bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Marijuana use and serum testosterone concentrations among U.S. males
Authors: Thistle J. E. , Graubard B. I. , Braunlin M. , Vesper H. , Trabert B. , Cook M. B. , McGlynn K. A. 
Published: April 2017

SummaryMarijuana has been reported to have several effects on the male reproductive system. Marijuana has previously been linked to reduced adult testosterone, however, a study in Denmark reported increased testosterone concentrations among marijuana users. This study was performed to estimate the effect of marijuana use on testosterone in U.S. males. Data on serum testosterone, marijuana use, and covariates for 1577 men from the 2011–2012 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were analyzed. Information on marijuana use was collected by a self‐administered computer‐assisted questionnaire. Serum testosterone was determined using isotope dilution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. The effects of marijuana use on serum testosterone concentrations were examined by frequency, duration, and recency of use. Adjusted means and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of serum testosterone across levels of marijuana use were estimated using multiple linear regression weighted by the survey weights. The majority (66.2%) of the weighted study population reported ever using marijuana with 26.6% reporting current marijuana use. There was no difference in serum testosterone between ever users (adjusted mean = 3.69 ng/mL, 95% CI: 3.46, 3.93) and never users (adjusted mean = 3.70 ng/mL, 95% CI: 3.45, 3.98) upon multivariable analysis. However, serum testosterone was inversely associated with time since last regular use of marijuana (p‐value for trend = 0.02). When restricted to men aged 18–29 years, this relationship strengthened (p‐value for trend <0.01), and serum testosterone was also inversely associated with time since last use (p‐value for trend <0.01), indicating that recency of use, and not duration or frequency, had the strongest relationship with testosterone levels. Serum testosterone concentrations were higher in men with more recent marijuana use. Studies are needed to determine the extent to which circulating testosterone concentrations mediate the relationship of marijuana use with male reproductive outcomes.
Unprofessional content on Facebook accounts of US urology residency graduates
Authors: Koo Kevin , Ficko Zita , Gormley E. Ann 
Published: April 2017

ObjectiveTo characterize unprofessional content on public Facebook accounts of contemporary US urology residency graduates.MethodsFacebook was queried with the names of all urologists who graduated from US urology residency programmes in 2015 to identify publicly accessible profiles. Profiles were assessed for unprofessional or potentially objectionable content using a prospectively designed rubric, based on professionalism guidelines by the American Urological Association, the American Medical Association, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Content authorship (self vs other) was determined, and profiles were reviewed for self‐identification as a urologist.ResultsOf 281 graduates, 223 (79%) were men and 267 (95%) held MD degrees. A total of 201 graduates (72%) had publicly identifiable Facebook profiles. Of these, 80 profiles (40%) included unprofessional or potentially objectionable content, including 27 profiles (13%) reflecting explicitly unprofessional behaviour, such as depictions of intoxication, uncensored profanity, unlawful behaviour, and confidential patient information. When unprofessional content was found, the content was self‐authored in 82% of categories. Among 85 graduates (42%) who self‐identified as a urologist on social media, nearly half contained concerning content. No differences in content were found between men and women, MD and DO degree‐holders, or those who did or did not identify as a urologist (all P > 0.05).ConclusionThe majority of recent residency graduates had publicly accessible Facebook profiles, and a substantial proportion contained self‐authored unprofessional content. Of those identifying as urologists on Facebook, approximately half violated published professionalism guidelines. Greater awareness of trainees’ online identities is needed.
Shadow conservation and the persistence of sacred church forests in northern Ethiopia
Authors: Cardelús Catherine L. , Scull Peter , Wassie Eshete Alemayehu , Woods Carrie L. , Klepeis Peter , Kent Eliza , Orlowska Izabela 
Published: April 2017

AbstractLand‐use change threatens biodiversity and ecosystem function worldwide. These changes have impacts on weather patterns, carbon storage, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services from regional to local scales. Only 8 percent of tropical forests are formally recognized as conservation areas, however globally, there is a network of sites that are protected because they are sacred and as a result act as ‘shadow’ conservation for biodiversity. Unlike other types of protected sites (e.g., national parks), these sites are seats of religious ritual that anchor a community's cultural identity, while also conserving biological diversity and other ecosystem services. We studied the extent and status of sacred forests in northern Ethiopia, which are threatened because of their small size (~5 ha) and isolation, increasing their exposure to edge effects and human pressures. Using historical and modern imagery, we found that over the last 50 yr, sacred forests have increased in area, but decreased in crown closure. We also found that forest ecological status, via ground‐level investigation, had high mean human disturbance (e.g., trails, plantations, exotic planting; 37%); and that forests close to markets (e.g., cities) increased in area due to planting of Eucalyptus (exotic), indicating a potential threat to their persistence and value as shelters of the church.
The effect of roads on spider monkeys’ home range and mobility in a heterogeneous regenerating forest
Authors: Asensio Norberto , Murillo‐Chacon Evin , Schaffner Colleen M. , Aureli Filippo 
Published: April 2017

