bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Negative interference by rheumatoid factor in alpha-fetoprotein chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay
Authors: Wang Hui , Bi Xiaohui , Xu Lei , Li Yirong 
Published: April 2016

Background Rheumatoid factor causes positive interference in multiple immunoassays. Recently, negative interference has also been found in immunoassays in the presence of rheumatoid factor. The chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay is widely used to determine serum alpha-fetoprotein. However, it is not clear whether the presence of rheumatoid factor in the serum causes interference in the chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay of alpha-fetoprotein. Methods Serum alpha-fetoprotein was determined using the ARCHITECT alpha-fetoprotein assay. The estimation of alpha-fetoprotein recovery was carried out in samples prepared by diluting high-concentration alpha-fetoprotein serum with rheumatoid factor-positive or rheumatoid factor-negative serum. Paramagnetic microparticles coated with hepatitis B surface antigen–anti-HBs complexes were used to remove rheumatoid factor from the serum. Results The average recovery of alpha-fetoprotein was 88.4% and 93.8% in the rheumatoid factor-positive and rheumatoid factor-negative serum samples, respectively. The recovery of alpha-fetoprotein was significantly lower in the rheumatoid factor-positive serum samples than in the rheumatoid factor-negative serum samples. In two of five rheumatoid factor-positive samples, a large difference was found (9.8%) between the average alpha-fetoprotein recoveries in the serially diluted and initial recoveries. Fourteen rheumatoid factor-positive serum samples were pretreated with hepatitis B surface antigen-anti-HBs complex-coated paramagnetic microparticles. The alpha-fetoprotein concentrations measured in the pretreated samples increased significantly. Conclusions It was concluded that the alpha-fetoprotein chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay is susceptible to interference by rheumatoid factor, leading to significantly lower results. Eliminating the incidence of negative interference from rheumatoid factor should be an important goal for immunoassay providers. In the meantime, laboratorians must remain alert to the negative interference by rheumatoid factor, and in some cases, pretreat rheumatoid factor-positive samples with blocking or absorbing reagents.
Urine ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry in a routine clinical laboratory
Authors: Armer Jane M , Allcock Rebecca L 
Published: April 2016

Background Detection of alcohol consumption in clients undergoing treatment for alcohol dependence can be difficult. The ethanol metabolites ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate are detectable for longer in urine than either breath ethanol or urine ethanol. Our aim was to develop a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for urine ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate for use in a routine clinical laboratory and define clinical cut-offs in a large population who had not consumed alcohol for at least two weeks. Methods Urine samples were diluted in 0.05% formic acid in HPLC grade water and then directly injected onto a Waters Acquity ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled to a Waters TQ Detector. Eighty participants were recruited who had not consumed alcohol for at least two weeks to define cut-offs for urine ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate. Samples and alcohol diaries were also collected from 12 alcohol-dependent clients attending a treatment programme. Results The assay was validated with a lower limit of quantitation of 0.20 mg/L for ethyl glucuronide and 0.04 mg/L for ethyl sulphate. Accuracy, precision, linearity and recovery were acceptable. Cut-offs were established for ethyl glucuronide, ethyl sulphate and ethyl sulphate/creatinine ratio (≤0.26 mg/L, ≤0.22 mg/L and ≤0.033 mg/mmol, respectively) in a non-drinking population. The validated cut-offs correctly identified clients in alcohol treatment who were continuing to drink alcohol. Conclusions A simple liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for urine ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate has been validated and cut-offs defined using 80 participants who had not consumed alcohol for at least two weeks. This is the largest study to date to define cut-offs for ethyl glucuronide, ethyl sulphate and ethyl sulphate/creatinine ratio.
Comparison of intravenous and subcutaneous exposure supporting dose selection of subcutaneous belimumab systemic lupus erythematosus Phase 3 program
Authors: Yapa S Wickramaratne Senarath , Roth D , Gordon D , Struemper H 
Published: April 2016

