bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Impact of Land Uses, Agrophysical Variables and Altitudinal Gradient on Soil Organic Carbon Concentration of North‐Eastern Himalayan Region of India
Authors: Choudhury Burhan U. , Fiyaz Abdul R. , Mohapatra Kamal P. , Ngachan Shishomvanao 
Published: November 2014

AbstractIn the fragile hilly ecosystem of North‐eastern Himalayan Region (NEHR) of India, interaction of land use change and soil organic carbon (SOC) holds significance in sustaining land productivity. However, because of limited data, the effect of land use on SOC inventory at regional level is poorly quantified. The present study assessed the influence of seven major land uses and agrophysical variables (soil texture, bulk density, annual rainfall and mean temperature) on SOC concentration and stock across altitudinal gradients (6–3,500 masl) of NEHR of India. Results revealed that non‐agricultural land uses (grasslands and forests) registered significantly higher SOC concentration (2·20 to 2·51%) and stock (35·2–42·1 Mg ha−1) compared with agricultural (shifting and settled‐up and lowlands), plantation and horticultural land uses (SOC, 1·44 to 1·63%; stock, 27·4–28·4 Mg ha−1). Principal component analysis exhibited that the variation in SOC concentration among the land uses was mostly contributed by finer fractions of soil separates (silt and clay contents), and altitudinal gradient led variation in climatic variables (rainfall and temperature). Trend analyses depicted that SOC increased with an increase in rainfall and clay content but decreased with mean temperature and soil bulk density. Along the altitudinal gradient (6 to 1,000 masl), an inconsistent increase in silt + clay, annual rainfall, SOC concentration, and stock was also observed. However, beyond 1,000 masl, the corresponding increase was linear. The wide variability in SOC concentration and stock, therefore, resulted from the interaction of land uses, altitudinal gradients, textural gradients and climatic variables Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ion Conduction in a Semicrystalline Polyviologen and Its Polyether Mixtures
Authors: Lee Minjae , Choi U Hyeok , Colby Ralph H. , Gibson Harry W. 
Published: November 2014

Polyviologen (PV) with C6 spacers and bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (Tf2N−) anions is a semicrystalline polymer. Its semicrystalline mixtures with 18‐crown‐6 (18C6), 30‐crown‐10 (30C10), dibenzo‐30‐crown‐10 (DB30C10), and poly(ethylene glycol) dimethyl ether 1000 (PEGDME) are prepared by evaporation of solutions. The ionic conductivities, measured by dielectric relaxation spectroscopy, of all of the mixtures are 10–100× higher than that of PV itself in spite of the fact that the ionic contents are reduced by ≈25%. The room temperature (RT) ionic conductivity of PV is 1.1 × 10−9 S cm−1, and that of its mixture with DB30C10 is over 100‐fold higher even though its Tg is slightly above that of PV. The mixtures with 30C10 and PEGDME have similar RT conductivities. However, the 18C6 mixture, in spite of a 9 °C drop in Tg, displays a room temperature (RT) conductivity 10× lower than the other mixtures. Although plasticization probably plays a role, complexation of the polyethers with the viologen units plays a role in the higher conductivities, it is believed, because it increases the fraction of non‐ion‐paired mobile anions. With 30C10 and DB30C10, polypseudorotaxane formation is envisioned to play a significant role in conductivity enhancement.
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Synthesis and Microphase Separation of PS‐b‐P(MA‐alt‐St) Block Copolymers and Their Ionomers for the Design of Polymer Crystallization Nucleation Agents
Authors: Xing Shili , Li Rui , Tang Ping 
Published: November 2014

Several well‐controlled polystyrene‐block‐poly(styrene‐alt‐maleic anhydride) (PS‐b‐P(St‐alt‐MA)) functionalized block copolymers (BCs) and their sodium salt ionomers with different block ratios and molecular weights are synthesized through two‐step reversible addition–­fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) images and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results reveal that the prepared BCs and their ionomers microphase separate into various nanostructures depending on the block ratios. By taking advantage of the formation of amphiphilic nanostructures via the microphase, the block ionomers serve as nucleation agents to improve the crystallization rate of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). The crystallization behavior of PET upon the addition of block ionomers is investigated isothermally and non‐isothermally by DSC. The results show that the block ionomers can effectively accelerate the crystallization rate of PET, which strongly depends on the molecular weights and block ratios
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Weight gain following subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation: A PET study
Authors: Sauleau Paul , Le Jeune Florence , Drapier Sophie , Houvenaghel Jean‐François , Dondaine Thibaut , Haegelen Claire , Lalys Florent , Robert Gabriel , Drapier Dominique , Vérin Marc 
Published: November 2014

