nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Social media usage and its impact on reading habits: a study of Koforidua Polytechnic students
Venue: Int. J. Soc. Media Interact. Learn. Environ.

The study investigates the use of social media by students of Koforidua Polytechnic and its impact on their reading habits. Questionnaire was administered on a sample of the students to gather data and information. Out of a total of 1,050 questionnaires administered, 852 responses were retrieved representing 80.98% The study revealed that 92.72/ of respondents visit social media sites every day and spent between 30 minutes to three hours, while 66.78% respondents indicated that the use of social media affected their reading habits. In addition, 81.92% of the respondents indicated they had not read novels or fiction within the last two semesters. The study revealed that there is a relationship between time spent on social media and reading habits and that constant use of social media leads to low reading habits. The study recommended that faculty staff should encourage students to spend less time on the social media sites and rather should be encouraged to channel more of their time and energies towards educational purposes.
Impact analysis of traffic related air pollution based on real time traffic and basic meteorological information.
Venue: Journal of environmental management

With the rapid development of urbanization and motorization in China, traffic related air pollution has become a major component of air pollution which constantly jeopardizes public health. This study proposes an integrated framework for estimating the concentration of traffic related air pollution with real time traffic and basic meteorological information and also for further evaluating the impact of traffic related air pollution. First, based on the vehicle emission factor models sensitive to traffic status, traffic emissions are calculated according to the real time link based average traffic speed, traffic volume, and vehicular fleet composition. Then, based on differences in meteorological conditions, traffic pollution sources are divided into line sources and point sources, and the corresponding methods to determine the dynamic affecting areas are also proposed. Subsequently, with basic meteorological data, Gaussian dispersion model and puff integration model are applied respectively to estimate the concentration of traffic related air pollution. Finally, the proposed estimating framework is applied to calculate the distribution of CO concentration in the main area of Beijing, and the population exposure is also calculated to evaluate the impact of traffic related air pollution on public health. Results show that there is a certain correlation between traffic indicators (i.e. traffic speed and traffic intensity) of the affecting area and traffic related CO concentration of the target grid, which indicates the methods to determine the affecting areas are reliable. Furthermore, the reliability of the proposed estimating framework is verified by comparing the predicted and the observed ambient CO concentration. In addition, results also show that the traffic related CO concentration is higher in morning and evening peak hours, and has a heavier impact on public health within the Fourth Ring Road of Beijing due to higher population density and higher CO concentration under calm wind condition in this area.
Modal Activity Based Vehicle Energy/Emissions Estimation Using Sparse Mobile Sensor Data

Microscopic energy/emissions models have emerged as a promising tool for evaluating the environmental impact of the traffic, but require high resolution speed/acceleration rate profile as the input. The massive but low frequency global positioning system (GPS) data from commercial real time traffic and navigation applications could be a potential data source for those models. In this paper, the authors developed a modal activity based method to estimate the vehicular emissions and energy consumption using sparse mobile sensor data. The proposed model estimate the vehicle dynamic state stochastically based on GPS data and traffic knowledge. The Speed and acceleration rate profile estimation models are developed for both acceleration/deceleration process and cruising process. The Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) model is then applied to calculate the emissions and energy consumption. The proposed model is calibrated with Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) Lankershim dataset, and validated with the data from another time period. Numerical results show that the performance is good for emission estimation. Especially for aggregated measures over a short time period, the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is about 4% 8%
Integrated monitoring for environmental health impact assessment related to the genotoxic effects of vehicular pollution in Uberlandia, Brazil
Venue: Environmental Science and Pollution Research

The development of parameters to explore the link between air related diseases and their significant driving forces is an important aim in terms of national economics and public health. In this study, we did an integrated analysis involving multiple environmental health indicators from Uberlandia, Brazil, registered before and during a period when the Brazilian government reduced taxes on new cars in a bid to bolster local manufacturing. In addition, the present study utilized Driving Force Pressure State Exposure Effect Action (DPSEEA) frameworks to evaluate correlations in environmental health indicators over 10 years (2004 2013) in which the Brazilian government reduced vehicle production taxes beginning in 2008. Significant correlations in all indicators selected were found from 2008 to 2013, corresponding to the tax reduction on new vehicles. The frequency of micronuclei (MN) was significantly higher in the city center compared to the reference site, with the highest MN levels observed during the period of reduced taxes. Results reinforced the need to adopt air quality monitoring programs in major cities.
Variable density based clustering
Venue: 2016 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)

