nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
How Can We Address the Publication Bias Against Negative Scientific Study Data?
Venue: Toxicologic pathology

We read with great interest the article by Boorman et al. (2015) on 'The Value of Publishing Negative Scientific Study Data. This article succinctly demonstrates the value of publishing negative results not only in the field of toxicology but also for the scientific community and for human health as a whole. Over the past few years, we have seen an increase in articles discussing this issue, yet there appears to be little shift in accepting and publishing negative data among the scientific community. This opinion piece explores how medical and scientific communities, particularly journals and registries, can play a critical role in paving the way for a paradigm shift in the acceptance of negative data appearing in literature. The article tells us that studies have demonstrated that 'negative results are gradually disappearing from the literature in most disciplines and countries. This is not surprising. Historically and even today, scientists have struggled to publish their data in esteemed journals for lack of novelty or interest. Yet it still remains that negative scientific study data valuably add to the plethora of scientific knowledge. The authors quote scientists and journals being intensely interested in impact factors. This is a very real problem and one which the scientific and medical communities must address. Over the last 10 years, we have seen a dramatic increase in journals launched specifically for publishing negative results or having set sections which do so. This is certainly a step in the right direction, although some areas like surgery still don't have a dedicated negative results journal. Yet work must still be done to make a substantial dent to the immense positive study publication bias present. We agree with the authors in that journal editors should add an active policy for publishing negative data to their acceptance criteria; however, in practice, this may be difficult to implement, particularly at peer review. We propose that journals specifically publishing negative results or having negative results sections may be a better approach. To this effect, formation of registries which publish all data pertaining to their scientific and medical disciplines should be encouraged and, as this article states, would engender potentially enormous savings in resources. Our group has recently launched the Research Registry, an international database that registers all studies with human participants. In fact, the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki 2013  www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/ accessed February 2016) provides a strong ethical mandate for registering all types of research studies. It is our ethical duty as individuals in the scientific and medical community to ensure negative studies are accurately and fairly represented in the literature not only for the compendium of scientific knowledge but also for knowing what works and what doesn't, optimizing resource allocation and wider transparency.
Pedestrian Detection at Day/Night Time with Visible and FIR Cameras: A Comparison
Venue: Sensors

Despite all the significant advances in pedestrian detection brought by computer vision for driving assistance, it is still a challenging problem. One reason is the extremely varying lighting conditions under which such a detector should operate, namely day and nighttime. Recent research has shown that the combination of visible and non visible imaging modalities may increase detection accuracy, where the infrared spectrum plays a critical role. The goal of this paper is to assess the accuracy gain of different pedestrian models (holistic, part based, patch based) when training with images in the far infrared spectrum. Specifically, we want to compare detection accuracy on test images recorded at day and nighttime if trained (and tested) using (a) plain color images; (b) just infrared images; and (c) both of them. In order to obtain results for the last item, we propose an early fusion approach to combine features from both modalities. We base the evaluation on a new dataset that we have built for this purpose as well as on the publicly available KAIST multispectral dataset.
VIIRS Day/Night Band Correcting Striping and Nonuniformity over a Very Large Dynamic Range
Venue: J. Imaging

The Suomi National Polar orbiting (NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day Night Band (DNB) measures visible and near infrared light extending over seven orders of magnitude of dynamic range. This makes radiometric calibration difficult. We have observed that DNB imagery has striping, banding and other nonuniformities day or night. We identified the causes as stray light, nonlinearity, detector crosstalk, hysteresis and mirror side variation. We found that these affect both Earth view and calibration signals. These present an obstacle to interpretation by users of DNB products. Because of the nonlinearity we chose the histogram matching destriping technique which we found is successful for daytime, twilight and nighttime scenes. Because of the very large dynamic range of the DNB, we needed to add special processes to the histogram matching to destripe all scenes, especially imagery in the twilight regions where scene illumination changes rapidly over short distances. We show that destriping aids image analysts, and makes it possible for advanced automated cloud typing algorithms. Manual or automatic identification of other features, including polar ice and gravity waves in the upper atmosphere are also discussed. In consideration of the large volume of data produced 24 h a day by the VIIRS DNB, we present methods for reducing processing time.
Fast Optical Flow Using Dense Inverse Search
Venue: ECCV

