nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
The effect of a conditional cash transfer on HIV incidence in young women in rural South Africa (HPTN 068) a phase 3, randomised controlled trial.
Venue: The Lancet. Global health

Cash transfers have been proposed as an intervention to reduce HIV infection risk for young women in sub Saharan Africa. However, scarce evidence is available about their effect on reducing HIV acquisition. We aimed to assess the effect of a conditional cash transfer on HIV incidence among young women in rural South Africa.  We did a phase 3, randomised controlled trial (HPTN 068) in the rural Bushbuckridge subdistrict in Mpumalanga province, South Africa. We included girls aged 13 20 years if they were enrolled in school grades 8 11, not married or pregnant, able to read, they and their parent or guardian both had the necessary documentation necessary to open a bank account, and were residing in the study area and intending to remain until trial completion. Young women (and their parents or guardians) were randomly assigned (1:1) by use of numbered sealed envelopes containing a randomisation assignment card which were numerically ordered with block randomisation, to receive a monthly cash transfer conditional on school attendance =80% of school days per month) versus no cash transfer. Participants completed an Audio Computer Assisted Self Interview (ACASI) before test HIV counselling, HIV and herpes simplex virus (HSV) 2 testing, and post test counselling at baseline, then at annual follow up visits at 12, 24, and 36 months. Parents or guardians completed a Computer Assisted Personal Interview at baseline and each follow up visit. A stratified proportional hazards model was used in an intention to treat analysis of the primary outcome, HIV incidence, to compare the intervention and control groups.  Between March 5, 2011, and Dec 17, 2012, we recruited 10 134 young women and enrolled 2537 and their parents or guardians to receive a cash transfer programme (n=1225) or not (control group; n=1223) At baseline, the median age of girls was 15 years (IQR 14 17) and 672 (27% had reported to have ever had sex. 107 incident HIV infections were recorded during the study: 59 cases in 3048 person years in the intervention group and 48 cases in 2830 person years in the control group. HIV incidence was not significantly different between those who received a cash transfer (1*94% per person years) and those who did not (1*70% per person years; hazard ratio 1*17, 95% CI 0*80 1*72, p=0*42) INTERPRETATION Cash transfers conditional on school attendance did not reduce HIV incidence in young women. School attendance significantly reduced risk of HIV acquisition, irrespective of study group. Keeping girls in school is important to reduce their HIV infection risk.
Student teachers' reflections on their practices of the curriculum and assessment policy statement

This article presents a case study of twenty two university postgraduate students (student teachers) who specialised in Curriculum Studies. The students' projects analysis, one on one semi structured interview and focus group discussion were used for data generation/production. The study concluded that student teachers were not aware of the theories that underpin their subjects CAPSs. As a result of not understanding the theories that shape their learning, they decided to continue with the way they had been working throughout their years of teaching. This suggests that they are teaching without prioritising the implementation of their subjects' CAPSs. Purposive and convenience samplings were used in selecting the most accessible twenty two students. This article consequently recommends the identification of theories that underpin CAPS and the curriculum type before implementation in order for teachers to understand the implementation process.  Activities, learners, objectives, outcomes, reflections, theories.
Using curricular spider web to explore a research facilitator's and students' experiences.

This article presents an interpretive case study of two groups of students and a facilitator, who were involved in the learning and teaching of a postgraduate research module. The module was face to face for a group of twenty four students and fourteen distance learning students. The facilitator had to use different e resources to create an e learning environment for the students to learn. Document/LMS analysis, semi structured interviews/discussion and participant observations were used for data generation. Purposive sampling was used in selecting these two specific groups of research students and their facilitator. This article uses the term 'e learning signals' to group every important element of e learning environments. Twelve issues of learning are presented for discussing the important activities for learning framed by the curricular spider web. This article consequently recommends that facilitators and students should define, understand, and use or apply the e learning environment in order to support learning.
Health related quality of life in HIV/AIDS patients on antiretroviral therapy at a tertiary care facility in Zimbabwe
Venue: AIDS care

