bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Equity and resilience in local urban food systems: a case study
Authors: Stone Tiffanie F. , Huckins Erin L. , Hornbuckle Eliana C. , Thompson Janette R. , Dentzman Katherine 
Published: March 2024

AbstractLocal food systems can have economic and social benefits by providing income for producers and improving community connections. Ongoing global climate change and the acute COVID-19 pandemic crisis have shown the importance of building equity and resilience in local food systems. We interviewed ten stakeholders from organizations and institutions in a U.S. midwestern city exploring views on past, current, and future conditions to address the following two objectives: 1) Assess how local food system equity and resilience were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) Examine how policy and behavior changes could support greater equity and resilience within urban local food systems. We used the Community Capitals Framework to organize interviewees’ responses for qualitative analyses of equity and resilience. Four types of community capital were emphasized by stakeholders: cultural and social, natural, and political capital. Participants stated that the local food system in this city is small; more weaknesses in food access, land access, and governance were described than were strengths in both pre- and post-pandemic conditions. Stakeholder responses also reflected lack of equity and resilience in the local food system, which was most pronounced for cultural and social, natural and political capitals. However, local producers’ resilience during the pandemic, which we categorized as human capital, was a notable strength. An improved future food system could incorporate changes in infrastructure (e.g., food processing), markets (e.g., values-based markets) and cultural values (e.g., valuing local food through connections between local producers and consumers). These insights could inform policy and enhance community initiatives and behavior changes to build more equitable and resilient local food systems in urban areas throughout the U.S. Midwest.
Reinforcement learning applications in environmental sustainability: a review
Authors: Zuccotto Maddalena , Castellini Alberto , Torre Davide La , Mola Lapo , Farinelli Alessandro 
Published: March 2024

AbstractEnvironmental sustainability is a worldwide key challenge attracting increasing attention due to climate change, pollution, and biodiversity decline. Reinforcement learning, initially employed in gaming contexts, has been recently applied to real-world domains, including the environmental sustainability realm, where uncertainty challenges strategy learning and adaptation. In this work, we survey the literature to identify the main applications of reinforcement learning in environmental sustainability and the predominant methods employed to address these challenges. We analyzed 181 papers and answered seven research questions, e.g., “How many academic studies have been published from 2003 to 2023 about RL for environmental sustainability?” and “What were the application domains and the methodologies used?”. Our analysis reveals an exponential growth in this field over the past two decades, with a rate of 0.42 in the number of publications (from 2 papers in 2007 to 53 in 2022), a strong interest in sustainability issues related to energy fields, and a preference for single-agent RL approaches to deal with sustainability. Finally, this work provides practitioners with a clear overview of the main challenges and open problems that should be tackled in future research.
Coleman automorphisms of finite groups with semidihedral Sylow 2-subgroups
Authors: Aragona R. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractWe study some families of finite groups having inner class-preserving
automorphisms. In particular, let G be a finite group and S be a
semidihedral Sylow 2-subgroup. Then, in both cases when either Sym(4) is not
a homomorphic image of G and $$Z(S) < Z(G)$$

Z
(
S
)
<
Z
(
G
)

or G is nilpotent-by-nilpotent, we
have that all the Coleman automorphisms of G are inner. As a consequence, these
groups satisfy the normalizer problem.
Fertility of Czech Gay and Straight Men, Women, and Their Relatives: Testing the Sexually Antagonistic Gene Hypothesis
Authors: Fořt Jakub , Flegr Jaroslav , Kuba Radim , Kaňková Šárka 
Published: March 2024

AbstractOne proposal for the persistence of homosexuality in the human population is the sexually antagonistic gene hypothesis, which suggests that the lower fertility of homosexual individuals, especially men, may be compensated by higher fertility of their relatives of the opposite sex. To test this hypothesis, we have collected data from 7,312 heterosexual men, 459 gay men, 3,352 heterosexual women, and 79 lesbian women mainly from Czechia. In an online survey, participants answered questions regarding their own as well as their parents’ and grandparents’ fertility. For men, we obtained no significant results except for higher fertility of gay men’s paternal grandmothers, but the magnitude of this effect was very small. For the female sample, we recorded lower fertility of lesbian women’s mothers and fathers. In line with our expectations, both gay men and lesbian women had lower fertility rates than their heterosexual counterparts. Our results are consistent with recent studies which likewise do not support the sexually antagonistic gene hypothesis.
Dynamic identification and seismic capacity of an innovative cleanroom with walkable ceiling system
Authors: Magliulo Gennaro , Zito Martino , D’Angela Danilo 
Published: March 2024