Most recent works in optical flow extraction focus on the accuracy and neglect the time complexity. However, in real life visual applications, such as tracking, activity detection and recognition, the time complexity is critical. We propose a solution with very low time complexity and competitive accuracy for the computation of dense optical flow. It consists of three parts: (1) inverse search for patch correspondences; (2) dense displacement field creation through patch aggregation along multiple scales; (3) variational refinement. At the core of our Dense Inverse Search based method (DIS) is the efficient search of correspondences inspired by the inverse compositional image alignment proposed by Baker and Matthews (2001, 2004) DIS is competitive on standard optical flow benchmarks. DIS runs at 300 Hz up to 600 Hz on a single CPU core (1024 \times 436 resolution. 42 Hz/46 Hz when including preprocessing: disk access, image re scaling, gradient computation. More details in Sect. 3.1. reaching the temporal resolution of human's biological vision system. It is order(s) of magnitude faster than state of the art methods in the same range of accuracy, making DIS ideal for real time applications.
Evaluation of Event Based Algorithms for Optical Flow with Ground Truth from Inertial Measurement Sensor
Venue: Front. Neurosci.

In this study we compare nine optical flow algorithms that locally measure the flow normal to edges according to accuracy and computation cost. In contrast to conventional, frame based motion flow algorithms, our open source implementations compute optical flow based on address events from a neuromorphic Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) For this benchmarking we created a dataset of two synthesized and three real samples recorded from a 240 x 180 pixel Dynamic and Active pixel Vision Sensor (DAVIS) This dataset contains events from the DVS as well as conventional frames to support testing state of the art frame based methods. We introduce a new source for the ground truth: In the special case that the perceived motion stems solely from a rotation of the vision sensor around its three camera axes, the true optical flow can be estimated using gyro data from the inertial measurement unit integrated with the DAVIS camera. This provides a ground truth to which we can compare algorithms that measure optical flow by means of motion cues. An analysis of error sources led to the use of a refractory period, more accurate numerical derivatives and a Savitzky Golay filter to achieve significant improvements in accuracy. Our pure Java implementations of two recently published algorithms reduce computational cost by up to 29% compared to the original implementations. Two of the algorithms introduced in this paper further speed up processing by a factor of 10 compared with the original implementations, at equal or better accuracy. On a desktop PC, they run in real time on dense natural input recorded by a DAVIS camera.
Awareness and Current Use of Electronic Cigarettes in Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, and Greece: Findings From 2011 2013 Global Adult Tobacco Surveys.
Venue: Nicotine tobacco research official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco

Increases in electronic cigarette (e cigarette) awareness and current use have been documented in high income countries but less is known about middle and low income countries.  Nationally representative household survey data from the first four Global Adult Tobacco Surveys to assess e cigarettes were analyzed, including Indonesia (2011) Malaysia (2011) Qatar (2013) and Greece (2013) Correlates of e cigarette awareness and current use were calculated. Sample sizes for Greece and Qatar allowed for further analysis of e cigarette users.  Awareness of e cigarettes was 10.9% in Indonesia, 21.0% in Malaysia, 49.0% in Qatar, and 88.5% in Greece. In all four countries, awareness was higher among male, younger, more educated, and wealthier respondents. Current e cigarette use among those aware of e cigarettes was 3.9% in Malaysia, 2.5% in Indonesia, 2.2% in Greece and 1.8% in Qatar. Across these four countries, an estimated 818 500 people are currently using e cigarettes. Among current e cigarette users, 64.4% in Greece and 84.1% in Qatar also smoked cigarettes, and, 10.6% in Greece and 6.0% in Qatar were never smokers.  E cigarette awareness and use was evident in all four countries. Ongoing surveillance and monitoring of awareness and use of e cigarettes in these and other countries could help inform tobacco control policies and public health interventions. Future surveillance should monitor use of e cigarettes among current smokers and uptake among never smokers and relapsing former smokers.
Employer Voices, Employer Demands, and Implications for Public Skills Development Policy Connecting the Labor and Education Sectors

