bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Imaging assessment of conjunctival goblet cells in dry eye disease
Authors: Liu Yushuang , Duan Zhengyu , Yuan Jin , Xiao Peng 
Published: March 2024

AbstractDry eye disease (DED) is a widespread, multifactorial, and chronic disorder of the ocular surface with disruption of tear film homeostasis as its core trait. Conjunctival goblet cells (CGCs) are specialised secretory cells found in the conjunctival epithelium that participate in tear film formation by secreting mucin. Changes in both the structure and function of CGCs are hallmarks of DED, and imaging assessment of CGCs is important for the diagnosis, classification, and severity evaluation of DED. Existing imaging methods include conjunctival biopsy, conjunctival impression cytology and in vivo confocal microscopy, which can be used to assess the morphology, distribution, and density of the CGCs. Recently, moxifloxacin‐based fluorescence microscopy has emerged as a novel technique that enables efficient, non‐invasive and in vivo imaging of CGCs. This article presents a comprehensive overview of both the structure and function of CGCs and their alterations in the context of DED, as well as current methods of CGCs imaging assessment. Additionally, potential directions for the visual evaluation of CGCs are discussed.
Rational inattention: A new theory of neurodivergent information seeking
Authors: Jones Samuel David , Jones Manon Wyn , Koldewyn Kami , Westermann Gert 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThis paper presents rational inattention as a new, transdiagnostic theory of information seeking in neurodevelopmental conditions that have uneven cognitive and socio‐emotional profiles, including developmental language disorder (DLD), dyslexia, dyscalculia and autism. Rational inattention holds that the optimal solution to minimizing epistemic uncertainty is to avoid imprecise information sources. The key theoretical contribution of this report is to endogenize imprecision, making it a function of the primary neurocognitive difficulties that have been invoked to explain neurodivergent phenotypes, including deficits in auditory perception, working memory, procedural learning and the social brain network. We argue that disengagement with information sources with low endogenous precision (e.g. speech in DLD, orthography‐phonology mappings in dyslexia, numeric stimuli in dyscalculia and social signals in autism) constitutes resource‐rational behaviour. We demonstrate the strength of this account in a series of computational simulations. In experiment 1, we simulate information seeking in artificial agents mimicking an array of neurodivergent phenotypes, which optimally explore a complex learning environment containing speech, text, numeric stimuli and social cues. In experiment 2, we simulate optimal information seeking in a cross‐modal dual‐task paradigm and qualitatively replicate empirical data from children with and without DLD. Across experiments, simulated agents’ only aim was to maximally reduce epistemic uncertainty, with no difference in reward across information sources. We show that rational inattention emerges naturally in specific neurodivergent phenotypes as a function of low endogenous precision. For instance, an agent mimicking the DLD phenotype disengages with speech (and preferentially engages with alternative precise information sources) because endogenous imprecision renders speech not conducive to information gain. Because engagement is necessary for learning, simulation demonstrates how optimal information seeking may paradoxically contribute negatively to an already delayed learning trajectory in neurodivergent children.Research Highlights
We present the first comprehensive theory of information seeking in neurodivergent children to date, centred on the notion of rational inattention.
We demonstrate the strength of this account in a series of computational simulations involving artificial agents mimicking specific neurodivergent phenotypes that optimally explore a complex learning environment containing speech, text, numeric stimuli, and social cues.
We show how optimal information seeking may, paradoxically, contribute negatively to an already delayed learning trajectory in neurodivergent children.
This report advances our understanding of the factors shaping short‐term decision making and long‐term learning in neurodivergent children.
