Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting Test Tampering Using Item Response Theory

Test tampering, especially on tests for educational accountability, is an unfortunate reality, necessitating that the state (or its testing vendor) perform data forensic analyses, such as erasure analyses, to look for signs of possible malfeasance. Few statistical approaches exist for detecting fraudulent erasures, and those that do largely do not lend themselves to making probabilistic statements about the likelihood of the observations. In this article, a new erasure detection index, EDI, is developed, which uses item response theory to compare the number of observed wrong-to-right erasures to the number expected due to chance, conditional on the examinee’s ability-level and number of erased items. A simulation study is presented to evaluate the Type I error rate and power of EDI under various types of fraudulent and benign erasures. Results show that EDI with a correction for continuity yields Type I error rates that are less than or equal to nominal levels for every condition studied, and has high power to detect even small amounts of tampering among the students for whom tampering is most likely.
Silicon solar cells with total area efficiency above 25 %

SunPower Corporation reports in this paper the first silicon solar cells with total area efficiency over 25 % This solar cell structure is an advanced version of the SunPower X-Series technology, which is in manufacturing at greater than 100 MW scale. Key improvements are in the area of edge loss and series resistance. Emitter recombination is also improved over previous solar cells. A loss analysis is discussed which shows rear optical loss and bulk lifetime are the largest remaining loss mechanisms. Improvements in module area losses and series resistance combined with 25 % efficiency solar cells are expected to yield >23% module level efficiency.
Computationally inexpensive and revised normalized weighting factor method for segregated solvers

ABSTRACT A new methodology for the implementation of high-resolution (HR) scheme is being presented. The proposed method is a revision of the existing normalized weighting factor (NWF) method and henceforth, it is termed as revised normalized weighting factor (RNWF) method. Unlike the previous method which is penta-diagonal in nature, the RNWF method generates tri-diagonal system of linear equations and is expected to be computationally inexpensive and robust to use. Further to assess the performance of this method, iterations required for the convergence of HR schemes and to configure the CPU clock time, pure advection tests (viz. Step, Double-Step and Sine) were performed. These results were then compared with the existing methods such as, deferred correction (DC) and NWF which suggested that the proposed RNWF method is 4 times faster than DC and 1.3 times faster than NWF on uniform grids. To further evaluate the performance of this method, assessment tests for incompressible, newtonian fluid using the segregated solver (SIMPLE algorithm) are also detailed. Results suggest that RNWF method delivers computationally inexpensive and convergent numerical solutions when compared to the existing methods. Moreover, this method outperforms the NWF as it has been successfully applied for segregated solvers.
A study on object detection method from manga images using CNN

Japanese comics (manga) are popular content worldwide. In order to acquire metadata from manga images, techniques automatic recognition of manga content have been studied. Recently, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been applied to object detection in manga images. R-CNN and Fast R-CNN generate region proposals by Selective Search. Faster R-CNN generates them using CNN layers called Region Proposal Network (RPN). Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD), the latest detection method, performs object classification and box adjustment for small regions in an image. These methods are effective to natural images. However, it is unclear whether such methods work properly to manga images or not, since those image features are different from natural images. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of manga object detection by comparing Fast R-CNN, Faster R-CNN, and SSD. Here, manga objects are panel layout, speech balloon, character face, and text. Experimental results show that Fast R-CNN is effective for panel layout and speech balloon, whereas Faster R-CNN is ef­fective for character face and text.
Estimating the Relationship between Alcohol Policies and Criminal Violence and Victimization

Abstract Violence is one of the leading social problems in both Europe and the United States. The development of appropriate public policies to curtail violence is confounded by the relationship between alcohol and violence. In this article, we estimate the propensity of alcohol control policies to reduce the perpetration and victimization of criminal violence. We measure violence with data on individual-level victimizations from the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey. We examine the effects of a number of different alcohol control policies in reducing violent crime. These policies include the retail price of beer, drunk driving laws and penalties, keg laws and serving and selling laws. We find some evidence of a negative relationship between alcohol prices and the probability of alcohol- or drug-related assault victimizations. However, we find no strong evidence that other alcohol policies are effective in reducing violent crimes.
Socio-cognitive load and social anxiety in an emotional anti-saccade task

