bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Self-medication among general population in the European Union: prevalence and associated factors
Authors: Yeamans Spencer , Gil-de-Miguel Ángel , Hernández-Barrera Valentín , Carrasco-Garrido Pilar 
Published: September 2024

AbstractSelf-medication (SM) forms an important part of public health strategy. Nonetheless, little research has been performed to understand the current state of self-medication in the European Union (EU). Utilizing data from the third wave of the European Health Interview Surveys, this study finds an estimated SM prevalence of 34.3% in the EU (95%CI = 34.1-34.5%; n = 255,758). SM prevalence, as well as SM prevalence inequality between men and women, varies substantially between EU member countries. Via multivariable analysis, we also identify a number of variables associated with SM, most notably the substantial impact of health systems on SM behavior (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AOR] = 4.00; 95% Confidence Interval [95%CI] = 3.81–4.21). Several demographics are also associated with greater SM prevalence, including those aged 25–44 (versus ages 75+: AOR = 1.21; 95%CI = 1.12–1.31), women (AOR = 1.74; 95%CI = 1.68–1.81), immigrants born in other EU states (AOR = 1.16; 95%CI = 1.04–1.30), those with higher education (AOR = 1.83; 95%CI = 1.60–2.09), and urban dwellers (AOR = 1.14; 95%CI = 1.04–1.30). Additionally, long-standing health problems (AOR = 1.39; 95%CI = 1.33–1.45), visits to doctors (both general practitioners and specialists) (AOR = 1.21, 95%CIs = 1.15–1.26, 1.17–1.26), and unmet needs for health care due to waiting lists (AOR = 1.38; 95%CI = 1.23–1.55) or inability to afford medical examinations/treatment (AOR = 1.27; 95%CI = 1.12–1.42) serve as conditioners for SM. We also find that smoking (AOR = 1.05; 95%CI = 1.01–1.10), vaping (AOR = 1.19; 95%CI = 1.06–1.32), drinking alcohol (AOR = 1.23; 95%CI = 1.19–1.28), and higher levels of physical activity (AOR = 1.27; 95%CI = 1.22–1.32) are factors associated with SM. Analysis of these variables reveals that though women self-medicate more than men, the patterns that govern their consumption are similar.
Cartels, board gender composition and gender quotas
Authors: García Carmen , Borrell Joan-Ramon , Jiménez Juan Luis , Ordóñez-de-Haro José Manuel 
Published: September 2024

