bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Learning analytics in support of inclusiveness and disabled students: a systematic review
Authors: Khalil Mohammad , Slade Sharon , Prinsloo Paul 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThis article maps considerations of inclusiveness and support for students with disabilities by reviewing articles within the field of learning analytics. The study involved a PRISMA-informed systematic review of two popular digital libraries, namely Clarivate’s Web of Science, and Elsevier’s Scopus for peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings. A final corpus of 26 articles was analysed. Findings show that although the field of learning analytics emerged in 2011, none of the studies identified here covered topics of inclusiveness in education before the year of 2016. Screening also shows that learning analytics provides great potential to promote inclusiveness in terms of reducing discrimination, increasing retention among disadvantaged students, and validating particular learning designs for marginalised groups. Gaps in this potential are also identified. The article aims to provide valuable insight into what is known about learning analytics and inclusiveness and contribute knowledge to this particular nascent area for researchers and institutional stakeholders.
Optimization of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction of Rice Bran Oil and γ-Oryzanol Using Multi-Factorial Design of Experiment
Authors: Fraterrigo Garofalo S. , Cavallini N. , Destefano R. , Micera M. , Cavagnero C. , Botto A. , Savorani F. , Tommasi T. , Fino D. 
Published: March 2023

AbstractAfter rice harvesting, the milling processes generate many by-products including husk, bran, germs, and broken rice representing around 40% of the total grain. Bran, one of the external cereal layers, contains proteins, dietary fibers, minerals, and lipids. One of the most common rice bran utilization is the extraction of rice bran oil (RBO). Among all vegetable oils, RBO presents a unique chemical composition rich in antioxidant compounds such as γ-oryzanol that provide several beneficial properties. RBO is generally extracted by exploiting hexane, a solvent toxic to the environment and human health. The growing demand for this oil has led researchers to look for more sustainable extraction techniques. Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) has been successfully applied to extract oil and functional compounds from several matrices. In this work, the SC-CO2 extraction of RBO was optimized using a Design of Experiment (DoE) on a pilot scale. "The DoE approach involving multilinear regression allowed modelling the yield in RBO and gamma oryzanol as a function of temperature and pressure, keeping the extraction time constant, as decided by the company. This approach made it possible to optimize the extraction yield and to identify the best temperature (40 °C), while also highlighting that pressure did not play any influential role in the process, at least concerning the analyzed experimental domain on this industrial plant. A model for computing the extraction yield as a function of temperature and pressure was obtained. This study shows that it is possible to obtain good quality RBO, rich in γ-oryzanol and essential fatty acids, using low temperatures and pressures, starting from a rice milling by-product.
Graphical Abstract
Nationwide analysis of inpatient laparoscopic ventral hernia repair in Italy from 2015 to 2020
Authors: Botteri Emanuele , Ortenzi Monica , Williams Sophie , Balla Andrea , Podda Mauro , Guerrieri Mario , Sartori Alberto 
Published: March 2023

