bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Rapid Indian ocean warming threatens Agricultural productivity in North America
Authors: Yang Young-Min 
Published: February 2023

Abstract

During the recent several decades, the Indian Ocean has recorded the largest warming trends in the globe and has led to pronounced regional and global impacts. However, its impact, particularly on agricultural productivity and relevant terrestrial carbon sink is unclear. Here we investigated how and to what extent the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) influences the changes in US state-level crop yields and gross primary productivity (GPP) using multiple datasets including observation and process-driven from Earth System Model experiment. We found that crop yields in the US declined with increasing TIO temperature by 5–20 percent. Our results suggest that the reduction in agricultural productivity may be mainly attributed to the deficit of precipitation induced by atmospheric teleconnection from the tropical Indian Ocean to the United States (US) through the North Pacific. We also found that the reduction in gross primary productivity (GPP) is approximately 25 percent from multiple datasets and carbon sink loss of 0.25 P g C yr− 1over the US. A strong TIO warming in near future could enhance the negative impact on human life through adverse climate conditions and reduction in crop yields, and suppress further carbon-climate feedback.
Differences in the disclosure of a cancer diagnosis by healthcare professionals and the repercussions on patients’ emotions and health
Authors: Sancho E. Ruiz , Nieto M.A. Pérez , Román F. , León L. , Escamilla F. Sánchez , Francés S. Enrech , Escutia M.A. Pérez , Martel I. Juez , Pérez-Segura P. , Aguirre A. , Delgado M. Redondo 
Published: February 2023

AbstractPurpose: This study serves a dual purpose. Our initial aim is to study how a cancer diagnosis is disclosed to patients by different physicians (oncologists, consultants, and general practitioners). Secondly, we set out to study how the way in which oncologists normally communicate with their patients is related to variables such as anxiety, depression, coping mechanisms, and the perception of both their health and their quality of life. Methods: A cohort of 177 patients from three cancer associations answered a battery of questionnaires on sociodemographic data, aspects of the disease, monitoring of the SPIKES protocol by the physician delivering the diagnosis, and their satisfaction with their communication with the oncologist (EORTC QLQ-COMU26). The patients also completed the ADAF screening questionnaire for detecting the presence of anxiety, depression, and dysfunctional coping strategies. Results: The analyses recorded medium-low scores for some of the steps in the SPIKES protocol when delivering the diagnosis, and significant differences in some of them among the different physicians. It seems that oncologists perform this task better than consultants. In turn, satisfaction with the communication with oncologists is related to the levels of anxiety, depression, vulnerability, and the perception of health and quality of life among cancer patients. Conclusions: Better communication strategies are called for among all healthcare professionals to enable them to deal with the task of breaking bad news to their patients. This will have a positive impact on patients’ emotional and health issues, while reducing stress and burnout among the physicians themselves.
Mechanically induced topological transition of spectrin regulates its distribution in the mammalian cortex
Authors: Ghisleni Andrea , Bonilla-Quintana Mayte , Crestani Michele , Rangamani Padmini , Gauthier Nils 
Published: February 2023

Abstract

The cell cortex is a dynamic assembly formed by the plasma membrane and the underlying cytoskeleton. As the main determinant of cell shape, the cortex ensures its integrity during passive deformation or active response by adapting cytoskeleton topologies with poorly understood mechanisms. The spectrin meshwork ensures such adaptation in erythrocytes and neurons by adopting dramatically different organizations. Erythrocytes rely on triangular-like lattices of spectrin tetramers, which in neurons are organized in parallel and periodic arrays. Since spectrin is ubiquitously expressed, we exploited Expansion Microscopy to discover that these two distinct topologies can co-exist in other mammalian cells such as fibroblasts. We show through biophysical measurements and computational modeling that spectrin provides coverage of the cortex and, with the intervention of actomyosin, erythroid-like lattices can dynamically transition into condensates that resemble neuron-like periodic arrays fenced by actin stress fibers. Spectrin condensates experience lower mechanical stress and turnover despite displaying an extension close to the contour length of the tetramer. Our study sheds light on the adaptive properties of spectrin, which ensures protection of the cortex by undergoing mechanically induced topological transitions.
Isolation of a methyl-reducing methanogen outside the Euryarchaeota
Authors: Cheng Lei , Wu Kejia , Zhou Lei , Tahon Guillaume , Liu Laiyan , Li Jiang , Zhang Jianchao , Zheng Fengfeng , Deng Chengpeng , Han Wenhao , Bai Li-ping , Fu Lin , Dong Xiuzhu , Zhang Chuanlun , Ettema Thijs , Diana Sousa 
Published: February 2023

