bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Assessing the Vulnerability of California Water Utilities to Wildfires
Authors: Lee Juhee , Nemati Mehdi , Sanchez Jose J. 
Published: July 2022

AbstractWildfires are becoming more frequent and destructive in California, and it is essential to quantify their potential impacts on drinking water utilities. This study aims to measure the severity of wildfires in each California water utility based on the exposure frequency and the extent of area burned by wildfires in each service area. Our quantitative models show an association between water utility characteristics and their vulnerability to wildfires. Findings indicate that wildfire vulnerability is higher in government-owned utilities than private ones, utilities primarily relying on surface water than groundwater, and utilities using local-sourced water than purchased water. Also, we find a stronger association between wildfire vulnerability and large utilities in terms of population served than small or medium ones. Regarding geography, we find wildfire vulnerability is higher in southern and coastal California utilities than in Northern and inland California. These results help water utilities and land managers identify vulnerable locations and develop wildfire management and disaster preparedness strategies.
MRA-detected intracranial atherosclerotic disease in patients with TIA and minor stroke
Authors: Dempsey Philip J. , Murphy Mark C. , Marnane Michael , Murphy Sean , Kavanagh Eoin C. 
Published: July 2022

Abstract

Objectives
Patients with TIA and minor stroke commonly undergo CT and CTA in the emergency department with subsequent MRI with MRA for further workup. The purpose of this study was to review outpatient MRIs for TIA/stroke patients to assess the additional benefit, if any, of the MRA sequence in the detection of intracranial atherosclerotic disease in patients for whom CTA had already been performed.

Methods
The radiology reports of outpatient MRIs of the brain for TIA/minor stroke patients were retrospectively reviewed via the hospital PACS system. Following this, the imaging report from the patient’s initial presentation to the emergency department was reviewed. This index imaging and subsequent MRI were compared to assess the incidence of new vascular findings detected on the MRA sequence in patients for whom CTA had already been performed. Where new lesions had been identified at follow-up, the imaging was retroactively reviewed to assess if they were present on the index imaging.

Results
Two hundred seven consecutive patients were reviewed. Significant (> 50%) intracranial atherosclerotic disease was present on MRA in 18 patients (8.7%). This was a new finding in 11 patients. Five had initial CTA where the atherosclerosis was not detected. All 5 of these cases were located in the posterior cerebral arteries. Incidental aneurysms were seen in 14 (6.7%); 12 were a new finding at time of MRI.

Conclusion
The MRA sequence provides additional value by increasing the detection of clinically important intracranial atherosclerotic disease which may inform management in patients with minor stroke and TIA.
Socially induced motivation in learning: coping with digital interaction in higher education under the pandemic
Authors: Poppe Ida , Kjekshus Lars Erik 
Published: July 2022

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a total digital disruption of all activities at universities. New digital tools and arenas replaced the daily physical interactions between students and professors. How did this affect motivation and learning outcomes? This article uses the pandemic as a prism to understand how and why social relations and interaction are important in the educational system. Data were obtained from 26 informants in two case studies (study programs). A total of 12 in-depth interviews with employees and 4 group interviews with 14 students were performed at Oslo University during the pandemic (2020–2021). We explore an alternative understanding of social ties in relation to the educational process and the importance of social interaction in sensemaking and self-determination theory concepts. As digital disruption creates a social disconnect for most actors, it becomes prevalent that social activity, both formal and informal, seems to be an important source of motivation for both students and faculty members at the university. We introduce the concept of socially induced motivation as an important aspect of learning. The tendencies in the informants’ accounts of the social interaction are perceived in this context as sensemaking the university as an organization and how it solves its missions and assignments. Socially induced motivation is an important concept, both in relation to work in general and specifically to work in higher education. Our study shows why universities should strive to facilitate socially induced motivation in the future.
Impact of Oral Probiotics in Amelioration of Immunological and Inflammatory Responses on Experimentally Induced Acute Diverticulitis
Authors: Soliman Maha G. , Mansour Hanaa A. , Hassan Wedad A. , Shawky Eman 
Published: July 2022

