bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Effect of Tillage Systems on Durum Wheat Production with Different Rotations in Semi Arid Area of Algeria
Authors: Chouter Assya , Benniou Ramdane , Sebbane Mahieddine , Louahdi Nasreddine 
Published: September 2022

Background: Durum wheat is the most important cereal in Algeria. The yield of durum wheat is low and depends on climatic conditions and technical operations. Methods: The objective of this study is to compare the effect of the no-till system (NT) and conventional tillage system (CT) with three crop rotation sequences on wheat yield, yield components and some physiological traits under rain-fed conditions. The study was conducted at the technical institute of field crops-Sétif-in east of Algeria, over three crop seasons: 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19. Result: The number of plants/m2, tillers/m2, spikes/m2​ and grain yield were affected by the tillage system and the environmental conditions. Seed weight, straw yield, biological yield, leaf relative water content and leaf chlorophyll content were significantly affected by the environment but not by the tillage system. While the spike density, the harvest index and the grain yield were significantly higher under NT system than in the CT system. Furthermore, wheat grain yield was also higher following legumes than in wheat monoculture. These results indicate that no-tillage and crop diversification by adding leguminous in rotation improves grain legumes yield of durum wheat under semi-arid conditions of Algeria.
Surveying Hate and Its Effects During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders
Authors: Shimkhada Riti , Ponce Ninez A. 
Published: September 2022

Objectives. To summarize data collection on anti–Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) experiences during COVID-19 and measure the associations of anti-AANHPI hate incidents with mental health, health access, and public safety among AANHPI adults. Methods. We cataloged COVID-19 surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021 on anti-AANHPI experiences. We then analyzed the 2020 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) AANHPI COVID-19 module by constructing a variable of experiencing or witnessing a hate incident and estimating its associations with serious psychological distress, forgone care, and perceived neighborhood safety. Results. Estimates of being a victim of a hate incident ranged from 6% to 30%. In the CHIS, 28% of respondents experienced or witnessed a hate incident. Experiencing or witnessing a hate incident was significantly associated with serious psychological distress (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 5.33), forgoing care (AOR = 2.27), and not feeling safe in one’s neighborhood (AOR = 2.70). Conclusions. Evidence from a multitude of data sources corroborates the toll of hate incidents suffered by AANHPIs. Findings regarding the negative effects of anti-AANHPI hate on mental health, health access, and public safety compel public and private investment to end victimization of AANHPI communities. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(10):1446–1453. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306977 )
A Study of Swirling Jet Drilling and Its Specific Energy for Hydrate-Bearing Sediments
Authors: Zhang Yiqun , Hu Xiao , Wu Xiaoya , Li Gensheng , Li Jingbin , Tian Shoucheng , Shen Kaixiang 
Published: September 2022

SummaryNatural gas hydrate (NGH) is a form of clean energy. The marine NGH solid fluidization exploitation method and the integrated radial jet drilling and completion method are considered as two ways to improve gas production, and water jet is the key technology of the two mining methods. This paper first compared the flow field distribution of conical jet and swirling jet at different outlet velocities through numerical simulation. The volume change of conical jet and swirling jet erosion hydrate-bearing sediment (HBS) was analyzed when the jet outlet velocity and standoff distance were changed. Then, based on the experimental apparatus for NGH generation and jet erosion, we carried out the swirling jet erosion HBS experiments. The depth and diameter of the erosion pits were about 10% larger than the numerical simulation. Finally, we evaluated the jet erosion performance with specific energy calculations. The results show that the reaming ability of the swirling jet is 2.4 times than that of the conical jet at the jet velocity of 100 m/s and the standoff distance of 5 mm. When the jet velocity ranges from 30 to 100 m/s, the erosion efficiency of the swirling jet is higher than that of the conical jet. The critical standoff distance is calculated as 12.5 mm (12.5 times nozzle throat) in current study, larger than which the advantages of swirling jet erosion HBS become less obvious. The excellent performance of swirling jet erosion HBS under certain conditions is described by specific energy calculation. This study can help for better understanding the performance of water jet drilling and provides an idea for improving the production efficiency of NGH.
Observational study on the assessment of prognostic factors for mortality in patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia
Authors: Spuntarelli Valerio , Taranto Aldo , Beumo Brice Ndongmo , Tartarone Emanuele , Bentivegna Enrico , Luciani Michelangelo , Morsa Alessandra , Bonfini Rita , Martelletti Paolo 
Published: September 2022

