nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
The Clinical Significance of Uric Acid and Complement Activation in the Progression of IgA Nephropathy
Venue: Kidney and Blood Pressure Research

The aim of this study is to investigate the utility of clinical [age, gender, mean arterial pressure (MAP) and laboratory parameters [eGFR, hemoglobin (Hgb) serum levels of creatinine, uric acid, albumin, proteinuria, hematuria] and also histopathological lesions (Oxford classification parameters, crescents, intensity and pattern of staining for C3, C1Q, IgA, IgG, IgM) as progression markers in patients with IgA Nephropathy (IgAN)  A total of 111 IgAN patients with a follow up period >1 year or who reached kidney failure [GFR category G5 chronic kidney disease (CKD) <1 year were investigated. Primary endpoint was the development of kidney failure or eGFR decline =50% from the baseline. Kaplan Meier and Cox proportional hazards analyses were performed.  Mean follow up period was 33+ 29 months. Thirty seven (33.3% patients progressed to kidney failure and 4 (3.6% patients developed eGFR decline =50% from the baseline after a median of 23 and 65 months, respectively. In multivariate Cox regression analysis, baseline levels of Hgb (HR:0.782, 95% CI 0.559 0.973, p=0.037) serum uric acid (HR:1.293, 95% CI 1.023 1.621, p=0.046) eGFR (HR:0.966, 95% CI 0.947 0.984, p=0.004) and intensity of C3 staining (HR:1.550, 95% CI 1.198 1.976, p=0.049) predicted primary endpoint. Serum uric acid level was associated independently with T score (b=0.303, p=0.005) in patients with eGFR>30 ml/min/m2.  Hyperuricemia and the deposition of C3 are independent risk factors for IgAN progression.
University Timetable Generator Using Tabu Search

This report is based on University Timetable Generator by using Tabu Search algorithm. It helps to generate a course schedule and an exam schedule for a University. Every university faces a different set of problem while preparing course schedule and exam schedule. There are lots of constraints while making a scheduler. And for this reason, students suffer much as well as faculties. This report is based on discussion about an automated timetable generator for a University by using Tabu Search algorithm. Tabu Search is a meta heuristic procedure for solving optimization problems. Tabu Search deals with a sub optimal initial solution. By analyzing the search space and averts inessential exploration, it optimists this solution and keeps the list of recently visited area in a Tabu list. This helps to solve these problems within a reasonable time and gives a feasible solution than any manual system. For a University, we have found that preparing exam schedule, course schedule, student assessment, room assignment with required resources are quite complex. But for all of them, we analyze that the Tabu Search technique is an essential method for getting a feasible solution. In this paper, we describe how Tabu Search works and how to get a feasible solution by using this algorithm.
Sennoside A, derived from the traditional chinese medicine plant Rheum L. is a new dual HIV 1 inhibitor effective on HIV 1 replication.
Venue: Phytomedicine international journal of phytotherapy and phytopharmacology

Despite the availability of effective antiretroviral therapies, drugs for HIV 1 treatment with new mode of action are still needed. An innovative approach is aimed to identify dual HIV 1 inhibitors, small molecules that can inhibit two viral functions at the same time. Rhubarb, originated from Rheum palmatum L. and Rheum officinale Baill. is one of the earliest and most commonly used medicinal plants in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practice. We wanted to explore TCM for the identification of new chemical scaffolds with dual action abilities against HIV 1.  R. palmatum L. and R. officinale Baill. extracts along with their main single isolated constituents anthraquinone derivatives were tested on both HIV 1 Reverse Transcriptase (RT) associated DNA Polymerase (RDDP) and Ribonuclease H (RNase H) activities in biochemical assays. Active compounds were then assayed for their effects on HIV 1 mutated RTs, integrase (IN) and viral replication.  Both R. palmatum L. and R. officinale Baill. extracts inhibited the HIV 1 RT associated RNase H activity. Among the isolated constituents, Sennoside A and B were effective on both RDDP and RNase H RT associated functions in biochemical assays. Sennoside A was less potent when tested on K103N, Y181C, Y188L, N474A and Q475A mutated RTs, suggesting the involvement of two RT binding sites for its antiviral activity. Sennoside A affected also HIV 1 IN activity in vitro and HIV 1 replication in cell based assays. Viral DNA production and time of addition studies showed that Sennoside A targets the HIV 1 reverse transcription process.  Sennoside A is a new scaffold for the development of HIV 1 dual RT inhibitors.
A novel five variable refined plate theory for vibration analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates

