bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Interactions between runoff volume, timing, and annual temperatures shape migration phenology of a threatened adfluvial sucker
Authors: Walsworth Timothy E. , Fadlovich Rae , Fonken Dale , Heinle Kadie B. , May Emmanuel , Rousseau Skylar , Wallace Ellie , Landom Kevin 
Published: May 2024

AbstractMigratory fish species have been particularly impacted by changes to the hydrologic and climatic cues to which migration and spawning behaviours have been adapted across generations. While conservation and recovery programs increasingly implement flow management actions to promote successful migration and spawning, uncertainty regarding how spawning migration phenology responds to changing environmental conditions can limit the ability to effectively target such recovery actions. Here, we use a Bayesian hierarchical modelling framework to analyse spawning migration phenology of individually tagged June suckers (Chasmistes liorus) – a federally threatened, long‐lived, iteroparous, adfluvial species endemic to Utah Lake (Utah, USA) and its tributaries. We then examine how annual hydrologic and thermal conditions relate to different components of annual migration phenology, including peak migration date, in‐stream residence time, and among‐individual variation in migration timing. Peak migration date occurred earlier in years with warmer spring air temperatures (a proxy for water temperatures), though this effect interacted with peak runoff timing. Both residence time and among‐individual variation in migration timing were greater in years with larger spring discharge and later peak flows. Residence time was also longer in warmer years. These results highlight how natural and anthropogenic changes to river flow and thermal regimes are likely to impact June sucker migration timing and duration, and our approach can be applied to other migratory species to identify the external drivers of the different components of migration phenology.
The spatial extent of Walleye and Lake Sturgeon spawning migrations below a dam in the lower Black Sturgeon River, Lake Superior
Authors: Kosziwka Kerri , Cooke Steven J. , Smokorowski Karen E. , Fischer Friedrich , Dunlop Erin S. , Rennie Michael D. , Pratt Thomas C. 
Published: May 2024

AbstractIn the Laurentian Great Lakes, the issue of barrier removal is complicated by the presence of non‐native species below barriers. A fish tracking study was conducted to guide efforts for barrier remediation decisions for the restoration of fish populations with a focus on Walleye (Scander vitreus) and Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) in the Black Sturgeon River, a river system fragmented by a dam which blocks access of fishes to the majority of a large, otherwise barrier‐free watershed. Data from 3 years of spawning migrations (2018–2020) indicated that the Walleye population in Black Bay likely consists of both river (65%) and lake spawners (27%), with the remaining individuals spawning in the bay or river in different years. Walleye and Lake Sturgeon showed consistent differences in the extent to which individuals migrated upstream in the river during the spawning season, despite expectations that both species would spawn at the base of the dam when prevented from further migration. The dam was presumably a barrier to migration for Lake Sturgeon, as nearly all Lake Sturgeon that entered the river migrated to the base of the dam. In contrast, few Walleye entering the river during the spawning season migrated to the dam annually. These findings suggest that Walleye and Lake Sturgeon may not benefit equally, at least in the short term, from barrier remediation or dam removal.
A genealogy of politics: Vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist
Authors: Burelli Carlo , Prinz Janosch 
Published: May 2024

AbstractIn Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politics, vindicating the need human beings have for this practice and clarifying the extent of its contemporary rejections. To achieve these contributions, the paper connects the literatures on pragmatic genealogy and on political realism, revealing how they can complement each other. Following pragmatic genealogy, the practice of politics is vindicated, because it meets an inevitable functional need for collectively binding decision‐making. However, and importantly, political realism allows us to see that the functional mechanisms through which politics fulfills this need vary contextually and thus require careful empirical scrutiny. The paper thus dispels confusion about seeming rejections of politics by clarifying what is unavoidable, and what is revisable about politics.
Efficient integration of perceptual variational autoencoder into dynamic latent scale generative adversarial network
Authors: Cho Jeongik , Krzyzak Adam 
Published: May 2024

