bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Contributions of associative and non-associative learning to the dynamics of defensive ethograms
Authors: Le Quan-Son Eric , Hereford Daniel , Borkar Chandrashekhar D. , Aldaco Zach , Klar Julia , Resendez Alexis , Fadok Jonathan P. 
Published: July 2023

AbstractDefensive behavior changes based on threat intensity, proximity, and context of exposure, and learning about danger-predicting stimuli is critical for survival. However, most Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigms focus only on freezing behavior, obscuring the contributions of associative and non-associative mechanisms to dynamic defensive responses. To thoroughly investigate defensive ethograms, we subjected male and female adult C57BL/6J mice to a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm that paired footshock with a serial compound stimulus (SCS) consisting of distinct tone and white noise (WN) stimulus periods. To investigate how associative and non-associative mechanisms affect defensive responses, we compared this paired SCS-footshock group with four control groups that were conditioned with either pseudorandom unpaired presentations of SCS and footshock, shock only, or reversed SCS presentations with inverted tone--WN order, with paired or unpaired presentations. On day 2 of conditioning, the paired group exhibited robust freezing during the tone period with switching to explosive jumping and darting behaviors during the WN period. Comparatively, the unpaired and both reverse SCS groups expressed less tone-induced freezing and rarely showed jumping or darting during WN. Following the second day of conditioning, we observed how defensive behavior changed over two extinction sessions. During extinction, the tone-induced freezing decreased in the paired group and mice rapidly shifted from escape jumping during WN to a combination of freezing and darting. The unpaired, unpaired reverse, and shock-only groups displayed defensive tail rattling and darting during the SCS, with minimal freezing and jumping. Interestingly, the paired reverse group did not jump to WN, and tone-evoked freezing was resistant to extinction. These findings demonstrate that non-associative factors promote some defensive responsiveness, but associative factors are required for robust cue-induced freezing and high-intensity flight expression.
Experimental and Phylogenetic Evidence for Correlated Gene Expression Evolution between Dermal and Endometrial Fibroblasts: implications for the evolution of cancer malignancy
Authors: Dighe Anasuya , Maziarz Jamie , Ibrahim-Hashim Arig , Gatenby Robert A. , Kshitiz  , Levchenko Andre , Wagner Günter P. 
Published: July 2023

AbstractChanges in transcriptional gene expression is a dominant mode of evolution, mostly driven by mutations at cis-regulatory regions. Mutations can affect gene expression in multiple cell types if the same cis-regulatory elements are used by different cell types. As a consequence, changes in gene expression in one cell type may be associated with similar gene expression changes in another cell type. Correlated gene expression change can explain correlated character evolution, as for instance the correlation between placental invasion and vulnerability to cancer malignancy. Here we test this hypothesis using a comparative and an experimental data set. Specifically, we investigate gene expression in dermal skin fibroblasts (SF) and uterine endometrial stomal fibroblasts (ESF). The comparative dataset consists of transcriptomes from cultured SF and ESF from 9 mammalian species. We calculated the independent phylogenetic contrasts (PIC) for each gene and cell type. We find that evolutionary changes in gene expression in SF and ESF are highly correlated, supporting the hypothesis that the correlated gene expression changes are a prevalent feature of gene expression evolution. The experimental data set derives from a SCID mouse strain that was selected for slow cancer growth which led to substantial changes in the SF compared to wild type SCID mice. We isolated SF and ESF from wild type and evolved SCID mice and compared their gene expression profiles. We find a significant correlation between the gene expression contrasts of SF and ESF, which supports the hypothesis that gene expression variation in SF and ESF is correlated. We discuss the implications of these findings for the hypothesized correlation between placental invasiveness and vulnerability to metastatic cancer.
Indexing and searching petabyte-scale nucleotide resources
Authors: Shiryev Sergey A. , Agarwala Richa 
Published: July 2023

