bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Immunological Mechanisms in Allergic Contact Dermatitis
Authors: Rustemeyer Thomas 
Published: April 2022

AbstractPurpose of the reviewThe understanding of the cellular and molecular pathogenesis of allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) has increased dramatically.Recent findingsBesides CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, other cell types such as innate lymphoid cells, natural killer T cells (NKT), natural killer cells, and T regulatory cells have emerged as crucial key players. New immunological insights have unravelled that the predominant effector cell type determines the clinical pictures. Hence, a better understanding of the involvement of distinct effector cells has shed light on the diversity of ACD reactions and subsequent clinical pictures. Another new perspective has arisen in the elicitation phase. Here, Langerhans cells can play a role in the development of immune tolerance and not, as previously thought, exclusively in the allergen-driven hypersensitivity reaction. B cells also appear to play an important role in triggering ACD by secreting IgM antibodies in response to interleukin (IL)-4 produced by NKT cells, leading to complement activation and chemotaxis of immune cells.SummaryAllergic contact dermatitis is a delayed-type hypersensitivity reaction triggered by skin contact with the chemical of interest in individuals previously sensitised to the same or a chemically related substance. The understanding of the cellular and molecular pathogenesis of allergic contact dermatitis has improved considerably. In addition to CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, other cell types such as natural killer T cells (NKT) and regulatory T cells have emerged as important participants. The binding of haptens is the first step in the development of allergic contact dermatitis. Haptens are low molecular weight (mostly <500 Dalton) chemicals that are able to penetrate the stratum corneum of the skin or can enter the body upon systemic administration. Haptens are not immunogenic per se but can be effectively recognised by the immune system after binding to a protein carrier. In the clinically inapparent sensitisation phase, Langerhans cells and dendritic cells initiate an adaptive immune response by capturing and processing antigens and presenting them to naïve T cells in the paracortical regions of the lymph nodes. In the elicitation phase, the clinical manifestations of allergic contact dermatitis are the result of a T cell-mediated inflammatory response that occurs in the skin upon re-exposure to the bite and is mediated by the activation of bite-specific T cells in the skin or other organs.
The influence of skill-based policies on the immigrant selection process
Authors: Macaluso Mariele 
Published: April 2022

AbstractUnderstanding the type of immigration flow that maximises the expected economic benefits in the destination countries is one of the main debated topics both in the economic literature and in policy agendas worldwide. In recent years, governments have developed regulations of migration flows by adopting some form of selective immigration policy based on either human capital criteria or skill needs. Admission policies in the destination countries are likely to affect the direction and magnitude of selection as well as the socio-economic performance of immigrants. However, the relationship between quality-selective policy and immigrants’ skill composition remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to survey the existing literature on how selective-immigration policies shape the characteristics of immigrants from the receiving-country perspective. First, it introduces the main route of admissions and the theoretical models to understand how the direction of selection works; second, it discusses the theoretical models; third, it reviews the empirical works. A final concluding section briefly points out the actual findings and future avenues of work.
Comparisons and predictions of intercity population migration propensity in major urban clusters in China: based on use of the Baidu index
Authors: Li Huihui , Xiao Zhouyan 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThe development of the Internet and big data have made it possible to study population migration and flow between cities. This study analyzes the probability of the population migration propensity of China’s three major urban clusters, identifies the direction of population movements, and uses Markov chains to predict the probability of population migration propensity moving forward in order to assess the intercity population migration trends of urban clusters in the future. Internet search engine data is used, and a population migration propensity intensity model is used for calculations. The results show that the Pearl River Delta urban cluster and the Yangtze River Delta urban clusters are areas of active population migration, and that intercity population migration is a part of this activity. Intercity population migration in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban cluster is not as active as it is in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta urban cluster. Although the physical distance between Beijing and surrounding cities is relatively small, the correlation degree of migration propensity is not high. In the future, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Zhoushan in the Yangtze River Delta urban cluster; Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Huizhou, and Zhongshan in the Pearl River Delta urban cluster; and Tianjin in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban cluster will be the main destinations of China’s population migration.