Abstract

Methanogenic archaea are main contributors to methane emissions, and thus play a crucial role in carbon cycling and global warming. Until recently, methanogens were confined to the phylum Euryarchaeota, but metagenomic studies revealed the presence of genes encoding the methyl coenzyme M reductase complex in other archaeal clades, thereby opening up the premise that methanogenesis is taxonomically more widespread. Nevertheless, laboratory cultivation of these non-Euryarchaeal methanogens was missing to allow the study of their physiology and to corroborate their potential methanogenic capability. Here we describe a thermophilic co-culture from an oil field, containing a single archaeon (strain LWZ-6) belonging to the proposed order Candidatus Verstraetearchaeia, together with a H2-producing Acetomicrobium sp. CY-2. Strain LWZ-6, for which we propose the name Verstraetearchaeum methanopetracarbonis, is a H2-dependent methylotrophic methanogen. Although previous metagenomic studies speculated on the fermentative potential of Verstraetearchaeial methanogens, strain LWZ-6 does not ferment sugars, peptides, and amino acids. Its energy metabolism is linked to methanogenesis, with methanol and monomethylamine as electron acceptors and H2 as electron donor. Comparative (meta)genome analysis revealed that H2-dependent methylotrophic methanogenesis is a shared trait among Verstraetearchaeia. Our findings corroborate that the diversity of methanogens expands beyond the classical Euryarchaeota and change our current conception of the global carbon cycle.
Assessing Awareness of Social Determinants of Health in an Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Authors: Moussa Mohamad , Kaur Darpan , Irfan Faryal , Aoun Jihad , Shih James 
Published: February 2023

Abstract

Background
In recent years there has been increased recognition regarding the importance of social determinants of health (SDOH) on health outcomes. Although SDOH awareness is already incorporated into medical education, there is a lack of comprehensive tools available to assess SDOH understanding, attitudes, and application in medicine[1]. By determining the limitations in current medical education, this study aims to address shortcomings in SDOH education to provide optimal care to patients from diverse backgrounds by meeting their individual needs.
Methods
Participants completed a pre-survey prior to the intervention. Participants were then presented with an educational PowerPoint on the social determinants of health. Post-presentation, participants were divided randomly into small groups to discuss 3 different cases incorporating SDOH. Afterward, they completed a post-survey.
Results
Participants are statistically significantly more comfortable talking with their future patients after the session on 10 out of 12 topics (the exceptions are gender identity and sexual orientation). These improvements remain significant on 6 topics (i.e., the community they practice, access to care, food insecurity, healthy diet, homelessness, and intimate partner violence) even after multiple comparison corrections using Bonferroni procedure.
Conclusion
The current study provides evidence that residents benefit from the inclusion of SDOH-specific education in their curriculum as shown by our quantitative assessment.
Dental workforce challenges in rural England:
Survey into recruitment and retention in Devon and Cornwall
Authors: Mills Ian , Bryce Marie , Clarry Laura , Evans Deborah , Hanks Sally 
Published: February 2023

Abstract
Introduction

Devon and Cornwall have been identified as a “dental desert” with limited NHS dental access, high levels of oral health inequality and challenges in recruitment and retention of the dental workforce. Recruitment and retention of all members of the dental team has been identified as an important factor in the availability of dental services particularly within rural and coastal areas. During the last five years there has been an 8% decrease in the number of dentists working within the NHS in Devon, and although this may be due to a variety of factors, recruitment and retention appears to be key

Aims

The aim of this research was to explore the experiences of dental practices within Devon and Cornwall in relation to recruitment and retention of the dental workforce.

Method

A self-administered, online questionnaire was used to explore various aspects of recruitment and retention of the dental workforce in Devon and Cornwall. The questionnaire included categorical rating scale and free text question formats providing both quantitative and qualitative data. Rating scales were analysed using frequency analysis, and the free-text answers analysed using thematic analysis.

Results

106 dental practices responded to the survey, providing a response rate of 36%. The vast majority of respondents (94%) considered recruitment and retention to be a major barrier to delivering NHS services. 77% of practices had a current staff vacancy; 57% had a dentist vacancy; and 48% had a vacancy for dental nurses. Thematic analysis led to identification of four main themes which were considered to influence recruitment and retention: NHS system; Economic Challenges; Logistics; Support Networks. The current NHS dental contract was identified as the main barrier in recruiting and retaining workforce within the NHS in the region. Other factors such as income generation, workload, economic challenges, geographic isolation, lack of support, training opportunities and career development were identified as important issues which affected both NHS and private practices in rural and coastal areas.