ABSTRACTSearching vast and rapidly growing sets of nucleotide content in data resources, such as runs in Sequence Read Archive and assemblies for whole genome shotgun sequencing projects in GenBank, is currently impractical in any reasonable amount of time or resources available to most researchers. We present Pebblescout, a tool that navigates such content by providing indexing and search capabilities. Indexing uses dense sampling of the sequences in the resource. Search finds subjects that have short sequence matches to a user query with well-defined guarantees. Reported subjects are ranked using a score that considers the informativeness of the matches. Six databases that index over 3.5 petabases were created and used to illustrate the functionality of Pebblescout. Here we show that Pebblescout provides new research opportunities and a data-driven way for finding relevant subsets of large nucleotide resources for analysis, some of which are missed when relying only on sample metadata or tools using pre-defined reference sequences. For two computationally intensive published studies, we show that Pebblescout rejects a significant number of runs analyzed without changing the conclusions of these studies and finds additional relevant runs. A pilot web service for interactively searching the six databases is freely available athttps://pebblescout.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Packaging-free practices in food retail: the impact on customer loyalty
Authors: Barbosa Belem , Shabani Shojaei Alireza , Miranda Hugo 
Published: July 2023

PurposeThis study analyzes the impact of packaging-free practices in food retail stores, particularly supermarkets, on customer loyalty.Design/methodology/approachBased on the literature on the impacts of sustainable practices and corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies on consumer behavior, this study defined a set of seven hypotheses that were tested using data collected from 447 consumers that regularly buy food products at supermarkets. The data were subjected to structural equation modeling using SmartPLS.FindingsThis study confirmed that packaging-free practices positively influence brand image, brand trust, satisfaction and customer loyalty. The expected positive impacts of brand image and satisfaction on customer loyalty were also confirmed. However, the expected impact of brand trust on customer loyalty was not confirmed.Practical implicationsThis article demonstrates how a competitive sector can reap benefits from implementing sustainable practices in the operational domain, particularly by offering packaging-free products at the point of purchase. Thus, as recommended, general retail stores (e.g. supermarkets) gradually increase the stores' offering of packaging-free food products, as this practice has been shown to have positive impacts not only on brand image, but also on customer satisfaction and loyalty.Originality/valueThis study extends the literature on the effects of sustainable practices on customer loyalty, by focusing on a specific practice. Furthermore, this study contributes to the advancement of research on packaging-free practices in retail by developing a research framework and providing evidence on the direct and indirect effects of this specific practice on customer loyalty.
Autonomous vehicles will spur moving budget from railroads to roads
Authors: Wiseman Yair 
Published: July 2023

PurposeNowadays, transportation authorities in various countries are in tension as to whether to invest in railroads or roads. There are arguments for each side, and in the end, each transportation authority reaches a kind of balance between the investments. This study aims to anticipate how autonomous vehicles will influence this decision.Design/methodology/approachThe roads' capacity in the era of autonomous vehicles is assessed and research has concluded that the anticipated increase in road capacity will encourage transportation authorities to invest much more in roads than in railroads.FindingsThe appearance of the autonomous vehicles will significantly change the balance in favor of the roads, because the roads' capacity will be increased substantially so the roads will be able to accommodate many more vehicles.Research limitations/implicationsCurrently, autonomous vehicles are still very rare.Practical implicationsThe impact of autonomous vehicles on the decision whether to build more roads is explained.Originality/valueThe study explained why the transportation authorities in the various countries will be more inclined to switch to road construction and why the transition to more roads and fewer railroads will likely be done gradually as more autonomous vehicles enter service.
Linking government interventions to firm performance: the influence of stringency and support during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Zou Qi , Wang Yuan , Modi Sachin 
Published: July 2023

