bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Role of Religion, Wealth, and Livelihoods in the Hunting Practices of Urban and Rural Inhabitants in Western Amazonia
Authors: Oliveira Marcela Alvares , El Bizri Hani R. , Morcatty Thais Q. , Braga-Pereira Franciany , Fa Julia E. , Messias Mariluce Rezende , da Costa Doria Carolina Rodrigues 
Published: December 2023

AbstractHunting by rural and urban populations is essential for securing access to protein and other nutrients throughout the tropics. The hunting patterns of urban hunters in Amazonia, and the similarities with those of rural hunters, are unclear, as are the social factors that influence hunting practices. We analyze the effects of socioeconomic and cultural factors on hunting frequency and composition of species hunted by urban and rural Amazonian hunters. We interviewed 49 urban hunters and 57 rural hunters within 10 municipalities in western Amazonia in Brazil. A total of 44 species were cited as hunted. Our analyses show that the probability of engaging in sport hunting (for recreation) is greater among urban hunters. Rural inhabitants, hunters with lower monetary incomes, and hunters who were non-practicing Christians and atheists hunted more frequently. The composition of species hunted was similar, regardless of the hunters’ livelihood (rural or urban) or religion. We found that hunting frequency is influenced by hunters’ socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, but these factors do not affect the composition of the harvest. This similarity between urban and rural hunters might be related to species distribution and availability and could potentially impact the most hunted species if hunting grounds overlap. Understanding hunting patterns, especially those of urban hunters, allows for more effective hunting management strategies, improvements in law enforcement against illegal hunting, as well as development of more effective and sustainable conservation actions.
The potential of nano graphene oxide and chlorhexidine composite membranes for use as a surface layer in functionally graded membranes for periodontal lesions
Authors: Qasim Syed Saad Bin , Ahmed Jasim , Karched Maribasappa , Al-Asfour Adel 
Published: December 2023

AbstractMembranes have been used for treating periodontal defects and play a crucial role in guided bone regeneration applications. Nano graphene oxide have been exploited in tissue engineering due to its biomechanical properties. Its composite formulations with hydroxyapatite and chitosan with controlled degradation could aid in becoming part of a surface layer in a functionally graded membrane. The aim of the study was to synthesize chitosan and composite formulations of nano graphene oxide, hydroxyapatite and chlorhexidine digluconate using solvent casting technique and to characterize the physiochemical, mechanical, water vapor transmission rate (barrier), degradation and antimicrobial potential of the membranes. Altogether four different membranes were prepared (CH, CCG, 3511 and 3322). Results revealed the chemical interactions of hydroxyapatite, chitosan and nanographene oxide due to inter and intra molecular hydrogen bonding. The tensile strength of 3322 (33.72 ± 6.3 MPa) and 3511 (32.06 ± 5.4 MPa) was higher than CH (27.46 ± 9.6 MPa). CCG showed the lowest water vapor transmission rate (0.23 ± 0.01 g/h.m2) but the highest weight loss at day 14 (76.6 %). 3511 showed a higher drug release after 72 h (55.6 %) Significant biofilm growth inhibition was observed for all membranes. 3511 showed complete inhibition against A. actinomycetemcomitans. Detailed characterization of the synthesized membranes revealed that 3511 composite membrane proved to be a promising candidate for use as a surface layer of membranes for guided bone regeneration of periodontal lesions.
Graphical Abstract
Advancing Global Health Equity: The Role of the Liberal Arts in Health Professional Education
Authors: Bekele Abebe , Regnier Denis , Paul Tomlin , Waka Tsion Yohannes , Bradley Elizabeth H. 
Published: December 2023