AbstractSeveral hypotheses have been put forward to explain weight gain after deep brain stimulation (DBS), but none provides a fully satisfactory account of this adverse effect. We analyzed the correlation between changes in brain metabolism (using positron emission tomography [PET] imaging) and weight gain after bilateral subthalamic nucleus DBS in patients with Parkinson's disease. Body mass index was calculated and brain activity prospectively measured using 2‐deoxy‐2[18F]fluoro‐D‐glucose 3 months before and 4 months after the start of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation in 23 patients with Parkinson's disease. Motor complications (United Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale [UPDRS]‐IV scores) and dopaminergic medication were included in the analysis to control for their possible influence on brain metabolism. Mean ± standard deviation (SD) body mass index increased significantly by 0.8 ± 1.5 kg/m2 (P = 0.03). Correlations were found between weight gain and changes in brain metabolism in limbic and associative areas, including the orbitofrontal cortex (Brodmann areas [BAs] 10 and 11), lateral and medial parts of the temporal lobe (BAs 20, 21, 22,39 and 42), anterior cingulate cortex (BA 32), and retrosplenial cortex (BA 30). However, we found no correlation between weight gain and metabolic changes in sensorimotor areas. These findings suggest that changes in associative and limbic processes contribute to weight gain after subthalamic nucleus DBS in Parkinson's disease. © 2014 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Synthesis, Crystal Structure, DNA Binding, Cleavage and Docking Studies of a Novel Dinuclear Schiff‐Base Copper(II) Complex
Authors: Shao Dalin , Shi Menglu , Zhao Qun , Wen Jinghan , Geng Zhirong , Wang Zhilin 
Published: November 2014

AbstractA dinuclear copper(II) complex (1) of a Schiff‐base ligand L [2‐((Z)‐(3‐((3‐((Z)‐2‐hydroxybenzylideneamino)propyl)(pyridin‐4‐yl)amino)propylimino)methyl)phenol] was synthesized and characterized. Complex 1 has a [2+2] ring structure formed by two ligands and two central atoms, and each central metal atom lies in a distorted tetrahedral environment. The in vitro DNA binding studies of 1 with calf thymus‐DNA were carried out by UV/Vis, fluorescence and circular dichroism spectroscopic methods, competitive groove‐binding test, and molecular docking. Complex 1 efficiently cleaved supercoiled pUC19 DNA. As evidenced by the consistent experimental and theoretical outcomes, the copper(II) complex interacted with DNA by both partial intercalation and minor‐groove binding.
Developmental changes in hypothalamic toll‐like‐receptor 4 mRNA expression and the effects of lipopolysaccharide on such changes in female rats
Authors: Iwasa Takeshi , Matsuzaki Toshiya , Tungalagsuvd Altankhuu , Munkhzaya Munkhsaikhan , Kawami Takako , Yamasaki Mikio , Murakami Masahiro , Kato Takeshi , Kuwahara Akira , Yasui Toshiyuki , Irahara Minoru 
Published: November 2014

AbstractHypothalamic pro‐inflammatory cytokine expression exhibits a weaker response to lipopolysaccharides (LPS) during the early neonatal period than during the later developmental period. Although toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR4), which recognizes bacterial molecules, activates pro‐inflammatory cytokine responses, the developmental changes in hypothalamic TLR4 expression have not been evaluated. In this study, the hypothalamic TLR4 mRNA levels of saline‐injected and LPS‐injected rats were measured during the neonatal, pre‐pubertal, and post‐pubertal periods. The rats' hypothalamic TLR4 mRNA levels gradually increased from the neonatal to pubertal period and were altered by the injection of LPS at all examined ages (postnatal day (PND) 5, 15, 25, and 42). LPS injection resulted in decreased hypothalamic TLR4 mRNA expression at PND5, whereas it increased hypothalamic TLR4 mRNA expression at PND15, 25, and 42. After the injection of LPS, the hypothalamic mRNA levels of the pro‐inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)‐1β, tumor necrosis factor α, and IL‐6 were attenuated during the early developmental period and increased acutely on PND42. The expression profiles of these pro‐inflammatory cytokines exhibited similar, but not entirely consistent, changes to those displayed by TLR4 during the developmental period. Hypothalamic TLR4 mRNA expression gradually increased throughout the developmental period, whereas the mRNA expression levels of the pro‐inflammatory cytokines increased acutely at PND42. Thus, it is assumed that hypothalamic TLR4 hypoactivity contributes to the low sensitivity of pro‐inflammatory cytokines to LPS during the early developmental period.
Greater Loss of White Matter Integrity in Postural Instability and Gait Difficulty Subtype of Parkinson's Disease
Authors: Gu Quanquan , Huang Peiyu , Xuan Min , Xu Xiaojun , Li Dan , Sun Jianzhong , Yu Hualiang , Wang Chao , Luo Wei , Zhang Minming 
Published: November 2014