In this article, a new five variable refined plate theory for the free vibration analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates is developed. By dividing the transverse displacement into bending, shear, and thickness stretching parts, the number of unknowns and governing equations of the present theory is reduced, and hence, makes it simple to use. Indeed, the number of unknown functions involved in the present theory is only five, as opposed to six or more in the case of other shear and normal deformation theories. The theory accounts for hyperbolic distribution of the transverse shear strains, and satisfies the zero traction boundary conditions on the surfaces of the plate without using a shear correction factor. Two common types of functionally graded material (FGM) sandwich plates, namely, the sandwich with FGM facesheet and homogeneous core and the sandwich with homogeneous facesheet and FGM core, are considered. The equations of motion are obtained using Hamilton's principle. Numerical results of the present theory are compared with three dimensional elasticity solutions and other higher order theories reported in the literature. It can be concluded that the proposed theory is accurate and efficient in predicting the free vibration response of functionally graded sandwich plates.
Free vibration analysis of nonlocal strain gradient beams made of functionally graded material

A size dependent Timoshenko beam model, which accounts for through thickness power law variation of a two constituent functionally graded (FG) material, is derived in the framework of the nonlocal strain gradient theory. The equations of motion and boundary conditions are deduced by employing the Hamilton principle. The model contains a material length scale parameter introduced to consider the significance of strain gradient stress field and a nonlocal parameter introduced to consider the significance of nonlocal elastic stress field. The influence of through thickness power law variation and size dependent parameters on vibration is investigated. It is found that through thickness grading of the FG material in the beam has a great effect on the natural frequencies and therefore can be used to control the natural frequencies. The vibration frequencies can generally increase with the increasing material length scale parameter or the decreasing nonlocal parameter. When the material characteristic parameter is smaller than the nonlocal parameter, the FG beam exerts a stiffness softening effect. When the material characteristic parameter is larger than the nonlocal parameter, the FG beam exerts a stiffness hardening effect.
Three dimensional culture systems in cancer research: Focus on tumor spheroid model.
Venue: Pharmacology therapeutics

Cancer cells propagated in three dimensional (3D) culture systems exhibit physiologically relevant cell cell and cell matrix interactions, gene expression and signaling pathway profiles, heterogeneity and structural complexity that reflect in vivo tumors. In recent years, development of various 3D models has improved the study of host tumor interaction and use of high throughput screening platforms for anti cancer drug discovery and development. This review attempts to summarize the various 3D culture systems, with an emphasis on the most well characterized and widely applied model multicellular tumor spheroids. This review also highlights the various techniques to generate tumor spheroids, methods to characterize them, and its applicability in cancer research.
Assay Establishment and Validation of a High Throughput Screening Platform for Three Dimensional Patient Derived Colon Cancer Organoid Cultures
Venue: Journal of biomolecular screening

The application of patient derived three dimensional culture systems as disease specific drug sensitivity models has enormous potential to connect compound screening and clinical trials. However, the implementation of complex cell based assay systems in drug discovery requires reliable and robust screening platforms. Here we describe the establishment of an automated platform in 384 well format for three dimensional organoid cultures derived from colon cancer patients. Single cells were embedded in an extracellular matrix by an automated workflow and subsequently self organized into organoid structures within 4 days of culture before being exposed to compound treatment. We performed validation of assay robustness and reproducibility via plate uniformity and replicate experiment studies. After assay optimization, the patient derived organoid platform passed all relevant validation criteria. In addition, we introduced a streamlined plate uniformity study to evaluate patient derived colon cancer samples from different donors. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of using patient derived tumor samples for high throughput assays and their integration as disease specific models in drug discovery.
The role of Effective Supervision on academic performance of Senior High Schools in Ghana

In all facets of life, supervision has become a cross cutting edge tool and a pivot around which performance revolves. There are widespread and on going debates centred on the influence of effective supervision on academic performance in our academic institutions. This study examined the role of supervision on academic performance in Senior High Schools (SHS) in Ghana. The study was based on the collegial model of educational management and the supervision model, Theory Y as proposed by Douglas McGregor This study employed the descriptive research survey design. Through a questionnaire, data analysed was collected from 963 respondents who were purposively selected from randomised schools in each region comprising of headmasters, their assistants and heads of department of 155 SHSs across Ghana. The WAEC results (2006 2009 and 2011) of the sampled schools were analysed. Reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was Cronbach's alpha (a) 0.826. The Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) version 18 software was employed in the analyses of data using, mean, standard deviation, correlation and independent t test. The study revealed that there was a positive weak significant relationship between supervision roles of heads and academic performance of students. Moreso, there was a positive weak significant relationship between gender of heads and their supervision roles. The study recommended that supervision should be intensified in SHS. Heads of SHS should be re orientated in the new trends of supervision in schools.
Handwriting Recognition with Large Multidimensional Long Short Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks
Venue: 2016 15th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR)

