that for a political candidate, atheism is anathema. But the United States is becoming a more secular nation. Does secularization mean that atheists are acceptable to some Americans, specifically Democrats and voters with low religiosity? Can concerns about atheists be assuaged by appealing to the superordinate identity of “patriotic American”? Drawing on four survey experiments, we find that Democrats are more supportive of an atheist, Republicans less—producing a null effect overall. Furthermore, voters’ reactions to an atheist are not driven by the office, but are shaped by both their partisanship and religiosity. Voters’ negative attitudes are partially assuaged by framing an atheist as a patriotic war hero. As the secular population grows in the United States, it seems likely that atheists will emerge as candidates for elected office. Our data suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom, atheist candidates are potentially electable.
Weak link or strong foundation? Vulnerability of fine root networks and stems to xylem embolism
Authors: Harrison Day Beatrice L. , Brodersen Craig R. , Brodribb Timothy J. 
Published: September 2024

Summary

Resolving the position of roots in the whole‐plant hierarchy of drought‐induced xylem embolism resistance is fundamental for predicting when species become isolated from soil water resources. Published research generally suggests that roots are the most vulnerable organ of the plant vascular system, although estimates vary significantly. However, our knowledge of root embolism excludes the fine roots (< 2 mm diameter) that form the bulk of total absorptive surface area of the root network for water and nutrient uptake.

We measured fine root and stem xylem vulnerability in 10 vascular plant species from the major land plant clades (five angiosperms, three conifers, a fern and lycophyte), using standardised in situ methods (Optical Methods and MicroCT).

Mean fine root embolism resistance across the network matched or exceeded stems in all study species. In six of these species (one fern, one lycophyte, three conifers and one angiosperm), fine roots were significantly more embolism resistant than stems. No clear relationship was found between root xylem conduit diameter and vulnerability.

These results provide insight into the resistance of the plant hydraulic pathway at the site of water and nutrient uptake, and challenge the long‐standing assumption that fine roots are more vulnerable than stems.
Interactions between kisspeptin and bone: Cellular mechanisms, clinical evidence, and future potential
Authors: Mills Edouard G. , Abbara Ali , Dhillo Waljit S. , Comninos Alexander N. 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThe neuropeptide kisspeptin and its cognate receptor have been extensively studied in reproductive physiology, with diverse and well‐established functions, including as an upstream regulator of pubertal onset, reproductive hormone secretion, and sexual behavior. Besides classical reproduction, both kisspeptin and its receptor are extensively expressed in bone‐resorbing osteoclasts and bone‐forming osteoblasts, which putatively permits direct bone effects. Accordingly, this sets the scene for recent compelling findings derived from in vitro experiments through to in vivo and clinical studies revealing prominent regulatory interactions for kisspeptin signaling in bone metabolism, as well as certain oncological aspects of bone metabolism. Herein, we comprehensively examine the experimental evidence obtained to date supporting the interaction between kisspeptin and bone. A comprehensive understanding of this emerging facet of kisspeptin biology is fundamental to exploiting the future therapeutic potential of kisspeptin‐based medicines as a novel strategy for treating bone‐related disorders.
Spiritual capital and spiritual entrepreneurship: The new spiritualities and the processes of subjectivation
Authors: Navarrete‐Saavedra Rodrigo , Gallardo‐Vergara René 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThis paper critically examines the constructs of spiritual capital and spiritual entrepreneurship/entrepreneur. These concepts have recently become widespread in the social sciences and the psychology of the New Age, or the new spiritualities, and they are also increasingly present in business literature, organizational management, and personal improvement in managerial terms. From a critical social psychology position, the paper will consider the usefulness of these concepts in revealing how the field of spirituality currently seems to be a favoured space of governmentality and subjectivation for neoliberalism.
Climate‐related disasters and transparency: Records and the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency
Authors: Sterett Susan M. 
Published: September 2024

