bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Adding serial N‐terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide measurements to optimal clinical management in outpatients with systolic heart failure: a multicentre randomized clinical trial (NorthStar monitoring study)
Authors: Schou Morten , Gustafsson Finn , Videbaek Lars , Andersen Helge , Toft Jens , Nyvad Ole , Ryde Henrik , Fog Lars , Jensen Jens C.H. , Nielsen Olav W. , Lind‐Rasmussen Soren , Abdulla Jawdat , Hildebrandt Per R. ,   on behalf of the NorthStar Investigators,   All members of the Danish Heart Failure Clinics Network
Published: March 2013

AimsThis study was designed to evaluate a new NT‐proBNP monitoring concept in outpatients with systolic heart failure (HF).Methods and resultsThis was a multicentre, prospective randomized open‐label blinded endpoint study. A total of 407 systolic HF patients were allocated to either clinical management (n = 208) or clinical management + NT‐proBNP monitoring (n = 199) and followed for 2.5 years. If NT‐proBNP increased >30%, a clinical checklist was completed and treatment initiated. The patients were matched at randomization and were 73 years old, 25% were females, 85% were NYHA class I–II, LVEF was 30%, and NT‐proBNP 1955 pg/mL. NT‐proBNP monitoring did not improve outcome, the hazard ratio for the primary composite endpoint (death or a cardiovascular admission) being 0.96 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.71–1.29, P = 0.766]. NT‐proBNP monitoring did not induce a significant change in the pharmacological strategy (P > 0.05 for all comparisons). In patients in whom NT‐proBNP increased >30% (25% of the patients) during follow‐up, a higher frequency of admission (69% vs. 47%, P = 0.002), a higher number of admission days (14 vs. 5 days, P = 0.003) and number of admissions (2 vs. 1, P = 0.009), and a lower quality of life (P = 0.032) and a poorer functional class (37% vs. 18% in NYHA class III–IV, P < 0.001) were observed.ConclusionsAdding serial measurements of NT‐proBNP to optimal clinical management was not associated with a change in pharmacological strategy and did not improve outcome. However, survivors in whom NT‐proBNP increased >30% showed a poorer functional class, clinical outcome, and quality of life.Trial registrationwww.centerwatch: 173491 (NorthStar).
Āryadeva
Authors: Lang Karen C. 
Published: March 2013

Āryadeva (3rd century), a disciple of Nāgārjuna, is a central figure in the development of early Indian Madhyamaka philosophy. Āryadeva’s Hundred Verses Treatise (Bai lun) was one of the three basic texts of the Chinese Madhyamaka school founded by the central Asian monk Kumārajīva (b. 344–d. 413), which accordingly was called the Sanlun (Jpn. Sanron), or “three-treatise” school. According to the biography that Kumārajīva translated into Chinese, Āryadeva was born into a South Indian Brahmin family, became Nāgārjuna’s disciple, was renowned for his skill in debate, and was murdered by a student of a defeated teacher. Candrakīrti (b. c. 570–d. 650), in his commentary on Āryadeva’s major work, the Four Hundred Verses (Catuḥśataka), reports that Āryadeva was born on the island of Sinhala (Sri Lanka) as a king’s son, renounced his royal status, became a monk, and traveled to South India, where he studied with Nāgārjuna. Some scholars suggest that Āryadeva is the elder deva mentioned in the Mahāvaṃsa and Dīpavaṃsa chronicles of early Sri Lankan religious history. Āryadeva did not write commentaries on Nāgārjuna’s works but, rather, wrote autonomous treatises that defended Madhyamaka beliefs against its Buddhist and non-Buddhist critics. He devotes the first eight chapters to explaining ethical behavior and such practices as generosity, which form the basis for the bodhisattva’s accumulation of merit (puṇya). The latter eight chapters refute wrong views about the independent existence of external phenomena and the self, defending the Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness and the dependently arisen nature of all things. The Catuḥśataka presents the path to the attainment of buddhahood as structured around these two requisites of merit and knowledge (jñāna). As an introduction to the practices of a bodhisattva, the Catuḥśataka prepares the ground for Śāntideva’s later (c. 8th-century) and more extensive treatment in Introduction to the Practices of a Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra). Apart from some fragments of the Catuḥśataka, none of the works the Chinese and Tibetan canons attributed to Āryadeva survive in Sanskrit.
Paul Feyerabend
Authors: Preston John 
Published: March 2013