AbstractAcute diverticulitis is inflammation of a colon diverticulum; it represents a major cause of morbidity and mortality. The alteration of gut microbiota contributes to the promotion of inflammation and the development of acute diverticulitis disease. Probiotics can modify the gut microbiota, so they are considered a promising option for managing diverticulitis disease. This study aimed to investigate the potential protective effect of probiotics, alone or in combination with amoxicillin, on the experimentally induced model of acute diverticulitis disease. Forty-two rats were divided into seven groups as follows: control group: received water and food only; DSS group: received 3% dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) daily for 7 days; LPS group: injected with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) enema at the dose of (4 mg/kg); probiotics group: treated with probiotics (Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis) each of which (4 × 108 CFU suspended in 2 ml distilled water) orally for 7 days; DSS/LPS group: received DSS and LPS; DSS/LPS treated with probiotics group; DSS/LPS treated with probiotics and amoxicillin group. The results revealed that both treatments (probiotics and probiotics-amoxicillin) attenuated DSS/LPS-induced diverticulitis, by restoring the colonic antioxidant status, ameliorating inflammation (significantly reduced TNF-α, interleukins, interferon-γ, myeloperoxidase activity, and C-reactive protein), decreasing apoptosis (through downregulating caspase-3), and reduction of the colon aerobic bacterial count. These probiotic strains were effective in preventing the development of the experimentally induced acute diverticulitis through the anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects and have affected gut microbiota, so they can be considered a potential option in treating acute diverticulitis disease.
Regional Anesthesia in the Emergency Department: an Overview of Common Nerve Block Techniques and Recent Literature
Authors: Malik Adrienne , Thom Stephanie , Haber Brian , Sarani Nima , Ottenhoff Jakob , Jackson Bradley , Rance Logan , Ehrman Robert 
Published: July 2022

Abstract
Purpose of Review
This review seeks to discuss the use of RA in the ED including benefits of administration, types of RA by anatomic location, complications and management, teaching methods currently in practice, and future applications of RA in the ED.

Recent Findings
The early use of RA in pain management may reduce the transition of acute to chronic pain. Multiple plane blocks have emerged as feasible and efficacious for ED pain complaints and are now being safely utilized.

Summary
Adverse effects of opioids and their potential for abuse have necessitated the exploration of substitute therapies. Regional anesthesia (RA) is a safe and effective alternative to opioid treatment for pain in the emergency department (ED). RA can manage pain for a wide variety of injuries while avoiding the risks of opioid use and decreasing length of stay when compared to other forms of analgesia and anesthesia, without compromising patient satisfaction.
On a variant of Pillai’s problem involving S-units and Fibonacci numbers
Authors: Ziegler Volker 
Published: July 2022

AbstractLet us denote by $$F_n$$

F
n

the n-th Fibonacci number. In this paper we show that there exist at most finitely many integers c such that the exponential Diophantine equation $$F_n-2^x3^y=c$$

F
n

-

2
x

3
y

=
c

has more than one solution $$(n,x,y)\in {\mathbb {N}}^3$$

(
n
,
x
,
y
)

∈

N

3

with $$n>1$$

n
>
1

. Moreover, in the case that $$c>0$$

c
>
0

we find all integers c such that the Diophantine equation has at least three solutions and in the case that $$c<0$$

c
<
0

we find all integers c such that the Diophantine equation has at least four solutions.
Longitudinal assessment of renal function after lung transplantation for cystic fibrosis: transition from post-operative acute kidney injury to acute kidney disease and chronic kidney failure
Authors: Scaravilli Vittorio , Merrino Alessandra , Bichi Francesca , Madotto Fabiana , Morlacchi Letizia Corinna , Nosotti Mario , Lissoni Alfredo , Rosso Lorenzo , Blasi Francesco , Pesenti Antonio , Zanella Alberto , Castellano Giuseppe , Grasselli Giacomo 
Published: July 2022

Abstract
Introduction
The clinical trajectory of post-operative acute kidney injury (AKI) following lung transplantation for cystic fibrosis is unknown.