The anti-saccade task has been used to measure attentional control related to general anxiety but less so with social anxiety specifically. Previous research has not been conclusive in suggesting that social anxiety may lead to difficulties in inhibiting faces. It is possible that static face paradigms do not convey a sufficient social threat to elicit an inhibitory response in socially anxious individuals. The aim of the current study was twofold. We investigated the effect of social anxiety on performance in an anti-saccade task with neutral or emotional faces preceded either by a social stressor (Experiment 1), or valenced sentence primes designed to increase the social salience of the task (Experiment 2). Our results indicated that latencies were significantly longer for happy than angry faces. Additionally, and surprisingly, high anxious participants made more erroneous anti-saccades to neutral than angry and happy faces, whilst the low anxious groups exhibited a trend in the opposite direction. Results are consistent with a general approach-avoidance response for positive and threatening social information. However increased socio-cognitive load may alter attentional control with high anxious individuals avoiding emotional faces, but finding it more difficult to inhibit ambiguous faces. The effects of social sentence primes on attention appear to be subtle but suggest that the anti-saccade task will only elicit socially relevant responses where the paradigm is more ecologically valid.
The effect of magnesium sulfate concentration on the effective concentration of rocuronium, and sugammadex-mediated reversal, in isolated left phrenic nerve hemi-diaphragm preparations from the rat

Background Perioperative magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) is used for analgesic, anti-arrhythmic, and obstetric purposes. The effects of MgSO4 on the neuromuscular blockade (NMB) induced by rocuronium, and the sugammadex reversal thereof, have not been clearly quantified. We investigated the effect of various MgSO4 concentrations on the NMB by rocuronium, and sugammadex reversal, in isolated left phrenic nerve hemi-diaphragm (PNHD) preparations from the rat. Methods Rat PNHD preparations were randomly allocated to one of four groups varying in terms of MgSO4 concentration (1, 2, 3, and 4 mM, each n = 10, in Krebs solution). The train-of-four (TOF) and twitch height responses were recorded mechanomyographically. The preparations were treated with incrementally increasing doses of rocuronium and each group’s effective concentration (EC)50, EC90, and EC95 of rocuronium were calculated via nonlinear regression. Then, sugammadex was administered in doses equimolar to rocuronium. The recovery index, time to T1 height > 95% of control, and the time to a TOF ratio > 0.9 after sugammadex administration were measured. Results The EC50, EC90, and EC95 of rocuronium fell significantly as the magnesium level increased. The EC50, EC90, and EC95 of rocuronium did not differ between the 3 and 4 mM groups. The recovery index, time to T1 height > 95% of control, and time to a TOF ratio > 0.9 after sugammadex administration did not differ among the four groups. Conclusions Increases in the magnesium concentration in rat PNHD preparations proportionally enhanced the NMB induced by rocuronium but did not affect reversal by equimolar amounts of sugammadex.
A Novel Multiconnected Convolutional Network for Super-Resolution

Convolutional neural networks exhibit superior performance for single image super-resolution (SISR) tasks. However, as the network grows deeper, features from the earlier layers are impeded or less used in later layers. In SISR, the earlier layers are mainly composed of local features that are essential to the task. In this letter, we present a novel multiconnected convolutional network for SISR tasks by enhancing the combination of both low- and high-level features. We design a structure built on multiconnected blocks to extract diversified and complicated features via the concatenation of low-level features to high-level features. In addition to stacking multiconnected blocks, a long skip-connection is implemented to further aggregate features of the first layer and a specific later layer. Furthermore, we employ a flexible two-parameter loss function to optimize the training process. The proposed method yields state-of-the-art performance both in terms of quantitative metrics and visual quality. The method also outperforms existing methods on datasets via unknown degrading operators, indicating an excellent generalization ability.
High Piezoelectric Conversion Properties of Axial InGaN/GaN Nanowires

We demonstrate for the first time the efficient mechanical-electrical conversion properties of InGaN/GaN nanowires (NWs). Using an atomic force microscope equipped with a modified Resiscope module, we analyse the piezoelectric energy generation of GaN NWs and demonstrate an important enhancement when integrating in their volume a thick In-rich InGaN insertion. The piezoelectric response of InGaN/GaN NWs can be tuned as a function of the InGaN insertion thickness and position in the NW volume. The energy harvesting is favoured by the presence of a PtSi/GaN Schottky diode which allows to efficiently collect the piezo-charges generated by InGaN/GaN NWs. Average output voltages up to 330 ± 70 mV and a maximum value of 470 mV per NW has been measured for nanostructures integrating 70 nm-thick InGaN insertion capped with a thin GaN top layer. This latter value establishes an increase of about 35% of the piezo-conversion capacity in comparison with binary p-doped GaN NWs. Based on the measured output signals, we estimate that one layer of dense InGaN/GaN-based NW can generate a maximum output power density of about 3.3 W/cm2. These results settle the new state-of-the-art for piezo-generation from GaN-based NWs and offer a promising perspective for extending the performances of the piezoelectric sources.
Characterization of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) causing mosaic symptom on Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don in Malaysia

A cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) isolate, causing leaf mosaic and distortion, malformed flowers or colourbreaking on the petals of Catharanthus roseus in Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia, was identified and designated as Malaysian periwinkle isolate (CMV-MP). The virus was spherical in shape with the size of 28.6 Â± 0.48 nm in diameter with a central core. It was mechanically transmitted to various test plants which produced typical symptoms of CMV infection. The coat protein (CP) gene of the virus was amplified using reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and cloned in Escherichia coli using TOPO-TA vector. A single open reading frame of 657 nucleotides, potentially encoding for 218 amino acids was sequenced. A comparison with the CP genes of other CMV isolates indicated that CMV-MP shared 100% sequence homology to the CP gene sequence of C. roseus isolate of CMV in India. This is the first aetiology report on C. roseus in Malaysia showing natural mosaic disease symptoms supported with the nucleotide sequence analysis of the causal virus.
Black Seed (Nigella Sativa) and its Constituent Thymoquinone as an Antidote or a Protective Agent Against Natural or Chemical Toxicities

Nigella sativa (N. sativa), which belongs to the botanical family of Ranunculaceae, is a widely used medicinal plant all over the world. N. sativa seeds and oil have been used in the treatment of different diseases. Various studies on N. sativa have been carried out and a broad spectrum of its pharmacological actions have been established which include antioxidant, antidiabetic, anticancer, antitussive, immunomodulator, analgesic, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, spasmolytic, and bronchodilator. This is also indicated that the majority of the therapeutic effects of N. sativa are due to the presence of thymoquinone (TQ) that is the main bioactive constituent of the essential oil. According to several lines of evidence, the protective effects of this plant and its main constituent in different tissues including brain, heart, liver, kidney, and lung have been proved against some toxic agents either natural or chemical toxins in animal studies. In this review article, several in-vitro and animal studies in scientific databases which investigate the antidotal and protective effects of N. sativa and its main constituents against natural and chemical induced toxicities are introduced. Because human reports are rare, further studies are required to determine the efficacy of this plant as an antidote or protective agent in human intoxication.
miR-331-3p functions as an oncogene by targeting ST7L in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a highly invasive tumor with early metastasis and poor prognosis, yet the mechanisms for tumor progression have not been fully elucidated. Emerging evidence indicate that microRNA-331-3p (miR-331-3p) plays an important role in the progression of diverse human cancers. Here, we found that miR-331-3p was significantly upregulated in tumor specimens of PC patients and PC cell lines. Functional studies showed that downregulation of miR-331-3p inhibited PC cell proliferation and epithelial to mesenchymal transition-mediated metastasis in vitro. Furthermore, suppression of tumorigenicity 7 like (ST7L) was identified as a novel target gene of miR-331-3p. Tumor promotion effects of miR-331-3p was partially reversed by ST7L re-expression. In addition, miR-331-3p antagomir suppressed PC tumor growth and metastasis via upregulation of ST7L in xenograft mice. In summary, these results demonstrate that miR-331-3p is a tumor-promoting miRNA in PC cells and a promising biomarker for PC.
Time and Place as Modifiers of Personal UV Exposure

It is a common belief that, if we want to limit our sun exposure during outdoor recreational activities and holidays in order to avoid sunburn or reduce our risk of skin cancer, we need to reach for the bottle of sunscreen or cover up with clothing. As important as these measures are, there is another way to enjoy our time outdoors and still benefit from the experience. In this article, we consider the impact of time, place, and behaviour outdoors on our exposure to solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Some of the simple actions we can take in controlling our UV exposure include being aware of the position of the sun in the sky, understanding how we can use the UV index to guide our outdoor exposure, and the importance of reducing our sun exposure around the middle of the day. Finally we review our preferred holiday activities and destinations, and the influence of outdoor leisure pursuits. By planning where and when we spend our leisure time in the sun, we can maximise our enjoyment whilst limiting our UV exposure.
SecureNN: Efficient and Private Neural Network Training

Neural Networks (NN) provide a powerful method for machine learning training and prediction. For effective training, it is often desirable for multiple parties to combine their data – however, doing so conflicts with data privacy. In this work, we provide novel three-party and four-party secure computation protocols for various NN building blocks such as matrix multiplication, Rectified Linear Units, MaxPool, normalization etc. This enables us to construct three-party and four-party information-theoretically secure protocols for training and prediction of CNNs, DNNs and a number of other NN architectures such that no single party learns any information about the data. Experimentally, we build a system and train a (A) 3-layer DNN (B) 4-layer CNN from MiniONN, and (C) 4-layer LeNet network. Compared to the state-of-the-art prior work SecureML (Mohassel and Zhang, IEEE S&P 2017) that provided (computationally-secure) protocols for only the network A in the 2 and 3-party setting, we obtain 93X and 8X improvements, respectively. In the WAN setting, these improvements are more drastic for example, we obtain an improvement of 407X. Our efficiency gains come from a > 8X improvement in communication, coupled with the complete elimination of expensive oblivious transfer protocols. In fact, our results show that the overhead of executing secure training protocols is only between 17-33X of the cleartext implementation even for networks that achieve > 99% accuracy.
Age Related Changes in Topological Properties of Brain Functional Network and Structural Connectivity

