bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Distribution of Critical Areas for Ecological Conservation in Multiple Scenarios——Emphasizing the Impact of Human Activities
Authors: Dai Xinyan , Wang Hongwei , Ma Chen , Wang Xiaoqin , Zhou Jing , Tan Bo 
Published: March 2022

ABSTRACTDetermining critical ecological protected areas at the city (county) spatial scale is crucial for coordinating regional ecological environment management, control, and governance. It is a recognized consensus in academia that human activities significantly impact natural ecosystems. Many scholars ignore this point in the research process and only use several factors to characterize human influence. Therefore, this study takes Aksu City and Wensu County, important cities and towns in southern Xinjiang, as examples, focusing on the impact of human activities on the distribution of critical ecological protection areas. First, we simulated the range, intensity, and local natural conditions of human activities in the study area using geospatial data. We created corresponding resistance surfaces (human activity resistance surface and natural landscape resistance surface). We then assign different weights to the two resistance surfaces based on several possible scenarios, resulting in different synthetic resistance surfaces. Finally, we used the Linkage Mapper plugin to identify critical ecological reserves and compared several results. The results show that: Human activities have greatly interfered with the migration and dispersal of species, affecting the distribution of critical ecological reserves. The specific performance is that in the urban center area with high intensity of human activities, the number and location of the surrounding ecological corridors change significantly with the increase in the proportion of human activity resistance and the total area remains unchanged; As part of the ecological corridors, the ecological pinch points changes with the location of the corridor, and the whole area remains unchanged; The threshold range of the restoration value of ecological barrier points is reduced. The maximum value generated by the restoration of ecological barrier points is reduced, which shows that the restoration value of ecological barrier points decreases with increased human activities.
Welfare concerns for mounted load carrying by working donkeys in Pakistan
Authors: Bukhari Syed S. U. H. , Rosanowski Sarah M. , McElligott Alan G. , Parkes Rebecca S. V. 
Published: March 2022

AbstractWorking donkeys (Equus asinus) are vital to people’s livelihoods. They are essential for carrying goods, however globally, overloading is one of the primary welfare concerns of working donkeys. We studied mounted load carrying by donkeys and associated factors in Pakistan. A cross-sectional study of donkey owners (n = 332) was conducted, and interviews were undertaken based on a questionnaire. Owners estimated that the median weight of their donkeys was 110kg (interquartile range (IQR) 100-120kg), and that they carried a median mounted load of 81.5kg (IQR 63-99kg). We found that 87.4% of donkeys carried a load above 50% of their bodyweight ratio (BWR), the median BWR carried was 77.1% (IQR 54.5-90.7%), and 25.3% of donkeys carried above 90% BWR. Donkeys that were loaded at more than 50% BWR were more likely to sit, compared to donkeys loaded with less weight (p=0.01). Donkeys working in peri-urban and urban areas were more likely to carry a greater BWR than donkeys working in rural areas (P<0.001), as were those carrying construction materials or bricks, compared to agricultural materials (p=0.004). Age (p=0.03) and breed (p=0.01) were also associated with carrying a higher weight. Overloading based on current recommendations (50% BWR) was common, with the majority (87.4%) of donkeys reported to carry more than the recommended 50% limit. This survey provides evidence of on-the-ground working practices and factors associated with mounted load carrying, which is critical for developing evidence-based recommendations for loading, in order to improve the welfare of working donkeys.
Mapping of cis-regulatory variants by differential allelic expression analysis identifies candidate causal variants and target genes of 41 breast cancer risk loci
Authors: Xavier Joana M. , Magno Ramiro , Russell Roslin , de Almeida Bernardo P. , Jacinta-Fernandes Ana , Duarte André , Dunning Mark , Samarajiwa Shamith , O’Reilly Martin , Maia António M. , Rocha Cátia L. , Rosli Nordiana , Ponder Bruce A. J. , Maia Ana Teresa 
Published: March 2022

