bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Clinical performance, safety, and patient-reported outcomes of an active osseointegrated bone-conduction hearing implant system at 24-month follow-up
Authors: Cowan Robert , Lewis Aaran T. , Hallberg Carina , Tong Michael C. F. , Birman Catherine S. , Ng Iris H.-Y. , Briggs Robert 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
Purpose
To investigate 2-year post-operative hearing performance, safety, and patient-reported outcomes of hearing-impaired adults treated with the Osia® 2 System, an active osseointegrated bone-conduction hearing implant that uses piezoelectric technology.

Methods
A prospective, multicenter, open-label, single-arm, within-subject clinical study conducted at three tertiary referral clinical centers located in Melbourne, Sydney and Hong Kong. Twenty adult recipients of the Osia 2 System were enrolled and followed up between 12 and 24 months post-implantation: 17 with mixed or conductive hearing loss and 3 with single-sided sensorineural deafness. Safety data, audiological thresholds, speech recognition thresholds in noise, and patient-reported outcomes were collected and evaluated. In addition, pre-and 6-month post-implantation data were collected retrospectively for this recipient cohort enrolled into the earlier study (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04041700).

Results
Between 6- and 24-month follow-up, there was no statistically significant change in free-field hearing thresholds or speech reception thresholds in noise (p =  > 0.05), indicating that aided improvements were maintained up to 24 months of follow-up. Furthermore, improvements in health-related quality of life and daily hearing ability, as well as clinical and subjective measures of hearing benefit remained stable over the 24-month period. No serious adverse events were reported during extended follow-up.

Conclusions
These study results provide further evidence to support the longer term clinical safety, hearing performance, and patient-related benefits of the Osia 2 System in patients with either a conductive hearing loss, mixed hearing loss, or single-sided sensorineural deafness.

Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04754477. First posted: February 15, 2021.
Diagnostic odyssey in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: diagnostic criteria and reality
Authors: Maksymowicz Stanisław , Siwek Tomasz 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
Background
Diagnosing a rare disease, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a major challenge for physicians and patients. Despite detailed diagnostic criteria, this process often does not proceed as it should, exacerbating the problems of patients. In the following study, we show how the process, which in medical sciences has been called the “diagnostic odyssey”, proceeds and how it affects patients.

Materials and methods
Participants were recruited via a neurology clinic. Twenty-four patients with the diagnosed disease were interviewed using in-depth interviews and an author questionnaire: 9 females and 15 males ages ranging from 30–39 to 60–69.

Results
The median time from 1st symptoms to diagnosis was almost 12 months and mean almost 20 months (min. 3, max 106). Only 5 patients waited less than 6 months for being diagnosed. Over 80% of patients received an alternative diagnosis on the first attempt.

Conclusion
ALS is a fast-paced fatal disease, which requires immediate action to slow down the course of the disease and improve patients’ quality of life. However, in many cases, the disease is diagnosed too late. It also happens that a wrong diagnosis causes inaccurate treatment, which accelerates the development of ALS. For this reason, it is necessary to expand the clinical and communication competences of medical personnel already at the stage of medical studies. In addition, the diagnostic criteria should highlight the common problem with diagnosing ALS.
Sailing the Seven Seas: A Multinational Comparison of ChatGPT’s Performance on Medical Licensing Examinations
Authors: Alfertshofer Michael , Hoch Cosima C. , Funk Paul F. , Hollmann Katharina , Wollenberg Barbara , Knoedler Samuel , Knoedler Leonard 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
Purpose
The use of AI-powered technology, particularly OpenAI’s ChatGPT, holds significant potential to reshape healthcare and medical education. Despite existing studies on the performance of ChatGPT in medical licensing examinations across different nations, a comprehensive, multinational analysis using rigorous methodology is currently lacking. Our study sought to address this gap by evaluating the performance of ChatGPT on six different national medical licensing exams and investigating the relationship between test question length and ChatGPT’s accuracy.

Methods
We manually inputted a total of 1,800 test questions (300 each from US, Italian, French, Spanish, UK, and Indian medical licensing examination) into ChatGPT, and recorded the accuracy of its responses.

Results
We found significant variance in ChatGPT’s test accuracy across different countries, with the highest accuracy seen in the Italian examination (73% correct answers) and the lowest in the French examination (22% correct answers). Interestingly, question length correlated with ChatGPT’s performance in the Italian and French state examinations only. In addition, the study revealed that questions requiring multiple correct answers, as seen in the French examination, posed a greater challenge to ChatGPT.