Methods
Incidence and risk factors for post-operative AKI, acute kidney disease (AKD) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) were retrospectively analyzed in cystic fibrosis patients undergoing lung transplantation. Logistic regressions, Chi-square, Cuzick rank tests, and Cox-proportional hazard models were used.

Results
Eighty-three patients were included. Creatinine peaked 3[2–4] days after transplantation, with 15(18%), 15(18%), and 20(24%) patients having post-operative AKI stages 1, 2, and 3, while 15(18%), 19(23%) and 10(12%) developed AKD stage 1, stage 2 and 3, respectively. Higher AKI stage was associated with worsening AKD (p = 0.009) and CKD (p = 0.015) stages. Of the 50 patients with AKI, 32(66%) transitioned to AKD stage > 0, and then 27 (56%) to CKD stage > 1. Female sex, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support as a bridge to lung transplant and at the end of the surgery, the use of intraoperative blood components, and cold-ischemia time were associated with increased risk of post-operative AKI and AKD. Higher AKI stage prolonged invasive mechanical ventilation (p = 0.0001), ICU stay (p = 0.0001), and hospital stay (p = 0.0001), and increased the incidence of primary graft dysfunction (p = 0.035). Both AKI and AKD stages > 2 worsened long-term survival with risk ratios of 3.71 (1.34–10.2), p = 0.0131 and 2.65(1.02–6.87), p = 0.0443, respectively.

Discussion
AKI is frequent in cystic fibrosis patients undergoing lung transplantation, it often evolves to AKD and to chronic kidney disease, thereby worsening short- and long-term outcomes.

Graphical abstract
Sentence part-enhanced BERT with respect to downstream tasks
Authors: Liu Chaoming , Zhu Wenhao , Zhang Xiaoyu , Zhai Qiuhong 
Published: July 2022

AbstractBidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) have achieved great success in many natural language processing tasks. However, BERT generally takes the embedding of the first token to represent sentence meaning in the tasks such as sentiment analysis and textual similarity, which does not properly treat different sentence parts. Different sentence parts have different levels of importance for different downstream tasks. For example, main parts (subject, predicate, and object) play crucial roles in textual similarity calculation, while secondary parts (adverbial and complement) are more important than the main parts in sentiment analysis. To this end, we propose a sentence part-enhanced BERT (SpeBERT) model that uses sentence parts with respect to downstream tasks to enhance sentence representations. Specifically, we encode sentence parts based on dependency parsing and downstream tasks, and extract embeddings through a pooling operation. Furthermore, we design several fusion strategies to incorporate different embeddings. We evaluate the proposed SpeBERT model on two downstream tasks, sentiment classification, and semantic textual similarity, with six benchmark datasets. The experimental results show that our model achieves better performance than competitor models.
Oxygen Vacancy-Rich 2D TiO2 Nanosheets: A Bridge Toward High Stability and Rapid Hydrogen Storage Kinetics of Nano-Confined MgH2
Authors: Ren Li , Zhu Wen , Li Yinghui , Lin Xi , Xu Hao , Sun Fengzhan , Lu Chong , Zou Jianxin 
Published: July 2022