ABSTRACTGenome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified hundreds of risk loci for breast cancer, but identifying causal variants and candidate target genes remains challenging. Since most risk loci fall in active gene regulatory regions, we developed a novel approach to identify variants with greater regulatory potential in the disease’s tissue of origin. Using genome-wide differential allelic expression (DAE) analysis on microarray data from 64 normal breast tissue samples, we mapped over 54K variants associated with DAE (daeQTLs). We then intersected these with GWAS data to reveal candidate risk regulatory variants and analyzed their cis-acting regulatory potential. We found 122 daeQTLs in 41 loci in active regulatory regions that are in strong linkage disequilibrium with risk-associated variants (risk-daeQTLs). We also identified 65 new candidate target genes in 29 of these loci for which no previous candidates existed. As validation, we identified and functionally characterized five candidate causal variants at the 5q14.1 risk locus targeting theATG10andATP6AP1Lgenes, likely acting via modulation of alternative transcription and transcription factor binding. Our study demonstrates the power of DAE analysis and daeQTL mapping to understand breast cancer genetic risk, including in complex genetic regulatory landscapes. It additionally provides a genome-wide resource of variants associated with DAE for future functional studies.
Exposures associated with sporadicCryptosporidiuminfection in industrialised countries: a systematic review
Authors: McKerr Caoimhe , Shepherd Wendi , Chalmers Rachel M , Vivancos Roberto , O’Brien Sarah J , Waldram Alison , Pollock Kevin G , Christley Robert M 
Published: March 2022

AbstractTransmission of Cryptosporidium can occur via contaminated food or water, contact with animals or other people. Exposures are often identified from outbreak investigations, but sources for sporadic disease and pathways to infection are still unclear. The aim of this review is to consolidate the literature to describe exposures associated with human cryptosporidiosis in industrialised countries.Methods followed the recommendations made in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Three steps were used to identify the literature including electronic database searching using PubMed, Scopus and Web Of Science; reference list trawling; and an exploration of the grey literature. Quality was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Screening of results was undertaken by two reviewers and data extracted using a standardised form. A narrative summary presented. Papers were included if they reported on sporadic cases and were published between 2008 and 2018. Exposures were grouped into pathways.After full-text screening, eight articles (comprising 11 studies) were included, and seven (comprising 10 studies) were suitable for further synthesis. None of the identified grey literature was included. Four studies described case-control methods, two were case-case studies and one cross-sectional. Study year ranged from 1999 to 2017 and the studies were conducted in five, large countries in three continents: Europe (UK and the Netherlands), North America (USA, Canada), and Australia.Included papers investigated water and animal exposures most frequently. Recreational water was not a major source of sporadic illness in this review. The person-to-person pathway represented the most consistent finding, with all three studies reporting on contact with a symptomatic individual demonstrating correlations between exposure and disease. This applied particularly to the home environment, which is increasingly understood to be a significant setting for spread of Cryptosporidium infection. Further work on this would help support public health messaging on preventing spread of disease at home.Systematic review registration: PROSPERO number CRD42017056589.
A two-stage framework for neural processing of biological motion
Authors: Duarte João Valente , Abreu Rodolfo , Castelo-Branco Miguel 
Published: March 2022

AbstractIt remains to be understood how biological motion is hierarchically computed, from discrimination of local “life motion” animacy to global dynamic body perception. Here, we addressed this functional separation of the correlates of the perception of life motion, defined as characteristic for the local motion of parts of living beings, from perception of global motion of a body. We hypothesized that life motion processing can be isolated, by using a single dot motion perceptual decision paradigm featuring the biomechanical details of local realistic motion of a single joint. To ensure that we were indeed tackling processing of biological motion properties we used a discrimination instead of detection task. We discovered using representation similarity analysis that two key early dorsal and two ventral stream regions (visual motion selective hMT+ and V3A, extrastriate body area EBA and a region within fusiform gyrus FFG) showed robust and separable signals related to encoding of life motion and global motion. These signals reflected two independent processing stages, as revealed by representation dissimilarity analysis and deconvolution of fMRI responses to each motion pattern. This study showed that higher level pSTS encodes both classes of biological motion in a similar way, revealing a higher-level integrative stage, reflecting scale independent biological motion perception. Our results reveal a two-stage framework for neural computation of biological motion, with an independent contribution of dorsal and ventral regions for the initial stage.
Impact of Autocalibration Method on Accelerated Echo-Planar Imaging of the Cervical Spinal Cord at 7T
Authors: Seifert Alan C. , Xu Junqian 
Published: March 2022

