nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
The natural selection of bad science
Venue: Royal Society Open Science

Poor research design and data analysis encourage false positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor methods results partly from incentives that favour them, leading to the natural selection of bad science. This dynamic requires no conscious strategizing no deliberate cheating nor loafing by scientists, only that publication is a principal factor for career advancement. Some normative methods of analysis have almost certainly been selected to further publication instead of discovery. In order to improve the culture of science, a shift must be made away from correcting misunderstandings and towards rewarding understanding. We support this argument with empirical evidence and computational modelling. We first present a 60 year meta analysis of statistical power in the behavioural sciences and show that power has not improved despite repeated demonstrations of the necessity of increasing power. To demonstrate the logical consequences of structural incentives, we then present a dynamic model of scientific communities in which competing laboratories investigate novel or previously published hypotheses using culturally transmitted research methods. As in the real world, successful labs produce more 'progeny, such that their methods are more often copied and their students are more likely to start labs of their own. Selection for high output leads to poorer methods and increasingly high false discovery rates. We additionally show that replication slows but does not stop the process of methodological deterioration. Improving the quality of research requires change at the institutional level.
Diclofenac and its transformation products: Environmental occurrence and toxicity A review.
Venue: Environment international

Diclofenac (DCF) is a prevalent anti inflammatory drug used throughout the world. Intensive researches carried out in the past few decades have confirmed the global ubiquity of DCF in various environmental compartments. Its frequent occurrence in freshwater environments and its potential toxicity towards several organisms such as fish and mussels makes DCF an emerging environmental contaminant. At typical detected environmental concentrations, the drug does not exhibit toxic effects towards living organisms, albeit chronic exposure may lead to severe effects. For DCF, about 30 70% removal has been obtained through the conventional treatment system in wastewater treatment plant being the major primary sink. Thus, the untreated DCF will pass to surface water. DCF can interact with other inorganic contaminants in the environment particularly in wastewater treatment plant, such as metals, organic contaminants and even with DCF metabolites. This process may lead to the creation of another possible emerging contaminant. In the present context, environmental fate of DCF in different compartments such as soil and water has been addressed with an overview of current treatment methods. In addition, the toxicity concerns regarding DCF in aquatic as well as terrestrial environment along with an introduction to the metabolites of DCF through consumption as well as abiotic degradation routes are also discussed. Further studies are required to better assess the fate and toxicological effects of DCF and its metabolites and must consider the possible interaction of DCF with other contaminants to develop an effective treatment method for DCF and its traces.
Does providing an advance organizer in online drill and practice games improve language learning outcomes

Like many other methodological innovations, Game Based Learning (GBL) has been applied to the area of language learning. Drill and practice games are most often used. However, little research has been done to explore whether providing an advance organizer in drill and practice games improves language learning outcome. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an advance organizer on vocabulary word and grammar based word learning among Chinese junior students. A quasi experimental design was adopted to probe this study. Students in NO.11 junior school in China were recruited and divided into an experimental group and a control of 30 students each. Students in the experimental group were provided with an advance organizer; whereas, the students in the control group were not. Post test questionnaires were subsequently administered to the participants after playing the game. Independent sample t test analysis was applied to examine if the advance organizer is effective for vocabulary word and grammar based word learning. Findings indicate that an advance organizer did have significant positive impact on vocabulary word learning. On the other hand, it did a negative influence on learning grammar based words. These results imply that learning vocabulary by means of a drill and practice game can be enhanced by giving an advance organizer. In addition, teachers can also enhance their teaching method by using games and advance organizers.
Secure device to device communications over WiFi direct
Venue: IEEE Network

D2D communications facilitate proximal devices to directly communicate with each other, bypassing cellular base stations or access points, and bring many benefits such as improvement in both spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. Among existing D2D enabling techniques, the recently released WiFi Direct is one promising protocol that offers high data rate D2D communications in local areas. However, WiFi Direct is susceptible to security threats due to the open access of wireless channels and lack of security infrastructures. In this article, we identify several attacks that challenge WiFi Direct based D2D communications. Since pairwise key establishment lies in the area of securing D2D communications, we introduce a short authentication string based key agreement protocol and analyze its security performance. We also integrate the SAS based key agreement protocol into the existing WiFi Direct protocol, and implement it using Android smartphones.
Transcriptome differences between fiber type and seed type Cannabis sativa variety exposed to salinity
Venue: Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants

