bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Working memory dysfunction in fibromyalgia is associated with genotypes of the catechol- O-methyltransferase gene: an event-related potential study
Authors: Ferrera David , Gómez-Esquer Francisco , Peláez Irene , Barjola Paloma , Fernandes-Magalhaes Roberto , Carpio Alberto , De Lahoz María Eugenia , Martín-Buro María Carmen , Mercado Francisco 
Published: September 2022

AbstractRecent findings have associated different COMT genotypes with working memory capacity in patients with fibromyalgia. Although it is thought that the COMT gene may influence neural correlates (P2 and P3 ERP components) underlying working memory impairment in this chronic-pain syndrome, it has not yet been explored. Therefore, the aim of the present research was to investigate the potential effect of the COMT gene in fibromyalgia patients on ERP working memory indices (P2 and P3 components). For this purpose, 102 participants (51 patients and 51 healthy control participants) took part in the experiment. Event-related potentials and behavioral responses were recorded while participants performed a spatial n-back task. Participants had to decide if the stimulus coincided or not in the same location as the one presented one (1-back condition) or two (2-back condition) trials before. Genotypes of the COMT gene were determined through a saliva sample from all participants. Present results significantly showed lower working memory performance (p < 0.05) in patients with fibromyalgia as compared to control participants (higher rate of errors and slower reaction times). At neural level, we found that patients exhibited enhanced frontocentral and parieto-occipital P2 amplitudes compared to control participants (p < 0.05). Interestingly, we also observed that only fibromyalgia patients carrying the Val/Val genotype of the COMT gene showed higher frontocentral P2 amplitudes than control participants (p < 0.05). Current results (behavioral outcomes and P2 amplitudes) confirmed the presence of an alteration in working memory functioning in fibromyalgia. The enhancement of frontocentral P2 could be reflecting that these patients would manifest an inefficient way of activating executive attention processes, in carriers of the Val/Val genotype of COMT. To our knowledge, the present findings are the first linking neural indices of working memory dysfunctions and COMT genotypes in fibromyalgia. Applying a subgroup of patient’s strategy based on this genetic marker could be useful to establish more tailored therapeutical approaches.
DNA metabarcoding identifies urban foraging patterns of oligolectic and polylectic cavity-nesting bees
Authors: Fernandes Kristen , Prendergast Kit , Bateman Philip W. , Saunders Benjamin J. , Gibberd Mark , Bunce Michael , Nevill Paul 
Published: September 2022

AbstractUrbanisation modifies natural landscapes resulting in built-up space that is covered by buildings or hard surfaces and managed green spaces that often substitute native plant species with exotics. Some native bee species have been able to adapt to urban environments, foraging and reproducing in these highly modified areas. However, little is known on how the foraging ecology of native bees is affected by urbanised environments, and whether impacts vary among species with different degrees of specialisation for pollen collection. Here, we aim to investigate the responses of native bee foraging behaviour to urbanisation, using DNA metabarcoding to identify the resources within nesting tubes. We targeted oligolectic (specialist) and polylectic (generalist) cavity-nesting bee species in residential gardens and remnant bushland habitats. We were able to identify 40 families, 50 genera, and 23 species of plants, including exotic species, from the contents of nesting tubes. Oligolectic bee species had higher diversity of plant pollen in their nesting tubes in residential gardens compared to bushland habitats, along with significantly different forage composition between the two habitats. This result implies a greater degree of forage flexibility for oligolectic bee species than previously thought. In contrast, the diversity and composition of plant forage in polylectic bee nesting tubes did not vary between the two habitat types. Our results suggest a complex response of cavity-nesting bees to urbanisation and support the need for additional research to understand how the shifts in foraging resources impact overall bee health.
A generalised multi-scale Peridynamics–DEM framework and its application to rigid–soft particle mixtures
Authors: Hartmann Philipp , Thoeni Klaus , Rojek Jerzy 
Published: September 2022