Convolutional signature for sequential data
Authors: Min Ming , Ichiba Tomoyuki 
Published: April 2022

AbstractSignature is an infinite graded sequence of statistics known to characterize geometric rough paths. While the use of the signature in machine learning is successful in low-dimensional cases, it suffers from the curse of dimensionality in high-dimensional cases, as the number of features in the truncated signature transform grows exponentially fast. With the idea of Convolutional Neural Network, we propose a novel neural network to address this problem. Our model reduces the number of features efficiently in a data-dependent way. Some empirical experiments including high-dimensional financial time series classification and natural language processing are provided to support our convolutional signature model.
Modifying a Smectite using Organic Nutrients to Enhance its Efficacy at Removing Aflatoxin B1 from Corn Fermentation Solution
Authors: Alam Sabrina Sharmeen , Deng Youjun 
Published: April 2022

AbstractAflatoxins in contaminated corn do not degrade in corn fermentation solution (CFS) during biofuel production; rather, they are enriched in the co-product, dried distillers grain. Aflatoxin B1 (AfB1) is the most toxic form of all aflatoxins. Removing AfB1 from CFS is desirable to minimize its toxicity to animals. Smectites can adsorb AfB1 from aqueous solutions and, therefore, inactivate the toxin, but proteins in CFS inhibit the adsorption of AfB1 by smectites. The current study aimed to minimize the interference by CFS in adsorption of AfB1 on smectite by modifying a calcium-smectite (Ca-3MS) with a small nutritive organic compound, e.g. carnitine, choline, arginine, histidine, or tryptophan. The organo-smectites were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and adsorption of AfB1 in CFS by these composites was examined. Various degrees of intercalation of the organic nutrients into the smectites were observed with XRD and FTIR. After immersing the smectite and organo-smectites in the CFS, the d001 values of Ca-3MS expanded to ~1.82 nm due to protein interaction, but the organo-smectites were confined to ~1.39 nm, which indicated that the protein had limited access to the organo-smectite interlayers. The IR bands at ~1652, 1544, 1538, and 1454 cm–1 from the organo-smectites revealed, however, that complete protein inhibition was not achieved. The organo-smectites were capable of adsorbing AfB1 in simple aqueous solution with maximal adsorption capacity up to 0.55 mol kg–1. Significantly greater (p ≤ 0.05) AfB1 adsorption was achieved by choline- and carnitine-modified smectites compared with the original Ca-3MS in the presence of competing protein (pepsin) in simple aqueous solution. In real CFS, both AfB1 adsorption capacities (Qmax) and affinities (K) by all organo-smectites were greater (Qmax = up to 0.45 mol kg–1 and K = up to 0.165 μM–1) than those by Ca-3MS (Qmax = 0.22 mol kg–1 and K = 0.031 μM–1). The study suggested that using smectites modified with an organic nutritive compound could be an effective, economical, and safe strategy for removing mycotoxins, including aflatoxins, during biofuel production.