AbstractPurposeThe spinal cord contains sensorimotor neural circuits of scientific and clinical interest. However, spinal cord fMRI is significantly more technically demanding than brain fMRI due primarily to its proximity to the lungs. Accelerated EPI at 7T is particularly vulnerable to k-space phase inconsistencies induced by motion or B0 fluctuation, during either autocalibration signal (ACS) or timeseries acquisition. For 7T brain fMRI, sensitivity to motion and B0 fluctuation can be reduced using a re-ordered segmented EPI ACS based on the fast low-angle excitation echo-planar technique (FLEET). However, respiration-induced B0 fluctuations (exceeding 100Hz at C7) are greater, and fewer k-space lines per slice are required, for cervical spinal cord fMRI at 7T, necessitating a separate evaluation of ACS methods.MethodsWe compared 24-line single-shot EPI, and 48-line two-shot segmented EPI, two-shot FLEET, and GRE-based ACS acquisition methods, performed under various physiological conditions, in terms of temporal SNR (tSNR) and prevalence of artifacts in GRAPPA-accelerated EPI of the cervical spinal cord at 7T.ResultsSegmented EPI and FLEET ACS produce images with nearly identical patterns of severe image artifacts. GRE and single-shot EPI ACS consistently produce images free from significant artifacts, and tSNR is significantly greater for GRE ACS, particularly in lower slices where through-slice dephasing is most severe.ConclusionGRE and single-shot EPI ACS acquisition methods, which are robust to respiration-induced phase errors between k-space segments, produce images with fewer and less severe artifacts than either FLEET or conventionally segmented EPI for accelerated EPI of the cervical spinal cord at 7T.
Iterative deletion of gene trees detects extreme biases in distance-based phylogenomic coalescent analyses
Authors: Gatesy John , Sloan Daniel B. , Warren Jessica M. , Simmons Mark P. , Springer Mark S. 
Published: March 2022

AbstractSummary coalescent methods offer an alternative to the concatenation (supermatrix) approach for inferring phylogenetic relationships from genome-scale datasets. Given huge datasets, broad congruence between contrasting phylogenomic paradigms is often obtained, but empirical studies commonly show some well supported conflicts between concatenation and coalescence results and also between species trees estimated from alternative coalescent methods. Partitioned support indices can help arbitrate these discrepancies by pinpointing outlier loci that are unjustifiably influential at conflicting nodes. Partitioned coalescence support (PCS) recently was developed for summary coalescent methods, such as ASTRAL and MP-EST, that use the summed fits of individual gene trees to estimate the species tree. However, PCS cannot be implemented when distance-based coalescent methods (e.g., STAR, NJst, ASTRID, STEAC) are applied. Here, this deficiency is addressed by automating computation of ‘partitioned coalescent branch length’ (PCBL), a novel index that uses iterative removal of individual gene trees to assess the impact of each gene on every clade in a distance-based coalescent tree. Reanalyses of five phylogenomic datasets show that PCBL for STAR and NJst trees helps quantify the overall stability/instability of clades and clarifies disagreements with results from optimality-based coalescent analyses. PCBL scores reveal severe ‘missing taxa’, ‘apical nesting’, ‘misrooting’, and ‘basal dragdown’ biases. Contrived examples demonstrate the gross overweighting of outlier gene trees that drives these biases. Because of interrelated biases revealed by PCBL scores, caution should be exercised when using STAR and NJst, in particular when many taxa are analyzed, missing data are non-randomly distributed, and widespread gene-tree reconstruction error is suspected. Similar biases in the optimality-based coalescent method MP-EST indicate that congruence among species trees estimated via STAR, NJst, and MP-EST should not be interpreted as independent corroboration for phylogenetic relationships. Such agreements among methods instead might be due to the common defects of all three summary coalescent methods.
Comparison of individualized behavioral predictions across anatomical, diffusion and functional connectivity MRI
Authors: Ooi Leon Qi Rong , Chen Jianzhong , Shaoshi Zhang , Kong Ru , Tam Angela , Li Jingwei , Dhamala Elvisha , Zhou Juan Helen , Holmes Avram J , Yeo B. T. Thomas 
Published: March 2022

AbstractA fundamental goal across the neurosciences is the characterization of relationships linking brain anatomy, functioning, and behavior. Although various MRI modalities have been developed to probe these relationships, direct comparisons of their ability to predict behavior have been lacking. Here, we compared the ability of anatomical T1, diffusion and functional MRI (fMRI) to predict behavior at an individual level. Cortical thickness, area and volume were extracted from anatomical T1 images. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and approximate Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI) models were fitted to the diffusion images. The resulting metrics were projected to the Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) skeleton. We also ran probabilistic tractography for the diffusion images, from which we extracted the stream count, average stream length, and the average of each DTI and NODDI metric across tracts connecting each pair of brain regions. Functional connectivity (FC) was extracted from both task and resting-state fMRI. Individualized prediction of a wide range of behavioral measures were performed using kernel ridge regression, linear ridge regression and elastic net regression. Consistency of the results were investigated with the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) datasets. In both datasets, FC-based models gave the best prediction performance, regardless of regression model or behavioral measure. This was especially true for the cognitive domain. Furthermore, all modalities were able to predict cognition better than other behavioral domains. Combining all modalities improved prediction of cognition, but not other behavioral domains. Finally, across all behaviors, combining resting and task FC yielded prediction performance similar to combining all modalities. Overall, our study suggests that in the case of healthy children and young adults, behaviorally-relevant information in T1 and diffusion features might reflect a subset of the variance captured by FC.HighlightsFC predicts behavior better than anatomical and diffusion featuresCognition is predicted better than other behavioral domains regardless of modalityCombining resting & task FC improves prediction as much as combining all modalitiesFindings were replicated over 3 regression models and 2 datasets
Interconnection between molecular regulators in LMNA related muscular dystrophy
Authors: Dutta Subarna , Vasudevan Madavan 
Published: March 2022

