bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
When the host’s away, the pathogen will play: the protective role of the skin microbiome during hibernation
Authors: Troitsky T. S. , Laine V. N. , Lilley T. M. 
Published: December 2023

AbstractThe skin of animals is enveloped by a symbiotic microscopic ecosystem known as the microbiome. The host and microbiome exhibit a mutualistic relationship, collectively forming a single evolutionary unit sometimes referred to as a holobiont. Although the holobiome theory highlights the importance of the microbiome, little is known about how the skin microbiome contributes to protecting the host. Existing studies focus on humans or captive animals, but research in wild animals is in its infancy. Specifically, the protective role of the skin microbiome in hibernating animals remains almost entirely overlooked. This is surprising, considering the massive population declines in hibernating North American bats caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans, which causes white-nose syndrome. Hibernation offers a unique setting in which to study the function of the microbiome because, during torpor, the host’s immune system becomes suppressed, making it susceptible to infection. We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature on the protective role of the skin microbiome in non-human animals. We selected 230 publications that mentioned pathogen inhibition by microbes residing on the skin of the host animal. We found that the majority of studies were conducted in North America and focused on the bacterial microbiome of amphibians infected by the chytrid fungus. Despite mentioning pathogen inhibition by the skin microbiome, only 30.4% of studies experimentally tested the actual antimicrobial activity of symbionts. Additionally, only 7.8% of all publications studied defensive cutaneous symbionts during hibernation. With this review, we want to highlight the knowledge gap surrounding skin microbiome research in hibernating animals. For instance, research looking to mitigate the effects of white-nose syndrome in bats should focus on the antifungal microbiome of Palearctic bats, as they survive exposure to the Pseudogymnoascus destructans -pathogen during hibernation. We also recommend future studies prioritize lesser-known microbial symbionts, such as fungi, and investigate the effects of a combination of anti-pathogen microbes, as both areas of research show promise as probiotic treatments. By incorporating the protective skin microbiome into disease mitigation strategies, conservation efforts can be made more effective.
Systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt treated with transcatheter arterial embolization and subsequent lung segmentectomy
Authors: Notsuda Hirotsugu , Tomiyama Fumiko , Onodera Ken , Watanabe Tatsuaki , Watanabe Yui , Oishi Hisashi , Niikawa Hiromichi , Inoue Chihiro , Ota Hideki , Noda Masafumi , Okada Yoshinori 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Background
Systemic-to-pulmonary artery shunt (SPAS) is a rare condition that can occur as a result of congenital heart disease or chronic pulmonary inflammation, occasionally leading to life-threatening hemoptysis. Computed tomography (CT) imaging is crucial in the diagnosis of SPAS, and the optimal management approach for SPAS remains uncertain. This case report presents a novel approach to the treatment of SPAS, consisting of transcatheter arterial embolization of the systemic artery followed by lung segmentectomy.

Case presentation
A 42-year-old man with abnormal chest findings was referred to us and a diagnosis of SPAS was established based on the CT findings showing a blood flow regurgitation from the dilated left 4th intercostal artery to the Lt. A6. The patient was asymptomatic but we decided to treat him to prevent a risk of future hemoptysis. Transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) of systemic arteries followed by S6 segmentectomy was successfully performed with minimal blood loss and complete removal of the dilated intra-pulmonary blood vessels. Histological analysis confirmed the diagnosis of SPAS.

Conclusion
We reported a case of SPAS, who was successfully treated with the combination of TAE and subsequent segmentectomy. The blood loss during surgery was minimal and this strategy appeared to minimize future recanalization and hemoptysis. Further studies and long-term follow-up of SPAS patients are required to establish standardized management guidelines for this rare condition.
Financial Toxicity and Quality of Life in Patients Undergoing Stem-Cell Transplant Evaluation: A Single-Center Analysis
Authors: Hussaini S.M. Qasim , Ren Yi , Racioppi Alessandro , Lew Meagan V. , Bohannon Lauren , Johnson Ernaya , Li Yan , Thompson Jillian C. , Henshall Bethany , Darby Maurisa , Choi Taewoong , Lopez Richard D. , Sarantopoulos Stefanie , Gasparetto Cristina , Long Gwynn D. , Horwitz Mitchell E. , Chao Nelson J. , Zafar S. Yousuf , Sung Anthony D. 
Published: December 2023