Paul Feyerabend (b. 1924–d. 1994), whose productive career lasted forty-five years, wrote on a plethora of philosophical issues, although much of his work concerned the nature and role of science. He was no narrowly trained or narrowly focused academic, though. His time as a student was divided among the studies of singing, stage management, theater, Italian, harmony, piano, physics, mathematics, astronomy, history, and sociology. He became a student of philosophy only after having earned his doctorate in the subject. His career as a philosopher was an accident, and he did not always see himself as a philosopher. Indeed, Feyerabend seemed to hold the interest and opinion of those who were not professional philosophers in higher regard than those of his academic peers. Nevertheless, he forged for himself a reputation as an important philosopher of science, being very knowledgeable about a range of sciences and very keen to deflate what he saw as pompous, overinflated, or ill-informed estimations of the epistemic and social virtues of the sciences, whether expressed by professional philosophers or by others.
Semiotics
Authors: Danesi Marcel 
Published: March 2013

Semiotics is the discipline studying the meanings, uses, and functions of signs and sign systems—a “sign” being defined as anything (a word, gesture, facial expression, and so on) that stands for something other than itself, to someone, in some capacity. Some designate this discipline as a science, others as an analytical tool or a critical method. One of its modern-day founders, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (b. 1839–d. 1914), called it a “doctrine,” in the sense of a set of principles. It has also been called “semiology” by Ferdinand de Saussure (b. 1857–d. 1913), another modern-day founder. The terms “significs,” coined by Victoria Lady Welby (b. 1837–d. 1912), and “sematology” are also sometimes used. The term “semiotics” was adopted by the International Association for Semiotics Studies in 1969, becoming, ever since, the main one to designate the discipline. Debate is ongoing today about whether semiotics is a science and if it should encompass the study of nonhuman as well as human sign systems. This has led to the rise to prominence of “biosemiotics,” which aims to do exactly that. Several theoretical debates have also characterized semiotics proper for more than a century. The most important one has been whether sign construction is, in its origin, an arbitrary process, producing sign forms with no sensory, experiential, or affective connection to their referents, or if it is a “motivated” process, or generating sign forms that do. This basic debate is discussed in several core texts and in many of the theoretical works listed here. In a general annotated bibliography such as this one, selections must be made, given the extensive amount of writing that has marked the field over the past century. Also, decisions have to be made to classify certain works under particular rubrics, rather than others, because of the built-in thematic overlap of a large portion of semiotic writing. So, some listings included here under one category may be found classified under some other category elsewhere. Also, only English-language works have been listed here. This in no way implies that works in other languages are less important. On the contrary, many non-English works have been critical to the establishment and development of semiotics as a discipline. They are not included here unless they have English translations.
Militarism
Authors: Trauschweizer Ingo 
Published: March 2013

Contemporary critics and scholars alike have associated militarism both with the military’s predominance in foreign policy and with the employment of military force, rhetoric, and symbols in order to ensure elite control of the populace. Two definitions from German scholars illustrate that range. Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (Benjamin 1978, cited under Seminal Critiques) holds that militarism is “the compulsory, universal use of violence as a means to the ends of the state” (p. 284). And for Alfred Vagts (A History of Militarism; Vagts 1959, cited under General Overviews), “militarism . . . presents a vast array of customs, interests, prestige, actions, and thought associated with armies and wars and yet transcending true military purposes. . . . It may permeate all society and become dominant overall industry and arts” (p. 13). More recently, Andrew Bacevich (The New American Militarism; Bacevich 2005, cited under Contemporary) has added an intriguing twist to the discussion of American militarism since the end of the Vietnam War: a shift of agency from the state and its military institutions to civil society, which had previously been regarded as a victim or consumer of militarism and not as one of its originators. As a practical matter, modern militarism evolved from the upheaval of the social, political, and industrial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries in Western countries and in Japan. Industrialization and the rise of the lower classes threatened reactionary elites, the emergence of mass society forced the state to educate and indoctrinate its citizens, and technological advances made war more lethal and required both specialization of military functions and mass mobilization of society and economy. Proponents of the Sonderweg thesis argue that these developments were felt most intensely in Germany, where the modern nation-state was forged in war and where civil society was overtaken by nationalism and military culture. In public imagination, the two world wars firmly established Germany as the ideal type of modern militarism, in the sense of both aggression toward its neighbors and the predominance of military culture at home.
Vertigo
Authors: White Susan 
Published: March 2013

