bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cholesterol‐Containing Liposomes Decorated With Au Nanoparticles as Minimal Tunable Fusion Machinery
Authors: Canepa Ester , Bochicchio Davide , Brosio Giorgia , Silva Paulo Henrique Jacob , Stellacci Francesco , Dante Silvia , Rossi Giulia , Relini Annalisa 
Published: March 2023

AbstractMembrane fusion is essential for the basal functionality of eukaryotic cells. In physiological conditions, fusion events are regulated by a wide range of specialized proteins, operating with finely tuned local lipid composition and ionic environment. Fusogenic proteins, assisted by membrane cholesterol and calcium ions, provide the mechanical energy necessary to achieve vesicle fusion in neuromediator release. Similar cooperative effects must be explored when considering synthetic approaches for controlled membrane fusion. We show that liposomes decorated with amphiphilic Au nanoparticles (AuLips) can act as minimal tunable fusion machinery. AuLips fusion is triggered by divalent ions, while the number of fusion events dramatically changes with, and can be finely tuned by, the liposome cholesterol content. We combine quartz‐crystal‐microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM‐D), fluorescence assays, and small‐angle X‐ray scattering (SAXS) with molecular dynamics (MD) at coarse‐grained (CG) resolution, revealing new mechanistic details on the fusogenic activity of amphiphilic Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) and demonstrating the ability of these synthetic nanomaterials to induce fusion regardless of the divalent ion used (Ca2+ or Mg2+). The results provide a novel contribution to developing new artificial fusogenic agents for next‐generation biomedical applications that require tight control of the rate of fusion events (e.g., targeted drug delivery).
Acetamide‐ or Formamide‐Assisted In Situ Approach to Carbon‐Rich or Nitrogen‐Deficient Graphitic Carbon Nitride for Notably Enhanced Visible‐Light Photocatalytic Redox Performance
Authors: Zhang Xueyan , Yang Guang , Meng Jiaqi , Qin Lang , Ren Miao , Pan Yue , Yang Yuxin , Guo Yihang 
Published: March 2023

AbstractAcetamide‐ or formamide‐assisted in situ strategy is designed to synthesize carbon atom self‐doped g‐C3N4 (AHCNx) or nitrogen vacancy‐modified g‐C3N4 (FHCNx). Different from the direct copolymerization route that suffers from the problem of mismatched physical properties of acetamide (or formamide) with urea, the synthesis of AHCNx (or FHCNx) starts from a crucial preorganization step of acetamide (or formamide) with urea via freeze drying‐hydrothermal treatment so that the chemical structures as well as C‐doping level in AHCNx and N‐vacancy concentration in FHCNx can be precisely regulated. By using various structural characterization methods, well‐defined AHCNx and FHCNx structures are proposed. At the optimal C‐doping level in AHCNx or N‐vacancy concentration in FHCNx, both AHCNx and FHCNx exhibit remarkably improved visible‐light photocatalytic performance in oxidation of emerging organic pollutants (acetaminophen and methylparaben) and reduction of proton to H2 in comparison of unmodified g‐C3N4. Combination of the experimental results with theoretical calculations, it is confirmed that AHCNx and FHCNx show different charge separation and transfer mechanisms, while the enhanced visible‐light harvesting capacity and the localized charge distributions on HOMO and LUMO are responsible for this excellent photocatalytic redox performance of AHCNx and FHCNx.
In Vivo Behavior of Ultrasmall Spherical Nucleic Acids
Authors: Callmann Cassandra E. , Vasher Matthew K. , Das Anindita , Kusmierz Caroline D. , Mirkin Chad A. 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThe biological properties of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) are largely independent of nanoparticle core identity but significantly affected by oligonucleotide surface density. Additionally, the payload‐to‐carrier (i.e., DNA‐to‐nanoparticle) mass ratio of SNAs is inversely proportional to core size. While SNAs with many core types and sizes have been developed, all in vivo analyses of SNA behavior have been limited to cores >10 nm in diameter. However, “ultrasmall” nanoparticle constructs (<10 nm diameter) can exhibit increased payload‐to‐carrier ratios, reduced liver accumulation, renal clearance, and enhanced tumor infiltration. Therefore, we hypothesized that SNAs with ultrasmall cores exhibit SNA‐like properties, but with in vivo behavior akin to traditional ultrasmall nanoparticles. To investigate, we compared the behavior of SNAs with 1.4‐nm Au102 nanocluster cores (AuNC‐SNAs) and SNAs with 10‐nm gold nanoparticle cores (AuNP‐SNAs). Significantly, AuNC‐SNAs possess SNA‐like properties (e.g., high cellular uptake, low cytotoxicity) but show distinct in vivo behavior. When intravenously injected in mice, AuNC‐SNAs display prolonged blood circulation, lower liver accumulation, and higher tumor accumulation than AuNP‐SNAs. Thus, SNA‐like properties persist at the sub‐10‐nm length scale and oligonucleotide arrangement and surface density are responsible for the biological properties of SNAs. This work has implications for the design of new nanocarriers for therapeutic applications.
A transformative shift toward blockchain‐basedIoTenvironments: Consensus, smart contracts, and future directions
Authors: Trivedi Chandan , Rao Udai Pratap , Parmar Keyur , Bhattacharya Pronaya , Tanwar Sudeep , Sharma Ravi 
Published: March 2023