Long noncoding RNA ANRIL alleviates hypoxia‐induced pulmonary microvascular endothelial cell damage
Authors: Qi Yijin , Chen Mingyue , Zhang Tianyi , Zhao Beibei , Jin Tianbo , Yuan Dongya 
Published: March 2024

AbstractBackgroundHigh‐altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE) is a form of noncardiogenic pulmonary oedema. Studies have found that long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) plays an important role in HAPE. ANRIL is significant in pulmonary illnesses, which implies that alterations in ANRIL expression levels may be involved in the beginning and development of HAPE. However, the specific mechanism is indistinct. The present study is meant to explore the effect and mechanism of ANRIL on hypoxic‐induced injury of pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (PMEVCs).MethodsIn the hypoxic model of PMVECs, overexpression of ANRIL or knockdown of miR‐181c‐5p was performed to assess cell proliferation, apoptosis, and migration. Furthermore, the levels of apoptosis‐related proteins, inflammatory factors, and vascular active factors were also measured.ResultsThe results showed that, after 24 h of hypoxia, PMVECs proliferation and migration were suppressed in comparison to the control group, along with an increase in apoptosis, a decrease in the expression of ANRIL, and an increase in the expression of miR‐181c‐5p (all p < .05). The damage caused by hypoxia in PMVECs can be lessened by overexpressing ANRIL, which also inhibits the production of TNF‐α, iNOS, and VEGF as well as BAX and cleaved caspase‐3 (all p < .05). Further experimental results showed that overexpression of ANRIL and knockdown of miR‐181c‐5p had the same protection against hypoxic injury in PMVECs (all p < .05).ConclusionsOur study suggests that ANRIL may prevent hypoxia injury to PMVECs in HAPE through the negative regulation of miR‐181c‐5p.
A heuristic‐based hybrid sampling method using a combination of SMOTE and ENN for imbalanced health data
Authors: Nizam‐Ozogur Hatice , Orman Zeynep 
Published: March 2024

AbstractHealth datasets often exhibit class imbalance, with healthy individuals being the majority class and patients being the minority class. As in many applications, machine learning methods are frequently used in the prediction and detection of diseases. The class imbalance presents a significant challenge for machine learning classifiers, particularly in their ability to accurately and effectively classify data from minority and majority classes. Therefore, data preprocessing is crucial before classifying the imbalanced data. In this study, we present GASMOTEPSO_ENN method that combines the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and edited nearest neighbour (ENN) algorithms using genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) heuristics as a preprocessing method to classify the imbalanced health datasets. In the experiments, chronic kidney disease (CKD), cerebral stroke prediction (CSP), and PIMA Indian diabetes (PID) datasets were utilized to assess the performance of the proposed method with metrics derived from the confusion matrix. The GASMOTEPSO_ENN method can classify the various diseases into different two classes of patients and healthy individuals with acceptable Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) metric using the machine learning algorithms (Logistic regression (LR) 1.00 for CKD dataset, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) 0.94 for CSP dataset, and support vector machine (SVM) 0.87 for PID dataset). Moreover, the proposed method also performed well with other metrics in all datasets, and the analysis of the model results in relation to existing literature reveals that the proposed model demonstrably produces superior results.
Conceptualisation of personal recovery in a private hospital mental health service
Authors: Lorien Leonie M. , Blunden Sarah , Romero Vivian , MacNevin Diana 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThere has been limited research on personal recovery during a hospital admission. However, studies in this setting indicate that consumers' experiences of personal recovery, during an inpatient admission, may not mirror the experiences of consumers living in the community, which has been conceptualised by the CHIME processes of Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment. Findings to date posit that inpatients may be more likely to experience disconnection and hopelessness. To investigate this further, staff working in a private hospital mental health service designed and implemented a research project to understand personal recovery from patients' perspectives. The method comprised four consumer focus groups (n = 16 participants). Researchers analysed the data using inductive thematic analysis, identifying three themes: different pathways reflecting each patient's individual journey to personal recovery; challenges including experiencing hopelessness and distress, ups and downs, it not being easy, isolation and lack of support; and living well including wanting to return to everyday living, hope and acceptance, and feeling empowered. The findings suggest that the CHIME conceptualisation of recovery may need to be revised to include the experiences of hospital patients. The conceptualisation of recovery as a dynamic spectrum, with recovery moving up and down between challenges and living well may better represent hospital patient experiences. Patients also talked about a process not included in CHIME, of returning to ‘everyday living’ which was about getting back to doing everyday activities that most of us take for granted.