PURPOSE We investigated the prevalence of financial toxicity in a population undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) evaluation and measured its impact on post-transplant clinical and health-related quality-of-life outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a prospective study in patients undergoing evaluation for allogeneic HCT between January 1, 2018, and September 23, 2020, at a large academic medical center. Financial health was measured via a baseline survey and the comprehensive score for financial toxicity-functional assessment of chronic illness therapy (COST-FACIT) survey. The cohort was divided into three groups: none (grade 0), mild (grade 1), and moderate-high financial toxicity (grades 2-3). Health-related quality of life outcomes were measured at multiple time points. Multivariate logistic regression analysis evaluated factors associated with financial toxicity. Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank tests was used to evaluate overall survival (OS) and nonrelapse survival. RESULTS Of 245 patients evaluated for transplant, 176 (71.8%) completed both questionnaires (median age was 57 years, 63.1% were male, 72.2% were White, and 39.2% had myelodysplastic syndrome, 38.1% leukemia, and 13.6% lymphoma). At initial evaluation, 83 (47.2%) patients reported no financial toxicity, 51 (29.0%) with mild, and 42 (23.9%) with moderate-high financial toxicity. Patients with financial toxicity reported significant cost-cutting behaviors, including reduced spending on food or clothing, using their savings, or not filling a prescription because of costs ( P < .0001). Quality of life was lower in patients with moderate-high financial toxicity at 6 months ( P = .0007) and 1 year ( P = .0075) after transplant. Older age (>62; odds ratio [OR], 0.33 [95% CI, 0.13 to 0.79]; P = .04) and income ≥$60,000 in US dollars (USD) (OR, 0.17 [95% CI, 0.08 to 0.38]; P < .0001) were associated with lower odds of financial toxicity. No association was noted between financial toxicity and selection for transplant, OS, or nonrelapse mortality. CONCLUSION Financial toxicity was highly correlated with patient-reported changes in compensatory behavior, with notable impact on patient quality of life after transplant.
Non-standard Wigner doublets
Authors: da Silva Barbosa F. A. , Hoff da Silva J. M. 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Guided by a conservative formulation in investigating the physical content of quantum fields, we explore non-standard Wigner classes of particles that could provide the basis for self-interaction models to dark matter. We critically contrast the analysis with long-standing constraints to non-standard Wigner classes in the literature to discuss the model's viability.
Melatonin Does Not Affect the Stress-Induced Phase Shifts of Peripheral Clocks in Male Mice
Authors: Kong Xiangpan , Meerlo Peter , Hut Roelof A 
Published: December 2023

Abstract
Repeated or chronic stress can change the phase of peripheral circadian rhythms. Melatonin (Mel) is thought to be a circadian clock-controlled signal that might play a role in synchronizing peripheral rhythms, in addition to its direct suppressing effects on the stress axis. In this study we test whether Mel can reduce the social-defeat stress–induced phase shifts in peripheral rhythms, either by modulating circadian phase or by modulating the stress axis. Two experiments were performed with male Mel-deficient C57BL/6J mice carrying the circadian reporter gene construct (PER2::LUC). In the first experiment, mice received night-restricted (ZT11-21) Mel in their drinking water, resulting in physiological levels of plasma Mel peaking in the early dark phase. This treatment facilitated re-entrainment of the activity rhythm to a shifted light-dark cycle, but did not prevent the stress-induced (ZT21-22) reduction of activity during stress days. Also, this treatment did not attenuate the phase-delaying effects of stress in peripheral clocks in the pituitary, lung, and kidney. In a second experiment, pituitary, lung, and kidney collected from naive mice (ZT22-23), were treated with Mel, dexamethasone (Dex), or a combination of the two. Dex application affected PER2 rhythms in the pituitary, kidney, and lung by changing period, phase, or both. Administering Mel did not influence PER2 rhythms nor did it alleviate Dex-induced delays in PER2 rhythms in those tissues. We conclude that exogenous Mel is insufficient to affect peripheral PER2 rhythms and reduce stress effects on locomotor activity and phase changes in peripheral tissues.
Ecological and morphological correlates of visual acuity in birds
Authors: Caves Eleanor M. , Fernández-Juricic Esteban , Kelley Laura A. 
Published: December 2023

