bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Effects of fluid dynamics parameters on flow-accelerated corrosion at elbow of carbon steel pipeline
Authors: Xu Tao , Zhang Rui , Si Xiaodong 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC) has always posed a significant threat to the safe operation of the secondary circuit in nuclear power units. In this study, we investigated typical carbon steel elbow pipe sections susceptible to FAC failure using fluid dynamics software to analyze the hydrodynamic characteristics at varying inlet velocities (2 m s−1, 4 m s−1, and 6 m s−1). The distribution of the FAC rate was monitored in real time using an array electrode. The results revealed that the outermost side of the elbow pipe section was the most susceptible location to FAC. By comparing different fluid dynamic parameters with the FAC rate, we identified radial velocity as an effective parameter for characterizing the FAC rate. Additionally, we established an empirical formula for predicting flow-accelerated corrosion in elbow pipe sections using the least squares method. The implications of this research are pertinent to the design and operation of pipelines in nuclear power plants.
Silver-graphene oxide nanocomposite doping chitosan/PVA membrane for arsenic (III) elimination from aqueous solution
Authors: Abd-Elghany Amr A , Ramadan Marwa A , El-Wakeel Shaimaa T , AlOmari Ahmad Khaleel , Mohamad Ebtesam A 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
Heavy metals and pathogens from contaminated water sources may undoubtedly be removed by creating an efficient bio-adsorbent based on functional spots. Thus, the goal of this work was to produce chitosan (Ch)-polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) biofilm decorated with graphene oxide (GO) sheets doped with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The nanostructure of prepared GO/Ag nanosheets is examined by transmission electron microscope (TEM). The fabricated film (GO/Ag Ch-PVA) is compared by the control films (Ch, PVA and Ch-PVA). Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and tensile strength are used to study the films’ structure. Also, the antimicrobial activity was assessed for the films. After doping the polymer matrix with GO/Ag, it was discovered that the tensile strength increased to about 46.18 MPa. Moreover, adsorption experiment for arsenic As (III) ions is explored by the prepared film at different operating conditions. The obtained results validated the enhanced adsorption ability of the GO/Ag Ch-PVA film towards As (III) with the highest adsorption capacity of 54.3 mg g−1 obtained from the isotherm model of Langmuir. Moreover, kinetic mathematical models for the adsorption effectiveness of GO/Ag Ch-PVA film are assessed. The results gathered demonstrated that GO/Ag Ch-PVA film is a potentially useful material for eliminating As (III) and microbial strains from essential water resources.
Combustion characteristics of Al/PTFE materials with different microstructures
Authors: Zhou Hang , Zhen Jianwei , Ma Huijuan , Du Shiguo 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
The microstructures play a crucial role in the combustion of aluminum/polytetrafluoroethylene (Al/PTFE) materials. Mechanically activated Al/PTFE typically demonstrates higher reactivity but a lower combustion rate compared to physically mixed Al/PTFE. Recently, the combustion performance of fuel-rich Al/PTFE has been well explained by the microexplosion mechanism. In this study, the combustion characteristics of stoichiometric Al/PTFE (26.5:73.5 wt%) materials with varying microstructures were investigated to further the understanding of their combustion mechanism and offer insights for their potential applications in metal cutting. The Al/PTFE materials with different microstructures were prepared using sonication and ball milling methods. The results of scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis suggest that the sonicated Al/PTFE (s-Al/PTFE) containing spherical Al particles displayed a loosely dispersed structure, while the milled Al/PTFE (m-Al/PTFE) exhibited a densely layered structure with flake-like Al particles coated by the PTFE matrix. The milled Al/PTFE was found to be mechanically activated. Combustion in quartz tubes was recorded using a high-speed camera and a video. Combustion of s-Al/PTFE demonstrated a high-temperature flame (∼2346 K) and obvious microexplosions featuring hot particles ejection, while combustion of m-Al/PTFE showed a weak flame (∼2037 K) and slow-burning, featuring dense carbon smoke. Increasing the powder density was observed to slightly decrease (∼100 K) flame temperature. Microstructure and phase analysis of combustion products were systematically conducted to elucidate the combustion behaviors. The results suggest that the residue of s-Al/PTFE contained high AlF3 and low carbon content, whereas the residue of m-Al/PTFE exhibited the opposite condition. The results of the combustion tests suggest that microexplosions promoted the oxidation of hot Al particles and carbon products, consequently leading to a fast reaction, high flame temperature, and enhanced heat transfer capability.
Epistemology with a Broad and Long View
Authors: Foley Richard 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
Epistemology with a Broad and Long View is an original and provocative challenge to standard epistemologies which assume that the reasonability of beliefs is wholly a function of considerations indicating their current likelihood. The book argues that this view, although widely accepted, is excessively narrow. It’s preoccupied with beliefs, degrees of confidence, the current moment, and truth-related considerations. A less constricted epistemology acknowledges that in addition to beliefs and degrees of confidence, intellectual commitments play a vital role in our intellectual lives, that the key issue in overseeing all these attitudes is whether it’s appropriate to revise or add to them for purposes going forward, and that a mixture of practical, ethical, political, social, and intellectual considerations beyond the current moment determine what’s appropriate. On this view, there is no purely epistemic notion of reasonability. There are truth-related considerations, but except in those rare cases where there is complete certainty, they don’t determine the reasonability of our belief-like attitudes. They do so only in partnership with a broad and long range of non-truth-related considerations. A failure to recognize these partnerships results in theoretical confusion, and also impedes our ability to understand and deal with dogmatists who have unlikely and toxic views. The book’s overriding theme is that a broad and long view is as necessary for making sense of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of our opinions as it is for other aspects of our lives.
Observations
Authors: Foley Richard 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
A broad range of things are of value to us; circumstances can change quickly; little of what we believe is utterly certain; many beliefs are acquired with little thought, while others are the products of deliberation; the notions of reasons, reasonableness, and sibling notions are used in various ways. These commonplace observations point toward conclusions at odds with widely prevailing views in epistemology. Among the heterodoxies is that only rarely do considerations supporting the truth of claims account for why it’s reasonable to believe them; beliefs play a less dominant role in our intellectual lives than is usually assumed; and epistemology cannot be detached from the practical, ethical, and political.
The Standard View
Authors: Foley Richard 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
According to the standard view, reasons for beliefs are truth-related. There are rival proposals about the considerations that generate these reasons—versions of foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, infinitism, and others—but whatever the particulars, these reasons are said to contrast with non-truth-related reasons. If someone offers you a belief bribe of a million dollars to believe something unlikely, this may give you a reason to act as if you believed it, or to initiate a project that would eventually result in your believing it, but it isn’t a reason for you to now believe it. Considerations indicating the likely truth of claims go hand in hand with reasons to believe them. If we have the one, we have the other, and if we lack one, we lack the other, or so the standard view maintains.
Beliefs and Other Belief-Like Attitudes
Authors: Foley Richard 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
In deliberating and making decisions, we rely on probabilistically unqualified attitudes about claims that aren’t certain. Some of these attitudes are beliefs but others are internal commitments, that is, resolves to rely on the claim's truth for a set of purposes. The range of purposes, however, can be quite narrow. In making plans for the day, we may internally commit to its not raining even though there’s a 20 percent chance of rain. But there are also internal commitments that aren’t narrowly limited. We can commit to the truth of a claim for most decision-making and deliberative purposes. These intellectual commitments share features with beliefs, but there are important differences. Intellectual commitments are less allergic to doubts. They can be more stable and help make deliberations and decision-making more consistent and strategic over time. There are fewer constraints on how directly and explicitly practical, ethical, and future intellectual considerations motivate and provide reasons for them. There’s greater agency to them. They’re more easily and immediately subject to control.
The effect of oral probiotics on response to vaccination in older adults: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials
Authors: Arioz Tunc Hediye , Childs Caroline E , Swann Jonathan R , Calder Philip C 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
This systematic review evaluated the impact of oral probiotics on the immune response to vaccination in older people. A literature search was performed in three electronic databases up to January 2023. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) conducted in older people (age ≥ 60 years) investigating oral probiotics and vaccine response outcomes were included. Characteristics and outcome data of the included studies were extracted and analysed and study quality was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for randomised trials. Ten RCTs involving 1,560 participants, reported in 9 papers, were included. Nine studies involved the seasonal influenza vaccine and one a COVID-19 vaccine. All studies used lactobacilli, some in combination with bifidobacteria. Studies reported outcomes including anti-vaccine antibody titres or concentrations, seroconversion and seroprotection. When comparing antibody titres, seroprotection rate and seroconversion rate between probiotic and placebo groups expressed as a response ratio, the weighted mean values were 1.29, 1.16 and 2.00, respectively. Meta-analysis showed that probiotics increase seroconversion rates to all three strains of the seasonal influenza vaccine: odds ratio (95% confidence interval) 2.74 (1.31, 5.70; P = 0.007) for the H1N1 strain; 1.90 (1.04, 3.44; P = 0.04) for the H3N2 strain; 1.72 (1.05, 2.80; P = 0.03) for the B strain. There was a low level of heterogeneity in these findings. Several studies were at high risk of bias due to missing outcome data. Lactobacilli may improve the vaccine response, but further research is needed to be more certain of this.
Invited commentary: it’s not all about residual confounding—a plea for quantitative bias analysis for epidemiologic researchers and educators
Authors: Fox Matthew P , Adrien Nedghie , van Smeden Maarten , Suarez Elizabeth 
Published: May 2024

