bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The role of imaging in detecting and monitoring COVID-19 complications in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) setting
Authors: Brandi Nicolò , Renzulli Matteo 
Published: January 2024

AbstractCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Most people infected with the virus experience mild to moderate respiratory illness. However, some might become seriously ill and may develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), thus requiring non-invasive or invasive mechanical ventilation. Furthermore, COVID-19 disease can involve also other organs and systems, causing several extra-pulmonary manifestations and, thus, negatively influencing the patient’s outcome. Imaging studies play a pivotal role in the monitoring of severely ill patients, especially those admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), who can develop several potentially life-threatening complications, both from the infection itself and the mechanical supporting system. This widespread utility of imaging modalities calls for a deeper understanding of potential radiologic findings in this disease and the need for multidisciplinary collaboration between radiologists and anesthesiologists to provide actionable guidance to appropriate interventions under such conditions.
Analytical study on the relationship among land surface temperature, land use/land cover and spectral indices using geospatial techniques
Authors: Tiwari Atul K. , Kanchan Rolee 
Published: January 2024

AbstractMonitoring changes in Land Use/Land Cover (LULC), spectral indices, and Land Surface Temperature (LST) can help to identify the areas at risk for indefensible land use, a low-grade environment, and especially urban heat islands (UHI). This study aims to examine the changing pattern of LULC, the dynamics of geospatial indices (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalised Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Normalised Difference Water Index (NDWI), Normalised Difference Bareness Index (NDBaI), and Normalised Difference Latent-heat Index (NDLI)), and LST patterns with the relationship among them between 1991 and 2021 in the Varanasi City Development Region (VCDR). The LULC classification was done into seven classes (using the maximum likelihood method), the LST has been retrieved, and the above spectral indices have been calculated using Landsat 5 and 8 data. Pearson’s correlation method was used to analyse the relationship between LST and spectral indices. As per result, built-up area was increased by 507.8 per cent consequently, water bodies, agricultural, barren, fallow land and vegetation cover were declined by 4.84, 18.68, 82.41, 26.18 and 22.16 per cent respectively during 1991–2021. The maximum, minimum, and mean LST increased by 6.18, 2.28, and 2.24 °C, respectively, throughout the period. A positive relationship has been observed among NDBI, NDBaI, NDLI, and LST, whereas NDVI, NDWI, and LST have an inverse relationship. The finding explains the high number of water bodies, healthy vegetation cover, sufficient open space, and less concrete surface are necessary to maintain the LST and its related problems. So, an SPURS plan has been proposed to maintain the thermal environment of VCDR. This study can be a useful guide for planners and policymakers by providing a scientific background as well as the suggestions for sustainable urban management and development in VCDR and other cities as well.
Public Health and Health System’s Responsiveness During the 2022 Floods in Pakistan: What Needs to Be Done?
Authors: Abdullah Muhammad Ahmed , Shaikh Babar Tasneem , Sikander Ameer , Sarwar Balaj 
Published: January 2024

Abstract

Objective:
In 2022, Pakistan witnessed unprecedented flooding, submerging one-third of the country under-water, ruining millions of houses, taking lives, afflicted injuries, and displacing scores of people. Our study documents not only the public health problems that have arisen due to this natural calamity but also the state of health systems’ response.

Methods:
We conducted a qualitative study asking key questions around prevalent health problems, health-care seeking, government’s response, resource mobilization, and roadmap for the future. We purposively selected 16 key frontline health workers for in-depth interviews.

Results:
Waterborne and infectious diseases were rampant posing huge public health challenges. Disaster mitigation efforts and relief operations were delayed and not at scale to cover the entire affected population. Moreover, a weak economy, poverty, and insufficient livelihoods compounded the tribulations of floods. Issues of leadership and governance at state level resulted in disorganized efforts and response.

Conclusions:
Pakistan is famous for its philanthropy; however, lack of transparency and accountability, the actual benefits seldom reach the beneficiaries. Such climatic disasters necessitate a more holistic approach and a greater responsiveness of the health system. In addition to health services, the state must respond to financial, social, and infrastructural needs of the people suffering from the calamity.
Political Institutions and Long-Term Policymaking: How Parliamentary Future Committees Can Make a Difference
Authors: Koskimaa Vesa , Raunio Tapio 
Published: January 2024

