nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Water availability as dominant control of heat stress responses in two contrasting tree species.
Venue: Tree physiology

Heat waves that trigger severe droughts are predicted to increase globally; however, we lack an understanding of how trees respond to the combined change of extreme temperatures and water availability. Here, we studied the impacts of two consecutive heat waves as well as post stress recovery in young Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb. Franco (Douglas fir) and Robinia pseudoacacia L. (black locust) growing under controlled conditions. Responses were compared under water supply close to the long term average and under reduced irrigation to represent drought. Exposure to high temperatures +10 degC above ambient) and vapour pressure deficit strongly affected the trees in terms of water relations, photosynthesis and growth. Douglas fir used water resources conservatively, and transpiration decreased in response to mild soil water limitation. In black locust, heat stress led to pronounced tree water deficits (stem diameter shrinkage) accompanied by leaf shedding to alleviate stress on the hydraulic system. The importance of water availability during the heat waves became further apparent by a concurrent decline in photosynthesis and stomatal conductance with increasing leaf temperatures in both species, reaching the lowest rates in the heat drought treatments. Stress severity determined both the speed and the amount of recovery. Upon release of stress, photosynthesis recovered rapidly in drought treated black locust, while it remained below control rates in heat (t 2.4, P 0.05) and heat drought stressed trees (t 2.96, P 0.05) In Douglas fir, photosynthesis recovered quickly, while water use efficiency increased in heat drought trees because stomatal conductance remained reduced (t 2.92, P 0.05) Moreover, Douglas fir was able to compensate for stem growth reductions following heat 40% and heat drought stress 68% but most likely at the expense of storage and other growth processes. Our results highlight the importance of studying heat waves alongside changes in water availability. They further suggest that we should look beyond the actual stress event to identify lagged effects and acclimation processes that may determine tree resilience in the long term.
Characteristics of the Spanish and English Language Self Efficacy to Manage Diabetes Scales
Venue: The Diabetes educator

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the Spanish language diabetes self efficacy scale (DSES S) and the English language version (DSES)  This study consists of secondary data from 3 randomized studies that administered the DSES S and DSES at 2 time points. The scales consist of 8 Likert type 10 point items. Principal component analysis was applied to determine if the scales were unitary or consisted of subscales. Univariate statistics were used to describe the scales. Sensitivity to change was measured by comparing randomized treatment with control groups, where the treatment included methods designed to enhance self efficacy. General linear models were used to examine the association between the scales and the 8 medical outcomes after controlling for demographic variables.  Principal component analysis indicated that there were 2 subscales for both versions: self efficacy for behaviors and self efficacy to manage blood levels and medical condition. The measures had similar means across the 3 studies, high internal consistent reliability, values distributed across the entire range, and they showed no evidence of floor effects and little evidence of ceiling effects. The measures were sensitive to change. They were associated with several health indicators and behaviors at baseline, and changes were associated with changes in health measures.  The self efficacy measures behaved consistently across the 3 studies and were highly reliable. Associations with medical indicators and behaviors suggested validity, although further study would be desirable to compare other measures of self efficacy for people with type 2 diabetes. These brief scales are appropriate for measuring self efficacy to manage diabetes.
Translation and Adaptation of Five English Language Self Report Health Measures to South Indian Kannada Language
Venue: Audiology research

The objective of this study was to translate and adapt five English self report health measures to a South Indian language Kannada. Currently, no systematically developed questionnaires assessing hearing rehabilitation outcomes are available for clinical or research use in Kannada. The questionnaires included for translation and adaptation were the hearing handicap questionnaire, the international outcome inventory hearing aids, the self assessment of communication, the participation scale, and the assessment of quality of life 4 dimensions. The questionnaires were translated and adapted using the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) guidelines. The five stages followed in the study included: i) forward translation; ii) common translation synthesis; iii) backward translation; iv) expert committee review; v) pre final testing. In this paper, in addition to a description of the process, we also highlight practical issues faced while adopting the procedure with an aim to help readers better understand the intricacies involved in such processes. This can be helpful to researchers and clinicians who are keen to adapt standard self report questionnaires from other languages to their native language.
GEMs: shared memory parallel programming for Node.js
Venue: OOPSLA 2016