Background Belimumab is a recombinant, human, IgG1λ monoclonal antibody that targets B-lymphocyte stimulator. The intravenous formulation is indicated for the treatment of active, autoantibody-positive systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Belimumab has been formulated for subcutaneous (SC) administration to improve patient convenience. This post-hoc modeling and simulation analysis characterizes the population pharmacokinetics (PK) of SC belimumab, and compares the exposure profiles of the approved belimumab IV dose—10 mg/kg every four weeks—to the 200 mg SC weekly dose in SLE patients, highlighting key pharmacological differences relevant for clinicians. Methods Data from two Phase 1 studies in US American and Japanese healthy subjects were analyzed with a non-linear mixed effects modeling approach. The resulting SC population PK model and a previously developed IV population PK model were used to conduct simulation trials in a Phase 3 IV belimumab SLE patient population, comparing chronic exposure profiles and exposure ranges stratified by body weight tertiles for IV vs SC dosing. Results The PK of belimumab following SC administration was best described by a linear two-comment model. The estimates for clearance, steady-state volume of distribution, and bioavailability were 208 mL/day, 5250 mL, and 76%, respectively. After four weeks of SC dosing, simulated belimumab concentrations exceeded the steady-state trough concentrations of the IV dosing regimen. At steady state simulated serum profiles demonstrated comparable average belimumab concentrations (Cavg,ss) after IV and SC dosing. Simulated belimumab exposures demonstrated largely overlapping concentration ranges following 200 mg SC weekly and 10 mg/kg IV every four weeks dosing. Discussion The predicted Cavg,ss of belimumab in SLE patients was comparable following 200 mg SC weekly and 10 mg/kg IV every four weeks dosing. The simulated belimumab accumulation following SC weekly dosing indicated that administration of a loading dose was not required. Similar Cavg,ss ranges were predicted for fixed dose SC and weight-proportional IV regimens in the simulated SLE population, albeit with a reversed body-size-to-exposure relationship for the SC regimen. These findings provide rheumatologists with a better understanding of expected differences in belimumab exposure when comparing IV and SC dosing regimens.
Approximation of a zero point of monotone operators with nonsummable errors
Authors: Ibaraki Takanori 
Published: April 2016

AbstractIn this paper, we study an iterative scheme for two different types of resolvents of a monotone operator defined on a Banach space. These resolvents are generalizations of resolvents of a monotone operator in a Hilbert space. We obtain iterative approximations of a zero point of a monotone operator generated by the shrinking projection method with errors in a Banach space. Using our result, we discuss some applications.
The use of social environment in a psychosocial clubhouse to facilitate recovery-oriented practice
Authors: Raeburn Toby , Schmied Virginia , Hungerford Catherine , Cleary Michelle 
Published: April 2016

BackgroundRecovery-oriented language has been widely adopted in mental health policy; however, little is known about how recovery practices are implemented within individual services, such as psychosocial clubhouses.AimsTo explore how recovery practices are implemented in a psychosocial clubhouse.MethodQualitative case study design informed by self-determination theory was utilised. This included 120 h of participant observation, interviews with 12 clubhouse members and 6 staff members. Field notes and interview transcripts were subject to theoretical thematic analysis.ResultsTwo overarching themes were identified, each comprising three sub-themes. In this paper, the overarching theme of ‘social environment’ is discussed. It was characterised by the sub-themes, ‘community and consistency’, ‘participation and opportunity’ and ‘respect and autonomy’.ConclusionsSocial environment was used to facilitate recovery-oriented practice within the clubhouse. Whether recovery is experienced by clubhouse members in wider society, may well depend on supports and opportunities outside the clubhouse.
Maternal vitamin D deficiency and the risk of autism spectrum disorders: population-based study
Authors: Magnusson Cecilia , Kosidou Kyriaki , Dalman Christina , Lundberg Michael , Lee Brian K. , Rai Dheeraj , Karlsson Håkan , Gardner Renee , Arver Stefan 
Published: April 2016

