bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Can application of biochar improve the soil water characteristics of silty loam soil?
Authors: Toková Lucia , Igaz Dušan , Horák Ján , Aydın Elena 
Published: April 2023

Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates if a biochar application in 2014 and its reapplication in 2018 had affected the selected physical and hydrophysical soil properties of silty loam Haplic Luvisol at Dolná Malanta experimental site (Nitra, Slovakia) during the studied period of 2018–2020.

Materials and methods
Biochar was produced from cereal husks and paper fiber sludge by pyrolysis at temperature of 550 °C for 30 min and was applied to the soil in doses of 0, 10, and 20 t ha−1. The biochar treatments were combined with three levels of N fertilization (N0, N1, and N2).

Results
Biochar significantly decreased the bulk density up to − 12% and increased the soil porosity up to + 22% even 4–6 years after the biochar application. We also observed an increase in saturated hydraulic conductivity, which was reflected in better precipitation retention and a higher average soil water content by 12–15% depending on the fertilization level. Depending on the level of N fertilization, the interval of plant available water enlarged by 8–51% (10 t ha−1 of biochar), 18–21% (20 t ha−1 of biochar) after single biochar application, and by 18–34% (10 t ha−1 of biochar) and 19–31% (20 t ha−1 of biochar) after reapplication of biochar, which has positive implications regarding providing soil water to plants.

Conclusions
The results indicate that biochar amendments have the potential to substantially improve the soil water characteristics, and therefore, the quality status of silty loam agricultural soils.
Response to “Scrutinizing the causal link between excited delirium syndrome and restraint – a commentary on: ‘The role of restraint in fatal excited delirium: a research synthesis and pooled analysis’ by E.M.F. Strömmer, W. Leith, M.P. Zeegers and M.D. Freeman”
Authors: Freeman Michael D. , Strömmer Ellen M. F. , Leith Wendy M. , Zeegers Maurice P. 
Published: April 2023

Abstractde Boer et al. criticize the conclusions in our 2020 paper on the validity of Excited Delirium Syndrome (ExDS) as “egregiously misleading.” Our conclusion was that there “is no existing evidence that indicates that ExDS is inherently lethal in the absence of aggressive restraint.” The basis for de Boer and colleague’s criticism of our paper is that the ExDS literature does not provide an unbiased view of the lethality of the condition, and therefore the true epidemiologic features of ExDS cannot be determined from what has been published. The criticism is unrelated to the goals or methods of the study, however. Our stated purpose was to investigate “how the term ExDS has evolved in the literature and been endowed with a uniquely lethal quality,” and whether there is “evidence for ExDS as a unique cause of a death that would have occurred regardless of restraint, or a label used when a restrained and agitated person dies, and which erroneously directs attention away from the role of restraint in explaining the death.” We cannot fathom how de Boer et al. missed this clearly stated description of the study rationale, or why they would endorse a series of fallacious and meaningless claims that gave the appearance that they failed to grasp the basic design of the study. We do acknowledge and thank these authors for pointing out 3 minor citation errors and an equally minor table formatting error (neither of which altered the reported results and conclusions in the slightest), however.
Variation in Severity-Adjusted Resource use and Outcome for Neurosurgical Emergencies in the Intensive Care Unit
Authors: Raj Rahul , Moser André , Starkopf Joel , Reinikainen Matti , Varpula Tero , Jakob Stephan M. , Takala Jukka 
Published: April 2023

Abstract
Background
The correlation between the standardized resource use ratio (SRUR) and standardized hospital mortality ratio (SMR) for neurosurgical emergencies is not known. We studied SRUR and SMR and the factors affecting these in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), nontraumatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH).

Methods
We extracted data of patients treated in six university hospitals in three countries (2015–2017). Resource use was measured as SRUR based on purchasing power parity-adjusted direct costs and either intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay (costSRURlength of stay) or daily Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System scores (costSRURTherapeutic Intervention Scoring System). Five a priori defined variables reflecting differences in structure and organization between the ICUs were used as explanatory variables in bivariable models, separately for the included neurosurgical diseases.

