nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
A Novel Diagnostic Aid for Detection of Intra Abdominal Adhesions to the Anterior Abdominal Wall Using Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Venue: Gastroenterology research and practice

Abdominal adhesions can cause serious morbidity and complicate subsequent operations. Their diagnosis is often one of exclusion due to a lack of a reliable, non invasive diagnostic technique. Development and testing of a candidate technique are described below.  During respiration, smooth visceral sliding motion occurs between the abdominal contents and the walls of the abdominal cavity. We describe a technique involving image segmentation and registration to calculate shear as an analogue for visceral slide based on the tracking of structures throughout the respiratory cycle. The presence of an adhesion is attributed to a resistance to visceral slide resulting in a discernible reduction in shear. The abdominal movement due to respiration is captured in sagittal dynamic MR images.  Clinical images were selected for analysis, including a patient with a surgically confirmed adhesion. Discernible reduction in shear was observed at the location of the adhesion while a consistent, gradually changing shear was observed in the healthy volunteers.  The technique and its validation show encouraging results for adhesion detection but a larger study is now required to confirm its potential.
Exogenous pulmonary surfactant prevents the development of intra abdominal adhesions in rats
Venue: Journal of cellular and molecular medicine

Intra abdominal adhesions are major post operative complications for which no effective means of prevention is available. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of exogenous pulmonary surfactant administration in the prevention of post operative abdominal adhesions. Rats were randomly assigned to undergo laparotomy (L) or gastroenterostomy (GE) and then treated with surfactant (groups L S and GE S, respectively) Intra abdominal adhesions, collagen fibre content, metalloproteinase (MMP) 9, expression of growth factors (TGF b, KGF and VEGF) type III procollagen (PCIII) and pro caspase 3, as well as isolectin B4 and ED1 positive cells expressing MMP 9, were evaluated. Groups treated with surfactant (GE S and L S) exhibited fewer adhesions. A significant reduction in collagen fibre content was observed in GE S compared to GE animals (P 0.001) In situ and gelatin zymography analysis showed higher MMP 9 expression and activity in the GE S group compared to the GE group (P 0.05) ED1 positive cell counts were significantly higher in the GE S group (P 0.001) than in the GE group. Virtually all cells positive for ED1 were MMP 9+ Double labelling of MMP 9 with IB4 showed no significant differences between GE S and GE groups. TGF b, KGF, PCIII and pro caspase 3 mRNA expression decreased significantly in GE S compared to GE animals (P 0.05) Surfactant administration also reduced apoptosis in the GE S group. These findings suggest that surfactant reduces the intra abdominal adhesions triggered by laparotomy and gastrointestinal anastomosis, thus preventing fibrosis formation at the peritoneal surfaces. This preclinical study suggests an innovative treatment strategy for intra abdominal adhesions with surfactant and to endorse its putative mechanism of action.
Intuition and Moral Decision Making The Effect of Time Pressure and Cognitive Load on Moral Judgment and Altruistic Behavior
Venue: PloS one

Do individuals intuitively favor certain moral actions over others? This study explores the role of intuitive thinking induced by time pressure and cognitive load in moral judgment and behavior. We conduct experiments in three different countries (Sweden, Austria, and the United States) involving over 1,400 subjects. All subjects responded to four trolley type dilemmas and four dictator games involving different charitable causes. Decisions were made under time pressure/time delay or while experiencing cognitive load or control. Overall we find converging evidence that intuitive states do not influence moral decisions. Neither time pressure nor cognitive load had any effect on moral judgments or altruistic behavior. Thus we find no supporting evidence for the claim that intuitive moral judgments and dictator game giving differ from more reflectively taken decisions. Across all samples and decision tasks men were more likely to make utilitarian moral judgments and act selfishly compared to women, providing further evidence that there are robust gender differences in moral decision making. However, there were no significant interactions between gender and the treatment manipulations of intuitive versus reflective decision making.
Comparative efficacy and acceptability of pharmacological treatments for insomnia in adults: A systematic review and network meta analysis

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: 1) To compare individual pharmacological treatments for insomnia in adults in terms of: efficacy, measured as self rated quality of sleep or satisfaction with sleep; and acceptability of treatment. 2) To generate a clinically useful hierarchy of available pharmacological treatments for insomnia in adults, according to their efficacy and acceptability.
LD IMPSO Based Power Adjustment Algorithm for eICIC in QoS Constrained Hyper Dense HetNets
Venue: Wirel. Pers. Commun.