BackgroundMaternal vitamin D deficiency may increase risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but direct evidence is lacking.AimsTo clarify the relationship between maternal vitamin D deficiency and offspring risk of ASD with and without intellectual disability.MethodUsing a register-based total population study (N=509 639), we calculated adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIS) of ASD with and without intellectual disability in relation to lifetime diagnoses of maternal vitamin D deficiency. Although rare, such deficiency was associated with offspring risk of ASD with, but not without, intellectual disability (aORs 2.51, 95% CI 1.22–5.16 and 1.28, 0.68–2.42). Relationships were stronger in non-immigrant children.ConclusionsIf reflecting associations for prenatal hypovitaminosis, these findings imply gestational vitamin D substitution as a means of ASD prevention.
Living with Parasites in Palo Verde National Park
Authors: Kirksey Eben 
Published: April 2016

AbstractBruno Latour has tried to bring a parliamentary democracy to the domain of nature. Wading through the swamps of Palo Verde, a national park in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica, and wandering onto neighbouring agricultural lands, I failed to find a central place where people were speaking for nature. Departing from a failed attempt to speak for another species (the fringe-toed foam frog), this paper considers how diverging values and obligations shape relationships in multi-species worlds. As spokespersons articulated competing visions of nature on the borderlands of Palo Verde, multiple social and ecological worlds went to war. The haunting specter of capital joined the fray—animating the movements of cattle, grasses with animal rhizomes, rice seeds, and flighty ducks across national borders and through fragmented landscapes. Amidst this warfare, the fringe-toed foam frog was just one tenacious parasite, a noisy agent eating at the table of another, which began to flourish in worlds designed with the well-being of others in mind. Cattails, charismatic birds, and a multitude of insects began interrupting human dreams and schemes. Final solutions to the problem of living with parasites failed in Palo Verde. Humans and parasites, who became para-selves of one another, maintained an abiding presence in the landscape.
The Affective Legacy of Silent Spring
Authors: Lockwood Alex 
Published: April 2016

Abstract
In the fiftieth year since the publication of Silent Spring, the importance of Rachel Carson's work can be measured in its affective influence on contemporary environmental writing across the humanities. The ground broken by Silent Spring in creating new forms of writing has placed affect at the very centre of contemporary narratives that call for pro-environmental beliefs and behaviours. A critical public-feelings framework is used to explore these issues and trace their passage from the private and intimate, where they risk remaining denuded of agency, and into the public sphere. The work of Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart and their focus on the struggle of everyday citizenship in contemporary life is helpful in illustrating how Silent Spring mobilised private feelings, particularly anger aimed at environmental destruction, into political action. This template is then explored in two contemporary environmental writers. First, The End of Nature by Bill McKibben is examined for its debt to Silent Spring and its use (and overuse) of sadness in its attempt to bring climate change to the public's attention. Second, Early Spring by Amy Seidl is shown to be a more affective and effective descendant of Silent Spring in its adherence to Carson's narrative procedures, by bringing attention back to the unpredictable and intimate power of ordinary, everyday affects. As such, Silent Spring is shown to occupy a foundational position in the history of the environmental humanities, and a cultural politics concerned with public feelings.
Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1991) and Archival Reimaginations of Eco-Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Hicks Scott 
Published: April 2016

Abstract
This article blurs the boundaries of literature, agriculture, public history, grassroots political activism, and public policymaking in order to problematize the current eco-cosmopolitan trajectory of ecocritical theory, a trajectory promulgated by Ursula K. Heise in important essays and books. Foregrounding the voices of grassroots environmentalists as well as the public-relations campaigns of multinational agribusiness trade groups, materials collected in the special collections of Iowa State University, the article resituates Smiley's prizewinning novel and offers a complication of current conceptualizations of eco-cosmopolitanism. The article aims to show the struggles of rural people to embrace a planetary consciousness—a global awareness that can paradoxically foreground as well as participate in the continued ecological devastation of the landscapes these activists hold dear. These local voices underscore the challenges human subjects face in articulating and narrating environmental relationships—even despite their intimate proximity to these landscapes. Just as Thousand Acres's mastery of a complex environmentalist voice is hard won, so too is that of dozens of rural people across the world. The challenges they face demand the close attention of the environmental humanities, not only to deeply engage appropriate texts, but to engage them with a framework that expands the orchestra and zeros in on the critical problems of global agriculture, planetary health, and human rights.
“Without Evidence, There Is No Answer”: Uncertainty and Scientific Ethos in theSilent Spring[s] of Rachel Carson
Authors: Walker Kenny 
Published: April 2016