AbstractCartel busting often results in the restructuring of boards of directors, presumably to remove individuals (both executive and non-executive members) who may have been involved in the cartel. This study employs 2 exogenous changes—cartel busting and binding board gender quotas policies—to examine their impact on board gender composition using DiD and Staggered DiD methods. In countries with binding quotas, boards are already undergoing restructuring to include more women, even without the shock of cartel busting. Furthermore, boards increase the percentage of women in non-cartelized firms only when countries introduce binding gender quotas. Binding board gender quota regulations are effective in improving gender balance on corporate boards. Additionally, in countries without binding board gender quotas, only firms sanctioned for cartel conduct show an increase in the percentage of women after cartel busting, compared to non-sanctioned firms. Thus, board gender quota regulations and anti-cartel policies interact to influence the gender composition of sanctioned firms: binding gender policies are effective in achieving more balanced board gender composition, and cartel busting drives more balanced boards in sanctioned firms regardless of whether their countries have binding board quota regulations or not.
Characterization of the mycobiome of Pinus sylvestris L. seedlings damaged by forest animals, with an emphasis on pathogenic species
Authors: Okorski Adam , Paczkowska Gabriela , Dąbrowska Joanna , Rutkiewicz Artur , Borowik Piotr , Pszczółkowska Agnieszka , Oszako Tomasz 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
In Poland, red deer, roe deer and elk cause great damage to pine stands, and pine is the predominant forest-forming tree species in Polish forests. Pine seedlings planted adjacent to agricultural fields face heightened risk of damage from nocturnal foraging by game animals, which retreat to forested areas during the day. This damage creates openings for fungal entry, particularly by concerning plant pathogens, such as Fusarium species, which are prevalent in agricultural settings. This study aimed to analyze the mycobiome of pine seedlings damaged by forest animals, focusing on the presence of concerning pathogens in infested pine seedlings collected from ten forest plantations at various distances from rural areas. Samples of pine seedlings bitten by forest animals were taken from 10 forest plantations at different distances from rural areas. Selected diversity indices were determined to compare the fungal populations. Mycological analysis of the gnawed pine shoots using culture and qPCR methods revealed 746 fungal colonies. The most frequently isolated species were: Fusarium avenaceum, Alternaria alternata, Botrytis sp., Cladosporium cladosporioides, representatives of the genus Penicillium, Rhizopus nigricans and Fusarium oxysporum, which were found in samples from all study plots and are thus ubiquitous. Species that are typical pathogens of agricultural crops, such as Fusarium avenaceum, F. culmorum, F. poae, F. sporotrichioides and F. tricinctum, were also isolated from damaged seedling tissue in forest plantations neighbouring agricultural fields. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis showed that the importance of secondary pathogens, represented by species of the genus Fusarium, decreased with increasing distance from agricultural fields, while the importance of primary pathogens increased. Younger pine seedlings exhibited lower species diversity and a higher prevalence of specific secondary pathogen species, coupled with heightened susceptibility to infection compared to older seedlings when subjected to tissue damage by forest animals. These findings underscore not only variations among plantations in proximity to agricultural fields but also suggest potential inter-land spread of fungi, emphasizing the need for integrated management strategies across agricultural and forestry domains.
Ethical Causality and Rebirth in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra and Abhidharmakośabhāṣya: A Mirrored Argument
Authors: O’Brien-Kop Karen 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThis paper focuses on Sāṃkhya-Yoga and Buddhist Abhidharma ontologies and their engagement. A close reading of two hitherto uncompared passages from Pātañjalayogaśāstra 2.13 and Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya 4.94 suggests that they are intertextual or interdiscursive. A mirrored argument form in the texts explains ethical causality (karma) in relation to rebirth (punarjanman). The arguments in both texts are similar in form, sequence, and even conclusion, although not in terms of the doctrinal basis of reasoning. On first examination, both arguments analyse how action (karma) sustains patterns of moral repercussion across life and beyond death in terms of singular and plural causes and effects. But a close reading shows that the level of conceptual engagement on this issue is more nuanced – centred on ‘projecting’ and ‘completing’ mechanisms of karmic retribution (ākṣepaka karman and paripūraka karman) as well as determinate or indeterminate (niyata and aniyata) maturation of karmic effects. The paper suggests that the function of Patañjali’s passage was to serve as a structured engagement with Buddhist Sarvāstivāda karma theory.
Here Comes Revenge: Peer Victimization Relates to Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Exclusion
Authors: Kellij Sanne , Dobbelaar Simone , Lodder Gerine M.A. , Veenstra René , Güroğlu Berna 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThe aim of this study was to examine whether repeated victimization relates to differential processing of social exclusion experiences. It was hypothesized that experiences of repeated victimization would modulate neural processing of social exclusion in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and lateral prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, we hypothesized that repeated victimization relates positively to intentions to punish excluders. Exploratively, associations between neural processing and intentions to punish others were examined. The sample consisted of children with known victimization in the past two years (n = 82 (behavioral) / n = 73 (fMRI), 49.4% girls, Mage = 10.6). The participants played Cyberball, an online ball-tossing game, which was manipulated so that in the first block participants were equally included and in the second block they were excluded from play. Victimization was not related to neural activation during social exclusion, although there were indications that victimization may be related to increased insula activation during explicit exclusion. Behaviorally, repeated victimization was related to more intention to punish excluders. Neural activation during social exclusion did not predict intentions to punish excluders, but results tentatively suggested that increased insula activation during social exclusion may be related to increased intentions to punish. Together, these results provide a replication of earlier Cyberball studies and point toward differential processing of social exclusion by children who are victimized.
Optimal Control of Underdamped Systems: An Analytic Approach
Authors: Sanders Julia , Baldovin Marco , Muratore-Ginanneschi Paolo 
Published: September 2024