AbstractRecently, Internet‐of‐Things (IoT) based applications have shifted from centralized infrastructures to decentralized ecosystems, owing to user data's security and privacy limitations. The shift has opened new doors for intruders to launch distributed attacks in diverse IoT scenarios that jeopardize the application environments. Moreover, as heterogeneous and autonomous networks communicate, the attacks intensify, which justifies the requirement of trust as a key policy. Recently, blockchain‐based IoT solutions have been proposed that address trust limitations by maintaining data consistency, immutability, and chronology in IoT environments. However, IoT ecosystems are resource‐constrained and have low bandwidth and finite computing power of sensor nodes. Thus, the inclusion of blockchain requires an effective policy design regarding consensus and smart contract environments in heterogeneous IoT applications. Recent studies have presented blockchain as a potential solution in IoT, but an effective view of consensus and smart contract design to meet the end application requirements is an open problem. Motivated by the same, the survey presents the integration of suitable low‐powered consensus protocols and smart contract design to assess and validate the blockchain‐IoT ecosystems. We present blockchain‐IoT's emerging communication and security aspects with performance issues of consensus protocols, interoperability, and implementation platforms. A case study of a smart contract‐based blockchain‐driven ecosystem is presented with a comparative analysis of mining cost and latency, which shows its suitability in real‐world setups. We also highlight attacks on blockchain IoT, open issues, potential findings, and future directions. The survey intends to drive novel solutions for future consensus and safe, smart contract designs to support applicative IoT ecosystems.
Teaching health justice and reimagining narratives of place through community‐driven science practices
Authors: Visintainer Tammie 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThis study explores how a biology teacher from a summer science program engaged high school students of color in a three‐week science unit exploring community health at the intersection of history, race, place, and power. The goal of this study is to better understand what community‐driven science looks like in a science classroom when a health equity unit is guided by a biology teacher who engages the socio‐historical, political, and relational aspects of community structure and agency. Using student and instructor interviews, program observations, and student artifacts, I examine how the instructor's positioning as a Black woman scientist shaped her goals and vision and the instructional and pedagogical resources made available during the unit. In addition, I explore how engaging in community‐driven science practices during the unit such as critical inquiry and data analysis supported students' sense making about community health and the possibilities they imagined for their communities. Findings illuminate how engaging community health at the intersection of history, race, place, and power shaped engagement in community‐driven science practices and supported student sense making in ways that surfaced challenges, tensions, and opportunities for disrupting and reimagining community narratives. Further, finding highlight the importance of an instructor's lived experiences and pedagogical vision in supporting emergent forms of student agency and place remaking, and generating possibilities for community healing and hope.
DeepFixCX: Explainable privacy‐preserving image compression for medical image analysis
Authors: Gaudio Alex , Smailagic Asim , Faloutsos Christos , Mohan Shreshta , Johnson Elvin , Liu Yuhao , Costa Pedro , Campilho Aurélio 
Published: March 2023

