bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
‘We are pulled to the four corners’: Qualitative role descriptions of advanced practice children's nurses in Malawi
Authors: North Natasha , Brysiewicz Petra , Coetzee Minette 
Published: May 2024

AbstractPurposeThis study investigated emerging roles among specialist child health nurses (CHNs) in Malawi. Advanced nursing role development is globally advocated. Nursing role descriptions provide an evidential basis for workforce planning. Rigorously developed role descriptions are scarce worldwide, especially for Africa. Advanced nursing roles were introduced in Malawi's child health system a decade ago.Design and MethodsWe followed guidance on generating nursing role descriptions to collect and analyse qualitative data from interviews and focus groups, using qualitative content analysis. We used COREQ reporting standards.ResultsMore than half (41/80) of Malawi's child health nursing workforce participated. Richly descriptive accounts of roles elicited three themes: leading and developing new services and improving existing ones; holding rare knowledge which uplifts care quality; and responsibility for developing the role. These responsibilities are experienced as a privilege and a burden, often meaning CHNs are ‘pulled to the four corners’.Practice ImplicationsWe found evidence of remarkable achievements by Malawi's CHNs but also suggestions that they are under heavy strain. Because multi‐stakeholder agreement about role content is crucial to successfully implementing advanced nursing roles, we hope the approach taken by this study, and the information generated, could be useful as part of human resources for health strategy development in other lower‐resourced countries globally.
The sun's position at birth is unrelated to subjective well‐being: Debunking astrological claims
Authors: Joshanloo Mohsen 
Published: May 2024

AbstractBeliefs linking zodiac signs to personality traits, life outcomes, and well‐being remain widespread across various cultures. This study examined the relationship between Western zodiac signs and subjective well‐being in a nationally representative American sample from the General Social Survey (N = 12,791). Well‐being was measured across eight components: general unhappiness, depressive symptoms, psychological distress, work dissatisfaction, financial dissatisfaction, perceived dullness of one's life, self‐rated health, and unhappiness with marriage. Parametric and nonparametric analyses consistently revealed no robust associations between zodiac signs and any of the well‐being variables, regardless of whether demographic factors were controlled for. The effect sizes were negligible, accounting for 0.3% or less of the variance in well‐being, demonstrating that zodiac signs lack predictive power for well‐being outcomes. An additional analysis revealed that astrological signs were no more predictive of than random numbers. Thus, a randomly generated number between 1 and 12 is statistically as predictive of one's well‐being as one's zodiac sign. These findings challenge popular astrological claims about the influence of zodiac signs on well‐being and quality of life.
Investment projects and the protection of indigenous peoples and territories in Colombia
Authors: Lizarazo‐Rodríguez Liliana , De Lombaerde Philippe , Lizarazo Carrera Miguel Andrés , Londono‐Escudero Carolina 
Published: May 2024

AbstractThis article addresses the protection of indigenous peoples and their natural habitats in Colombia when investment projects are planned or implemented. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of prior informed consultation; and free, prior, and informed consent. The Colombian case is relevant because it is at the vanguard of protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and their territories, and it is home to tough policy choices, balancing indigenous rights, the environment (as a megadiverse country), and the economy (highly dependent on mining exports). From a law and sustainable development perspective, this article analyzes a novel combination of various statistical data sets and case law and includes tests of the outcomes of prior informed consultation processes and their interaction with environmental licensing based on regression analyses. The conclusions point to the scale of the use of the protection mechanisms, the patterns in the behavior of indigenous peoples and in the outcomes of the mechanisms, the need to reinterpret transaction costs, and the crucial role of the constitutional court.
Two‐stage nonparametric framework for missing data imputation, uncertainty quantification, and incorporation in system identification
Authors: Zhang Wen‐Jing , Yuen Ka‐Veng , Yan Wang‐Ji 
Published: May 2024

