bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Impact of leadless pacemaker implantation site on cardiac synchronization and tricuspid regurgitation
Authors: Gao Xiao-fei , Zhu Hong , Zhang Jia-sheng , Ning-Zhang  , Pan Xiao-hong , Xu Yi-Zhou 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Background
To investigate the optimization of leadless pacemaker placement and to assess its impact on heart synchronization and tricuspid regurgitation.

Results
A clinical trial was conducted involving 53 patients who underwent leadless pacemaker implantation at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine and Hangzhou First People’s Hospital between March 2022 and February 2023. Implantation site localization was determined using the 18-segment method under RAO 30° imaging. Intraoperative and 1-month post-operative echocardiography was performed to assess cardiac electromechanical synchronization and tricuspid regurgitation; parameters of interest included interventricular mechanical delay (IVMD), pre-ejection period of the aorta (L-PEI), and septal-to-posterior wall motion delay (SPWMD). Pacing thresholds, sensing, and impedance exhibited no significant differences between the 8/9 zone and other sites (P > 0.05). In contrast, the 8/9 zone group manifested a significant reduction in L-PEI (128.24 ± 12.27 vs. 146.50 ± 18.17 ms, P < 0.001), IVMD (17.92 ± 8.47 vs. 28.56 ± 15.16 ms, P < 0.001), and SPWMD (72.84 ± 19.57 vs. 156.56 ± 81.54 ms, P < 0.001), compared to the non-8/9 group. Post-pacing QRS duration showed no significant difference between the two groups (139.21 ± 11.36 vs. 143.83 ± 16.35 ms P = 0.310). Notably, for patients with atrial fibrillation, the 8/9 zone placement significantly reduced tricuspid regurgitation. During the 1-month follow-up, neither group reported major complications such as bleeding, cardiac tamponade, pacemaker detachment, or malignant arrhythmias.

Conclusion
Implantation of the leadless pacemaker in the right ventricular 8/9 zone provides superior electromechanical synchronization compared to other sites.
Ursolic acid attenuates obesity-related metabolic dysfunction via modulation of peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-gamma in male Wistar rats fed with high-carbohydrate high-fat diet
Authors: Omodara Oluwatosin O. , Kawu Mohammed U. , Bako Ibrahim G. , Mhya Daniel H. , Dawus Theophilus T. 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Background
The risk factors of metabolic syndrome (MS) precedes the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes and are largely triggered by high-carbohydrate high-fat diet (HCHFD) and sedentary lifestyle. The development of these risk factors is connected to persistent low-grade inflammation. Though, ursolic acid (UA) has been shown to prevent HCHFD-induced metabolic parameters. The present study aimed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the preventive effects of dietary UA supplementation on obesity-related metabolic disorders and inflammation in male Wistar rats fed with HCHFD. The animals were randomly divided into 4 groups (n = 5): 1—normal diet (ND) + distilled water (DW); 2—ND + UA; 3—HCHFD + DW; 4—HCHFD + UA. HCHFD was augmented with 20% fructose in drinking water. The animals were fed their respective diets daily for 20 weeks. 250 mg/kg body weight of ursolic acid was administered orally to UA-treated groups for the last 8 weeks. Blood samples were collected and liver and adipose tissues were harvested for biochemical and tissue analysis, respectively.

Results
BMI and FBG were significantly lowered in the HCHFD + UA-fed animals compared to the HCHFD + DW-fed animals. In the HCHFD + UA-fed animals, HOMA-IR, serum insulin, cholesterol, triglyceride and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were significantly decreased while high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) was increased compared to the HCHFD + DW-fed animals. UA significantly decreased serum tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) and increased adiponectin level compared to the HCHFD + DW-fed animals. The messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) level of peroxisome proliferator activated receptor-gamma (PPAR-γ) in adipose tissue was significantly upregulated while liver PPAR-γ mRNA level was significantly downregulated in HCHFD + UA-fed animals compared to HCHFD + DW group, respectively. UA restored the architecture of liver parenchyma to near normal.

Conclusion
Dietary UA supplementation mitigated metabolic dysfunction and inflammation associated with obesity via modulation of liver and adipose tissue PPAR-γ in male Wistar rats fed with HCHFD for 20 weeks.
Unveiling the therapeutic potential of insect-derived natural products for drug discovery
Authors: Anal Jasha Momo H. , Mozhui Lobeno , Rokhum Samuel Lalthazuala 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Background
The recent FDA-approved Ycanth (cantharidin) for treating Molluscum contagiosum, a viral skin infection, was first reported from blister beetles. Medicinal insects are reservoirs for exploring bioactive molecules, which have various benefits. Their use in traditional medicinal practices explains why uncovering new chemical substances is worthwhile.