AbstractExplanations of a model's biases or predictions are essential to medical image analysis. Yet, explainable machine learning approaches for medical image analysis are challenged by needs to preserve privacy of patient data, and by current trends in deep learning to use unsustainably large models and large datasets. We propose DeepFixCX for explainable and privacy‐preserving medical image compression that is nimble and performant. We contribute a review of the field and a conceptual framework for simultaneous privacy and explainability via tools of compression. DeepFixCX compresses images without learning by removing or obscuring spatial and edge information. DeepFixCX is ante‐hoc explainable and gives privatized post hoc explanations of spatial and edge bias without accessing the original image. DeepFixCX privatizes images to prevent image reconstruction and mitigate patient re‐identification. DeepFixCX is nimble. Compression can occur on a laptop CPU or GPU to compress and privatize 1700 images per second of size 320 × 320. DeepFixCX enables use of low memory MLP classifiers for vision data; permitting small performance loss gives end‐to‐end MLP performance over 70× faster and batch size over 100× larger. DeepFixCX consistently improves predictive classification performance of a Deep Neural Network (DNN) by 0.02 AUC ROC on Glaucoma and Cervix Type detection datasets, and can improve multi‐label chest x‐ray classification performance in seven of 10 tested settings. In all three datasets, compression to less than 5% of original number of pixels gives matching or improved performance. Our main novelty is to define an explainability versus privacy problem and address it with lossy compression.This article is categorized under:
Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Explainable AI
Commercial, Legal, and Ethical Issues > Security and Privacy
Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Big Data Mining
Tracing water use by sectors in Morocco: An input–output modeling approach
Authors: Samih Ikram , Loudyi Dalila 
Published: March 2023