Circ_0005576 Exerts an Oncogenic Role in Cervical Cancer via miR-1305-Dependent Regulation of PAIP1
Authors: Wang Yajing , Du Fang , Xie Zongyuan , Lai Junhao , Li Yuanjie , Xu Yongping , Tong Rui 
Published: April 2022

AbstractCervical cancer (CC) is a leading cause of high morbidity and mortality in women worldwide. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are considered to be essential regulators of various cancers, including CC. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role and mechanism of circ_0005576 in CC progression. The levels of circ_0005576, miR-1305, and poly(A)-binding protein-interacting protein 1 (PAIP1) were detected by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) or western blot assay. The stability and location of circ_0005576 were determined by ribonuclease R (RNase R) assay and subcellular fractionation distribution assay, respectively. Cell proliferation was evaluated by CCK-8 assay, EDU incorporation assay, and colony formation assay. Cell migration and invasion were assessed by transwell assay. The interactions between miR-1305 and circ_0005576 or PAIP1 were validated by dual-luciferase reporter assay. The protein expression of cyclin D1, vimentin, and matrix metallopeptidase 9 (MMP9) was tested by western blot. Moreover, mice xenograft models were constructed to analyze tumor growth in vivo. Circ_0005576 and PAIP1 were upregulated, while miR-1305 was downregulated in CC tissues and cells. Circ_0005576 was a stable circRNA that was mainly distributed in the cytoplasm of cells. Knockdown of circ_0005576 suppressed the proliferation, migration, and invasion of CC cells, while the silence of miR-1305 facilitated the development of CC cells. Meanwhile, circ_0005576 could sponge miR-1305 to promote PAIP1 expression. Furthermore, PAIP1 overexpression relieved the influence of circ_0005576 silence on the growth of CC cells. Additionally, circ_0005576 silence hindered CC tumor growth in vivo. Circ_0005576 depletion suppressed tumor development in CC by regulating the miR-1305/PAIP1 axis, suggesting that circ_0005576 might be a potential biomarker for CC treatment.
Navigating complexities towards sustainable food crops production: local practices for climate change adaptation in rural Ghana
Authors: Dambeebo Daniel , Dakyaga Francis , Derbile Emmanuel K. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractGlobally, food crops production has been challenged by the impacts of climate change. Climate change scholars have argued that rural dwellers, particularly smallholder farmers who engage in food crops production, suffer the most due to their low capacity to adapt. A growing body of knowledge also suggests that local practices serve as safeguards, that enable smallholder farmers to lessen their vulnerability in food crops production. However, limited scholarly insight has been advanced about sustainable food production via the use of local practices. Through the mixed research approach, the study contributes to local practices and climate adaptation debates by examining the various local practices of smallholder farmers, the challenges they encounter with the use of such practices and the possibility for sustainable food crops production in the future in Ghana. The findings suggest that smallholders encounter multiple drawbacks in attempt to utilize local practices to adapt food crops production to climate change including the advent of modern farming inputs/practices. Even when multiple local practices (the planting of multiple crops’ varieties, switching between crops and livestock rearing, reducing cultivatable land size) are utilized, only the increment in farm size, the use of income/remittances of rural–urban migrants to support food crops production, and early cultivation offered some possibilities of sustaining improvement in food crops production for the future. Therefore, the study concluded that local practices are not necessarily panaceas for sustaining food crops production under climate change. The study recommended that further studies pay attention to the sustainability of local practices under climate change.
The Role of Layer-Specific Residual Stresses in Arterial Mechanics: Analysis via a Novel Modelling Framework
Authors: Giudici Alessandro , Spronck Bart 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThe existence of residual stresses in unloaded arteries has long been known. However, their effect is often neglected in experimental studies. Using a recently developed modelling framework, we aimed to investigate the role of residual stresses in the mechanical behaviour of the tri-layered wall of the pig thoracic aorta. The mechanical behaviour of the intact wall and isolated layers of n = 3 pig thoracic aortas was investigated via uniaxial tensile testing. After modelling the layer-specific mechanical data using a hyperelastic strain energy function, the layer-specific deformations in the unloaded vessel were estimated so that the mechanical response of the computationally assembled tri-layered flat wall would match that measured experimentally. Physiological tension–inflation of the cylindrical tri-layered vessel was then simulated, analysing changes in the distribution of stresses in the three layers when neglecting residual stresses. In the tri-layered model with residual stresses, layers exhibited comparable stresses throughout the physiological range of pressure. At 100 mmHg, intimal, medial, and adventitial circumferential load bearings were 16 $$\pm$$
±
3%, 59 $$\pm$$
±
4%, and 25 $$\pm$$
±
2%, respectively. Adventitial stiffening at high pressures produced a shift in load bearing from the media to the adventitia. When neglecting residual stresses, in vivo stresses were highest at the intima and lowest at the adventitia. Consequently, the intimal and adventitial load bearings, 23 $$\pm$$
±
2% and 18 $$\pm$$
±
3% at 100 mmHg, were comparable at all pressures. Residual stresses play a crucial role in arterial mechanics guaranteeing a uniform distribution of stresses through the wall thickness. Neglecting these leads to incorrect interpretation of the layers’ role in arterial mechanics.