AbstractThis paper studies the power adjustment based interference coordination algorithm for hyper dense heterogeneous networks. Both the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the users and the practical serving cell selection rule are considered. Each user associates with the strongest cell in respect of the downlink received power and the association alters with the power adjustment of the cells. A time saving power adjustment based interference coordination algorithm based on the combination of Lagrange duality (LD) and improved modified particle swarm optimization (IMPSO) is proposed to maximize the system throughput while guaranteeing the QoS requirements of the users. LD is used to optimize the initial transmit power of the small cells and accelerate the speed of finding the best solution while IMPSO is employed to tackle the NP hard power adjustment problem caused by the alteration of the user association. Simulations show that, compared with the existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the run time while greatly improving the satisfied rate of the users and the throughput of the network.
Multi Constrained QoS Opportunistic Routing by Optimal Power Tuning in Low Duty Cycle WSNs

Designing a multi constrained QoS (Quality of service) communication protocol for mission critical applications that seeks a path connecting source node and destination node that satisfies multiple QoS constrains such as energy cost, delay, and reliability imposes a great challenge in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) In such challenging dynamic environment, traditional routing and layered infrastructure are inefficient and sometimes even infeasible. In recent research works, the opportunistic routing paradigm which delays the forwarding decision until reception of packets in forwarders by utilizing the broadcast nature of the wireless medium has been exploited to overcome the limitations of traditional routing. However, to guarantee the balance between the energy, delay and reliability requires the refinement of opportunistic routing through interaction between underlying layers known as cross layer opportunistic routing. Indeed, these schemes fail to achieve optimal performance and hence require a new method to facilitate the adoption of the routing protocol to the dynamic challenging environments. In this paper, we propose a universal cross layered opportunistic based communication protocol for WSNs for guaranteeing the user set constraints on multi constrained QoS in low duty cycle WSN. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed work, Multi Constrained QoS Opportunistic routing by optimal Power Tuning (MOR PT) effectively achieves the feasible QoS trade off constraints set by user by jointly considering the power control and selection diversity over established algorithms like DSF  and DTPC
The Effect of Extended Instruction on Passive Voice, Reduced Relative Clauses, and Modal Would in the Academic Writing of Advanced English Language Learners

As more international students who are not expert users of English come to the United States to study at university, the field of teaching English for Academic Purposes grows. There are many important skills these international students must learn to become successful university students in America, but writing for academic purposes is of particular importance for these students to join the academic conversation in their respective disciplines. Corpus research has identified the grammatical features which are frequently found in different registers, and from this work it is known which structures are important in different types of academic writing. Grammatical structures frequently found in the academic register must be taught to these university bound students. However, many English Language Learners (ELLs) are infrequently using, or inaccurately using, some of these grammatical features in their writing when compared to L1 writers. This study focuses on three of those under used, and/or inaccurately used structures: passive voice, reduced relative clauses, and modal would. At an Intensive English Language Program (IELP) in the Pacific Northwest, an experimental group of advanced ELLs were given extended instruction extra time and practice on these three features. The control group received the standard amount of time and practice students typically receive at this IELP. 25 essays from the experimental group and 44 essays from the control group were tagged for presence, accuracy, and appropriacy of the three grammatical features (passive i ii voice, reduced relative clauses, and modal would) The experimental and control group essays were compared to see if the treatment instruction had a significant effect on the frequency, accuracy, and/or appropriacy of these features. Results from an independent t test on the frequency of passive voice showed no significant difference between the experimental group essays and the control group essays. Results from a Mann Whitney U test on the frequency of reduced relative clauses and modal would showed no significant difference between the two groups. In regard to accuracy and appropriacy, a Mann Whitney U test found no significant difference between the experiment group and control group. The analysis of the two groups showed that students in the treatment group did use passive voice on average more than students in the control group, but it was not enough to be significantly different. The frequency of reduced relative clauses and modal would was low, yet accuracy and appropriacy of these features was very high for both groups. These findings reveal that different, or perhaps more focused, approaches must be taken beyond extra time and practice to increase ELLs' use of passive voice, reduced relative clauses, and modal would in their writing.
Analysis and evaluation of battery supercapacitor hybrid energy storage system for photovoltaic installation

Standalone operation of a photovoltaic generating system under fluctuating solar irradiance and variable load conditions necessitates a storage energy unit. The energy storage system by using battery supercapacitor combination is an interesting solution. However, batteries have a high energy storage ratio but are limited in the power. In the other hand, supercapacitors can provide high levels of power while they have a much lower energy storage ratio. Moreover, the SC can act as a buffer against large magnitudes and rapid fluctuations in power. In this paper, supercapacitors are used to reduce stresses on batteries and improve their life cycle. In this context, the performance of the RMS current gain in battery, the gain in energy losses, the total energy efficiency and the elimination rate of surge load power are explored, in different operating state conditions. These parameters are also investigated versus the SCs cost. All tests are carried with different number of parallel supercapacitors and the filter constant.
Performance analysis and investigation of a grid connected photovoltaic installation in Morocco

