bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
HR‐DO: High reliable–delay optimized controller placement in software‐defined networking
Authors: Thalapala Vidya Sagar , Raguraman Preeth , Guravaiah Koppala 
Published: March 2024

SummaryCurrently, networking technologies are pivoting towards software‐defined networking (SDN) due to its easy management and centralized control system. The SDN network metrics, such as latency, scalability, robustness, and reliability largely depends on controller placement in the network domain. In view of betterment and best progression of network quality, the above mentioned network metrics need to be laid more emphases by considering controller placement. To achieve better network quality, an HR‐DO (high reliable–delay optimized controller placement) is proposed. Fuzzy C‐means, a meta‐heuristic optimization algorithm, is used to optimize the number of controllers required in the network due to its effectiveness in cluster selection. It also eases the network latency. In addition, a minimal cut set‐based Boolean logic approach and natural connectivity metric are used to improve the reliability and robustness of SDN with minimum worst‐case latency. To check the performance, the proposed HR‐DO is implemented on a topology‐zoo network data set (OS3E and Chinanet). For comparison purposes, OCPA and K‐means algorithms are taken into the account of latency, reliability, and robustness as parameters. The performance of the HR‐DO approach outperforms over K‐means and OCPA with respect to latency, reliability, and robustness.
A case of lung FNA with atypical squamous cells
Authors: Helland Timothy Leif , Torous Vanda F. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractFine‐needle aspiration (FNA) is a commonly employed method for initial diagnosis and work‐up of pulmonary nodules. Utilization of rapid on‐site evaluation (ROSE) has the added benefit of allowing for triaging of material as appropriate for ancillary studies including microbiology testing. While many pulmonary lesions are easily categorized by cytologic evaluation, more difficult cases exist. In particular, pulmonary lesions demonstrating atypical squamoid cells can cause diagnostic challenge given the morphologic overlap between benign and malignant pulmonary lesions showing atypical squamoid cells. We herein review these common and uncommon squamoid lesions, which may enter within the differential when encountering atypical squamoid cells in pulmonary FNA specimens with emphasis on morphologic pitfalls and approaches to appropriate categorization.
One‐pot synthesis of phenylacetaldehyde from styrene via metal oxide catalysed oxidation in presence of cumene hydroperoxide
Authors: Das Sudip 
Published: March 2024

AbstractPhenylacetaldehyde (PhA) is an aromatic aldehyde which has a hyacinth‐like floral, sweet and green‐leafy odour. PhA is used as a perfumery chemical and a rate‐controlling additive in cosmeceutical and polymer industries, respectively. The conventional process of PhA manufacturing in industries involve hazardous and costly feedstock and often lead to generation of substantial amount of waste. Moreover, usage of stoichiometric reagents often makes the processes economically impractical. This article illustrates the possibility of production of PhA from low‐cost feedstock styrene through a single‐step, one‐pot method wherein various metal oxides have been utilized as catalysts for styrene oxidation under the influence of cumene hydroperoxide (CHP). Ag2O is found to be the highest PhA‐yielding catalyst and a promising candidate for scaling up for its considerably good reusability up to 6 consecutive uses. A maximum of ~45% PhA selectivity has been observed at ~60% styrene conversion. Interestingly, this process does not require any alkaline/acid wash and hence does not produce any organic/inorganic liquid effluent stream. Furthermore, all the major byproducts found, that is styrene oxide, benzaldehyde and acetophenone, are themselves considered as valorized styrene derivatives. Overall, the metal oxide catalysed styrene oxidation has potential to take over the conventional industrial process(es) for sustainable selective production of PhA Along with a plausible mechanism of styrene oxidation over Ag2O, a conceptualized reaction–separation framework has been reported for intensified production of PhA from CHP‐based styrene oxidation.
Chemogenetic activation of astrocytic Gi signaling promotes spinogenesis and motor functional recovery after stroke
Authors: Wu Chaoran , Li Yu , He Xinran , Sun Hao , Zhang Shiwen , Hou Fengsheng , Hu Mengqiu , Lan Aili , Zhang Hao , Qi Long , Zhang Huibin , Liao Hong 
Published: March 2024