Locality and Local Gazetteers in the Republic: A Case for the Continuity of Spatial Order
Authors: Du Yongtao 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThe way late imperial political elites in China positioned themselves in the tianxia—their life world—can be described as a balance between polity and locality, which was often accompanied by an enduring sense of local identity. This article argues that despite the fall of the tianxia concept in modern China, the age-old locality–polity relationship and the elite local identity did not disappear. Taking the flourishing local gazetteer production of the Republican era as a case, I suggest that instead of suppressing locality, the crisis of the polity and the coming of the nation-state in China brought it more to the foreground. The decline of locality in China's political culture occurred only after the communist takeover. The study makes use of the Local Gazetteer Research Tools (LoGaRT) developed by Max Planck Institute for the History of Sciences.
Regional variation in ongoing sound change: The case of the Dutch diphthongs
Authors: Voeten Cesko C. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThis paper discusses the regional variation in four ongoing sound changes in the Dutch vowels /eː,øː,oː,ɛi,œy/ that are conditioned by a following coda /l/. The synchronic diatopic diffusion of these changes is charted using the Dutch teacher corpus, a comprehensive dataset containing word-list data from four regions in The Netherlands and four in Flanders. Comparisons are made of the five vowels preceding nonapproximant consonants and preceding coda /l/. To avoid manually segmenting the oftentimes highly gradient vowel–/l/ boundary, GAMMs are used to model whole formant trajectories. Comparisons are then made of trajectories and of peaks of trajectories. The results are used to classify the nature of the four sound changes in terms of phonetic and lexical abruptness/graduality and to show that the changes are intertwined in such a way that they can only be considered as separate facets of a single, currently ongoing vowel shift.
Sub-kilometre scale distribution of snow depth on Arctic sea ice from Soviet drifting stations
Authors: Mallett Robbie D. C. , Stroeve Julienne C. , Tsamados Michel , Willatt Rosemary , Newman Thomas , Nandan Vishnu , Landy Jack C. , Itkin Polona , Oggier Marc , Jaggi Matthias , Perovich Don 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThe sub-kilometre scale distribution of snow depth on Arctic sea ice impacts atmosphere-ice fluxes of energy and mass, and is of importance for satellite estimates of sea-ice thickness from both radar and lidar altimeters. While information about the mean of this distribution is increasingly available from modelling and remote sensing, the full distribution cannot yet be resolved. We analyse 33 539 snow depth measurements from 499 transects taken at Soviet drifting stations between 1955 and 1991 and derive a simple statistical distribution for snow depth over multi-year ice as a function of only the mean snow depth. We then evaluate this snow depth distribution against snow depth transects that span first-year ice to multiyear ice from the MOSAiC, SHEBA and AMSR-Ice field campaigns. Because the distribution can be generated using only the mean snow depth, it can be used in the downscaling of several existing snow depth products for use in flux modelling and altimetry studies.
