bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Rotation Inside Convex Kakeya Sets
Authors: Janzer Barnabás 
Published: March 2024

AbstractLet K be a convex body (a compact convex set) in $$\mathbb {R}^d$$

R

d

, that contains a copy of another body S in every possible orientation. Is it always possible to continuously move any one copy of S into another, inside K? As a stronger question, is it always possible to continuously select, for each orientation, one copy of S in that orientation? These questions were asked by Croft. We show that, in two dimensions, the stronger question always has an affirmative answer. We also show that in three dimensions the answer is negative, even for the case when S is a line segment – but that in any dimension the first question has a positive answer when S is a line segment. And we prove that, surprisingly, the answer to the first question is negative in dimensions four and higher for general S.
iATT liver fat quantification for steatosis grading by referring to MRI proton density fat fraction: a multicenter study
Authors: Hirooka Masashi , Ogawa Sadanobu , Koizumi Yohei , Yoshida Yuichi , Goto Tatsuya , Yasuda Satoshi , Yamahira Masahiro , Tamai Tsutomu , Kuromatsu Ryoko , Matsuzaki Toshihisa , Suehiro Tomoyuki , Kamada Yoshihiro , Sumida Yoshio , Hiasa Yoichi , Toyoda Hidenori , Kumada Takashi 
Published: March 2024

Abstract
Background
Several preliminary reports have suggested the utility of ultrasound attenuation coefficient measurements based on B-mode ultrasound, such as iATT, for diagnosing steatotic liver disease. Nonetheless, evidence supporting such utility is lacking. This prospective study aimed to investigate whether iATT is highly concordant with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF) and could well distinguish between steatosis grades.

Methods
A cohort of 846 individuals underwent both iATT and MRI-PDFF assessments. Steatosis grade was defined as grade 0 with MRI-PDFF < 5.2%, grade 1 with 5.2% MRI-PDFF < 11.3%, grade 2 with 11.3% MRI-PDFF < 17.1%, and grade 3 with MRI-PDFF of 17.1%. The reproducibility of iATT and MRI-PDFF was evaluated using the Bland–Altman analysis and intraclass correlation coefficients, whereas the diagnostic performance of each steatosis grade was examined using receiver operating characteristic analysis.

Results
The Bland–Altman analysis indicated excellent reproducibility with minimal fixed bias between iATT and MRI-PDFF. The area under the curve for distinguishing steatosis grades 1, 2, and 3 were 0.887, 0.882, and 0.867, respectively. A skin-to-capsula distance of ≥ 25 mm was identified as the only significant factor causing the discrepancy. No interaction between MRI-logPDFF and MRE-LSM on iATT values was observed.

Conclusions
Compared to MRI-PDFF, iATT showed excellent diagnostic accuracy in grading steatosis. iATT could be used as a diagnostic tool instead of MRI in clinical practice and trials.
Trial registration This study was registered in the UMIN Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN000047411).
Reductive amination of ω-conotoxin MVIIA: synthesis, determination of modification sites, and self-assembly
Authors: Ding Xiufang , Wang Yue , Zhang Sida , Zhang Ruihua , Chen Dong , Liu Changcai , Xu Jianfu , Chen Long 
Published: March 2024

AbstractPeptide drugs have disadvantages such as low stability, short half-life and side effects, which limit their widespread use in clinical practice. Therefore, peptide drugs can be modified to improve these disadvantages. Numerous studies have shown that alkyl-modified peptide drugs can self-assemble to prolong the duration of efficacy and/or reduce side effects. However, the commonly used solid-phase synthesis method for alkyl-modified peptides is time-consuming. To overcome this, a simple reductive amination reaction was employed, which can directly graft the alkyl chain to the peptide sequence and effectively avoid stepwise synthesis from C- to N-terminal with amino acids. In this study, ω-conotoxin MVIIA was used as the peptide drug, while myristic aldehyde was used as the alkylating agent. To obtain the maximum productivity of modified peptides, the molar ratio of peptide MVIIA to myristic aldehyde in the reductive amination reaction was optimized. Furthermore, the peptide modification sites in this reaction were confirmed by secondary mass spectrometry analysis. Besides, alkyl-modified peptide MVIIA was able to form micelles by self-assembly and improved stability in serum, which was related to our previous work where myristoylated peptide MVIIA micelles can improve the drug stability. Finally, this study was intended to provide a methodological basis for modifying the alkyl chain of peptide drugs.
Positive psychotic symptoms as a marker of clinical severity in a transdiagnostic sample of help-seeking adolescents
Authors: Kaeser Janko M. , Lerch Stefan , Sele Silvano , Reichl Corinna , Koenig Julian , Mürner-Lavanchy Ines , Berger Thomas , Kaess Michael , Cavelti Marialuisa 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe present study aimed to examine the association between the presence, number, and type of positive psychotic symptoms (PPS) and clinical severity in adolescent patients. Five hundred-six patients aged 11–17 years were assigned to either the noPPS (n = 341), the delusional beliefs only (del; n = 32), the hallucinations only (hall; n = 80), or the delusional beliefs and hallucinations (del&hall; n = 53) group. Generalized Structural Equation Modeling was applied to identify the best-fitting model representing clinical severity indicated by psychiatric diagnoses, depressivity, personality pathology, non-suicidal self-injury, suicide attempts, perceived stress, and psychosocial impairments, assessed by interviews and questionnaires. The groups were compared concerning the final model’s factors. The final model consisted of three factors representing psychopathology and functional impairments, self-harming behavior, and perceived stress (BIC difference to reference model: 103.99). Participants with any PPS scored higher on all factors than the noPPS group (differences in SD: 0.49–1.48). Additionally, the del&hall group scored 1.31 SD higher on psychopathology and functional impairments than the hall group, and 1.16 SD higher on self-harming behavior compared to the del group. Finally, the hall group scored 0.84 SD higher on self-harming behavior than the del group, with no group differences in the other factors. In adolescent patients, the presence of PPS may represent a marker for a more severe form of mental disorder, with hallucinations being indicative of self-harming behavior. Early transdiagnostic assessment of PPS seems indicated as it may inform treatment in the context of clinical staging.
Scale-up of dry impregnation processes for porous spherical catalyst particles in a rotating drum: experiments and simulations
Authors: Xu Pengfei , Shen Yangyang , Avila Bryant , Makse Hernán A. , Tomassone Maria S. 
Published: March 2024