Results
Out of 28,363 emergency patients treated in six ICUs, 6,162 patients (22%) were admitted with a neurosurgical emergency (41% nontraumatic ICH, 23% SAH, 13% multitrauma TBI, and 23% isolated TBI). The mean costs for neurosurgical admissions were higher than for nonneurosurgical admissions, and the neurosurgical admissions corresponded to 23.6–26.0% of all direct costs related to ICU emergency admissions. A higher physician-to-bed ratio was associated with lower SMRs in the nonneurosurgical admissions but not in the neurosurgical admissions. In patients with nontraumatic ICH, lower costSRURs were associated with higher SMRs. In the bivariable models, independent organization of an ICU was associated with lower costSRURs in patients with nontraumatic ICH and isolated/multitrauma TBI but with higher SMRs in patients with nontraumatic ICH. A higher physician-to-bed ratio was associated with higher costSRURs for patients with SAH. Larger units had higher SMRs for patients with nontraumatic ICH and isolated TBI. None of the ICU-related factors were associated with costSRURs in nonneurosurgical emergency admissions.

Conclusions
Neurosurgical emergencies constitute a major proportion of all emergency ICU admissions. A lower SRUR was associated with higher SMR in patients with nontraumatic ICH but not for the other diagnoses. Different organizational and structural factors seemed to affect resource use for the neurosurgical patients compared with nonneurosurgical patients. This emphasizes the importance of case-mix adjustment when benchmarking resource use and outcomes.
Global, regional, and national burdens of cirrhosis in children and adolescents aged under 19 years from 1990 to 2019
Authors: Zhang Chi , Liu Yiqi , Zhao Hong , Wang Guiqiang 
Published: April 2023

Abstract
Background & aims
Cirrhosis was the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in adults, but data on the burden and trends were sparse in children and adolescents. We aimed to assess the trends in 204 countries and territories over the past 30 years in children and adolescents aged 0–19 years.

Methods
Data on cirrhosis was collected by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 database from 1990 to 2019. We reported on the number, rates, and average annual percentage changes (AAPCs) of incidence and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) of cirrhosis at global, regional, and national level.

Results
Globally, the incident numbers of cirrhosis in children and adolescents increased from 204,767 in 1990 to 241,364 in 2019, an increase of 17.9%, with an AAPC 0.13(0.10 to 0.16). Prevalence (AAPC = − 2.27[− 2.39 to − 2.15]), mortality (AAPC = − 1.68 [− 1.86 to − 1.5]), and DALYs rate (AAPC = − 1.72[− 1.88 to − 1.56]) of cirrhosis have decreased significantly. Cirrhosis incident rates varied between different ages. Cirrhosis caused by alcohol use (AAPC = 1[0.8 to 1.1]; incidence cases increased 48%), hepatitis C (AAPC = 0.4 [0.4 to 0.5]), NAFLD (AAPC = 0.5 [0.3 to 0.6]) have been increasing, while only hepatitis B (− 0.3[− 0.4 to − 0.2]) decreasing. Incidence cases of cirrhosis were increased in low (101.6%) and low-middle sociodemographic index (SDI 21.1%) areas, while decreasing in middle and above SDI areas. At the regional level, the largest increases count was observed in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Conclusions
Global incidence rate of cirrhosis has been increasing, while the DALYs rate has been decreasing in children and adolescents. Morbidity of cirrhosis caused by hepatitis B declined, while hepatitis C, NAFLD, and alcohol use increased.
Differential and Linear properties of vectorial boolean functions based on chi
Authors: Mella Silvia , Mehrdad Alireza , Daemen Joan 
Published: April 2023