Alfred Hitchcock made Vertigo during an especially creative period of 1958–1960, when he released three historic films, Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). Each took a radically distinctive approach to the “suspense thriller.” With its overtones of mystery, romance, and the supernatural, Vertigo resembles Rebecca (1940) pushed over into the realm of the fantastic, without the irony saturating the earlier film. Despite its stellar cast, James Stewart, Kim Novak (1958’s top female box-office star), and Barbara Bel Geddes, it inspired mediocre reviews and a relatively poor financial return. Truffaut’s extensive 1962 interviews with Hitchcock reveal that he was devastated by the film’s poor reception, blaming, among other factors, Stewart’s age (fifty—twice that of Novak) for the film’s unimpressive showing. Hitchcock withdrew Vertigo and several other films from circulation between 1973 and 1983, for financial reasons. But despite initial lukewarm reactions, and the film’s unavailability to the public, critics, and journalists for a decade, Vertigo is one of the most thoroughly documented and analyzed films in history. It has risen steadily in “Top Ten” polls, often reaching the number one or two spot. (As of 4 July 2011 it ranks ninth in the AFI’s 100 Years . . . 100 Movies poll, and fourth in Sight & Sound’s International Critics Poll.) Now regarded as a defining work in Hitchcock’s canon, Vertigo may be his most “personal” film. It metaphorically comments, with great profundity, upon the process and meaning of making films and seems to convey, through the suffering of its protagonists, the director’s own powerful emotions. Thematically, the film reiterates Hitchcock’s best-known obsessions, including the attractions of an “icy” blonde who turns out to be warm-blooded and sexual fetishes such as scopophilia. Although these themes richly inhabit other Hitchcock films, Vertigo places singular emphasis on male power and control over women, men’s fear of their own often ill-repressed femininity, the role of “theatricality” in film, and the nature of suspense. For students of film, following the critical fortunes of Vertigo offers an opportunity to study important currents in cinema theory and criticism, especially feminist film criticism, in which Vertigo has been considered a prime example of women’s oppression in mainstream cinema and Hitchcock’s confessional deconstruction of that oppression. This bibliography aims to represent in a balanced way the major journalistic and critical debates around Vertigo, highlighting representative books, essays, reviews, films, and visual works that approach Vertigo from diverse disciplines.
Henry David Thoreau
Authors: Rossi William 
Published: March 2013