AbstractSince 2010, several guidelines and consensus papers have been proposed to support surgeons in the decision-making process (Cuccurullo et al. in Hernia 17(5):557–566, 2013; Silecchia et al. in Surg Endosc 29:2463–2484, 2015; Bittner et al. in Surg Endosc 33(11):3511–3549, 2015) with the conclusion that laparoscopic repair (LR) has gained popularity in the treatment of IH.To date, however, it is not yet clear as to the uptake of LR for IH on national basis. Only dated studies encompassing of all types of incisional hernia repairs are available in literature (Bisgaard et al. in Br J Surg 96:1452–1457, 2009). The aim of our study is to present a snapshot of Italian data for LR of ventral hernias, over a 6 years period, including volume of LR, procedural features and major postoperative outcomes. Data were extracted from the Italian Hospital Information System (HIS) that collects clinical and administrative information regarding each hospital admission of every patient discharged from any hospital in Italy. Using Hospital Discharge records regional Databases (HDD), all laparoscopic ventral hernia procedures carried out in public and private hospitals between 2015 and 2020, in patients over 18 years and resident in Italy, were collected based on diagnosis and procedure codes. The National Agency for Regional Health Services (AgeNaS) oversees the management and analysis of data. All hospital admissions that occurred between 2015 and 2020 were analyzed.A total of 154,546 incisional hernia repairs were performed in Italy from 2015 to 2020. Of these, 20,789 (13.45%) were minimally invasive repairs. The number of procedures performed increased significantly over time, constituting 11.96 and 15.24% of all procedures performed in 2015 and 2020 respectively. However, considering the whole period, the mean annual change was—5.58% (CI − 28.6% to 17.44%; p < 0.0001).Urgent minimally invasive repairs were performed in 1968 cases (1.27%). The absolute rate of laparoscopically treated patients needing an urgent surgical procedure increased overtime (from 7.36% in 2015 to 13.418% in 2020). The mean annual change registered over the whole period was 7.42%. 92% (CI − 0.03 to 14.09%; p < 0.0001). However, when considering the period from 2015 to 2019, the mean annual change was 10.42% (CI 6.35 to 14.49%; p < 0.0001). To our knowledge this is the first nationwide Italian report presenting the national workload of surgical units and the main perioperative features of minimally invasive surgery for ventral hernia repairs.
Nanoparticle pre-treatment for enhancing the survival and activation of pulmonary macrophage transplant
Authors: Jarai Bader M. , Bomb Kartik , Fromen Catherine A. 
Published: March 2023

AbstractDespite recent clinical successes of chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies in treating liquid cancers, many lingering challenges stand in the way of therapeutic translation to broader types of malignancies. Macrophages have been proposed as alternatives to T cells given macrophages’ advantages in promoting tumor infiltration, acquiring diverse antigens, and possessing the ability to continuously stimulate adaptive responses. However, the poor survival of macrophages upon transplantation in addition to transient anti-tumor phenotypical states have been major obstacles standing in the way of macrophage-based cell therapies. Given recent discoveries of nanoparticle strategies in improving macrophage survival and promoting phenotype retention, we herein report the ability to extend the survival and phenotype of macrophage transplants in murine lungs via pre-treatment with nanoparticles of varying degradation rates. Macrophages pre-treated with 100 µg/ml dose of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate nanoparticle formulations improve pulmonary macrophage transplant survival over untreated cells beyond 7 days, where degradable nanoparticle formulations result in over a 50% increase in retention of transplanted cell counts relative to untreated cells. Furthermore, pre-treated macrophages more efficiently retain an imposed pro-inflammatory-like polarization state following transplantation out to 7 days compared to macrophages pre-treated with a classical pro-inflammatory stimulus, interferon-gamma, where CD86 costimulatory molecule expression is greater than 150% higher in pre-treated macrophage transplants compared to untreated counterparts. These findings provide an avenue for a major improvement in the lifespan and efficacy of macrophage-based cell therapies and have broader implications to other phagocyte-based cellular therapeutics and administration routes.
Graphical Abstract
Developing Artificial Intelligence-Based Content Creation: Are EU Copyright and Antitrust Law Fit for Purpose?
Authors: Vesala Juha 
Published: March 2023

AbstractArtificial intelligence offers promising applications for content production. However, their development faces significant copyright issues because it involves reproduction of protected subject matter and requires datasets so large that obtaining licences from all rightholders is unfeasible. These issues potentially hinder technological development and content production. On the other hand, some AI applications can threaten the interests and incentives of those who create works and subject matter that are protected by related rights. This article examines whether EU copyright and antitrust law are capable of addressing these challenges. It identifies possibilities and obstacles in applying exceptions for text and data mining (TDM) and temporary copying to the development of artificial creativity (AC) applications. The article also examines mechanisms by which EU antitrust law facilitates access to copyright-protected training materials and licences – an important complement to the copyright exceptions. While copyright and antitrust law enable the development of AC in certain situations, their tools are limited to particular types of AI applications, certain categories of subject matter and specific market conditions, and are subject to requirements concerning the development process as well as considerable legal uncertainty. Copyright and antitrust law also remain largely toothless against contractual and technological restraints, while recent EU initiatives dealing with data access also provide little relief in this regard.
Contrasting Outcomes in Two Cases of Uterine PEComa
Authors: Tiwari Mansi , Nikolopoulos Manolis , Miah Aisha , Wise Olga , Sayasneh Ahmad , Nath Rahul , Rajkumar Savithri , Kolomainen Desiree , Mehra Gautam 
Published: March 2023