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Infection can range from asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic to more severe forms with pneumonia and multiorgan dysfunction. Understanding the prognostic factors that influence the course of hospitalization and the onset of more severe forms of the disease has been one of the most important challenges of this pandemic. The main objective of this observational study is to establish some clinical and laboratory parameters useful for defining the prognosis of COVID-19 patients. The secondary end point is to understand how glycaemic changes affect the days of hospitalization. We observed how hypernatremia, hypokalaemia, newly diagnosed renal insufficiency and altered glycemic values were the main complications that arose during hospitalization, especially in patients staying in high-intensity units. Interestingly, we also noted how the altered glycemic values correlated with a longer length of hospital stay. We hope this study will help to better understand what the most important factors to be aware of for COVID-19 patients.
House prices and credit as transmission channels from monetary policy to inequality: evidence from OECD countries
Authors: Vale Sofia de Sousa 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
This paper applies a panel vector autoregressive model to assess the impact of monetary policy on the Gini coefficient of disposable income of 30 OECD countries between 1995Q1 and 2017Q4. The emphasis is put on transmission channels as house prices and households’ debt, which represent the two sides of households’ balance sheet at a macroeconomic level. The analysis of the impulse-response functions indicates a contractionary monetary policy increasing the Gini coefficient. Inequality in income decreases with a rise in credit but increases with a positive shock to house prices. The findings indicate reverse causality between the Gini coefficient and the short-run interest rate, as a shock to the former causes the latter to increase. These results are robust to model specifications in which each transmission channel is considered in isolation, revealing that house prices and credit-to-GDP affect inequality and that they are mutually reinforcing.
Electronic structure and optical properties of nonmetal-doped TiO2 for application in self-cleaning and photovoltaic panel's coatings: first-principles calculations
Authors: AKHARKHACH Badr , BARHDADI Abdelfettah 
Published: September 2022