AbstractIschemic stroke is the leading cause of adult disability. The rewiring of surviving neurons is the fundamental process for functional recovery. Accumulating evidence implicates astrocytes in synapses and neural circuits formation, but few studies have further studied how to enhance the effects of astrocytes on synapse and circuits after stroke and its impacts on post‐stroke functional recovery. In this study, we made use of chemogenetics to specifically activate astrocytic Gi signaling in the peri‐infarcted sensorimotor cortex at different time epochs in a mouse model of photothrombotic stroke. We found that early activation of astrocytic hM4Di after stroke by CNO modulates astrocyte activity and upregulates synaptogenic molecules including thrombospondin‐1 (TSP1) as revealed by bulk RNA‐sequencing, but no significant improvement was observed in dendritic spine density and behavioral performance in grid walking test. Interestingly, when the manipulation was initiated at the subacute phase of stroke, the recovery of spine density and motor function could be effectively promoted, accompanied by increased TSP1 expression. Our data highlight the important role of astrocytes in synapse remodeling during the repair phase of stroke and suggest astrocytic Gi signaling activation as a potential strategy for synapse regeneration, circuit rewiring, and functional recovery.
Isotopic offsets in throughfall and stemflow may have small effects on estimates of winter precipitation fractions
Authors: Floriancic Marius G. , Kirchner James W. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractForest canopies alter the amount and isotopic composition of precipitation reaching the forest floor. Thus retention, evaporation and transport processes in forest canopies, and their effects on water isotopes, are key to understanding forest water cycling. Using a two‐year isotope dataset from a mixed beech/spruce forest in Zurich, Switzerland, we assessed the isotopic offsets between precipitation, throughfall and stemflow. We also analysed how these offsets affect estimates of the fraction of soil water that is derived from winter precipitation. Throughfall was typically enriched in heavy isotopes compared to precipitation, but isotopically lighter than stemflow, with average δ2H of −64.3 ‰, −59.9 ‰ and − 56.3 ‰ in precipitation, throughfall and stemflow, respectively. The differences between beech and spruce were rather small compared to the seasonal differences in precipitation isotopes. Isotopic offsets between precipitation and throughfall/stemflow were smaller during the spring and summer months (March through August) than during fall and winter (September through February). Bulk and mobile soil waters at 10 and 40 cm showed smaller seasonal variations than those in precipitation, throughfall and stemflow, and were isotopically lighter than recent precipitation, with the largest offsets occurring during the summer months (June through August) for bulk soil waters. Thus, bulk soil waters at both depths contain a mixture of precipitation from previous events and seasons, with over‐representation of isotopically lighter winter precipitation. Mobile soil waters were more similar to recent precipitation than bulk soil waters were. Throughfall isotopes were slightly heavier than precipitation isotopes, resulting in different sinusoidal fits for seasonal isotopic cycles in precipitation and throughfall. These differences lead to small underestimates in the fraction of soil water originating from winter precipitation, when open‐field precipitation rather than throughfall is used as the input data. Together our results highlight the importance of isotope measurements in throughfall and stemflow for the assessment of precipitation seasonality and water cycling across forested landscapes.
Tree species composition affects litter eco‐hydrological function in Pinus massoniana conifer‐broadleaf mixed forest stands in southwest China
Authors: Tang Xue‐Ya , Xu Ming , Wang Xiao‐Ding , Zhang Jian 
Published: March 2024