Numerical simulation of the Ge28Sb12Se60 fiber extrusion process
Authors: Shabarova L. V. , Stepanov B. S. , Kirillov Y. P. , Mishinov S. V. , Stepanov A. S. , Lashmanov E. N. , Shiryaev V. S. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractA computational fluid dynamics model of the glass fiber extrusion process is proposed and verified. The model describes the homogeneous non‐isothermal motion of a viscous glass melt and the surrounding air in an experimental setup, taking into account the interface between the media and the movement of the metal rod. The unclad Ge28Sb12Se60 glass fibers for sensor applications are fabricated by extrusion. The validation of the developed model is performed based on the experimental data, including pressure values, temperature field in extrusion setup, and extruded glass mass outflow. Based on the proposed model, the thermal and kinetic conditions for the flow of Ge28Sb12Se60 glass during extrusion are numerically studied. The presented model could be used as a tool for analyzing the hydrodynamic and thermal processes during fiber extrusion.
The thermal debinding of soluble binders in injection molded zirconia ceramic from room temperature to 250°C
Authors: Zhu Jiacheng , Qiao Liang , Zheng Jingwu , Ying Yao , Cai Wei , Li Juan , Yu Jing , Li Wangchang , Che Shenglei 
Published: March 2024

AbstractIn ceramic injection molding, the conventional solvent‐debinding process encounters limitations such as solvent cost and environmental pollution. In this paper, a suitable thermal‐debinding process from room temperature to 250°C using carbon/alumina embedding powders with nano and submicron size was developed to remove the soluble binders replacing the conventional solvent debinding of injection molding ZrO2 ceramic. The effects of the embedding powders on microstructure and debinding ratio were studied in detail. The results showed that the main factor influencing debinding ratio was associated with the sufficient dispersing of mixed particles, which was characterized by the relative change ratio of tap volume. A debinding mechanism was proposed to explain the effects of carbon/alumina mixed powders on the debinding ratio and surface cracks. Based on the influencing mechanism, the debinded green part with the elimination of soluble binders and optimal surface was achieved using the mixed powders with C/A = 8/2 on the top and C/A = 4/6 on the bottom.
Environmental policy and audit pricing
Authors: Rabarison Monika K. , Siraj Ibrahim , Wang Bin 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThis paper examines the effect of environmental policy stringency (EPS) on audit pricing. By exploiting the exogenous variation in environmental policies across 26 countries, we find that firms in countries with more stringent environmental policies incur lower audit fees. The inverse association is more pronounced in common law countries, in countries with a higher level of public enforcement of regulations and in countries with more investor protection. The lower audit fees are also more prominent for firms that are followed by more analysts and firms that have a greater institutional ownership. Furthermore, we find that firms in countries with strong regulations are better and more innovative at managing environmental risk, which implies that better environmental performance of the firms following stronger regulations could lower business risks and thus decrease audit fees. Overall, our findings suggest that compliant firms benefit from EPS.