Henry David Thoreau (b. 1817–d. 1862) was given the name David Henry at birth, outside Concord, Massachusetts, on the farm of his maternal grandmother. In 1833, he entered Harvard College, and he graduated in 1837, the year Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his Phi Beta Kappa address on “The American Scholar” (though Thoreau’s attendance at the event is unconfirmed). One of several youths deeply influenced by the transcendentalist movement that gathered around Emerson, Thoreau enjoyed the older man’s professional encouragement and friendship throughout the 1840s. During the twenty-five years of his writing life, before he died of a tubercular condition at age forty-four, Thoreau published numerous magazine articles in well-established national venues, as well as two books: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), a reflective account of a journey taken with his older brother, John, ten years earlier, and Walden (1854), published by Ticknor and Fields, for which he is best known. Shortly after his death, four more essays were published in the Atlantic Monthly, and in the next few years Ticknor and Fields brought out four collections of his writings, including Excursions (1863), The Maine Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1865), and A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and Reform Papers (1866). Although never a bestselling author, nor able to make a living solely by his pen, Thoreau was modestly successful in his own day and well recognized nationally as a writer of ambition, sharp humor, and great skill. The commercial failure of A Week, which sank his plan of publishing Walden immediately afterward, did nothing to diminish Thoreau’s ambivalence toward the literary marketplace. But A Week suffered less critically than commercially, and that failure was probably more the result of unfavorable negotiating and inadequate marketing than the author’s haughty disdain for his readers or the book’s anti-Christian critique. Walden, an immediate critical success, fared considerably better in sales (though hardly a blockbuster), owing both to energetic promotion by Ticknor and Fields and to the author’s growing stature. From the late nineteenth century to the present, critical interest in Thoreau as writer, social and environmental philosopher, and cultural icon has ranged through many dimensions of his work—the descriptive fidelity and moralism of the natural history essays, the social and political critiques leveled in early chapters of Walden and the reform essays, the literary artistry of Walden, and the ecological sensibility that characterizes the later Journal and two natural history projects, edited and published in 1993 and 2000, that Thoreau left unfinished at his death.
César Chávez
Authors: Bender Steven W. 
Published: March 2013

César Chávez (b. 1927–d. 1993) is recognized as an American hero, as evidenced by an official state holiday in California, the first for any Latina/o or labor leader. Reflecting his influence beyond California, several other states have established optional or commemorative holidays honoring his legacy as a labor leader. Though renowned for his role as a cofounder, with Dolores Huerta and Filipino leaders, of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union to secure fair wages and safe working conditions for agricultural workers, Chávez’s legacy also includes his formative years as a political organizer in California for the Community Service Organization. Known for his invocation of religious symbols as an organizing tactic and his advocacy of an ethos of nonviolence in the farm worker movement, Chávez is best remembered for his twenty-five-day hunger fast in 1968 as an act of penance to ensure nonviolence in the increasingly contentious grape strike and national grape boycott sponsored by the UFW and centered in the grape fields of Delano, California. A later, longer fast in 1988 called attention to the dangers to farm workers and their families from the use of pesticides in the fields. Although rooted in the California grape fields, Chávez’s organizing efforts and the UFW union reached well beyond that locale to encompass other crops and states, notably drawing the UFW into a territorial dispute in the 1970s with the Teamsters union in lettuce and grape fields. UFW membership peaked under Chávez’s leadership in the early 1980s but declined significantly in subsequent years, mirroring national trends of union declines, although some critics fault Chávez’s leadership tactics. Chávez’s life is the subject of many scholarly works, particularly emphasizing the 1960s Delano grape strike and the national grape boycott as well as his leadership style and organizing strategies.
The Manipulation of Auxin in the Abscission Zone Cells of Arabidopsis Flowers Reveals That Indoleacetic Acid Signaling Is a Prerequisite for Organ Shedding
Authors: Basu Manojit M. , González-Carranza Zinnia H. , Azam-Ali Sayed , Tang Shouya , Shahid Ahmad Ali , Roberts Jeremy A. 
Published: March 2013

AbstractA number of novel strategies were employed to examine the role of indoleacetic acid (IAA) in regulating floral organ abscission in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Analysis of auxin influx facilitator expression in β-glucuronidase reporter plants revealed that AUXIN RESISTANT1, LIKE AUX1, and LAX3 were specifically up-regulated at the site of floral organ shedding. Flowers from mutants where individual family members were down-regulated exhibited a reduction in the force necessary to bring about petal separation; however, the effect was not additive in double or quadruple mutants. Using the promoter of a polygalacturonase (At2g41850), active primarily in cells undergoing separation, to drive expression of the bacterial genes iaaL and iaaM, we have shown that it is possible to manipulate auxin activity specifically within the floral organ abscission zone (AZ). Analysis of petal breakstrength reveals that if IAA AZ levels are reduced, shedding takes place prematurely, while if they are enhanced, organ loss is delayed. The At2g41850 promoter was also used to transactivate the gain-of-function AXR3-1 gene in order to disrupt auxin signaling specifically within the floral organ AZ cells. Flowers from transactivated lines failed to shed their sepals, petals, and anthers during pod expansion and maturity, and these organs frequently remained attached to the plant even after silique desiccation and dehiscence had taken place. These observations support a key role for IAA in the regulation of abscission in planta and reveal, to our knowledge for the first time, a requirement for a functional IAA signaling pathway in AZ cells for organ shedding to take place.
Developmental patterns of a large set of barley (Hordeum vulgare) cultivars in response to ambient temperature
Authors: Karsai I. , Igartua E. , Casas A.M. , Kiss T. , Soós V. , Balla K. , Bedő Z. , Veisz O. 
Published: March 2013