AbstractPast earthquakes highlighted the vulnerability of cleanrooms, especially in earthquake-prone countries like Italy; the post-earthquake reconnaissance showed that damage to cleanrooms led to immeasurable economic losses. This study investigates the seismic performance of an innovative cleanroom, seismically designed and provided with innovative components. Full-scale shake table tests were performed on the cleanroom according to ICC-ES AC156 protocol; the cleanroom was tested under operating conditions. Both dynamic properties and seismic behavior of the specimen were assessed. The tests showed the excellent seismic behavior of the cleanroom, confirming that simple devices can significantly improve the seismic performance of nonstructural elements.
Characterization of Second-Order Mixing Effects in Reconstructed Cross-Spectra of Random Neural Fields
Authors: Hindriks Rikkert 
Published: March 2024

AbstractFunctional connectivity in electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data is commonly assessed by using measures that are insensitive to instantaneously interacting sources and as such would not give rise to false positive interactions caused by instantaneous mixing of true source signals (first-order mixing). Recent studies, however, have drawn attention to the fact that such measures are still susceptible to instantaneous mixing from lagged sources (i.e. second-order mixing) and that this can lead to a large number of false positive interactions. In this study we relate first- and second-order mixing effects on the cross-spectra of reconstructed source activity to the properties of the resolution operators that are used for the reconstruction. We derive two identities that relate first- and second-order mixing effects to the transformation properties of measurement and source configurations and exploit them to establish several basic properties of signal mixing. First, we provide a characterization of the configurations that are maximally and minimally sensitive to second-order mixing. It turns out that second-order mixing effects are maximal when the measurement locations are far apart and the sources coincide with the measurement locations. Second, we provide a description of second-order mixing effects in the vicinity of the measurement locations in terms of the local geometry of the point-spread functions of the resolution operator. Third, we derive a version of Lagrange’s identity for cross-talk functions that establishes the existence of a trade-off between the magnitude of first- and second-order mixing effects. It also shows that, whereas the magnitude of first-order mixing is determined by the inner product of cross-talk functions, the magnitude of second-order mixing is determined by a generalized cross-product of cross-talk functions (the wedge product) which leads to an intuitive geometric understanding of the trade-off. All results are derived within the general framework of random neural fields on cortical manifolds.
Adolescents’ Subjective Well-Being: The Unique Contribution of Fathers
Authors: Walsh Colleen S. , Kliewer Wendy , Sullivan Terri N. 
Published: March 2024

Abstract
Background
Caregiver relationships are associated with adolescent subjective well-being. Yet, little is known about the contributions of father-adolescent relationship quality to well-being including perseverance, connectedness, and happiness or the specific contributions of father-adolescent relationship quality to these outcomes after accounting for covariates.

Objective
This study aimed to understand how father-adolescent relationships and school connectedness interact with one another when positive adolescent functioning are the outcomes.

Methods
Adolescents (N = 2,509; Mage = 15.5; 51.8% male; Black and African American (47.9%), Hispanic (24.8%), and white (17.7%) participating in the FFCWBS provided cross-sectional data. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine direct associations between father-adolescent relationship quality and each of the three adolescent subjective well-being outcomes (perseverance, connectedness, and happiness), and to evaluate the moderating role of adolescent biological sex in these associations. Covariates included race, household income, father’s residential status, the adolescent’s relationship with the mother and school connectedness.

Results
Regressions showed that father-adolescent relationship quality was significantly associated with each well-being outcome beyond the contributions of demographics, mother-adolescent relationships, and school connectedness, and had similar associations with the outcomes by sex.