Enhance adult students' online knowledge construction: Exploring effective instructional designs and addressing barriers
Authors: Ho Yujen 
Published: March 2024

AbstractBackground StudyAsynchronous online discussions are vital venues for collaborative knowledge construction. However, the lack of appropriate instruction designs poses challenges in promoting deep and substantive engagement with the core subject matter. This paper explores how to enhance adult students' knowledge construction in the context of asynchronous online discussions at an open university in Taiwan.ObjectivesThis study explores instructional designs aimed at promoting online knowledge construction among adult students and overcoming barriers to this process.MethodsThis study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design to collect concurrently both quantitative data from the students' online discussion postings for content analysis and qualitative data from the focus group and individual interviews, the online open‐ended questionnaire, and the instructor's observation logs for thematic analysis. Then the results were merged in the interpretation stage.Results and ConclusionThe research highlights the significance of instructional designs in influencing students' level of knowledge construction during online discussions. The findings suggest that instructional designs that provide teacher‐led interim summaries, pose Socratic questions, and incorporate problem‐solving projects can promote higher‐level knowledge construction. However, time constraints, cultural influences, and unfamiliarity with peers negatively affected higher‐order knowledge construction. To address these challenges, culturally responsive and technologically inclusive instructional designs that take into account the specific challenges faced by adult learners are proposed to enhance learning outcomes through active participation.LimitationThe study's limited sample size warrants further research with a larger and more diverse cohort to validate the effectiveness of the proposed instructional designs. Another limitation is the lack of a robust theoretical base for the instructional strategies presented by the current action‐research study. Further examination and broader exploration in online education are needed to prop up proposed pedagogical approaches.
Polygonatum sibiricum (Huang Jing) polysaccharide reduces diabetic cardiomyopathy through increasing cyclic guanosine monophosphate‐protein kinase G signaling in diabetic mice
Authors: Lei Shengping , Lu Xin , Yan Lei , Liu Tian , Niu Yan , Yu Jun 
Published: March 2024

AbstractAims/IntroductionDiabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a prevalent condition among individuals with diabetes, and is associated with a high mortality rate. The anti‐oxidant properties of Jing Huang or Polygonatum sibiricum polysaccharide (PSP) have been extensively used to treat diabetes‐related disorders; however, its potential effectiveness against DCM remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate PSP's therapeutic effects on DCM in an experimental diabetic mouse model.Materials and MethodsTo induce insulin resistance, mice were fed a high‐fat diet for 3 months, followed by intraperitoneal streptozotocin injection to induce slight hyperglycemia and develop DCM. Both DCM and control mice were given PSP orally for 3 weeks. Western blotting was used to detect the protein expressions of protein kinase G, C/EBP homologous protein, glucose‐regulated protein 78, phosphodiesterase type 5, protein kinase R‐like endoplasmic reticulum (ER) kinase, and phospho‐protein kinase R‐like endoplasmic reticulum kinase in heart tissue.ResultsThe results showed a reduction in bodyweight and blood glucose levels in the PSP therapy group compared with DCM group. PSP also improved cardiac function and had a negligible effect on malondialdehyde activity. Furthermore, the findings showed that PSP alleviated ER and oxidative stress observed in DCM mice hearts, leading to the inhibition of cyclic guanosine monophosphate‐specific phosphodiesterase type 5 and cardiac cyclic guanosine monophosphate reactivation. Phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibition reduced high‐fat diet‐induced cardiac dysfunction and decreased ER stress.ConclusionsPSP could effectively protect diabetic myocardium by inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum stress. These findings provide crucial insights into the potential of PSP to ameliorate DCM conditions in diabetic mice by decreasing ER and oxidative stress, and enhancing cyclic guanosine monophosphate protein kinase G signaling.
A new characid species with remarkable sexual dimorphism (Characiformes: Characidae: Stevardiinae) from the upper Guayabero River, Orinoco basin, Colombia
Authors: P. Carvalho Tiago , Tonolli Thomaz Andréa , Urbano‐Bonilla Alexander , Prada‐Pedreros Saúl 
Published: March 2024

AbstractA new species of characid with remarkable sexual characteristics is described from the upper Guayabero River drainage from the Orinoco basin in Colombia. The new species is included in the genus Monotocheirodon by sharing most of the previously proposed diagnostic features of this genus. It differs from all Stevardiinae by the combination, in adult males, of an enlarged urogenital papilla in contact with the first anal‐fin unbranched ray and a highly modified anal fin with enlarged and distally elongated first and second branched anal‐fin rays, forming a gonopodium‐like structure. In addition, it differs from congeners by the presence of an adipose fin, an incomplete lateral line, an ascending process of the premaxilla dorsally oriented, and a long snout. The new species was discovered from a poorly sampled region in Colombia and is an unexpected new record given its disjunct geographic distribution from other species of the genus. Monotocheirodon species were previously known from piedmont drainages in Bolivia and Peru. The conservation status of the new species is herein categorized following IUCN criteria.