AbstractAlthough changes in tree species composition profoundly affect the structure, function, and processes of mixed forest ecosystems, there is limited knowledge on the effects of these changes on the hydrological functions of the litter layer in Pinus massoniana conifer‐broadleaf mixed forests in subtropical mountains. Here, we investigated three typical P. massoniana forest stands in southwest China: P. massoniana‐Liquidambar formosana conifer‐deciduous broadleaf mixed forest (Pm + Lf), P. massoniana‐Castanopsis eyrei conifer‐evergreen broadleaf mixed forest (Pm + Ce), and P. massoniana plantation (Pm), and conducted field investigations (litter composition and mass) and indoor immersion experiments to analyse the litter water‐holding capacity (LWHC) of forest stands in their natural state and with artificial ratios combining mixed (needle‐leaf and broad‐leaf) litters. The total litter mass did not significantly differ among the three forest stands (p > 0.05), but significant differences were observed in the needle‐leaf (0.67–2.92 t hm−2), broad‐leaf (0.32–1.89 t hm−2) and bark (0.11–0.34 t hm−2) masses in the undecomposed layer. The LWHC of different stand types was in the order of Pm + Lf > Pm + Ce > Pm. The maximum water‐holding capacity of different artificial ratios of mixed litters was positively proportional to the broad‐leaf mass and inversely proportional to the needle‐leaf mass, and the P. massoniana‐L. formosana mixed litter had a higher maximum water‐holding capacity than the P. massoniana‐C. eyrei mixed litter. The LWHC of mixed forests is mainly influenced by stand structure (tree composition) and litter characteristics, and is positively correlated with leaf area, thickness, dry matter content, and surface roughness. This study revealed that the LWHC can be significantly affected by different P. massoniana stands in subtropical mountains. This study will aid the sustainable and ecological management of forest in subtropical mountains, and P. massoniana plantations should be gradually converted into mixed conifer‐broadleaf forests with greater LWHC and buffering capacity.
Numerical assessment of hydro‐morphodynamics affected by altered upstream discharge in the Dujiangyan reach of the Min River, China
Authors: Wang Xie‐Kang , Cheng Kai , Luo Ming , Xu Ze‐Xing , Yan Xu‐Feng 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, a globally well‐known hydraulic engineering project, is significant for the Chengdu Plain. In recent years, due to water supply scarcity in the Chengdu Plain and increasing flood disasters in the Min River, the Moertan Reservoir was constructed to alleviate these pressures. The construction resulted in a mid‐reach embankment along the Min River that forced channel narrowing and triggered changes in channel morphology, flow and bedload transport. This study utilised field measurements coupled with physical and numerical models to simulate the resulting characteristics of flow, bedload transport and topographic change for different flood frequencies in the Dujiangyan reach following emplacement of the Moertan Reservoir. The results indicated that following extensive hydraulic regulation, the flow‐bedload transport characteristics and morphodynamics exhibited similar behaviours across different flood frequencies. The presence of a mid‐channel gravel‐cobble shoal (GCS) divided the flow into multiple branches, with the right branch systematically dominating flow and bedload transport across all flood frequencies. Further downstream, the Fish Mouth Levee effectively diverted nearly equal amounts of flow through the Inner and Outer rivers. In contrast, approximately 20% and 80% of the bedload was transported through the Inner and Outer rivers, respectively. The findings were beneficial in providing a reference for the flood season management of the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project and the maintenance of associated hydraulic engineering projects.
D‐Unet: A symmetric architecture of convolutional neural network with two auxiliary outputs for dementia recognition
Authors: Li Siying , Xia Pan , Zou Yonggang , Du Lidong , Li Zhenfeng , Wang Peng , Chen Xianxiang , Chen Yundai , Shi Yajun , Fang Zhen 
Published: March 2024

AbstractDementia‐associated disorders cause damage to the brains of patients and bring huge burdens to individuals and families. Electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring is friendly to patients on account of low cost, non‐invasion, and objective. Event‐related potential (ERP) is a component of EEG that has huge potential to evaluate the cognitive function of the brain. In this study, we recorded the ERP from patients with dementia and healthy people, then proposed an ERP‐based deep learning method to realize dementia recognition via the model Dementia‐Unet (D‐Unet). To improve the performance of the model, on the base of the decoder and the primary classifier, we added new structures including a symmetric decoder and two auxiliary outputs. One of the auxiliary outputs was input reconstruction, and the other one was aimed at working like the primary classifier with the same task. The results of the experiment of four‐fold cross‐validation demonstrated the two auxiliary outputs improved the performance of the model effectively. When compared with some other machine learning methods and deep learning methods, our model obtained the best performance with an accuracy of 0.815, a precision of 0.829, a recall of 0.797, and an f1‐score of 0.812. Besides, we put up a complex training strategy with all outputs involved, but a simple testing strategy with only a primary classifier working to keep high performance but cut down the complexity burden during testing.
An adaptive weight search method based on the Grey wolf optimizer algorithm for skin lesion ensemble classification
Authors: Liu Luzhou , Zhang Xiaoxia , Xu Zhinan 
Published: March 2024