AbstractDynamic latent scale GAN is an architecture‐agnostic encoder‐based generative model inversion method. This paper introduces a method to efficiently integrate perceptual VAE into dynamic latent scale GAN to improve the performance of dynamic latent scale GAN. When dynamic latent scale GAN is trained with a normal i.i.d. latent random variable and the latent encoder is integrated into the discriminator, a sum of a predicted latent random variable of real data and a scaled normal noise follows the normal i.i.d. random variable. Since this random variable is paired with real data and follows the latent random variable, it can be used for both VAE and GAN training. Furthermore, by considering the intermediate layer output of the discriminator as the feature encoder output, the VAE can be trained to minimise the perceptual reconstruction loss. The forward propagation & backpropagation for minimising this perceptual reconstruction loss can be integrated with those of GAN training. Therefore, the proposed method does not require additional computations compared to typical GAN or dynamic latent scale GAN. Integrating perceptual VAE to dynamic latent scale GAN improved the generative and inversion performance of the model.
Multiple‐scale crack propagation characteristics and failure precursor identification of freeze–thawed sandstone during loading
Authors: Zheng Daozhe , Liu Chengyu , Zhou Annan , Zhang Xiangxiang , Chen Chenghai , Huang Shengfeng 
Published: May 2024

AbstractTo study the effect of freeze–thaw temperature change rate on the crack propagation characteristics and failure precursor in freeze–thawed sandstone, uniaxial compression tests were simultaneous monitoring for acoustic emission (AE) and microseismic (MS) signals. The results demonstrate that increased temperature change rates resulted in accelerated crack propagation, earlier rock failure, and lower brittleness; the failure mode changes from tensile to shear‐tensile mixing; the proportion of tensile cracks decreases from 90.9% to 70.8%; and shear cracks increase from 9.1% to 29.2%. A comparative analysis of AE and MS provided insights into the evolution of crack propagation at multiple scales, enabling the classification of crack types and their relationship with propagation scale. Based on the precursor characteristic of the original waveform and time‐domain curve in AE and MS signals, the advantageous areas of early‐warming indicators for rock failure were identified. Compared with traditional indicators, the precursory indicators calculated using MS b‐values and AE energy rates can obtain a larger early warning window, with maximum windows of 20.52%–29.29% and 7.09%–13.73% in high initial damage rocks and low initial damage rocks, respectively.
A method to obtain probabilistic fatigue lives under varying strain peaks for rubber components with small samples
Authors: Wang Xiaoli , Liu Zhiyong , Zeng Xiangkun , Xu You 
Published: May 2024

AbstractUniaxial tension fatigue experiments are conducted on filled natural rubber (NR) specimens. According to the test data, typical probabilistic distributions under constant strain peak are investigated. Accordingly, a small sample probabilistic fatigue life curve fitting method is proposed, where a Weibull distribution is utilized for the tested rubber. A power‐Weibull statistical model with nonconstant scatter and the conventional group method for complete data are also employed to evaluate the proposed method. It turns out that the slope and intercept relative errors from the small sample fitting method are below 7.86% and 0.943%, respectively, of the complete data methods. It indicates that the proposed method can obtain high‐precision probabilistic fatigue life curves in the case of small samples, which has a certain significance for the efficient test and reliability of rubber fatigue in engineering applications.
Macro‐meso damage cracking and energy dissipation of rock‐backfill composites: Effect of cyclic disturbance frequency
Authors: Wang Yu , Chen Zhenzhen , Yi Xuefeng , Long Dayu 
Published: May 2024