Conclusion

Recruitment and retention of the dental workforce is a major barrier to delivering oral healthcare services in the Southwest Peninsula. A large number of dental practices are failing to operate at capacity due to workforce shortages which is affecting both NHS and private practices. The situation is most acute in recruitment and retention of dentists and dental nurses, with NHS practices affected more than the private sector. Urgent action is needed at a local, regional and national level to avoid further deterioration.
Space use and residency patterns of largemouth bass relative to a freshwater protected area
Authors: Zolderdo Aaron J. , Brownscombe J. W. , Abrams A. E.I. , Suski Cory D. , Cooke S. J. 
Published: February 2023

Abstract
Fish movement patterns are an essential consideration for the design of effective freshwater protected areas (FPAs). The Rideau Waterway system (Ontario, Canada) is home to some of the oldest single-resource FPAs in Ontario (> 70 years active). Initially, these FPAs were intended to provide holistic protection to the heavily exploited largemouth bass, but since their establishment, little is known regarding their protective capacity. Using a passive acoustic telemetry network, we measured how site fidelity varied with body size and across seasons in largemouth bass within one Rideau Waterway FPA. Collectively, 50 bass were tracked for an average of 227 days, with some individuals tracked upwards of 744 days. Tagged fish spent on average 55% of their time at liberty within the FPA, with occupancy rates exceeding 85% for some individuals. Most of the tagged fish displayed cyclical movement behaviour between the FPA and non-protected areas, largely corresponding with known life-history stages. Largemouth bass occupancy was highest in the spring-summer seasons (i.e., reproductive period), with a sharp decline during the fall that sustained through the winter. FPA occupancy varied with body size, with large fish (> 430 mm) using the FPA more extensively. Our findings show that this Rideau Waterway FPA provides temporal protection from exploitation to a highly targeted sportfish, especially during their reproductive period, likely providing major conservation benefits. These findings also highlight the value of considering the habitat requirements of a species across life-stages to inform effective FPA design.
Identification and validation of a novel overall survival prediction model for immune-related genes in bone metastases of prostate cancer
Authors: Bi Wen , Guo Weiming , Wan Teng , Fan Gang , Jiang Changqing 
Published: February 2023

Abstract
Background
Immunotherapy has become a revolutionary treatment for cancer and brought new vitality to tumor immunity. Still, using either immunotherapy alone is unlikely to significantly change the outcome of prostate cancer (PCa), especially metastatic PCa. Bone metastases are the most prevalent metastatic site for advanced PCa. Therefore, finding new immunotherapy targets in PCa patients with bone metastasis is urgently needed.
Methods
We conducted an elaborative bioinformatics study of immune related genes (IRGs) and tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) in PCa bone metastases. The TCGA-PRAD and cBioPortal databases were integrated to obtain RNA-sequencing data and clinical prognostic information. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were conducted to construct an overall survival (OS) prediction model. GSE32269 in the GEO database was analyzed to acquire differentially expressed IRGs. A total of 209 differentially expressed IRGs were identified, of which 159 were down-regulated and 50 were up-regulated. Subsequently, the PPI network was established by Cytoscape for identifying hub genes and biological network. The OS prediction model was established by employing six IRGs (MAVS, HSP90AA1, FCGR3A, CTSB, FCER1G, and CD4). The CIBERSORT algorithm was adopted to assess the proportion of TIICs in each group. Furthermore, Transwell, MTT, and wound healing assays were employed to determine the effect of MAVS on PCa cells.
Results
High-risk patients had worse OS compared to the low-risk patients in the training and validation cohorts. Meanwhile, clinically practical nomograms were generated using these identified IRGs to predict the 3- and 5-year survival rates of patients. The infiltration percentages of some TIICs were closely linked to the risk score of the OS prediction model. Naïve B cells, M1 and M2 macrophages, and CD4 memory resting T cells were related to the OS. FCGR3A was closely correlated with some TIICs. In vitro experiments verified that up-regulation of MAVS suppressed the proliferation and metastatic abilities of PCa cells.
Conclusions
Our work presented a thorough interpretation of TIICs and IRGs for illustrating and discovering new potential immune checkpoints in bone metastases of PCa. Additionally, we developed a trustworthy OS risk score model that may serve as a prognostic biomarker and potential immune checkpoints for immunotherapy.
Where do pigeons’ choices come from? Transfer Learning in Spiking Neural Networks for Animal Choices in Behavioral Research
Authors: Plessas Anna , Espinosa-Ramos Josafath Israel , Cowie Sarah , Landon Jason , Parry Dave 
Published: February 2023

