nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
A systematic review and meta analysis of self help therapeutic interventions for obsessive compulsive disorder: Is therapeutic contact key to overall improvement?
Venue: Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry

The presence of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can result in low quality of life, with significant impairments in social and occupational functioning. An increase in the dissemination of self help programs has been observed in the treatment of OCD, and has provided improved accessibility to treatment. The present study examined the efficacy of self help interventions for OCD in the context of therapeutic contact.  Randomised controlled trials and quasi experimental studies were identified through computerised database searches. Self help format (bibliotherapy, internet based, computerised) and therapeutic contact were examined for their effect on treatment outcomes.  Eighteen studies targeting self help for OCD met inclusion criteria with 1570 participants. The average post treatment effect size (Hedges' g) of self help interventions on primary outcomes was .51 (95% CI: .41 to 0.61) Subgroup analysis revealed large effect sizes for minimal contact self help (g 0.91, 95% CI: 0.66 to 1.17) moderate effect sizes for predominantly self help (g 0.68, 95% CI: 0.40 to 0.96) and small effect sizes for self administered self help (g 0.33, 95% CI: .18 to 0.47) LIMITATIONS A large variation of treatment approaches, amount of therapeutic contact, and risk of bias within each study may account for the large magnitude in effect sizes across studies. Additionally, the long term follow up effects of treatment approaches were not examined.  A growing body of literature supporting to the use of self help treatments for OCD is evident, however, further investigation through use of randomised controlled trials is required, particularly the use of stepped care and long term effectiveness.
An evolutionary perspective on habenular asymmetry in humans

The habenula (Hb) of vertebrates is a dorsal and bilateral diencephalic nuclear complex that works as an anatomical hub integrating cognitive, emotional and sensory networks to regulate mood, motivation and value based decision making, among other functions. Across vertebrates, the Hb organises into two conserved separate components (medial and lateral in mammals equivalent to dorsal and ventral in more basal vertebrate species) which are thought to subserve different functions based on a partial independence of their connectivity systems. As a complex, the Hb shows morphological, molecular and connectivity differences between the left and right sides in a wide range of vertebrate species, which in some cases extend to the functional and behavioural levels. Habenular asymmetries are particularly prominent in basal vertebrate species but become less evident in amniotes and particular mammals. In humans, recent evidence reveals that, under an overall symmetry morphology, the Hb shows lateral differences in volume, activation, metabolism and susceptibility to damage that suggest an asymmetric condition of this nuclear complex. Here, we review the evidence supporting this view and discuss the possible origin of this asymmetric trait in humans from an evolutionary developmental perspective.
A Study of the Effects of Social Factors and Innovation Characteristics on Search Effort and Uncertainty in Mobile App Adoption
Venue: 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)

The mobile economy is growing rapidly and creating increasingly diversified digital products available to consumers. Due to the cognitive limitation of adopters, they often face the issue of information overload. In order to cope with such issues, adopters typically utilize other information to reduce their uncertainty before adoption. This study focuses on determinants of uncertainty reduction during the adoption process. We do not study why individuals adopt mobile apps, but rather we are studying what perceptions individuals have on the innovation characteristics and social factors (such as friends who use and like the app) and how those perceptions affect their level of search effort and uncertainty. Innovation diffusion theory, herding behavior theory, information overload theory, and the theory of informational cascades are employed in the development of our research model. Findings from this study provide significant insights for developers and management in the mobile app economy.
Peeling the Onion. An Exploration of the Layers of Social Innovation Ecosystems. Modelling a context sensitive perspective on driving and hindering factors for social innovation

This article builds on the emerging discourse on "ecosystems of social innovation" and develops a model to identify and analyse driving and hindering factors for social innovation initiatives. Social innovation especially in the context of social entrepreneurship is increasingly gaining momentum in the European welfare landscape. That growing importance challenges the scientific discourse as it asks for criteria of how to support, foster and sustain social innovation. This article utilizes two case studies illustrating different levels of drivers and barriers and develops a model for understanding contexts of social innovation. Four interrelated context levels are identified which constitute social innovation ecosystems: actors, structures, functions, and norms. The "onion" model can be used by social innovators, financiers and policy makers alike in order to better and more strategically support social innovations themselves and to improve the framework conditions promoting or impeding them. The model allows for a better understanding of the diversity of supporting and hindering factors initiatives can face in any given urban or national social innovation ecosystem.
Mapping the Impact of Social Media for Innovation: The Role of Social Media in Explaining Innovation Performance in the PDMA Comparative Performance Assessment Study