AbstractTo evaluate the security of a cryptographic primitive, investigating its resistance against differential and linear cryptanalysis is required. Many modern cryptographic primitives repeatedly apply similar round functions alternated with the addition of round keys or constants. A round function usually consists of a non-linear mapping and a number of linear mappings. The non-linear mapping $$\chi$$
χ
is used in different cryptographic primitives such as Keccak and Subterranean. An alternative version of $$\chi$$
χ
is used in Ascon and the non-linear layer of Simon has the same differential and linear properties of $$\chi$$
χ
. The mapping $$\chi$$
χ
can be applied to strings with different lengths. For instance, it can be parallelly applied to small-length strings as in Keccak, where it works on 5-bit strings, or it can be applied to big-length strings as in Subterranean, where it works on a string of length 257. Investigating the differential and linear properties of $$\chi$$
χ
working on alternative lengths of strings, provides useful information to designers to make a better choice for the non-linear layer. Some differential properties of $$\chi$$
χ
have been analyzed in [8] and in this work we provide a revised presentation of them. We then extend this study and we analyze linear propagation properties of $$\chi$$
χ
. Thanks to these additional results, we extend the comparison between the application of parallel instances of $$\chi$$
χ
on small-length strings and the application of a single instance of $$\chi$$
χ
on a big-length string. We show how we can apply the results of this study also to the non-linear layers of Ascon and Simon thanks to their affine-equivalence with $$\chi$$
χ
.
Existence of Solutions to Nonlinear Fourth-Order Beam Equation
Authors: Ostaszewska Urszula , Schmeidel Ewa , Zdanowicz Małgorzata 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis paper studies the boundary value problem for a fourth-order difference equation with three quasidifferences. The new existence criterion of at least one solution to the issues considered is obtained using the theory of variational methods. The main result is illustrated in some examples.
Digital technology adaptation and initiatives: a systematic review of teaching and learning during COVID-19
Authors: Zhou Xue , Smith Christopher James MacBride , Al-Samarraie Hosam 
Published: April 2023

AbstractCOVID-19 dramatically influenced students’ and staff’s learning and teaching experiences and approaches to learning. While many papers examined individual experiences in the context of higher education, synthesising these papers to determine enabling and hindering influences of digital adaptation was needed to guide the next phase of online learning reforms. This study explored the main dimensions of digital technology adaptation in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The consequences for student and staff experiences and what aspects should be sustained and developed were discussed in this review. A total of 90 articles (published between 1st January 2020 and 30th June 2021) were identified and analysed based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses framework. Four dimensions (with associated sub-factors) were found to influence student and staff experiences: techno-economic; personal and psychological; teaching, learning and assessment; and social. The findings highlighted that an integrated approach, across institutional, technical platforms, and individuals would be required to sustain digital learning initiatives during the crisis time.
Masking, extrinsicness, and the nature of dispositions: the role of niche signals in muscle stem cells
Authors: Suárez Javier 
Published: April 2023

AbstractI investigate the intrinsic/extrinsic nature of stemness in muscle stem cells (MSC) by relying on recent research on quiescence, with the aim of shedding light on the nature of dispositions and deriving some consequences about stem cells. First, I argue why the study of quiescence is the best available way to establish any claim about the intrinsicness/extrinsicness of stemness at least is some stem cells. Drawing on that, I argue that MSC’s stem capacities result from the combination of intrinsic cues plus extrinsic factors from the stem cell niche, making stemness an extrinsic disposition in MSC. Importantly, it is shown that the niche allows the instantiation of stemness in MSC by acting as amaskerof its manifestation. This shows that stemness is, at least in MSC, what I call an extrinsically structurally masked disposition (SMD); that is, a disposition whose instantiation requires, as a condition of possibility, the interaction between the bearer and a masker. Finally, I conclude by suggesting some potential consequences of this observation for the philosophical study of dispositions and for stem cell research.
Neuroadaptive Technology and the Self: a Postphenomenological Perspective
Authors: Fairclough Stephen 
Published: April 2023