AbstractSkin cancer is a common type of malignant tumor that poses a serious threat to patients' lives and health, especially melanoma. It may spread to other body parts, resulting in serious complications and death. In the medical field, accurate identification of skin lesion images is crucial for diagnosing different diseases. However, due to the similarity between different skin lesions, it brings some challenges to medical diagnosis. In this paper, a novel Ensemble Learning Model (EL‐DLOA) based on deep learning and optimization algorithms is proposed, which uses four different deep neural network architectures to generate confidence levels for classes, and optimization algorithms are used to integrate these confidence levels to make the final predictions. To ensure the model's accuracy and reliability, it is first trained using three different learning rates to find the best classification performance of the model. Then, a new search method based on the grey wolf optimization algorithm is proposed to enhance the grey wolf search efficiency. The method improves the search mechanism by changing the grey wolf's individual position through random perturbation or adaptive mutation, which solves the problem that the grey wolf algorithm is easy to fall into local optimum. Finally, four different ensemble strategies are used to reduce individual model bias in the classification process. The proposed model is trained and evaluated using the publicly available dataset HAM10000. The experimental results show that the improved grey wolf optimization algorithm effectively avoids the premature convergence problem and improves the search combination efficiency. Furthermore, in the ensemble methods, the adaptive weight average ensemble strategy effectively improves the classification performance, yielding accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores of 0.888, 0.837, 0.897, and 0.862, respectively. These metrics show varying degrees of improvement over the best performing single model. In general, the results indicate that the proposed method achieves high accuracy and practicality in skin lesion classification. Our model shows excellent performance in comparison with other existing models, which makes it significant for research and application in dermatology diagnosis.
Zinc‐doped hydroxyapatite as a pH responsive drug delivery system for anticancer drug 6‐mercaptopurine
Authors: Jakubowski Marcel , Majchrzycki Łukasz , Zarkov Aleksej , Voelkel Adam , Sandomierski Mariusz 
Published: March 2024