AbstractResponding to the need to make democratic governance more anticipatory, during recent decades parliaments have increasingly made efforts to involve elected legislators directly in addressing future risks and envisioning long-term developments. At the level of general democratic-institutional principles, engaging legislators in national-level foresight is expected to enhance the general legitimacy of future-regarding policymaking almost automatically by broadening the scope of democratic actors involved in policy work. However, even the basic mechanisms through which the impact of legislature-based foresight activities could traverse to policymaking remain largely uncharted and unknown. To develop a preliminary framework for detecting and comparing such mechanisms, we draw from the experiences of the most institutionalised and influential legislature-based foresight unit, the Committee for the Future in the Finnish Eduskunta. We extract three general mechanisms through which parliamentary future committees could make a valuable contribution to national-level strategic foresight: (1) they can improve the quality of future-regarding policymaking by broadening and consolidating national foresight “ecosystems”; (2) they can strengthen the transparency and accountability of the foresight work of political executives; and (3) they can enhance the legitimacy of anticipatory governance by connecting broader democratic publics to foresight work through more inclusive participatory processes.
Using interprofessional collaboration to reduce reported rates of central-line–associated bloodstream infection in an intensive care setting
Authors: Musgrove Hannah , Ruby Abigail , Chami Eman , Pollak Edward , Suleyman Geehan , Gupta Arielle 
Published: January 2024

AbstractUsing a multicomponent approach that included blood-culture stewardship, evaluation for secondary sources of bloodstream infection, improved documentation, and prompt central-line removal, an interprofessional team improved patient care and reduced central-line–associated bloodstream infection rates in collaboration with the primary team on the surgical intensive care unit.
Welfare regimes in twenty-first-century Latin America
Authors: Ferre Juan Cruz 
Published: January 2024

AbstractA growing scholarship has documented changes in welfare policy in twenty-first-century Latin America, but no study yet has offered a systematic assessment, using a welfare regime approach, that captures the main trends across countries and over time. For a sample of 17 countries, this study offers a comprehensive tool to measure shifts in social policy regimes, highlighting three dimensions of welfare – inclusion, generosity, and equity – across four policy areas: transfers, health care, education, and family policies. Countries made significant progress in generosity and inclusion, but none improved equity. A cluster analysis based on the three dimensions of welfare offers a new, more precise classification of Latin American countries in welfare regimes in 2002 and 2017. Although the analysis shows minor shifts in country groupings, an increasing reliance on social assistance policies, particularly among the most advanced countries, marks a shift towards what I call compensatory regimes.
Canada's Lobbying Industry: Business and Public Interest Advocacy from Harper to Trudeau
Authors: Graham Nicolas , Evans Bryan , Chen David 
Published: January 2024

AbstractThis article provides an empirical overview of federal lobbying in Canada, examining lobbying contacts by field and sector from 2011 to 2022. We track shifts in lobbying representation over this period, including across Harper Conservative and Trudeau Liberal administrations. The study reveals the dominance of business interests in lobbying in Canada and a high level of lobbying concentration. By sector, export-oriented industries with high environmental and climatic impacts—namely, agriculture, fossil fuel and manufacturing industries—predominate. With the transition to Trudeau, we find a significant increase in overall rates of lobbying and a modest increase in the ratio of public interest representation. Overall, the lobbying industry is characterized by greater access but unequal voice.
Representation and Partisanship: What Determines the Topics That Members of Parliament Prioritize in Communications with Their Constituents?
Authors: Marland Alex , Snagovsky Feodor 
Published: January 2024

AbstractWhat determines how Members of Parliament (MPs) and their staff frame their communications with all constituents in their electoral district? Prior research has suggested that constituency operations are one of the last bastions of freedom that MPs have from the full grasp of party discipline in Canada. If this remains true, MP communications with their constituents should reflect the MPs’ background or the constituency context and not their political partisanship. We collected a sample of published newsletters (“householders”) that Canadian MPs’ offices sent to all households in their electoral districts during the COVID-19 pandemic. We supplement our analysis with original insights about householders from a selection of MPs and their staff. Our results suggest that in a system of strict party discipline, the most important predictor of what MPs include in their constituent communications is indeed partisanship. The results inform our understanding of democratic representation, centralized co-ordination and political communication, and the pervasiveness of partisan messaging in Canada.
The Effect of Takeover Protection in Quiet Life and Bonding Firms
Authors: Fich Eliezer M. , Harford Jarrad , Yore Adam S. 
Published: January 2024

AbstractAntitakeover measures are controversial because the evidence of their net effect on shareholders is mixed. We propose that, for many firms, the potential bonding benefits outweigh the agency costs of the quiet life, explaining the mixed results. We study business combination and poison pill laws as exogenous shocks to takeover vulnerability and use shareholder valuation of internal slack as an indicator of the net effect of takeover protection. Firms susceptible to quiet life agency problems exhibit a decrease in the market-assessed value of internal slack. Conversely, cash appreciates at companies where takeover protection bonds commitments with major counterparties.
SNOW, REPETITION AND OBLIVION: ECOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS IN BEAT FURRER'S RECENT WORK
Authors: Dysers Christine 
Published: January 2024