PurposeThis study uncovers how government interventions, in terms of stringency and support, shape coronavirus disease 2019's (COVID-19) detrimental impact on organizations' performance. Specifically, this paper studies whether stringency and support play complementary or substitutive roles in lowering COVID-19's impact on organizations' performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors gathered primary data from USA manufacturing companies and combined this with secondary data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) to test the proposed model with structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsThe results show that the stringency approach increases the detrimental impact on both operational and financial performance, while economic support (to households) and fiscal spending (to organizations) work differently on lowering the impacts of COVID-19. Further, these combinative effects only influence the firm's operational performance, albeit in opposite directions.Originality/valueThis study advances the knowledge of government interventions by examining stringency and support's direct and interaction effects on firm performance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings contribute to the literature by uncovering the unique roles of both supportive policies, thus differentiating economic support (to individuals/households) from fiscal spending (to organizations) and providing important academic, managerial and policy insights into how government should best initiate and blend stringency and support policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Female preference for males with lower pattern contrast follows Weber's law of proportional processing in jumping spiders
Authors: Kwek Bernetta Z. W. , Zhou Wei , Yu Long , Ding Guohua , Li Daiqin 
Published: July 2023

Abstract

According to Weber's law of proportional processing, perceptual discrimination between stimuli of different magnitudes is based on their proportional differences in magnitude (not absolute differences). Proportional processing operates in various sensory modalities and behavioural contexts. However, whether female mate preference for colour patterns in animals follows Weber's law of proportional processing remains untested.

We addressed this research gap using the jade jumping spider, Siler semiglaucus, whose males exhibit remarkable sexually selected colour patterns and whose females show preferences for males with low abdomen pattern contrast (pattern contrast is defined as the spatial feature of the relative abundance of two adjacent colour patches). By manipulating the dorsal abdomen colour patterns of S. semiglaucus males, we created males with varying abdomen pattern contrasts. We then assessed female preference for males that varied in both absolute and proportional differences in pattern contrast.

We found that females preferred males with lower abdomen pattern contrasts and discriminated between males based on both absolute and proportional differences in pattern contrast. While proportional difference alone was not a significant predictor of female mate‐choice, discrimination based on proportional difference coupled with absolute difference had a greater influence on female mate preference than absolute difference alone.

Hence, our findings suggest that S. semiglaucus female preference for males with lower pattern contrast follows Weber's law, and female discrimination may have the potential to limit the exaggeration of sexually selected colour patterns.

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Forensic age estimation of living individuals: a novel bibliometric approach to the literature review
Authors: Panci Valentina , Hackman Lucina 
Published: July 2023

AbstractThis study investigates the trends within the published research up to 2019 in relation to skeletal and dental age estimation in living individuals by using a novel bibliometric analysis which utilizes a specialist, open‐source R script. The analysis was performed on a total of 644 papers (627 articles, fifteen conference papers, and two reviews) retrieved using the online database Scopus. The analysis included an investigation of publication trends, authors’ affiliations, citation, Open Access publications, authors’ keywords, and index keywords. An additional investigation was conducted to study the relation between the methodologies developed and the specific populations that have been tested. The relation between imaging techniques and areas of the body used in these studies was also examined.
Adult patients with constipation presenting to the emergency department: Can care be improved?
Authors: Bunting Catherine , Smith Emily , Dunham Fiona , Simpson Sally , Truter Piers 
Published: July 2023