AbstractObjectiveMany governments aim for transparency for accountability. Transparency and its processes contribute to governing climate. The transparency agenda focuses on sharing records to inform the public. In the United States, accessible records also add to decision‐making processes since records are useful to contest decisions. Few people put together the two kinds of transparency, sharing and challenging. Analyzing both is critical as calls for acting on climate‐related disasters grow.MethodIn the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) shares records. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is one route to access FEMA's records. To assess transparency, I coded FEMA's 2019 FOIA log for requester and record requested. Years of damaging, notable disasters preceded 2019, but 2019 precedes pandemic disruptions.ResultRequesters can make requests likely to be useful instrumentally, concerning assistance and insurance. Journalists and scholars request records useful to conceptualizing governing disaster to include both individual political officials and aggregate bureaucratic policy. Instrumental requests dominate, as they do for other agencies.ConclusionThis article answers the call in recent studies of transparency, policy, and of disaster governance to track how policies embed power. Assessing record requests contributes to understanding the accountability in freedom of information.
Monolithic Chinese political culture?: A cross‐regional exploration
Authors: Harmel Robert , Li Zhaoqing , Shen Chen , Yeh Yao‐Yuan 
Published: September 2024

AbstractObjectiveThis article explores whether authoritarian China has a monolithic political culture, or rather a set of somewhat different political cultures across a number of regions.MethodOn the basis of several criteria we deem particularly important for identifying regions within which development, communication, and socialization of political attitudes are likely to be internally common but distinguishable from those of other regions, we divide China into six such regions. We then employ a combination of eight attitudinal measures from The China Survey of 2008 which are directly relevant to discerning political culture.ResultsWe find that there are indeed substantively different cultures across regions, some of which are more consistent with elite preferences than others.ConclusionFrom our initial foray into possible explanation, we conclude that politico‐historical legacy—sometimes in interaction with certain aspects of geographic, demographic, and economic characteristics—may go furthest in explaining the cross‐region cultural differences.
On certainty, Left Wittgensteinianism and conceptual change
Authors: Mollema W. J. T. 
Published: September 2024