Abstract
Catalyst impregnation is the first step and one of the most crucial steps for preparing industrial catalysts. The process is typically performed in rotating vessels with a spray-nozzle to distribute the liquid onto porous catalyst supports until the pore volume is reached. The inter-particle variability of the impregnated liquid inside the particles significantly affects the activity and selectivity of the resulting catalyst. Current scale-up practices lead to poor fluid distribution and inhomogeneity in the liquid content. The aim of this work is to understand the dynamic behavior of the particles under the spray nozzle, which is essential for desired content uniformity, and to develop a scale-up model for the dry impregnation process. In this work, we considered four dimensionless numbers in the scaling analysis. The scale-up rules require that the dimensionless numbers are kept constant for different scales. Both DEM simulations and matching experiments of dry impregnation inside the porous particles were performed for different vessel sizes. The water content of the particles was compared for different times and locations, and the relative standard deviation is calculated from the axial water content. Simulation and experimental results show that particles achieve similar content uniformity at the end of impregnation, confirming that the scale-up rules are applicable to all vessel sizes. The dimensionless numbers give very good scale-up performance since curves collapse indicating similarity in the processes. In addition, the scale-up method is validated for different particle sizes in simulations.

Graphical abstract
Do dogs preferentially encode the identity of the target object or the location of others’ actions?
Authors: Lonardo Lucrezia , Völter Christoph J. , Hepach Robert , Lamm Claus , Huber Ludwig 
Published: March 2024

Abstract
The ability to make sense of and predict others’ actions is foundational for many socio-cognitive abilities. Dogs (Canis familiaris) constitute interesting comparative models for the study of action perception due to their marked sensitivity to human actions. We tested companion dogs (N = 21) in two screen-based eye-tracking experiments, adopting a task previously used with human infants and apes, to assess which aspects of an agent’s action dogs consider relevant to the agent’s underlying intentions. An agent was shown repeatedly acting upon the same one of two objects, positioned in the same location. We then presented the objects in swapped locations and the agent approached the objects centrally (Experiment 1) or the old object in the new location or the new object in the old location (Experiment 2). Dogs’ anticipatory fixations and looking times did not reflect an expectation that agents should have continued approaching the same object nor the same location as witnessed during the brief familiarization phase; this contrasts with some findings with infants and apes, but aligns with findings in younger infants before they have sufficient motor experience with the observed action. However, dogs’ pupil dilation and latency to make an anticipatory fixation suggested that, if anything, dogs expected the agents to keep approaching the same location rather than the same object, and their looking times showed sensitivity to the animacy of the agents. We conclude that dogs, lacking motor experience with the observed actions of grasping or kicking performed by a human or inanimate agent, might interpret such actions as directed toward a specific location rather than a specific object. Future research will need to further probe the suitability of anticipatory looking as measure of dogs’ socio-cognitive abilities given differences between the visual systems of dogs and primates.
Investigating the role of circulating tumor cells in gastric cancer: a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Eskandarion Mohammad Reza , Eskandarieh Sharareh , Tutunchi Sara , Shakoori Farahani Abbas , Shirkoohi Reza 
Published: March 2024

