bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Intracranial neural representation of phenomenal and access consciousness in the human brain
Authors: Fang Zepeng , Dang Yuanyuan , Li Xiaoli , Zhao Qianchuan , Zhang Mingsha , Zhao Hulin 
Published: April 2024

AbstractAfter more than 30 years of extensive investigation, impressive progress has been made in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). However, the functional role of spatiotemporally distinct consciousness-related neural activity in conscious perception is debated. Based on empirical EEG findings, e.g., of the enhanced early negative wave and late positive wave under conscious conditions, an influential framework proposed that consciousness-related neural activities could be dissociated into two distinct processes: phenomenal and access consciousness. This framework has been supported mainly by comparison of neural activity between report and no-report paradigms; however, though hotly debated, its authenticity has not been examined in a single paradigm with more informative intracranial recordings. In the present study, we employed a novel visual awareness task and recorded the local field potential (LFP) of epilepsy patients with electrodes implanted in cortical and subcortical regions. Overall, we found that the latency of visual awareness-related activity exhibited a bimodal distribution, and the recording sites with short and long latencies were largely separated in location, except in the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC). The mixture of short and long latencies in the lPFC indicates that it plays a critical role in linking phenomenal and access consciousness. However, the division between the two is not as simple as the central sulcus, as proposed previously. Moreover, in 4 patients with electrodes implanted in the bilateral prefrontal cortex, early awareness-related activity was confined to the contralateral side, while late awareness-related activity appeared on both sides. Finally, Granger causality analysis showed that awareness-related information flowed from the early sites to the late sites. These results provide the first LFP evidence of neural correlates of phenomenal and access consciousness, which sheds light on the spatiotemporal dynamics of NCC in the human brain.
Should regional species loss be faster, or slower, than local loss? It depends on density-dependent rate of death
Authors: Keil Petr , Clark Adam T. , Barták Vojtěch , Leroy François 
Published: April 2024

1AbstractAssessment of the rate of species loss, which we also label extinction, is an urgent task. However, the rate depends on spatial grain (average areaA) over which it is assessed—local species loss can be on average faster, or slower, than regional or global loss. Ecological mechanisms behind this discrepancy are unclear. We propose that the relationship between extinction rate andAis driven by two classical ecological phenomena: the Allee effect and the Janzen-Connell effect. Specifically, we hypothesize that (i) when per-individual probability of death (Pdeath) decreases with population densityN(as in Allee effects), per-species extinction rate (Px) should be high at regional grains, and low locally. (ii) In contrast, whenPdeathincreases withN(as in Janzen-Connell effects),Pxshould be low regionally, but high locally. (iii) Total counts of extinct species (Ex) should follow a more complex relationship withA, as they also depend on drivers of the species-area relationship (SAR) prior to extinctions, such as intraspecific aggregation, species pools, and species-abundance distributions. We tested these hypotheses using simulation experiments, the first based on point patterns, the second on a system of generalized Lotka-Volterra equations. In both experiments, we used a single continuous parameter that moved between the Allee effect, no relationship betweenPdeathandN, and the Janzen-Connell effect. We found support for our hypotheses, but only when regional species-abundance distributions were uneven enough to provide sufficiently rare or common species for Allee or Janzen-Connell to act on. In all, we have theoretically demonstrated a mechanism behind different rates of biodiversity change at different spatial grains which has been observed in empirical data.
Activation of hypoactive parvalbumin-positive fast-spiking interneuron restores dentate inhibition to prevent epileptiform activity in the mouse intrahippocampal kainate model of temporal lobe epilepsy
Authors: Lee Sang-Hun , Kang Young-Jin , Smith Bret N. 
Published: April 2024