AbstractIn recent decades, Morocco has experienced a strong and rapid increase in water demand due to many challenges such as population growth, urbanization sprawl, and economic development. Besides, climate change and its negative impact on natural water resources availability have put the supply–demand balance in jeopardy. This imperative has created a priority need to analyze the demand structure and identify how economic sector linkages mitigate or exacerbate water shortage. In this paper, a methodological framework based on an input–output model has been proposed to capture not only sectors with a large drag effect on water consumption of the whole economy but also the propagation of water use from both diffusion and absorption effects. The results show that the responsibility for water stress is attributed to different sectors and depends on the exogenous final demand shocks. This highlights the significance of consumers' decisions in the determination of ecological impact assessment.
Time and Topos in Migratory Trajectories: Mapping Memory and Lived Experiences of Religion Among Syrian Refugees in Norway
Authors: Løland Ingrid 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThis chapter addresses the interconnection of religion and displacement in a conflict-induced Syrian refugee context. After more than a decade of bloodshed and undissolved war, an unprecedented displacement crisis has led Syrians to comprise one of the largest refugee populations in Europe and elsewhere. Little research has discerned the complex role that religion, identity, and belonging play in shaping migratory patterns and experiences among Syrian refugees. Not least have these dimensions been absent concerning the ways in which lived experiences of religion inform both real and imaginary forms of temporal and spatial displacement contexts. In order to adequately capture the multidimensional and (dis)empowering aspects of religion in Syrians’ migratory experiences, this chapter argues for applying a dynamic trajectory lens in which the parameters of time and space are both experientially and existentially acknowledged. The research shows how trajectories embrace pivotal experiences spanning flight, refugeehood, and exile as multiple and overlapping migratory paths and horizons. Furthermore, it explores trajectories as mirroring a hybrid assemblage of memory practices through which the symbolic language of metaphors is narratively conveyed. By focusing on the spatiotemporal metaphors of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia, this research thus attempts to map the storied landscape of Syrian refugee trajectories; an ambiguous realm in which religion, identity, and belonging fluctuate between both backward-looking as well as future-oriented processes.
“Emerging Forms of Authority in Land Access?”: The Occult and Witchcraft Among Malawian Migrants in Peri-urban Zimbabwe
Authors: Bhanye Johannes 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThe purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of religion and ritual in facilitating access to and security over land among migrants in peri-urban Zimbabwe. The chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among Malawians settled in Lydiate, an informal settlement in Zimbabwe’s Norton peri-urban area. The study shows that though they are not the only sources of access to and security over land, religion and ritual-based forms of authority—the Nyau cult and witchcraft—play a role in land matters. Migrants turn to the enchanting, dramatic, yet dreadful Nyau cult to access and reinforce their ownership of land. Because it is feared and respected by adherents on account of its association with deathly symbols, the cult is able to yield and secure land for those who seek it in its name. Others secure their land against expropriation from fellow migrants through the eccentric means of witchcraft. The migrants do not choose these alternative forms of authority out of preference; very often there are no formal institutions that they can use. Legal courts and local authorities are often unsympathetic toward their interests. Thus, migrant squatter settlements have become dynamic spaces with novel forms of authority regulating access to coveted resources such as land.
Religion Constructed, Imagined, and Experienced: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Turkey
Authors: Kujawa Izabela 
Published: March 2023

AbstractSince 2011, over 3.7 million Syrians have sought and received protection in Turkey, placing it among the countries hosting the largest number of refugees in the world. Based on in-depth interviews, I explore how religion and religious freedom are present in rhetoric employed in discussions surrounding Syrian refugees’ presence in the country and their status there. Furthermore, I focus on refugees’ own experiences, expectations, and imaginaries, and the role religion and religious tolerance play in them. I also analyze how the theme of religion is established as an axis around which belonging and otherness are constructed and what role it plays in the process of integration. This essay is grounded in interviews carried out in Istanbul and Gaziantep with Syrian refugees and representatives of civil society organizations supporting them.
Religion Resettles Refugees: Religion’s Role in Integration in the United States
Authors: Scribner Todd , Weiner Matthew C. , Clifton Katherine 
Published: March 2023

AbstractWhat role does religion play in the displacement, resettlement, and integration of refugees who are brought into the United States? This chapter examines an ongoing initiative, the Religion and Resettlement Project (RRP), that takes as its central premise the idea that religion is a critical aspect for understanding refugees’ mental health and civic lives, fostering civil society, conceptualizing the long-term displacement of refugees, and assisting with their integration. With the RRP, we consider the full range of resettled refugees—from Holocaust survivors to Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders. In this chapter, we examine key initiatives pertinent to this project, some of the challenges related to its implementation, and areas where further research is needed to better understand this dynamic.
Introduction
Authors: Duan Lunbo , Li Lin 
Published: March 2023

AbstractFBC technology with the advantages of flexible fuel applicability, stable temperature control, inherently low gas-pollutant emissions, etc. is an advanced fuel-conversion technology, applied in industry, and in heat and electric utilities. Theoretically, FBC has good gas-solid mixing and a resulting uniform temperature distribution. In the actual FBC operation, however, especially in large-scale reactors, the mixing of oxygen and fuel is still limited by the lateral solids dispersion coefficient and gas penetration. Such an issue not only reduces the combustion efficiency but also brings a series of problems related to the operation, such as excessive emissions and bed agglomeration. OCAC technology, which is using oxygen carrier particles to partially or completely replace the traditional inert bed materials in fluidized-bed reactors. This technology is aiming to improve combustion efficiency, enhance operational safety, and reduce pollutant emission by promoting the uniformity of the oxygen and temperature distributions in a fluidized-bed reactor. Benefiting from the oxygen buffering characteristic of oxygen carrier particles, OCAC can significantly improve the oxygen distribution throughout the combustion chamber, which can reduce CO and hydrocarbon emissions.
The Evolution of OCAC and Its Working Principles
Authors: Duan Lunbo , Li Lin 
Published: March 2023