Operationalizing therapeutic jurisprudence in the family law system
Authors: Lux Glenda , Amundson Jon 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe family law system requires change to improve family outcomes, and the operationalization of therapeutic jurisprudence may be part of the solution. In this paper, the authors propose The Confluent Family Law Model, which realigns mental health professionals with the court to utilize their expertise better, mitigate problems with child custody evaluations, reduce system noise, and improve decision hygiene in family law. The model aims to work collaboratively with family court professionals to assist families and argues that “best interest” determinations may be better achieved through mental health input on a case‐by‐case basis at the level of the bench.
Characterization of African‐American Super‐Agers in the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center cohort
Authors: Trammell Antoine R. , Goldstein Felicia C. , Parker Monica W. , Hajjar Ihab M. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractBackground“Super‐agers” are adults aged ≥80 with cognitive performance similar to persons two to three decades younger. Characteristics such as larger hippocampal volume, APOE‐ε4 allele absence, higher educational attainment, female sex, and lifelong cognitive stimulation are associated with cognitive performance compatible with super‐aging. These findings are based on predominantly white research samples. Limited data are available on African‐American super‐agers. To fill this gap, we explored potential factors associated with super‐aging in older African‐American adults.MethodsData from African‐American participants aged ≥80 in the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC) dataset were analyzed. Using global Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scores, participants were first categorized as impaired (score ≥0.5) or non‐impaired/normal cognition (NC) (score = 0). From the NC group, super‐agers were identified using NACC‐data‐driven cutoffs. Participants were considered super‐agers if their memory performance was similar to persons aged 50–60 with NC, and their performance on other domains was within one standard deviation of the mean for persons aged ≥80. We examined group characteristics (NC, super‐ager, impaired) using chi‐square and ANOVA with pairwise comparisons. Multinomial logistic regression, adjusted for sex and education, evaluated correlates of super‐ager group assignment.ResultsData for 1285 African‐American participants aged ≥80 were analyzed. We identified 24.7% (n = 316) NC, 4.8% (n = 61) super‐agers, and 70.6% (n = 905) impaired. Super‐agers were mostly female and more educated, had similar vascular comorbidities as the other groups, and had less sleep disorders, depression, and alcohol use. After adjusting for sex and education, super‐ager group assignment was associated with less sleep disorders, less depression, and moderate alcohol use.ConclusionsParticipants with controlled vascular risk, mental health, alcohol use, and sleep disorders tended to be in the super‐ager group. These factors may be important focus areas in clinical practice to support cognitive resilience with aging in older African‐American adults.
RNs in nursing homes—It is not always about the numbers
Authors: Mueller Christine A. , Bowers Barbara J. , Kolanowski Ann M. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe compelling evidence that higher RN to resident ratios improve health outcomes in nursing homes underscores the necessity of implementing evidence‐based RN nursing home staffing standards. However, there are other dimensions to RN staffing in nursing homes beyond the numbers or hours per resident day (HPRD) that influence the quality of care. Without attending to a broader focus on nurse staffing, the benefits of increased RN staffing levels will not be achieved. This article outlines how RN HPRD can be maximized by magnifying the RN's scope of practice and attending to how nursing care is organized and delivered in nursing homes using a nursing practice model framework. This framework addresses the accountability of the RN and the RN's role in supporting and facilitating: (1) collective decision‐making among the nursing staff about the care of residents and the work environment, (2) continuity of information among care providers, and (3) ensuring residents have continuity with the care providers assigned to their care. Attention to the RN's expertise in gerontological nursing and leadership capacity further leverages the RN's ability to influence the quality of care for nursing homes residents.