AbstractThe discrete element method (DEM) is the most dominant method for the numerical prediction of dynamic behaviour at grain or particle scale. Nevertheless, due to its discontinuous nature, the DEM is inherently unable to describe microscopic features of individual bodies which can be considered as continuous bodies. To incorporate microscopic features, efficient numerical coupling of the DEM with a continuous method is generally necessary. Thus, a generalised multi-scale PD–DEM framework is developed in this work. In the developed framework, meshfree discretised Peridynamics (PD) is used to describe intra-particle forces within bodies to capture microscopic features. The inter-particle forces of rigid bodies are defined by the DEM whereas a hybrid approach is applied at the PD–DEM interface. In addition, a staggered multi-scale time integration scheme is formulated to allow for an efficient numerical treatment of both methods. Validation examples are presented and the applicability of the developed framework to capture the characteristics mixtures with rigid and deformable bodies is shown.
Detecting and tracking using 2D laser range finders and deep learning
Authors: Aguirre Eugenio , García-Silvente Miguel 
Published: September 2022

AbstractDetecting and tracking people using 2D laser rangefinders (LRFs) is challenging due to the features of the human leg motion, high levels of self-occlusion and the existence of objects which are similar to the human legs. Previous approaches use datasets that are manually labelled with support of images of the scenes. We propose a system with a calibrated monocular camera and 2D LRF mounted on a mobile robot in order to generate a dataset of leg patterns through automatic labelling which is valid to achieve a robust and efficient 2D LRF-based people detector and tracker. First, both images and 2D laser data are recorded during the robot navigation in indoor environments. Second, the people detection boxes and keypoints obtained by a deep learning-based object detector are used to locate both people and their legs on the images. The coordinates frame of 2D laser is extrinsically calibrated to the camera coordinates allowing our system to automatically label the leg instances. The automatically labelled dataset is then used to achieve a leg detector by machine learning techniques. To validate the proposal, the leg detector is used to develop a Kalman filter-based people detection and tracking algorithm which is experimentally assessed. The experimentation shows that the proposed system overcomes the Angus Leigh’s detector and tracker which is considered the state of the art on 2D LRF-based people detector and tracker.
Adaptive convexification of microsphere-based incremental damage for stress and strain softening at finite strains
Authors: Köhler Maximilian , Neumeier Timo , Melchior Jan , Peter Malte A. , Peterseim Daniel , Balzani Daniel 
Published: September 2022

AbstractThe brief history of relaxation in continuum mechanics ranges from early application of non-convex plasticity and phase transition formulations to small and large strain continuum damage mechanics. However, relaxed continuum damage mechanics formulations are still limited in the following sense that their material response lack to model strain softening and the convexification of the non-convex incremental stress potential is computationally costly. This paper presents a reduced model for relaxed continuum damage mechanics at finite strains which includes strain softening by a fiber-specific damage in the microsphere approach. Computational efficiency is achieved by novel adaptive algorithms for the fast convexification of the one-dimensional fiber material model. The algorithms are benchmarked against state-of-the-art methods, and the choice of quadrature schemes for the microsphere approach is discussed. This contribution is finalized by a mesh independence test.
Curcumin nanoparticles: the topical antimycotic suspension treating oral candidiasis
Authors: Anwar Souzy Kamal , Elmonaem Sarah Nasser Abd , Moussa Eglal , Aboulela Aliaa Gamaleldin , Essawy Marwa Morsy 
Published: September 2022

