bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Role of Maternal Preconception Adiposity in Human Offspring Sex and Sex Ratio
Authors: DeVilbiss Elizabeth A , Purdue-Smithe Alexandra C , Sjaarda Lindsey A , Taylor Brandie D , Freeman Joshua R , Perkins Neil J , Silver Robert M , Schisterman Enrique F , Mumford Sunni L 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
We evaluated relationships between preconception adiposity and human offspring sex and sex ratio. Using data from a prospective preconception cohort nested within a randomized controlled trial based at 4 US clinical sites (2006–2012), we used logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for male:female sex ratio, and log-identity regression to estimate risk differences (RDs) and 95% CIs for male and female livebirth according to preconception adiposity measures. Inverse-probability weights accounted for potential selection bias. Among 603 women attempting pregnancy, there were meaningful reductions in sex ratio for the highest category of each adiposity measure. The lowest sex ratios were observed for obesity (body mass index of ≥30, calculated as weight (kg)/height (m)2, OR = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.26, 0.88) relative to normal body mass index, and the top tertiles (tertile 3) of serum leptin (OR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.32, 0.80) and skinfold measurements (OR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.32, 0.79) relative to the lowest tertiles. Reductions were driven by 11–15 fewer male livebirths per 100 women (for obesity, RD = −15, 95% CI: −23, −6.7; for leptin tertile 3, RD = −11, 95% CI: −20, −3.2; and for skinfolds tertile 3, RD = −11, 95% CI: −19, −3.3). We found that relationships between preconception adiposity measures and reduced sex ratio were driven by a reduction in male births.
Unlike a virgin: a meta-analytical review of female mating status in studies of female mate choice
Authors: Richardson Jon , Zuk Marlene 
Published: December 2022

AbstractStudies of female mate choice commonly use virgin females as test subjects, either to control for the effects of mating or because virgin females are presumed to be more responsive to mating cues. Theory predicts that virgin females will be less choosy because they risk dying without mating. Moreover, in many species, females spend more of their lives mated than as virgins. Thus, the exclusive use of virgin females in studies of female mate choice may underestimate the strength or direction of female choice and fail to reflect natural mating decisions. We conducted a systematic meta-analysis of female mate choice studies focusing on three scenarios in which female choice might differ in virgin and mated females: reproductive isolation, inbreeding avoidance, and sexually transmitted disease. Using only virgin females was common (53% of 303 studies). In addition, 38% of studies lacked information on female mating history. Contrary to predictions, we found no evidence that virgin females were less choosy than mated females. Nevertheless, excluding mated females from studies of female mate choice leaves an important gap in our understanding of the role of female preferences in evolution. We therefore encourage future studies of female mate choice to consider the natural context of mate choice and include mated females as test subjects when relevant.
Improved model quality assessment using sequence and structural information by enhanced deep neural networks
Authors: Liu Jun , Zhao Kailong , Zhang Guijun 
Published: December 2022

AbstractProtein model quality assessment plays an important role in protein structure prediction, protein design and drug discovery. In this work, DeepUMQA2, a substantially improved version of DeepUMQA for protein model quality assessment, is proposed. First, sequence features containing protein co-evolution information and structural features reflecting family information are extracted to complement model-dependent features. Second, a novel backbone network based on triangular multiplication update and axial attention mechanism is designed to enhance information exchange between inter-residue pairs. On CASP13 and CASP14 datasets, the performance of DeepUMQA2 increases by 20.5 and 20.4% compared with DeepUMQA, respectively (measured by top 1 loss). Moreover, on the three-month CAMEO dataset (11 March to 04 June 2022), DeepUMQA2 outperforms DeepUMQA by 15.5% (measured by local AUC0,0.2) and ranks first among all competing server methods in CAMEO blind test. Experimental results show that DeepUMQA2 outperforms state-of-the-art model quality assessment methods, such as ProQ3D-LDDT, ModFOLD8, and DeepAccNet and DeepUMQA2 can select more suitable best models than state-of-the-art protein structure methods, such as AlphaFold2, RoseTTAFold and I-TASSER, provided themselves.
Succinylated lysine residue prediction revisited
Authors: Ahmed Shehab Sarar , Rifat Zaara Tasnim , Rahman M Saifur , Rahman M Sohel 
Published: December 2022