The paper present an evaluation of a grid connected photovoltaic (PV) system installed on the roof of a government building located in Tangier, Morocco. The experimental data was recorded from 1st January 2015 to December 2015 based on real time observation. The aim is to encourage the use of solar PV system for government, commercial and residence building in Morocco based on the obtained results. The system is made up of 20 modules of 250 Wp and one inverter of 5 kW. The assessed parameters of the PV installation includes energy output, final yield, modules temperature, efficiency module, performance ratio (PR) and others. The PV park supplied the grid with 6411.3 kWh during the year 2015. The final yield (Yf) ranged from 1.96 to 6.42 kWh/kWp, the performance ratio (PR) ranged from 58% to 98% and the annual capacity factor was found to be 14.84% The final yield of PV installation is compared with other final yields of solar PV systems located at other places. Finally various power losses are given through a diagram loss.
BIPV temp: A demonstrative Building Integrated Photovoltaic installation

This paper presents the results of a demonstrative Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) installation in Lugano where five BiPV modules with different integration solutions (fully integrated as Double Glaze Units (DGUs) and ventilated) different inclinations (30deg and 90deg) and different technologies (double junction amorphous silicon (a Si/a Si) and crystalline silicon (c Si) were investigated. The paper aims at evaluating the impact of the operating cell temperature on the modules' performance for different investigating cases. Two models were used to calculate the junctions' temperatures of the modules under operation: the simplified Nominal Operating Temperature (NOCT) model and the Equivalent Cell Temperature (ECT) The first was used in a simplified version and the second was used for all modules, regardless of its limitations for thin film technologies. The two models agree well and give satisfactory results regardless of the inclination, integration solution or technology. The difference between the NOCT and ECT calculated average daily temperatures of the modules was found to be less than 5 6degC, with only one exception. As expected, fully integrated modules exhibit higher temperatures. In terms of performance, the integrated c Si modules, regardless of their inclination, ranked lower in terms of energy yield than the integrated and ventilated a Si/a Si modules, for which the high operating temperatures proved to be beneficial. The inclination of 90deg was found to be ideal for Lugano for both c Si and a Si/a Si modules.
Saliva use as a lubricant for anal sex is a risk factor for rectal gonorrhoea among men who have sex with men, a new public health message: a cross sectional survey
Venue: Sexually Transmitted Infections

Apart from penile anal intercourse, other anal sexual practices (rimming, fingering and saliva use as a lubricant for anal sex) are common among men who have sex with men (MSM) The aim of this study is to evaluate whether these anal sexual practices are risk factors for rectal gonorrhoea in MSM.  A cross sectional survey was conducted among MSM attending Melbourne Sexual Health Centre between 31 July 2014 and 30 June 2015. Rectal gonorrhoea cases were identified by culture.  Among 1312 MSM, 4.3% (n=56) had rectal gonorrhoea. Other anal sexual practices were common among MSM: receptive rimming (70.5% receptive fingering or penis dipping (84.3% and using partner's saliva as a lubricant for anal sex (68.5% Saliva as a lubricant (adjusted OR 2.17; 95% CI 1.00 to 4.71) was significantly associated with rectal gonorrhoea after adjusting for potential confounding factors. Receptive rimming and fingering or penis dipping were not statistically associated with rectal gonorrhoea. The crude population attributable fraction of rectal gonorrhoea associated with use of partner's saliva as a lubricant for anal sex was 48.9% (7.9% to 71.7%  Saliva use as a lubricant for anal sex is a common sexual practice in MSM, and it may play an important role in gonorrhoea transmission. Almost half of rectal gonorrhoea cases may be eliminated if MSM stopped using partner's saliva for anal sex.
Lower HIV Risk Among Circumcised Men Who Have Sex With Men in China: Interaction With Anal Sex Role in a Cross Sectional Study
Venue: Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes

Voluntary medical male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV heterosexual transmission in men, but its effect on male to male sexual transmission is uncertain. Circumcision status of men who have sex with men (MSM) in China was evaluated by genital examination and self report; anal sexual role was assessed by questionnaire interview. Serostatus for HIV and syphilis was confirmed. Among 1155 participants (242 were seropositive and 913 with unknown HIV status at enrollment) the circumcision rate by self report (10.4% was higher than confirmed by genital examination (8.2% Male circumcision (by examination) was associated with 47% lower odds of being HIV seropositive [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.53; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.27 to 1.02] after adjusting for demographic covariates, number of lifetime male sexual partners, and anal sex role. Among MSM who predominantly practiced insertive anal sex, circumcised men had 62% lower odds of HIV infection than those who were uncircumcised (aOR: 0.38; 95% CI: 0.09 to 1.64) Among those whose anal sex position was predominantly receptive or versatile, circumcised men have 46% lower odds of HIV infection than did men who were not circumcised (aOR: 0.54; 95% CI: 0.25 to 1.14) Compared to uncircumcised men reporting versatile or predominantly receptive anal sex positioning, those who were circumcised and reported practicing insertive sex had an 85% lower risk (aOR: 0.15; 95% CI: 0.04 to 0.65) Circumcision was not associated clearly with lower syphilis risk (aOR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.51 to 1.61) Circumcised MSM were less likely to have acquired HIV, most pronounced among men predominantly practicing insertive anal intercourse. A clinical trial is needed.
Viewing of Internet Based Sexually Explicit Media as a Risk Factor for Condomless Anal Sex among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Four U.S. Cities
Venue: PloS one