Health related quality of life (HRQoL) is a broad concept reflecting a patient's general subjective perception of the effect of an illness or intervention on physical, psychological and social aspects of their daily life. HRQoL among patients infected with HIV has become an important indicator of impact of disease and treatment outcomes. A cross sectional survey was carried out at Chitungwiza Central Hospital, Zimbabwe, to assess HRQoL in patients with HIV/AIDS receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) using two validated instruments. The HIV/AIDS targeted quality of life (HAT QoL) and EuroQoL Five dimensions Three level (EQ 5D 3L) instruments were used to assess HRQoL. Internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the two instruments were also evaluated. For construct validity, the relationships between HRQoL scores and socio economic and HIV/AIDS related characteristics were explored. The median scores for the HAT QoL dimensions ranged from 33.3 (financial worries) to 100 (HIV mastery) A considerably low HAT QoL dimension score of 50.0 was observed for sexual function. There were ceiling effects for all HAT QoL dimension scores except for financial worries and disclosure worries. Floor effects were observed for financial worries and sexual function. The median of the EQ 5D 3L index and visual analogue scale (VAS) was 0.81 and 79.0, respectively. There were no floor or ceiling effects for both the EQ 5D 3L index and VAS. The overall scale Cronbach's alpha was 0.83 for HAT Qol and 0.67 for EQ 5D 3L. HAT QoL demonstrated good convergent validity with EQ 5D index (0.58) and VAS (0.40) A higher level of HRQoL was positively and significantly related to income, education and employment. The patients' self reported HRQoL was generally satisfactory in all the HAT QoL dimensions as well as the two components on the EQ 5D 3L instrument. The two instruments demonstrated good measurement properties in HIV/AIDS patients receiving ART and have potential for use, alongside biomarkers, in monitoring outcomes of interventions.
Is teaching without understanding curriculum visions and goals a high risk

Subject/discipline curriculum/teaching vision is very important in teaching because it forms the foundation for why teachers teach their subjects. The vision is divided into personal daily experience, societal/social and professional/content visions/reasons. When teachers understand the teaching vision, they identify relevant curriculum goals. The goals are divided into aims, objectives and outcomes. Teachers have to understand the curriculum vision in order to achieve the curriculum goals. Therefore, this article presents an interpretive case study of two participants out of twenty university Bachelor of Education Honours students who specialised in Curriculum Studies. The purpose of the study was to explore the postgraduate students' understanding of curriculum visions and goals in teaching their subjects. These postgraduate students were full time teachers and part time students at a South African university. The postgraduate students' reflective journals, one on one semi structured interview, lesson observation and focus group discussion were used for data generation. The study concluded that postgraduate students were not aware of the visions that underpin their teaching of the current South African curriculum. Although they were not aware of the visions, two participants were able to apply them in their teaching of the current South African curriculum. As a result of the application, they were able to interpret the curriculum. Participation in this study helped them to become aware of the importance of understanding visions, goals and critical reflections in order to apply these effectively. Purposive and convenience samplings were used to select the two most accessible participants from the twenty postgraduate students who participated in this study. This article consequently recommends the identification of visions that underpin the current curriculum, before teaching takes place, in order to identify measurable/observable goals and reflect on their teaching.
Lecturers' Experiences of Teaching STEM to Students with Disabilities

Innovative teaching is a concept based on student centred teaching strategies. Access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects has not been equitable due to use of traditional teaching strategies. These strategies tend to exclude students with disabilities who can effectively learn in environments that appropriately and innovatively integrate technology. Better use of technology in teaching also requires teachers to have the relevant skills to take advantage of the devices in their disposal. This article provides an overview of the literature and experiences of lecturers on the use of technology to facilitate access to STEM subjects at Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions. Using two TVET colleges as case studies, it seeks to clarify how technology is currently used in vocational training. Data gathering was done through in depth e interviews and observation of classes. Purposive convenience sampling was used to select the most accessible teachers that teach students with disabilities for this study. Understanding of prior practices and current teacher technological competency are the initial points in the development of TVET technology integration model. In this article, the experiences of teachers were used to guide the development of an inclusive and equitable technology integration model.
Effect of extended shelf life milk processing on the bacterial composition associated with the nozzles of filling machines