AbstractIn many engineering applications, missing data during system identification can hinder the performance of the identified model. In this paper, a novel two‐stage nonparametric framework is proposed for missing data imputation, uncertainty quantification, and its integration in system identification with reduced computational complexity. The framework does not require functional forms for both the imputation model and the identified mathematical model. Moreover, through the construction of a single imputation model, analytical expressions of predictive distributions can be given for missing entries across all missingness patterns. Furthermore, analytical expressions of the expectation and variance of distribution are provided to impute missing values and quantify uncertainty, respectively. This uncertainty is incorporated into a single mathematical model by mitigating the influence of samples with imputations during training and testing. The framework is applied to three applications, including a simulated example and two real applications on structural health monitoring and seismic attenuation modeling. Results reveal a minimum reduction of 21% in root mean squared error values, compared to those achieved by directly removing incomplete samples.
Deep learning framework with Local Sparse Transformer for construction worker detection in 3D with LiDAR
Authors: Zhang Mingyu , Wang Lei , Han Shuai , Wang Shuyuan , Li Heng 
Published: May 2024

AbstractAutonomous equipment is playing an increasingly important role in construction tasks. It is essential to equip autonomous equipment with powerful 3D detection capability to avoid accidents and inefficiency. However, there is limited research within the construction field that has extended detection to 3D. To this end, this study develops a light detection and ranging (LiDAR)‐based deep‐learning model for the 3D detection of workers on construction sites. The proposed model adopts a voxel‐based anchor‐free 3D object detection paradigm. To enhance the feature extraction capability for tough detection tasks, a novel Transformer‐based block is proposed, where the multi‐head self‐attention is applied in local grid regions. The detection model integrates the Transformer blocks with 3D sparse convolution to extract wide and local features while pruning redundant features in modified downsampling layers. To train and test the proposed model, a LiDAR point cloud dataset was created, which includes workers in construction sites with 3D box annotations. The experiment results indicate that the proposed model outperforms the baseline models with higher mean average precision and smaller regression errors. The method in the study is promising to provide worker detection with rich and accurate 3D information required by construction automation.
A highly resolved nuclear phylogeny uncovers strong phylogenetic conservatism and correlated evolution of fruit color and size in Solanum L.
Authors: Messeder João Vitor S. , Carlo Tomás A. , Zhang Guojin , Tovar Juan David , Arana César , Huang Jie , Huang Chien‐Hsun , Ma Hong 
Published: May 2024

Summary

Mutualisms between plants and fruit‐eating animals were key to the radiation of angiosperms. Still, phylogenetic uncertainties limit our understanding of fleshy‐fruit evolution, as in the case of Solanum, a genus with remarkable fleshy‐fruit diversity, but with unresolved phylogenetic relationships.

We used 1786 nuclear genes from 247 species, including 122 newly generated transcriptomes/genomes, to reconstruct the Solanum phylogeny and examine the tempo and mode of the evolution of fruit color and size.

Our analysis resolved the backbone phylogeny of Solanum, providing high support for its clades. Our results pushed back the origin of Solanum to 53.1 million years ago (Ma), with most major clades diverging between 35 and 27 Ma. Evolution of Solanum fruit color and size revealed high levels of trait conservatism, where medium‐sized berries that remain green when ripe are the likely ancestral form. Our analyses revealed that fruit size and color are evolutionary correlated, where dull‐colored fruits are two times larger than black/purple and red fruits.

We conclude that the strong phylogenetic conservatism shown in the color and size of Solanum fruits could limit the influences of fruit‐eating animals on fleshy‐fruit evolution. Our findings highlight the importance of phylogenetic constraints on the diversification of fleshy‐fruit functional traits.
In‐locus gene silencing in plants using genome editing
Authors: Shen Rundong , Yao Qi , Tan Xinhang , Ren Wendan , Zhong Dating , Zhang Xuening , Li Xinbo , Dong Chao , Cao Xuesong , Tian Yifu , Zhu Jian‐Kang , Lu Yuming 
Published: May 2024

Summary

Gene silencing is crucial in crop breeding for desired trait development. RNA interference (RNAi) has been used widely but is limited by ectopic expression of transgenes and genetic instability. Introducing an upstream start codon (uATG) into the 5′untranslated region (5′UTR) of a target gene may ‘silence’ the target gene by inhibiting protein translation from the primary start codon (pATG).