The industrial hemp varieties 'Yunma 5' and 'Bamahuoma, which demonstrate growth vigor and environmental adaptability, have been primarily cultivated in Yunnan and Guangxi, China, respectively, for fiber and seeds. The results of physiological measurements showed the phenotypic differences between the two varieties in response to salt stress. RNA Seq analysis was first performed on leaves of both varieties sampled at four time intervals (0, 2, 4, 6 days) after treatment with salt (500 mM NaCl) We identified 220 co up regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the two varieties, while 26 up regulated DEGs and 24 down regulated DEGs were identified exclusively in the single varieties after 2 days of salt stress. Among the 220 DEGs, we identified 22 transcription factors, including key transcription factors involved in salt stress, such as MYB, NAC, GATA, and HSF. We applied gene expression profile analysis and found that 'Yunma 5' and 'Bamahuoma' have variety specific pathways for resisting salt stress. The DEGs of 'Yunma 5' were enriched in spliceosome and amino acid metabolism genes, while the DEGs of 'Bamahuoma' were enriched in fatty acid metabolism, amino acid metabolism, and endoplasmic reticulum protein processing pathway. Although there were common DEGs, such as genes encoding cysteine protease and alpha/beta hydrolase superfamily, the two varieties' responses to salt stress impacted different metabolic pathways. The DEGs that were co expressed in both varieties under stress may provide useful insights into the tolerance of cultivated hemp and other bast fiber crops to saline soil conditions. These transcriptomes also represent reference sequences for industrial hemp.
Dependency Based Embeddings for Sentence Classification Tasks
Venue: NAACL

We compare different word embeddings from a standard window based skipgram model, a skipgram model trained using dependency context features and a novel skipgram variant that utilizes additional information from dependency graphs. We explore the effectiveness of the different types of word embeddings for word similarity and sentence classification tasks. We consider three common sentence classification tasks: question type classification on the TREC dataset, binary sentiment classification on Stanford's Sentiment Treebank and semantic relation classification on the SemEval 2010 dataset. For each task we use three different classification methods: a Support Vector Machine, a Convolutional Neural Network and a Long Short Term Memory Network. Our experiments show that dependency based embeddings outperform standard window based embeddings in most of the settings, while using dependency context embeddings as additional features improves performance in all tasks regardless of the classification method. Our embeddings and code are available at https:/www.cs.york.ac.uk/nlp/
Cognitive Control As a Double Edged Sword
Venue: Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Cognitive control, the ability to limit attention to goal relevant information, aids performance on a wide range of laboratory tasks. However, there are many day to day functions which require little to no control and others which even benefit from reduced control. We review behavioral and neuroimaging evidence demonstrating that reduced control can enhance the performance of both older and, under some circumstances, younger adults. Using healthy aging as a model, we demonstrate that decreased cognitive control benefits performance on tasks ranging from acquiring and using environmental information to generating creative solutions to problems. Cognitive control is thus a double edged sword aiding performance on some tasks when fully engaged, and many others when less engaged.
Automatically Evading Classifiers: A Case Study on PDF Malware Classifiers
Venue: NDSS

Machine learning is widely used to develop classifiers for security tasks. However, the robustness of these methods against motivated adversaries is uncertain. In this work, we propose a generic method to evaluate the robustness of classifiers under attack. The key idea is to stochastically manipulate a malicious sample to find a variant that preserves the malicious behavior but is classified as benign by the classifier. We present a general approach to search for evasive variants and report on results from experiments using our techniques against two PDF malware classifiers, PDFrate and Hidost. Our method is able to automatically find evasive variants for both classifiers for all of the 500 malicious seeds in our study. Our results suggest a general method for evaluating classifiers used in security applications, and raise serious doubts about the effectiveness of classifiers based on superficial features in the presence of adversaries.
Allatostatin A Signalling in Drosophila Regulates Feeding and Sleep and Is Modulated by PDF
Venue: PLoS genetics

Feeding and sleep are fundamental behaviours with significant interconnections and cross modulations. The circadian system and peptidergic signals are important components of this modulation, but still little is known about the mechanisms and networks by which they interact to regulate feeding and sleep. We show that specific thermogenetic activation of peptidergic Allatostatin A (AstA) expressing PLP neurons and enteroendocrine cells reduces feeding and promotes sleep in the fruit fly Drosophila. The effects of AstA cell activation are mediated by AstA peptides with receptors homolog to galanin receptors subserving similar and apparently conserved functions in vertebrates. We further identify the PLP neurons as a downstream target of the neuropeptide pigment dispersing factor (PDF) an output factor of the circadian clock. PLP neurons are contacted by PDF expressing clock neurons, and express a functional PDF receptor demonstrated by cAMP imaging. Silencing of AstA signalling and continuous input to AstA cells by tethered PDF changes the sleep/activity ratio in opposite directions but does not affect rhythmicity. Taken together, our results suggest that pleiotropic AstA signalling by a distinct neuronal and enteroendocrine AstA cell subset adapts the fly to a digestive energy saving state which can be modulated by PDF.
A Table Detection Method for PDF Documents Based on Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: 2016 12th IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS)