Conclusions
Our conclusions highlight the priority of including and retaining fathers in research and interventions.
Exploring Overpressure Events in Compartment Fires
Authors: Fleischmann Charles , Madrzykowski Daniel , Dow Nicholas 
Published: March 2024

AbstractFor more than a century, smoke explosions have been documented in the fire research literature. Yet even with this long history, smoke explosions have received very little attention in the fire research community. The few review articles on unexplained explosions (overpressure events) have adopted the conventional names of smoke explosions, backdraft, smoke gas explosions or rapid fire progression. Anecdotal evidence from firefighters have shown a number of overpressure events that cannot be explained as a gas leak or flammable liquids ignition. In this study, experiments were conducted in a plywood lined compartment with a timber crib as a sustained fire source and the ignition source. The compartment had a single vent that was open for the entire time. After an extended period of burning, the flames detached from the crib, traveled around the compartment, and finally self-extinguished. Sometime after the flames self-extinguished, the compartment erupted in flames culminating in a large horizontal flame projecting more than 2 m from the vent opening. In this study, a consistent cycle that leads to an overpressure event has been identified. A total of 29 overpressure events were created in 13 experiments with many experiments experiencing multiple overpressure events. Gas species, compartment temperatures, vent velocities, and compartment pressure were all recorded during the experiments. Conditions in the compartment immediately prior to the overpressure event are reported. Having demonstrated that an overpressure event within a combustible compartment can be reproduced, future research is recommended to better quantify the conditions leading to an overpressure event.
Axial length, more than aging, decreases the thickness and superficial vessel density of retinal nerve fiber layer in non-glaucomatous eyes
Authors: Huang Kuan-I. , Su Fang-Ying , Ho Heng-Yen , Ho Heng-Chen , Chen Yan-Wu , Lee Chih-Kuo , Lai Feipei , Lu Henry Horng-Shing , Ko Mei-Lan 
Published: March 2024

Abstract
Purpose
This study seeks to build a normative database for the vessel density of the superficial retina (SVD) and evaluate how changes and trends in the retinal microvasculature may be influenced by age and axial length (AL) in non-glaucomatous eyes, as measured with optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).

Methods
We included 500 eyes of 290 healthy subjects visiting a county hospital. Each participant underwent comprehensive ophthalmological examinations and OCTA to measure the SVD and thickness of the macular and peripapillary areas. To analyze correlations between SVD and age or AL, multivariable linear regression models with generalized estimating equations were applied.

Results
Age was negatively correlated with the SVD of the superior, central, and inferior macular areas and the superior peripapillary area, with a decrease rate of 1.06%, 1.36%, 0.84%, and 0.66% per decade, respectively. However, inferior peripapillary SVD showed no significant correlation with age. AL was negatively correlated with the SVD of the inferior macular area and the superior and inferior peripapillary areas, with coefficients of −0.522%/mm, −0.733%/mm, and −0.664%/mm, respectively. AL was also negatively correlated with the thickness of the retinal nerve fiber layer and inferior ganglion cell complex (p = 0.004).

Conclusion
Age and AL were the two main factors affecting changes in SVD. Furthermore, AL, a relative term to represent the degree of myopia, had a greater effect than age and showed a more significant effect on thickness than on SVD. This relationship has important implications because myopia is a significant issue in modern cities.
Cryoballoon pulmonary vein isolation as first-line treatment of typical atrial flutter: long-term outcomes of the CRAFT trial
Authors: Calvert Peter , Ding Wern Yew , Das Moloy , Tovmassian Lilith , Tayebjee Muzahir H. , Haywood Guy , Martin Claire A. , Rajappan Kim , Bates Matthew G. D. , Temple Ian Peter , Reichlin Tobias , Chen Zhong , Balasubramaniam Richard N. , Sticherling Christian , Ronayne Christina , Clarkson Nichola , Morgan Maureen , Barton Janet , Kemp Ian , Mahida Saagar , Gupta Dhiraj 
Published: March 2024

Abstract
Background
CRAFT was an international, multicentre, randomised controlled trial across 11 sites in the United UK and Switzerland. Given the evidence that pulmonary vein triggers may be responsible for atrial flutter (AFL) as well as atrial fibrillation (AF), we hypothesised that cryoballoon pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) would provide greater symptomatic arrhythmia reduction than cavotricuspid isthmus (CTI) ablation, whilst also reducing the subsequent burden of AF. Twelve-month outcomes were previously reported. In this study, we report the extended outcomes of the CRAFT study to 36 months.