A new, complex hyaline larger benthic foraminifer, Bigaella orbitoidiformis n. gen. n. sp., from the upper Bartonian-Priabonian of NW Turkey
Authors: Özcan Ercan , Mitchell Simon F. , Pignatti Johannes , Simmons Michael D. , Yücel Ali Osman , Robinson Natalie 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThe upper Bartonian–Priabonian shallow-marine deposits in the Biga Peninsula (NW Turkey) contain some hyaline larger benthic foraminifers (LBF) with a test architecture similar to ‘orbitoidiform’ foraminifers, but displaying some distinctive and complex morphological features that are recorded here for the first time. These coarsely porous specimens are characterized by a flat, disc-shaped, fragile, and smooth test with a layer of equatorial chambers/chamberlets, surrounded by poorly developed lateral chamberlets, never forming a discrete layer on either side of the equatorial layer. The nepionic stage is very distinctive because the bilocular embryonic apparatus is followed by a semi-rounded, notably large auxiliary chamber with a characteristic wavy outline, and consecutive cyclical chambers. The cyclical chamber arrangement is later transformed into annular cycles with numerous, complex arcuate- to cup-shaped chamberlets, as observed in equatorial sections. Bigaella orbitoidiformis Özcan, Mitchell, Pignatti, Simmons, and Yücel, n. gen. n. sp., is established for these specimens, and placed within the family Eoannulariidae Ferràndez-Cañadell and Serra-Kiel, emended herein. The new genus occurs together with Caudriella Haman and Huddleston and Epiannularia Caudri (both originally established from the American bioprovince) and the genus Linderina Schlumberger (found both in the Tethys and the American bioprovinces), together with other typical Western Tethyan LBFs. A comparison of the new genus with the aforementioned taxa is given.UUID: http://zoobank.org/ab917e30-86d3-4bc2-8115-d17cf75f5d79.
Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs as Nation Builders? Heritage and Innovation in Gagauzia
Authors: Holsapple Christiana 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThis article brings to light the lesser-known case of Gagauzia, an autonomous region in Moldova, to examine how global frameworks of authenticity and heritage are drawn upon and performed in three local ethnically centered initiatives. Drawing on data from twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2015 and 2018, this case study provides insight into the ways that notions of nationhood are constructed and perpetuated, with a focus on the role of a specific segment of society, ethnopolitical entrepreneurs. These are neither fully top-down nor bottom-up actors. Focusing on three Gagauzian “firsts” that claim to represent the “last” of disappearing cultural practices and identities, this article interrogates how the given initiatives fuse heritage and innovation to create metacultural discourses that advance notions of Gagauzian ethnic or national particularism. The article gives food for thought about the salience – or not – of elite actors’ articulations of nation, particularly within post-Soviet societies and underscores the array of social actors involved in any nation-building activity. Further, by highlighting the heterogeneity of intersectional, lived experience and articulations of belonging, the article problematizes group-based analysis and methodological nationalism.
THE VERSATILE USES OF THE 14C BOMB PEAK
Authors: Kutschera Walter 
Published: April 2022

ABSTRACTA concise review is presented of applying 14C produced in the atmospheric nuclear weapons testing program (1950 to 1963), subsequently forming the so-called 14C bomb peak. In order to convey the versatility of this unique isotope signal, selected applications from a variety of different fields are discussed touching on environmental, archaeological, biological, and forensic issues. A comprehensive list of references is supplied for in-depth studies of the respective fields.
Music and Identity in Paraguay: Expressing National, Racial and Class Identity in Guitar Music Culture
Authors: KRÜGER BRIDGE SIMONE 
Published: April 2022

AbstractThis article illustrates, with particular focus on Rolando Chaparro’s rock fusion albumBohemio(2011), the way in which music operates in expressing Paraguayan national, racial and class identity. It first reviews the literature on music and identity generally, as well as more specifically in relation to Paraguay. It then explores expressions of nationalism andparaguayidad(Paraguayanness) in folkloric ‘popular’ musics (música popular) and the concept ofraza guaraní(a widespread belief in a common ancestry based on Spanish and Guaraní ethnic identity) in the construction, maintenance and expression of identity. Finally, it examines the Agustín Barrios revivals in Paraguay and people’s class consciousness as it is expressed in Paraguayan guitar music culture.