Because of the better performance of deep learning on many computer vision tasks, researchers in the area of document analysis and recognition begin to adopt this technique into their work. In this paper, we propose a novel method for table detection in PDF documents based on convolutional neutral networks, one of the most popular deep learning models. In the proposed method, some table like areas are selected first by some loose rules, and then the convolutional networks are built and refined to determine whether the selected areas are tables or not. Besides, the visual features of table areas are directly extracted and utilized through the convolutional networks, while the non visual information (e.g. characters, rendering instructions) contained in original PDF documents is also taken into consideration to help achieve better recognition results. The primary experimental results show that the approach is effective in table detection.
ZnO/clay nanoarchitectures: Synthesis, characterization and evaluation as photocatalysts

In this work, ZnO clay heterostructured materials have been prepared as novel nanoarchitectures by generation of ZnO nanoparticles (NP) on the surface of the clay mineral. The synthetic approach implies previous modification of the clay minerals by cation exchange with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) solutions. So, these organophilic solids can be easily dispersed in 2 propanol being further incorporated ZnO nanoparticles (NP) which in turn are formed from reaction of zinc acetate with KOH solution. Once this sol gel reaction is achieved, the intermediate ZnO/clay organo heterostructures can be submitted to a thermal treatment for the removal of the organic matter, which finally gives rise to the ZnO/clay nanoarchitectures. The resulting materials were characterized by XRD, FE SEM, TEM, UV vis, FTIR, TG and DTA, specific surface area and porosity determinations. These techniques clearly shown the structural and textural arrangements produced during the formation of the ZnO/clay nanoarchitectures. This novel type of materials act as efficient heterogeneous photocatalysts showing higher yield in the photocatalytic decomposition of methylene blue (MB) dye in water than the corresponding ZnO powder without clay prepared under similar experimental conditions.
'Spanish Antitrust Private Enforcement: Enhancing Consumer Collective Redress'

Following the decisions of the European Court of Justice in the Courage and Manfredi cases, victims of antitrust practices may seek redress before their national civil courts against the infringing businesses. In Spain, an empirical study on private enforcement of competition law collecting the cases brought before the Spanish courts from 1999 to 2012, it found that, despite the increase of antitrust private enforcement cases in this country in the last decade, only one out of 323 reported cases was brought by consumers. With this in mind, the dissertation aims to find out the reasons of the scarcity of consumer cases in the land of private antitrust enforcement in Spain, in order to palliate this situation. To this end, this dissertation surveys some of the most successful models in delivering redress across the world, such the US style of class action or the Dutch Settlement only opt out mechanism for mass torts, as well as the proposals recently made in the UK, with the ultimate aim of learning the appropriate measures that can effective and efficiently deliver redress to consumers harmed as a result of anti competitive practices. In the light of those successful modes, it is noted, argued and concluded that the debate has focused on encouraging group litigation rather than on articulating efficient mechanisms, such as ADR tools, to deliver redress with the involvement of the National Competition Authorities. Based on this premise, two proposals are made: redress schemes voluntarily implemented and certified by the Spanish Competition Authorities on a voluntary basis, and a Public Prosecutor led collective action articulated on opt out basis.
Antitrust Private Enforcement in Portugal and the EU: The Tortuous Topic of Tort

Directive 2014/104/EU was written on the assumption that the private enforcement of competition law is amatter of tort in all Member States.While doubts about this issue may have been brought up by some during the legislative process, they are not reflected in the final text. This assumption also underlies rules of EU law, notably in the field of private international law. This paper shows that this assumption may well prove to be wrong in several Member States, and highlights the consequences thereof. It will do so by focusing specifically on Portugal, but it is likely that the same legal issues will arise in other jurisdictions where civil law has a strong Germanic influence.
Antitrust Private Enforcement in Portugal and the EU: The Tortuous Topic of Tort