Main body of the abstract
Insect-derived natural products with diverse and unique structures are significant for drug discovery and development potential. Various natural products are reported from insect sources; in this context, it also emphasizes the importance of active global participation among researchers, as it offers significant potential for developing a sustainable approach to why this should not remain untouched for ever-increasing unmet challenges.

Conclusion
Hence, practitioners in natural product chemistry and allied disciplines have a role in understating the enormous potential of discovering bioactive metabolites for their medicinal value to human health.
Diagnostic value of selected fetal echocardiographic parameters in the prenatally suspected bicuspid aortic valve
Authors: Zheng Min , Ruan Yanping , Sun Lin , Liu Xiaowei , Han Jiancheng , He Yihua 
Published: January 2025

Abstract
Objective
To explore the diagnostic value of crucial parameters of echocardiography for fetal bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) and improve diagnostic accuracy.

Methods
Fetuses with a prenatal suspected diagnosis of BAV were followed, and confirmed and misdiagnosed cases were obtained. Prenatal echocardiography was reviewed and analyzed. ROC curves were plotted to evaluate the diagnostic capabilities of different echo signs.

Results
14 cases were confirmed, and 7 patients were misdiagnosed. Some abnormal ultrasound signs were observed in both groups, including direct ultrasound signs of the aortic valve: Two commissures and a “fish-mouth” opening; Thickening, hyperechogenicity, or the presence of a raphe; Restricted motion or opening; Eccentric or a-linear valve leaflet closure line and indirect ultrasound signs: Increased supra-aortic valve velocity; Post-stenotic widening of the ascending aorta. The combination of “Increased supra-aortic valve velocity” and “Two commissures and a ‘fish-mouth’ opening” had the highest AUC (AUC: 0.893, 95%CI: 0.752-1.000, Sensitivity: 0.786, Specificity: 1.000).

Conclusions
We first found that the combination of “Increased supra-aortic valve velocity” and “Two commissures and a ‘fish-mouth’ opening” had the best diagnostic capability and could reduce the rate of misdiagnosis. Fetuses with BAV should be followed up prenatally for the aortic valve and ascending aorta as they progressively deteriorate with gestational age.
Egg shape and color mediate acceptance thresholds in diverse avian host species with different rates of antiparasitic egg rejection
Authors: Fernandez-Duque Facundo , Stanback Mark , Lawson Shelby L. , Hauber Mark E. 
Published: January 2025

ABSTRACT
Eggshell recognition in parental birds is vital for nest management, defense against brood parasitism, optimal embryonic development and minimizing disease and predation risks. This process relies on acceptance thresholds balancing the risk of rejecting own eggs against the benefit of excluding foreign ones, following signal detection theory. We investigated the role of object shape in egg rejection decisions among three host species of the obligate brood parasitic brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater), each with a varying known response to parasitic eggs. Following previous studies on the American robin (Turdus migratorius; a robust cowbird-egg rejecter), we presented Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis; moderate rejecter) and red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus; an accepter) with 3D-printed blue model eggs varying in width or angularity. To examine the shape–color interaction, we also presented Eastern bluebirds with these series in two colors and maculation: light blue (bluebird mimetic) and white with speckles (more cowbird-like). Both American robins and Eastern bluebirds were less likely to accept blue models as their width decreased. For the blue angularity series, acceptance decreased significantly with increased angularity for the red-winged blackbird, as has been previously seen in the American robin, but not for the Eastern bluebird. For bluebirds with the white-maculated models, these patterns remained but statistical significance reversed: acceptance did not decrease significantly with width, but did decrease significantly with angularity. These results suggest that egg shape variation influences antiparasitic egg rejection behaviors, is modulated by shell color and maculation patterns, and varies among different host species, highlighting the complexity of behavioral defense cues against brood parasitism.
Artificial light at night alters risk-related behaviors of the ground-dwelling isopod Porcellionides pruinosus
Authors: Dissegna Andrea , Chiandetti Cinzia 
Published: January 2025

ABSTRACT
Artificial light at night (ALAN) has emerged as a significant ecological disruptor, affecting various behavioral and physiological processes in numerous species. This study investigated the impact of ALAN on the risk-related behaviors and activity patterns of the ground-dwelling isopod Porcellionides pruinosus. Isopods were exposed to one of three different illuminance conditions (&lt;0.01, 1 and 10 lx) over a period of 14 consecutive nights. Behavioral assays included emergence, open-field, habituation to a looming stimulus, and spatial navigation tests. Additionally, the distribution and activity patterns of the isopods within the terraria were monitored. Our results indicate that ALAN significantly disrupted the repeatability of risk-related behaviors, suggesting individual-level behavioral alterations. At the group level, ALAN-exposed isopods exhibited prolonged freezing durations in response to a looming stimulus, increased shelter-seeking behavior and reduced dispersal in the terrarium. These findings suggest that ALAN-induced transformation of activity pattern of isopods is linked to the adoption of more prudent behaviors. A similar phenomenon may affect the activity pattern of other ground-dwelling invertebrates, leading to severe alterations of the soil invertebrate community.
Elevated developmental temperatures below the lethal limit reduce Aedes aegypti fertility
Authors: Pekľanská Miriama , van Heerwaarden Belinda , Hoffmann Ary A. , Nouzová Marcela , Šíma Radek , Ross Perran A. 
Published: January 2025