AbstractThis work aims to reveal the effect of cyclic disturbance frequency, i.e., 0.01, 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0 Hz, on damage cracking and energy dissipation characteristics of rock‐backfill composite structure specimens. Testing results show that fatigue volumetric strain and secant modulus increase with increasing disturbance frequency; low‐frequency disturbance leads to an earlier volume expansion. In addition, the strain energy density increases with increasing disturbance frequency. Most of the energy are dissipated for the specimen under high‐frequency disturbance. Finally, computed tomography scanning reveals the influence of disturbance frequency on failure modes; tensile‐splitting failure and shear failure are likely to occur at the surrounding rock subjected to high‐ and low‐ frequency disturbances. Low‐frequency‐disturbed stress seems easily to stimulate cracks at the rock‐backfill interfaces and the backfill; the backfill can absorb much more energy than high‐frequency circumstances. It is suggested that the role of backfill in energy absorption, contact support, and stress isolation is disturbance frequency dependent.
Vrba was right: Historical climate fragmentation, and not current climate, explains mammal biogeography
Authors: Gamboa Sara , Galván Sofía , Varela Sara 
Published: May 2024

AbstractClimate plays a crucial role in shaping species distribution and evolution over time. Dr Vrba's Resource‐Use hypothesis posited that zones at the extremes of temperature and precipitation conditions should host a greater number of climate specialist species than other zones because of higher historical fragmentation. Here, we tested this hypothesis by examining climate‐induced fragmentation over the past 5 million years. Our findings revealed that, as stated by Vrba, the number of climate specialist species increases with historical regional climate fragmentation, whereas climate generalist species richness decreases. This relationship is approximately 40% stronger than the correlation between current climate and species richness for climate specialist species and 77% stronger for generalist species. These evidences suggest that the effect of climate historical fragmentation is more significant than that of current climate conditions in explaining mammal biogeography. These results provide empirical support for the role of historical climate fragmentation and physiography in shaping the distribution and evolution of life on Earth.
Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) glycan isomer is predictive of HBsAg seroclearance in patients with chronic hepatitis B
Authors: Ikeda Yuji , Murata Ayato , Nago Hiroki , Yamaguchi Masahiro , Om Rihwa , Terai Yuichro , Kita Yuji , Sato Sho , Sato Shunsuke , Shimada Yuji , Genda Takuya 
Published: May 2024

AbstractAimMeasurement of O‐glycosylated middle hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg glycan isomer, HBsAgGi) has been developed to quantify hepatitis B virus (HBV) infectious virions and distinguish them from subviral particles. This study aimed to evaluate the association between serum HBsAg seroclearance and serum HBV virions measured by HBsAgGi in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB).MethodsSerum HBsAgGi levels were quantified in 232 treatment‐naïve patients with CHB genotype C. Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) for factors associated with HBsAg seroclearance.ResultsBaseline HBsAgGi levels showed significant differences among HBV phenotypes. During a median follow‐up period of 7.4 years, 22 of the 232 patients achieved HBsAg seroclearance. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that quantitative HBsAg, nucleoside/nucleotide analog therapy during the follow‐up period, and HBsAgGi levels were independent predictors of seroclearance. The adjusted HR indicated that the HBsAg seroclearance probability in patients with low HBsAgGi (≤3.5log ng/mL) was over five times higher than that in patients with high HBsAgGi. Kaplan–Meier analysis indicated that the 10‐year probabilities of HBsAg seroclearance were 21.0% and 3.0% in patients with low and high HBsAgGi levels, respectively (p < 0.001), and that patients with high HBsAgGi levels showed low seroclearance probabilities irrespective of the other predictors.ConclusionSerum HBV infectious virion levels, measured using HBsAgGi, may be a novel predictor of HBsAg seroclearance.
Inside the European Union's Trade Machinery: Institutional Changes in an Age of Geoeconomics
Authors: Couvreur Sjorre 
Published: May 2024