AbstractParvalbumin-positive (PV+) GABAergic interneurons in the dentate gyrus provide powerful perisomatic inhibition of dentate granule cells (DGCs) to prevent overexcitation and maintain the stability of dentate gyrus circuits. Most dentate PV+ interneurons survive status epilepticus, but surviving PV+ interneuron mediated inhibition is compromised in the dentate gyrus shortly after status epilepticus, contributing to epileptogenesis in temporal lobe epilepsy. It is uncertain whether the impaired activity of dentate PV+ interneurons recovers at later times or if it continues for months following status epilepticus. The development of compensatory modifications related to PV+ interneuron circuits in the months following status epilepticus is unknown, although reduced dentate GABAergic inhibition persists long after status epilepticus. We employed PV immunostaining and whole-cell patch-clamp recordings from dentate PV+ interneurons and DGCs in slices from male and female sham controls and intrahippocampal kainate (IHK) treated mice that developed spontaneous seizures months after status epilepticus to study epilepsy-associated changes in dentate PV+ interneuron circuits. We found that the number of dentate PV+ cells was reduced in IHK treated mice. Electrical recordings showed that: 1) Action potential firing rates of dentate PV+ interneurons were reduced in IHK treated mice up to four months after status epilepticus; 2) Spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) in DGCs exhibited reduced frequency but increased amplitude in IHK treated mice; and 3) The amplitude of evoked IPSCs in DGCs by optogenetic activation of dentate PV+ cells was upregulated without changes in short-term plasticity. Video-EEG recordings revealed that IHK treated mice showed spontaneous epileptiform activity in the dentate gyrus and that chemogenetic activation of PV+ interneurons abolished the epileptiform activity. Our results suggest not only that the compensatory changes in PV+ interneuron circuits develop after IHK treatment, but also that increased PV+ interneuron mediated inhibition in the dentate gyrus may compensate for cell loss and reduced intrinsic excitability of dentate PV+ interneurons to stop seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy.HighlightsReduced number of dentate PV+ interneurons in TLE micePersistently reduced action potential firing rates of dentate PV+ interneurons in TLE miceEnhanced amplitude but decreased frequency of spontaneous IPSCs in the dentate gyrus in TLE miceIncreased amplitude of evoked IPSCs mediated by dentate PV+ interneurons in TLE miceChemogenetic activation of PV+ interneurons prevents epileptiform activity in TLE mice
Mitochondrial heteroplasmy improves risk prediction for myeloid neoplasms
Authors: Hong Yun Soo , Pasca Sergiu , Shi Wen , Puiu Daniela , Lake Nicole J , Lek Monkol , Ru Meng , Grove Megan , Prizment Anna , Joshu Corinne E. , Platz Elizabeth A. , Guallar Eliseo , Arking Dan E. , Gondek Lukasz P. 
Published: April 2024

AbstractThe most well-known pathogenic risk factor for myeloid neoplasms (MN) is clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP)1. However, MN can develop in CHIP negative individuals, indicating that additional markers of clonal expansion might also be informative. Heteroplasmy, defined as the presence of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations in a subset of cellular mtDNA, has been associated with hematological malignancies2and could represent a marker of clonal expansion3. However, the relationship between heteroplamsy and CHIP, as well as its association with the incidence of MN in the general population is not known. In this study, we explored the association between somatic mtDNA and nuclear DNA (nDNA) mutations (mito-nuclear interaction), its impact on MN incidence, and whether its inclusion to the latest CHIP-based MN prediction algorithm could improve risk stratification in over 440,000 participants in the UK Biobank and Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) studies. We found that heteroplasmy count and heteroplasmic variants predicted to be more deleterious were enriched in individuals with CHIP, particularly in those with significantly expanded clones (VAF ≥20%), with more than one CHIP mutation, and with mutations in the spliceosome machinery. Individuals with both heteroplasmy and CHIP were more likely to develop MN than participants with either entity alone. Furthermore, we found a significant and independent association of predicted pathogenic effect of heteroplasmic variants with incident MN, suggesting a causal role of mtDNA variations in MN pathogenesis, even in the absence of CHIP. Finally, incorporating heteroplasmy into an existing risk score model for MN in individuals with CHIP significantly improved the sensitivity by 13.1% and identified 34.4% more cases in the high-risk group (10-year risk ≥10%). In sum, our findings suggest that heteroplasmy, in addition to being a marker of clonal expansion, may be a causal biomarker of MN development, with clinical utility in the general population.
Health Utility Adjusted Survival: a Composite Endpoint for Clinical Trial Designs
Authors: Deng Yangqing , de Almeida John R. , Xu Wei 
Published: April 2024