ABSTRACT
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are the principal vectors of dengue and continue to pose a threat to human health, with ongoing urbanization, climate change and trade all impacting the distribution and abundance of this species. Hot periods are becoming increasingly common and their impacts on insect mortality have been well established, but they may have even greater impacts on insect fertility. In this study, we investigated the impacts of high temperatures on Ae. aegypti fertility both within and across generations. Mosquitoes developing under elevated temperatures exhibited higher critical thermal maxima (CTmax), reflecting developmental acclimation, but their fertility declined with increasing developmental temperature. In females, elevated developmental temperatures decreased fecundity while in males it tended to decrease the proportion of eggs that hatched and the proportion of individuals producing viable offspring. Rearing both sexes at 35°C increased fecundity in the subsequent generation but effects of elevated temperatures persisted across gonotrophic cycles within the same generation. Moreover, exposure of adults to 35°C further decreased fertility beyond the effects of developmental temperature alone. These findings highlight sub-lethal impacts of elevated temperatures on Ae. aegypti fertility and plastic responses to thermal stress within and across generations. This has significant implications for predicting the distribution and abundance of mosquito populations thriving in increasingly warmer environments.
Multitask Learning and Bandits via Robust Statistics
Authors: Xu Kan , Bastani Hamsa 
Published: January 2025

Decision makers often simultaneously face many related but heterogeneous learning problems. For instance, a large retailer may wish to learn product demand at different stores to solve pricing or inventory problems, making it desirable to learn jointly for stores serving similar customers; alternatively, a hospital network may wish to learn patient risk at different providers to allocate personalized interventions, making it desirable to learn jointly for hospitals serving similar patient populations. Motivated by real data sets, we study a natural setting where the unknown parameter in each learning instance can be decomposed into a shared global parameter plus a sparse instance-specific term. We propose a novel two-stage multitask learning estimator that exploits this structure in a sample-efficient way, using a unique combination of robust statistics (to learn across similar instances) and LASSO regression (to debias the results). Our estimator yields improved sample complexity bounds in the feature dimension d relative to commonly employed estimators; this improvement is exponential for “data-poor” instances, which benefit the most from multitask learning. We illustrate the utility of these results for online learning by embedding our multitask estimator within simultaneous contextual bandit algorithms. We specify a dynamic calibration of our estimator to appropriately balance the bias-variance trade-off over time, improving the resulting regret bounds in the context dimension d. Finally, we illustrate the value of our approach on synthetic and real data sets. This paper was accepted by J. George Shanthikumar, data science. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.00490 .
Entre Rio e Paris
Authors: Garbaccio Grace Ladeira , Pratlong Florent , L. F. Gonçalves Dias Sylmara , F. de Melo Brito Ana Carolina 
Published: January 2025

Objetivo: A abordagem humanista sobre a inovação, aqui adotada como meio de melhorar a vida das pessoas e sua relação com a natureza e a cidade, é utilizada neste artigo com o objetivo de analisar como as legislações do Brasil e da França sobre plásticos de uso único (PDU) se comparam, especialmente no contexto das Olimpíadas de Paris 2024 e Rio de Janeiro 2016, e como isso se relaciona ao Direito à Cidade.
Método: Este estudo adota uma metodologia de revisão bibliográfica, análise comparativa, proporcionando uma visão jurídica sobre as estratégias de redução do uso de plástico e suas implicações ambientais para a cidade. Sendo assim, a metodologia utilizada é a descrição analítica, com observância dos diversos posicionamentos na aplicação dos instrumentos jurídicos em questão.
Resultados: Os resultados indicam que o banimento do PDU nas Olimpíadas de Paris 2024 representa um avanço significativo na direção de práticas mais sustentáveis, alinhando-se com os princípios do Direito à Cidade. Tais efeitos transcendem o evento esportivo e podem torná-lo um catalisador para a inovação ambiental e um exemplo a ser seguido, especialmente na organização de grandes eventos.
Contribuições finais: A partir desse recorte, pretende-se apresentar de que forma os grandes eventos internacionais, como as Olimpíadas, pode influenciar políticas ambientais que promovam inovação significativa para o desenvolvimento de cidades mais inclusivas e sustentáveis. Entre esses megaeventos, ocorreu a pandemia da covid-19, que não somente impulsionou inovações, como também colocou no topo da agenda de discussão novas questões ambientais, tais como as consequências deletérias ao meio ambiente decorrentes do uso de PDUs.
Extended network applications of coherent pluggable transceivers [Invited]
Authors: Pedro João , Hosseini Mohammad M. , Napoli Antonio 
Published: January 2025