AbstractOptimal control theory deals with finding protocols to steer a system between assigned initial and final states, such that a trajectory-dependent cost function is minimized. The application of optimal control to stochastic systems is an open and challenging research frontier, with a spectrum of applications ranging from stochastic thermodynamics to biophysics and data science. Among these, the design of nanoscale electronic components motivates the study of underdamped dynamics, leading to practical and conceptual difficulties. In this work, we develop analytic techniques to determine protocols steering finite time transitions at a minimum thermodynamic cost for stochastic underdamped dynamics. As cost functions, we consider two paradigmatic thermodynamic indicators. The first is the Kullback–Leibler divergence between the probability measure of the controlled process and that of a reference process. The corresponding optimization problem is the underdamped version of the Schrödinger diffusion problem that has been widely studied in the overdamped regime. The second is the mean entropy production during the transition, corresponding to the second law of modern stochastic thermodynamics. For transitions between Gaussian states, we show that optimal protocols satisfy a Lyapunov equation, a central tool in stability analysis of dynamical systems. For transitions between states described by general Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions, we introduce an infinite-dimensional version of the Poincaré-Lindstedt multiscale perturbation theory around the overdamped limit. This technique fundamentally improves the standard multiscale expansion. Indeed, it enables the explicit computation of momentum cumulants, whose variation in time is a distinctive trait of underdamped dynamics and is directly accessible to experimental observation. Our results allow us to numerically study cost asymmetries in expansion and compression processes and make predictions for inertial corrections to optimal protocols in the Landauer erasure problem at the nanoscale.
The role of non-economic goals in academic spin-offs
Authors: Criaco Giuseppe , Hahn Davide , Minola Tommaso , Pittino Daniel 
Published: September 2024

AbstractActing as a crucial link between academia and the business world, Academic Spin-Offs (ASOs) play a key role in translating innovative technologies from academic discoveries into commercial applications. Despite their potential for technological advancements, ASOs often struggle with challenges in financial performance and growth. Traditional explanations attribute these challenges to a lack of commercial resources and competencies. However, since ASOs often demonstrate prolonged survival, such explanations may not fully explain the paradox in ASOs’ outcomes. This paper offers a novel perspective, highlighting how non-economic goals, deeply ingrained in the academic context in which ASOs originate, shape their behavior and outcomes. These goals, related to the dimensions of control, identity, and emotions, go beyond financial gains, reflecting concerns that are specific to the academic environment. Integrating the organizational goals literature with insights from academic entrepreneurship research, we present a conceptual model describing the origins and nature of these goals and explain how they can help shedding light on some paradoxes in ASOs’ development, growth, and performance events. Our model bears significant implications for the academic entrepreneurship literature and related public policy.
Intervertebral disc degenerative disease in South Africa: a case-control analysis of selected gene variants
Authors: Pearce Keenau , Less Stephanie , Liebenberg Adriaan W. , Benjeddou Mongi 
Published: September 2024

Abstract

Background
Intervertebral disc (IVD) degenerative disease is a multifactorial disease for which genetics plays an integral role. Several genes, and their variants, associated with the development and progression of IVD degenerative disease have been identified. While several studies have investigated these genes in Asian and European populations, no available evidence exists for the South African population. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate these parameters.