AbstractLysine succinylation is a kind of post-translational modification (PTM) that plays a crucial role in regulating the cellular processes. Aberrant succinylation may cause inflammation, cancers, metabolism diseases and nervous system diseases. The experimental methods to detect succinylation sites are time-consuming and costly. This thus calls for computational models with high efficacy, and attention has been given in the literature to develop such models, albeit with only moderate success in the context of different evaluation metrics. One crucial aspect in this context is the biochemical and physicochemical properties of amino acids, which appear to be useful as features for such computational predictors. However, some of the existing computational models did not use the biochemical and physicochemical properties of amino acids. In contrast, some others used them without considering the inter-dependency among the properties. The combinations of biochemical and physicochemical properties derived through our optimization process achieve better results than the results achieved by combining all the properties. We propose three deep learning architectures: CNN+Bi-LSTM (CBL), Bi-LSTM+CNN (BLC) and their combination (CBL_BLC). We find that CBL_BLC outperforms the other two. Ensembling of different models successfully improves the results. Notably, tuning the threshold of the ensemble classifiers further improves the results. Upon comparing our work with other existing works on two datasets, we successfully achieve better sensitivity and specificity by varying the threshold value.
A novel PV array configuration for enhancing maximum power from PV array
Authors: Narne Dharani Kumar , Ramesh Kumar T A , Alla Rama Koteswara Rao 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
Partial shading conditions (PSC) are unavoidable and are the main reason for the reduction in power from a photovoltaic (PV) array. With proper arrangement, the impact of PSC can be somewhat mitigated. There are distinct types of configurations, including series, parallel, series-parallel (SP), honeycomb, total cross-tied (TCT), etc. This article presents a novel SP–TCT configuration to maximize output power from PV panels under different shading conditions. The proposed configuration performance has been examined considering a 4 × 4 PV array under long-narrow and long-wide, short-narrow, short-wide and uniform shading conditions. The results of the proposed configurations are compared with existing configurations in terms of performance measures such as maximum power, fill factor, efficiency and mismatch losses. In all the cases, performance of the proposed configuration is nearer to the TCT configuration performance. The percentage improvement in terms of efficiency for the proposed novel SP–TCT configuration and TCT configuration is nearly 1.6% compared to other methods.
The viability of using gasoline-integrated biodiesel–diesel mixtures in engines as a solution to greenhouse gas emissions: a review
Authors: Zandie Mohammad , Ng Hoon Kiat , Gan Suyin , Said Mohd Farid Muhamad , Cheng Xinwei 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
The implementation of alternative fuels, such as biodiesel, in engines has been shown to be a feasible strategy to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The blending of biodiesel with diesel can reduce emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide and reduce soot formation. Nonetheless, biodiesel combustion comes with low thermal efficiency, elevated emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon deposition issues. Recently, the addition of gasoline to diesel–biodiesel blends has been proposed to compensate for the downsides of biodiesel combustion. In the current review, the viability of using this ternary fuel blend in engines is thoroughly reviewed. The review first assesses the environmental and health issues caused by conventional fuels, mitigation schemes to control GHG emissions and alternative fuels as a decarbonizing technology. The combustion and emissions characteristics of diesel–biodiesel–gasoline mixtures are discussed in detail. Finally, the status, challenges and prospects of applying the alternative fuel mixture in engines are appraised. This work has revealed that the mixing of gasoline with diesel–biodiesel blends brings about elongated ignition delay, increased heat release rate and in-cylinder pressure at high loads. Additionally, by adding gasoline, the combustion duration is shortened and soot, CO and unburned hydrocarbon emissions are suppressed, while NOx emissions are slightly increased. Combustion stability is found to be partially disrupted in the presence of gasoline whereas fuel economy (at medium and high loads) is improved by the addition of gasoline. To support the wider deployment and commercialization of this fuelling strategy in the transportation sector, favourable legislation and/or fiscal incentives are needed in countries around the world. This would encourage researchers, fuel producers and engine manufacturers alike to solve challenges such as biodiesel feedstock costs, fuel quality, fuel storage management and engine warranty issues.
An efficient energy-management strategy for a DC microgrid powered by a photovoltaic/fuel cell/battery/supercapacitor
Authors: Abbas Furqan A , Obed Adel A , Qasim Mohammed A , Yaqoob Salam J , Ferahtia Seydali 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
The outcome of this paper is to suggest an efficient energy-management strategy (EMS) for a direct-current (DC) microgrid (MG). The typical MG is composed of two renewable energy sources [photovoltaic (PV) systems and fuel cells (FCs)] and two energy-storage elements (lithium-ion battery and supercapacitor). An EMS was proposed to ensure optimal bus voltage with a power-sharing arrangement between the load and the sources. As a result, in the suggested DC MG, non-linear flatness control theory was used instead of the traditional proportional-integral control approach. The suggested EMS is intended to supply high power quality to the load under varying load conditions with fluctuating solar irradiation while considering the FC status. To validate and prove the effectiveness of the proposed EMS, a MATLAB® environment was used. In addition, the output power of the PV system was maximized using the particle swarm optimization algorithm as a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique to track the MPP of the 3000-W PV system under different irradiance conditions. The results show that the suggested EMS delivers a stable and smooth DC bus voltage with minimum overshoot value (0.1%) and improved ripple content (0.1%). As a result, the performance of the DC MG was enhanced by employing the flatness control theory, which provides higher power quality by stabilizing the bus voltage.