AbstractEpidemiologists spend a great deal of time on confounding in our teaching, in our methods development, and in our assessment of study results. This may give the impression that uncontrolled confounding is the biggest problem observational epidemiology faces, when in fact, other sources of bias such as selection bias, measurement error, missing data, and misalignment of zero time may often (especially if they are all present in a single study) lead to a stronger deviation from the truth. Compared with the amount of time we spend teaching how to address confounding in data analysis, we spend relatively little time teaching methods for simulating confounding (and other sources of bias) to learn their impact and develop plans to mitigate or quantify the bias. Here we review the accompanying paper by Desai et al (Am J Epidemiol. 2024;193(11):1600-1608), which uses simulation methods to quantify the impact of an unmeasured confounder when it is completely missing or when a proxy of the confounder is measured. We discuss how we can use simulations of sources of bias to ensure that we generate better and more valid study estimates, and we discuss the importance of simulating realistic datasets with plausible bias structures to guide data collection.This article is part of a Special Collection on Pharmacoepidemiology.
MUSE-XAE: MUtational Signature Extraction with eXplainable AutoEncoder enhances tumour types classification
Authors: Pancotti Corrado , Rollo Cesare , Codicè Francesco , Birolo Giovanni , Fariselli Piero , Sanavia Tiziana 
Published: May 2024