Abstract

Development of novel self-cleaning technologies, especially those based on semiconductor photocatalysis system, is one of the most important research problems in environmental cleanup. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a well-known semiconductor photocatalyst that has a strong photocatalytic activity in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum while its photocatalytic efficiency is very limited within the visible range due to its large band gap. In the field of photocatalytic materials, doping is an efficient method to increase the spectral response and promote charge separation. However, the type of dopant is not the only important factor, but also its position in the material lattice. In the present study, we have carried out first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) to explore how particular doping configuration, such as Br or Cl doping at an O site, may influence the electronic structure and the charge density distribution within rutile TiO2. Furthermore, optical properties such as the absorption coefficient, the transmittance and reflectance spectra have also been derived from the calculated complex dielectric function and examined to see whether this doping configuration has any effect on the use of the material as a self-cleaning coating on photovoltaic panels.
Combining Deep Learning and Crowd-sourcing Images to Predict Housing Quality in Rural China
Authors: Xu Weipan , Gu Yu , Chen Yifan , Wang Yongtian , Chen Luan , Deng Weihuan , Li Xun 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Housing quality is an essential contributor to human well-being, security and health. Monitoring the housing quality is crucial for unveiling socio-economic development status and providing political proposals. However, it is exceedingly scarce to depict the nationwide housing quality in large-scale and fine-granularity in remote rural areas owing to the high cost of canonical survey methods. Taking rural China as an example, we collect massive rural house images for housing quality assessment by various volunteers and further build up a deep learning model based on the assessed images to realize an automatic prediction for huge raw house images. As a result, the model performance achieves a high R2 of 0.76. Afterward, the housing qualities of 10,000 Chinese villages are predicted based on 50,000 unlabeled geo-images, and an apparent spatial heterogeneity is uncovered. Specifically, divided by Qinling Mountains-Huaihe River Line, housing quality in southern China is much higher than in northern China. Our method provides high-resolution estimates of housing quality across the extensive rural area, which could be a complementary tool for automatically monitoring housing change and supporting house-related policy-making.
Adaptive Backstepping-Based Formation Control of Autonomous Ground Vehicles with Tire Sliding Effects
Authors: Wang Heng , Li Surui , Wang Siqi , Li Qing 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
This paper studies the problem of formation control of autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) in spite of tire sliding effects. The path tracking models of AGVs are converted into nonlinear systems via chain form transformation. An adaptive observer is designed to estimate the unknown sideslip angle for each vehicle, and distributed adaptive backstepping-based formation control strategies are proposed which guarantee that all the vehicles follow desired geometric patterns given only relative measurement information from their neighbors. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by simulation examples.
What Proportion of Population has achieved Cellular Immunity against SARS-CoV-2 after Booster Vaccination: A Cross-sectional Study
Authors: Tani Yuta , Takita Morihito , Kobashi Yurie , Wakui Masatoshi , Zhao Tianchen , Yamamoto Chika , Saito Hiroaki , Kawashima Moe , Sugiura Sota , Nishikawa Yoshitaka , Omata Fumiya , Shimazu Yuzo , Kawamura Takeshi , Sugiyama Akira , Nakayama Aya , Kaneko Yudai , Kodama Tetsuhiko , Kami Masahiro , Tsubokura Masaharu 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Background
Booster vaccination reduces the incidence of severe cases and mortality of COVID-19, with cellular immunity playing an important role. However, little is known about what proportion of population has achieved cellular immunity after booster vaccination.
Methods
We conducted a Fukushima cohort database and assessed the humoral and cellular immunity in 2526 residents and HCWs in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan by continuous blood collection every 3 months since September 2021. We identified the proportion of people with induced cellular immunity after booster vaccination, using T-SPOT.COVID test, and analyzed their background characteristics.
Results
Among 1089 participants, 64.3 % (700/1089) had reactive cellular immunity after booster vaccination. Multivariable analysis revealed the following as independent predictors of reactive cellular immunity: age <40 years (adjusted odds ratio: 1.81, 95 % confidence interval: 1.19–2.75, p-value: 0.005), and adverse reactions after vaccination (1.92, 1.19-3.09, 0.007). Notably, despite IgG(S) and neutralizing antibody titers of ≥500 AU/mL, 33.9 % (349/1031) and 33.5 % (341/1017) of participants, respectively, did not have reactive cellular immunity.
Conclusion
This is the first study to evaluate cellular immunity at the population level after booster vaccination using T-SPOT.COVID test, however, with several limitations. Future studies will need to evaluate previously infected subjects and their T-cell subsets.
Tumor-derived endothelial-specific molecule 1 elicits productive angiogenesis and tumor metastasis to promote bevacizumab resistance
Authors: Kang Nannan , Liang Xue , Fan Buxi , Zhao Chen , Shen Beiyu , Ji Xuemei , Liu Yu 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
The development of drug resistance in malignant tumors leads to disease progression and creates a bottleneck in their treatment. Bevacizumab is widely used clinically, and acts by inhibiting angiogenesis to “starve” tumors. Although it has negligeable side effects and significant short-term effects, continuous treatment can readily induce rebound proliferation of tumor blood vessels, leading to drug resistance, however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear with no effective strategies to overcome this resistance. Previously, we found that the Fc portion of bevacizumab cooperates with the Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR4) ligand to induce M2b polarization in macrophages and secrete tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα), which in its turn promotes immunosuppression, tumor metastasis, and angiogenesis. However, the downstream mechanism underlying TNFα-mediated bevacizumab resistance requires further investigation. Our RNA-Seq analysis results revealed that the expression of endothelial cell specific molecule-1 (ESM1) is significantly increased in drug-resistant tumors and promotes metastasis and angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, TNFα induces the upregulation of ESM1, while ESM1 further regulates matrix metalloprotease-9, vascular endothelial growth factor, and delta-like ligand-4 molecules, thus, promoting metastasis and angiogenesis. Accordingly, the curative effect of bevacizumab is significantly improved by neutralizing ESM1 with the high-affinity anti-ESM1 monoclonal antibody 1-2B7 in bevacizumab-resistant animal models. This study provides important insights regarding the molecular mechanism by which TNFα-induced ESM1 expression promotes angiogenesis, which has important theoretical value and clinical significance for elucidating the mechanism of bevacizumab drug resistance and identifying appropriate biosimilars.
Physical Activity and the Natural Environment Video Different research on the effect of different combinations on improving children's attention
Authors: Luo Xiao , Tao Meng , Lu Jiahao , Lu Li , He Xiaolong 
Published: September 2022