Theoretical evaluation of dielectric materials for lightning energy harvesting system
Authors: Uddin Saad , Gu Jinan , Ajmal Muhammad 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
This study describes the hypothetical approach to system design to collect and store electrical energy present in a flash of lightning. The system’s operations include the attraction and handling of the electrical charge obtained from lightning flashes. Performance differences arise from three different dielectric materials (rutile, mica and quartz) and the results define the estimated response of the storage system, including charge storage. All the results in this article were obtained through simulation or demonstrated mathematically showing the estimated outcomes of the system. The findings demonstrate that each dielectric material has its own advantages and disadvantages that influence the efficiency of the storage system. Through analysing the distinction of the three materials, it is observed that mica is the most suitable dielectric material, as it has the greatest dielectric strength, which is the main factor in the handling of charge.
Reactivating ordinal position information from auditory sequence memory in human brains
Authors: Fan Ying , Luo Huan 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
Retaining a sequence of events in their order is a core ability of many cognitive functions, such as speech recognition, movement control, and episodic memory. Although content representations have been widely studied in working memory (WM), little is known about how ordinal position information of an auditory sequence is retained in the human brain as well as its coding characteristics. In fact, there is still a lack of an efficient approach to directly accessing the stored ordinal position code during WM retention. Here, 31 participants performed an auditory sequence WM task with their brain activities recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). We developed new triggering events that could successfully reactivate neural representations of ordinal position during the delay period. Importantly, the ordinal position reactivation is further related to recognition behavior, confirming its indexing of WM storage. Furthermore, the ordinal position code displays an intriguing “stable-dynamic” format, i.e. undergoing the same dynamic neutral trajectory in the multivariate neural space during both encoding and retention (whenever reactivated). Overall, our results provide an effective approach to accessing the behaviorally-relevant ordinal position information in auditory sequence WM and reveal its new temporal characteristics.
Preparation of Ferrofluid from Adipic Acid Coated Magnetic Nanoparticles and Hydrophobic Deep Eutectic Solvent Used in Dispersive Micro-Solid-Phase Extraction: Application for the Pre-Concentration and Determination of Clozapine in Biological Samples
Authors: Nia Negar Nooraee , Hadjmohammadi Mohammad Reza 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
The aim of the present study is the preparation of a novel magnetic ferrofluid (FF) based on a hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent (DES), which is used for the extraction of trace quantities of clozapine from biological samples. For this purpose, a highly stable FF was prepared through the combination of adipic acid-coated magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) plus tetraethylammonium chloride/thymol hDES without an additional stabilizer. These solvents were synthesized by the available and less-toxic materials, which is the appropriate option to support the solvents for the preparation of FF. In this study, a water-immiscible DES acts simultaneously as a carrier and stabilizer for the MNPs. In addition, the strong interactions between clozapine and magnetic FF could increase the extraction efficiency. The fractional factorial design was used for screening the experimental parameters. Then, the effective factors were optimized using the Box–Behnken design. The optimum extraction conditions were the following: pH of the sample solution: 8, the volume of the desorption solvent: 200 μL and desorption time: 5 min. Moreover, the suggested method exhibited low limits of detection in the range of 2.8–3.1 μg L−1. The linear range was 10.0–500.0 μg L−1 for human plasma and urine samples with acceptable recoveries greater than 91.4%. In addition, the proposed method is convenient, sensitive, effective, rapid and environmentally friendly.
Curcumin-Melamine For Solid-Phase Microextraction of Volatile Organic Compounds from Aqueous Samples
Authors: Mohammadi Ali Ahmad , Davarani Saied Saeed Hosseiny , Jafari Mostafa , Mehdinia Ali 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
The hybrid coating of curcumin and melamine was prepared by a simple electrochemical method. Some physical and chemical properties of the fiber were studied by several methods such as FT-IR, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The fiber was stable at the inlet of a gas chromatograph at temperatures up to 280°C. The fiber has been used for the extraction of ethylbenzene, toluene and xylenes (ETX). Some parameters of headspace solid-phase microextraction, including extraction time, temperature and salt amount, were optimized. Under the optimized situation, the detection limits were 0.15–0.21 μg L −1 and the linear ranges were within the range of 0.5–1,000 μg L−1 (r2 ≥ 0.99). The intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviations were 10.2–13.7 and 13.0–15.6%, respectively, at a concentration level of 10 μg L−1 from each compound by applying a single fiber. The method was used to successfully analyze wastewater and pool water samples.
Age and Cancer Incidence in 5.2 Million People With Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV): The South African HIV Cancer Match Study
Authors: Ruffieux Yann , Muchengeti Mazvita , Olago Victor , Dhokotera Tafadzwa , Bohlius Julia , Egger Matthias , Rohner Eliane 
Published: December 2022