AbstractInvestigating the role of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and their characteristics is still controversial in patients with gastric cancer (GC). Therefore, in this study, to provide a comprehensive review and meta-analyses of the literature on association of CTCs with gastric cancer, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and Medline were searched for systematic reviews and meta-analyses conducted during February 2022 using the keywords. Risk of bias, hazard ratios (HRs), and risk differences (RD) were assessed. Forty-five studies containing 3,342 GC patients from nine countries were assessed. The overall prevalence of CTC in GC was 69.37% (60.27, 77.78). The pooled result showed that increased mortality in GC patients was significantly associated with positive CTCs, poor overall survival (HR = 2.73, 95%CI 2.34–3.24, p < 0.001), and progression-free survival rate (HR = 2.78, 95%CI 2.01–3.85, p < 0.001). Subgroup analyses regarding markers, detection methods, treatment type, presence of distance metastasis, presence of lymph node metastasis, and overall risk of bias showed significant associations between the groups in terms of the incidence rates of CTCs, OS, and PFS. In addition, the results of risk differences based on sampling time showed that the use of the cell search method (RD: − 0.19, 95%CI (− 0.28, − 0.10), p < 0.001), epithelial marker (RD: − 0.12, 95%CI (− 0.25, 0.00), p 0.05) and mesenchymal markers (RD: − 0.35, 95%CI (− 0.57, − 0.13), p 0.002) before the treatment might have a higher diagnostic power to identify CTCs and also chemotherapy treatment (RD: − 0.17, 95%CI (− 0.31, − 0.03), p 0.016) could significantly reduce the number of CTCs after the treatment. We also found that the risk differences between the clinical early and advanced stages were not statistically significant (RD: − 0.10, 95%CI (− 0.23, 0.02), P 0.105). Also, in the Lauren classification, the incidence of CTC in the diffuse type (RD: − 0.19, 95%CI (− 0.37, − 0.01), P0.045) was higher than that in the intestinal type. Meta-regression analysis showed that baseline characteristics were not associated with the detection of CTCs in GC patients. According to our systematic review and meta-analysis, CTCs identification may be suggested as a diagnostic technique for gastric cancer screening, and the outcomes of CTC detection may also be utilized in the future to create personalized medicine programs.
Environmental migration? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature
Authors: Cipollina Maria , De Benedictis Luca , Scibè Elisa 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThis article provides a comprehensive quantitative overview of the literature on the relationship between environmental changes and human migration. It begins with a systematic approach to bibliographic research and offers a bibliometric analysis of the empirical contributions. Specifically, we map the literature and conduct systematic research using main bibliographic databases, reviews, and bibliometric analysis of all resulting papers. By constructing a citation-based network, we identify four separate clusters of papers grouped according to certain characteristics of the analysis and resulting outcomes. Finally, we apply a meta-analysis to a sample of 96 published and unpublished studies between 2003 and 2020, providing 3904 point estimates of the effect of slow-onset events and 2065 point estimates of the effect of fast-onset events. Overall, the meta-analytic average effect on migration is small for both slow- and rapid-onset events; however, it is positive and significant. Accounting for the clustering of the literature, which highlights how specific common features of the collected studies influence the magnitude of the estimated effect, reveals a significant heterogeneity among the four clusters of papers. This heterogeneity gives rise to new evidence on the formation of club-like convergence of literature outcomes.
Video shot-boundary detection: issues, challenges and solutions
Authors: Kar T. , Kanungo P. , Mohanty Sachi Nandan , Groppe Sven , Groppe Jinghua 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe integration of high data transmission rates and the recent digital multimedia technology, paves the way to access a huge amount of video over the internet, in seconds. Additionally, uploading videos to different websites is no more confined to expert software professionals resulting in duplication of video data which led to exorbitant growth of multimedia information in cyberspace in a short span of time. This necessitates the development of efficient data management techniques including storage, searching and annotation mechanism. Automatic shot boundary detection is considered to be the first and foremost step towards such management. It is a booming area of research gaining attention in the domain of image processing, computer vision and pattern recognition. In this review paper, we present a detailed description of the methods and algorithms of shot boundary detection, reported in the last two decades. This review shows that using multiple features performs well in comparison to using only a single feature in the shot boundary detection problem although it leads to higher complexity. The major sources of disturbance in the boundary detection are the sudden illumination variation and presence of high motion in the video. An adaptive threshold outperforms a single global threshold in the boundary detection problem and the threshold requirement can be avoided through learning based strategies at the cost of larger training data and higher computation time. Moreover the present review includes a critical analysis of relative merits and demerits of existing algorithms and finally opens promising research directions in the area.
The finance-growth nexus and public-private ownership of banks in Brazil since 1870
Authors: Campos Nauro , Karanasos Menelaos , Koutroumpis Panagiotis , Glebkina Ekaterina 
Published: March 2024