Abstract
There is a large body of work in the behavioural psychology literature studying how an organism’s behavior changes in relation to consequences (reinforcement) from the environment. As all behaviors are an outcome of choice, behavioral research focuses on the study of choice behavior. Machine learning (ML) models may assist behavioral research to further understand the mechanisms of choice behavior. However, behavioral psychology datasets can be small and variable, affecting the ML's ability to generalize with new datasets extracted from different populations and/or behavioral experiments and limiting ML's usefulness in this context. Therefore, in this paper, we tested two transfer learning strategies –feature extraction and fine-tuning– to remove the need to retrain ML models for every new dataset. Our approach allowed our state-of-the-art artificial intelligence model to become adaptable to novel instances. Initially, we trained a single spiking neural network (SNN) to identify an organism’s reinforcement history based on five experimental datasets of pigeon binary decision-making. Then we tested two transfer learning strategies by keeping the underlying patterns of the pre-trained SNN the same (i.e., neuron properties and weights) and adapting only the classifier of the outputs (i.e., firing rates) to suit the new datasets. Lastly, we compared the performance of the transfer learning approaches to our baseline SNN model. Our study demonstrated that knowledge gained from a population (baseline model) could be applied to another population’s dataset without retraining the model each time, regardless of which dataset participated in the training or testing of the SNN model. Currently, there is limited use of transfer learning in SNNs and in animal research. Our results may help develop new approaches in the ‘toolbox’ of psychological research to enhance prediction, independent from the dataset, without consuming significant computational resources.
The Purpose of Internet Use and Face-to-Face Communication with Friends and Acquaintances among Older Adults: A JAGES Longitudinal Study
Authors: Chishima Iwao , Nakagomi Atsushi , Ide Kazushige , Shioya Ryunosuke , Saito Masashige , Kondo Katsunori 
Published: February 2023

Abstract

Background
Whether and what type of internet use increases face-to-face communication (FFC) remains unclear. We aimed to investigate the mode of internet use that increases the FFC among older adults after three years.
Methods
The participants were 8,734 adults aged 65 years or older who responded to the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES) surveys in 2016 and 2019. The exposures were the seven purposes of internet use in 2016, including communication, information search, and financial services. The outcome was the frequency of FFC with friends or acquaintances, more than once per week in 2019. The confounders included 13 variables, including demographic, socioeconomic, and psychological factors. We performed modified Poisson regression analyses to evaluate the association between the purposes of internet use in 2016 and meeting friends or acquaintances more than once per week in 2019. We also analyzed after stratification by the frequency of meeting friends or acquaintances in 2016. We evaluated the number of meetings with friends and acquaintances in the sensitivity analysis.
Results
Internet use for communication was associated with an increased probability of meeting friends or acquaintances more than once a week in 2019 (Cumulative Incidence Ratio:1.08; 95% Confidence Interval = [1.01–1.16]; P = .029). This trend was more noticeable if the frequency of meeting friends or acquaintances was less than once per week in 2016. Internet use for communication is also associated with an increased number of meeting friends or acquaintances.
Conclusions
Internet use for communication in 2016 increased FFC in 2019, especially in the lower frequency of FFC in 2016.
Automated Anomalous Child Repetitive Head Movement Identification through Transformer Networks
Authors: Wedasingha Nushara Deshith , Samarasinghe Pradeepa , Seneviratne Lasantha , Papndrea Michela , Puiatti Alessandro 
Published: February 2023

Abstract
The exponential growth of behavioral disorders among human beings is an increasing concern in the medical community due to a lack of medical resources for early identification of atypical behaviors. Many psychological journals which address behavioral disorders indicate that the most prominent way of puzzling out this problem is to identify behavioral disorder characteristics such as repetitive behaviors in early childhood, and recover through therapy. Even though there are many standards presently used in diagnosing behavioral disorder characteristics, due to a lack of facilities and limited number of professionals in the relevant fields, these traditional standards have failed to cater the increasing number of cases with behavioral disorders. Hence, the need for developing automated approaches to overcome the problems in current systems of diagnosing children with behavioral disorders has arisen from the research community. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an automated model that analyzes a video to distinguish typical, and atypical repetitive head movements of children while using different learning methods to mitigate issues that affect the performance of the model due to the scarcity of child datasets. In this work, we present a fusion of transformer networks, and Non-deterministic Finite Automata (NFA) techniques, which classify repetitive head movements of a child as typical or atypical based on the analysis of gender, age, the type of the repetitive head movement along with count, duration, and frequency of each repetitive head movement. Different transfer learning methods were experimented to enhance the performance of the model. The experimental results on five datasets: NIR face dataset, Bosphorus 3D face dataset, ASD Dataset, SSBD dataset, and head movements in the wild dataset, corroborate our proposed model has outperformed many state-of-the-art frameworks when distinguishing typical and atypical repetitive head movements of children.