AbstractMuch innovation has taken place in the development of medical schools and licensure exam processes across the African continent. Still, little attention has been paid to education that enables the multidisciplinary, critical thinking needed to understand and help shape the larger social systems in which health care is delivered. Although more than half of medical schools in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States offer at least one medical humanities course, this is less common in Africa. We report on the “liberal arts approach” to medical curricula undertaken by the University of Global Health Equity beginning in 2019. The first six-month semester of the curriculum, called Foundations in Social Medicine, includes courses in critical thinking and communication, African history and global political economy, medical anthropology and social medicine, psychology and health, gender and social justice, information technology and health, and community-based training. Additionally, an inquiry-based pedagogy with relatively small classes is featured within an overall institutional culture that emphasizes health equity. We identify key competencies for physicians interested in pursuing global health equity and how such competencies relate to liberal arts integration into the African medical school curriculum and pedagogical approach. We conclude with a call for a research agenda that can better evaluate the impact of such innovations on physicians’ education and subsequent practices.
Performance analysis of 3 × 10 Gb/s UOWC transmission system based on OCDMA using a DPS code
Authors: El-Mottaleb Somia A. Abd , Singh Mehtab , Atieh Ahmad , Aly Moustafa H. 
Published: December 2023

AbstractA new underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system utilizing optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) is proposed based on diagonal permutation shift (DPS) code. Different data rates of 2.5 Gb/s, 5 Gb/s, and 10 Gb/s are transmitted simultaneously in this model, where three channels are utilized, each is assigned with a distinct DPS code-sequence. Additionally, laser diodes operating in the green spectrum range are modulated to carry the OCDMA optical signals of each channel. Moreover, attenuation caused by different types of waterbodies are considered. These waterbodies include those who are located near harbors like harbor I (HA I) and harbor II (HA II), near the coast that are known as coastal sea (CS), inside sea water ‘pure sea (PS)’, and in clear oceans (CL). The performance of the UOWC utilizing OCDMA/DPS code system is evaluated through bit error rate (BER), quality factor , and eye diagrams. The accomplished results assure a successful transmission of the three channels underwater for ranges of 13 m for PS, 10 m for CL, 7.2 m for CS, 4.3 m for HA I, and 3 m for HA II with BER below $${10}^{-5}$$

10

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5

at data rate 10 Gb/s.
Positive and Negative Sexual Cognitions of Autistic Individuals
Authors: García-Barba Marta , Nichols Shana , Ballester-Arnal Rafael , Byers E. Sandra 
Published: December 2023

AbstractSexual cognitions are an important aspect of sexual well-being for all individuals; however, little is known about the sexual cognitions of autistic individuals. Therefore, our study aimed to explore the diversity, content, and frequencies of positive (PSC) and negative (NSC) sexual cognitions in this population. A total of 332 participants (57.5% women; 42.5% men) between the ages of 21 and 73 (M = 37.72, SD = 11.15) completed an online survey. Our results showed that almost all participants had experienced both positive and negative sexual cognitions. PSC were more diverse and experienced with greater frequency than NSC. In addition, gender (self-identified as being male) and having had relationship experience were associated with greater diversity and frequency of PSC, but not NSC. In terms of content, the most common experienced sexual cognitions for both men and women were intimacy-related. The men experienced 22 of the 56 PSC and 3 of the 56 NSC significantly more frequently than did the women; there were no cognitions that the women experienced more frequently than the men. A comparison to the results of studies of sexual cognitions among neurotypical individuals suggests that autistic individuals experience sexual cognitions in much the same way as their peers. However, sexual cognitions occur slightly less frequently and are somewhat less diverse. Nonetheless, the way in which they are experienced, and the content of the most frequent cognitions (mainly PSC about intimacy) may be indicative of sexual well-being.
Building a Social Progress-Adjusted Indicator of GDP Per Capita for the European Union’s Regions
Authors: Picazo-Tadeo Andrés J. , Gianmoena Lisa , Peiró-Palomino Jesús , Rios Vicente 
Published: December 2023