AbstractIn the context of increasingly assertive behaviour in international trade policy, various scholars seem to agree on the presence of a ‘geoeconomic turn’ in European Union (EU) trade policy. Whilst various aspects of this turn have been studied, the way in which the EU's trade institution might have adapted to this new context remains unclear. Therefore, this article addresses the following research question: how has the Directorate‐General for Trade (DG Trade) adapted to the geoeconomic turn in international trade policy? Using an innovative historical institutionalist framework and directed content analysis, the article analyses EU official documents and 14 interviews with EU officials. We find that, despite apparent continuity, under President von der Leyen, a gradual process of institutional adaptation through different forms of layering and conversion has taken place within DG Trade, increasing the EU's geoeconomic capacities and geoeconomic thinking inside the EU's trade machinery.
Morphology and metabolic traits related to swimming performance in Australasian snapper (Chrysophrys auratus) selected for fast growth
Authors: Magnoni Leonardo J. , Collins Selwyn P. , Wylie Matthew J. , Black Suzanne E. , Wellenreuther Maren 
Published: May 2024

AbstractChanges in body shape are linked to swimming performance and become relevant for selective breeding programmes in cultured finfish. We studied how the selection for fast growth could affect phenotypes by investigating the relationship between swimming performance and body shape. We also investigated how swimming might affect plasma metabolite concentrations. Critical swimming speed (UCrit), body traits (e.g., BW, body weight; BL, body length; K, condition factor), and plasma lactate and glucose concentrations were evaluated in two cohorts of Australasian snapper (Chrysophrys auratus): one derived from wild broodstock (F1), and the other selected for fast growth (F4). UCrit tests (n = 8) were applied in groups of 10 snapper of similar BW (71.7 g) and BL (14.6 cm). The absolute or relative UCrit values of both cohorts were similar (0.702 m⋅s−1 and 4.795 BL⋅s−1, respectively), despite the F4 cohort displaying a higher K. A positive correlation between K and absolute UCrit (Pearson's r = 0.414) was detected in the F4 cohort, but not in the F1 cohort, which may be linked to differences in body shape. A negative correlation between relative UCrit and body size (Pearson's r between −0.682 and −0.501), but no correlation between absolute UCrit and body size, was displayed in both cohorts. Plasma lactate and glucose concentrations were higher in the F4 cohort at UCrit. Whether a longer selective breeding programme could result in more changes in body shape, potentially affecting swimming performance, should be explored, along with the potential outcomes of the differences in metabolic traits detected.
SapBase: A central portal for functional and comparative genomics of Sapindaceae species
Authors: Li Jiawei , Chen Chengjie , Zeng Zaohai , Wu Fengqi , Feng Junting , Liu Bo , Mai Yingxiao , Chu Xinyi , Wei Wanchun , Li Xin , Liang Yanyang , Liu YuanLong , Xu Jing , Xia Rui 
Published: May 2024

ABSTRACTThe Sapindaceae family, encompassing a wide range of plant forms such as herbs, vines, shrubs, and trees, is widely distributed across tropical and subtropical regions. This family includes economically important crops like litchi, longan, rambutan, and ackee. With the wide application of genomic technologies in recent years, several Sapindaceae plant genomes have been decoded, leading to an accumulation of substantial omics data in this field. This surge in data highlights the pressing need for a unified genomic data center capable of storing, sharing, and analyzing these data. Here, we introduced SapBase, that is, the Sapindaceae Genome Database. SapBase houses seven published plant genomes alongside their corresponding gene structure and functional annotations, small RNA annotations, gene expression profiles, gene pathways, and synteny block information. It offers user‐friendly features for gene information mining, co‐expression analysis, and inter‐species comparative genomic analysis. Furthermore, we showcased SapBase's extensive capacities through a detailed bioinformatic analysis of a MYB gene in litchi. Thus, SapBase could serve as an integrative genomic resource and analysis platform for the scientific exploration of Sapinaceae species and their comparative studies with other plants.
Comparison of dual‐plane micro‐drop injection of botulinum toxin type A with two traditional methods for treating hypertrophic scars in the tension zone: A long‐term clinical application study
Authors: Jiang Banghong , Zhang Jianting , Yang Wenjian , Wang Yukun , Huang Sutao , Qiu Jingjing , Bian Bingzhi , Zhang Li , Zu Wenxuan 
Published: May 2024