AbstractArboreal fauna living in tropical ecosystems may be particularly affected by roads given their dependency on forest cover and the high vulnerability of such ecosystems to changes. Over a period of 4 yr, we followed subgroups of spider monkeys living in a regenerating dry tropical forest with 8.2 km of roads within their home range. We aimed to understand whether roads shaped the home range of spider monkeys and which road features affected their movement. Only 18 percent (3 km) of the spider monkeys’ home range perimeter bordered with roads; these roads had greater habitat disparity between road sides than roads inside the home range. Although monkeys were reluctant to be close to roads, and roadside habitat contained low proportions of mature forest, spider monkeys crossed roads at 69 locations (7.5 crossings per kilometer). The main road characteristic affecting crossings was canopy opening size, with greater probability of crossing where canopy openings were smaller. Our findings support the importance of canopy opening size for road crossing of arboreal taxa, but they also indicate the relevant role roadside forest structure may have. Minimizing canopy opening size and forest disturbance along roads can facilitate the movement of arboreal fauna and preserve the important role of spider monkeys and other arboreal taxa in seed dispersal and thus the maintenance and regeneration of forest diversity.
‘Maybe I will give some help…. maybe not to help the eyes but different help’: an analysis of care and support of children with visual impairment in community settings in Malawi
Authors: Gladstone M. , McLinden M. , Douglas G. , Jolley E. , Schmidt E. , Chimoyo J. , Magombo H. , Lynch P. 
Published: April 2017

AbstractBackgroundVisual impairment in children is common in low and middle‐income settings. Whilst visual impairment (VI) can impact on the development of children, many reach full potential with appropriate early intervention programmes. Although there is increased emphasis on early child development globally, it is not yet clear how to provide specific programmes for children with VI in low and middle‐income settings. This study aims to identify facilitators and barriers to the provision of a developmental stimulation programme for children with VI in rural and urban Malawi.MethodsWe undertook 6 focus groups, 10 home observations and 20 in‐depth interviews with carers of children with VI under 6 years in urban and rural Southern Malawi. We utilised topic guides relating to care, play, communication and feeding. Qualitative data were subject to thematic analysis that included placing themes within Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework. We established authenticity of themes through feedback from participants.ResultsWe identified themes within Bronfenbrenner's framework at five levels: (1) blindness acting as a barrier to stimulation and communication, health and complex needs all affecting the individual child; (2) understanding of VI, ability to be responsive at the microsystem level of the carer; (3) support from other carers at microsystem level within a mesosystem; (4) support from other professionals (knowledge of, identification and management of children with VI, responsibilities and gender roles, environmental safety and prejudice, stigma and child protection all at the level of the exosystem.DiscussionThis study has revealed the requirements needed in order to produce meaningful and appropriate programmes to support nutrition, care and early stimulation for children with VI in this and similar African settings. This includes supporting carers to understand their child's developmental needs, how to better communicate with, feed and stimulate their child; offering advice sensitive to carers' responsibilities and professional training to better support carers and challenge community stigma.
The House Unbound: Refiguring Gender and Domestic Boundaries in Urbanizing Southeast Turkey
Authors: PURCELL BRIDGET 
Published: April 2017

AbstractIn the modern Middle East, proponents of economic development often mobilize the “place” of women as an index of a country or region's modernization. In contemporary southeastern Turkey, for instance, state‐led urbanization is driven and justified by the claim that women in cities are free to participate in public life, whereas women in villages are “confined to the home.” This paper challenges that narrative by querying the figure of confinement to the home. I begin by exploring the social scientific convention that takes the boundary of the house (inside/outside, private/public, female/male) as a stable axis of comparison across time and space. Then, drawing on my fieldwork in the city of Urfa in southeastern Turkey, I track how the inside/outside boundary is phenomenally and differentially instantiated in three types of home—village, urban, and peri‐urban. I argue that, in Urfa, the notion of a bounded home arises only in the context of urbanization, as an emergent middle class moves into modern apartment buildings, setting themselves apart from villagers and migrants both socially and spatially. Here, “confinement to the home,” far from a mark of backwardness, is for local women a badge of middle‐class respectability. I thus show how the question of domestic boundaries, far more than a developmental or scholarly preoccupation, acts as an important means of self‐positioning and social differentiation in a multi‐ethnic, cross‐class context. [Turkey, urbanization, gender, spatial politics, migration and cosmopolitanism]
Betrayed by the Neoliberal State, Neglected by the “Jangali” Company: The Anxiety of Autonomy in an Elite Housing Colony in Kathmandu, Nepal
Authors: NELSON ANDREW 
Published: April 2017