AbstractPerivascular epithelioid cell tumours of the uterus are rare neoplasms with only few cases described in the literature. Ongoing contribution to the literature is important in order to understand the natural history for the diagnosis and management challenges for PEComa. We present two contrasting cases of PEComa who presented with postmenopausal bleeding, were diagnosed on endometrial biopsy and had surgical treatment. The first patient following treatment has been disease free for four years while on regular follow-ups. The second patient had aggressive disease developed early recurrence requiring chemotherapy and died in 17 months from diagnosis.PEComa is a rare tumour with usually good outcomes, where surgery itself is adequate treatment. There is not much evidence available currently on the use of chemotherapy in rare cases, such as our second case, where PEComa presents aggressively. In this article, we elaborate two cases of contrasting outcomes with one presentation being aggressive requiring chemotherapy. We evaluated the current evidence on use of chemotherapy in rare cases.
Numerical study on fracture control blasting using air–water coupling
Authors: Li Xudong , Liu Kewei , Qiu Tao , Sha Yanyan , Yang Jiacai , Song Ruitao 
Published: March 2023

AbstractFracture control blasting produces rock fractures in the desired direction, which is significant for the stability of excavation structures in rock engineering. The present study proposes a new method of fracture control blasting using air–water coupling. This method utilizes the difference of explosion stress transfer between air and water, which guides the explosion energy consumption in fracturing rock on water-coupling side, i.e. rock in the excavation zone, and thus the rock in the excavation zone is properly fragmented, and the reserved rock is well protected from damage. Based on the plane strain assumption, the transmission and propagation of explosion stress in the excavation and reserved rock with this method are first theoretically analyzed. Then, fracture control blasting using air–water coupling is numerically studied utilizing the LS-DYNA program. The numerical model is first developed and calibrated in the simulation with the laboratory-scale air-coupling and water-coupling blasting tests. Then, the successive processes of pressure attenuation, fracture evolution and energy consumption under air–water coupling blasting are numerically investigated. Thereafter, the effects of the air–water ratio and decoupling ratio on the performance of fracture control are numerically investigated. The theoretical and numerical results show that good performance of fracture control can be obtained using air–water coupling blasting.
A case weighted similarity deep measurement method based on a self-attention Siamese neural network
Authors: Cheng Zijun , Yan Aijun 
Published: March 2023

AbstractTo improve the accuracy of similarity measures in case-based reasoning, in this paper, we propose a deep metric learning method based on a self-attention mechanism and a Siamese neural network to realize the weighted similarity measure between cases. In this method, weight assignment and similarity measurement processes are integrated into a deep network. The method can map cases to a new feature space through nonlinear processing of the network layer to obtain better feature representation. The inner relationship between the features is captured by the self-attention mechanism, which is connected to the previous network layer, and the weight of the features is determined by the scoring function. Finally, a metric function is added to the contrastive loss to measure the case similarity. Experiments show that the accuracy of this method is better than that of other algorithms in the similarity measure and can improve the accuracy of case retrieval.
Computer studies of hybrid slotted working sections with minimum steady interference at subsonic speeds
Authors: Mabey D. G. , Steinle F. W. 
Published: March 2023