AbstractThe natural world is a frequent touchstone for the Swiss-born Austrian composer Beat Furrer. In the operatic work Violetter Schnee (2019), for instance, images of snow and coldness take on a central role. Other works, such as Wüstenbuch (2009) and the Spazio Immergente triptych (2015), refer more indirectly to notions of barren landscapes and ecological excess. At the basis of all these works are sentiments of slippage and loss, of far-reaching melancholia and an unrepairable detachment from reality. The composer's multi-layered use of repetition further underlines these sentiments and aids in the creation of constantly shifting sonic landscapes. This article argues that the recurrent use of nature imagery in Furrer's work signposts a latent ecological dimension in his oeuvre. In doing so, the article focuses on the slipperiness of musical repetition, and more particularly on the heavily destabilising power of the loop. Taking Violetter Schnee as the starting point for inquiry, and using Timothy Morton's philosophical project of ‘dark ecology’ as a heuristic framework, the article reads Furrer's recent work against the background of ecological critique.
TIME, MYTH AND NARRATIVE IN BEAT FURRER'S NUUN
Authors: Jones Gabriel 
Published: January 2024

AbstractThe title of Beat Furrer's nuun, for two pianos and chamber orchestra (1996), invites two principal readings. As a pun on the German ‘nun’, meaning ‘now’, it invokes a presentist mode of musical thinking, whereby each moment is heard to exist in a continuous state of development. It also invokes myth, as suggested by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, in its palindromic reflection of the name of the Breton goddess Nu, who, in medieval mysticism, ‘had the power to let time stand still’. In this article, I use Byron Almén's 2017 theory of musical narrative as the basis for a narrative analysis of nuun, aiming to reconcile these allusions with the aesthetics and formal processes of the piece, as well as Furrer's documented preoccupation with notions of storytelling in music. In doing so, I expand upon the hermeneutic readings of the piece proposed thus far, establish connections with textural archetypes in Furrer's oeuvre, both pioneered by and preceding nuun, and consider lines of dialogue with broader discourse on time in contemporary music.
LISTENING INTERTEXTUALLY IN BEAT FURRER'S MUSIC THEATRE WORKS
Authors: Redhead Lauren 
Published: January 2024

AbstractThis article focuses on three of Beat Furrer's works described as opera or music theatre: Begehren (2001), FAMA (2005) and Wüstenbuch (2010). Each of these pieces sets texts from Roman, contemporary and historical authors in exploration of the liminal spaces between life and death, and the possible transitions between them. In Wüstenbuch one such text is included from the Papyrus Berlin 3024, known as the source of the Ancient Egyptian philosophical text ‘The Dispute between a Man and his Ba’, a reflection on the meaning and value of life and the transition between life and death. Furrer's compositional style does not offer a linear narrative on such questions but rather multiple perspectives and tableaux, each of which calls the others and itself into question. In order to explore this and understand what the meeting and interchange of the different texts and authors offers within the context of Furrer's music, I outline a method of ‘listening intertextually’ in order to hear the liminal spaces not only within but between these compositions. I consider the hybrid and hypertexts that arise within the music, and the ways that they can be therefore considered – as in the subtitle often given to FAMA – a ‘drama of listening’.
Confessions of an Antinatalist Philosopher
Authors: Häyry Matti 
Published: January 2024

AbstractAntinatalism assigns reproduction a negative value. There should be fewer or no births. Those who say that there should be fewer births have been called conditional antinatalists. A better name for their view would be selective pronatalism. Those who say that there should be no births face two challenges. They must define the scope of their no-birth policy. Does it apply only to human or sentient beings or can it also be extended to all organic life, perhaps even to machine consciousness? And whatever the scope, they have to justify the eventual extinction of humankind or other life forms, an inevitable consequence of unconditional antinatalism. Different axiologies and moral theories produce different responses to these challenges. It is argued that a two-value conflict-sensitive negative utilitarianism would produce a kind and reasonable justification for ending at least human and factory-animal reproduction. The conclusion is purely moral and supports only voluntary extinction for humankind.
A Too Intimate Internet: What is Wrong with Precise Audience Selection?
Authors: Mitchell Thomas 
Published: January 2024