Here, we report an efficient gene silencing method by introducing a tailor‐designed uATG‐containing element (ATGE) into the 5′UTR of genes in plants, occupying the original start site to act as a new pATG.

Using base editing to introduce new uATGs failed to silence two of the tested three rice genes, indicating complex regulatory mechanisms. Precisely inserting an ATGE adjacent to pATG achieved significant target protein downregulation. Through extensive optimization, we demonstrated this strategy substantially and consistently downregulated target protein expression. By designing a bidirectional multifunctional ATGE4, we enabled tunable knockdown from 19% to 89% and observed expected phenotypes. Introducing ATGE into Waxy, which regulates starch synthesis, generated grains with lower amylose, revealing the value for crop breeding.

Together, we have developed a programmable and robust method to knock down gene expression in plants, with potential for biological mechanism exploration and crop enhancement.
hybridexpress: an R/Bioconductor package for comparative transcriptomic analyses of hybrids and their progenitors
Authors: Almeida‐Silva Fabricio , Prost‐Boxoen Lucas , Van de Peer Yves 
Published: May 2024

Summary

Hybridization, the process of crossing individuals from diverse genetic backgrounds, plays a pivotal role in evolution, biological invasiveness, and crop breeding.

At the transcriptional level, hybridization often leads to complex nonadditive effects, presenting challenges for understanding its consequences. Although standard transcriptomic analyses exist to compare hybrids to their progenitors, such analyses have not been implemented in a software package, hindering reproducibility.

We introduce hybridexpress, an R/Bioconductor package designed to facilitate the analysis, visualization, and comparison of gene expression patterns in hybrid triplets (hybrids and their progenitors). hybridexpress provides users with a user‐friendly and comprehensive workflow that includes all standard comparative analyses steps, including data normalization, calculation of midparent expression values, sample clustering, expression‐based gene classification into categories and classes, and overrepresentation analysis for functional terms.

We illustrate the utility of hybridexpress through comparative transcriptomic analyses of cotton allopolyploidization and rice root trait heterosis. hybridexpress is designed to streamline comparative transcriptomic studies of hybrid triplets, advancing our understanding of evolutionary dynamics in allopolyploids, and enhancing plant breeding strategies. hybridexpress is freely accessible from Bioconductor (https://bioconductor.org/packages/HybridExpress) and its source code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/almeidasilvaf/HybridExpress).
Identification of drought tolerant inbred lines and assessment of combining ability in maize (Zea mays L.)
Authors: Shailaja D. S. , Lohithaswa Hirenallur Chandappa , Sowmya M. S. , Mallikarjuna Mallana Gowdra , Banakara Santhoshkumari , Likhithashree T. R. , Kirankumar R. , Basanagouda G. , Patne Nagesh , Vivek B. S. 
Published: May 2024