AbstractNeuroadaptive technology (NAT) is a closed-loop neurotechnology designed to enhance human–computer interaction. NAT works by collecting neurophysiological data, which are analysed via autonomous algorithms to create actions and adaptations at the user interface. This paper concerns how interaction with NAT can mediate self-related processing (SRP), such as self-awareness, self-knowledge, and agency. We begin with a postphenomenological analysis of the NAT closed loop to highlight the built-in selectivities of machine hermeneutics, i.e., autonomous chains of algorithms that convert data into an assessment of psychological states/intentions. We argue that these algorithms produce an assessment of lived experience that is quantitative, reductive, and highly simplistic. This reductive assessment of lived experience is presented to the user via feedback at the NAT interface and subsequently mediates SRP. It is argued that congruence between system feedback and SRP determines the precise character of the alterity relation between human user and system. If feedback confirms SRP, the technology is regarded as a quasi-self. If there is a disagreement between SRP and feedback from the system, NAT is perceived to be a quasi-other. We argue that the design of the user interface shapes the precise ways in which NAT can mediate SRP.
Influence of wood species and additives on emission behavior of wood pellets in a residential pellet stove and a boiler
Authors: Mack Robert , Schön Claudia , Kuptz Daniel , Hartmann Hans , Brunner Thomas , Obernberger Ingwald , Behr Hans Martin 
Published: April 2023

AbstractWood pellets on the German pellet market mainly consist of spruce wood, but other wood species are increasingly used during pellet production. Moreover, additives such as starch or kaolin can be added to improve fuel quality and combustion behavior. Consequently, wood pellets vary in their physical and chemical properties and this variation might affect combustion behavior in stoves and boilers. In this study, eight different wood species were used for pellet production at the Technology and Support Centre (TFZ). Three types of starch and one type of kaolin were added to spruce wood without bark, using two additivation levels (starch: 0.5 w-% and 1.8 w-%, kaolin: 0.17 and 0.34 w-%). All pellet assortments were analyzed according to international standards for solid biofuels and additional methods. Fuels were combusted in a 6-kW pellet stove and a 15-kW pellet boiler. Selection of wood species had a significant impact on CO emissions for the pellet stove ranging between 85 and 4189 mg/m3 and on TPM emissions ranging between 23 and 263 mg/m3. Similar combustion behavior was observed for the pellet boiler but on a lower emission level. Kaolin reduced CO and TPM emissions as well as slag formation when the additivation level was set according to stoichiometric calculations. When kaolin was overdosed, it had a negative impact on TPM emissions mainly in the pellet boiler, probably due to entrainment. Regarding particles from incomplete combustion, a negative impact of overdosed kaolin was observed. Overall, at the current state of the art, the pellet stove showed larger sensitivity towards variable pellet qualities compared to the automatic pellet boiler. This calls for further improvements in fuel design and stove technology.
Long-term trends in yield variance of temperate managed grassland
Authors: Macholdt Janna , Hadasch Steffen , Macdonald Andrew , Perryman Sarah , Piepho Hans-Peter , Scott Tony , Styczen Merete Elisabeth , Storkey Jonathan 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThe management of climate-resilient grassland systems is important for stable livestock fodder production. In the face of climate change, maintaining productivity while minimizing yield variance of grassland systems is increasingly challenging. To achieve climate-resilient and stable productivity of grasslands, a better understanding of the climatic drivers of long-term trends in yield variance and its dependence on agronomic inputs is required. Based on the Park Grass Experiment at Rothamsted (UK), we report for the first time the long-term trends in yield variance of grassland (1965–2018) in plots given different fertilizer and lime applications, with contrasting productivity and plant species diversity. We implemented a statistical model that allowed yield variance to be determined independently of yield level. Environmental abiotic covariates were included in a novel criss-cross regression approach to determine climatic drivers of yield variance and its dependence on agronomic management. Our findings highlight that sufficient liming and moderate fertilization can reduce yield variance while maintaining productivity and limiting loss of plant species diversity. Plots receiving the highest rate of nitrogen fertilizer or farmyard manure had the highest yield but were also more responsive to environmental variability and had less plant species diversity. We identified the days of water stress from March to October and temperature from July to August as the two main climatic drivers, explaining approximately one-third of the observed yield variance. These drivers helped explain consistent unimodal trends in yield variance—with a peak in approximately 1995, after which variance declined. Here, for the first time, we provide a novel statistical framework and a unique long-term dataset for understanding the trends in yield variance of managed grassland. The application of the criss-cross regression approach in other long-term agro-ecological trials could help identify climatic drivers of production risk and to derive agronomic strategies for improving the climate resilience of cropping systems.
Long-term care need, loneliness, and perceived social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from the German Ageing Survey
Authors: Hajek André , Grupp Katharina , Aarabi Ghazal , Gyasi Razak Mohammed , Freak-Poli Rosanne , Kretzler Benedikt , König Hans-Helmut 
Published: April 2023

Abstract
Background
There is a complete lack of studies focusing on the association between care degree (reflecting the long-term care need) and loneliness or social isolation in Germany.