AbstractNuclear lamina is composed of different A-type and B-type lamin proteins and acts as major regulator of DNA replication, transcription, heterochromatin-euchromatin machinery. The majority of mutations in A type lamin are associated with some forms of muscular dystrophies,that majorly distinguishable by a common clinical feature : progressive skeletal muscle wasting. This speculates impaired skeletal muscle differentiation during development and after injury with the influence of myriad of signalling pathways. The molecular mechanism behind phenotypes of lamin A associated muscular dystrophies are still elusive . Here, we used genome wide expression analysis platform during the differentiation of murine C2C12 skeletal muscle cells to investigate the factors have been attributed to the disease. We compared the expression levels of the components of pathways that indicates important role of skeletal muscle as well as identified gene regulatory networks at two different time points of muscle differentiation in wild type and mutant cells. We also report significant perturbations in the expression and activation of Wnt signalling pathway in mutant cells among 40 dysregulated signalling pathways , presenting pronounced regulation of normal downstream myogenic signalling . Finally, with this largest data sets we evaluate in depth characterization of molecular effectors for myogenic differentiation, which could allow greater insight into development of therapeutic strategies for the remission of patients with LMNA linked muscle - related pathologies.
User oppression in human-computer interaction: a dialectical-existential perspective
Authors: Gonzatto Rodrigo Freese , van Amstel Frederick M.C. 
Published: March 2022

PurposeThis research theorizes the condition of human beings reduced to being users (and only users) in human-computer interaction (HCI), a condition that favors them becoming objects or targets of commercial dark patterns, racialized profiling algorithms, generalized surveillance, gendered interfaces and heteromation.Design/methodology/approachThe reconceptualization of the users’ condition is done by confronting HCI theories on users with a dialectical-existential perspective over human ontology. The research is presented as a conceptual paper that includes analyzing and revising those theories to develop a conceptual framework for the user oppression in HCI.FindingsMost HCI theories contribute to the user oppression with explicit or implicit ontological statements that denies their becoming-more or the possibility of users developing their handiness to the full human potential. Put together, these statements constitute an ideology called userism.Social implicationsHCI needs to acknowledge its role in structuring oppression not just in sexism, racism, classism and ableism, but also the specific relation that pertains to HCI: userism. Similar to other fields, acknowledging oppression is the first step toward liberating from oppression.Originality/valueThe user is an existential condition for HCI theories, yet few theories can explain in depth how this condition affects human development. From the dialectical-existential perspective, the user condition can be dehumanizing. Computers may intensify existing oppressions through esthetic interactions but these interactions can be subverted for liberation.
Work–family conflict and happiness: the moderating role of national culture
Authors: Gu Manli , Tan Chee Meng , Ho Yee Sen , Liu Li 
Published: March 2022

PurposeThis study aims to demonstrate how national culture, as measured using the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, moderates the relationship between work–family conflict (WFC) and individual-level subjective well-being (SWB).Design/methodology/approachUsing a two-level hierarchical linear model, this study analysed data from the “Family and Changing Gender Roles IV” survey from the International Social Survey Programme’s (ISSP). A total of 33,044 participants across 41 countries in 2012 were interviewed, but this investigation was limited to 23,277 individuals across 37 countries when all the necessary variables used in this analysis were accounted for. National cultural indicators (the moderators) were measured using Hofstede's cultural dimensions, which are individualism–collectivism, masculinity–femininity, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence–restraint.FindingsThis study presented two main results. Firstly, although family-to-work conflict has an overall negative impact on SWB, this negativity is stronger among participants from individualistic cultures. Secondly, just like family-to-work conflict, work-to-family interference has an adverse impact on workers’ well-being as well, though this effect is more prominent in indulgent cultures.Originality/valueThis paper is novel on two accounts. Firstly, it is one of the few articles that investigates the impact of WFC on SWB using a large multi-country dataset, which allows us to generalize results across multiple cultures. This is unlike many papers in the literature that presented findings from single-country sources, which contextualizes outcomes to a single nation. Secondly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the article is the first in examining the role played by the Hofstede’s indulgence–restraint dimension in moderating the effect of WFC on SWB.