AbstractBoosting economic, social and territorial cohesion is a high priority for the European Union. The regional Cohesion Policy is its instrument for achieving this objective, with GDP per capita being the principal criterion for funding allocation. However, social cohesion also embraces a comprehensive range of non-economic features. This paper proposes a composite indicator of GDP per capita adjusted for social progress that incorporates both economic and non-economic issues. Notably, the indicator can account for policymakers’ preferences regarding the relative importance assigned to income and social progress. This novel indicator is used to simulate the eligibility status of European Union regions for funding in several policy scenarios. Regions’ simulated eligibility is then compared with their current eligibility for the period 2021–2027. Based on that comparison, winner and loser regions are identified, thus providing policymakers in charge of the European Cohesion Policy with an insight into the effect of incorporating social progress into funding allocation.
A Systematic Review of Methods for Investigating Climate Change Impacts on Water-Energy-Food Nexus
Authors: Gao Danyang , Chen Albert S. , Memon Fayyaz Ali 
Published: December 2023

AbstractWater, energy and food are important for human survival and sustainable development. With climate change, investigating climate change impacts on Water-Energy-Food nexus has been a topic of growing interest in recent years. However, there is a lack of a systematic review of the current state and methodologies of Water-Energy-Food nexus studies under climate change. Here, we review research articles investigating climate change impacts on Water-Food, Water-Energy and Water-Energy-Food nexus over last seven years. The existing methods and tools, spatial scales, and future climate scenarios setting in these articles are summarised and analysed. We found that the analyses methods could be divided into four categories (physics-based modelling, statistical methods, supervised learning and operation optimisation), among them, physics-based modelling accounts for the largest proportion. The reviewed studies cover a range of scales from site scale to global, with most studies focusing on the regional scale. Models used for small to middle scale are mainly related to hydrology and water resource, while large-scale modelling is based on interdisciplinary models. Future climate scenarios setting include emission scenarios and global warming scenarios based on Global Climate Models (GCMs). A number of future research challenges have been identified. These include spatial scale and resolution, internal physical mechanism, application of novel artificial intelligence models, extreme climate events, potential competition in nexus systems as well as data and model uncertainty.
A machine learning approach for quantifying age-related histological changes in the mouse kidney
Authors: Sheehan Susan , Mawe Seamus , Chen Mandy , Klug Jenna , Ladiges Warren , Korstanje Ron , Mahoney J. Matthew 
Published: December 2023

AbstractThe ability to quantify aging-related changes in histological samples is important, as it allows for evaluation of interventions intended to effect health span. We used a machine learning architecture that can be trained to detect and quantify these changes in the mouse kidney. Using additional held out data, we show validation of our model, correlation with scores given by pathologists using the Geropathology Research Network aging grading scheme, and its application in providing reproducible and quantifiable age scores for histological samples. Aging quantification also provides the insights into possible changes in image appearance that are independent of specific geropathology-specified lesions. Furthermore, we provide trained classifiers for H&E-stained slides, as well as tutorials on how to use these and how to create additional classifiers for other histological stains and tissues using our architecture. This architecture and combined resources allow for the high throughput quantification of mouse aging studies in general and specifically applicable to kidney tissues.
Creative pedagogies in digital STEAM practices: natural, technological and cultural entanglements for powerful learning and activism
Authors: Chappell Kerry , Hetherington Lindsay 
Published: December 2023