Multidimensional long short term memory recurrent neural networks achieve impressive results for handwriting recognition. However, with current CPU based implementations, their training is very expensive and thus their capacity has so far been limited. We release an efficient GPU based implementation which greatly reduces training times by processing the input in a diagonal wise fashion. We use this implementation to explore deeper and wider architectures than previously used for handwriting recognition and show that especially the depth plays an important role. We outperform state of the art results on two databases with a deep multidimensional network.
Offline cursive Urdu Nastaliq script recognition using multidimensional recurrent neural networks
Venue: Neurocomputing

Optical Character Recognition of cursive scripts remains a challenging task due to a large number of character shapes, inter and intra word overlaps, context sensitivity and diagonality of text. This paper presents an implicit segmentation based recognition system for Urdu text lines in Nastaliq script. The proposed technique relies on sliding overlapped windows on lines of text and extracting a set of statistical features. The extracted features are fed to a multi dimensional long short term memory recurrent neural network (MDLSTM RNN) with a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) output layer that labels the character sequences. Experimental study of the proposed technique is carried out on the standard Urdu Printed Text line Images (UPTI) database which comprises 10,000 text lines in Nastaliq font. Evaluations under different experimental settings realize promising recognition rates with a highest character recognition rate of 96.40%
Applications of Experiential Learning in Science Education Non Formal Contexts

Education represents a process in constant evolution, which continuously adapts its structure and vision, objectives and strategies in order to successfully meet the challenges and significant changes occurring in society, but also in the psychical structure of its actors. As a suitable alternative to traditional learning, the experiential learning directly capitalizes skills and attitudes related to critical thinking and problem solving, being less anchored in mechanical learning and memorizing. The experiential learning includes learning by doing, through experience, through exploration and discovery, having the aim to teach the student how to learn, to develop his/her skills by individual work, to emphasize his/her creativity and originality, but also its self confidence. The paper has an exploratory character, its aim being to discover how experiential learning can influence the student's motivation, knowledge transfer, creativity, self confidence and how may be created learning opportunities, which can influence development of metacognitive skills, practical and independent work skills, exploratory skills and efficient learning through non formal activities. The paper also highlights on the students' perception related to their involvement in a series of non formal activities, organized in the frame of the EU FP7 project entitled: "IRRESISTIBLE Including Responsible Research and Innovation in Cutting Edge Science and Inquiry based Science Education to Improve Teacher's Ability of Bridging Learning Environments" and dedicated to the promoting of cutting edge scientific subjects, together with the disseminating of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) dimensions. The feed back offered by the students who expressed their degree of interest and their openness to such activities led to the conclusion that those contexts could create proper opportunities to facilitate the knowledge transfer, emphasizing more on developing practical skills and producing a sustainable learning.
Quantum Steganography for Multi party Covert Communication

A novel multi party quantum steganography protocol based on quantum secret sharing is proposed in this paper. Hidden channels are built in HBB and improved HBB quantum secret sharing protocols for secret messages transmitting, via the entanglement swapping of GHZ states and Bell measurement. Compared with the original protocol, there are only a few different GHZ sates transmitted in the proposed protocol, making the hidden channel with good imperceptibility. Moreover, the secret messages keep secure even when the hidden channel is under the attack from the dishonest participators, for the sub secretmessages distributed randomly to different participators. With good imperceptibility and security, the capacity of proposed protocol is higher than previous multi party quantum steganography protocol.
A Novel Self adaptive Quantum Steganography Based on Quantum Image and Quantum Watermark
Venue: ICCCS

Quantum steganography is an important branch of quantum information hiding. It integrates quantum secure communication technology and classical steganography, which embeds the secret information into public channel for covert communication. In this paper, based on the novel enhanced quantum representation (NEQR) a new quantum steganography algorithm is proposed to embed the secret information into the quantum carrier image and the quantum watermark image. The second least significant qubit (LSQb) of quantum carrier image is replaced with the secret information by implementing quantum circuit for good imperceptibility. Compared with the previous quantum steganography algorithms, the key shared by communicating parties can recover the secret information even if it was tampered while the tampers can be located effectively as well. In the experiment result, the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) is calculated with different quantum carrier images and quantum watermark images, which demonstrates the imperceptibility is good.
REVITALIZATION OF ACEH CUSTOMS IN FORMAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The study aims to strengthen the role of school in transforming Aceh customs. Schools as an official formal education institution, dealing with two issues namely their feelings cannot be ignored between customs and culture is a case that should be maintained continuously, and schools have to collide with system reining the power of cruising and creativity of education institutions in developing the value of custom. In addition, schools have a desire to interpret Aceh customary by themselves. Those things are done in two issues; First, the lack of teacher understanding customs well and perfectly. Secondly, low supported funding supporting every work in revitalization of custom. The study found that revitalization and strategy in developing in formal schools are undergone by two ways; theory and practice. Theoretically, schools include custom materials through several lessons. Then practically, schools encourage students' creativity in many ways, both in school activities internally and externally.
Black's educational law and formal education in Brazil