Conclusion
Our findings underscore the need for future research to further delineate ChatGPT’s strengths and limitations in medical test-taking across additional countries and to develop guidelines to prevent AI-assisted cheating in medical examinations.
Context-adaptable radar-based people counting via few-shot learning
Authors: Mauro Gianfranco , Martinez-Rodriguez Ignacio , Ott Julius , Servadei Lorenzo , Wille Robert , P. Cuellar Manuel , Morales-Santos Diego P. 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
In many industrial or healthcare contexts, keeping track of the number of people is essential. Radar systems, with their low overall cost and power consumption, enable privacy-friendly monitoring in many use cases. Yet, radar data are hard to interpret and incompatible with most computer vision strategies. Many current deep learning-based systems achieve high monitoring performance but are strongly context-dependent. In this work, we show how context generalization approaches can let the monitoring system fit unseen radar scenarios without adaptation steps. We collect data via a 60 GHz frequency-modulated continuous wave in three office rooms with up to three people and preprocess them in the frequency domain. Then, using meta learning, specifically the Weighting-Injection Net, we generate relationship scores between the few training datasets and query data. We further present an optimization-based approach coupled with weighting networks that can increase the training stability when only very few training examples are available. Finally, we use pool-based sampling active learning to fine-tune the model in new scenarios, labeling only the most uncertain data. Without adaptation needs, we achieve over 80% and 70% accuracy by testing the meta learning algorithms in new radar positions and a new office, respectively.

Graphical abstract
Let me know your name: a study of chigger mites (Acariformes: Trombiculidae) associated with the edible dormouse (Glis glis) in the Carpathian–Balkan distribution gradient
Authors: Zajkowska Paula , Postawa Tomasz , Mąkol Joanna 
Published: August 2023

AbstractTrombiculid mites were collected from the edible dormouse (Glis glis) within the Carpathian–Balkan distribution gradient of host species. Representatives of five genera (Leptotrombidium, Neotrombicula, Brunehaldia, Hirsutiella, Schoutedenichia) and 10 species of chiggers were discovered in the material, based on morphological and/or molecular data. Brunehaldia, new to the fauna of Greece, was recorded for the first time from the edible dormouse. Neotrombicula talmiensis was new to the fauna of Greece and Neotrombicula vulgaris was new to the fauna of North Macedonia. Successful amplification and sequencing of COI was carried out in relation to three genera and six species. The intraspecific variation of taxa hitherto distinguished based on morphological criteria was juxtaposed with molecular data, using the distance method and the phylogenetic approach. The molecular methods indicated wider than hitherto recognized, intraspecific morphological variation for Leptotrombidium europaeum and N. talmiensis. On the other hand, an inference limited to morphology proved to be insufficient for species delineation, which was confirmed by the relatively low identity (%) of examined COI sequences as well as the size of inter-/intraspecific K2P distance threshold. Our study provides support for integrative taxonomy that combines different sources of evidence and contributes to recognition of the scope of intraspecific variation. The high degree of hidden diversity revealed with the application of molecular tools, votes for a careful approach to the identification of chiggers. The confirmed cases of co-invasion, including the representatives of various genera (Leptotrombidium and Neotrombicula, Brunehaldia and Neotrombicula, Neotrombicula and Schoutedenichia, Hirsutiella and Schoutedenichia) additionally support the need to include all larvae found on a given host specimen in the identification process.
Energetic ion enhancements in sheaths driven by interplanetary coronal mass ejections
Authors: Kilpua Emilia , Vainio Rami , Cohen Christina , Dresing Nina , Good Simon , Ruohotie Julia , Trotta Domenico , Bale Stuart D. , Christian Eric , Hill Matt , McComas David J. , McNutt Ralph , Schwadron Nathan 
Published: August 2023

AbstractWe analyze here an energetic proton enhancement in a sheath ahead of a slow interplanetry coronal mass ejection (ICME) detected by Parker Solar Probe on June 30, 2021 at the heliospheric distance of 0.76 AU. The shock was likely quasi-parallel and had a high Mach number. However, the proton fluxes were not enhanced at the shock but about an hour later. The fluxes stayed elevated with a sporadic behaviour throughout the sheath. We suggest that some mechanism internal to the sheath was responsible for the energization. The observations show enhanced levels of magnetic field fluctuations in the sheath and frequent presence of highly reduced magnetic helicity structures ($\sigma _{m}$

σ
m

) at various time scales, representing either small-scale flux ropes or Alfvénic fluctuations that could have contributed to the energization. The correlation between the energetic proton fluxes and normalized fluctuation amplitudes/occurrence of high $\sigma _{m}$

σ
m

structures was generally weak or negligible. The most striking feature of the sheath was a strong enhancement of density (up to 50 cm−3) that implies the importance of compressive acceleration in the sheath. A statistical analysis of ion enhancements of 73 sheaths detected by ACE at ${\sim} 1$
∼
1
AU reveals that this sheath was peculiar as in ICME-driven sheaths preceded by strong shocks the ion fluxes typically peak at the shock and strongly decline through the sheath.
Challenging the status quo in invasive species assessment using mechanistic physiologically based demographic modeling
Authors: Ponti Luigi , Gutierrez Andrew Paul 
Published: August 2023