AbstractObjectiveThis study aimed to establish the demographic profile of adult patients presenting with constipation and constipation‐related issues to an Australian tertiary hospital ED, investigate ED management and referral pathways in this cohort and determine satisfaction of these aspects of care from a patient's perspective.MethodsThis is a single‐centre study conducted in an Australian tertiary hospital ED which sees 115 000 presentations annually. ED presentations of adults aged 18–80 years with symptoms of constipation were evaluated through retrospective electronic medical record audit and follow‐up by survey 3–6 months after their ED presentation.ResultsThe patients presenting to the ED with constipation had a median age of 48 years (IQR 33.5–63.5) and arrived self‐referred by private transport. Median length of stay was 292 min. 22% of patients reported they had previously attended the ED for the same issue within the previous year. Diagnosis of chronic constipation was inconsistent, with limited supporting documentation. Constipation was largely managed with aperients. Four in five patients were satisfied with ED care; however, 3–6 months post‐ED visit, 92% of patients reported ongoing bowel‐related issues, reflecting the chronic course of functional constipation.ConclusionThis is the first study to investigate the management of constipation in adult patients in an Australian ED setting. It is important that ED clinicians recognise that functional constipation is a chronic condition and many patients have persistent symptoms. There are opportunities for quality‐of‐care improvements including diagnostics, treatment, and referral post‐discharge to allied health, nursing and medical specialist services.
Machine learning and the prediction of changes in profitability
Authors: Jones Stewart , Moser William J. , Wieland Matthew M. 
Published: July 2023

AbstractThis study uses machine‐learning methods to predict next‐period change in profitability based on a model proposed by Penman and Zhang (2004, Working paper, Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley; “PZ”). We find that new machine‐learning methods predict out of sample substantially better than traditional regression methods and provide richer interpretations about the role and impact of different predictor variables through their nonlinear relationships and interaction effects. For example, our results contrast with previous research by showing that both components of the DuPont decomposition (change in profit margin and change in asset turnover) are informative of next‐period changes in profitability. Our results are robust across different performance metrics, alternative machine‐learning models, and software. Furthermore, an unconstrained machine‐learning model using a larger feature space could not significantly improve the performance of the PZ model. PZ variables alone accounted for most of the explanatory power of the unconstrained model, suggesting the PZ model is both well specified (in terms of feature selection) and robust in higher dimensional settings. With respect to the economic significance of this information, we find mixed results. The market appears to adjust its expectations more in line with the machine‐learning predictions relative to the PZ model but the portfolio returns are not significantly different.
Testing pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder with cue exposure paradigms: A systematic review and quantitative synthesis of human laboratory trial methodology
Authors: Meredith Lindsay R. , Burnette Elizabeth M. , Nieto Steven J. , Du Han , Donato Suzanna , Grodin Erica N. , Green ReJoyce , Magill Molly , Baskerville Wave‐Ananda , Ray Lara A. 
Published: July 2023

AbstractAlcohol cue exposure is a widely used experimental paradigm for screening pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Medication‐related reductions in cue‐reactivity signal early efficacy and inform medications development. Yet, across trials, the design of cue exposure, parameter testing, and outcome reporting is heterogeneous. This systematic review is a quantitative synthesis of trial methodologies and effect size estimation for AUD medication‐related craving and psychophysiological outcomes under the cue exposure paradigm. A PubMed search was conducted on January 3, 2022 based on identified pharmacotherapies for peer‐reviewed articles reported in English. Study‐level characteristics, including sample descriptors, paradigm design, analytic approach, and Cochrane Risk of Bias, along with descriptive statistics for cue‐exposure outcomes, were coded by two independent raters. Study‐level effect sizes were estimated for craving and psychophysiological outcomes separately and sample‐level effect sizes were calculated for each medication. Thirty‐six trials, comprising 1640 participants and testing 19 different medications satisfied eligibility criteria. All studies reported on biological sex (71% male participants on average). The exposure paradigms implemented used in vivo (n = 26), visual (n = 8), and audio script (n = 2) cues. Some trials included means for craving by medication condition in text (k = 7) or figures (k = 18). The quantitative synthesis included 63 effect sizes (craving kes = 47; psychophysiological kes = 16) from 28 unique randomized trials testing 15 medications for effects on cue reactivity. For cue‐induced craving, eight medications (kes range: 1–12) demonstrated small‐to‐medium effects (Cohen's d range: |0.24–0.64|) compared to placebo, with individuals randomized to receive medication reporting lower craving following cue exposure. Recommendations are provided to promote further consilience, so that the utility of cue exposure paradigms can be maximized in the development of effective AUD pharmacotherapies. Future work should explore the predictive utility of medication‐related reductions in cue‐reactivity on clinical outcomes.
Expression of placental growth factor and a disintegrin and metalloprotease with a thrombospondin type motifs 1‐4‐8 during the three trimesters of rat pregnancy at the maternal‐fetal interface
Authors: Tatar Musa , Uslu Sema , Öner Jale 
Published: July 2023