Abstract

Motivation
Mutational signatures are a critical component in deciphering the genetic alterations that underlie cancer development and have become a valuable resource to understand the genomic changes during tumorigenesis. Therefore, it is essential to employ precise and accurate methods for their extraction to ensure that the underlying patterns are reliably identified and can be effectively utilized in new strategies for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cancer patients.

Results
We present MUSE-XAE, a novel method for mutational signature extraction from cancer genomes using an explainable autoencoder. Our approach employs a hybrid architecture consisting of a nonlinear encoder that can capture nonlinear interactions among features, and a linear decoder which ensures the interpretability of the active signatures. We evaluated and compared MUSE-XAE with other available tools on both synthetic and real cancer datasets and demonstrated that it achieves superior performance in terms of precision and sensitivity in recovering mutational signature profiles. MUSE-XAE extracts highly discriminative mutational signature profiles by enhancing the classification of primary tumour types and subtypes in real world settings. This approach could facilitate further research in this area, with neural networks playing a critical role in advancing our understanding of cancer genomics.

Availability and implementation
MUSE-XAE software is freely available at https://github.com/compbiomed-unito/MUSE-XAE.
Assessing quality of hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery: nationwide benchmarking
Authors: de Graaff Michelle R , Hendriks Tessa E , Wouters Michel , Nielen Mark , de Hingh Ignace , Koerkamp Bas Groot , van Santvoort Hjalmar C , Busch Olivier R , den Dulk Marcel , Klaase Joost M , van Zwet Erik , Bonsing Bert A , Grünhagen Dirk J , Besselink Marc G , Kok Niels F M 
Published: May 2024

Abstract

Background
Clinical auditing is a powerful tool to evaluate and improve healthcare. Deviations from the expected quality of care are identified by benchmarking the results of individual hospitals using national averages. This study aimed to evaluate the use of quality indicators for benchmarking hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) surgery and when outlier hospitals could be identified.

Methods
A population-based study used data from two nationwide Dutch HPB audits (DHBA and DPCA) from 2014 to 2021. Sample size calculations determined the threshold (in percentage points) to identify centres as statistical outliers, based on current volume requirements (annual minimum of 20 resections) on a two-year period (2020–2021), covering mortality rate, failure to rescue (FTR), major morbidity rate and textbook/ideal outcome (TO) for minor liver resection (LR), major LR, pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) and distal pancreatectomy (DP).

Results
In total, 10 963 and 7365 patients who underwent liver and pancreatic resection respectively were included. Benchmark and corresponding range of mortality rates were 0.6% (0 −3.2%) and 3.3% (0–16.7%) for minor and major LR, and 2.7% (0–7.0%) and 0.6% (0–4.2%) for PD and DP respectively. FTR rates were 5.4% (0–33.3%), 14.2% (0–100%), 7.5% (1.6%–28.5%) and 3.1% (0–14.9%). For major morbidity rate, corresponding rates were 9.8% (0–20.5%), 28.1% (0–47.1%), 36% (15.8%–58.3%) and 22.3% (5.2%–46.1%). For TO, corresponding rates were 73.6% (61.3%–94.4%), 54.1% (35.3–100), 46.8% (25.3%–59.4%) and 63.3% (30.7%–84.6%). Mortality rate thresholds indicating a significant outlier were 8.6% and 15.4% for minor and major LR and 14.2% and 8.6% for PD and DP. For FTR, these thresholds were 17.9%, 31.6%, 22.9% and 15.0%. For major morbidity rate, these thresholds were 26.1%, 49.7%, 57.9% and 52.9% respectively. For TO, lower thresholds were 52.5%, 32.5%, 25.8% and 41.4% respectively. Higher hospital volumes decrease thresholds to detect outliers.