Methods and results
Biological samples were collected in the form of buccal swabs from patients and DNA was extracted using a standard salt-lysis protocol. DNA purity and quantity was assessed by spectrophotometry, and subsequent genotyping was performed using the MassARRAY®System IPLEX extension reaction. For associations between variants and the presence of IVD degenerative disease, odds ratios (OR), confidence intervals (CI), chi-squared analysis and logistic regression was calculated. Age and sex were adjusted for, and Bonferroni’s correction was applied. This study found statistically significant associations for five of the evaluated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with IVD degenerative disease, whereby IL-1α rs1304037 and rs1800587, ADAMTs-5 rs162509, and MMP-3 rs632478 demonstrated increased odds of a positive diagnosis for IVD degenerative disease, while decreased odds of IVD degenerative disease were seen for GDF-5 rs143383.

Conclusion
To the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first of its kind to investigate the association of gene variants associated with IVD degenerative disease within the South African population. This study has shown that 5 of these gene variants were significantly associated with the presence of IVD degenerative disease, reflecting their integral roles in development and possible progression of the disease.
A Robot Ground Medium Classification Algorithm Based on Feature Fusion and Adaptive Spatio-Temporal Cascade Networks
Authors: Feng Changqun , Dong Keming , Ou Xinyu 
Published: September 2024

AbstractWith technological advancements and scientific progress, mobile robots have found widespread applications across various fields. To enable robots to perform tasks safely and effectively in diverse and unknown environments, this paper proposes a ground medium classification algorithm for robots based on feature fusion and an adaptive spatio-temporal cascade network. Specifically, the original directional features in the dataset are first transformed into quaternion form. Then, spatio-temporal forward and reverse neighbors are identified using KD trees, and their connection strengths are evaluated via a kernel density estimation algorithm to determine the final set of neighbors. Subsequently, based on the connection strengths determined in the previous step, we perform noise reduction on the features using discrete wavelet transform. The noise-reduced features are then weighted and fused to generate a new feature representation.After feature fusion, the Adaptive Dynamic Convolutional Neural Network (ADC) proposed in this paper is cascaded with the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to further extract hybrid spatio-temporal feature information from the dataset, culminating in the final terrain classification. Experiments on the terrain type classification dataset demonstrate that our method achieves an average accuracy of 97.46% and an AUC of 99.80%, significantly outperforming other commonly used algorithms in the field. Furthermore, the effectiveness of each module in the proposed method is further demonstrated through ablation experiments.
Dual CAR-T cell therapy for glioblastoma: strategies to cure tumour diseases based on a mathematical model
Authors: Bodnar Marek , Piotrowska Monika J. , Bodzioch Mariusz , Belmonte-Beitia Juan , Foryś Urszula 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThe CAR-T cell immunotherapy entails the genetic reprogramming of T-lymphocytes, which then engage with cancer cells, triggering an anti-tumour immune response. While this treatment has gained approval for hematological cancers, addressing solid tumours presents new obstacles. Challenges include the heterogeneity of antigen expression within solid tumours, encompassing antigen-positive non-tumoural cells, the presence of immune inhibitory molecules, and the difficulty of CAR-T cell trafficking within the tumour microenvironment. In this article, we analytically study a generalisation of a mathematical model proposed by León-Triana et al. (Cancers 13(4):703, 2021a. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13040703, Commun Nonlinear Sci Numer Simul 94:105570). This model focuses on the dynamics of glioblastoma, the most aggressive brain tumour, and its response to CAR-T cell treatment. We study the basic properties of the model, the dynamics of the solutions of the model when the treatment is not sustained during the time, and finally we study analytically the model when the therapy is constant, periodic and/or impulsive. We derive sufficient conditions for global stability of tumour-free equilibrium, as well as necessary and sufficient conditions for local stability of the equilibrium obtaining conditions for an effective treatment. Finally, we perform different numerical simulations to find the strategies to keep the tumour under control. The obtained results are based on a combination of different analytical techniques in differential equations, dynamical systems and numerical simulations.
Global convergence of Newton’s method for the regularized p-Stokes equations
Authors: Schmidt Niko 
Published: September 2024

