nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Change Detection in Synthetic Aperture Radar Images Based on Deep Neural Networks
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems

This paper presents a novel change detection approach for synthetic aperture radar images based on deep learning. The approach accomplishes the detection of the changed and unchanged areas by designing a deep neural network. The main guideline is to produce a change detection map directly from two images with the trained deep neural network. The method can omit the process of generating a difference image (DI) that shows difference degrees between multitemporal synthetic aperture radar images. Thus, it can avoid the effect of the DI on the change detection results. The learning algorithm for deep architectures includes unsupervised feature learning and supervised fine tuning to complete classification. The unsupervised feature learning aims at learning the representation of the relationships between the two images. In addition, the supervised fine tuning aims at learning the concepts of the changed and unchanged pixels. Experiments on real data sets and theoretical analysis indicate the advantages, feasibility, and potential of the proposed method. Moreover, based on the results achieved by various traditional algorithms, respectively, deep learning can further improve the detection performance.
The Promise and Pitfalls of Computerized Provider Alerts for Laboratory Test Ordering.
Venue: Clinical chemistry

"asasasasassasasasasasdasdasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff" The above expletive was typed as "justification" to override an alert message recently implemented in a computerized provider order entry (CPOE)2 system designed to reduce unnecessary repeat laboratory testing. Similar permutations of the home keys "asdf" were also observed. These responses provide clear evidence that the alert was not always welcomed by providers, but they do not clarify whether the failure was due to provider intransigence or poor alert design. In this issue of Clinical Chemistry Moyer et al. describe the implementation and findings of a CPOE alert designed to reduce unnecessary repeat ordering of 3 tests ionized calcium (iCa) serum magnesium (Mg) and N terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide (NT proBNP) in 5 intensive care units at a single institution (1) Unlike the above example, their alert demonstrated considerable success, with decreases in test volumes of 28% 48% in the 90 days following the introduction of the alert. It provides a model for large clinical systems to effectively introduce evidence based decision making tools into laboratory ordering practices. It is no secret that laboratory tests are overordered in the clinical environment; a recent metaanalysis demonstrated that tests are overused by 20.6% on average (2) The ordering of unnecessary tests on such a massive scale may impact not only direct healthcare costs, but also patient safety, and may lead to unnecessary follow up investigation and iatrogenic blood loss due to excess phlebotomy (3) Unfortunately, in large hospitals with high patient volumes, it would be impractical for laboratory directors to evaluate every test individually for appropriateness, and even more difficult to convince providers to change ordering practices. Meeting other evidence based quality objectives in laboratory ordering is similarly labor intensive. One increasingly popular method
Fast food and full service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults
Venue: European Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Calorie intake and diet quality are influenced by the source of food and the place of consumption. This study examines the impacts of fast food and full service restaurant consumption on daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults.Nationally representative data of 18 098 adults 18 years of age and above from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003 2010 waves were analyzed. Outcomes included daily intake of total calories and 24 nutrients of public health concern. The key predictors were any food/beverage consumption in a day from fast food or full service restaurant, differentiated by consumption at home versus away from home. First difference estimator addressed confounding bias from time invariant unobservables such as personal food/beverage preferences by using within individual variations in diet and restaurant consumption status between two nonconsecutive 24 h dietary recalls.Fast food and full service restaurant consumption, respectively, were associated with a net increase in daily total energy intake of 190.29 and 186.74 kcal, total fat of 10.61 and 9.58 g, saturated fat of 3.49 and 2.46 g, cholesterol of 10.34 and 57.90 mg, and sodium of 297.47 and 411.92 mg. The impact of fast food and full service restaurant consumption on energy and nutrient intakes differed by sex, race/ethnicity, education, income and weight status. Increased total energy, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium intake were substantially larger when full service restaurant food was consumed away from home than at home.A holistic policy intervention is warranted to target the American's overall dining out behavior rather than fast food consumption alone.
Who is the academic entrepreneur? The role of graduate students in the development of university spinoffs