AbstractPhytotherapeutics is widely used nowadays as an alternative to the current antifungal drugs to reduce their side effects. Curcumin, with its wide therapeutic array as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, is one of the natural compounds that ha..s an antifungal effect, especially when being used at nanoscale to increase its bioavailability. Our research aimed to evaluate clinically and microbiologically the effect of using topical nanocurcumin suspension to treat oral candidiasis. After 4 days from induction of oral candidiasis (baseline), we randomly divided 39 female BALB/c mice into three groups of 13 animals; nanocurcumin, nystatin, and sham groups. All animals in nanocurcumin and nystatin groups received topical treatment twice daily for 10 days. Then, we performed clinical and microbiological evaluations at baseline, day 5, and day 10. By the end of treatment, our results revealed that nanocurcumin promoted a significant reduction in the number of candida colonies. There was no statistically significant difference neither clinically nor microbiologically between nanocurcumin and nystatin groups. In conclusion, nanocurcumin has a good antifungal effect as nystatin, however, its therapeutic efficacy takes a longer time to appear than nystatin. The enhanced bioavailability of curcumin at the nanoscale qualifies this nano-herb as a promising alternative therapy for oral candidiasis, evading nystatin-associated morbidity.
Zukunftsfähige Agrarlandschaften in Deutschland – Ziele und Anforderungen aus ökologischer, ökonomischer und rechtlicher Sicht
Authors: Möckel Stefan , Baake Marieke , Bartkowski Bartosz , Henn Elisabeth Veronika , Strauch Michael , Stubenrauch Jessica 
Published: September 2022

ZusammenfassungDie global steigenden Treibhausgase verändern in zunehmenden Maße auch in Deutschland die
klimatischen Verhältnisse. Betroffen sind insbesondere hiesige Agrarlandschaften, die weite Teile
Deutschlands umfassen und schon gegenwärtig vielfältige ökologische Probleme aufweisen. Auch
wenn die landwirtschaftlichen Nutzungen prägend für Agrarlandschaften sind, so hängt ihre
Zukunftsfähigkeit nicht allein von einer Veränderung der Bewirtschaftungsmethoden ab. Die Gestaltung
zukunftsfähiger Agrarlandschaften bedarf einer über den einzelnen Schlag hinausgehenden Betrachtung
und ist eine gesamtgesellschaftliche Aufgabe, die deutlich über die Verantwortung und Möglichkeiten
der einzelnen GrundstückseigentümerInnen und -bewirtschafterInnen hinausreicht. Ausgehend von
den bekannten ökologischen Problemen und den im Beitrag ausführlicher dargestellten besonderen
Herausforderungen des Klimawandels untersuchen wir daher, was Zukunftsfähigkeit bedeutet und welche
gesellschaftlichen Ziele und Anforderungen sich hieraus für Agrarlandschaften identifizieren lassen.
Der Beitrag will damit eine Grundlage für die Ausarbeitung praktischer Maßnahmenkonzepte und entsprechender
staatlicher Lenkung und Förderung schaffen.
Linkage to HIV Care and Early Retention in Care Rates in the Universal Test-and-Treat Era: A Population-based Prospective Study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Authors: Nicol Edward , Basera Wisdom , Mukumbang Ferdinand C , Cheyip Mireille , Mthethwa Simangele , Lombard Carl , Jama Ngcwalisa , Pass Desiree , Laubscher Ria , Bradshaw Debbie 
Published: September 2022

AbstractHIV linkage, and retention are key weaknesses in South Africa’s national antiretroviral therapy (ART) program, with the greatest loss of patients in the HIV treatment pathway occurring before ART initiation. This study investigated linkage-to and early-retention-in-care (LTRIC) rates among adults newly diagnosed with HIV in a high-HIV prevalent rural district. We conducted an observational prospective cohort study to investigate LTRIC rates for adults with a new HIV diagnosis in South Africa. Patient-level survey and clinical data were collected using a one-stage-cluster design from 18 healthcare facilities and triangulated between HIV and laboratory databases and registered deaths from Department of Home Affairs. We used Chi-square tests to assess associations between categorical variables, and results were stratified by HIV status, sex, and age. Of the 5,637 participants recruited, 21.2% had confirmed HIV, of which 70.9% were women, and 46.5% were aged 25–34 years. Although 82.7% of participants were linked-to-care within 3 months, only 46.1% remained-in-care 12 months after initiating ART and 5.2% were deceased. While a significantly higher proportion of men were linked-to-care at 3 months compared to women, a significant proportion of women (49.5%) remained-in-care at 12 months than men (38.0%). Post-secondary education and child support grants were significantly associated with retention. We found high linkage-to-care rates, but less than 50% of participants remained-in-care at 12 months. Significant effort is required to retain people living with HIV in care, especially during the first year after ART initiation. Our findings suggest that interventions could target men to encourage HIV testing.
Strategy analysis for a digital content platform considering perishability
Authors: Sun Xiaojie 
Published: September 2022