AbstractAmbient temperature plays an important role in plant development. In cereals, little is known about the exact effects of ambient temperature in the range between it being a vernalising agent and an abiotic stress factor; thus the genetic determinants involved in the registering and response to ambient temperature, and their natural variation has not been dissected either. Principally, we wished to establish the level of natural variation in response to ambient temperature in barley via studying plant phenological development. The responses to temperature of 168 barley genotypes of different provenances and seasonal growth habit groups were observed in controlled environments. The effects of four temperature regimes (13°C, 16.5°C, 18°C and 23°C) on the duration of plant phenophases were examined. The plant development was characterised in a series of consecutive phenophases that span the plant life cycle from germination through flowering to attainment of maximum plant height. Ambient temperature affected significantly plant development, with substantial variation in responses among the genotypes. Six major types of responses were identified, which depended strongly on seasonal growth habit, with only a small degree of overlap. Although the differences in the timing of development among clusters were significant under each temperature regime, the 23°C treatment resulted in the largest diversity of responses, with significant changes in the ranking of the six clusters compared to other treatments. Two clusters showed particularly unusual responses to 23°C: the development of one winter barley cluster was extremely accelerated by the 23°C treatment, whereas the development of one spring barley cluster was significantly delayed. Ambient temperature assumes importance as a regulatory cue in the intricate and complex temporal and spatial regulation network of plant development in cereals and acts mostly through its regulatory effect on certain developmental phases such as the onset and duration of the intensive stem elongation.
Evaluation of a Novel Artificial Pancreas: Closed Loop Glycemic Control System With Continuous Blood Glucose Monitoring
Authors: Tsukamoto Yuuki , Kinoshita Yoshihiko , Kitagawa Hiroyuki , Munekage Masaya , Munekage Eri , Takezaki Yuka , Yatabe Tomoaki , Yamashita Koichi , Yamazaki Rie , Okabayashi Takehiro , Tarumi Masatoshi , Kobayashi Masaki , Mishina Suguru , Hanazaki Kazuhiro 
Published: March 2013

AbstractA closed‐loop glycemic control system using an artificial pancreas has been applied with many clinical benefits in Japan since 1987. To update this system incorporating user‐friendly features, we developed a novel artificial pancreas (STG‐55). The purpose of this study was to evaluate STG‐55 for device usability, performance of blood glucose measurement, glycemic control characteristics in vivo in animal experiments, and evaluate its clinical feasibility. There are several features for usability improvement based on the design concepts, such as compactness, display monitor, batteries, guidance function, and reduction of the preparation time. All animal study data were compared with a clinically available artificial pancreas system in Japan (control device: STG‐22). We examined correlations of both blood glucose levels between two groups (STG‐55 vs. control) using Clarke's error grid analysis, and also compared mean glucose infusion rate (GIR) during glucose clamp. The results showed strong correlation in blood glucose concentrations (Pearson's product‐moment correlation coefficient: 0.97; n = 1636). Clarke's error grid analysis showed that 98.4% of the data fell in Zones A and B, which represent clinically accurate or benign errors, respectively. The difference in mean GIRs was less than 0.2 mg/kg/min, which was considered not significant. Clinical feasibility study demonstrated sufficient glycemic control maintaining target glucose range between 80 and 110 (mg/dL), and between 140 and 160 without any hypoglycemia. In conclusion, STG‐55 was a clinically acceptable artificial pancreas with improved interface and usability. A closed‐loop glycemic control system with STG‐55 would be a useful tool for surgical and critical patients in intensive care units, as well as diabetic patients.