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the availability of sexually explicit media (SEM) on the Internet. Men who have sex with men (MSM) report near universal use of SEM. However, this widespread use of SEM among MSM may contribute to more condomless anal sex. To examine the association of viewing SEM on the Internet and the number of condomless anal sex encounters among MSM, in 2012, an online survey was conducted of 265 MSM from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington D.C. who reported viewing SEM online in the past 3 months. Analyses were performed using negative binomial regression. Nearly all men reported viewing SEM featuring anal sex with (91% or without (92% condoms in the past 3 months. Neither viewing more hours of SEM per week or compulsively viewing SEM were associated with more condomless anal sex encounters. Rather, viewing a greater proportion of SEM containing condomless anal sex was associated with engaging in more condomless anal encounters (IRR 1.25) while viewing a greater proportion of SEM containing anal sex where condoms were used was associated with fewer condomless anal sex encounters (IRR 0.62) MSM reported that viewing SEM caused changes in their sexual fantasies, desires, and behaviors. These findings provide important insights for health policy and the design of interventions addressing SEM and condomless sex among MSM. The findings suggest that condom use by SEM performers may benefit not only actor health, but also have health implications for SEM viewers.
Contribution of Anal Sex to HIV Prevalence Among Heterosexuals: A Modeling Analysis
Venue: AIDS and Behavior

Anal intercourse is reported by many heterosexuals, and evidence suggests that its practice may be increasing. We estimated the proportion of the HIV burden attributable to anal sex in 2015 among heterosexual women and men in the United States. The HIV Optimization and Prevention Economics model was developed using parameter inputs from the literature for the sexually active U.S. population aged 13 64. The model uses differential equations to represent the progression of the population between compartments defined by HIV disease status and continuum of care stages from 2007 to 2015. For heterosexual women of all ages (who do not inject drugs) almost 28% of infections were associated with anal sex, whereas for women aged 18 34, nearly 40% of HIV infections were associated with anal sex. For heterosexual men, 20% of HIV infections were associated with insertive anal sex with women. Sensitivity analyses showed that varying any of 63 inputs by 20% resulted in no more than a 13% change in the projected number of heterosexual infections in 2015, including those attributed to anal sex. Despite uncertainties in model inputs, a substantial portion of the HIV burden among heterosexuals appears to be attributable to anal sex. Providing information about the relative risk of anal sex compared with vaginal sex may help reduce HIV incidence in heterosexuals.
Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally
Venue: Environmental Sciences Europe

BackgroundAccurate pesticide use data are essential when studying the environmental and public health impacts of pesticide use. Since the mid 1990s, significant changes have occurred in when and how glyphosate herbicides are applied, and there has been a dramatic increase in the total volume applied.MethodsData on glyphosate applications were collected from multiple sources and integrated into a dataset spanning agricultural, non agricultural, and total glyphosate use from 1974 2014 in the United States, and from 1994 2014 globally.ResultsSince 1974 in the U.S. over 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate active ingredient have been applied, or 19 of estimated global use of glyphosate (8.6 billion kilograms) Globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15 fold since so called "Roundup Ready," genetically engineered glyphosate tolerant crops were introduced in 1996. Two thirds of the total volume of glyphosate applied in the U.S. from 1974 to 2014 has been sprayed in just the last 10 years. The corresponding share globally is 72 In 2014, farmers sprayed enough glyphosate to apply ~1.0 kg/ha (0.8 pound/acre) on every hectare of U.S. cultivated cropland and nearly 0.53 kg/ha (0.47 pounds/acre) on all cropland worldwide.ConclusionsGenetically engineered herbicide tolerant crops now account for about 56 of global glyphosate use. In the U.S. no pesticide has come remotely close to such intensive and widespread use. This is likely the case globally, but published global pesticide use data are sparse. Glyphosate will likely remain the most widely applied pesticide worldwide for years to come, and interest will grow in quantifying ecological and human health impacts. Accurate, accessible time series data on glyphosate use will accelerate research progress.