AbstractMgH2 has attracted intensive interests as one of the most promising hydrogen storage materials. Nevertheless, the high desorption temperature, sluggish kinetics, and rapid capacity decay hamper its commercial application. Herein, 2D TiO2 nanosheets with abundant oxygen vacancies are used to fabricate a flower-like MgH2/TiO2 heterostructure with enhanced hydrogen storage performances. Particularly, the onset hydrogen desorption temperature of the MgH2/TiO2 heterostructure is lowered down to 180 °C (295 °C for blank MgH2). The initial desorption rate of MgH2/TiO2 reaches 2.116 wt% min−1 at 300 °C, 35 times of the blank MgH2 under the same conditions. Moreover, the capacity retention is as high as 98.5% after 100 cycles at 300 °C, remarkably higher than those of the previously reported MgH2-TiO2 composites. Both in situ HRTEM observations and ex situ XPS analyses confirm that the synergistic effects from multi-valance of Ti species, accelerated electron transportation caused by oxygen vacancies, formation of catalytic Mg-Ti oxides, and stabilized MgH2 NPs confined by TiO2 nanosheets contribute to the high stability and kinetically accelerated hydrogen storage performances of the composite. The strategy of using 2D substrates with abundant defects to support nano-sized energy storage materials to build heterostructure is therefore promising for the design of high-performance energy materials.
A Cesàro average for an additive problem with an arbitrary number of prime powers and squares
Authors: Cantarini Marco , Gambini Alessandro , Zaccagnini Alessandro 
Published: July 2022

AbstractIn this paper we extend and improve all the previous results known in literature about weighted average, with Cesàro weight, of representations of an integer as sum of a positive arbitrary number of prime powers and a non-negative arbitrary number of squares. Our result includes all cases dealt with so far and allows us to obtain the best possible outcome using the chosen technique.
Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia
Authors: Feng Bin , Zhuo Wei-Hai 
Published: July 2022

AbstractFor a more systematic understanding of the levels of environmental tritium and its behavior in East Asia, a database on environmental tritium was established based on the literature published in the past 30 years. Subsequently, the levels and behavior of the environmental tritium were further studied by statistical analyses. The results indicate that the distribution of environmental tritium is inhomogeneous and complex. In areas without nuclear facilities, the level of environmental tritium has decreased to its background level, even though a certain number of atmospheric nuclear tests were performed before 1980. In general, the level of atmospheric tritium was marginally higher than the levels in precipitation and surface water; the levels in shallow groundwater and seawater were considerably lower. Furthermore, the levels of tritium in the atmosphere, precipitation, and inland surface water were strongly correlated with latitude and distance from the coastline. In soil and living organisms, the level of tissue-free water tritium (TFWT) was comparable to the tritium levels in local rainfall, whereas the persistence of organically bound tritium (OBT) in the majority of organisms resulted in an OBT/TFWT ratio greater than one. Conversely, extremely high levels of environmental tritium were observed near certain nuclear power plants and the Fukushima accident sites. These results highlight the requirement to know the tritium baseline level and its behavior in the environment beforehand to better assess the impact of tritium discharge. Further investigations of environmental tritium in East Asia using more efficient and adequate monitoring methods are also required.
Controlling effect of saline sedimentary environment on enrichment and exploitation of shale gas and oil in lacustrine basin
Authors: Wu Songbai , Zhao Zhongxiang 
Published: July 2022

AbstractThe salinity of continental lacustrine basin has a great influence on the properties of shale. The main objective of this paper is to present the characteristics of shale in different saline stages. In this study, we restored the saline process by the Kauchi method and evaluated the hydrocarbon generation capacity, reservoir property, oiliness and exploitability of shale in different saline stages. The sources of organic matter and paleoproductivity may vary among saline stages. Organic matter mainly originates from coccolithophyta and dinoflagellate in the saltwater stage, demonstrating the highest paleoproductivity. Meanwhile, paleosalinity has an important effect on the lithologic assemblage and mineral composition of shale, which controls its reservoir properties, oiliness and compressibility. The lithology in the saltwater stage is dominated by lamellar argillaceous limestone/calcareous mudstone and lamellar limestone, with good original physical properties. The carbonate content in such stage is the highest, making it easy to dissolve into dissolution pores and thus increasing the porosity and saturation of movable fluid. The high hardness of carbonate gives optimum compressibility to shale.
Novel carbon coating on aluminum current collectors for lithium-ion batteries
Authors: Onsrud Morten , Tezel Ahmet Oguz , Fotedar Sameer , Svensson Ann Mari 
Published: July 2022