AbstractMaize is an important agricultural crop ensuring food and nutritional security throughout the globe. It is highly sensitive to many of the biotic and abiotic stresses, and among them, drought is the most severe abiotic stress limiting maize production. Climate change tends to worsen this scenario by changing precipitation patterns and decreasing water availability. Hence, the present study was undertaken to identify drought‐tolerant inbred lines under well‐irrigated and managed stress conditions in the field toward developing drought‐resilient maize hybrids. The initial in vitro screening of 65 agronomically elite maize inbred lines was undertaken at 15%, 20%, and 25% polyethylene glycol (PEG) concentrations. Subsequently, the 15 inbreds selected for their promising performance under varying concentrations of PEG were evaluated in the pot (100%, 60%, and 40% of field capacity [FC]) and managed field experiments (moisture stress). Various physiological, biochemical, and yield attributing traits were measured among the inbreds to assess their drought tolerance potential. The analysis of variance in the pot and field experiments indicated significant genotypic differences among the inbreds and genotype × treatment interaction for different traits considered. In the pot experiment, the phenotypic correlation analysis showed a significant positive association of shoot fresh weight with plant height (r = .71), number of leaves (r = .58), relative water content (r = .60), root fresh weight (r = .58), shoot dry weight (r = .60), and SPAD meter readings under (r = .71) moisture stress condition. In the field experiment, the grain yield had a significant positive association with plant height, relative water content, SPAD before stress, ear length, ear girth, kernel rows per ear, kernels per row, and per day productivity under stress. Proline accumulation in inbreds during stress was found to be higher compared to nonstress conditions. The inbred lines CML 505, CML 444, CML 451, CML 504, QM 11408, and MAI 214 were promising for most of the drought tolerance imparting traits. These six inbreds along with four inbreds having low DRI (SKV 50, MAI E2‐163, MAI 16, and MAI E2‐241) were crossed in half diallel manner, and crosses involving low × high or high × low DRI inbreds showed higher grain yield. The current study also revealed the need of combining various physiological and yield attributing traits in drought breeding programmes.
The Acute Inflammatory Potential of Particles From the Echinococcus granulosus Laminated Layer Is Moderated by Its Calcium Inositol Hexakisphosphate Component
Authors: Grezzi Leticia , González Carlos , Díaz Álvaro , Casaravilla Cecilia 
Published: May 2024

ABSTRACTCystic echinococcosis is caused by the tissue‐dwelling larva (hydatid) of Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato. A salient feature is that this larva is protected by the acellular laminated layer (LL). As the parasite grows, the LL sheds abundant particles that can accumulate in the parasite's vicinity. The potential of LL particles to induce inflammation in vivo has not been specifically analysed. It is not known how each of its two major components, namely highly glycosylated mucins and calcium inositol hexakisphosphate (InsP6) deposits, impacts inflammation induced by the LL as a whole. In this work, we show that LL particles injected intraperitoneally cause infiltration of eosinophils, neutrophils and monocytes/macrophages as well as the disappearance of resident (large peritoneal) macrophages. Strikingly, the absence of calcium InsP6 enhanced the recruitment of all the inflammatory cell types analysed. In contrast, oxidation of the mucin carbohydrates caused decreased recruitment of neutrophils. The carbohydrate‐oxidised particles caused cell influx nonetheless, which may be explained by possible receptor‐independent effects of LL particles on innate immune cells, as suggested by previous works from our group. In summary, LL particles can induce acute inflammatory cell recruitment partly dependent on its mucin glycans, and this recruitment is attenuated by the calcium InsP6 component.
Transcriptomic and metabolomic responses to varying nutrient conditions reveal new insights into pitcher formation in Nepenthes khasiana
Authors: Dkhar Jeremy , Bagri Jayram , Dhiman Kiran , Pareek Ashwani 
Published: May 2024

AbstractNepenthes are carnivorous plants that colonize habitats poor in soil nutrients. To survive, Nepenthes develop pitchers capable of capturing and digesting attracted prey. Prey‐derived nutrients are then absorbed to support plant growth and reproduction. So far, pitcher formation in Nepenthes is a poorly understood biological process. To shed light on the formation of Nepenthes pitchers, we grew dissected shoot apices of 3‐month‐old N. khasiana seedlings in Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium of varying strengths viz. full‐strength MS (1 MS), quarter‐strength MS (1/4 MS), and one‐eighth strength MS (1/8 MS), including those lacking nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) and in the presence of N‐1‐naphthylphthalamic acid (NPA). We sequenced the transcriptome and performed gas chromatography–mass spectrometry to determine changes in gene expression patterns and primary metabolite accumulations in response to the varying nutrient conditions. Shoots grown in 1 MS or NPA‐containing 1/4 MS and 1/8 MS failed to develop pitchers. Remarkably, pitcher formation is restored when N was removed from 1 MS. Transcriptomic response to nutrient‐sufficient and nutrient‐deficient conditions are associated with the enrichment of several defence‐related genes, including two JA‐mediated defence response genes, WRKY51 and WRKY11, respectively. Further, metabolomic response to the varying nutrient conditions identifies glutamic acid as a key metabolite, accumulating at lower and higher levels in shoots with and without pitchers, respectively. Together, our findings suggest that failure to form pitchers may be associated with the suppression of the JA‐signalling pathway, whereas the induction of the JA‐mediated defence response is linked to pitcher formation in N. khasiana.
Innovations in poultry reproduction using cryopreserved avian germ cells
Authors: Ichikawa Kennosuke , McGrew Mike J. 
Published: May 2024