Educators believe that they are adequately preparing youth for the labor market while at the same time employers lament the students' lack of skills. A possible source of the mismatch in perceptions is that employers and educators have different understandings of the types of skills valued in the labor market. Using economics and psychology literature to define four skills sets socio emotional, higher order cognitive, basic cognitive, and technical this paper reviews the literature that quantitatively measures employer skill demand, as reported in a preference survey. A sample of 27 studies reveals remarkable consistency across the world in the skills demanded by employers. While employers value all skill sets, there is a greater demand for socio emotional skills and higher order cognitive skills than for basic cognitive or technical skills. These results are robust across region, industry, occupation, and education level. Employers perceive that the greatest skills gaps are in socio emotional and higher order cognitive skills. These findings suggest the need to re conceptualize the public sector's role in preparing children for a future labor market. Namely, technical training is not equivalent to job training; instead, a broad range of skills, many of which are best taught long before labor market entry, should be included in school curricula from the earliest ages. The skills most demanded by employers higher order cognitive skills and socio emotional skills are largely learned or refined in adolescence, arguing for a general education well into secondary school until these skills are formed. Finally, the public sector can provide programming and incentives to non school actors, namely parents and employers, to encourage them to invest in the skills development process. Skills, labor demand, cognitive, non cognitive, behavioral skills, competences, employer surveys, skills policy, education policy, training policy.
Multi view semi supervised learning for image classification
Venue: Neurocomputing

With the massive growth of digital image data uploaded to the Internet, classifying each image into appropriate semantic category with respect to its image content for image index and image retrieval has become an increasingly difficult and laborious task. To deal with this issue, we propose a novel multi view semi supervised learning framework which leverages the information contained in pseudo labeled images to improve the prediction performance of image classification using multiple views of an image. In the training process, labeled images are first adopted to train view specific classifiers independently using uncorrelated and sufficient views, and each view specific classifier is then iteratively re trained with respect to a measure of confidence using initial labeled samples and additional pseudo labeled samples. In the classification process, the maximum entropy principle is utilized to assign appropriate category labels to unlabeled images via optimally trained view specific classifiers. Experimental results on a general purpose image database demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed multi view semi supervised image classification scheme.
English vowel identification and vowel formant discrimination by native Mandarin Chinese and native English speaking listeners: The effect of vowel duration dependence
Venue: Hearing Research

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between English vowel identification and English vowel formant discrimination for native Mandarin Chinese and native English speaking listeners. The identification of 12 English vowels was measured with the duration cue preserved or removed. The thresholds of vowel formant discrimination on the F2 of two English vowels,/L/and/i/ were also estimated using an adaptive tracking procedure. Native Mandarin Chinese speaking listeners showed significantly higher thresholds of vowel formant discrimination and lower identification scores than native English speaking listeners. The duration effect on English vowel identification was similar between native Mandarin Chinese and native English speaking listeners. Moreover, regardless of listeners' language background, vowel identification was significantly correlated with vowel formant discrimination for the listeners who were less dependent on duration cues, whereas the correlation between vowel identification and vowel formant discrimination was not significant for the listeners who were highly dependent on duration cues. This study revealed individual variability in using multiple acoustic cues to identify English vowels for both native and non native listeners.
Native English Speakers' Perception of Arabic Emphatic Consonants and the Influence of Vowel Context

Native English speakers experience difficulty acquiring Arabic emphatic consonants. Arabic language textbooks have suggested that learners focus on adjacent vowels for cues to these consonants; however, the utility of such a strategy has not been empirically tested. This study investigated the perception of Arabic emphatic plain contrasts by means of cross language vowel identification and perceptual discrimination tasks. It was found that native English speakers relied more on following vowels than on the consonants themselves when discriminating Arabic emphatic and plain consonants, and that their accuracy was greatest when the following vowel was /ae/ followed by /u/ and /i/ The cross language vowel identification task revealed that Arabic /ae/ was identified as a systematically different English vowel /a/ when following emphatics than when following plain consonants /ae/ while Arabic /i/ and /u/ failed to exhibit a differential identification pattern. Together these findings indicate that following vowel quality moderates Arabic emphatic consonant perception by English speakers, who may exploit their sensitivity to the English /a/ /ae/ contrast to perceive emphatic plain contrasts in the context of Arabic /ae/ However, such a strategy is less likely to be successful when the following vowel is /i/ or /u/ Implications and pedagogical suggestions for the teaching of Arabic to native speakers of English are offered.
The predictive relationship between specific teacher characteristics and the perceived sense of teacher self efficacy of non native English speaking teachers of English as a Foreign Language in rural Thailand

3 Dedication 4 Acknowledgments 5  List of Figures 11 List of Abbreviations 12 CHAPTER ONE:  A Powerful Construct Necessitating Further Research 16 Background and Conceptual Framework 19 Problem Statement 24 Purpose Statement 26 Research Question and Hypotheses 27 Identification of Key Variables 32 Definitions 41 Research Summary 42 CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE 43 Theoretical Framework: Social Cognitive Theory 43 Reciprocal Determinism 44 Human Agency 45 Self efficacy 46 The Evolution of General Teacher Self efficacy
The Taiwan Independence Movement In and Out of Power