Social media (SM) allow users to easily create, edit, or share content. The vast numbers of individuals that converge around sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter embody a rich source of external knowledge that could be utilized for new product development (NPD) Complementing other channels for open innovation (OI) SM can provide access to novel information about customer needs and technological solutions unknown to the firm. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are considerable benefits from using SM during an innovation project, but empirical evidence is scarce. Contributing to the perspective of openness in search, a number of hypotheses propose how SM as a new channel for OI can contribute to firm performance. This model is tested using data from the PDMA Comparative Performance Assessment Study, identifying factors influencing the relationship between SM and NPD performance. The findings indicate that utilizing information from SM channels can lead to higher performance, but that this link is influenced by the formalization of a firm's NPD process. This study also finds that the ability of a firm to benefit from external search in SM strongly depends on complementary internal processes when organizing and conducting this activity. Furthermore, managers have to take care when utilizing information from SM channels in radical projects, as for this kind of project only a weak significant performance contribution of SM could be found.
Difficulty is critical: The importance of social factors in modeling diffusion of green products and practices

Despite the very positive as measured by market surveys attitude towards eco innovations and sustainability in general, the actual market penetration of green products and practices generally falls behind the expectations. In this paper we argue that considering difficulty of engagement, as used in the Campbell Paradigm, is of critical importance when modeling diffusion of eco innovations. Such a notion of difficulty possesses three desired properties: (i) parsimony it is represented by a single value, (ii) interpretability it can be regarded as an estimator of the otherwise complex notion of behavioral cost, and (iii) applicability it can be easily measured through market surveys. In an extensive simulation and analytical study involving empirically measured difficulty and an agent based model spanned on different social network structures, we show that innovation adoption may exhibit abrupt changes in market penetration as a result of even small changes in difficulty. The latter may be of particular interest to policy makers who have to make strategic decisions when introducing socially but not necessarily individually desired products and practices, like dynamic or green electricity tariffs.
A Semantic and Content Based Search User Interface for Browsing Large Collections of Foley Sounds
Venue: Audio Mostly Conference

Sound designers select the sounds they use among massive collections of recordings. They usually rely on text based queries to narrow down a subset from these collections when looking for specific content. However, when it comes to unknown collections, this approach can fail to precisely retrieve files according to their content. We investigate an audio search engine that associates content based features and semantic meta data using Apache Solr deployed in a fully integrated server architecture. In order to facilitate the task of browsing the sounds, we also propose a search user interface in which the user can perform both text based queries and visual browsing in a window where sounds are organized according to their audio features. A preliminary evaluation of the performances helped to optimize the parameters of the system.
Prosody modeling for syllable based text to speech synthesis using feedforward neural networks
Venue: Neurocomputing

Prosody plays an important role in improving the quality of text to speech synthesis (TTS) system. In this paper, features related to the linguistic and the production constraints are proposed for modeling the prosodic parameters such as duration, intonation and intensities of the syllables. The linguistic constraints are represented by positional, contextual and phonological features, and the production constraints are represented by articulatory features. Neural network models are explored to capture the implicit duration, F0 and intensity knowledge using above mentioned features. The prediction performance of the proposed neural network models is evaluated using objective measures such as average prediction error (u) standard deviation and linear correlation coefficient g X Y The prediction accuracy of the proposed neural network models is compared with other state of the art prosody models used in TTS systems. The prediction accuracy of the proposed prosody models is also verified by conducting listening tests, after integrating the proposed prosody models to the baseline TTS system.
Childhood Precursors of Adult Borderline Personality Disorder Features: A Longitudinal Study
Venue: The Journal of nervous and mental disease

This study identifies childhood personality traits that are precursors of adult Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) features. In a longitudinal study, childhood personality traits were assessed at age 11 (N 100) using the California Child Q set (CCQ: Block and Block, 1980) A number of these Q items were found to be significantly correlated (p 0.001) with a prototype based measure of BPD features at age 23. Factor analysis of these Q items suggested that they could be characterized by two underlying personality dimensions: Impulsivity and Nonconformity/Aggression. The findings thus provide evidence that childhood personality traits predict adult BPD features. Identifying such childhood precursors provides an opportunity for early intervention.
Investigation of gene diet interactions in the incretin system and risk of type 2 diabetes: the EPIC InterAct study