AbstractMany randomized trials have used overall survival as the primary endpoint for establishing non-inferiority of one treatment compared to another. However, if a treatment is non-inferior to another treatment in terms of overall survival, clinicians may be interested in further exploring which treatment results in better health utility scores for patients. Examining health utility in a secondary analysis is feasible, however, since health utility is not the primary endpoint, it is usually not considered in the sample size calculation, hence the power to detect a difference of health utility is not guaranteed. Furthermore, often the premise of non-inferiority trials is to test the assumption that an intervention provides superior quality of life or toxicity profile without compromising the survival when compared to the existing standard. Based on this consideration, it may be beneficial to consider both survival and utility when designing a trial. There have been methods that can combine survival and quality of life into a single measure, but they either have strong restrictions or lack theoretical frameworks. In this manuscript, we propose a method called HUS (Health Utility adjusted Survival), which can combine survival outcome and longitudinal utility measures for treatment comparison. We propose an innovative statistical framework as well as procedures to conduct power analysis and sample size calculation. By comprehensive simulation studies involving summary statistics from the PET-NECK trial,1we demonstrate that our new approach can achieve superior power performance using relatively small sample sizes, and our composite endpoint can be considered as an alternative to overall survival in future clinical trial design and analysis where both survival and health utility are of interest.
Shallow Bound States and Hints for Broad Resonances with Quark Content
b¯c¯ud
in
B−D¯
and
B*−D¯
Scattering from Lattice QCD
Authors: Alexandrou Constantia , Finkenrath Jacob , Leontiou Theodoros , Meinel Stefan , Pflaumer Martin , Wagner Marc 
Published: April 2024

We present the first determination of the energy dependence of the B−D¯ and B*−D¯ isospin-0, S-wave scattering amplitudes both below and above the thresholds using lattice QCD, which allows us to investigate rigorously whether mixed bottom-charm b¯c¯ud tetraquarks exist as bound states or resonances. The scattering phase shifts are obtained using Lüscher’s method from the energy spectra in two different volumes. To ensure that no relevant energy level is missed, we use large, symmetric 7×7 and 8×8 correlation matrices that include, at both source and sink, B(*)−D¯ scattering operators with the lowest three or four possible back-to-back momenta in addition to local b¯c¯ud operators. We fit the energy dependence of the extracted scattering phase shifts using effective-range expansions. We observe sharp peaks in the B(*)−D¯ scattering rates close to the thresholds, which are associated with shallow bound states, either genuine or virtual, a few MeV or less below the B(*)−D¯ thresholds. In addition, we find hints for resonances with masses of order 100 MeV above the thresholds and decay widths of order 200 MeV.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Moderating effect of subsidy policy on intention to purchase residential rooftop solar panel systems
Authors: Kumar Ganesh , Nayak Jogendra Kumar 
Published: April 2024

PurposeThe adoption of residential rooftop solar panel systems (SPS) in India is at a nascent stage. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the factors affecting consumers’ intention to purchase SPS by expanding the theory of planned behavior (TPB) with three environmental psychology factors. The study was targeted at potential users’ intention to purchase SPS, thus it further explored the moderating role of perceived government subsidy policy (PGSP) in determining consumers’ purchase intention of SPS.Design/methodology/approachUsing G*power software, the minimum sample size of 189 was calculated; accordingly, 292 valid responses were gathered from potential users of SPS from three Indian states, namely Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, via an online questionnaire survey with the help of purposive sampling method. Structural equation modeling technique of partial least squares was employed to analyze the data.FindingsResults demonstrated that attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) and PGSP significantly influence purchase intention of SPS. Green trust and green self-identity did not influence the purchase intention of SPS. Further, PGSP strengthens the effect of attitude, green trust, PCE on purchase intention of SPS while it weakens the effect of subjective norms on purchase intention of SPS.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature by integrating green trust, green self-identity, PCE and PGSP into the TPB model to better understand factors affecting consumers’ purchase intention towards SPS in India.
Multinational corporations and grand challenges: part of the problem, part of the solution?
Authors: Dörrenbächer Christoph , Geppert Mike , Bozkurt Ödül 
Published: April 2024

