bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Scaling Arctic landscape and permafrost features improves active layer depth modeling
Authors: Hantson Wouter , Yang Daryl , Serbin Shawn P , Fisher Joshua B , Hayes Daniel J 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Tundra ecosystems in the Arctic store up to 40% of global below-ground organic carbon but are exposed to the fastest climate warming on Earth. However, accurately monitoring landscape changes in the Arctic is challenging due to the complex interactions among permafrost, micro-topography, climate, vegetation, and disturbance. This complexity results in high spatiotemporal variability in permafrost distribution and active layer depth (ALD). Moreover, these key tundra processes interact at different scales, and an observational mismatch can limit our understanding of intrinsic connections and dynamics between above and below-ground processes. Consequently, this could limit our ability to model and anticipate how ALD will respond to climate change and disturbances across tundra ecosystems. In this paper, we studied the fine-scale heterogeneity of ALD and its connections with land surface characteristics across spatial and spectral scales using a combination of ground, unoccupied aerial system, airborne, and satellite observations. We showed that airborne sensors such as AVIRIS-NG and medium-resolution satellite Earth observation systems like Sentinel-2 can capture the average ALD at the landscape scale. We found that the best observational scale for ALD modeling is heavily influenced by the vegetation and landform patterns occurring on the landscape. Landscapes characterized by small-scale permafrost features such as polygon tussock tundra require high-resolution observations to capture the intrinsic connections between permafrost and small-scale land surface and disturbance patterns. Conversely, in landscapes dominated by water tracks and shrubs, permafrost features manifest at a larger scale and our model results indicate the best performance at medium resolution (5 m), outperforming both higher (0.4 m) and lower resolution (10 m) models. This transcends our study to show that permafrost response to climate change may vary across dominant ecosystem types, driven by different above- and below-ground connections and the scales at which these connections are happening. We thus recommend tailoring observational scales based on landforms and characteristics for modeling permafrost distribution, thereby mitigating the influences of spatial-scale mismatches and improving the understanding of vegetation and permafrost changes for the Arctic region.
Gendering Angry Fun
Authors: De Esha Niyogi 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter explores how gender-centric ludic acts responding to militarized violence arise from an intersection of regional bodily arts of dance and comedy with transnational physical cinema (i.e., cinema evoking corporeal experience rather than perspectival reflection). Cases in point are the funny moves executed by female dancer/fighters and gender-queering male figures in two Pakistani action heroine films directed and produced by the female star Shamim Ara: Miss Hong Kong (1979/1980) and Lady Smuggler (1987). The screen choreographies interweave Pakistani-style mujra (hereditary courtesan dance) and bhand (hereditary male comedian) moves with codes drawn from international physical cinema (American, Hong Kong, Bollywood action and comedic film). Defying militarized masculinism, the choreographies interweave anger with carnivalesque improprieties. These improprieties are sensuously juxtaposed to militarized transformations that were underway in 1980s Pakistan, a nation drawn into the anti-Soviet Afghan War through Cold War maneuvers. The rebellious fun mines survival wisdom from quotidian performing arts.
Un/funny Business in On the Town (1949)
Authors: Kraut Anthea 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter examines the racist logic behind some of the comedy in the 1949 classic film musical On the Town. Combining feminist production studies methods with the insights of critical race studies, and reading one of the film’s early numbers, “Prehistoric Man,” alongside a triptych of nightclub scenes that occur later in the film, including the thirteen-second performance of Black jazz dancer Marie Bryant, the author interrogates the correlations between the film’s lightness and its whiteness and, concomitantly, uncovers the noir workings that both prop up and are hidden beneath its light/white surface. While these scenes’ staging of un/funny encounters between the film’s white leads and its racialized others reinforce the ideology of white supremacy, they are also sites of uncanny return and the eruption of an ambivalent form of laughter that may signal horror and humor simultaneously.
Sincerely Funny or Funny Sincerity
Authors: Wong Yutian 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Using fan-made choreography inspired by the animated children’s television show Avatar: The Last Airbender as a case study, this chapter deploys humor and sincerity as a joint framework to analyze how dance plays a central role in Avatar: The Last Airbender’s anti-imperialist critique and how fans of the children’s animated television show attempt to embody the show’s progressive politics through cosplay choreography. This chapter looks at the intersections between sincerity and humor to understand how humor as a method uncovers hierarchies of “funny” as an arbiter of “smarts,” of “seriousness,” and of possessing and being able to deploy the right kind of knowledge in the right spaces in order to situate cosplay choreography as a dance-object within dance studies.