AbstractWith the vigorous development of e-commerce, digital content consumption has prospered in the consumer market. Considering the perishability of digital content products and the negative utility of advertisements on users, the paper develops a dynamic game model for the supply chain with a digital content platform and an upstream advertiser, and obtains the optimal (or equilibrium) resource investing, pricing, and advertising strategies under the centralized and decentralized decision-making cases. The main results show that the marketing strategies of pricing and advertising are constant over the planning horizon, while the operation strategy of resource investing which depends on digital content products’ perishability is decreasing over time. And, the platform may open resource for free to benefit more from advertising. Furthermore, for a certain region with relatively small price sensitivity, a counterintuitive result is obtained that the resource investing level and the profits of both members increase with the price sensitivity under the decentralized case, which is in sharp contrast to the centralized case. Finally, ignoring the product perishability in the decision-making process will cut down the resource investment level and profit, and the profit loss is intensified by a lower price or advertising sensitivity of consumers.
An Empirical Wall Law for the Mean Velocity in an Adverse Pressure Gradient for RANS Turbulence Modelling
Authors: Knopp Tobias 
Published: September 2022

AbstractAn empirical wall law for the mean velocity in an adverse pressure gradient is presented, with the ultimate goal of aiming at the improvement of RANS turbulence models and wall functions. For this purpose a large database of turbulent boundary-layer flows in adverse pressure gradients from wind tunnel experiments is considered, and the mean velocity in the inner layer is analysed. The log law in the mean velocity is found to be a robust feature. The extent of the log-law region is reduced in ratio to the boundary layer thickness with increasing strength of the pressure gradient. An extended wall law emerges above the log law, extending up to the outer edge of the inner layer. An empirical correlation to describe the reduction of the log-law region is proposed, depending on the pressure-gradient parameter and on the Reynolds number in inner viscous scaling, whose functional form is motivated by similarity and scaling arguments. Finally, there is a discussion of the conjecture of the existence of a wall law for the mean velocity, which is governed mainly by local parameters and whose leading order effects are the pressure gradient and the Reynolds number, but whose details can be perturbed by higher-order local and history effects.
Interaction of the Sea Breeze with the Urban Area of Rome: WRF Mesoscale and WRF Large-Eddy Simulations Compared to Ground-Based Observations
Authors: Di Bernardino Annalisa , Mazzarella Vincenzo , Pecci Mattia , Casasanta Giampietro , Cacciani Marco , Ferretti Rossella 
Published: September 2022

AbstractThe Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model is used to simulate atmospheric circulation during the summer season in a coastal region of central Italy, including the city of Rome. The time series of surface air temperature, wind speed, and direction are compared with in situ observations in urban Rome and its rural surroundings. Moreover, the vertical wind profiles are compared to sodar urban measurements. To improve the WRF model’s ability to reproduce the local circulation, and the onset and propagation of the sea breeze, several simulations are carried out modifying the land use and the thermal and physical properties of the surfaces. Based on the results of the correlation coefficient and the RMSE, the heat capacity and albedo are the parameters mostly influencing the daily temperature cycle. Particularly, the temperature in the urban area is reproduced more realistically when the heat capacity is increased. Hence, the best simulations are used to initialize a large-eddy simulation at high spatial resolution to analyze the interaction between the sea breeze and the urban heat island and to investigate the interaction of the sea breeze front with orography and surface roughness. As confirmed by observations collected by in situ weather stations in the surroundings of Rome, the front, entering the city, splits into three branches: (i) a west component in the western flank of the city, closer to the sea; (ii) a north-west component in the northern, inland side, and (iii) a south-west component in the south area of the city.
Spatiotemporal role of muscarinic signaling in early chick development: exposure to cholinomimetic agents by a mathematical model
Authors: Paladino Ombretta , Moranda Arianna , Falugi Carla 
Published: September 2022