AbstractThe technical route proposed by Thunman et al. to use OC to aid fluidized bed combustion is very creative, although it is likely that the OCAC technology was inspired by chemical looping combustion (CLC) technology developed at the same department of Chalmers University of Technology. OCAC shares many characteristics with CLC as well as with three-way catalyst (TWC) technology in terms of adopting the oxygen-carrying material, gas-solid redox reaction, improving fuel conversion and reducing pollutants, etc. Therefore, the principle and technical characteristics of TWC and CLC will be briefly reviewed here to provide some preliminary knowledge before introducing working principle of OCAC. In addition, the operation of reactor, reaction temperature, theperiod ofredox reaction, type of bed material and reaction products of the TWC, CLC and OCAC technologies are compared and analyzed comprehensively in the last part of this chapter.
Oxygen Carrier Aided Gasification (OCAG)
Authors: Duan Lunbo , Li Lin 
Published: March 2023

AbstractGasification is regarded as an effective clean utilization technology of solid fuel, which can convert the chemical energy of solid fuel into gaseous fuel. However, the primary gas products contain not only the essential gas products, but also an unacceptable amount of tars, which will cause operational problems such as blockage of downstream equipment during gasification. Catalysts are often used after the gasifier to catalyze tar in the pyrolysis product gas. However, the activity ofcatalysts generally declines over time, as they will be poisoned by prolonged exposure to an atmosphere containing elements such as sulfur, chlorine and alkali metals. In addition, under the condition of high tar content, carbon deposition may form on the surface of catalyst, which leads to the deactivation of catalyst. The oxygen carrier particles of natural ores not only can transport oxygen, but also contain various metal elements that can be used as catalysts for tar cracking. Introduce the OCs to replace inert bed materials may not only provide a cheap catalyst for the technology, but also complete the transfer of oxygen between the two reactors, this process is oxygen carrier aided gasification (OCAG).
Classical off-shell currents
Authors: Comberiati Francesco , de la Cruz Leonardo 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
We consider tree-level off-shell currents of two massive particles and n massless bosons in the classical limit, which can be fused into the classical limit of n + 2 scattering amplitudes. We show that dressing up the current with coherent wave-functions associated with the massive particles leads to the recently proposed Worldline Quantum Field Theory (WQFT) path integral. The currents thus constructed encode solutions of classical equations of motion so they can be applied to contexts where the classical limit is relevant, including hard thermal loops. We give several examples of these currents in scalar, gauge and gravitational theories.
A reduced inner product for kink states
Authors: Evslin Jarah , Liu Hui 
Published: March 2023

Abstract
Solitons in classical field theories correspond to states in quantum field theories. If the spatial dimension is infinite, then momentum eigenstates are not normalizable. This leads to infrared divergences, which are generally regularized via wave packets or by compactification. However, in some applications both possibilities are undesirable. In the present note, we introduce a finite inner product on translation-invariant kink states that allows us to compute probabilities involving these nonnormalizable states. Essentially, it is the quotient of the usual inner product by the translation group. We present a surprisingly simple formula for the reduced inner product, which requires no knowledge of the zero-mode dependence of the states but includes a correction which accounts for the mixing between zero modes and normal modes as the kink moves. As an application, we show that initial and final state corrections to meson multiplication vanish. However, we find that the pole of the subleading term in the initial state requires an infinitesimal imaginary shift.