AbstractThe 50th year anniversary of Rachel Carson's monumental Silent Spring invites reflection on how the controversy over chemical pesticides shaped environmental discourse in the modern era. This essay focuses on uncertainty as a boundary device that shapes scientific ethos in crucial ways and negotiates a relationship between technical science and public deliberation. Situated in rhetorical analysis, the author takes a comparative approach towards the use of uncertainty and scientific ethos in the Silent Spring controversy. Drawing from Carson's published book, and from the famous CBS Reports investigative television program seven months after the book's publication, this essay demonstrates how CBS Reports directly received, and amplified, Carson's uncertainty frameworks, and used them to drive the public evaluation of scientific ethos. This analysis reveals three ways uncertainty shapes scientific ethos: uncertainty as a probability (ethos of expertise), as a moral certainty (ethos of civic participant), and as an unknown or unconcern (ethos of ignorance). Finally, the author suggests that the circulation of these uncertainty frameworks of scientific ethos helped drive the momentum from the books' publication, to public evaluation, to policy-making, and suggests these uncertainty frameworks are enduring forces in debates about the role of experts in scientific controversies.
‘Happy Cows,’ ‘Happy Beef’: A Critique of the Rationales for Ethical Meat
Authors: Pilgrim Karyn 
Published: April 2016

Abstract
The ethical food movement signals a significant transformation of cultural consciousness in its recognition of the intimate politics of what we eat and what kind of socio-political systems we sustain. The recent resurgence of economic localization exemplifies a grass roots attempt to undermine the hegemony of transnational corporations and build ecologically and economically sustainable communities. Social justice plays a key role in the guiding philosophies of these movements, and yet, while many ecocritical discourses examine the uncomfortable relationship of anthropocentricism and sustainability, some contemporary texts of the ethical food movement evidence a reluctant embrace of omnivorous eating, while simultaneously indicating a gendered, if ironic, machismo at odds with the principles of ethical eating. An analysis of the rhetoric of three popular nonfiction books that construct a similar narrative of the story of meat—Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, Susan Bourette's Meat, a Love Story, and Scott Gold's The Shameless Carnivore—reveals an attempt by these authors to naturalize what is essentially an economic and lifestyle activity. Working within a vegetarian ecofeminist framework, though recognizing that multiple compelling philosophical positions exist for considering the ethics of meat eating, this paper intends to argue, not that “ethical” and “omnivorous” are contradictory terms, but rather that a moral ambivalence prevails in these texts despite these authors' claims to the contrary. In elucidating these authors' reactions to their own participation in “the omnivore's dilemma” this paper pinpoints those areas where a resistance to a deeper examination of human-nonhuman relations is in operation.
Generating Infrastructural Invisibility: Insulation, Interconnection, and Avian Excrement in the Southern California Power Grid
Authors: Benson Etienne 
Published: April 2016