ABSTRACTBackground: Patients with the postural instability and gait difficulty (PIGD) subtype of Parkinson disease (PD) are at a higher risk of dysfunction and are less responsive to dopamine replacement therapy. The PIGD subtype was found to largely associate with white matter lesions, but details of the diffusion changes within these lesions have not been fully investigated. Voxel-based analysis for diffusion tensor imaging data is one of the preferred measures to compare diffusion changes in each voxel in any part of the brain. Methods: PD patients with the PIGD (n=12) and non-PIGD subtypes (n=12) were recruited to compare diffusion differences in fractional anisotropy, axial diffusivity, and radial diffusivity with voxel-based analysis. Results: Significantly reduced fractional anisotropy in bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus, bilateral anterior corona radiata, and the left genu of the corpus callosum were shown in the PIGD subtype compared with the non-PIGD subtype. Increased radial diffusivity in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus was found in the PIGD subtype with no statistical differences in axial diffusivity found. Conclusions: Our study confirms previous findings that white matter abnormalities were greater in the PIGD subtype than in the non-PIGD subtype. Additionally, our findings suggested: (1) compared with the non-PIGD subtype, loss of white matter integrity was greater in the PIGD subtype; (2) bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus may play a critical role in microstructural white matter abnormalities in the PIGD subtype; and (3) reduced white matter integrity in the PIGD subtype could be mainly attributed to demyelination rather than axonal loss.
Provoking Disorder: The Politics of Speech in Protectorate Middlesex
Authors: Boswell Caroline 
Published: November 2014

AbstractThis article explores the impact of the 1654 ordinance against challenges, duels, and provocations. Despite the Council of State's original intentions, this legislation offered non-elites the opportunity to prosecute threatening and abusive language as “provocations,” recasting interpersonal conflicts as dangerous to society rather than to an individual's “common fame.” Indeed, many of the cases prosecuted at the Middlesex sessions centered on “provocative” behavior that questioned normative social and gender relations, revealing how the Protectorate's anti-dueling legislation provided a new weapon in contests over social power. Comparing the creation and implementation of the 1654 ordinance, this article argues that the Protectorate's legislation exposed the connections between the regulation of social interactions and the preservation of the social and political order.
Arresting John Entick: TheMonitorControversy and the Imagined British Conquests of the Spanish Empire
Authors: Stiles David 
Published: November 2014

AbstractThis article explores the events surrounding theMonitorcontroversy, which stemmed from radical criticism of the crown's conservative approach to the war between Spain and Great Britain in 1762. While some observers wished to quickly bring the war to an end, others expressed more radical plans for the destruction of the Spanish Empire. When the crown retaliated against prominent agitators with a round of arrests designed to silence their dissent, the result was a succession of legal cases that culminated withEntick v. Carringtonin 1765. In their arguments, the plaintiffs expressed concern that the British Empire was seemingly in danger of evolving into an oppressive, allegedly “Spanish” style of polity. These legal processes and the precedents they set were critical to the development of protected space for political dissent in the British Empire, and affirmed a more broadly participatory model for the future development of imperial policy.
Reburial of a mosaic floor discovered at Tocra (Taucheira)
Authors: Buzaian Ahmed , Hashem Mohamed 
Published: November 2014

AbstractA large number of mosaic floors in Cyrenaica are in poor condition and a systematic programme for the assessment of exposed mosaics followed by strategic planning for their long term preservation is long overdue and badly needed. A mosaic floor discovered at Tocra in 1972 is a prime example of a deteriorated pavement. In this case the Department of Antiquities decided to protect the mosaic by careful reburial in a methodical fashion. Preservation of the Tocra pavement by careful reburial, with due regard to context and need, is unprecedented and represents a new, extreme but essential conservation activity for Libyan archaeology.
Reconfiguring agriculture through the relocation of production systems for water, environment and food security under climate change
Authors: MUSHTAQ S. , WHITE N. , COCKFIELD G. , POWER B. , JAKEMAN G. 
Published: November 2014

SUMMARYThe prospect of climate change has revived both fears of food insecurity and its corollary, market opportunities for agricultural production. In Australia, with its long history of state-sponsored agricultural development, there is renewed interest in the agricultural development of tropical and sub-tropical northern regions. Climate projections suggest that there will be less water available to the main irrigation systems of the eastern central and southern regions of Australia, while net rainfall could be sustained or even increase in the northern areas. Hence, there could be more intensive use of northern agricultural areas, with the relocation of some production of economically important commodities such as vegetables, rice and cotton. The problem is that the expansion of cropping in northern Australia has been constrained by agronomic and economic considerations.The present paper examines the economics, at both farm and regional level, of relocating some cotton production from the east-central irrigation areas to the north where there is an existing irrigation scheme together with some industry and individual interest in such relocation. Integrated modelling and expert knowledge are used to examine this example of prospective climate change adaptation. Farm-level simulations show that without adaptation, overall gross margins will decrease under a combination of climate change and reduction in water availability. A dynamic regional Computable General Equilibrium model is used to explore two scenarios of relocating cotton production from south east Queensland, to sugar-dominated areas in northern Queensland. Overall, an increase in real economic output and real income was realized when some cotton production was relocated to sugar cane fallow land/new land. There were, however, large negative effects on regional economies where cotton production displaced sugar cane. It is concluded that even excluding the agronomic uncertainties, which are not examined here, there is unlikely to be significant market-driven relocation of cotton production.
On asynchronous eventful session semantics
Authors: KOUZAPAS DIMITRIOS , YOSHIDA NOBUKO , HU RAYMOND , HONDA KOHEI 
Published: November 2014