AbstractAwareness is growing that, besides several neurotoxic effects, cholinomimetic drugs able to interfere the cholinergic neurotransmitter system may exert a teratogen effect in developing embryos of vertebrate and invertebrate organisms. Cholinomimetic substances exert their toxic activity on organisms as they inhibit the functionality of the cholinergic system by completely or partially replacing the ACh molecule both at the level of the AChE active site and at the level of acetylcholine receptors. In this work, we focused the attention on the effects of muscarinic antagonist (atropine) and agonist (carbachol) drugs during the early development and ontogenesis of chick embryos. An unsteady-state mathematical model of the drug release and fate was developed, to synchronize exposure to a gradient of drug concentrations with the different developmental events. Since concentration measures in time and space cannot be taken without damaging the embryo itself, the diffusion model was the only way to establish at each time-step the exact concentration of drug at the different points of the embryo body (considered two-dimensional up to the 50 h stage). This concentration depends on the distance and position of the embryo with respect to the releasing source. The exposure to carbachol generally enhanced dimensions and stages of the embryos, while atropine mainly caused delay in development and small size of the embryos. Both the drugs were able to cause developmental anomalies, depending on the moment of development, in a time- and dose-dependent way, regardless the expression of genes driving each event.
Graphical abstract

Early chick embryos were exposed to muscarinic drugs in a spatial-temporal context.

Effects were stage-(time) dependent, according to distance and position of the source.

Atropine inhibited growth, mainly interfering with the cephalic process formation and heart differentiation; carbachol increased growth reducing differentiation.

Interferences may be exerted by alteration of calcium responses to naturally occurring morphogen-driven mechanisms.
Testing environmental effects on taxonomic composition with canonical correspondence analysis: alternative permutation tests are not equal
Authors: ter Braak Cajo J. F. , te Beest Dennis E. 
Published: September 2022

AbstractAfter applying canonical correspondence analysis to metagenomics data with hugely different library sizes (site totals) it became evident that Canoco and the R-packages ade4 and vegan can yield (at least up to 2022) very differentP-values in statistical tests of the relationship between taxonomic composition (species composition) and predictors (environmental variables and/or treatments). The reason is that vegan and Canoco up to version 5.12 apply residualized response permutation (but ignore the model intercept), whereas ade4 applies predictor permutation. Predictor permutation, when extended to residualized predictor permutation, is applicable in partial constrained ordination. This paper shows by simulation that residualized response permutation can yield a very inflated Type I error rate, if the abundance data are both overdispersed and highly variable in site total. In contrast, residualized predictor permutation controlled the type I error rate and had good power, also when the predictors were skewed or binary. After square-root or log transformation of the abundance data, the differences between the permutation methods became small. Residualized predictor permutation is recommended, particularly in testing trait–environment relationships using double constrained correspondence analysis, because this method also critically depends on the species totals, which are generally highly variable. It is implemented in Canoco 5.15 and the R-code of this paper.
Designing interventions for sustainable change in a real-world laboratory
Authors: Pärli Rea , Stauffacher Michael , Seigo Selma L’Orange , Probst Matthias , Pearce BinBin 
Published: September 2022

AbstractReal-world laboratories (RWL) aim to support transformations for sustainable urban development by producing outputs with practical and scientific relevance. To achieve these aims, the local community of which the RWL is a part should be in close collaboration from the start of a project. RWLs offer spaces for ‘thinking outside the box’ and for experimenting with new ideas through concrete interventions into the life world of the community. We provide methodological guidance for researchers on how to design interventions in RWLs that both affect change on the ground and contribute to scientific knowledge. This includes addressing issues important to local communities and generating transformation knowledge about how sustainable urban development can be actualised. We use the case of a project-based master’s course within an RWL in the city of Zurich in Switzerland to demonstrate how the use of design thinking supported the development of needs-based interventions, curbing emissions from food consumption while aiming to generate scientifically relevant output. We conclude that further improvements in methodology are needed in order to test the effectiveness of interventions. However, the outputs of the approach show its potential both for having an impact in the real world and building on existing academic concepts for advancing transformation knowledge.