ABSTRACTBirds use their visual systems for important tasks, such as foraging and predator detection, that require them to resolve an image. However, visual acuity (the ability to perceive spatial detail) varies by two orders of magnitude across birds. Prior studies indicate that eye size and aspects of a species' ecology may drive variation in acuity, but these studies have been restricted to small numbers of species. We used a literature review to gather data on acuity measured either behaviorally or anatomically for 94 species from 38 families. We then examined how acuity varies in relation to (1) eye size, (2) habitat spatial complexity, (3) habitat light level, (4) diet composition, (5) prey mobility and (6) foraging mode. A phylogenetically controlled model including all of the above factors as predictors indicated that eye size and foraging mode are significant predictors of acuity. Examining each ecological variable in turn revealed that acuity is higher in species whose diet comprises vertebrates or scavenged food and whose foraging modes require resolving prey from farther away. Additionally, species that live in spatially complex, vegetative habitats have lower acuity than expected for their eye sizes. Together, our results suggest that the need to detect important objects from far away – such as predators for species that live in open habitats, and food items for species that forage on vertebrate and scavenged prey – has likely been a key driver of higher acuity in some species, helping us to elucidate how visual capabilities may be adapted to an animal's visual needs.
TOURISM MARKET IN THE WORLD AND IN RUSSIA: MODERN STATE AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS
Authors: Safronova Tatyana N. , Yabrova Olga A. , Shitova Darina D. , Khaneeva Milena A. 
Published: December 2023

Tourism plays a significant role in the GDP, job creation, and employment in many countries. According to the statistics of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and Oxford Economics, there was a rapid recovery in the tourism sector in 2022, with its contribution to the global GDP increasing by 22% on an annual basis, reaching $7.7 trillion US dollars. There is a direct link between the trends in the development of the tourism industry and overall economic, technical, and social achievements. In recent years, the structure of tourist flows to the Russian Federation has changed significantly due to geopolitical and socio-economic factors.
The aim of this research is to analyze the development of tourism in the post-pandemic period, taking into account the impact of international sanctions against Russia and restrictions on the travel of Russian citizens abroad.
The objects of the study were tourist flows, their structure and dynamics, as well as a quantitative assessment of the entities and actors associated with tourism activities.
This work is based on the authors’ own research and data provided by state statistics. Statistical methods and methods of general scientific research, including observation, data collection, and comparison of two or more objects to identify common and distinctive features, were used for analysis.
Results. The paper presents economic indicators of the hospitality industry’s development, analyzes statistical indicators of the hospitality market for the years 2018-2022 and their structure. Problems and current trends in the development of the tourism and hotel markets in the Russian Federation are identified.
Application of results. The results can be applied in the scientific and practical activities of regional authorities in addressing issues related to the development of international and domestic tourism.
PROBLEMS OF REALIZATION OF THE STATE FINANCIAL CONTROL OVER THE USE BUDGETARY FUNDS
Authors: Fedotkina Lyubov S. 
Published: December 2023

State financial control over the use of budgetary funds is an important component of the financial policy of the state, providing its financial stability, which directly depends on the organization and activities of various bodies of control over the use of financial resources of the state.
A significant number of studies are devoted to the analysis of activity of bodies of state financial control over the use of budgetary funds, where it is pointed out that there are a number of problems in our country, which need to be solved.
The purpose of the research. To reveal the problems of realization of the state financial control over the use of budgetary funds and to offer ways of their solution
Materials and methods. General scientific and special methods of cognition (scientific-theoretical and scientific-practical analysis, method of legal and comparative-legal characteristics, method of research and comparison, method of generalization, separation of selection, method of synthesis and analysis, method of critical analysis). The information base of this work is the materials of theoretical and scientific research (scientific articles, monographs, dissertations and reports).
Results. The problems of realization of the state financial control over the use of budgetary funds, revealed in the work, lead to a decrease in the quality of the control activities themselves. As a result, it leads to violations of budgetary legislation, including in the part of budgetary funds utilization.
Ways of their solution were proposed, namely in the need to create in the Russian Federation a unified system of financial control for all authorized bodies, in their full interaction, which will function on the basis of a unified regulatory framework, on the basis of the law on state financial control, standardization of control.
Scope of application of the results. The obtained conclusions can be used in the course of work from planning to issuing the results of inspections by financial control bodies.
Recommendations. Efficiency and effectiveness of the state financial control over the use of budgetary funds directly depends on the level of its legal regulation, organization and systematization. Realization of measures on elimination of problems of realization of the state financial control over use of budgetary means will be the key to successful realization of economic policy in Russia.
CHOOSING METRICS FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER’S SCRUM TEAMS
Authors: Klinkov Evgeny V. 
Published: December 2023