AbstractBackgroundPatients with hypertrophic scarring tend to experience recurrence after treatment, which often occurs in areas of the body with high skin tension.AimsTo evaluate better treatments aimed at reducing the risk of scar recurrence in areas of high skin tension.MethodsPatients were randomly divided into the following three treatment groups: botulinum toxin type A (BTA) via dual‐plane micro‐drop injections, triamcinolone acetonide (TAC) suspension, and CO2 via fractional CO2 laser. Interventions were implemented in all three groups once a month for three consecutive sessions. After the final treatment, scarring was evaluated at 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months using the Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale (POSAS).ResultsThe 3‐month POSAS score for each scar indicator in the treatment groups was significantly lower than that in the preoperative groups (p < 0.001). The scar score in the TAC group decreased at 3 months and increased thereafter. For other groups, the scar score continually decreased at all time points according to the Patient Scar Assessment Scale. Based on the Observer Scar Assessment Scale, the scar score continuously decreased at all time points in the BTA group; in the TAC group, it decreased at 1 month and increased thereafter; and in the CO2 group, the scar score decreased at 3 months and subsequently stabilized.ConclusionsAll three treatment methods were effective. However, the BTA group experienced a reduced risk of scar recurrence and maintained long‐term treatment effects.
Family physicians provide maternity care in and around the maternity care shortage areas, particularly rural
Authors: Walter Grace , Jetty Anuradha , Topmiller Michael , Huffstetler Alison 
Published: May 2024

AbstractPurposeThis study examined demographic, practice, and area‐level characteristics associated with family physicians’ (FP) provision of maternity care.MethodsUsing the American Board of Family Medicine Certification examination application survey data, we investigated the relationship between FPs’ maternity care service provision and (1) demographic (gender, years in practice, race/ethnicity), (2) practice characteristics (size, ownership, rurality), and (3) county‐level factors (percentage of reproductive‐age women, the number of obstetrician–gynecologists (OBGYNs) and certified nurse midwives (CNMs) per 100,000 reproductive‐age women). We performed summary statistics and multivariate logistic regression analyses.ResultsOf the 59,903 FPs in the sample, 7.5% provided maternity care. FPs practicing in rural were 2.5 times more likely to provide maternity care than those practicing in urban areas. FPs in academic (odds ratio [OR] 4.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] 4.1–5.1) and safety‐net settings (OR 1.9, 1.7–2.1) had greater odds of providing maternity care. FPs in the bottom quintile with no or fewer OBGYNs and CNMs had a higher likelihood of maternity care provision (OR 2.1, 1.8–2.3) than those in the top quintile, with more OBGYNs and CNMs.ConclusionsFPs in high‐needs areas, such as rural and safety net settings, and areas with fewer CNMs or OBGYNs are more likely to provide maternity care, demonstrating the importance of FPs in meeting the needs of women with limited maternity care access. Our study findings highlight the importance of considering the contributions of FPs to maternity care as the organizations prioritize resource allocation to areas of highest need.
Sidewalk‐based bicycle path network design incorporating equity in cycling time
Authors: Cai Yutong , Ong Ghim Ping , Meng Qiang 
Published: May 2024

AbstractMany cities find it difficult to claim enough land to build dedicated bicycle lanes. In response, this study proposes a novel framework to design a bicycle path network based on the existing sidewalks where selected sidewalk links are converted into eligible bicycle paths. The output will be a subset of the sidewalk links chosen to be converted to eligible bicycle paths with minimum cost such that all origin–destination (O‐D) pairs are connected with bicycle paths and cyclists from each O‐D pair can enjoy similar degrees of equity. The equity defined here is that cyclists from each O‐D pair will not need to travel excessively longer in time in the designed bicycle path network than in the original sidewalk network. A novel decomposition‐based dynamic dimensional search is proposed to solve the problem. The numerical experiments of a university campus and Clementi town in Singapore have shown our algorithm with varying equity parameter choices can provide tangible inclusive bicycle path network designs and improve as many as 80% equity in certain O‐D pairs with critical inequity issues.