AbstractMeat and eggs from chicken are the major source of animal protein for the human population. The cryopreservation of poultry species is needed to guarantee sustainable production. Here, we describe the existing cryopreservation technologies for avian reproductive cells using embryonic germ cells, spermatozoa and ovarian tissues. We outline strategies to reconstitute chicken breeds from their cryopreserved embryonic germ cells using surrogate hosts and discuss the perspectives for genetic conservation and reconstitution of chicken and wild avian species using surrogate host animals.
Early prediction of oestrus for herd fertility management in cattle and buffaloes – a review
Authors: Rajput Atul Singh , Mishra Babita , Rajawat Divya , Bhakat Mukesh 
Published: May 2024

AbstractOestrus is defined as a period when a female animal exhibits characteristic sexual behaviour in the presence of a mature male. Oestrous manifestation in dairy animals is due to the oestrogen (E2) effect on the central nervous system (CNS). It is a critical issue to be considered on a priority basis. Inefficient oestrous detection reduces the fertility status of the herd. The primary and most reliable indicator of oestrus is standing to be mounted by a bull or another female herd mate, signalling receptivity and the pre‐ovulatory state in dairy cattle. Oestrous detection is primarily a management challenge requiring skill and vigilance. To improve the efficiency of oestrous detection in dairy cattle, visual observation is one of the best methods if done three times a day; however, heat detection aids, if combined, give better results. However, techniques like using teaser bulls, tail painting, chin ball markers, ultrasound (USG) examination, hormonal analysis and examination of cervicovaginal mucus (CVM) improve oestrous detection efficiency. Moreover, the changes in production systems have reduced the expression of oestrous behaviour among cows, due to higher oestrogen (E2) metabolism. Therefore, automated systems, such as pedometers, accelerometers and acoustic sensors like infrared thermography (IRT) and image processing, have significantly enhanced reproductive performance by facilitating oestrous detection and optimizing insemination schedules. From this review, we would conclude that oestrous detection alone contributes considerably to the reproductive status of the herd; therefore, applying different methods of oestrous detection reduces the incidence of missed oestrus and improves the fertility status of the herd.
Incorporating mental imagery into geospatial environments for narrative visualizations
Authors: Rowe Ronny A. , Moore Antoni B. 
Published: May 2024

AbstractMethods for evaluating cognitively inspired geospatial interfaces have been important for revealing and helping solve their cognitive and usability issues. We argue that this is now true of interfaces in GIScience that deliver narrative visualizations, including 3D virtual narrative environments. These spaces allow for controlled conditions and realistic natural settings, where spatio‐temporal data can be collected and used to ascertain how well an interface design fulfilled a given narrative function. This study investigates the function of a cognitively inspired geospatial interface (Future Vision) that aimed to determine how mental images can be situated in geospatial environments and used to convey narratives that improve user cognition and decision‐making. The results of a two‐alternative forced‐choice (2AFC) decision‐making task showed that participants using future thinking guidance (mental images as a split‐second display of correct path choice) had statistically significant improvements in their task completion times, movement speeds and 2AFC decision‐making, compared to the unguided control group. Implications of the results include benefits for cue‐based navigation of real and conceptual spaces in GIScience. Future research can improve the interface design by modifying the interface code to reduce visual loss caused by eye blinks and saccades.