AbstractWhat are the limits of Left Wittgensteinianism's point‐ and need‐based account of conceptual change? Based upon Wittgenstein's account of certainty and the riverbed analogy for conceptual change in On Certainty, the question is raised whether Queloz and Cueni's redevelopment of Left Wittgensteinianism can account for the multiplicitous forms of change these concepts are subject to. I argue that Left Wittgensteinianism can only partially do so, because it overemphasises the role of criticism‐driven conceptual change, due to its focus on the reason‐based contingency of the practices of a local ‘we’. In response, it is argued that Left Wittgensteinianism should be fortified with (i) gradual changes to concepts' sociocultural constraints that concept‐users are unaware of and (ii) evolutionary and environmental changes to the biological determinants of natural constraints of conceptual cores. In the end, there are conceptual practices like holding for certain that are generally, and fully contingent, but simultaneously inevitable not only for ‘us’ but also for many other delimitations of ‘we’. Subsequently, the compatibility of this Wittgensteinian account of conceptual change with pragmatic genealogy is discussed. It is concluded that thinking about conceptual changes to practices cannot be about the possibility of criticism alone nor succeed without the inclusion thereof.
Polynomial Chaos Expansion-Based Uncertainty Model for Fast Assessment of Gas Turbine Aero-Engines Thrust Regulation: A Sparse Regression Approach
Authors: Li Shijia , Wei Zhiyuan , Zhang Shuguang , Cen Zhaohui , Tsoutsanis Elias 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Manufacturing tolerance uncertainties in gas turbine aero-engines are unavoidable, which adversely influence the thrust control performance of newly produced aero-engines. However, classic sample-based uncertainty quantification approaches are usually computationally intensive. In this paper, to consider the uncertainties in the thrust control design phase in advance, a polynomial chaos expansion-based uncertainty model (PCEUM) using a sparse regression method is proposed to get the accurate probability distribution of thrust regulation performance and other concerned engine variables at a decreased computational burden. In PCEUM, interested engine parameters are initially expressed as linear combinations of several orthogonal polynomials, whose weighting coefficients are solved by a sparse-regression-based method, i.e., orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP). Meanwhile, two classic sample-based uncertainty quantification approaches, (i.e., Monte Carlo simulations (MCS), Latin hypercube sampling (LHS)) and least angle regression (LARS) are set as benchmarks. Numerical simulations on a verified large turbofan engine model at the takeoff state on a desktop computer show that PCEUM costs only 47.06 s at 200 samples to obtain converged probability distributions for interested engine parameters whose errors of mean and standard deviation are within 0.01% and 1%, respectively, compared to MCS at 100,000 samples. Meanwhile, compared to the latter three methods, PCEUM saves 94.5%, 81.2%, and 13.1% of the simulation time, accordingly. Hence, both the accuracy and speed of the proposed model are guaranteed for the uncertainty assessment of thrust regulation, which provides a promising solution for both conventional and future aero-propulsion system.
A Low Mach Preconditioned Harmonic Balance Solver for Cavity Flutter Computations
Authors: Sivel Pierre , Frey Christian , Kersken Hans-Peter , Kügeler Edmund 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Labyrinth seal flutter is a critical phenomenon in turbomachinery, as it can lead to severe structural vibrations and potential component damage. Accurate prediction and mitigation of flutter are paramount to ensuring the reliability and performance of modern turbomachinery systems. This paper explores the numerical computation of a labyrinth seal flutter test case using a low Mach preconditioned harmonic balance (HB) solver and investigates how this approach can improve the accuracy and response time of flutter computations. HB solvers have gained prominence in turbomachinery computations for their ability to efficiently capture unsteady flow phenomena and significantly reduce computational time compared to time-domain analyses. In labyrinth seals, however, the flow is often characterized by low Mach numbers, and preconditioning for these conditions has been shown to significantly improve convergence and accuracy. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how to implement low Mach preconditioning in a HB solver in the frequency domain. We employ iterative preconditioning to alleviate the stiffness associated with density-based solvers under low Mach conditions and analyze the effect of the preconditioning parameters on the convergence rate. Furthermore, we address inaccuracies linked to the classical Roe solver in low Mach scenarios by adapting it to the low Mach preconditioned governing equations. Through the combined utilization of iterative preconditioning and a preconditioned Roe solver, this study aims to improve convergence rates and the overall quality of flutter predictions. We demonstrate the method with an academic labyrinth seal test case originally presented by Corral et al. (“Higher Order Conceptual Model for Labyrinth Seal Flutter,” ASME J. Turbomach., 143(7), p. 071006). While previous investigations have primarily relied on linearized frequency domain solvers and reduce-order models, in this research a preconditioned HB solver is applied to this test case.
Novel Soft Gripper With Adjustable Performance Based on Blade Flexures
Authors: Arredondo-Soto Mauricio , Cuan-Urquizo Enrique , Gómez-Espinosa Alfonso , Roman-Flores Armando , Ahmad Rafiq 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
The design of soft grippers is challenging as the target objects to be handled involve a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and softness. Most grippers reported present drawbacks, e.g., complex control strategies for stiffness and force variation, inadequate adaptability to target shape variability, and complicated adaptation to manipulators, which in turn limit their implementation in applications such as harvesting. This paper presents a novel overlay soft gripper based on an assembling mechanism and passive soft structures, enabling the modification of grip size, orientation, and gripping force. This gripper can be assembled over a commercial robot-gripper taking the closing motion of this as the input to perform its closing motion. Input and output parameters are related by means of the displacement transmission mechanism which converts the closing motion of the robot-gripper into the closing motion of the overlay soft gripper. The gripping force can be modified through the change of stiffness, via adjustment of effective length using contact elements, of internal blade flexures. The displacement transmission mechanism works in two modes: as rigid-body mechanism without the contact elements and as rigid-body/flexible mechanism with the contact elements. The relationships between input and output parameters are obtained analytically for the case of rigid-body mechanism, and through finite element analysis simulations for the case of rigid-body/flexible mechanism. Relationships between input and output parameters are approximated with polynomial surfaces. Finally, physical prototypes are manufactured and assembled on their respective robot-grippers to qualitatively demonstrate their performance.
An Efficient Integral Approach for Kinematic Reliability Sensitivity Analysis of Industrial Robots
Authors: Shen Shuoshuo , Zhang Dequan , Liu Weipeng , Liu Jie , Han Xu 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Assessment of the reliability and reliability sensitivity of positioning accuracy for industrial robots subject to aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties registers a challenging task. This study proposes a new optimized moment-based method for kinematic reliability analysis and its sensitivity analysis, which incorporates the sparse grid (SPGR) technique and the saddlepoint approximation (SPA) method. To start with, the positioning accuracy reliability and its sensitivity models of industrial robots are established via computational optimization techniques and kinematic criteria. The kinematic accuracy reliability and its sensitivity are then calculated. Specifically, the sparse grid technique is adopted to approach the positioning error statistical moments and moment sensitivities. On this basis, positioning accuracy reliability bounds and reliability sensitivity bounds are obtained by the saddlepoint approximation method and optimization techniques. Finally, two practical examples are implemented to demonstrate the proficiency of the currently proposed method against Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) results. The results show that the currently proposed method exhibits superior computational accuracy and efficiency in kinematic reliability and its sensitivity analyses for industrial robots.
Diversity of
Clostridioides difficile
PCR ribotypes isolated from freshwater sediments depends on the isolation method
Authors: Rupnik Maja , Fuks Alen , Janezic Sandra 
Published: September 2024