AbstractThe motion of glaciers can be simulated with the $$\varvec{p}$$

p

-Stokes equations. Up to now, Newton’s method to solve these equations has been analyzed in finite-dimensional settings only. We analyze the problem in infinite dimensions to gain a new viewpoint. We do that by proving global convergence of the infinite-dimensional Newton’s method with Armijo step sizes to the solution of these equations. We only have to add an arbitrarily small diffusion term for this convergence result. We prove that the additional diffusion term only causes minor differences in the solution compared to the original $$\varvec{p}$$

p

-Stokes equations under the assumption of some regularity. Finally, we test our algorithms on two experiments: A reformulation of the experiment ISMIP-HOM $$\varvec{B}$$

B

without sliding and a block with sliding. For the former, the approximation of exact step sizes for the Picard iteration and exact step sizes and Armijo step sizes for Newton’s method are superior in the experiment compared to the Picard iteration. For the latter experiment, Newton’s method with Armijo step sizes needs many iterations until it converges fast to the solution. Thus, Newton’s method with approximately exact step sizes is better than Armijo step sizes in this experiment.
Finding One’s Way Through the Gender Expanse: Examining the Use of Metaphors in Gender-Affirming Care as a Step Toward More Inclusive Spiritual Care Practices
Authors: Smit Jake , Schuhmann Carmen , Zwama Marein T. 
Published: September 2024

AbstractChaplains can play a unique role in providing care for trans and gender-diverse (TGD) people by addressing their spiritual needs. However, spiritual care for TGD individuals may fail to be inclusive in at least three ways: spiritual care may focus solely on religious TGD people, on a limited part of the whole range of gender identities, or on a specific route toward gender affirmation. In this article, the aim is to develop an inclusive perspective on spiritual care for TGD people. To that end, inspired by work by Susan Sontag, we examine spiritual care for TGD individuals through the philosophical lens of social imaginaries, focussing particularly on metaphors, tracing how metaphors used in care for TGD people have changed over time. We elaborate on the potential of the metaphor of “orientation in gender-expansive space,” based on queer theory and literature about worldview-inclusive chaplaincy, for envisioning an inclusive approach to gender-affirming spiritual care.
Population Pharmacokinetics of Casirivimab and Imdevimab in Pediatric and Adult Non-Infected Individuals, Pediatric and Adult Ambulatory or Hospitalized Patients or Household Contacts of Patients Infected with SARS-COV-2
Authors: Lin Kuan-Ju , Turner Kenneth C. , Rosario Maria , Harnisch Lutz O. , Davis John D. , DiCioccio A. Thomas 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Introduction
Casirivimab (CAS) and imdevimab (IMD) are two fully human monoclonal antibodies that bind different epitopes on the receptor binding domain of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and block host receptor interactions. CAS + IMD and was developed for the treatment and prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Methods
A population pharmacokinetic (PopPK) analysis was conducted using pooled data from 7598 individuals from seven clinical studies to simultaneously fit concentration–time data of CAS and IMD and investigate selected covariates as sources of variability in PK parameters. The dataset comprised CAS + IMD-treated pediatric and adult non-infected individuals, ambulatory or hospitalized patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, or household contacts of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Results
CAS and IMD concentration–time data were both appropriately described simultaneously by a two-compartment model with first-order absorption following subcutaneous dose administration and first-order elimination. Clearance estimates of CAS and IMD were 0.193 and 0.236 L/day, respectively. Central volume of distribution estimates were 3.92 and 3.82 L, respectively. Among the covariates identified as significant, body weight and serum albumin had the largest impact (20–34%, and ~ 7–31% change in exposures at extremes, respectively), while all other covariates resulted in small differences in exposures. Application of the PopPK model included simulations to support dose recommendations in pediatrics based on comparable exposures of CAS and IMD between different weight groups in pediatrics and adults following weight-based dosing regimens.

Conclusions
This analysis provided important insights to characterize CAS and IMD PK simultaneously in a diverse patient population and informed pediatric dose selection.