Methods
Patients with typical AFL and no evidence of AF were randomised 1:1 to cryoballoon PVI or radiofrequency CTI. All patients received an implantable loop recorder (ILR) for continuous cardiac rhythm monitoring. The primary outcome was time-to-symptomatic arrhythmia recurrence > 30 s. Secondary outcomes included time-to-first-AF episode ≥ 2 min. The composite safety outcome included death, stroke and procedural complications.

Results
A total of 113 patients were randomised to cryoballoon PVI (n = 54) or radiofrequency CTI ablation (n = 59). Ninety-one patients reconsented for extended follow-up beyond 12 months. There was no difference in the primary outcome between arms, with the primary outcome occurring in 12 PVI vs 11 CTI patients (HR 0.97; 95% CI 0.43–2.20; p = 0.994). AF ≥ 2 min was significantly less frequent in the PVI arm, affecting 26 PVI vs 36 CTI patients (HR 0.48; 95% CI 0.29–0.79; p = 0.004). The composite safety outcome occurred in 5 PVI and 6 CTI patients (p = 0.755).

Conclusion
Cryoballoon PVI shows similar efficacy to radiofrequency CTI ablation in reducing symptomatic arrhythmia recurrence in patients presenting with isolated typical AFL but significantly reduces the occurrence of subsequent AF.

Graphical Abstract
Exploring the influence of friction in the puncture mechanics of soft solids
Authors: Montanari Matteo , Spagnoli Andrea 
Published: March 2024

AbstractFriction is an ever-present force in our lives, affecting the interaction between objects in numerous ways. The common hypothesis of frictionless contact between a foreign rigid object (needle) and a target material during puncturing leads to a constant penetration force. However, experimental observations reveal a linear increase in penetration force as the needle tip delves deeper. This force increment arises from the interplay of friction and adhesion at needle-solid interface. The present work provides an insight into the measure of friction and adhesion quasi-static characteristics at the needle-solid interface through puncture experiments. To this end, an axisymmetric hyperelastic model is presented to describe the expansion of a cavity under the contact pressure of the penetrating needle. In addition, the competing mechanisms of cavity expansion and mode I cracking during needle penetration in a soft solid are discussed.
Deep Convolutional Neural Network Compression Method: Tensor Ring Decomposition with Variational Bayesian Approach
Authors: Liu Weirong , Zhang Min , Shi Changhong , Zhang Ning , Liu Jie 
Published: March 2024

AbstractDue to deep neural networks (DNNs) a large number of parameters, DNNs increase the demand for computing and storage during training, reasoning and deployment, especially when DNNs stack deeper and wider. Tensor decomposition can not only compress DNN models but also reduce parameters and storage requirements while maintaining high accuracy and performance. About tensor ring (TR) decomposition of tensor decomposition, there are two problems: (1) The practice of setting the TR rank to be equal in TR decomposition results in an unreasonable rank configuration. (2) The training time of selecting rank through iterative processes is time-consuming. To address the two problems, a TR network compression method by Variational Bayesian (TR-VB) is proposed based on the Global Analytic Solution of Empirical Variational Bayesian Matrix Factorization (GAS of EVBMF). The method consists of three steps: (1) rank selection, (2) TR decomposition, and (3) fine-tuning to recover accumulated loss of accuracy. Experimental results show that, for a given network, TR-VB gives the best results in terms of Top-1 accuracy, parameters, and training time under different compression levels. Furthermore, TR-VB validated on CIFAR-10/100 public benchmarks achieves state-of-the-art performance.
PEB-TAXO: Projecting Entities as Boxes for Taxonomy Expansion
Authors: Zhang Yuhang , Qin Jiwei , Feng Chongren 
Published: March 2024