The class of density based clustering algorithms excels in detecting clusters of arbitrary shape. DBSCAN, the most common representative, has been demonstrated to be useful in a lot of applications. Still the algorithm suffers from two drawbacks, namely a non trivial parameter estimation for a given dataset and the limitation to data sets with constant cluster density. The first was already addressed in our previous work, where we presented two hierarchical implementations of DBSCAN. In combination with a simple optimization procedure, those proofed to be useful in detecting appropriate parameter estimates based on an objective function. However, our algorithm was not capable of producing clusters of differing density. In this work we will use the hierarchical information to extract variable density clusters and nested cluster structures. Our evaluation shows that the clustering approach based on edge lengths of the dendrogram or based on area estimates successfully detects clusters of arbitrary shape and density.
Preliminary survey on site adaptation techniques for satellite derived and reanalysis solar radiation datasets

At any site, the bankability of a projected solar power plant largely depends on the accuracy and general quality of the solar radiation data generated during the solar resource assessment phase. The term "site adaptation" has recently started to be used in the framework of solar energy projects to refer to the improvement that can be achieved in satellite derived solar irradiance and model data when short term local ground measurements are used to correct systematic errors and bias in the original dataset. This contribution presents a preliminary survey of different possible techniques that can improve long term satellite derived and model derived solar radiation data through the use of short term on site ground measurements. The possible approaches that are reported here may be applied in different ways, depending on the origin and characteristics of the uncertainties in the modeled data. This work, which is the first step of a forthcoming in depth assessment of methodologies for site adaptation, has been done within the framework of the International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling Programme Task 46 "Solar Resource Assessment and Forecasting"
The SATRAM Timepix spacecraft payload in open space on board the Proba V satellite for wide range radiation monitoring in LEO orbit

The Space Application of Timepix based Radiation Monitor (SATRAM) is a spacecraft platform radiation monitor on board the Proba V satellite launched in an 820 km altitude low Earth orbit in 2013. The is a technology demonstration payload is based on the Timepix chip equipped with a 300 um silicon sensor with signal threshold of 8 keV/pixel to low energy X rays and all charged particles including minimum ionizing particles. For X rays the energy working range is 10 30 keV. Event count rates can be up to 106 cnt/(cm2 s) for detailed event by event analysis or over 1011 cnt/(cm2 s) for particle counting only measurements. The single quantum sensitivity (zero dark current noise level) combined with per pixel spectrometry and micro scale pattern recognition analysis of single particle tracks enables the composition (particle type) and spectral characterization (energy loss) of mixed radiation fields to be determined. Timepix's pixel granularity and particle tracking capability also provides directional sensitivity for energetic charged particles. The payload detector response operates in wide dynamic range in terms of absorbed dose starting from single particle doses in the pGy level, particle count rate up to 106 10 /cm2/s and particle energy loss (threshold at 150 eV/um) The flight model in orbit was successfully commissioned in 2013 and has been sampling the space radiation field in the satellite environment along its orbit at a rate of several frames per minute of varying exposure time. This article describes the design and operation of SATRAM together with an overview of the response and resolving power to the mixed radiation field including summary of the principal data products (dose rate, equivalent dose rate, particle type count rate) The preliminary evaluation of response of the embedded Timepix detector to space radiation in the satellite environment is presented together with first results in the form of a detailed visualization of the mixed radiation field at the position of the payload and resulting spatial and time correlated radiation maps of cumulative dose rate along the satellite orbit.
Everolimus Eluting Stents or Bypass Surgery for Left Main Coronary Artery Disease.
Venue: The New England journal of medicine

Patients with obstructive left main coronary artery disease are usually treated with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) Randomized trials have suggested that drug eluting stents may be an acceptable alternative to CABG in selected patients with left main coronary disease.  We randomly assigned 1905 eligible patients with left main coronary artery disease of low or intermediate anatomical complexity to undergo either percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with fluoropolymer based cobalt chromium everolimus eluting stents (PCI group, 948 patients) or CABG (CABG group, 957 patients) Anatomic complexity was assessed at the sites and defined by a Synergy between Percutaneous Coronary Intervention with Taxus and Cardiac Surgery (SYNTAX) score of 32 or lower (the SYNTAX score reflects a comprehensive angiographic assessment of the coronary vasculature, with 0 as the lowest score and higher scores [no upper limit] indicating more complex coronary anatomy) The primary end point was the rate of a composite of death from any cause, stroke, or myocardial infarction at 3 years, and the trial was powered for noninferiority testing of the primary end point (noninferiority margin, 4.2 percentage points) Major secondary end points included the rate of a composite of death from any cause, stroke, or myocardial infarction at 30 days and the rate of a composite of death, stroke, myocardial infarction, or ischemia driven revascularization at 3 years. Event rates were based on Kaplan Meier estimates in time to first event analyses.  At 3 years, a primary end point event had occurred in 15.4% of the patients in the PCI group and in 14.7% of the patients in the CABG group (difference, 0.7 percentage points; upper 97.5% confidence limit, 4.0 percentage points; P=0.02 for noninferiority; hazard ratio, 1.00; 95% confidence interval, 0.79 to 1.26; P=0.98 for superiority) The secondary end point event of death, stroke, or myocardial infarction at 30 days occurred in 4.9% of the patients in the PCI group and in 7.9% in the CABG group (P<0.001 for noninferiority, P=0.008 for superiority) The secondary end point event of death, stroke, myocardial infarction, or ischemia driven revascularization at 3 years occurred in 23.1% of the patients in the PCI group and in 19.1% in the CABG group (P=0.01 for noninferiority, P=0.10 for superiority)  In patients with left main coronary artery disease and low or intermediate SYNTAX scores by site assessment, PCI with everolimus eluting stents was noninferior to CABG with respect to the rate of the composite end point of death, stroke, or myocardial infarction at 3 years.
Everolimus for the treatment of advanced, non functional neuroendocrine tumours of the lung or gastrointestinal tract (RADIANT 4) a randomised, placebo controlled, phase 3 study
Venue: The Lancet