AbstractThe increased incidence of invasive species introductions is a hallmark of global change, but their associated environmental and economic impacts are vastly underestimated. Assessing and managing the impact of invasive species requires understanding their weather driven dynamics as a basis for predicting their potential geographic distribution and relative abundance. Current de-facto standards for invasive species assessment are correlative approaches lacking mechanistic underpinnings, and hence fail to capture the weather driven biology limiting their explanatory and predictive capacity to forewarn policy makers of species invasiveness (i.e., its potential geographic distribution and relative abundance under extant and/or climate change weather). The idiosyncratic time-place nature of biological invasions and the inability of correlative approaches to incorporate biological information call for development of a unifying prospective approach across species. Physiologically based demographic models (PBDMs) provide a holistic basis for assessment of invasive species addressing many limitations of correlative approaches while accommodating higher level of biological complexity using a similar number of parameters. We use the South American tomato pinworm Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) as a case study in the Palearctic and compare the predictions of our PBDM model to those of three analyses based on the correlative CLIMEX model. The PBDM outperformed CLIMEX with comparable CLIMEX predictions only after the pest had reached its potential geographic distribution (i.e., post hoc), using 6–10 vs. 13 parameters, respectively. We suggest creating dedicated laboratories to gather appropriate biological data and developing generalized software to build mechanistic models for assessing invasive species of any taxa.
The hub of the wheel or hitchhikers? The potential influence of large avian herbivores on other trophic levels in wetland ecosystems
Authors: Gunnarsson Gunnar , Kjeller Elsie , Holopainen Sari , Djerf Henric , Elmberg Johan , Pöysä Hannu , Söderquist Pär , Waldenström Jonas 
Published: August 2023

AbstractGoose and swan populations have increased concurrently with environmental degradation of wetlands, such as eutrophication, vegetation losses, and decrease in biodiversity. An important question is whether geese and swans contribute to such changes or if they instead benefit from them. We collected data from 37 wetlands in southern Sweden April − July 2021 to study relationships between geese, swans and other waterbird guilds, macrophytes, invertebrates, as well as physical and water chemistry variables. Neither goose nor swan abundance was negatively correlated with other trophic levels (abundance, richness, or cover). On the contrary, goose or swan abundances were positively related to abundances of surface and benthic feeding waterbirds, cover of specific macrophytes, and to invertebrate richness and abundance. Moreover, invertebrates (number of taxa or abundance) were positively associated with abundance of several waterbird guilds and total phosphorous with surface feeders, whereas water colour was positively (surface feeders) or negatively (benthic feeders) related. We conclude that waterbirds are more abundant in productive wetlands and that geese and swans do not show clear deleterious effects on other trophic levels included in this study. However, patterns may be masked at the species level, which should be addressed in further studies, complemented with experimental studies of grazing impact.
Integral feedback in synthetic biology: negative-equilibrium catastrophe
Authors: Plesa Tomislav , Dack Alexander , Ouldridge Thomas E. 
Published: August 2023

AbstractA central goal of synthetic biology is the design of molecular controllers that can manipulate the dynamics of intracellular networks in a stable and accurate manner. To address the fact that detailed knowledge about intracellular networks is unavailable, integral-feedback controllers (IFCs) have been put forward for controlling molecular abundances. These controllers can maintain accuracy in spite of the uncertainties in the controlled networks. However, this desirable feature is achieved only if stability is also maintained. In this paper, we show that molecular IFCs can suffer from a hazardous instability called negative-equilibrium catastrophe (NEC), whereby all nonnegative equilibria vanish under the action of the controllers, and some of the molecular abundances blow up. We show that unimolecular IFCs do not exist due to a NEC. We then derive a family of bimolecular IFCs that are safeguarded against NECs when uncertain unimolecular networks, with any number of molecular species, are controlled. However, when IFCs are applied on uncertain bimolecular (and hence most intracellular) networks, we show that preventing NECs generally becomes an intractable problem as the number of interacting molecular species increases. NECs therefore place a fundamental limit to design and control of molecular networks.
Uniqueness of the Gibbs Measure for the Anti-ferromagnetic Potts Model on the Infinite $$\Delta $$-Regular Tree for Large $$\Delta $$
Authors: Bencs Ferenc , Boer David de , Buys Pjotr , Regts Guus 
Published: August 2023