AbstractAs domain knowledge evolves, new concepts (entities) continuously emerge, leading to a decrease in the coverage of existing taxonomies with hierarchical structures, thus necessitating the continual expansion of these taxonomies to include new concepts. Due to the relationships (“contain”, “disjoint”, and “intersect”) between the boxes, which can effectively represent asymmetric hierarchies, box embeddings have been successfully applied in taxonomy expansion. However, existing models that use box embeddings for taxonomy expansion have the following shortcomings: (1) the size of the boxes is not restricted, and the model produces meaningless boxes; (2) the model does not fully utilize the geometric information of the boxes. To address the above shortcomings, this paper proposes a taxonomy expansion model based on projecting entities as boxes: PEB-TAXO. Firstly, PEB-TAXO employs modified L1 regularization to constrain the box sizes in all dimensions, pushing the box sizes towards the preset minimum, thereby avoiding the generation of meaningless boxes by the model. Secondly, the model utilizes a box inclusion inference method: it infers the relationship between two entities through the relationship between two boxes in geometric space, thus fully exploiting the geometric information of the boxes for more accurate inferences. Finally, we conducted extensive experiments on two public datasets and verified that PEB-TAXO greatly improves performance over mainstream taxonomy expansion methods.
Low-order modeling of collective dynamics of four ring-coupled turbulent thermoacoustic oscillators
Authors: Liao Yu , Guan Yu , Liu Peijin , Moon Kihun , Kim Kyu Tae 
Published: March 2024

AbstractWe investigate the low-order modeling of collective dynamics in a can-annular combustor consisting of four ring-coupled turbulent lean-premixed combustors. Each combustor is treated as an individual thermoacoustic oscillator, and the entire combustion system is modeled using four Van der Pol oscillators ring-coupled with dissipative, time-delay, and reactive coupling terms. We show that this model, despite its simplicity, can reproduce many collective dynamics observed in experiments under various combinations of equivalence ratios and combustor lengths, such as 2-can anti-phase synchronization, alternating anti-phase synchronization, pairwise anti-phase synchronization, spinning azimuthal mode, and 4 steady thermoacoustic oscillators. The phase relationship in the majority of cases can be quantitatively modeled. Moreover, by incorporating a reactive coupling term, the model is able to reproduce the frequency shift observed experimentally. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using a simple low-order model to reproduce collective dynamics in complex turbulent combustion systems. This suggests that this model could be used (i) to facilitate the interpretation of experimental data within the synchronization framework, (ii) to identify potential parameter regimes leading to amplitude death, and (iii) to serve as a basis for modeling the collective dynamics observed in more complicated multi-combustors.
Importance of Considering Fed-State Gastrointestinal Physiology in Predicting the Reabsorption of Enterohepatic Circulation of Drugs
Authors: Nakamura Kohei , Kambayashi Atsushi , Onoue Satomi 
Published: March 2024

AbstractPurposeThe purpose of this study was to develop a simulation model for the pharmacokinetics (PK) of drugs undergoing enterohepatic circulation (EHC) with consideration to the environment in the gastrointestinal tract in the fed state in humans. The investigation particularly focused on the necessity of compensating for the permeability rate constant in the reabsorption process in consideration of drug entrapment in bile micelles.MethodsMeloxicam and ezetimibe were used as model drugs. The extent of the entrapment of drugs inside bile micelles was evaluated using the solubility ratio of Fed State Simulated Intestinal Fluid version 2 (FeSSIF-V2) to Fasted State Simulated Intestinal Fluid version 2 (FaSSIF-V2). Prediction accuracy was evaluated using the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) value, calculated from the observed and predicted oral PK profiles.ResultsThe solubilization of ezetimibe by bile micelles was clearly observed while that of meloxicam was not. Assuming that only drugs in the free fraction of micelles permeate through the intestinal membrane, PK simulation for ezetimibe was performed in both scenarios with and without compensation by the permeation rate constant. The MAPE value of Zetia® tablet, containing ezetimibe, was lower with compensation than without compensation. By contrast, Mobic® tablet, containing meloxicam, showed a relatively low MAPE value even without compensation.ConclusionFor drugs which undergo EHC and can be solubilized by bile micelles, compensating for the permeation rate constant in the reabsorption process based on the free fraction ratio appears an important factor in increasing the accuracy of PK profile prediction.