Effective systemic therapies for patients with advanced, progressive neuroendocrine tumours of the lung or gastrointestinal tract are scarce. We aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of everolimus compared with placebo in this patient population.  In the randomised, double blind, placebo controlled, phase 3 RADIANT 4 trial, adult patients (aged =18 years) with advanced, progressive, well differentiated, non functional neuroendocrine tumours of lung or gastrointestinal origin were enrolled from 97 centres in 25 countries worldwide. Eligible patients were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio by an interactive voice response system to receive everolimus 10 mg per day orally or identical placebo, both with supportive care. Patients were stratified by tumour origin, performance status, and previous somatostatin analogue treatment. Patients, investigators, and the study sponsor were masked to treatment assignment. The primary endpoint was progression free survival assessed by central radiology review, analysed by intention to treat. Overall survival was a key secondary endpoint.  Between April 3, 2012, and Aug 23, 2013, a total of 302 patients were enrolled, of whom 205 were allocated to everolimus 10 mg per day and 97 to placebo. Median progression free survival was 11*0 months (95% CI 9*2 13*3) in the everolimus group and 3*9 months (3*6 7*4) in the placebo group. Everolimus was associated with a 52% reduction in the estimated risk of progression or death (hazard ratio [HR] 0*48 [95% CI 0*35 0*67] p<0*00001) Although not statistically significant, the results of the first pre planned interim overall survival analysis indicated that everolimus might be associated with a reduction in the risk of death (HR 0*64 [95% CI 0*40 1*05] one sided p=0*037, whereas the boundary for statistical significance was 0*0002) Grade 3 or 4 drug related adverse events were infrequent and included stomatitis (in 18 [9% of 202 patients in the everolimus group vs 0 of 98 in the placebo group) diarrhoea (15 [7% vs 2 [2% infections (14 [7% vs 0) anaemia (8 [4% vs 1 [1% fatigue (7 [3% vs 1 [1% and hyperglycaemia (7 [3% vs 0) INTERPRETATION Treatment with everolimus was associated with significant improvement in progression free survival in patients with progressive lung or gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumours. The safety findings were consistent with the known side effect profile of everolimus. Everolimus is the first targeted agent to show robust anti tumour activity with acceptable tolerability across a broad range of neuroendocrine tumours, including those arising from the pancreas, lung, and gastrointestinal tract.
A NOTE ON BEST PROXIMITY POINTS FOR $P$ SUMMING CYCLIC ORBITAL MEIR KEELER CONTRACTIONS

The classical Banach contraction theorem has a lot of applications  One of the interesting generalizations of Banach contraction is the well known Meir Keeler contraction theorem  In  the following notions are introduced.If A and B are non empty subsets of a metric space (X, d) and if T AB AB is such that T (A) T (B) and T (B) T (A) then T is called a cyclic map. A point x AB is called a best proximity point if d(x, Tx) dist(A,B) where dist(A,B) inf{d(x, y) x A and y B} In this paper a best proximity point is obtained for a map called cyclic contraction. It is further generalized in  by introducing a map called cyclic Meir Keeler contraction.
Students' Experiences of Blended Learning in Accounting Education at the Durban University of Technology.