hypothesisThe gut incretin hormones glucagon like peptide 1 (GLP 1) and glucose dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) have a major role in the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes. Specific genetic and dietary factors have been found to influence the release and action of incretins. We examined the effect of interactions between seven incretin related genetic variants in GIPR, KCNQ1, TCF7L2 and WFS1 and dietary components (whey containing dairy, cereal fibre, coffee and olive oil) on the risk of type 2 diabetes in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) InterAct study.MethodsThe current case cohort study included 8086 incident type 2 diabetes cases and a representative subcohort of 11,035 participants (median follow up: 12.5 years) Prentice weighted Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to investigate the associations and interactions between the dietary factors and genes in relation to the risk of type 2 diabetes.ResultsAn interaction (p 0.048) between TCF7L2 variants and coffee intake was apparent, with an inverse association between coffee and type 2 diabetes present among carriers of the diabetes risk allele (T) in rs12255372 (GG: HR 0.99 [95% CI 0.97, 1.02] per cup of coffee; GT: HR 0.96 [95% CI 0.93, 0.98] and TT: HR 0.93 [95% CI 0.88, 0.98] In addition, an interaction (p 0.005) between an incretin specific genetic risk score and coffee was observed, again with a stronger inverse association with coffee in carriers with more risk alleles (0 3 risk alleles: HR 0.99 [95% CI 0.94, 1.04] 7 10 risk alleles: HR 0.95 [95% CI 0.90, 0.99] None of these associations were statistically significant after correction for multiple testing.Conclusions/interpretationOur large scale case cohort study provides some evidence for a possible interaction of TCF7L2 variants and an incretin specific genetic risk score with coffee consumption in relation to the risk of type 2 diabetes. Further large scale studies and/or meta analyses are needed to confirm these interactions in other populations.
Vybrane pristupy k mereni a hodnoceni konkurenceschopnosti zemi: aplikace na Evropskou unii.

Dizertacni prace se zabyva vymezenim moznych pristupu ke konkurenceschopnosti zemi a aplikaci vybranych zpusobu hodnoceni konkurenceschopnosti na zeme Evropske unie. Duraz je kladen nejen na zvysovani konkurenceschopnosti jednotlivych zemi EU, ale rovnez na zlepsovani konkurencni schopnosti Evropske unie jako celku ve srovnani s dalsimi svetovymi ekonomikami. Nezbytnym predpokladem rustove dynamiky EU jako celku je sblizovani urovne konkurenceschopnosti jednotlivych clenskych statu. Bylo prokazano, ze dochazi ke konvergenci konkurenceschopnosti jednotlivych zemi Evropske unie za soucasneho rustu konkurenceschopnosti. Vysledky jsou ale zavisle na zvolenem pristupu k mereni konkurenceschopnosti zemi.
Antibiotics induced depletion of mice microbiota induces changes in host serotonin biosynthesis and intestinal motility
Venue: Journal of Translational Medicine

BackgroundThe gastrointestinal motility is affected by gut microbiota and the relationship between them has become a hot topic. However, mechanisms of microbiota in regulating motility have not been well defined. We thus investigated the effect of microbiota depletion by antibiotics on gastrointestinal motility, colonic serotonin levels, and bile acids metabolism.MethodsAfter 4 weeks with antibiotics treatments, gastrointestinal and colon transit, defecation frequency, water content, and other fecal parameters were measured and analyzed in both wild type and antibiotics treated mice, respectively. Contractility of smooth muscle, serotonin levels, and bile acids levels in wild type and antibiotics treated mice were also analyzed.ResultsAfter antibiotics treatment, the richness and diversity of intestinal microbiota decreased significantly, and the fecal of mice had less output (P 0.01) more water content (P 0.01) and longer pellet length (P 0.01) Antibiotics treatment in mice also resulted in delayed gastrointestinal and colonic motility (P 0.05) and inhibition of phasic contractions of longitudinal muscle from isolated proximal colon (P 0.01) In antibiotics treated mice, serotonin, tryptophan hydroxylase 1, and secondary bile acids levels were decreased.ConclusionGut microbiota play an important role in the regulation of intestinal bile acids and serotonin metabolism, which could probably contribute to the association between gut microbiota and gastrointestinal motility as intermediates.
Vehicle Detection in High Resolution Aerial Images via Sparse Representation and Superpixels
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing

This paper presents a study of vehicle detection from high resolution aerial images. In this paper, a superpixel segmentation method designed for aerial images is proposed to control the segmentation with a low breakage rate. To make the training and detection more efficient, we extract meaningful patches based on the centers of the segmented superpixels. After the segmentation, through a training sample selection iteration strategy that is based on the sparse representation, we obtain a complete and small training subset from the original entire training set. With the selected training subset, we obtain a dictionary with high discrimination ability for vehicle detection. During training and detection, the grids of histogram of oriented gradient descriptor are used for feature extraction. To further improve the training and detection efficiency, a method is proposed for the defined main direction estimation of each patch. By rotating each patch to its main direction, we give the patches consistent directions. Comprehensive analyses and comparisons on two data sets illustrate the satisfactory performance of the proposed algorithm.
Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart animal farm
Venue: 2016 3rd International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development (INDIACom)