Defusing Arguments in Favour of Conscientious Objection
Authors: Giubilini Alberto , Schuklenk Udo , Minerva Francesca , Savulescu Julian 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Chapter 3 examines the main arguments put forward in the literature and public discourse for a right to conscientious objection, arguing that they do not succeed. These include arguments from reasonability, compromise, human rights, toleration, diversity, integrity, and equality of opportunity. For each of them the chapter not only highlights their strength in supporting a right of freedom of conscience in society at large but also shows their limitations in supporting the same right within a specific professional context like health care. The focus in particular is on the reasonability-based argument as it appears to be the one offering the most philosophically robust defence of a fettered right to conscientious objection, but ultimately this argument is rejected.
Specific Cases
Authors: Giubilini Alberto , Schuklenk Udo , Minerva Francesca , Savulescu Julian 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Chapter 4 applies the arguments made so far against a right to conscientious objection in health care to a wide range of cases in health care delivery where conscientious objection is typically put forward or might foreseeably be put forward in the future. These include ‘standard’ cases, such as abortion, medical assistance in dying, in vitro fertilization, and less common but equally controversial cases such as some instances of cosmetic surgery, sex-selection and non-invasive prenatal testing, bioenhancement, genome editing, ‘Ashley cases’, and others. For each of these, the chapter proposes that doctors’ own objections of conscience do not provide a sufficient ground for acceptable refusal to provide services, but depending on what model of professionalism is adopted among the ones discussed in previous chapters, different implications can be drawn from doctors’ right to object in each of these cases.
The Weight of Reasons
Authors: Tucker Chris 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
The book develops, defends, and applies a “Dual Scale” model of weighing reasons to resolve various issues in ethics. It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons and probably a lot of stuff you didn’t want to know too. It addresses, among other things, what the general issue of weighing reasons is; what it is to weigh reasons correctly; whether reasons have more than one weight value (e.g., justifying, requiring, and/or commending weight); whether weight values are context sensitive; how to tell what the weights of reasons are; how reasons for are related to reasons against; and how the weights of reasons aggregate. After addressing such issues, it explains a number of puzzling phenomena in ethics, such as the All or Nothing Problem, the normative significance of small improvements, and the intransitivity of the makes-it-permissible-to-act-against relation.
Introduction
Authors: Steen Bård Nikolas Vik 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This introduction explains how this book analyses the US-China rivalry and what its key findings are. The introduction argues that while it is too simplistic to frame the US-China rivalry as a “new cold war,” comparing the new superpower rivalry with the Cold War is still a useful analytical approach because it mirrors how most people think and make decisions about the world around them. This approach also allows us to recognize the unique features of today’s superpower dynamics—allowing us to make better decisions about how to deal with them. The introduction then goes on to highlight the books overarching themes and summarizing the findings in each of its sixteen chapters.
China
Authors: Ross Robert S 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Just as US and Soviet Cold War policies reflected their twentieth-century competition over the balance of power in Europe, the trend in US and Chinese security policies in the twenty-first century will reflect US-China competition over the East Asian balance of power. Nonetheless, the US-China competition will not be Cold War II. East Asia is very different than Europe. As a maritime theater, it has its own geopolitical conditions, with distinct implications for the character of the US-China competition, including US defense policy and the regional balance of power that will determine the likelihood that China will emerge as the world’s next global naval power. The distinct geopolitical characteristics of the East Asian balance of power will determine the dynamics of US-China relations and East Asian security, as well as the character of great power politics beyond East Asia.
The Geography of Rimland and Heartland
Authors: Bekkevold Jo Inge 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
This chapter outlines how the geography of US-China rivalry differs from the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and why it matters. It shows that with rimland China replacing heartland Soviet Union as the main rival of the United States, another geopolitical logic emerges. During the Cold War, the United States implemented a containment strategy toward the Soviet Union, which consisted of three main elements: perimeter defence in the Eurasian rimlands, playing the “China card” against the Soviet Union, and economic containment. The different geopolitical logic of US-China rivalry makes this Cold War blueprint unsuitable to balance China. China’s rimland position forces the United States to implement a naval-based strongpoint strategy in the Indo-Pacific theatre, it strengthens the Sino-Russian partnership, and it enhances China’s global resource acquisition strategy.