Directive 2014/104/EU was written on the assumption that the private enforcement of competition law is a matter of tort in all Member States. While doubts about this issue may have been brought up by some during the legislative process, they are not reflected in the final text. This assumption also underlies rules of EU law, notably in the field of private international law. This paper shows that this assumption may well prove to be wrong in several Member States, and highlights the consequences thereof. It will do so by focusing specifically on Portugal, but it is likely that the same legal issues will arise in other jurisdictions where civil law has a strong Germanic influence.
An Experimental Investigation of Enhancement Surface Quality of Micro holes for Be Cu Alloys Using Micro EDM with Multi diameter Electrode and Different Dielectrics

Be Cu alloys are known as high reliability engineered materials because of their high fatigue strength and hardness, excellent wear and corrosion resistance and non magnetic characteristics. So they are used in the field of the micro liquid floated gyroscope. Micro EDM provides a cost effectively methods to machine micro holes for Be Cu alloys because of their good thermal and electrical properties. The surface quality directly influences the micro fluid circulation in liquid floated gyroscope. The robustness of the liquid floated gyroscope can be improved with the surface quality of micro holes improved. In this paper a new method for enhancement surface quality of Be Cu alloys using multi diameter electrode and different dielectrics is proposed. This method consists of two processing stages which are carried out in sequence on the same machine tool with the same electrode but different dielectric medium. In the first stage, the micro hole was drilling by micro EDM using the front of the multi diameter electrode and deionized water as dielectric; in the second stage, with kerosene as dielectric, the large diameter part of multi diameter electrode was used to improve the surface quality of the micro hole. The characters of the surface obtained by micro EDM were measured with confocal laser scanning microscope and scanning electron microscope. The results show that the surface quality is improved by using the multi diameter electrode and deionized water and kerosene as dielectrics without changing the drilling time. It proves that this new method is possible and useful in the field of micro hole drilling for Be Cu alloys.
Experimental Investigations into the Effect of Process Parameters on Performance Measures of Sink EDM Process: A Review Year 2011 To 2015 and Future Work

Sink Electrical Discharge Machining (Sink EDM) is a one of the important NTM process wherein electrically conductive work pieces are melted, vaporized (thermal erosion) by immersing in a dielectric fluid; tool electrode and work piece between the DC supply two poles either positive or negative and electric discharges takes place produces very high temperature in few micro seconds. It is widely used in defense, aerospace, automotive, micro systems, mould and die making industries. Recently researchers have discovered many ways to improve process parameters for achieving higher MRR, lower TWR and better surface quality. The paper reviews the works carried out from 2011 to till 2015. It reports on the research related to improve performance measures. The primary objective of analysis is to optimize the process parameters with the help of taguchi robust design methodology, design of experiment (DOE) analysis of variance(ANOVA) signal to noise ratio(S/N ratio, analysis of means (ANOM) face centered or rotational central composite design (CCD) scanning electron microscopy (SEM) X ray diffraction (XRD) response surface methodology (RSM) gray relational analysis (GRA) atomic force microscopy (AFM) energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) multiple regression analysis (MRA) mass spectrometry, optical microscopy techniques, fractional factorial design(FFD) with CCD and finite element analysis (FEM) etc. In end of the paper suggestions useful for future work has been indicated.
Quantifying terrain factor using GIS applications for real estate property valuation

This thesis studies the use of GIS applications to derive adjustment figures for the terrain factor in property valuation tasks. It aims at suggesting a quantitative approach alternative to evaluate the terrain factor as opposed to traditional methods and current industry practices where terrain is qualitatively judged based on visual observation at site and subjected to individual opinion. In this study, the terrain factor is considered by analysing the slope and surface roughness elements of terrain. To achieve this, slope and surface roughness values are generated from available open source digital elevation models (DEMs) within the Esri ArcGIS software environment. For the purposes of this study, the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM developed by National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as well as the Advance Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global DEM jointly developed by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan (METI) and NASA, were used to derive terrain values. The output adjustments were tested on several hypothetical valuation cases, consisting of small and large properties, to see the effects of DEM resolution upon the results. In order to test the accuracy of the proposed adjustment outputs and applicability of the study methods, feedbacks from industry experts were collected via an online survey for analysis. Upon analysing the feedbacks, this study finds that industry experts are of the opinion that the terrain adjustments proposed by this method are reasonable for use in the industry practice, although some apprehensions were also noted, as property valuers tend to exercise caution when using automated valuation methods. The proposed method is simple to apply and does not require advanced knowledge of GIS functions to operate. Therefore, considering the positive feedback from the valuation community, it could pave way towards future incorporation of geostatistical methods/ components in value analysis.