ABSTRACT

Clostridioides difficile
is an intestinal pathogen of humans and animals. In community-associated infections, the environment is suggested to play a significant role in overall transmission routes. Although the prevalence of
C. difficile
in freshwater and soil has been widely studied, little is known about its presence in sediments. In this study, we tested 15 sediment samples collected from various freshwater sources.
C. difficile
was isolated from all sampled sites, yielding a total of 171 strains grouped into 26 ribotypes, with 001/072 and 014/020 being the most prevalent. Genome sequencing of 37 isolates from 17 PCR ribotypes confirmed the presence of highly related strains in the geographically distant and unlinked water samples. Eight divergent PCR ribotypes from clades C-II and C-III were found in six samples. In each sample, the unbound fraction (supernatant after sediment wash) and bound fraction (sonicated sediment sample) were subjected to enrichment. Sonication was only slightly better than washing in terms of sample positivity (14 positive samples with sonication and 11 with washing). However, sonication substantially increased the diversity of the PCR ribotypes obtained (23 in sonicated samples vs nine in washed samples). In conclusion, sediments are a rich source for investigating the diversity of environmental
C. difficile,
including isolates from divergent lineages. Selection of the isolation method can significantly impact the diversity of captured PCR ribotypes.

IMPORTANCE

Clostridioides difficile
, a pathogenic bacterium that can cause intestinal infections in humans and animals, thrives in the gut but also disperses widely through spores found in the environment. Clinical and environmental strains often overlap with common PCR ribotypes, which are consistently isolated worldwide. Environmental studies have mostly focused on water and soil, but sediments have been very poorly studied. In this study, we investigated the presence of
C. difficile
in various freshwater sediments and evaluated the effectiveness of two different isolation approaches on positivity rates and strain diversity.
C. difficile
was found to be highly prevalent in sediments, with an isolation rate of 100%. Sonication proved to be more effective than simple washing for capturing a greater diversity of PCR ribotypes. Overall, this study underscores the widespread presence of
C. difficile
in freshwater sediments and emphasizes the importance of continued surveillance and monitoring to understand its ecology and transmission dynamics.