Farming plays an important role in today's world and it requires proper environmental and diet care. A smart system is needed to operate and monitor animal farm remotely. This system should provide feed and water as required, exhaust the excess of biogas which is produced by the animals' waste, and detect fire in the farm. Moreover, this intelligent system should also do surveillance of the entire farm. This kind of intelligent system can be designed cost effectively by using microcontrollers, water level sensor, ultrasonic sensor, gas sensor, temperature, humidity sensor, and an IP Camera along with Internet or Intranet connectivity with the devices i.e. smart phones or computer. In this paper, we develop an IoT based smart animal farm with above mentioned features.
Character Metaphors in George Orwell's Animal Farm

Animal Farm was written by George Orwell in 1944 to criticize the Soviet Union leaders and their administration represented by animal characters. The objective of this study was to find out the resemblances between the character of Soviet Union leaders at the time the novel was written and those depicted in the novel. In analysing the objective of this study, content analysis was used. The data are the dialogues and other information in the novel concerning the metaphors of characters between the Soviet Union leaders of the 20th century and those in Animal Farm. The writer finds out that Jones metaphors Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russian Monarchy, Old Major with his speech metaphors Karl Marx with his Communist Manifesto, Napoleon as Stalin, Snowball as Trotsky, Squealer as Pravda, the Russian Newspaper at that time, Frederick as German and Boxer as the type of gullibility proletariat. Indeed, George Orwell's timeless work reminds us that totalitarianism could be harmful to one society.
Response trajectories capture the continuous dynamics of the size congruity effect.
Venue: Acta psychologica

In a comparison task involving numbers, the size congruity effect refers to the general finding that responses are usually faster when there is a match between numerical size and physical size (e.g. 2 8) than when there is a mismatch (e.g. 2 8) In the present study, we used computer mouse tracking to test two competing models of the size congruity effect: an early interaction model, where interference occurs at an early representational stage, and a late interaction model, where interference occurs as dynamic competition between response options. In three experiments, we found that the curvature of responses for incongruent trials was greater than for congruent trials. In Experiment 2 we showed that this curvature effect was reliably modulated by the numerical distance between the two stimulus numbers, with large distance pairs exhibiting a larger curvature effect than small distance pairs. In Experiment 3 we demonstrated that the congruity effects persist into response execution. These findings indicate that incongruities between numerical and physical sizes are carried throughout the response process and result from competition between parallel and partially active response options, lending further support to a late interaction model of the size congruity effect.
The Source of the Symbolic Numerical Distance and Size Effects
Venue: Front. Psychol.

Human number understanding is thought to rely on the analog number system (ANS) working according to Weber's law. We propose an alternative account, suggesting that symbolic mathematical knowledge is based on a discrete semantic system (DSS) a representation that stores values in a semantic network, similar to the mental lexicon or to a conceptual network. Here, focusing on the phenomena of numerical distance and size effects in comparison tasks, first we discuss how a DSS model could explain these numerical effects. Second, we demonstrate that the DSS model can give quantitatively as appropriate a description of the effects as the ANS model. Finally, we show that symbolic numerical size effect is mainly influenced by the frequency of the symbols, and not by the ratios of their values. This last result suggests that numerical distance and size effects cannot be caused by the ANS, while the DSS model might be the alternative approach that can explain the frequency based size effect.
Using Songs in Teaching Oral Skills to Young Learners: Teachers' Views and Attitudes

The major aim of this descriptive research study was to explore the views and attitudes of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Saudi Arabia about using songs when Teaching English to Young Learner (TEYL) oral skills (listening and speaking) specifically. The opinions of English language teachers in primary school in Jeddah (n=89) were collected through the use of one instrument which is questionnaire. The data were generated using the IBM SPSS Statistics 22(r) program. The results demonstrated that most of the teachers surveyed realize the pedagogical value of using songs when teaching English oral skills to Young Learner (YL) however, they do not use songs because of their religious and cultural beliefs. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers should be provided with chants that are free of musical instruments to avoid any controversies with cultural or religious beliefs. The development of a website that contains educational songs and is designed specifically to suit Saudi EFL teachers' needs is strongly recommended.
Stage IB cervix cancer with nodal involvement treated with primary surgery or primary radiotherapy: Patterns of failure and outcomes in a contemporary population
Venue: Journal of medical imaging and radiation oncology

The purpose of this study is to evaluate patterns of failure, overall survival (OS) disease free survival (DFS) prognostic factors and late toxicities in node positive International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage IB cervix cancer treated with curative intent.