In South Africa extended shelf life (ESL) milk processors are still facing challenges extending the shelf life beyond 14 days. It is hypothesized that post contamination along the milk processing line is responsible of reducing the shelf life of ESL milk. This assumption was investigated through assessing the microorganisms associated with the nozzles of aseptic filling machines post CIP process, this study was designed and divided into two phases. Phase one involved isolation and characterisation of the bacteria associated with the nozzles of aseptic filling machines after CIP process with the aim of determining the diversity of microorganisms attached to the nozzles of aseptic filling machines. Swab samples were collected from a dairy plant processing ESL milk. Twenty swabs were taken from ten different nozzles of aseptic filling machines during 4 visits (n=80) The swab samples were plated on the day of sampling. A total bacterial count ranging from 1.75 1.95 log CFU/cm with an average of 1.81 log CFU/cm (n=80) MALDI TOF revealed a high percentage of Gram positive rods (69% followed by Gram positive cocci (20% and then Gram negative rods (7% The Gram positive rods belonging to genus Bacillus were identified as B. cereus, followed by B. pumilus, B. subtilis and Paenibacillus spp. The Gram positive cocci included S. hominis, S. epidermidis, Micrococcus luteus and Anaerococcus spp. The Gram negative rods were identified as Acinetobacter junii. The prevalence of Bacillus spp. noted in the nozzles of ESL aseptic filling machines is attributed to their ability to resist heat treatment during CIP process and their ability to attach to stainless steel surfaces. There was a degree of similarity in terms of MALDI TOF MS profiles for the strains of B. cereus, Staphylococcus spp. and Paenibacillus spp. originating from the nozzles of aseptic ESL filling machines and the packaged ESL milk product. These bacteria are likely to originate from the nozzles and dispensed into the final ESL milk during filling process.
Monocular Depth Estimation Using Neural Regression Forest
Venue: 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)

This paper presents a novel deep architecture, called neural regression forest (NRF) for depth estimation from a single image. NRF combines random forests and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) Scanning windows extracted from the image represent samples which are passed down the trees of NRF for predicting their depth. At every tree node, the sample is filtered with a CNN associated with that node. Results of the convolutional filtering are passed to left and right children nodes, i.e. corresponding CNNs, with a Bernoulli probability, until the leaves, where depth estimations are made. CNNs at every node are designed to have fewer parameters than seen in recent work, but their stacked processing along a path in the tree effectively amounts to a deeper CNN. NRF allows for parallelizable training of all "shallow" CNNs, and efficient enforcing of smoothness in depth estimation results. Our evaluation on the benchmark Make3D and NYUv2 datasets demonstrates that NRF outperforms the state of the art, and gracefully handles gradually decreasing training datasets.
The Helmholtz theorem and retarded fields

Textbooks frequently use the Helmholtz theorem to derive expressions for electrostatic and magnetostatic fields but they do not usually apply this theorem to derive expressions for time dependent electric and magnetic fields, even when there is no formal objection to doing so because the proof of the theorem does not involve time derivatives but only spatial derivatives. Here we address the question as to whether the Helmholtz theorem is useful in deriving expressions for the fields of Maxwell's equations. We show that when this theorem is applied to Maxwell's equations we obtain instantaneous expressions of the electric and magnetic fields, which are formally correct but of little practical usefulness. We then discuss two generalizations of the theorem which are shown to be useful in deriving the retarded fields.
On the Helmholtz Theorem and Its Generalization for Multi Layers

The decomposition of a vector field to its curl free and divergence free components in terms of a scalar and a vector potential function, which is also considered as the fundamental theorem of vector analysis, is known as the Helmholtz theorem or decomposition. In the literature, it is mentioned that the theorem was previously presented by Stokes, but it is also mentioned that Stokes did not introduce any scalar and vector potentials in his expressions, which causes a contradiction. Therefore, in this article, Stokes's and Helmholtz's representations are examined in detail to reveal and emphasize their differences, similarities and important points. The Helmholtz theorem is obtained for all kinds of spaces by using the theory of distributions in a comprehensive and rigorous manner with detailed explanations, which also leads to a new surface version of the Helmholtz theorem or a new surface decomposition, resulting in the canonical form; hence, it is different than the one suggested previously in terms of two scalar functions. The generalized form of the Helmholtz theorem is also presented by employing the same approach when there is a multi layer on the surface of discontinuity, which also corresponds to the extension of the theorem to fields with singularities of higher order.
Evaluation of Current Assessment Methods in Engineering Entrepreneurship Education.