This article is the result of seeking to investigate and understand the process of implementation of educational laws that act on black lives in the formal education process. It shows the gap between the proclaimed and planned and the reality. Thus, we understand that the laws studied here represent a movement of tension towards the curriculum and the school democratization, because it allows that less visible and valued populations in this institution and in their social practices are recognized in their stories, express themselves actively participate in the constant construction and reconstruction of school routine.
The Limitations of Deep Learning in Adversarial Settings
Venue: 2016 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)

Deep learning takes advantage of large datasets and computationally efficient training algorithms to outperform other approaches at various machine learning tasks. However, imperfections in the training phase of deep neural networks make them vulnerable to adversarial samples: inputs crafted by adversaries with the intent of causing deep neural networks to misclassify. In this work, we formalize the space of adversaries against deep neural networks (DNNs) and introduce a novel class of algorithms to craft adversarial samples based on a precise understanding of the mapping between inputs and outputs of DNNs. In an application to computer vision, we show that our algorithms can reliably produce samples correctly classified by human subjects but misclassified in specific targets by a DNN with a 97% adversarial success rate while only modifying on average 4.02% of the input features per sample. We then evaluate the vulnerability of different sample classes to adversarial perturbations by defining a hardness measure. Finally, we describe preliminary work outlining defenses against adversarial samples by defining a predictive measure of distance between a benign input and a target classification.
Colorful Image Colorization
Venue: ECCV

Given a grayscale photograph as input, this paper attacks the problem of hallucinating a plausible color version of the photograph. This problem is clearly underconstrained, so previous approaches have either relied on significant user interaction or resulted in desaturated colorizations. We propose a fully automatic approach that produces vibrant and realistic colorizations. We embrace the underlying uncertainty of the problem by posing it as a classification task and use class rebalancing at training time to increase the diversity of colors in the result. The system is implemented as a feed forward pass in a CNN at test time and is trained on over a million color images. We evaluate our algorithm using a "colorization Turing test," asking human participants to choose between a generated and ground truth color image. Our method successfully fools humans on 32 of the trials, significantly higher than previous methods. Moreover, we show that colorization can be a powerful pretext task for self supervised feature learning, acting as a cross channel encoder. This approach results in state of the art performance on several feature learning benchmarks.
Mo2N: An efficient non noble metal cocatalyst on CdS for enhanced photocatalytic H2 evolution under visible light irradiation

Mo 2 N as an efficient non noble metal cocatalyst was firstly reported for improving photocatalytic H 2 evolution under visible light irradiation. The activity of 2.0% Mo 2 N/CdS is 6.1 times of CdS alone and 1.4 times of 1.0% Pt/CdS. The longevity test shows the Mo 2 N/CdS is very stable in 42 h. After 42 h, the activity of Mo 2 N/CdS gradually decreases. However, even after 90 h, the activity of Mo 2 N/CdS also keeps the 49% of that fresh catalyst. The molybdenum oxides, CdMoO 4 on the surface of Mo 2 N may combine CdS with Mo 2 N closely, protect Mo 2 N cocatalyst and inhibit the reversible reaction of H 2 production, thus increase the photocatalytic activity and the stability of Mo 2 N/CdS. This study demonstrates Mo 2 N is a new efficient low cost non noble metal cocatalyst in photocatalytic H 2 evolution.
Homocysteine, B Vitamins, and Cognitive Impairment.
Venue: Annual review of nutrition

Moderately elevated plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) is a strong modifiable risk factor for vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Prospectively, elevated tHcy is associated with cognitive decline, white matter damage, brain atrophy, neurofibrillary tangles, and dementia. Most homocysteine lowering trials with folate and vitamins B6 and/or B12 tested as protective agents against cognitive decline were poorly designed by including subjects unlikely to benefit during the trial period. In contrast, trials in high risk subjects, which have taken into account the baseline B vitamin status, show a slowing of cognitive decline and of atrophy in critical brain regions, results that are consistent with modification of the Alzheimer's disease process. Homocysteine may interact with both risk factors and protective factors, thereby identifying people at risk but also providing potential strategies for early intervention. Public health steps to slow cognitive decline should be promoted in individuals who are at risk of dementia, and more trials are needed to see if simple interventions with nutrients can prevent progression to dementia.