AbstractThis paper delves deeply into the creative pedagogies which support cutting edge digital STEAM practice across primary and secondary school settings. It contextualises the research within current STEAM agendas including transdisciplinarity, and STEAM and technology and goes on to offer insight from the novel context of ocean learning to develop and extend a theorisation of creative pedagogies as entwining both creative teaching and teaching for creativity as embodied, democratic, dialogic and material processes. Intra-action between theory, praxis, nature, culture, the digital and humans enables an emergent perspective about changing the dynamics of power to develop ocean or environmental learning and related activism. Derived from research into an ocean education project, which aimed to develop students’ ocean literacy through the combined educative principles of creative pedagogies and digital technologies (Augmented and Virtual Realities), the research draws on data from six projects across primary and secondary school settings in Denmark, Spain and England. It used a ‘diffractive’ analytic technique, inspired by new materialist theory, to explore the messy mixtures of natural, cultural and technological environments that were being learned through. This involved the development of four material-dialogic assemblages each including diffractive switches. Each is presented first through a ‘piece’ which demonstrates each assemblage’s connection to the core question, followed by ‘ripples’, which briefly articulate the new learning and questions arising from that assemblage. The four assemblages cover the irresistibility of making kin, the relationships between lively bodies and virtual environments, the importance of spacetimematter in environmental edu-activism and trajectories between transience, stability and dialogic space. The paper leaves the reader/engager with a selection of prompts to highlight the research’s contribution to current STEAM agendas related to changing power dynamics, and to provoke reader/engagers’ own practices. These can include new pedagogies and activisms, as well as theoretical developments to the combined educative principles of creative pedagogies and digital technologies within STEAM education.
Edep: ethical imagination and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammed
Authors: Kostadinova Zora 
Published: December 2023

AbstractThis paper analyzes the role of Sufiedep/adab(spiritual manners) in the ethical self-cultivation among a Naqshbandi Sufi Muslim group in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. It considers how an ethnographic focus onedeb/adabcan help us understand Sufi spirituality as a form of everyday sociality on one hand and as a form of religious virtue and piety on the other. The ethnography highlights the importance of inculcating self-reflexivity in the pious and ethical self-cultivation as a way of attainingadaband thus piety as an everyday social. Instead of focusing on the exclusion of other Muslim selfhoods, the Naqshbandi Muslims analyzed in this paper turn to self-critique and self-improvement, a key method for spiritual refinement and a deeper relation to divine authority. Self-critique is a method which opens a path toward the proper internalization of the Prophet’ssunna, and it therefore constitutes a degree of hermeneutic practice. The essay argues for a greater ethnographic focus on how self-critique can be oriented toward the social and contribute toward formulations of ideas of tolerance and local forms of sociality. This makesadab‘good to think with’ both in tracing the intra-Muslim power dynamics, in exploring broader Sufi engagements as religious subjects who perform ethics in a secular world, and tensions between the subject and the social, together with the practices of dervishes (initiates) to individual and collective ends. Thus, the paper proposes that a religious agency in the present via the cultivation ofadabcan be used to interrogate the canon, in an ongoing process of ethical cultivation which places the accent of being Islamic on the ethical as a relational category (Zigon,The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,27(2), 384–401, 2021).Edepis an abstract noun in Turkish, drawn from the original Arabicadab.Though the preferred vocabulary of my interlocutors wasedepas most scholarly literature usesadab, in this text, I useadab. The interchange betweenedepandadabis used only when I am quoting directly from my interlocutors.
Radiomic features of the hippocampal based on magnetic resonance imaging in the menopausal mouse model linked to neuronal damage and cognitive deficits
Authors: Zhao Jie , Jiao Yan , Wang Hui , Song Peiji , Gao Zhen , Bing Xue , Zhang Chunling , Ouyang Aimei , Yao Jian , Wang Song , Jiang Huijie 
Published: December 2023