Event-driven programming is one of the major paradigms in concurrent and communication-based programming, where events are typically detected as the arrival of messages on asynchronous channels. Unfortunately, the flexibility and performance of traditional event-driven programming come at the cost of more complex programs: low-level APIs and the obfuscation of event-driven control flow make programs difficult to read, write and verify.This paper introduces a π-calculus with session types that modelsevent-driven session programming(called ESP) and studies its behavioural theory. The main characteristics of the ESP model are asynchronous, order-preserving message passing, non-blocking detection of event/message arrivals and dynamic inspection of session types. Session types offer formal safety guarantees, such as communication and event handling safety, and programmatic benefits that overcome problems with existing event-driven programming languages and techniques. The new typed bisimulation theory developed for the ESP model is distinct from standard synchronous or asynchronous bisimulation, capturing the semantic nature of eventful session-based processes. The bisimilarity coincides with reduction-closed barbed congruence.We demonstrate the features and benefits of ESP and the behavioural theory through two key use cases. First, we examine an encoding and the semantic behaviour of the event selector, a central component of general event-driven systems, providing core results for verifying type-safe event-driven applications. Second, we examine the Lauer–Needham duality, building on the selector encoding and bisimulation theory to prove that a systematic transformation from multithreaded to event-driven session processes is type- and semantics-preserving.
Design of Three-shell Icosahedral Matryoshka Clusters A@B12@A20 (A = Sn, Pb; B = Mg, Zn, Cd, Mn)
Authors: Huang Xiaoming , Zhao Jijun , Su Yan , Chen Zhongfang , King R. Bruce 
Published: November 2014

AbstractWe propose a series of icosahedral matryoshka clusters of A@B12@A20 (A = Sn, Pb; B = Mg, Zn, Cd), which possess large HOMO-LUMO gaps (1.29 to 1.54 eV) and low formation energies (0.06 to 0.21 eV/atom). A global minimum search using a genetic algorithm and density functional theory calculations confirms that such onion-like three-shell structures are the ground states for these A21B12 binary clusters. All of these icosahedral matryoshka clusters, including two previously found ones, i.e., [As@Ni12@As20]3− and [Sn@Cu12@Sn20]12−, follow the 108-electron rule, which originates from the high Ih symmetry and consequently the splitting of superatom orbitals of high angular momentum. More interestingly, two magnetic matryoshka clusters, i.e., Sn@Mn12@Sn20 and Pb@Mn12@Pb20, are designed, which combine a large magnetic moment of 28 µB, a moderate HOMO-LUMO gap and weak inter-cluster interaction energy, making them ideal building blocks in novel magnetic materials and devices.
Probing Mechanoregulation of Neuronal Differentiation by Plasma Lithography Patterned Elastomeric Substrates
Authors: Nam Ki-Hwan , Jamilpour Nima , Mfoumou Etienne , Wang Fei-Yue , Zhang Donna D. , Wong Pak Kin 
Published: November 2014

AbstractCells sense and interpret mechanical cues, including cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions, in the microenvironment to collectively regulate various physiological functions. Understanding the influences of these mechanical factors on cell behavior is critical for fundamental cell biology and for the development of novel strategies in regenerative medicine. Here, we demonstrate plasma lithography patterning on elastomeric substrates for elucidating the influences of mechanical cues on neuronal differentiation and neuritogenesis. The neuroblastoma cells form neuronal spheres on plasma-treated regions, which geometrically confine the cells over two weeks. The elastic modulus of the elastomer is controlled simultaneously by the crosslinker concentration. The cell-substrate mechanical interactions are also investigated by controlling the size of neuronal spheres with different cell seeding densities. These physical cues are shown to modulate with the formation of focal adhesions, neurite outgrowth and the morphology of neuroblastoma. By systematic adjustment of these cues, along with computational biomechanical analysis, we demonstrate the interrelated mechanoregulatory effects of substrate elasticity and cell size. Taken together, our results reveal that the neuronal differentiation and neuritogenesis of neuroblastoma cells are collectively regulated via the cell-substrate mechanical interactions.