Abstract

Objectives Physical activity intervention and watching natural environment videos have been proven to improve young children’s attention level. However, evidence comparing the improvement effects of different combinations of the two has rarely been reported. By comparing the differences in the improvement effects of four combinations of physical activities and watching natural environment videos on the attention level of young children, this study can enrich the evidence in this research field and also provide a reference for arranging effective intervention methods for children’s attention recovery between classes. Method A total of 152 children aged 4 to 6 years were recruited and randomly divided into four intervention groups: (1) physical activity intervention first and thereafter watching the natural environment video group (activity + video group), (2) watching the natural environment video first and thereafter the physical activity intervention group (video + activity group), (3) physical activity-based group, and (4) natural environment video-based group. Physical activity involved 4 minutes of moderate-intensity basic physical fitness combination training. The subjects wore thePico Neopioneer version of the VR glasses all-in-one machine to watch the natural environment video. Thereafter, population sociological variables and daily physical activity levels, among others, were investigated. Auditory and visual sustained attention tests were performed before and after the intervention in each group. Result Compared with the pretest scores, the auditory attention post-test scores of the four groups showed an improvement trend. In particular, the “activity + video” group (F = 10.828;ɳp2 = 0.226;p = 0.002) and “natural environmental video-based” group (F = 9.452;ɳp2 = 0.203;p = 0.004) have the best improvement effect. For visual attention, only the “activity + video” group showed a significant improvement trend (F = 4.287;ɳp2 = 0.104;p = 0.045), while the other three groups showed a downward trend in scores. Conclusions Among the different intervention combinations, the physical activity intervention first and watching natural environment videos thereafter group has the best effect on improving children’s attention during recess. Physical activity interventions at the end of recess adversely affect young children’s visual attention levels at the beginning of the class. Therefore, this study recommends that children should not engage in physical activity interventions in the second half of the class break. Lastly, the current research recommends presenting the content of physical activity interventions first and further improving their attention thereafter by watching natural environment videos.
MS-CANet: Multi-Scale Subtraction Network with Coordinate Attention for Retinal Vessel Segmentation
Authors: Jiang Yun , Yan Wei , Chen Jie , Qiao Hao , Zhang Zequn , Wang Meiqi 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Retinal vessel segmentation is essential for the diagnosis of certain ophthalmic and cardiovascular diseases. Most improved methods based on U-shape networks for retinal vessel segmentation use element-wise addition or dimension-concatenate to fuse the differences between different network layers. However, these operations easily generate redundant information, which will weaken the complementarity between features of different layers and neglect the location information of feature maps, resulting in inaccurate retinal vessel localization and blurred vessel edges. To address these problems, we propose a multi-scale subtraction network (MS-CANet) with residual coordinate attention to segment the vessels in retinal vessel images. Specifically, we first use a residual coordinate attention module in the encoding phase to capture the long-range dependence of spatial direction while preserving accurate position information. Then, we configure the multi-scale subtraction units at different perceptual field levels to obtain rich multi-scale information. In addition, We design a parallel channel attention module to increase the difference between the vessel and the background, facilitating the recovery of marginal vessels in the decoding phase. Experiments on three benchmark datasets, DRIVE, CHASE, and STARE, show that our method has good performance compared to most advanced methods under different evaluation metrics.
Screening of Latent Rheumatic Heart Disease and Pharyngeal Group a Streptococci Carriage in Family Members of Children With Rheumatic Heart Disease
Authors: Balaban İsmail , Kara Soner S. , Güllü Ufuk U. , Kılınç Yusuf , Demirelli Selami 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Objective
The aim of this study is to evaluate echocardiographic evidence of latent rheumatic heart disease and Group A β hemolytic Streptococcus carriage in family members of acute rheumatic fever patients and asses the importance of screening for this conditions.
Methods
Children with diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever aged between 5 and 18 years and their family members and household relatives were screened with echocardiography for latent rheumatic heart disease and Group A β hemolytic Streptococcus carriage with throat culture test.
Results
In the study period, 46 index cases and their 124 relatives were evaluated. Echocardiographic screening of 22 (17.7%) family members revealed latent rheumatic heart disease.Ten (8.1%) cases had positive throat culture results for Group A β hemolytic Streptococcus and 2 of them, 20% of all culture positive cases, had latent rheumatic heart disease findings in echocardiographic evaluation.
Conclusions
The family members of children with rheumatic heart disease have increased relative risk for rheumatic heart disease. Screening programs for throat culture test and echocardiographic evaluation of household, family members and relatives, of children with acute rheumatic fever should be planned for determination of definite or latent rheumatic heart disease and asymptomatic Streptococcal throat carriage and if detected, Group A β hemolytic Streptococcal carriage should be treated to decrease the risk of recurrent acute rheumatic fever for index case.
TCF7L2 is a master regulator of muscle wasting in severe cancer cachexia
Authors: Leong Mei Ling , Karjalainen Klaus , Ruedl Christiane 
Published: September 2022

Abstract
Hyper-activation of the canonical Wnt signalling pathway drives tumour initiation and cancer progression. Of the four TCF/LEF transcription factors that propagate Wnt signalling, TCF7L2 is believed to be relevant in colorectal cancer because it is essential for adult gut homeostasis. However, this has been challenging to verify because Tcf7l2 germline or adulthood knockouts are lethal. To circumvent lethality and mimic the systemic action of a potential drug, we generated a transgenic mouse strain that allows inducible, tuneable and reversible repression of endogenous Tcf7l2. While complete Tcf7l2 repression was lethal, partial repression rescued moribund mice from death in the ApcMin/+-DSS colon adenocarcinoma model. Unexpectedly, Tcf7l2 repression did not impact tumour growth but reversed lethal cachexia—a cancer comorbidity characterised by severe weight and muscle loss. During severe cachexia, elevated Tcf7l2 in the gastrocnemius muscle induces atrophy via the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy lysosome system (ALS). Repressing Tcf7l2 in the gastrocnemius reduces the expression of UPS and ALS genes to non-cachectic levels, thereby preventing atrophy and restoring muscle mass. Therapeutic targeting of TCF7L2 could ameliorate cachexia-induced muscle atrophy. Our mice could be utilised to study conditions that involve muscle atrophy, such as aging, diabetes, obesity and neuromuscular diseases.