Abstract

Background
Old age is an important risk factor for developing cancer, but few data exist on this association in people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, PWH) in sub-Saharan Africa.

Methods
The South African HIV Cancer Match study is a nationwide cohort of PWH based on a linkage between HIV-related laboratory records from the National Health Laboratory Service and cancer diagnoses from the National Cancer Registry for 2004–2014. We included PWH who had HIV-related tests on separate days. Using natural splines, we modeled cancer incidence rates as a function of age.

Results
We included 5 222 827 PWH with 29 580 incident cancer diagnoses—most commonly cervical cancer (n = 7418), Kaposi sarcoma (n = 6380), and breast cancer (n = 2748). In young PWH, the incidence rates for infection-related cancers were substantially higher than for infection-unrelated cancers. At age 40 years, the most frequent cancer was cervical cancer in female and Kaposi sarcoma in male PWH. Thereafter, the rates of infection-unrelated cancers increased steeply, particularly among male PWH, where prostate cancer became the most frequent cancer type at older age. Whereas Kaposi sarcoma rates peaked at 34 years (101/100 000 person-years) in male PWH, cervical cancer remained the most frequent cancer among older female PWH.

Conclusions
Infection-related cancers are common in PWH in South Africa, but rates of infection-unrelated cancers overtook those of infection-related cancers after age 54 years in the overall study population. As PWH in South Africa live longer, prevention and early detection of infection-unrelated cancers becomes increasingly important. Meanwhile, control strategies for infection-related cancers, especially cervical cancer, remain essential.
Elite philanthropy and applied economics: the Rockefeller Foundation’s role in post-war research direction
Authors: Vogel Ann , Shipman Alan 
Published: December 2022

Abstract
This essay investigates how, why and with what results the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) influenced the development of UK economics between 1930 and 1950. It shows the extent to which the RF, as the major sponsor of the newly emerging ‘applied economics’ research in the US and Europe, shaped the conversion of newly emerging macroeconomic theory into policy and research, and steered the fast expanding ‘applied’ economics in an econometric direction based on newly available national accounts data. The RF played a decisive role in selecting the economists retained for applied research when World War 2 ended, and with it the type of work funded. We argue that the RF’s preference for financing stand-alone institutes restrained the initial expansion of England’s applied economics research despite a head-start on national income accounting and business-focused research. Drawing on unpublished correspondence between John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) and senior RF officers, we show how the difficulty in obtaining start-up funding conditioned the turn towards econometrics in the early choice of leadership and research plans at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Economics, narrowing its earlier vision for a ‘realistic approach’ consonant with that of Keynes. Covering the path-dependent nature of applied economics in its formative phase, the essay demonstrates the role of philanthropic elite organisations in knowledge formation that led to the making of microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Factors Associated With Fecal Calprotectin Sample Collection Compliance: An IBD Center Quality Improvement Project
Authors: Fenton David , Choi Natalie K , Garcia Nicole M , Dyer Emma C , Cohen Nathaniel A , Rubin David T 
Published: December 2022

Abstract

Background
Fecal calprotectin (Fcal) is a noninvasive, inexpensive biomarker of disease activity. However, patient compliance with this test is variable and incompletely described. We assessed compliance rates with Fcal tests and identified factors associated with noncompliance.

Methods
A retrospective chart review of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who had a Fcal test ordered through our center between August 2021 and December 2021 was conducted. Demographic, clinical, disease, and test-related information were recorded. Patients with incomplete Fcal orders were sent a survey to better understand their reasons for noncompliance. Simple statistical analysis and and multivariable logistic regression modeling were performed.

Results
Of 303 patients, 165 (54.4%) had an order for Fcal. Of the Fcal tests ordered, 55 (33.3%) were not completed. Remission of IBD, no prior Fcal completion, and tests ordered at a distant site were all associated with test noncompletion. A multivariable logistic regression revealed that history of a prior completed Fcal test is associated with subsequent test completion (odds ratio = 2.1, 95% confidence interval 1.9–35.5, P = .004). Patients who did not complete the test described the pandemic and third-party testing center issues as the most common reasons for noncompliance.

Conclusions
In this single center experience with Fcal testing in patients with IBD, we identified that a history of incomplete Fcal testing and distant location of lab testing were significantly associated with noncompletion of the test. We provide practical guidance for future utilization and compliance, including the impact of home-based testing.