JavaScript is the most popular programming language for client side Web applications, and Node.js has popularized the language for server side computing, too. In this domain, the minimal support for parallel programming remains however a major limitation. In this paper we introduce a novel parallel programming abstraction called Generic Messages (GEMs) GEMs allow one to combine message passing and shared memory parallelism, extending the classes of parallel applications that can be built with Node.js. GEMs have customizable semantics and enable several forms of thread safety, isolation, and concurrency control. GEMs are designed as convenient JavaScript abstractions that expose high level and safe parallelism models to the developer. Experiments show that GEMs outperform equivalent Node.js applications thanks to their usage of shared memory.
Generic messages: capability based shared memory parallelism for event loop systems
Venue: PPoPP 2016

Systems based on event loops have been popularized by Node.JS, and are becoming a key technology in the domain of cloud computing. Despite their popularity, such systems support only share nothing parallelism via message passing between parallel entities usually called workers. In this paper, we introduce a novel parallel programming abstraction called Generic Messages (GEMs) which enables shared memory parallelism for share nothing event based systems. A key characteristic of GEMs is that they enable workers to share state by specifying how the state can be accessed once it is shared. We call this aspect of the GEMs model capability based parallelism.
Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things
Venue: IEEE Access

Motivated by the recent explosion of interest around blockchains, we examine whether they make a good fit for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. Blockchains allow us to have a distributed peer to peer network where non trusting members can interact with each other without a trusted intermediary, in a verifiable manner. We review how this mechanism works and also look into smart contracts scripts that reside on the blockchain that allow for the automation of multi step processes. We then move into the IoT domain, and describe how a blockchain IoT combination: 1) facilitates the sharing of services and resources leading to the creation of a marketplace of services between devices and 2) allows us to automate in a cryptographically verifiable manner several existing, time consuming workflows. We also point out certain issues that should be considered before the deployment of a blockchain network in an IoT setting: from transactional privacy to the expected value of the digitized assets traded on the network. Wherever applicable, we identify solutions and workarounds. Our conclusion is that the blockchain IoT combination is powerful and can cause significant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel, distributed applications.
Exploring plant tissue culture to improve the production of phenolic compounds: A review

Plant tissue and organ culture has been extensively used from the beginning of the XX century for the study and comprehension of some primary biological mechanisms such as morphogenesis. However, with the increasing demand of the market for novel products derived from plants, in vitro culture became a reliable technique for the mass production of plant material. Moreover, the potential to use this technique for the production of some bioactive compounds, such as phenolic compounds, is immense since it allows the manipulation of the biosynthetic routes to increase the production and accumulation of specific compounds. This work intends to make a brief historical review of in vitro culture, highlighting its use for the production of bioactive compounds. Also, emphasizes the importance of phenolic compounds for the consumer as well reviews the metabolic pathways involved in its production in plant cells. Furthermore, it was carried out a comprehensive study on the work developed for the production of plant phenolic compounds in in vitro cultures, as well as on the type of elicitors used to increase of the same production; also a brief highlighting of the phenolic compounds which serve as elicitors. There are numerous reports directed to the production of phenolic extracts in in vitro plant cultures, however there is a lack in the production of individual phenolic compounds mainly due to the complexity of the biosynthetic routes and extraction procedures. Elicitation procedures are often used to increase the production of phenolics, achieving in most cases higher yields than in non elicitated cultures. The increasing production of bioactive phenolic extracts/compounds allows for their further applicability, namely in the industry of functional foods or in pharmaceutical/medical fields.
Study of Liquid Motion and Pressure Forces Applied on the Walls of Partially Filled Moving Tank

Various analytical, numerical and experimental studies have been developed to investigate the effect of liquid sloshing on the dynamic behavior of tank trucks. However, this type of studies is still complex and expensive. Mechanical models are used to simulate complex phenomena. Using these models in the simulation of deformable bodies provides both geometrical and physical aspects. In this study, a new 3D mechanical model is applied to simulate liquid motion in partially filled tank. This model, which is developed in previous study, is able to simulate lateral, longitudinal and vertical displacements. It may also evaluate pressure forces applied on the tank walls. The main idea of this model is to represent the liquid as a mesh of spring mass systems. The liquid was divided in multiple masses along each axis. The movement of each mass is simulated by displacement of its mass center; this constitutes the mesh nodes. Each adjacent two nodes are linked by flexible edges having a parallel spring and damper. The discretizing method of the liquid is applied; it is followed by computing of masses and initial coordinates of each node. We show, in detail, the method to obtain stiffness of the springs and damping coefficient of the dampers. Afterwards, equations of dynamic liquid motion are obtained. The system of equations is solved for some examples in order to compare results to the literature.
Performance Analysis of Gradient Based Nash Seeking Algorithms Under Quantization
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