AbstractIt is commonly recognized that the modern capacity for mass online communication carries various dangers: fake news, rampant conspiracy theories, trolling, and so forth. It is less commonly realized that moral problems remain when the contents of online communications are completely innocuous. This article discusses one of the noteworthy features of modern digital technology, the fact that it is possible to precisely target specific audiences, and argues that this can make mass communications such as advertising and political campaigns morally problematic. What is more, this holds even if the communicator is using only rational persuasion. In being selective about who sees which arguments, one becomes liable to mislead the audience despite sticking to honest, evidence-based, rational argumentation.
My Body, My Speech
Authors: Licon Jimmy Alfonso 
Published: January 2024

AbstractA popular tactic for defending abortion rights is appealing to self-ownership: since I own my body, a foetus has the right to occupy it only if I allow it. One cannot be forced to bring a pregnancy to term because that would violate one's self-ownership. The same logic applies to speech: we have freedom of speech because we produce speech using the bodies that we own. To curtail that speech violates our self-ownership, or in a phrase: my body, my speech.
Is it Ever Right to Lie? How Ethical Questions Bring us to Philosophy of Mind
Authors: Erden Yasemin J. 
Published: January 2024

AbstractMoral and ethical agreements require sufficiently shared values, or at least some common ground. We might think of this in terms of a shared ‘form of life’, ‘lebensform’, as Wittgenstein describes it in his Philosophical Investigations. Yet it is not clear what will be sufficient, nor how to bridge gaps when disagreement occurs, for instance on whether it is ever right to lie. Ethical and moral theories offer some guidance, but there is no guide for which theory one ought to follow. Whether you favour eudaimonist (flourishing, well-being), deontological (duty), or utilitarian (consequentialist) principles, the selection of a philosophy says much about who you are (preferences, judgements, beliefs) and your context (social, political, cultural). More than this it can indicate certain psychological and personal dispositions, whether defined as brain states, mental states, or personalities. In this article I outline some arguments for why ethics might need a philosophy of mind, and why this poses problems for ethical and moral theory building.
Storm‐Time Characteristics of Ionospheric Model (MSAP) Based on Multi‐Algorithm Fusion
Authors: Chen Zhou , Wang Kang , Li Haimeng , Liao Wenti , Tang Rongxin , Wang Jing‐song , Deng Xiaohua 
Published: January 2024

AbstractGeomagnetic storms induce ionospheric disturbances, affecting short‐wave radio communication systems. Accurate ionospheric total electron content (TEC) prediction is vital for accurately describing the short‐wave radio environment of the ionosphere. We use the Multi‐Step Auxiliary Prediction (MSAP) model, a deep learning algorithm, to forecast TEC during geomagnetic storms. The MSAP model integrates Bi‐LSTM networks, an auxiliary model, and convolutional processes for spatiotemporal modeling. Our validation shows the MSAP model outperforms the IRI‐2016 model in predicting global TEC for the next 6 days in the test set. We assess its performance during 116 geomagnetic storm events, considering storm intensity, solar activity, month, and Universal Time (UT). The MSAP model exhibits a weak correlation with storm intensity and a strong correlation with solar activity. Monthly variation displays similar strong correlations in root mean square error (RMSE) and R2 for both models. For UT variation, the other metrics exhibit a weak correlation with the number of Global Navigation Satellite System stations, except for the RMSE of the MSAP and IRI‐2016 models.
A New Method of Diagnosing the Historical and Projected Changes in Permafrost on the Tibetan Plateau
Authors: Li Hu , Pan Xiaoduo , Washakh Rana Muhammad Ali , Nie Xiaowei 
Published: January 2024

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the largest permafrost distribution zone at high‐altitude in the mid‐latitude region. Climate change has caused significant permafrost degradation on the TP, which has important impacts for the eco‐hydrological processes. In this study, the frost number is utilized to calculate the frost number (F) based on the air freezing/thawing index obtained from the downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data sets. A novel method is proposed to determine the frost number threshold (Ft) for diagnosing permafrost distribution. Then the simulated permafrost distribution maps are compared with the existing permafrost distribution map, employing the Kappa coefficient as the measure of classification accuracy to identify the optimal Ft. Finally, the permafrost distribution on the TP under different Shared Socio‐economic Pathways (SSP) scenarios are diagnosed with the optimal Ft. Simulation results demonstrate that across all scenarios, the rates of permafrost degradation during the mid‐future period (2040–2060) remain comparable to those observed in the baseline period (2000), ranging from 33% ± 3% to 53% ± 4%. Conversely, during the far‐future (2080–2099), the permafrost degradation rates display significant variation across different scenarios, ranging from 37% ± 4% to 96% ± 3%. The profound impacts of permafrost degradation on the TP are reflected in decreasing trends in soil moisture and runoff, as well as a slower increasing trend in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) compared to other regions, indicating negative impacts on vegetation growth.