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to address the relationship between multinational corporations (MNCs) and grand challenges. Stressing the moderating impact of stakeholders and governments, it frames and introduces the six contributions of the special issue, equally divided into those illustrating how MNCs contribute to the existence of grand challenges and those exploring how MNCs contribute to addressing grand challenges.

Design/methodology/approach
Based on a review of the existing literature on the relationship between MNCs and grand challenges and recent developments in mainstream international business, the viewpoint emphasizes the need to move beyond a one-sided focus on the positive contributions of MNCs to grand challenges.

Findings
The special issue contributions reveal that even established MNCs are actively engaged in strategic efforts to perpetuate unsustainable practices and minimize the impact of societal rules and stakeholders. The contributions also highlight the complications when MNCs aim to tackle grand challenges.

Practical implications
Displaying positive practices of how MNCs contribute to the solution of grand challenges should not be considered a functional substitute for regulatory action, contrary to the frequent assertion of MNCs and their political representatives.

Originality/value
This special issue is the first one in IB to address the relationship between MNCs and grand challenges from an empirical vantage point.
Accuracy and feasibility of 3D virtual dynamic fit technology
Authors: Kim Youngsook , Baytar Fatma 
Published: April 2024

PurposeThe research evaluated the feasibility of 3D dynamic fit utilizing female compression tops by comparatively analyzing the virtual and actual dynamic fit.Design/methodology/approachSix female participants were 3D body-scanned and photographed in compression tops in four types of athletic movements (pull-up, kettlebell swing, circle-crunch and sit-up). Fit measurements, waist cross-sectional areas, waist width, waist depth, numerical simulation of clothing pressure (kPa) and objective pressure measurements (kPa) were collected from 3D virtual animation, 3D fit scan data and actual photos with the four types of athletic motions. The data were comparatively investigated between virtual and actual dynamic fit.FindingsThe 3D-animated body was not reflected with human body deformation because only bone structure was changed while maintaining the constant forms of muscle and body surface in athletic movements. Due to this consistency of virtual dynamic fit, there were significant differences with the actual dynamic fit at the top length, shoulder width and waist cross-sectional areas. Also, the virtual dynamic pressure indicated significantly higher levels than the objective dynamic pressure while presenting no significant correlations at the front neckline, breast, lateral waist, upper back, back armhole and back waist.Originality/valueThis study is the first to verify multiple aspects of virtual dynamic fit using 3D digital technology. This study provided useful information about which aspects of the current virtual animation need to be improved to apply in the dynamic fit evaluation.
Entrepreneurial financing: how global and regional export intentions affect financial and non-financial choices for small and midsized enterprises in low-income countries
Authors: van Klyton Aaron , Arrieta-Paredes Mary-Paz , Byombi Kamasa Vedaste , Rutabayiro-Ngoga Said 
Published: April 2024