The Durban University of Technology guided by the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQC) identified e learning as one of their objectives in the curriculum renewal process. To explore the impact of e learning, blended learning, a combination of online and face to face interaction was implemented as a teaching approach in Accounting Education. This paper explores Accounting Education students' experiences of blended learning The study was conducted using an action research methodology. Data was collected from the 2011 fourth year cohort of Accounting Education students who were exposed to blended learning for a period of 18 months. This data was gathered and analysed to determine students' perceptions of a blended learning approach in Accounting Education. Results indicated that students experienced significant improvements in their performance in Accounting Education, they were more motivated to learn, they experienced increased levels of independence in the learning process and they had acquired a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Results also showed that additional learning materials were readily available via hyperlinks to websites, the students got immediate feedback from online assessments, there was greater lecturer student interaction as well as student student interaction through meaningful dialogue with peers and finally there was increased convenience, flexibility and access to learning in the blended learning environment.  Curriculum renewal, blended learning, on line classroom, action research, accounting education
Towards SDN Defined Programmable BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Security
Venue: NDSS

An emerging trend in corporate network administration is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Although with many advantages, the paradigm shift presents new challenges in security to enterprise networks. While existing solutions such as Mobile Device Management (MDM) focus mainly on controlling and protecting device data, they fall short in providing a holistic network protection system. New innovation is needed in providing administrators with sophisticated network policies and control capabilities over the devices and mobile applications (apps) In this paper, we present PBS (Programmable BYOD Security) a new security solution to enable fine grained, applicationlevel network security programmability for the purpose of network management and policy enforcement on mobile apps and devices. Our work is motivated by another emerging and powerful concept, SDN (Software Defined Networking) With a novel abstraction of mobile device elements (e.g. apps and network interfaces on the device) into conventional SDN network elements, PBS intends to provide network wide, context aware, app specific policy enforcement at run time without introducing much overhead on a resource constrained mobile device, and without the actual deployment of SDN switches in enterprise networks. We implement a prototype system of PBS, with a controller component that runs a BYOD policy program on existing SDN controllers and a client component, PBS DROID, for Android devices. Our evaluation shows that PBS is an effective and practical solution for BYOD security.
Distributed nonconvex multiagent optimization over time varying networks
Venue: 2016 50th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers

We study nonconvex distributed optimization in multiagent networks where the communications between nodes is modeled as a time varying sequence of arbitrary digraphs. We introduce a novel broadcast based distributed algorithmic framework for the (constrained) minimization of the sum of a smooth (possibly nonconvex and nonseparable) function, i.e. the agents' sum utility, plus a convex (possibly nonsmooth and nonseparable) regularizer. The latter is usually employed to enforce some structure in the solution, typically sparsity. The proposed method hinges on Successive Convex Approximation (SCA) techniques coupled with i) a tracking mechanism instrumental to locally estimate the gradients of agents' cost functions; and ii) a novel broadcast protocol to disseminate information and distribute the computation among the agents. Asymptotic convergence to stationary solutions is established. A key feature of the proposed algorithm is that it neither requires the double stochasticity of the consensus matrices (but only column stochasticity) nor the knowledge of the graph sequence to implement. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed framework is the first broadcast based distributed algorithm for convex and nonconvex constrained optimization over arbitrary, time varying digraphs. Numerical results show that our algorithm outperforms current schemes on both convex and nonconvex problems.
Allegories of Origins: Frankenstein after the Enlightenment

This essay proposes that Mary Shelley's fictional Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is productively conceived via Enlightenment preoccupations with accounting for origins of humanity, society, and language. The shaking of confidence in the Bible's account of such origins, beginning in the late seventeenth century, prompted any number of thinkers either to provide an allegorical reading of the Genesis story or to offer an alternative account, without, however, being on firm empirical ground to do so. This essay argues that the creature's account of the early phases of his life correspond strikingly to narratives of the early origins of humanity in Constantin Francois Volney, William Godwin, and Jean Jacques Rousseau and that these must be taken into account in deciphering one allegorical strain of this post Enlightenment fiction.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE USE OF SPEAKING STRATEGIES AND PERFORMANCE ON IELTS SPEAKING TEST: A STUDY ON CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENTS

By now, a host of achievements have been made on studies on the relationship between language learning strategies and language proficiency. The relationship between the use of speaking strategies and performance on oral English test, however, is hardly explored, especially within a Chinese context. The research aims to explore such a relationship between the application speaking strategies and IELTS speaking test performance, thereby improving oral English performance through appropriate strategy choosing and training. 93 Chinese postgraduate students who have taken IELTS at their undergraduate years answered a questionnaire regarding their use of speaking strategies, and the data are analyzed with IBM SPSS Version 22, which specifically involve a correlation analysis, regression analysis and ANOVA. The major findings are as follows: (1) The overall use of speaking strategies is at a medium frequency range; and participants are found to use compensation speaking strategy most frequently while cognitive speaking strategy is the least frequently used one. (2) IELTS speaking test performance is positively correlated with the use of all six types of speaking strategies.