Introduction: There are still uncertainties about the true nature of age related changes in topological properties of the brain functional network and its structural connectivity during various developmental stages. In this cross- sectional study, we investigated the effects of age and its relationship with regional nodal properties of the functional brain network and white matter integrity. Method: DTI and fMRI data were acquired from 458 healthy Chinese participants ranging from age 8 to 81 years. Tractography was conducted on the DTI data using FSL. Graph Theory analyses were conducted on the functional data yielding topological properties of the functional network using SPM and GRETNA toolbox. Two multiple regressions were performed to investigate the effects of age on nodal topological properties of the functional brain network and white matter integrity. Result: For the functional studies, we observed that regional nodal characteristics such as node betweenness were decreased while node degree and node efficiency was increased in relation to increasing age. Perversely, we observed that the relationship between nodal topological properties and fasciculus structures were primarily positive for nodal betweenness but negative for nodal degree and nodal efficiency. Decrease in functional nodal betweenness was primarily located in superior frontal lobe, right occipital lobe and the global hubs. These brain regions also had both direct and indirect anatomical relationships with the 14 fiber bundles. A linear age related decreases in the Fractional anisotropy (FA) value was found in the callosum forceps minor. Conclusion: These results suggests that age related differences were more pronounced in the functional than in structural measure indicating these measures do not have direct one-to-one mapping. Our study also indicates that the fiber bundles with longer fibers exhibited a more pronounced effect on the properties of functional network.
Enhanced Invitations Using the Question-Behavior Effect and Financial Incentives to Promote Health Check Uptake in Primary Care

Abstract Background Uptake of health checks for cardiovascular risk assessment in primary care in England is lower than anticipated. The question-behavior effect (QBE) may offer a simple, scalable intervention to increase health check uptake. Purpose The present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of enhanced invitation methods employing the QBE, with or without a financial incentive to return the questionnaire, at increasing uptake of health checks. Methods We conducted a three-arm randomized trial including all patients at 18 general practices in two London boroughs, who were invited for health checks from July 2013 to December 2014. Participants were randomized to three trial arms: (i) Standard health check invitation letter only; (ii) QBE questionnaire followed by standard invitation letter; or (iii) QBE questionnaire with offer of a financial incentive to return the questionnaire, followed by standard invitation letter. In intention to treat analysis, the primary outcome of completion of health check within 6 months of invitation, was evaluated using a p value of . 0167 for significance. Results 12,459 participants were randomized. Health check uptake was evaluated for 12,052 (97%) with outcome data collected. Health check uptake within 6 months of invitation was: standard invitation, 590 / 4,095 (14.41%); QBE questionnaire, 630 / 3,988 (15.80%); QBE questionnaire and financial incentive, 629 / 3,969 (15.85%). Difference following QBE questionnaire, 1.43% (95% confidence interval −0.12 to 2.97%, p = .070); following QBE questionnaire and financial incentive, 1.52% (−0.03 to 3.07%, p = .054). Conclusions Uptake of health checks following a standard invitation was low and not significantly increased through enhanced invitation methods using the QBE.
Biological control of apple gray mold by mixtures of Bacillus Subtilis and yeast isolates

In this study the effect of biocontrol agents Candida membraniciens (isolates A4, A5), Pichia guilliermondii (isolate A6) and Bacillus subtilis (isolates B2, B6) were evaluated individually and in combination on gray mold of apple. Our results show that the antagonists were compatible when they were tested in vitro. Also, results show the spore germination of Botrytis cinerea decreased significantly by the combination of B2+A5 more than the other treatments. In the dual culture test, the combinations of B2+A5 and B6+A6 prevented mycelial growth of pathogen and that the combined application of the two agents was more effective in control of gray mold of apple in vivo than the application of each one alone. In different proportions antagonist test, when the inoculum size favored A5 was 70 in the mixed, the biocontrol could be improved. This study suggested that antagonists are more effective in biological control of apple gray mold when used in proper combinations than when each one is used alone. Key words: Gray mold, biocontrol, mixtures antagonist, Botrytis cinnerea.