This book is a study of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) the Taiwan Independence Movement (TIM) and electoral politics in Taiwan during 2000 2012. It consists of two parts: the first part proposes a movement government framework to understand the fluctuating popular support for the DPP government during 2000 2008 when it was in power, and the second part includes a series of studies on the DPP's quick but limited revival during 2008 2012 when it was out of power. For the DPP in and out of power, its strategic relations with the TIM have either promoted or constrained popular support for the DPP under different circumstances. This book reviews the history of the TIM since 1945, its relations with the DPP since 1986, the DPP's strategies in dealing with the TIM, and explains how these strategies have significantly affected the size and composition of the DPP's support base since 2000 by analyzing rich survey data collected during 1996 2013. Theoretically, this book challenges the traditional dichotomous and overly structuralist understanding of state movement relations; empirically, it provides both qualitative and quantitative analysis of Taiwan's major political and social events since 2000, such as presidential and legislative elections, and rise of Taiwanese nationalism.
Anger in brain and body: the neural and physiological perturbation of decision making by emotion.
Venue: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience

Emotion and cognition are dynamically coupled to bodily arousal: the induction of anger, even unconsciously, can reprioritise neural and physiological resources toward action states that bias cognitive processes. Here we examine behavioural, neural and bodily effects of covert anger processing and its influence on cognition, indexed by lexical decision making. While recording beat to beat blood pressure, the words ANGER or RELAX were presented subliminally just prior to rapid word/non word reaction time judgements of letter strings. Subliminal ANGER primes delayed the time taken to reach rapid lexical decisions, relative to RELAX primes. However, individuals with high trait anger were speeded up by subliminal anger primes. ANGER primes increased systolic blood pressure and the magnitude of this increase predicted reaction time prolongation. Within the brain, ANGER trials evoked an enhancement of activity within dorsal pons and an attenuation of activity within visual occipitotemporal and attentional parietal cortices. Activity within periaqueductal grey matter, occipital and parietal regions increased linearly with evoked blood pressure changes, indicating neural substrates through which covert anger impairs semantic decisions, putatively through its expression as visceral arousal. The behavioural and physiological impact of anger states compromises the efficiency of cognitive processing through action ready changes in autonomic response that skew regional neural activity.
Communication performance prediction and link adaptation based on a statistical radio channel model

This thesis seeks to develop a robust semi analytical performance prediction method for an advanced iterative receiver that processes spatially multiplexed signals that have propagated through frequency selective receive correlated multiple input multiple output (MIMO) wireless communication channels. In a change of perspective, the proposed performance prediction methods are applied at the transmitter, which seeks to attain a target frame error rate (FER) either by adaptive power control or by adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) The performance prediction scheme utilises the statistical properties of the channel namely noise variance, number of separable propagation paths and the eigenvalues of the receive correlation matrix to predict the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) at the output of a frequency domain soft interference cancellation minimum mean square error equaliser. The SINR distribution is used to derive the distribution of the variance of the log likelihood ratios (LLRs) at the output of a soft symbol to bit demapper. Mutual information transfer charts establish a bijective relationship between the variance of the LLRs and mutual information. A 3rd Generation Partnership Project compliant turbo code is assumed. Since the decoder operates independently from the channel, its extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts can be simulated in advance. By utilising the approximate LLR variance distribution of the demapped equaliser output, it is possible to evaluate the probability of an intersection between an equaliser chart associated with a random channel realisation and a fixed decoder chart. This probability provides the FER. Since the proposed performance prediction method does not require any instantaneous channel state information, it can be applied at the transmitter side as a robust link adaptation scheme. In adaptive transmission power control, the modulation order and code rate are fixed. By iteratively adjusting transmission power, the transmitter attempts to find an equaliser output LLR variance distribution that reaches a specified target FER. In AMC, transmission power is fixed. The equaliser output's LLR variance distribution is determined by the modulation order, while the decoder chart's position is determined by the code rate. The transmitter iteratively adjusts the code rate and attempts to find a modulation order and code rate pairing that reaches the target FER. For vertically encoded spatially multiplexed systems, the adaptive transmission power control and AMC schemes are complemented by adaptive repeat redundancy and incremental redundancy hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) techniques, respectively.