AbstractLike much of the global spread of gated communities and fortified enclaves, the emergence of Kathmandu's “housing” industry (housing colonies and apartment complexes) grew out of neoliberal reforms. The restructuring of Nepal's economy and government created the conditions for privatized housing infrastructure, management, and services to cater to elites dissatisfied with the post‐1991 processes of democratization and declining conditions in the city. However, while the decentralization of local governance and deregulation of the finance industry created the conditions for elites to desert the public city for private housing complexes, the contractual relations of privatization also sowed the seeds of discontent. Through an ethnographic account of a conflict between the residents of a housing colony and the company that built and managed it (at that time), this article demonstrates how Kathmandu elites have adjusted to the rearrangement of their relationship with the state from the patron/client arrangements of the Panchayat era (1962–1990) to the “consumer citizenship” (Fernandes 2006) of the post‐1991 era of liberalization and democratization. Expecting relations of dependence, the residents were ultimately alienated by the indifference of the company. They articulated critiques of the company through ethnically coded protests of its business practices and expressions of nostalgia for the paternalist patronage of the pre‐1991 non‐democratic state. Ultimately, the conflict exposed a contradictory wish of elites to benefit from the privatized benefits of neoliberalism alongside the social protections of an interventionist state. [fortified enclaves/gated communities, neoliberal urbanism, elites, Kathmandu, Nepal]
Cleaning Up Bodhgaya: Conflicts over Development and the Worlding of Buddhism
Authors: RODRIGUEZ JASON 
Published: April 2017

AbstractIn 2007 the Indian government deployed police and soldiers in Bodhgaya to oversee the demolition of a number of long‐standing businesses and homes. These actions were pursued as part of the “Master Plan,” a sweeping, fifty‐year government‐led development plan for Bodhgaya, place of Buddha's enlightenment in the north Indian state of Bihar, designed to manage Bodhgaya's increasing global significance as a pilgrimage and tourism destination while negotiating an array of competing interests. In this article I argue that understanding the Master Plan requires an attention to how such place‐making takes shape with and against the Indian state, neoliberal policies, the ongoing emergence of a contemporary global Buddhist sacred geography, and the diverse, multifaceted desires of Bodhgaya residents. [India, Buddhism, governance, pilgrimage, development, policy, tourism]
Shifting baseline in macroecology? Unravelling the influence of human impact on mammalian body mass
Authors: Santini Luca , González‐Suárez Manuela , Rondinini Carlo , Di Marco Moreno 
Published: April 2017

AbstractAimHuman activities have led to hundreds of species extinctions and have narrowed the distribution of many of the remaining species. These changes influence our understanding of global macroecological patterns, but their effects have been rarely explored. One of these patterns, the Bergmann's rule, has been largely investigated in macroecology, but often under the assumption that observed patterns reflect “natural” processes. We assessed the extent to which humans have re‐shaped the observable patterns of body mass distribution in terrestrial mammals, and how this has altered the macroecological baseline.LocationGlobal.MethodsUsing a comprehensive set of ecological, climatic and anthropogenic variables, we tested several alternative hypotheses to explain the body mass pattern observed in terrestrial mammals’ assemblages at a one‐degree resolution. We then explored how model predictions and the Bergmann's latitudinal pattern are affected by the inclusion of human impact variables and identified areas where predicted body mass differs from the expected due to human impact.ResultsOur model suggests that median and maximum body mass predicted in grid cells would be higher, and skewness in local mass distributions reduced, if human impacts were minimal, especially in areas that are highly accessible to humans and where natural land cover has been converted for human activities.Main conclusionsOur study provides evidence of the pervasive effects of anthropogenic impact on nature and shows human‐induced distortion of global macroecological patterns. This extends the notion of “shifting baseline”, suggesting that when the first macroecological investigations started, our understanding of global geographic patterns was based on a situation which was already compromised. While in the short term human impact is causing species decline and extinction, in the long term, it is causing a broad re‐shaping of animal communities with yet unpredicted ecological implications.
Credit Scoring and the Quality of Business Credit During the Crisis
Authors: Demma Cristina 
Published: April 2017