This paper investigates the impact of quantized inter agent communications on the asymptotic and transient behavior of gradient based Nash seeking algorithms in non cooperative games. Using the information theoretic notion of entropy power, we establish a universal lower bound on the asymptotic rate of exponential mean square convergence to the Nash equilibrium (NE) This bound depends on the inter agent data rate and the local behavior of the agents' utility functions, and is independent of the quantizer structure. Next, we study transient performance and derive an upper bound on the average time required to settle inside a specified ball around the NE, under uniform quantization. Furthermore, we establish an upper bound on the probability that agents' actions lie outside this ball, and show that this bound decays double exponentially with time. Finally, we propose an adaptive quantization scheme that allows the gradient algorithm to converge to the NE despite quantized inter agent communications.
Factors Influencing Desired Family Size among Residents of Assela Town

Ethiopia, like most Countries in Sub Saharan Africa, is experiencing rapid population growth. The rapid growth prevents national development effort and affects maternal and child health. Different factors influence family size at different levels in different Societies. This Study assessed factors affecting family size preferences in Assela town where data was not available in this regard.  To determine desired family size and identify factors influencing family size among residents of Assela town, Ethiopia.  A community based cross sectional study was conducted in Assela town, between March 25 and April 4, 2013. A total of 428 residents were included in the study. The age of women ranged from 15 to 49 years and men above 15 years. The desired family size was determined using mean score. Respondents were asked to determine which factors were influential on their desired family size. Descriptive analysis, 95% CI and multiple linear regressions were used to see relationship between the independent variables and desired family size. After recoding the variables, logistic regression was used to see association between family size preference and predictor.  Mean desired family size for the study population was 3.8. The factors which had got higher magnitude and rank included household income and gender preference. In linear regression, statistically adjusting for the effects of socio demographic variables, respondents who had primary education desired higher family size than respondents who had more than secondary education (B=2.04, 95% C1=1.33, 2.70) at P value<0.01. Logistic regression shows, women who had good knowledge of fertility awareness method of contraception were found to be 1.7 times more likely to prefer small family size compared to women who had poor knowledge of fertility awareness method of contraception (AOR=1.71, 95% CI=1.08 2.72)  It is quite possible that increasing educational level and age at marriage might influence couples to desire lower family size. Women prefer small family size than their husbands. Educational level and knowledge of family planning affected family size preferences. Special effort to inform uneducated couples about knowledge of family planning should be focused. Fertility and family planning policies should aware of gender differences in family size preference and consider counseling couples about family size. In addition to quantitative research qualitative methods should be used to identify other factors influencing family size.
Like Mother( in Law) Like Daughter? Influence of the Older Generation's Fertility Behaviours on Women's Desired Family Size in Bihar, India
Venue: European journal of population Revue europeenne de demographie

This paper investigates the associations between preferred family size of women in rural Bihar, India and the fertility behaviours of their mother and mother in law. Scheduled interviews of 440 pairs of married women aged 16 34 years and their mothers in law were conducted in 2011. Preferred family size is first measured by Coombs scale, allowing us to capture latent desired number of children and then categorized into three categories (low, medium and high) Women's preferred family size is estimated using ordered logistic regression. We find that the family size preferences are not associated with mother's fertility but with mother's education. Mother in law's desired number of grandchildren is positively associated with women's preferred family size. However, when the woman has higher education than her mother in law, her preferred family size gets smaller, suggesting that education provides women with greater autonomy in their decision making on childbearing.
Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?
Venue: The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment

PurposeThis article introduces the special issue "LCA of nutrition and food consumption" and 14 papers selected from the Ninth LCA Food Conference in San Francisco in October 2014.Literature overviewThe scientific literature in the field of food LCA has increased more than ten times during the last 15 years. Nutrition has a high contribution to the total environmental impacts of consumption. Agricultural production often dominates the impacts, but its importance depends on the type of product, its production mode, transport, and processing. Local or domestic products reduce transports, but this advantage can be lost if the impacts of the raw material production are substantially increased. Diets containing less meat tend to be more environmentally friendly. Several studies concluded that respecting the dietary recommendations for a healthy diet would reduce the overall environmental impacts in the developed countries, although this is not a universal conclusion.Contribution of this special issueEight papers analyze the environmental impacts of catering and in house food consumption and impacts on sectoral and national levels; four papers presents tools and methods to better assess the impacts of nutrition and to implement the results in practical decision making. Finally, two contributions analyze the impacts of food waste and reduction options.Challenges for the environmental assessment of nutrition(i) Comprehensive assessment. Most studies only analyze climate impacts, although data, methods, and tools are readily available for a more comprehensive analysis. (ii) Assessment of sustainability. The social dimension remains the weakest pillar. (iii) Data availability is still an obstacle, but significant progress has been made in recent years. (iv) Lack of harmonization of methodologies makes comparisons among studies difficult. (v) Land use. Enhanced consideration of land use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services is required in LCA. (vi) Defining the functional unit including nutritional aspects, food security, and health needs further work. (vii) Consumer behavior. Its impacts are still little assessed. (viii) Communication of the environmental impact assessment results to stakeholders including policy makers and consumers needs additional efforts.Research needs and outlook(i) Development of holistic approaches for the assessment of sustainable food systems, (ii) assessment of land use related impacts and inclusion of ecosystem services, (iii) exploration of LCA results for policy support and decision making, (iv) investigation of food consumption patterns in developing and emerging countries, and (v) harmonization of databases.
Empowering Leadership and Effective Collaboration in Geographically Dispersed Teams

Our research integrates theoretical perspectives related to distributed leadership in geographically dispersed teams with empowering leadership theory to build a multilevel model of virtual collaboration and performance in dispersed teams. We test the model with procurement teams in a major multinational corporation. Our results show a significant cross level effect of empowering team leadership, such that under conditions of high empowering team leadership, a team member's virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT SJ) is positively and significantly associated with his or her virtual collaboration behaviors and also indirectly with his or her individual performance in the team. At the team level, our findings also suggest that the impact of empowering leadership on team members' aggregate virtual collaboration, and indirectly on team performance, increases at higher levels of team dispersion. These findings shed important light on the role of team leadership in fostering effective collaboration and performance of geographically dispersed virtual teams.
Enabling Shared Leadership in Virtual Project Teams: A Practitioners' Guide

Many virtual project teams perform better when leadership is shared (rather than centralized with the formal team leader) however, team leaders are often neither prepared to identify shared leadership potential nor to actually share leadership responsibility. Based on a study of 96 globally dispersed software development teams we show that team leaders tend to underestimate the team members' capacity to lead themselves. As a consequence, these leaders monopolize decision making authority and provide insufficient levels of autonomy for team members to tackle their tasks. Preventing the team members from unfolding their true potential, these leaders unconsciously jeopardize virtual team performance. Paradoxically, it is thus team leaders themselves hindering leadership effectiveness in virtual teams.
Emergent Leadership in Virtual Teams: A Multilevel Investigation of Individual Communication and Team Dispersion Antecedents

While considerable research has been conducted on understanding why individuals are perceived as leaders in traditional work contexts, much less is known about how individual difference variables influence leader perceptions in a virtual environment. In this study, we examine this issue by investigating the effects of two communication related constructs (communication apprehension [CA] and text based communication ability [TBCA] on leadership emergence in virtual teams. We also examine how leadership emergence is affected by team dispersion: specifically, overall team configuration and dyadic team member co location. Predicated on adaptive structuration theory (DeSanctis Poole, 1994) we propose a theoretical model that outlines the effects of the individual difference attributes and team dispersion variables on leadership emergence. Results of an experiment testing the model with 84 four person teams of varying levels of team member dispersion suggest that CA and TBCA have significant relationships with leadership emergence, as well as team configuration and team member co location.