Conclusion
Current event rates and minimum volume requirements per hospital are too low to detect any meaningful between hospital differences in mortality rate and FTR. Major morbidity rate and TO are better candidates to use for benchmarking.
Exosome-mimetic vesicles derived from fibroblasts carrying matrine for wound healing
Authors: Zhang Xinyue , Huang Jiahua , Zhao Jing , Li Lisha , Miao Fengze , Zhang Tingrui , Chen Zhongjian , Zhou Xing , Tai Zongguang , Zhu Quangang 
Published: May 2024

Abstract

Background
Chronic skin wounds are a leading cause of hospital admissions and reduced life expectancy among older people and individuals with diabetes. Delayed wound healing is often attributed to a series of cellular abnormalities. Matrine, a well-studied component found in Sophora flavescens, is recognized for its anti-inflammatory effects. However, its impact on wound healing still remains uncertain. This study aims to explore the potential of matrine in promoting wound healing.

Methods
In this study, we utilized gradient extrusion to produce fibroblast-derived exosome-mimetic vesicles as carriers for matrine (MHEM). MHEM were characterized using transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering analysis. The therapeutic effect of MHEM in wound healing was explored in vitro and in vivo.

Results
Both matrine and MHEM enhanced the cellular activity as well as the migration of fibroblasts and keratinocytes. The potent anti-inflammatory effect of matrine diluted the inflammatory response in the vicinity of wounds. Furthermore, MHEM worked together to promote angiogenesis and the expression of transforming growth factor β and collagen I. MHEM contained growth factors of fibroblasts that regulated the functions of fibroblasts, keratinocytes and monocytes, which synergistically promoted wound healing with the anti-inflammatory effect of matrine.

Conclusions
MHEM showed enhanced therapeutic efficacy in the inflammatory microenvironment, for new tissue formation and angiogenesis of wound healing.
Key morphological features of human pyramidal neurons
Authors: Benavides-Piccione Ruth , Blazquez-Llorca Lidia , Kastanauskaite Asta , Fernaud-Espinosa Isabel , Tapia-González Silvia , DeFelipe Javier 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
The basic building block of the cerebral cortex, the pyramidal cell, has been shown to be characterized by a markedly different dendritic structure among layers, cortical areas, and species. Functionally, differences in the structure of their dendrites and axons are critical in determining how neurons integrate information. However, within the human cortex, these neurons have not been quantified in detail. In the present work, we performed intracellular injections of Lucifer Yellow and 3D reconstructed over 200 pyramidal neurons, including apical and basal dendritic and local axonal arbors and dendritic spines, from human occipital primary visual area and associative temporal cortex. We found that human pyramidal neurons from temporal cortex were larger, displayed more complex apical and basal structural organization, and had more spines compared to those in primary sensory cortex. Moreover, these human neocortical neurons displayed specific shared and distinct characteristics in comparison to previously published human hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Additionally, we identified distinct morphological features in human neurons that set them apart from mouse neurons. Lastly, we observed certain consistent organizational patterns shared across species. This study emphasizes the existing diversity within pyramidal cell structures across different cortical areas and species, suggesting substantial species-specific variations in their computational properties.
Functionality of arousal-regulating brain circuitry at rest predicts human cognitive abilities
Authors: Podvalny Ella , Sanchez-Romero Ruben , Cole Michael W 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
Arousal state is regulated by subcortical neuromodulatory nuclei, such as locus coeruleus, which send wide-reaching projections to cortex. Whether higher-order cortical regions have the capacity to recruit neuromodulatory systems to aid cognition is unclear. Here, we hypothesized that select cortical regions activate the arousal system, which, in turn, modulates large-scale brain activity, creating a functional circuit predicting cognitive ability. We utilized the Human Connectome Project 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset (n = 149), acquired at rest with simultaneous eye tracking, along with extensive cognitive assessment for each subject. First, we discovered select frontoparietal cortical regions that drive large-scale spontaneous brain activity specifically via engaging the arousal system. Second, we show that the functionality of the arousal circuit driven by bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (associated with the default mode network) predicts subjects’ cognitive abilities. This suggests that a cortical region that is typically associated with self-referential processing supports cognition by regulating the arousal system.
Doff Thy Gown—Shedding Contact Precautions for COVID-19
Authors: Rabin Alexander S , Marr Linsey C , Blumberg Henry M 
Published: May 2024

Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 is predominantly transmitted through aerosols (ie, airborne transmission); however, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to recommend the use of contact precautions (a gown and gloves) for the care of patients with COVID-19. Infection-prevention guidelines should reflect the current science and eliminate this wasteful practice.