Background. There are many books about software development, slightly fewer books about software development team’s management, and very little about work metrics of software development teams. Existing developers scrum team metrics definition practices were analyzed in this article and common rules were proposed. Application of the rules will allow implementing the Pareto principle in the choosing and using of metrics in developer’s scrum teams.
Methods. General scientific methods such as the analysis of Russian-language and foreign thematic literature, comparative analysis, induction and analogy were used.
Results. The result of the article is an ordered action plan, using of which makes it possible to most effectively evaluate the work of the developer’s scrum team. The target audience of the article is wide. Managers of different levels (from the team manager or scrum master to the head of the department) can use the described approach to create metrics for their departments. Developers will be able to better understand how managers see their work and take this into account in their work.
Conclusion. Software developer typical tasks are divided into technical stages. When allocating metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of each stage, the risk of local optimizations increased. In addition, if the area of responsibility of the manager shifts from the whole to the part, from the efficiency of the company to the efficiency of the business unit, then the risk of choosing the wrong metrics increases many times. Metrics that evaluate a partial result are considered incorrect – they relate to a part of the functionality, a division within the company, etc. As a result, the likelihood of making a management decision in accordance with the interests of the division, rather than the company or the product as a whole, increases. For this reason, the use of private metrics should be avoided.
FORMATION OF PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCES OF INTERNATIONAL-RELATIONS STUDENTS BY USING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN AUTONOMOUS WORK
Authors: Kalita Anna V. 
Published: December 2023

Purpose. The article is devoted to the analysis of the specifics of the process of forming professionally significant competencies in the training of future international affairs specialists and to the analysis of how the resource of digital technologies used in the process of independent work influences the formation of professional and personal competencies. This problem is revealed using the example of the Chinese language.
Methodology. Fundamental to the research is a systematic approach; main theoretical research methods are analysis, synthesis, deduction
Results. The article substantiates the role of independent work in the formation of professional competencies. The study allows us to draw conclusions about the need to use digital technologies in the process of independent work in order to develop the professional competencies of students. The author offers a number of educational resources that allow you to effectively integrate digital technologies into the independent work of international relations students, taking into account the specifics of Chinese language.
Practical implications. The results can be used in the practice of teaching international specialists, especially studying Chinese.
A Quarter Century of Change in Family and Gender-Role Attitudes in Hungary
Authors: Spéder Zsolt 
Published: December 2023

Our study examines how attitudes towards family and gender roles have changed since the ultimate collapse of communism in Hungary. With respect to evaluating the effects of the regime change, it is important to note that Hungary is unique in having pre-transition measures on attitudes from the International Social Survey Program. In analyzing the nature of value shifts, an arithmetic method that decomposes the changes into population turnover and individual (period) components is used. According to the results, period effects fluctuated over the quarter of century, while the population turnover effects point continuously and clearly towards liberalization of family and gender-role attitudes. Since the period effects were usually stronger, they shaped the fluctuating nature of overall change. Namely, there is a clear trend towards re-traditionalization immediately following the regime change and liberalization thereafter, although there are also signs of continued support for traditional values. The series of repeated modules of the ISSP allowed us to examine a key premise of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) theory in the case of Hungary. We concluded that the detected direction of the attitude change does not support the examined premise of the SDT.
* This article belongs to a special issue on “Demographic Developments in Eastern and Western Europe Before and After the Transformation of Socialist Countries”.
Supervised ML for Solving the GI/GI/1 Queue
Authors: Baron Opher , Krass Dmitry , Senderovich Arik , Sherzer Eliran 
Published: December 2023

We apply supervised learning to a general problem in queueing theory: using a neural net, we develop a fast and accurate predictor of the stationary system-length distribution of a GI/GI/1 queue—a fundamental queueing model for which no analytical solutions are available. To this end, we must overcome three main challenges: (i) generating a large library of training instances that cover a wide range of arbitrary interarrival and service time distributions, (ii) labeling the training instances, and (iii) providing continuous arrival and service distributions as inputs to the neural net. To overcome (i), we develop an algorithm to sample phase-type interarrival and service time distributions with complex transition structures. We demonstrate that our distribution-generating algorithm indeed covers a wide range of possible positive-valued distributions. For (ii), we label our training instances via quasi-birth-and-death(QBD) that was used to approximate PH/PH/1 (with phase-type arrival and service process) as labels for the training data. For (iii), we find that using only the first five moments of both the interarrival and service times distribution as inputs is sufficient to train the neural net. Our empirical results show that our neural model can estimate the stationary behavior of the GI/GI/1—far exceeding other available methods in terms of both accuracy and runtimes. History: Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science and Machine Learning. Funding: O. Baron received financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NERC) [Grant 458051]. D. Krass received financial support from the NERC [Grant 458395]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information ( https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0263 ) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository ( https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0263 ). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/ .