AbstractThe functional roles of the a disintegrin and metalloprotease with a thrombospondin type motifs (ADAMTS) gene family in reproductive physiology, reproductive organs developments and adult reproductive health are still under investigation. The expression of the anti‐angiogenic proteases ADAMTS‐1, ADAMTS‐4 and ADAMTS‐8 in placental angiogenesis at various stages of pregnancy also remains unclear. The purpose of this study was therefore to determine the localization and expression of the ADAMTS‐1, ADAMTS‐4 and ADAMTS‐8 proteins during the three stages of pregnancy in rats. Maternal‐fetal tissue samples were collected on Days 5, 12 and 19 of each trimester, corresponding to the first, second and third trimesters. The expression of placental growth factor (PlGF) and ADAMTS‐1, ADAMTS‐4 and ADAMTS‐8 at the maternal‐fetal interface was examined using immunohistochemistry and western blot at three distinct phases of pregnancy. ADAMTS‐1, ADAMTS‐4 and ADAMTS‐8 were detected in all three trimesters of pregnancy. The relative amount of PIGF increased in the first trimester and decreased significantly in the third trimester (p < 0.05). The expression of ADAMTS‐1 and ADAMTS‐4 was significantly higher in the second (p < 0.05) and third trimesters (p < 0.01) compared to the first trimester. However, no statistically significant change was observed in ADAMTS‐8 expression between trimesters. The ADAMTS exhibiting the highest expression during the first trimester was ADAMTS8. These findings indicate that the expression of ADAMTS‐1, ADAMTS‐4 and ADAMTS‐8 in the three different stages of rat pregnancy may be involved in the modulation of decidualization, morphogenesis and angiogenesis. Periodic changes in ADAMTS expression are thought to be regulated by gonadal steroids.
Berberine enhances autophagic flux by activating the Nrf2 signaling pathway in bovine endometrial epithelial cells to resist LPS‐induced apoptosis
Authors: Fu Kaiqiang , Chen Han , Mei Lian , Wang Jifang , Gong Benzhi , Li Yan , Cao Rongfeng 
Published: July 2023

AbstractBerberine exerts many beneficial effects on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐induced bovine endometrial epithelial cells (BEECs). Recently, we also found that berberine shows significant antiapoptotic and autophagy‐promoting activities, but the underlying mechanism has not been elucidated. This research explored the association between the antiapoptotic and autophagy‐promoting activities of berberine in LPS‐treated BEECs. BEECs were first preconditioned with an inhibitor of autophagic flux (chloroquine [CQ]) for 1 h, treated with berberine for 2 h, and then incubated with LPS for 3 h. Cell apoptosis was assessed by flow cytometry, and autophagy activities were assessed by immunoblot analysis of LC3II and p62. The results indicated that the antiapoptotic activity of berberine was notably inhibited in LPS‐treated BEECs after preconditioning with CQ for 1 h. Furthermore, to determine whether berberine promoted autophagy by activating the nuclear factor‐erythroid 2 related factor 2 (Nrf2) signaling pathway, we assessed autophagy in LPS‐treated BEECs after preconditioning with a signaling pathway inhibitor of Nrf2 (ML385). The results indicated that the enhanced autophagy activity induced by berberine was partially reversed in LPS‐treated BEECs after the Nrf2 signaling pathway was disturbed by ML385. In conclusion, berberine enhances autophagic flux to allow resistance to LPS‐induced apoptosis by activating the Nrf2 signaling pathway in BEECs. The present study may provide new insight into the antiapoptotic mechanism of berberine in LPS‐induced BEECs.