Abstract6‐Mercaptopurine (6MP) is commonly used in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia as an important agent in maintenance therapy. Despite its therapeutic benefits, 6MP has some limitations during therapy. Taking into account the disadvantages during 6MP therapy, there is a great need to create an appropriate delivery system for this drug. 6MP contains in its structure nitrogen and sulfur atoms capable of forming coordination compounds with metal ions, for example zinc. Therefore, in this work, we prepared biocompatible hydroxyapatite (HAp) doped with zinc ions, and used it as a carrier for 6MP. Doped HAp has not been used as a carrier for this drug before. The work proved that the prepared carrier‐drug system has a particle size of about 130 nm, which indicates its potential for intravenous delivery. In addition, in an acidic environment (imitating cancer cells), the carrier agglomerates allow targeted release of the drug. The drug is evenly distributed, which indicates that the doses released from it will always be comparable. The release of the drug in a neutral environment is long‐lasting in controlled doses, whereas in an acidic environment it is immediate. The obtained results indicate the high potential of the material in both slow‐release and cancer‐targeted release of 6MP.
Geographic variation in incubation temperatures promoting viable offspring production in broadly co‐distributed turtles
Authors: Cordero Gerardo A. , Balk Michelle L. , Pérez‐González César E. , Solberg Lisa M. , Doody Jeremiah Sean , Plummer Michael V. , Janzen Fredric J. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractOrganisms whose early life stages are environmentally sensitive produce offspring within a relatively narrow range of suitable abiotic conditions. In reptiles, development rate and survival are often maximized if incubation temperatures remain under 31°C, though this upper bound may vary within and among species. We addressed this expectation by comparing responses to egg incubation at 30°C versus 33°C in congeneric turtle species pairs with broad syntopic geographic distributions. In the two softshell turtles (Apalone spp.), the greatest changes in development rate and phenotypic variance were observed in the northernmost population, which had a low survival rate (40%) at 33°C. The presumably suboptimal temperature (33°C) for northern populations otherwise yielded 76%–93% survival rates and fast swimming speeds in more southern populations. Still, in one species, northern hatchlings incubated at 33°C matched the elevated speeds of their southern counterparts, revealing a countergradient response. In northern populations of the two map turtles (Graptemys spp.), survival was also reduced (28%–60%) at 33°C and the development rate (relative to 30°C) increased by up to 75%. Our experiments on divergent taxa with similar nesting ecologies substantiate that the optimal thermal range for offspring production is variable. These findings encourage further work on how population‐ and species‐level differences relate to local adaptation in widely distributed oviparous species.
Use of virtual reality in patient education program to reduce anxiety in upper gastrointestinal endoscopy: A randomized controlled trial
Authors: Siripongsaporn Surachet , Yongsiriwit Karn , Tantitanawat Kittithat , Chirapongsathorn Sakkarin 
Published: March 2024

AbstractBackground and AimVirtual reality (VR) provides an immersive image‐viewing experience that has recently been expanding its use in clinical medicine. We aimed to examine a patient education program by VR to reduce anxiety in patients undergoing esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD).MethodsWe conducted a randomized controlled trial and consecutively enrolled patients who had an indication for unsedated EGD with topical anesthesia. Patients were randomly assigned to use Oculus GO with three‐dimensionally specific software content (a stand‐alone VR headset) for patient education or standard patient education using oral information (the control group) before EGD. The primary outcome was the variation in anxiety scores before and after patient education programs.ResultsA total of 107 patients underwent EGD and received a VR (n = 58) and control (n = 49) patient education program. The mean anxiety score before starting the patient education program was 41.4 9.6 in the VR group and 41.9 7.7 in the control group. The mean anxiety score after the patient education program was 37.1 10.8 in the VR group and 38.9 8.07 in the control group (P‐value = 0.354). The anxiety score in the VR group decreased more than in the control group but was not significant. The recall questionnaire scores were higher in the VR group (4.70.4) than the control group (3.91, P‐value 0.001).ConclusionA virtual reality‐assisted patient education program before EGD did not significantly reduce anxiety but may provide more memory and understanding about the procedure to patients who underwent unsedated EGD.
Long‐term variability and trends of meteorological droughts in Ukraine
Authors: Semenova Inna , Vicente‐Serrano Sergio M. 
Published: March 2024

AbstractThe purpose of this research is to identify changes in the spatiotemporal distribution and severity of meteorological droughts in Ukraine between 1946 and 2020. In order to determine the role of precipitation and atmospheric evaporative demand on drought severity, two drought indices were applied for comparative analysis: the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and the standardized evaporation precipitation index (SPEI). Both indices were calculated on 3‐ and 12‐month timescales. The gridded dataset of monthly air temperature and atmospheric precipitation for Ukraine with high spatial resolution (0.1° × 0.1°), developed in the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, was used. Results of time series analysis of drought indices showed at least 20 episodes, in which more than 25% of the territory of Ukraine was affected by drought of varying intensity. Trends show an increase in drought severity determined mostly by a strong observed increase in the atmospheric evaporative demand. Tendencies towards an increase in the duration and intensity of droughts were observed mainly in the southwestern, central and northern regions of Ukraine. The main cause of the increase was droughts in spring and summer. The temporal analysis of the spatial distribution of areas affected by drought during the identified main drought episodes showed different patterns in drought propagation across the territory of Ukraine.