Will Europe Balance China?
Authors: Walt Stephen M 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Despite growing concerns about China’s rising power, Europe is unlikely to make a direct contribution to balance it in Asia. States are most likely to balance when powerful states are located nearby and when they possess significant power projection capabilities and highly revisionist intentions. European states will do little to balance China because it is too far away to pose a direct threat to their security. Europe also lacks the military capacity to affect the balance of power in Asia, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will focus future rearmament efforts closer to home. To preserve transatlantic harmony and protect shared values, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European members should gradually take over primary responsibility for their own defence as the United States shifts its main military effort to Asia.
Scientific Knowledge from Making and the Mechanical Mind
Authors: Adams Marcus P 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Chapter 3—the second part of the account of Hobbes’s epistemology—argues that Hobbes distinguishes cognitio (knowledge from sense that can develop into prudence) from scientia (scientific knowledge) by proposing a distinct source for the latter, a unique role for language for it, and a different explanation for the human behavior that brings it about. The distinct source is making, whether a construction in geometry or civil philosophy, language’s distinct role is to mark conceptual discoveries made in construction (non-linguistic inferences from the construction of one particular to all of a kind) with private marks, form necessary universal propositions that serve as definitions, and then use those to form syllogisms, and the different explanation for the behavior that brings about scientific knowledge is that there must be a combination of curiosity, leisure, and proper methodology. The chapter argues that Hobbes’s epistemology of scientia is grounded upon two epistemic principles. The maker’s knowledge principle holds that only the maker of something knows its causes (the source), and the perspectival principle holds that explananda are determined by human interests and aims, and an explanadum determines which explanans is relevant. There is no theoretically-privileged “level,” as it were, from which one should draw causes. A knower’s interests and aims determine what is to be explained—whether how to make peace or a geometric figure—and that end determines what serves as a foundation for construction. The maker’s knowledge view takes Hobbes to be a materialist but denies any attempt at seeing him as a materialist reductionist.
scHiClassifier: a deep learning framework for cell type prediction by fusing multiple feature sets from single-cell Hi-C data
Authors: Zhou Xiangfei , Wu Hao 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Single-cell high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) technology enables capturing chromosomal spatial structure information at the cellular level. However, to effectively investigate changes in chromosomal structure across different cell types, there is a requisite for methods that can identify cell types utilizing single-cell Hi-C data. Current frameworks for cell type prediction based on single-cell Hi-C data are limited, often struggling with features interpretability and biological significance, and lacking convincing and robust classification performance validation. In this study, we propose four new feature sets based on the contact matrix with clear interpretability and biological significance. Furthermore, we develop a novel deep learning framework named scHiClassifier based on multi-head self-attention encoder, 1D convolution and feature fusion, which integrates information from these four feature sets to predict cell types accurately. Through comprehensive comparison experiments with benchmark frameworks on six datasets, we demonstrate the superior classification performance and the universality of the scHiClassifier framework. We further assess the robustness of scHiClassifier through data perturbation experiments and data dropout experiments. Moreover, we demonstrate that using all feature sets in the scHiClassifier framework yields optimal performance, supported by comparisons of different feature set combinations. The effectiveness and the superiority of the multiple feature set extraction are proven by comparison with four unsupervised dimensionality reduction methods. Additionally, we analyze the importance of different feature sets and chromosomes using the “SHapley Additive exPlanations” method. Furthermore, the accuracy and reliability of the scHiClassifier framework in cell classification for single-cell Hi-C data are supported through enrichment analysis. The source code of scHiClassifier is freely available at https://github.com/HaoWuLab-Bioinformatics/scHiClassifier.
Skeletal muscle adiposity, coronary microvascular dysfunction, and adverse cardiovascular outcomes
Authors: Souza Ana Carolina do A H , Troschel Amelie S , Marquardt Jan P , Hadžić Ibrahim , Foldyna Borek , Moura Filipe A , Hainer Jon , Divakaran Sanjay , Blankstein Ron , Dorbala Sharmila , Di Carli Marcelo F , Aerts Hugo J W L , Lu Michael T , Fintelmann Florian J , Taqueti Viviany R 
Published: January 2025