AbstractHow does finance affect economic growth? And does ownership matter? This paper investigates whether and how deposits in public vis-a-vis in private banks affect economic growth. It uses the power-ARCH framework with annual time series for Brazil from 1870 to 2018. There are three main findings: (a) the indirect impact of domestic financial development on economic growth is negative, whereas that of international financial development is positive, (b) the direct short-run effect of public and private banks is negative, while only for the latter does the positive direct long-run effect dominate, and (c) the indirect and direct short-run effect of public ownership banks is greater in size than that of private ownership banks.
Terrain traversability prediction through self-supervised learning and unsupervised domain adaptation on synthetic data
Authors: Vecchio Giuseppe , Palazzo Simone , Guastella Dario C. , Giordano Daniela , Muscato Giovanni , Spampinato Concetto 
Published: March 2024

AbstractTerrain traversability estimation is a fundamental task for supporting robot navigation on uneven surfaces. Recent learning-based approaches for predicting traversability from RGB images have shown promising results, but require manual annotation of a large number of images for training. To address this limitation, we present a method for traversability estimation on unlabeled videos that combines dataset synthesis, self-supervision and unsupervised domain adaptation. We pose the traversability estimation as a vector regression task over vertical bands of the observed frame. The model is pre-trained through self-supervision to reduce the distribution shift between synthetic and real data and encourage shared feature learning. Then, supervised training on synthetic videos is carried out, while employing an unsupervised domain adaptation loss to improve its generalization capabilities on real scenes. Experimental results show that our approach is on par with standard supervised training, and effectively supports robot navigation without the need of manual annotations. Training code and synthetic dataset will be publicly released at: https://github.com/perceivelab/traversability-synth.
Personality Discrimination and the Wrongness of Hiring Based on Extraversion
Authors: Räsänen Joona , Lippert-Rasmussen Kasper 
Published: March 2024

AbstractEmployers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based on sex or race, and the wrongness of such hiring practices is based on two widely accepted principles: the Relevance Principle and the Fairness Principle. The Relevance Principle states that hiring should be based on what is relevant to job performance, while the Fairness Principle states that hiring should be based on features that individuals can control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates these principles, it is wrong. However, we argue that, in a range of cases, hiring based on extraversion also violates these principles, and assuming the validity of the Relevance and the Fairness Principles, it follows that personality discrimination is morally wrong in those cases.
Interactions of NaCl with cellulose I$$\beta$$ crystal surfaces and the effect on cellulose hydration: a molecular dynamics study
Authors: Kou Zhennan , Tolmachev Dmitry , Vuorte Maisa , Sammalkorpi Maria 
Published: March 2024

AbstractCrystalline nanocellulose is widely used for example, in the paper-making and food industries, as support matrix material or reinforcement of polymer materials, but also in drug carrier and nanomedicine applications. Interestingly, aqueous solutions of cellulose are extremely sensitive to small amounts of added salt yet mere considerations of charge screening leave open questions regarding the mechanisms, especially for unmodified cellulose in aqueous solutions. Here, we map NaCl ion distributions and the effect of added NaCl salt on the hydration of I$$\beta$$
β
cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) surfaces by atomistic detail molecular dynamics simulations with explicit water solvent. The simulations reveal the dependency of the hydration layers of the six surfaces of CNCs on the ions, as well as NaCl ion binding sites, and preferences in terms of binding free energy for the ions near CNC surfaces at different NaCl concentrations. We discuss the modelling results against our prior rheology characterization of cellulose solutions. Together, the results indicate that the high sensitivity of cellulose aqueous solutions to added salt rises from the ions near the surface changing locally the ordering and structure of the hydration layers of the CNC surfaces. The revealed mechanism of salt-induced viscosity changes in cellulose aqueous solutions allows advanced design of gelling CNC systems for various end uses and may also guide tuning cellulose interactions by different solvent environments.
Meta-inductive Justification of Inductive Generalizations
Authors: Schurz Gerhard 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe account of meta-induction (G. Schurz, Hume’s problem solved: the optimality of meta-induction, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2019) proposes a two-step solution to the problem of induction. Step 1 consists in a mathematical a priori justification of the predictive optimality of meta-induction, upon which step 2 builds a meta-inductive a posteriori justification of object-induction based on its superior track record (Sect. 1). Sterkenburg (Br J Philos Sci, forthcoming. 10.1086/717068/) challenged this account by arguing that meta-induction can only provide a (non-circular) justification of inductive predictions for now and for the next future, but not a justification of inductive generalizations (Sect. 2). This paper develops a meta-inductive method that does provide an a posteriori justification of inductive generalizations, in the form of exchangeability conditions (Sect. 3). In Sect. 4, a limitation of the proposed method is worked out: while the method can justify weakly lawlike generalizations, the justification of strongly lawlike generalizations (claimed to hold for all eternity) requires epistemic principles going beyond meta-induction based on predictive success.