AbstractEstrogen deficiency in the early postmenopausal phase is associated with an increased long-term risk of cognitive decline or dementia. Non-invasive characterization of the pathological features of the pathological hallmarks in the brain associated with postmenopausal women (PMW) could enhance patient management and the development of therapeutic strategies. Radiomics is a means to quantify the radiographic phenotype of a diseased tissue via the high-throughput extraction and mining of quantitative features from images acquired from modalities such as CT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This study set out to explore the correlation between radiomics features based on MRI and pathological features of the hippocampus and cognitive function in the PMW mouse model. Ovariectomized (OVX) mice were used as PWM models. MRI scans were performed two months after surgery. The brain’s hippocampal region was manually annotated, and the radiomic features were extracted with PyRadiomics. Chemiluminescence was used to evaluate the peripheral blood estrogen level of mice, and the Morris water maze test was used to evaluate the cognitive ability of mice. Nissl staining and immunofluorescence were used to quantify neuronal damage and COX1 expression in brain sections of mice. The OVX mice exhibited marked cognitive decline, brain neuronal damage, and increased expression of mitochondrial complex IV subunit COX1, which are pathological phenomena commonly observed in the brains of AD patients, and these phenotypes were significantly correlated with radiomics features (p < 0.05, |r|>0.5), including Original_firstorder_Interquartile Range, Original_glcm_Difference Average, Original_glcm_Difference Average and Wavelet-LHH_glszm_Small Area Emphasis. Meanwhile, the above radiomics features were significantly different between the sham-operated and OVX groups (p < 0.01) and were associated with decreased serum estrogen levels (p < 0.05, |r|>0.5). This initial study indicates that the above radiomics features may have a role in the assessment of the pathology of brain damage caused by estrogen deficiency using routinely acquired structural MR images.
A MLP-Mixer and mixture of expert model for remaining useful life prediction of lithium-ion batteries
Authors: Zhao Lingling , Song Shitao , Wang Pengyan , Wang Chunyu , Wang Junjie , Guo Maozu 
Published: December 2023

AbstractAccurately predicting the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of lithium-ion batteries is crucial for battery management systems. Deep learning-based methods have been shown to be effective in predicting RUL by leveraging battery capacity time series data. However, the representation learning of features such as long-distance sequence dependencies and mutations in capacity time series still needs to be improved. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a novel deep learning model, the MLP-Mixer and Mixture of Expert (MMMe) model, for RUL prediction. The MMMe model leverages the Gated Recurrent Unit and Multi-Head Attention mechanism to encode the sequential data of battery capacity to capture the temporal features and a re-zero MLP-Mixer model to capture the high-level features. Additionally, we devise an ensemble predictor based on a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture to generate reliable RUL predictions. The experimental results on public datasets demonstrate that our proposed model significantly outperforms other existing methods, providing more reliable and precise RUL predictions while also accurately tracking the capacity degradation process. Our code and dataset are available at the website of github.
Modeling of carbonaceous aerosols for air pollution health impact studies in Europe
Authors: Paisi Niki , Kushta Jonilda , Georgiou George , Zittis George , Pozzer Andrea , Van der Gon Hugo Denier , Kuenen Jeroen , Christoudias Theodoros , Lelieveld Jos 
Published: December 2023

AbstractAir pollution from fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has been associated with various health implications that can lead to increased morbidity and excess mortality. Epidemiological and toxicological studies have shown that carbonaceous particles (black carbon and organic aerosols) may be more hazardous to human health than inorganic ones. Health impact studies and emission reduction policies are based on total PM2.5 concentration without differentiating the more harmful components. In such assessments, PM2.5 and their sub-component concentrations are usually modeled with air quality models. Organic aerosols have been shown to be consistently underestimated, which may affect excess mortality estimates. Here, we use the WRF-Chem model to simulate PM2.5 (including carbonaceous particles) over the wider European domain and assess some of the main factors that contribute to uncertainty. In particular, we explore the impact of anthropogenic emissions and meteorological modeling on carbonaceous aerosol concentrations. We further assess their effects on excess mortality estimates by using the Global Exposure Mortality Model (GEMM). We find that meteorological grid nudging is essential for accurately representing both PM2.5 and carbonaceous aerosols and that, for this application, results improve more significantly compared to spectral nudging. Our results indicate that the explicit account of organic precursors (semi-volatile and intermediate-volatile organic carbons—SVOCs/IVOCs) in emission inventories would improve the accuracy of organic aerosols modeling. We conclude that uncertainties related to PM2.5 modeling in Europe lead to a ∼15% deviation in excess mortality, which is comparable to the risk model uncertainty. This estimate is relevant when all PM2.5 sub-components are assumed to be equally toxic but can be higher by considering their specific toxicity.