Quality assessment is an essential component of education that allows educators to support student learning and improve educational programs. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the current state of assessment in engineering entrepreneurship education. We identified 52 assessment instruments covered in 29 journal articles and conference proceedings that focused on engineering entrepreneurship. We evaluated these instruments using the unified theory of validity as a framework. Our analysis identified a variety of means through which entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, and attitudes are assessed in engineering. Self or peer report surveys, some of which were originally developed in business contexts, were the primary tool used for assessment. Another common tool was project deliverables. The assessment instruments often lacked features that can help differentiate levels of competencies and hence had limited utility for formative purposes. We argue that engineering entrepreneurship education would benefit from a system of assessment instruments designed through rigorous methods and developed to assess constructs specific to entrepreneurial engineering.
Time Series Structure Discovery via Probabilistic Program Synthesis

There is a widespread need for techniques that can discover structure from time series data. Recently introduced techniques such as Automatic Bayesian Covariance Discovery (ABCD) provide a way to find structure within a single time series by searching through a space of covariance kernels that is generated using a simple grammar. While ABCD can identify a broad class of temporal patterns, it is difficult to extend and can be brittle in practice. This paper shows how to extend ABCD by formulating it in terms of probabilistic program synthesis. The key technical ideas are to (i) represent models using abstract syntax trees for a domain specific probabilistic language, and (ii) represent the time series model prior, likelihood, and search strategy using probabilistic programs in a sufficiently expressive language. The final probabilistic program is written in under 70 lines of probabilistic code in Venture. The paper demonstrates an application to time series clustering that involves a non parametric extension to ABCD, experiments for interpolation and extrapolation on real world econometric data, and improvements in accuracy over both non parametric and standard regression baselines.
Decoding cognitive states using the bag of words model on fMRI time series
Venue: 2016 24th Signal Processing and Communication Application Conference (SIU)

Bag of words (BoW) modeling has yielded successful results in document and image classification tasks. In this paper, we explore the use of BoW for cognitive state classification. We estimate a set of common patterns embedded in the fMRI time series recorded in three dimensional voxel coordinates by clustering the BOLD responses. We use these common patterns, called the code words, to encode activities of both individual voxels and group of voxels, and obtain a BoW representation on which we train linear classifiers. Our experimental results show that the BoW encoding, when applied to individual voxels, significantly improves the classification accuracy (an average 7.2% increase over 13 different datasets) compared to a classical multi voxel pattern analysis method. This preliminary result gives us a clue to generate a code book for fMRI data which may be used to represent a variety of cognitive states to study the human brain.
Is there a difference between the energy and CO2 emission performance for China's thermal power industry? A bootstrapped directional distance function approach

A scientific evaluation of the energy efficiency and CO2 emission performance of the thermal power industry could not only provide valuable information for reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions but also serve as a tool to estimate the effectiveness of relevant policy reforms. Considering the opposite effects of energy conservation and carbon emission reduction on generation cost, this study respectively measures the energy and CO2 emission performance of the thermal power industries in China's 30 provincial administrative regions during the period 2005 2012 from both static and dynamic perspectives. We implement the bootstrap method for the directional distance function to correct the possible estimate bias and test the significance of productivity changes where the weak disposability of undesirable outputs is also integrated. The empirical analysis leads to the following conclusions. The bootstrapping results could provide us with much valuable information because the initial estimates might result from sampling noise rather than reveal the real variations. In addition, some differences do exist between the energy and CO2 emission performance of China's thermal power industry. Furthermore, technological progress is the main driving force for energy and CO2 emission productivity improvement and it works better for the former.
An introduction to hypergraph signal processing
Venue: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)

Developing tools to analyze signals defined over a graph is a research area that is attracting a significant amount of contributions because of its many applications. However, a graph representation does not capture the overall information about the data, as it implicitly takes into account only pairwise relations. The goal of this paper is to extend signal processing tools to signals defined over hypergraphs, which represent a formal framework to describe multi way relations among the data. First, we suggest alternative ways to introduce a Fourier Transform (FT) for signals defined over hypergraphs and, in particular, for simplicial complexes. Then, building on the notion of Fourier Transform, we derive a sampling theorem aimed at identifying the minimum number of samples necessary to encode all information about band limited hypergraph signals.
1 SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF CONCRETE FRAMES REINFORCED WITH SUPERELASTIC SHAPE MEMORY ALLOYS

WITH SUPERELASTIC SHAPE MEMORY ALLOYS M.A. YOUSSEF* M.A. ELFEKI The University of Western Ontario, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada *Phone: 519 661 2111 Ext. 88661, E mail: youssef@uwo.ca Reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings dissipate the seismic energy through yielding of the reinforcing bars. This yielding jeopardizes the serviceability of these buildings as it results in residual lateral deformations. Superelastic Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) can recover inelastic strains by stress removal. Since SMA is a costly material, this paper defines the required locations of SMA bars in a typical RC frame to optimize its seismic performance in terms of damage scheme and seismic residual deformations. The intensities of five earthquakes causing failure to a typical RC six storey building are defined and used to evaluate seven SMA design alternatives.