SummaryCurrently there is renewed interest in the evaluation and reduction of steady wind tunnel wall interference, especially for large models.Evaluation of previous predictions for perforated and slotted tunnels suggests that a hybrid slotted tunnel, ie a slotted tunnel with closed slats and perforated slots) should offer minimum corrections for upwash, flow curvature and solid blockage. This suggestion is confirmed by the present computer studies of a range of rectangular hybrid slotted tunnels.The computer studies are for tunnel working section height to breadth ratios of 0·835 and 0·600 over the Mach number range from 0 to 0·85. Wings swept at 28° and 50°, with ratios of model span to tunnel breadth varying from 0 to 0·7, are considered. An idealised fuselage shape is used to predict solid and wake blockage corrections for the wall configurations selected on the basis of minimum upwash and curvature interference.
The three dimensional turbulent corner wall jet
Authors: Hogg S. I. , Launder B. E. 
Published: March 2023

SummaryExperiments are reported of the self-preserving turbulent corner wall jet formed by directing a jet of air parallel to the line of intersection of two walls abutting at right angles. Self preserving profiles of the mean and turbulent flow are established by approximately 50 jet diameters downstream. Like the three-dimensional wall jet on a plane-wall surface there is evidence of a significant secondary flow induced by vortex line bending, though its magnitude is smaller than in the plane-wall case.
A calculation method for two-dimensional wall-bounded turbulent flows
Authors: Johnston L. J. 
Published: March 2023

SummaryA method to calculate two-dimensional or axisymmetric, compressible, wall-bounded viscous flows is described. The solution procedure involves a finite-difference discretisation of the governing flow equations. A number of novel normal co-ordinate transformations are used to enable efficient use to be made of the computational grid points. The implementation of zero-, one- and two-equation turbulence models is described. Results are presented for a range of compressible boundary-layer flows, and for an incompressible wake/ boundary layer mixing flow.
Spiral vortex flow over a swept-back wing
Authors: Poll D. I. A. 
Published: March 2023

SummaryAn experimental investigation has been performed to study the formation and development of spiral vortex flow over a swept-back wing. An aerofoil section with three alternative leading edge shapes was tested at sweep angles ranging from 0° to 56° for unit Reynolds numbers of 1 × 106/m and 2 × 106/m. The principal diagnostic tool was the surface oil-flow visualisation technique supplemented by pressure distribution measurements in certain cases. No spiral vortex flow was observed for sweep angles of 0° and 15° but at higher sweep angles the oil-flows indicated that there were three different mechanisms for the formation of spiral vortices. The angle of incidence at the onset of vortex flow, and the mechanism responsible for its formation, were found to depend upon the sweep angle, the leading edge shape and the Reynolds number. It was also noted that the larger the leading edge radius the greater the dependence upon Reynolds number. However, comparison with other work suggests that Reynolds number, incidence and sweep angle alone are insufficient to determine the type of spiral vortex flow occurring on a given wing.
Finite element free vibration analysis of
stiffened plates
Authors: Mukherjee Abhijit , Mukhopadhyay Madhujit 
Published: March 2023

SummaryFree vibration characteristics of stiffened plates possessing symmetrical stiffeners have been investigated by the finite element method. The main elegance of the element used lies in that the formulation takes into account the arbitrary orientation of a stiffener inside the plate element. The element being isoparametric in nature caters effectively for the irregular edges of the boundary as well as the transverse shear deformation of the plate and the stiffeners. Rectangular and skew stiffened plates having various boundary conditions and with stiffeners varying in number and in spacing, have been analysed. The correlation of the natural frequencies obtained by the present approach with the published results have been found to be very good.
The Conservative Wave and Corporate Practices in Brazil: The Controversy over LGBTQ in Marketing
Authors: Gomes Simone da Silva Ribeiro , Cantu Rodrigo 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThis article explores the impact conservative criticism has had on companies’ behaviour in Brazil. We investigate whether Natura and Boticário − the two largest Brazilian cosmetics companies − have maintained or reversed LGBTQ-oriented marketing and advertising when confronted with criticism from conservative groups. We draw on interviews with stakeholders, company investors and LGBTQ activists, in addition to complaints filed with the Conselho Nacional de Autorregulamentação Publicitária (National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation, CONAR), and companies’ documents on finance and social responsibility. Overall, even when faced with a negative backlash from conservative opinion, companies have persisted in their commitment to diversity issues and LGBTQ inclusion in marketing. However, firms have also employed evasive strategies, such as targeted communication and less controversial forms of retail design, signalling compromises with conservative stakeholders and customers.
Chromosomal genome sequence assembly and mating-type (MAT) locus characterization of the leprose asexual lichenized fungus Lepraria neglecta (Nyl.) Erichsen
Authors: Pfeffer Bubba , Lymbery Chandler , Booth Brendan , Allen Jessica L. 
Published: March 2023