Over the past 15 years, coherent optical transceiver evolution has been driving the increase of capacity in optical networks, enabling the cost-effective transport of higher traffic volumes across submarine, long-haul, regional, and (a fraction of) metro networks. Until recently, these devices have been proprietary and embedded in dedicated line cards, which are deployed and managed within the transport network domain. With the emergence of both implementation and multi-source agreements for coherent optical transceivers in pluggable form factors, significant savings in cost, power consumption, and footprint are now achievable, e.g., in high-speed data center interconnect (DCI) and metro applications. Furthermore, by installing these transceivers directly in routers/switches, the long-envisioned IP over-DWDM architecture can be materialized. Importantly, recent progress in coherent pluggable transceivers’ performance and feature sets is expanding the number of network segments where their benefits can be leveraged. This paper overviews the range of applications of coherent pluggable optical transceivers and investigates in detail how they can (i) meet the stringent requirements of regional/long-haul networks and (ii) further simplify and reduce the capital expenditures of metro-aggregation networks. Particularly, it reports a comparison of the deployment in a reference regional network of coherent pluggable transceivers that retain full interoperability (at the expense of limited performance) and coherent pluggable transceivers designed for best-in-class performance. The network simulation analysis focuses on the key design metrics in this network segment—usable capacity and number of required transceivers—and highlights the importance of adopting high-performance devices. Moreover, it describes how a low-cost filterless architecture can be combined with coherent pluggable transceivers featuring point-to-multipoint (P2MP) capabilities via digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) to reduce capital expenditures in metro-aggregation networks. It is shown that, by exploiting a transmitter-based launch power control, the number of optical amplifiers can be minimized while guaranteeing that the power unbalance associated with the different paths traversed by upstream subcarriers (SCs) can be kept below a target threshold.
Achromatic arbitrary polarization control in the terahertz band by tunable phase compensation
Authors: Chen Hao , Yang Shengxin , Wang Sheng , Guo Hangbing , Wang Tianwu , Hu Min , Jin Biaobing , Wu Jingbo , Fang Guangyou , Chen Xuequan 
Published: January 2025

Polarization is a key parameter in light–matter interactions and is consequently closely linked to light manipulation, detection, and analysis. Terahertz (THz) waves, characterized by their broad bandwidth and long wavelength, pose significant challenges to efficient polarization control with existing technologies. Here, we leverage the mesoscale wavelength characteristics of THz waves and employ a mirror-coupled total internal reflection structure to mechanically modulate the phase difference between p- and s-waves by up to 289°. By incorporating a liquid crystal phase shifter to provide adaptive phase compensation, dispersion is eliminated across a broad bandwidth. We demonstrate active switching of orthogonal linear polarizations and handedness-selective quarter-wave conversions in the 1.6–3.4 THz range, achieving an average degree of linear/circular polarization exceeding 0.996. Furthermore, arbitrary polarization at any center frequency is achieved with a fractional bandwidth exceeding 90%. This customizable-bandwidth and multifunctional device offers an accurate and universal polarization control solution for various THz systems, paving the way for numerous polarization-sensitive applications.
Plasmon-Induced Transparency in Square Ring Resonator Structures for Optical Switch and Slow-Light Applications
Authors: Jafari Behnam , Gholizadeh Elnaz , Adibnia Ehsan , Salari Yasamin , Abbasi Mehran , Abbasifakher Ali , Oregani Hesam Karimi , Golmohammadi Saeed , Soofi Hadi , sarram Iman 
Published: January 2025

In this study, we introduce an innovative plasmonic structure utilizing a Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) waveguide that interacts with an	A symmetric square ring resonator, designed specifically for enhanced control of slow-light effects and refractive index sensing. By leveraging the phenomenon of Plasmon-Induced Transparency (PIT), our approach addresses and overcomes key limitations associated with traditional Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT). Using Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulations, we explore the capabilities of this design, demonstrating significant improvements in refractive index sensitivity and notable slow-light effects. The findings highlight the potential of this structure in advancing integrated photonic devices and in applications requiring high precision. The sensitivity achieved, represented by figures of merit (FOM) for different modes, displays values of 1900, 2000, 1600, and 1600, indicating its strong performance as a versatile sensor. Additionally, when employed in slow-light applications, the group index (ng) and delay values were recorded at 95 and 34, respectively, in addition, the proposed structure has the capability to function as a sensor and switcher, along with its main function of slow light functionality, making this design a promising candidate for next-generation optical systems.