AbstractThe fact that industrial infrastructures are embedded in complex environments animated by unexpected agencies is often invisible to their users—at least those who live in rich, industrialized societies with reliable systems for distributing water, power, and other goods and services. This article investigates how that invisibility is generated through a case study of electric power transmission in California in the early twentieth century. In the 1910s, the Pacific Light and Power Company constructed a 150,000-volt transmission line that delivered power from the Big Creek hydroelectric complex in the Sierra Nevada to customers in Los Angeles, more than 240 miles (386 kilometers) away. When the Southern California Edison Company upgraded this line to 220,000 volts in the early 1920s, the rate of disruptive “flashovers” on the line jumped dramatically. After months of investigation, the cause was determined to be excrement from birds perching on the transmission towers. To render this and other sources of interruption invisible to users, two techniques were used: insulation and interconnection. These kinds of humble techniques of separation and resilience are ubiquitous in modern infrastructure. By creating and maintaining divisions, they make it possible for new kinds of agency to emerge. Infrastructures become animate: responsive to their environments in ways that allow them to persist in the face of continual change.
Use of smartphone attached mobile thermography assessing subclinical inflammation: a pilot study
Authors: Kanazawa T. , Nakagami G. , Goto T. , Noguchi H. , Oe M. , Miyagaki T. , Hayashi A. , Sasaki S. , Sanada H. 
Published: April 2016

Objective: To verify the reliability and validity of FLIR ONE, a device connected to a smartphone, for the assessment of inflammation based on relative temperature increase compared with the thermography routinely used in pressure ulcer (PU) and diabetic foot assessment. Method: Participants in this pilot cross-sectional observational study were recruited from the patients in the PU team rounds and the diabetic foot outpatient clinic at the university hospital in January 2015. Cohen's kappa coefficient with its 95% confidence intervals was used to evaluate the criterion-related validity and inter- and intra-rater reliability for the thermal imaging assessment. For assessing criterion-related validity, a hand-held high-end infrared thermography device was used to provide reference data. Comparison of thermal images between the smartphone-connected device and the hand-held device was performed with both a ‘predetermined range’ and an ‘automatically-set range.’ For assessing inter-rater reliability, two assessors evaluated the thermal images taken by the mobile thermography. For assessing intra-rater reliability, one assessor evaluated the thermal images twice. The thermal images were shown to the assessors at random. Results: Among 16 thermal images obtained from eight patients, kappa coefficients for each value were as follows: for the predetermined range and automatically-set range, respectively, the criterion-related validity was 1.00 (95% confidence interval 1.00–1.00) and 1.00 (95% confidence interval 1.00–1.00); the inter-rater reliability was 1.00 (95% confidence interval 1.00–1.00) and 1.00 (95% confidence interval 1.00–1.00); and the intra-rater reliability was 1.00 (95% confidence interval 1.00–1.00) and 1.00 (95% confidence interval 1.00–1.00). Conclusion: This pilot study suggests that FLIR ONE can work as an alternative device for assessing subclinical inflammation in PUs and the diabetic foot in clinical settings. Our results may facilitate clinicians in accepting the routine use of thermal imaging assessment at the patients' bedside.
On the Existence of Infinite Sequences of Ordered Positive Solutions of Nonlinear Elliptic Eigenvalue Problems
Authors: Corrêa Francisco Júlio S. A. , Carvalho Marcos L. M. , Gonçalves José Valdo A. , Silva Kaye O. 
Published: April 2016

Abstract
In this work, we employ minimization arguments and topological degree theory for mappings of type

S
+

${S_{+}}$

to prove the existence of infinite sequences of ordered solutions for a class of nonlinear equations in which the semilinear term vanishes an infinite number of times. Our results extend earlier ones by Hess [10] and by Loc and Schmitt [15].
Brain Drain, Contracts, and Moral Obligation
Authors: Callies Daniel Edward 
Published: April 2016

Abstract
In this paper I first argue that when answering the question of whether or not governments may restrict emigration, Brock and Blake are staking out positions not astronomically far from one another. Despite the ostensibly large philosophical gap between the two, both think that certain governments may restrict emigration when such restriction is agreed to in a morally binding contract. Secondly, both authors think that there are specific “circumstances” or “conditions” under which a contract that restricts emigration can be morally binding. This second part of the paper will pose some questions that explore these various circumstances or conditions. The ultimate aim of the paper is to help point the debate in the right direction so as to further develop an answer to the question of whether or not governments may restrict emigration.