AbstractComplete chromosomal-level assemblies of fungal genomes are rare. The intimate ecological symbioses and complex reproduction strategies utilized by fungi make highly contiguous, gapless genome assemblies particularly difficult. Here, we use long-read sequencing on the Oxford Nanopore Technology MinION platform to sequence and assemble the genome of Lepraria neglecta (Ascomycota, Lecanorales). In addition to eight contigs ascribable to chromosomes, six of which are assembled telomere-to-telomere, we discovered the presence of a complete MAT locus with two conserved MAT1-2 genes and a putative MAT1-1 pseudogene. The full genome assembly of a widespread, common species presents an opportunity for new insights into lichen reproduction while the presence of the mating-type locus in the genome of an asexual lichen raises fundamental questions about reproductive biology in fungi generally.
Minakata Kumagusu and the emergence of queer nature: Civilization theory, Buddhist science, and microbes, 1887–1892
Authors: Honda Eiko 
Published: March 2023

AbstractIn the intellectual history of modern Japan, the late 1880s epitomized the Meiji government’s effort to ‘civilize’ through Westernization, driven by the social Darwinian vision of the survival of the fittest. During this period in the United States, the ideas of civilization theory, informed by the very antithesis of the Meiji state’s understanding, surfaced in the life and work of the aspiring young naturalist-botanist Minakata Kumagusu. He imagined a ‘different kind of civilization’ as he re-examined the nature of social evolution in microbes by turning to Indian-and-Chinese-derived knowledge of his home region of Kii, Japan. Buddhism, persecuted by the Meiji regime, most notably enabled his scientific enquiry, while the encyclopedic work of Wakan Sansai Zue (The Illustrated Three Knowledge of Sino-Japan) became another key inspiration. Chinese historiography and Confucian thoughts additionally facilitated his reasoning.What interconnected all of these strands was what the author refers to as ‘queer nature’: the basis for truths whose ontological and experiential qualities resembled the microbe slime mould. Similar to this microbe that captured Kumagusu’s imagination, with queer nature the process of knowing defied the epistemological dichotomies and hierarchies that were fundamental to the social Darwinian theory of evolution. Experientially, it attracted the knower’s attention, induced their desire for intimacy with strange and curious others, and propelled greater intellectual enquiries. The article thus demonstrates a queer theory of intellectual history rooted in modern Japan, whose intellectual lineage derived from India and China instead of the West.
Finite‐Size Scaling for the Permeability of Discrete Fracture Networks
Authors: Yin Tingchang , Man Teng , Li Ling , Galindo‐Torres Sergio Andres 
Published: March 2023

AbstractWe formulate a finite‐size scaling hypothesis to predict the global permeability of fracture networks. To validate the hypothesis, numerous discrete fracture networks are generated, and the permeability is numerically calculated. Results suggest that the dimensionless permeability, scaled by moments of local conductivity and fracture sizes and corrected by two stereological ratios, can capture variations in fracture attributes (orientations, sizes, and apertures). The universal form obtained in this study can also explain the contradictory observations where the permeability decreases or increases with the domain size of fracture networks. We show that how a clear transition point, where the permeability does not change with the domain size, is obtained from this universal form. This study provides a solid theoretical foundation to understand the connection between fracture attributes and field‐scale hydraulic properties.