Abstract

Background and Aims
Skeletal muscle (SM) fat infiltration, or intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT), reflects muscle quality and is associated with inflammation, a key determinant in cardiometabolic disease. Coronary flow reserve (CFR), a marker of coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD), is independently associated with body mass index (BMI), inflammation and risk of heart failure, myocardial infarction, and death. The relationship between SM quality, CMD, and cardiovascular outcomes is not known.

Methods
Consecutive patients (n = 669) undergoing evaluation for coronary artery disease with cardiac stress positron emission tomography demonstrating normal perfusion and preserved left ventricular ejection fraction were followed over a median of 6 years for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs), including death and hospitalization for myocardial infarction or heart failure. Coronary flow reserve was calculated as stress/rest myocardial blood flow. Subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), SM, and IMAT areas (cm2) were obtained from simultaneous positron emission tomography attenuation correction computed tomography using semi-automated segmentation at the 12th thoracic vertebra level.

Results
Median age was 63 years, 70% were female, and 46% were nonwhite. Nearly half of patients were obese (46%, BMI 30–61 kg/m2), and BMI correlated highly with SAT and IMAT (r = .84 and r = .71, respectively, P &lt; .001) and moderately with SM (r = .52, P &lt; .001). Decreased SM and increased IMAT, but not BMI or SAT, remained independently associated with decreased CFR (adjusted P = .03 and P = .04, respectively). In adjusted analyses, both lower CFR and higher IMAT were associated with increased MACE [hazard ratio 1.78 (95% confidence interval 1.23–2.58) per −1 U CFR and 1.53 (1.30–1.80) per +10 cm2 IMAT, adjusted P = .002 and P &lt; .0001, respectively], while higher SM and SAT were protective [hazard ratio .89 (.81–.97) per +10 cm2 SM and .94 (.91–.98) per +10 cm2 SAT, adjusted P = .01 and .003, respectively]. Every 1% increase in fatty muscle fraction [IMAT/(SM + IMAT)] conferred an independent 2% increased odds of CMD [CFR &lt;2, odds ratio 1.02 (1.01–1.04), adjusted P = .04] and a 7% increased risk of MACE [hazard ratio 1.07 (1.04–1.09), adjusted P &lt; .001]. There was a significant interaction between CFR and IMAT, not BMI, such that patients with both CMD and fatty muscle demonstrated highest MACE risk (adjusted P = .02).

Conclusions
Increased intermuscular fat is associated with CMD and adverse cardiovascular outcomes independently of BMI and conventional risk factors. The presence of CMD and SM fat infiltration identified a novel at-risk cardiometabolic phenotype.
Extracellular vesicle-mediated VEGF-A mRNA delivery rescues ischaemic injury with low immunogenicity
Authors: You Yi , Tian Yu , Guo Rui , Shi Junfeng , Kwak Kwang Joo , Tong Yuhao , Estania Andreanne Poppy , Hsu Wei-Hsiang , Liu Yutong , Hu Shijun , Cao Jianhong , Yang Liqun , Bai Rui , Huang Pufeng , Lee Ly James , Jiang Wen , Kim Betty Y S , Ma Shuhong , Liu Xujie , Shen Zhenya , Lan Feng , Phuong Nguyen Patricia Kim , Lee Andrew S 
Published: January 2025

Abstract

Background and Aims
Lackluster results from recently completed gene therapy clinical trials of VEGF-A delivered by viral vectors have heightened the need to develop alternative delivery strategies. This study aims to demonstrate the pre-clinical efficacy and safety of extracellular vesicles (EVs) loaded with VEGF-A mRNA for the treatment of ischaemic vascular disease.

Methods
After encapsulation of full-length VEGF-A mRNA into fibroblast-derived EVs via cellular nanoporation (CNP), collected VEGF-A EVs were delivered into mouse models of ischaemic injury. Target tissue delivery was verified by in situ analysis of protein and gene expression. Functional rescue was confirmed by in vivo imaging and histology. The safety of single and serial delivery was demonstrated using immune-based assays.

Results
VEGF-A EVs were generated with high mRNA content using a CNP methodology. VEGF-A EV administration demonstrated expression of exogenous VEGF-A mRNA by in situ RNA hybridization and elevated protein expression by western blot, microscopy, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Mice treated with human VEGF-A EVs after femoral or coronary artery ligation exhibited heightened neovascularization in ischaemic tissues with increased arterial perfusion and improvement in left ventricular function, respectively. Serial delivery of VEGF-EVs in injured skin showed improved wound healing with repeat administration. Importantly, as compared with adeno-associated viral and lipid nanoparticle VEGF-A gene therapy modalities, murine VEGF-A EV delivery did not trigger innate or adaptive immune responses at the injection site or systemically.

Conclusions
This study demonstrated that VEGF-A EV therapy offers efficient, dose-dependent VEGF-A protein formation with low immunogenicity, resulting in new vessel formation in murine models of ischaemic vascular disease.
A novel signal processing approach enabled by machine learning for the detection and identification of chemical warfare agent simulants using a GC-QEPAS system
Authors: Liberatore Nicola , Felizzato Giorgio , Mengali Sandro , Viola Roberto , Romolo Francesco Saverio 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
The detection and identification of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) present challenges in emergency response scenarios and for safety and security applications. This study presents the development and validation of an innovative analytical method using a gas chromatography and quartz-enhanced photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy (GC-QEPAS) sensor for the detection of stimulants for six CWAs. Following the guidelines of the European Network of Forensic Science Institute (ENFSI) and the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/808, the analytical method was validated. The validation results demonstrated the robustness and reliability of both the GC and QEPAS modules. Moreover, with regard to the toxicological threshold levels, this study highlights the efficacy of a prototype of a portable device for real security and safety applications. Furthermore, a machine learning (ML) approach was developed to automate the detection and identification of CWAs’ stimulants. The workflow involved two interconnected stages: detection based on chromatographic retention times, and identification using IR spectra through the one-class support vector machines classifier. The classifier was activated only after obtaining a positive detection based on retention times (RTs). The results highlight the ML model’s effectiveness in CWA detection and identification, combining RT analysis and IR spectrum classification, achieving 97% accuracy at a 95.5% confidence interval and 99% accuracy at a 99.7% confidence interval; this result demonstrates the model’s utility for real-world security and safety applications for CWAs.