AbstractIn this paper we prove that for any integer$$q\ge 5$$q≥5, the anti-ferromagneticq-state Potts model on the infinite$$\Delta $$Δ-regular tree has a unique Gibbs measure for all edge interaction parameters$$w\in [1-q/\Delta ,1)$$w∈[1-q/Δ,1), provided$$\Delta $$Δis large enough. This confirms a longstanding folklore conjecture.
Emotion-specific AUs for micro-expression recognition
Authors: Leong Shu-Min , Phan Raphaël C.-W. , Baskaran Vishnu Monn 
Published: August 2023

AbstractThe Facial Action Coding System (FACS) comprehensively describes facial expressions with facial action units (AUs). It is a well-used technique by researchers in emotions research to understand human emotions better. Most micro-expression datasets provide FACS-coded AU ground truths corresponding to micro-expressions classes. It is commonly accepted in computer vision-based emotions research that certain emotions are reliably revealed when specific combinations of AUs occur. However, the reliability of the ground truth AUs in the micro-expression datasets is lower than that of normal expressions, as they have lower AU intensities. Moreover, these micro-expression datasets only report the overall reliability of all AUs. It could not be identified which AUs had been accurately coded. This work aims to revisit the ground truth AUs of popular micro-expression datasets, namely CASME II, SAMM and CAS(ME)$$^2$$

2

, and inspect whether any AUs crucial for micro-expression recognition may need to be reconsidered. This paper also provides a detailed AU analysis which yields new AU-based RoIs for each dataset. These new RoIs improve the micro-expression recognition performances compared to the baselines considered in this work. The proposed RoIs for CASME II, SAMM and CAS(ME)$$^2$$

2

improve the recognition rates by $$2\%$$

2
%

, $$1\%$$

1
%

and $$4\%$$

4
%

, respectively, when compared with the existing RoIs.
Challenges and Opportunities for Celecoxib Repurposing
Authors: Bąk Urszula , Krupa Anna 
Published: August 2023

AbstractDrug repositioning, also known as drug repurposing, reprofiling, or rediscovery, is considered to be one of the most promising strategies to accelerate the development of new original drug products. Multiple examples of successful rediscovery or therapeutic switching of old molecules that did not show clinical benefits or safety in initial trials encourage the following of the discovery of new therapeutic pathways for them. This review summarizes the efforts that have been made, mostly over the last decade, to identify new therapeutic targets for celecoxib. To achieve this goal, records gathered in MEDLINE PubMed and Scopus databases along with the registry of clinical trials by the US National Library of Medicine at the U.S. National Institutes of Health were explored. Since celecoxib is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that represents the class of selective COX-2 inhibitors (coxibs), its clinical potential in metronomic cancer therapy, the treatment of mental disorders, or infectious diseases has been discussed. In the end, the perspective of a formulator, facing various challenges related to unfavorable physicochemical properties of celecoxib upon the development of new oral dosage forms, long-acting injectables, and topical formulations, including the latest trends in the pharmaceutical technology, such as the application of mesoporous carriers, biodegradable microparticles, lipid-based nanosystems, or spanlastics, was presented.
Weighted Poincaré Inequalities and Degenerate Elliptic and Parabolic Problems: An Approach via the Distance Function
Authors: Monticelli D. D. , Punzo F. 
Published: August 2023

AbstractWe obtain weighted Poincaré inequalities in bounded domains, where the weight is given by a symmetric nonnegative definite matrix, which can degenerate on submanifolds. Furthermore, we investigate uniqueness and nonuniqueness of solutions to degenerate elliptic and parabolic problems, where the diffusion matrix can degenerate on subsets of the boundary of the domain. Both the results are obtained by means of the distance function from the degeneracy set, which is used to construct suitable local sub– and supersolutions.
“Injury risk, concussions, race, and pay in the NFL”
Authors: Keefer Quinn A. W. , Kniesner Thomas J. 
Published: August 2023

AbstractWe make two main contributions to the literature on work-related injury risk and economic outcomes in the context of American professional football. One is to examine an increasingly important specific injury, concussions, and compare its subsequent economic effects to those of other types of football injuries. Our other contribution is to study the role of race in understanding injury risk and severity and their resulting economic consequences, which has been overlooked in previous sports injury research. Using a specific position, tight ends, which allows conditioning on fine-grained relevant measures of player demographics, playing time, and performance, we find that whether a player continues to play NFL football from year to year is affected by type of injury and the player’s race. We calculate that the average ex post loss in annual compensation from a concussion is about 7%. Moreover, the effect of games missed due to concussion on continued employment is triple that of other injuries. Being white positively affects length of playing career independent of the measured productivity of the players involved. The racial gap in career length is approximately equal to the effect of an additional game missed from concussion. With respect to heterogeneity in the effects of injuries, both concussions and other injury types affect ex post economic outcomes equally for white and nonwhite players. Both injuries and race affect compensation solely through their effects on career length.