The Great Recession produced a sharp worsening of credit quality for banks and firms alike. In this context, this paper investigates whether in Italy during the period 2008–2011 credit quality was higher for the banks that had adopted credit scoring techniques before the crisis and actually incorporated them into their loan evaluation process. To this end, I use a unique dataset built by merging information about banks organization variables drawn from the Regional Bank Lending Survey, the main banks’ balance sheet indicators and data on non‐performing loans drawn from the Italian Central Credit Register and from banks’ supervisory reports to the Bank of Italy.The main finding is that, after controlling for other supply factors, during the financial crisis the banks that relied more heavily on credit scoring models had higher‐quality loans to non‐financial companies. This result is consistent with the thesis that scoring models mitigated the negative impact of the crisis by enhancing banks’ screening ability. However, the positive effect is significant only for loans granted to large firms; for smaller firms, the absence of a significant effect could be explained by the greater importance traditionally attached to other means of assessing their creditworthiness, mainly soft information.
Immunofluorescence reveals unusual patterns of labelling for connexin43 localized to calbindin‐D28K‐positive interstitial cells in the pineal gland
Authors: Tsao D. D. , Wang S. G. , Lynn B. D. , Nagy J. I. 
Published: April 2017

AbstractGap junctions between cells in the pineal gland have been described ultrastructurally, but their connexin constituents have not been fully characterized. We used immunofluorescence in combination with markers of pineal cells to document the cellular localization of connexin43 (Cx43). Immunofluorescence labelling of Cx43 with several different antibodies was widely distributed throughout the pineal, whereas another connexin examined, connexin26, was not found in pineal but only in surrounding leptomeninges. Labelling apparently associated with plasma membranes was visualized either as fine Cx43‐puncta (1–2 μm) or as unusually large pools of Cx43 ranging up to 4–7 μm in diameter or length. These puncta and pools were highly concentrated in perivascular spaces, where they were associated with numerous cells devoid of labelling for markers of pinealocytes (e.g. tryptophan hydroxylase and serotonin), and where they were minimally associated with blood vessels and lacked association with resident macrophages. Astrocytes labelled for glial fibrillary acidic protein were largely restricted to the anterior pole of the pineal gland, where they displayed only fine and sparse Cx43‐puncta along their processes. Labelling for Cx43 was localized largely though not exclusively to the somata and long processes of a subpopulation of perivascular interstitial cells that were immunopositive for calbindin‐D28K. These cells were often located among dense bundles or termination areas of sympathetic fibres labelled for tyrosine hydroxylase or serotonin. The results indicate that interstitial cells form abundant gap junctions composed of Cx43, and suggest that gap junction‐mediated intracellular communication by these cells supports the activities of pinealocytes.
Advances and trends for the development of ambient‐assisted living platforms
Authors: Costa Angelo , Julián Vicente , Novais Paulo 
Published: April 2017

AbstractAmbient Assisted Living (AAL) and Ambient Intelligence (AmI) try to achieve a future where technology surrounds the users and helps them in their daily lives. In this sense, the urgent need of solutions to cover the rapid increase of the elderly population with chronic diseases led to the increase of projects related with AAL and AmI. During the latest years, several projects have been proposed to tackle different medical problems, some building devices and others services. This paper presents iGenda and its evolution, the UserAccess, with the main objective of developing an AAL platform. It features an analysis of the latest developments and points future directions for the work. These projects display the importance of the interoperability of the platforms, demonstrating a case study for AAL development.
Impact of eutrophication on the carbon stable‐isotopic baseline of benthic invertebrates in two deep soft‐water lakes
Authors: Belle Simon , Verneaux Valérie , Mariet Anne‐Lise , Millet Laurent 
Published: April 2017

Abstract

Sedimentary geochemical proxies and carbon stable isotopes of subfossil chironomid head capsules (δ13C) were combined to reconstruct long‐term changes in organic matter sources contributing to chironomid biomass in two soft‐water lakes (Vosges Mountains, France). Here, we test how basal carbon sources fueling the benthic food web responded to two millennia of environmental changes.

Sedimentary organic matter characteristics were strongly variable over time, and were mainly influenced by human activities within the watershed basin. During the pre‐eutrophication phase, subfossil chironomid δ13C (δ13CHC) values were lower than those of sedimentary organic matter. These results suggested that chironomid larvae preferentially fed on the autochthonous part of the total sedimentary organic matter.

During the modern period, higher accumulation rates of organic matter and a decrease in C/N ratio suggested a steep rise in aquatic productivity for both lakes. As suggested by the synchronous increase in organic matter δ13C values, this higher productivity and the subsequent increase in dissolved CO2 uptake may have induced either a marked increase in atmospheric CO2 uptake by phytoplankton or a reduction in the phytoplankton trophic fractionation. These changes led to overlaps in terrestrial and aquatic carbon stable‐isotopic baselines, hampering the reliable reconstruction of the chironomid palaeo‐diet.

These results seem to indicate the minor role of allochthony to sustain aquatic food webs of large and soft‐water lakes, and underscore the necessity to apply an independent compound‐specific stable‐isotope analysis to better estimate the temporal changes in isotopic baseline and, thus, strengthen the reliability of the chironomid palaeo‐diet reconstructions.