Abstract
In this work a significant improvement of the performance of LiFePO4 (LFP) composite cathodes, in particular at high rates (up to 12C), is demonstrated by the use of carbon-coated aluminum current collectors. The coating procedure is novel, and allows for application of a thin carbon layer without the use of solvent and binder. The presence of the thin carbon coating is verified by collecting the Raman spectra. The spectra are dominated by the D-band, indicating a low the degree of graphitization and a high amount of disordered carbon in the sample. LFP cathodes with an area capacity of 1.7 mAh/cm2 show an excellent rate capability of 89% upon cycling at 5C. A dramatic reduction of the contact resistance towards the active cathode material has been verified for the coated current collectors. It is furthermore shown that the electrochemical impedance spectra for cathodes applied on uncoated current collectors is dominated by the contact resistance, while the charge transfer resistance dominates the spectrum for cathodes applied to the carbon-coated current collector.

Article Highlights

A novel carbon coating is applied to aluminum current collectors without the use of solvents and binders

The rate performance of LiFePO4 cathodes is considerably improved when the active material is coated onto the carbon-coated collectors

The contact resistance between the active cathode material and the current collector is almost eliminated by the use of the carbon coating
Efficacy of Two Texas Bentonites in Binding Aflatoxin B1 and in Reducing Aflatoxicosis in Broilers
Authors: Barrientos-Velazquez Ana Luisa , Kakani Radhika , Fowler Justin , Haq Akram-ul , Bailey Christopher A. , Deng Youjun 
Published: July 2022

AbstractThe incorporation of bentonites in aflatoxin-contaminated animal feeds to remedy aflatoxicosis has been tested widely in animal trials. Yet, a large variation in efficacy among samples has been observed which has been attributed to variations in the properties of the clay mineral adsorbents. The objectives of the current study were: (1) to evaluate the mineral and chemical composition of two selected bentonites to find minerals or elements which are potentially of concern; (2) to characterize the aflatoxin B1 (AfB1) adsorption (selectivity, capacity, reversibility, and interlayer accessibility) by the bentonites; and (3) to evaluate the safety and efficacy of selected clays as amendments of aflatoxin-contaminated feed for broiler chickens. The mineral, chemical, and exchange cation composition of the clays were analyzed, and they appeared to be safe for use in feed. The bentonites and their fractions showed that adsorption capacities range from 0.48 to 0.97 mol/kg. The interlayer spaces of both montmorillonites were accessible by AfB1, and the adsorption was irreversible. Three-day old broiler chickens were given clean and high-aflatoxin-concentration (1400 mg/kg) diets with and without the presence of the two bentonites. After three weeks the chickens were sacrificed and biomarkers were evaluated. The presence of aflatoxins reduced the body weight by 58% and resulted in a 25% mortality rate. Adding bentonites 1TX and 4TX increased the body weight of the chickens by 14 and 23%, respectively, but did not improve the mortality rates. The results suggested that selected bentonites could effectively sequester aflatoxins in vivo but did not eliminate the total toxicity present in highly contaminated poultry feed.
The Hardest Hamiltonian Cycle Problem Instances: The Plateau of Yes and the Cliff of No
Authors: Sleegers Joeri , van den Berg Daan 
Published: July 2022

AbstractWe use two evolutionary algorithms to make hard instances of the Hamiltonian cycle problem. Hardness (or ‘fitness’), is defined as the number of recursions required by Vandegriend–Culberson, the best known exact backtracking algorithm for the problem. The hardest instances, all non-Hamiltonian, display a high degree of regularity and scalability across graph sizes. These graphs are found multiple times through independent runs, and by both evolutionary algorithms, suggesting the search space might contain monotonic paths towards the global maximum. For Hamiltonian-bound evolution, some hard graphs were found, but convergence is much less consistent. In this extended paper, we survey the neighbourhoods of both the hardest yes- and no-instances produced by the evolutionary algorithms. Results show that the hardest no-instance resides on top of a steep cliff, while the hardest yes-instance turns out to be part of a plateau of 27 equally hard instances. While definitive answers are far away, the results provide a lot of insight in the Hamiltonian cycle problem’s state space.