Aims
To investigate the association between care degree and loneliness as well as perceived social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods
We used data from the nationally representative German Ageing Survey, which covers community-dwelling middle-aged and older individuals aged 40 years or over. We used wave 8 of the German Ageing Survey (analytical sample: n = 4334 individuals, mean age was 68.9 years, SD: 10.2 years; range 46–100 years). To assess loneliness, the De Jong Gierveld instrument was used. To assess perceived social isolation, the Bude and Lantermann instrument was used. Moreover, the level of care was used as a key independent variable (absence of care degree (0); care degree 1–5).

Results
After adjusting for various covariates, regressions showed that there were no significant differences between individuals without a care degree and individuals with a care degree of 1 or 2 in terms of loneliness and perceived social isolation. In contrast, individuals with a care degree of 3 or 4 had higher loneliness (β = 0.23, p = 0.034) and higher perceived social isolation scores (β = 0.38, p < 0.01) compared to individuals without a care degree.

Discussion/conclusions
Care degrees of 3 or 4 are associated with higher levels of both loneliness and perceived social isolation. Longitudinal studies are required to confirm this association.
Compact interactive dual-branch network for real-time semantic segmentation
Authors: Dong Yongsheng , Yang Haotian , Pei Yuanhua , Shen Longchao , Zheng Lintao , Li Peiluan 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThe traditional complete dual-branch structure is effective for semantic segmentation tasks. However, it is redundant in some sense. Moreover, the simple additive fusion of the features from the two branches may not achieve the satisfactory performance. To alleviate these two problems, in this paper we propose an efficient compact interactive dual-branch network (CIDNet) for real-time semantic segmentation. Specifically, we first build a compact interactive dual-branch structure by constructing a compact detail branch and a semantic branch. Furthermore, we build a detail-semantic interactive module to fuse several specific stages of the two branches in the backbone network with the corresponding stages of the detail resolution branch. Finally, we propose a dual-branch contextual attention fusion module to deeply fuse the extracted features and predict the final segmentation result. Extensive experiments on Cityscapes and CamVid dataset demonstrate that the proposed CIDNet achieve satisfactory trade-off between segmentation accuracy and inference speed, and outperforms 20 representative real-time semantic segmentation methods.
Enhancing context representations with part-of-speech information and neighboring signals for question classification
Authors: Gong Peizhu , Liu Jin , Xie Yurong , Liu Minjie , Zhang Xiliang 
Published: April 2023

AbstractQuestion classification is an essential task in question answering (QA) systems. An effective and efficient question classification model can not only restrict the search space for answers, but also guide the QA system in selecting the optimal knowledge base and search strategy. In recent years, self-attention mechanism has been widely used in question classification for its strength of capturing global dependencies. However, it models all signals with weighted averaging, which is prone to overlooking the relation of neighboring signals. Furthermore, recent research has revealed that part-of-speech (POS) information can be used to determine and reinforce the semantics in sentence representation. In this paper, we propose a POS-aware adjacent relation attention network (POS-ARAN) for question classification, which enhance context representations with POS information and neighboring signals. To consider the local context, we propose an adjacent relation attention mechanism, which incorporates a Gaussian bias via a dynamic window to revise the vanilla self-attention mechanism. Thus, it can capture both the long-term dependency and local representation of semantic relations among words in different sentences. In addition, a POS-aware embedding layer is proposed, which helps to locate the appropriate headwords by syntactic information. Extensive experiments are conducted on Experimental Data for Question Classification (EDQC) dataset and Yahoo! Answers Comprehensive Questions and Answers 1.0, the results demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms the existing methods, achieving 95.59% in coarse-grained level accuracy and 92.91% in fine-grained level accuracy, respectively.