PurposeThe study explores how the intention to export affects financing and non-financing variables for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a low-income country (LIC). The objectives of this study are (1) to discern between regional and global exporting and (2) to evaluate its policymaking implications.Design/methodology/approachPrimary survey data were collected from 330 Rwandan SMEs and were analysed using ordered logistic models as an application of the expectation-maximisation iterating algorithm, which was tested for robustness using a sampling model variation.FindingsThe results show that alternative sources of finance are the predominant choice to finance the intention to export within and outside Africa. As the scope of export intentions broadened from regional to global, there was a shift in preferences from less formal to more formal lending technologies, moving from methods like factoring to lines of credit. Moreover, reliance on bank officers became more significant, with increasing marginal effects. Finally, the study determined that government financing schemes were not relevant for SMEs pursuing either regional or global exporting.Practical implicationsWhilst alternative sources of finance predominate the export intentions of Rwandan SMEs, establishing a robust banking relationship becomes crucial for global exporting. Despite this implication, the intention to export should prompt more transparent communication regarding government financial support programmes. There is an opportunity for increased usage of relationship lending to customise support for SMEs involved in exporting, benefiting both the private and public sectors.Originality/valueThis study accentuates how export distance alters SME financing priorities. The results also contribute to understanding how the value of relationship lending changes when less familiar markets (i.e. global exporting) are the objective. Moreover, the study offers a new perspective on how institutional voids affect entrepreneurial financing decisions in LICs.
Social media influencer marketing: science mapping of the present and future trends
Authors: Fauzi Muhammad Ashraf , Ali Zuraina , Satari Zanariah , Megat Ramli Puteri Azlian , Omer Mazen 
Published: April 2024

PurposeThis study aims to reveal the knowledge structure of social media influencer marketing literature by performing science mapping analysis through a state-of-the-art bibliometric approach to determine the current and future trends. Social media influencer marketing is one of the most effective approaches to presenting a brand and offering value to consumers via social media.Design/methodology/approachThis study evaluates the knowledge structure to uncover the emerging trends and future predictions in social media influencer marketing through bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis. In total, 917 journal publications were retrieved from the Web of Science database and analyzed using VOSviewer software.FindingsThe central theme in social media influencer marketing reflects digital engagement between influencers and followers and communication between influencers and followers. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.Originality/valueThis study unleashes the knowledge structure according to the fundamental literature of social media influencer marketing and the underlying themes related to the phenomenon.
Flexural behavior of RC beams reinforced by ECC layer and steel plate: numerical simulation
Authors: Liu Long , Wang Lifeng , Xiao Ziwang 
Published: April 2024

PurposeThe combination of an Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) layer and steel plate to reinforce RC beams (ESRB) is a new strengthening method. The ESRB was proposed based on the steel plate at the bottom of RC beams, aiming to solve the problem of over-reinforced RC beams and improve the bearing capacity of RC beams without affecting their ductility.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the finite element model of ESRB was established by ABAQUS. The results were compared with the experimental results of ESRB in previous studies and the reliability of the finite element model was verified. On this basis, parameters such as the width of the steel plate, thickness of the ECC layer, damage degree of the original beam and cross-sectional area of longitudinal tensile rebar were analyzed by the verified finite element model. Based on the load–deflection curve of ESRB, ESRB was discussed in terms of ultimate bearing capacity and ductility.FindingsThe results demonstrate that when the width of the steel plate increases, the ultimate load of ESRB increases to 133.22 kN by 11.58% as well as the ductility index increases to 2.39. With the increase of the damage degree of the original beam, the ultimate load of ESRB decreases by 23.7%–91.09 kN and the ductility index decreases to 1.90. With the enhancement of the cross-sectional area of longitudinal tensile rebar, the ultimate bearing capacity of ESRB increases to 126.75 kN by 6.2% and the ductility index elevates to 2.30. Finally, a calculation model for predicting the flexural capacity of ESRB is proposed. The calculated results of the model are in line with the experimental results.Originality/valueBased on the comparative analysis of the test results and numerical simulation results of 11 test beams, this investigation verified the accuracy and reliability of the finite element simulation from the aspects of load–deflection curve, characteristic load and failure mode. Furthermore, based on load–deflection curve, the effects of steel plate width, ECC layer thickness, damage degree of the original beam and cross-sectional area of longitudinal tensile rebar on the ultimate bearing capacity and ductility of ESRB were discussed. Finally, a simplified method was put forward to further verify the effectiveness of ESRB through analytical calculation.