Academic entrepreneurship, the establishment of new companies based on technologies derived from university research, is a well recognized driver of regional and national economic development. For more than a decade, scholars have conceptualized individual university faculty as the primary agents of academic entrepreneurship. Recent research suggests that graduate students also play a critical role in the establishment and early development of university spinoff companies, but the nature of their involvement through the entrepreneurial process is not yet fully understood. Employing a case study approach, this paper investigates the role of graduate students in early stage university spinoff companies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We find that graduate students play role similar to that of individual faculty entrepreneurs in university spinoffs, both in terms of making the initial establishment decision and in reconfiguring the organization for marketable technology development. We also find that student entrepreneurs face unique challenges involving conflicts with faculty advisors and other students.
An Improved Trust aware Recommender System for Personalized User Recommendation in Tmall

Annual Double Eleven shopping festival has attracted people's attention greatly. With the increase of online shopping channel, trust has become the most important content of user interaction in this environment. In this paper, We proposed improved trust aware recommender system (iTARS) produces valuable recommendations by dynamic trust between users and selecting a best neighborhood based on biological metaphor of ant colonies in Tmall. The performance of iTARS is evaluated using tmall datasets of differernt sparsity levels and compared with traditional trust aware recommender system for generating recommendations to the tmall members.
Averting a malaria disaster: will insecticide resistance derail malaria control?
Venue: The Lancet

World Malaria Day 2015 highlighted the progress made in the development of new methods of prevention (vaccines and insecticides) and treatment (single dose drugs) of the disease. However, increasing drug and insecticide resistance threatens the successes made with existing methods. Insecticide resistance has decreased the efficacy of the most commonly used insecticide class of pyrethroids. This decreased efficacy has increased mosquito survival, which is a prelude to rising incidence of malaria and fatalities. Despite intensive research efforts, new insecticides will not reach the market for at least 5 years. Elimination of malaria is not possible without effective mosquito control. Therefore, to combat the threat of resistance, key stakeholders need to rapidly embrace a multifaceted approach including a reduction in the cost of bringing new resistance management methods to market and the streamlining of associated development, policy, and implementation pathways to counter this looming public health catastrophe.
Country of origin preferences for organic food
Venue: Organic Agriculture

Consumers in almost any country seem to prefer domestic food compared to foreign food. One reason for this finding is probably consumers believe foreign food to be of lower standard than domestic food. In the last years, international agreements about organic products have led to harmonization of regulations allowing organic food produced in one country to be sold as organic in another. A hypothesis is then whether consumers view a foreign food product with the identical organic label as a domestic counterpart as equivalent substitutes. This study uses an online choice experiment with conventional and organic veal to investigate country of origin preferences for organic meat. The results show that despite the fact that the organic label assures consumers that the meat has been produced under the same organic regulations the willingness to pay for organic meat depends greatly on the country of origin. Hence, common international labels for organic food do alleviate the huge skepticism toward foreign food.
Organic food in food policy and in public catering: lessons learned from Finland
Venue: Organic Agriculture

The strategic goal of the Finnish food policy is to develop agriculture and food production as a sector of strong expansion. Since 2010, the role of organic food is specifically stressed in strivings to improve the competitiveness of the Finnish food sector.Recognising the significance of the statutory public catering in Finland, the focus here is the organic food in the context of public catering. The article examines the discourse articulated in food policy documents, the use of organic food within municipal food services and the materialised efforts to increase its use. Finnish experiences are discussed by considering the competitive tendering process constrained by regulations on public procurement and the role of the public catering services for the SMEs in the heavily competitive food markets. The aim is to improve actors' knowledge regarding the possibilities of the institutional consumers to increase the use of organic food. Despite the good intentions articulated in the policy documents, expanding the use of organic food in institutional kitchens is a slow process. It requires that the bottlenecks are identified and opened in the real life context. Increased organic consumption in public catering is primarily a political decision. Its adoption requires determined will, and the local policymakers are in a key position to decide, whether organic food should be favoured. This requires strategic decisions and a strong commitment to long term development work. The options for including and/or increasing organic food in public catering should be considered when formulating comprehensive municipal development strategies. It is important to pay attention to the research results, to involve practical actors and to appreciate the caterers' expertise as well as the customers' experiences regarding the various quality aspects. Municipal customers are important for the SME:s, who often have difficulties to get foothold in the heavily competitive food markets. Long term contracts provide secure income and the entrepreneurs can then better concentrate on developing their core business. To establish the customership, both the entrepreneurs and the municipal purchasers need thorough knowledge on the purchasing procedure.
Tables and Graphs for Monitoring Temporal Crime Trends: Translating Theory into Practical Crime Analysis Advice

This article is a practical review on how to construct tables and graphs to monitor temporal crime trends. Such advice is mostly applicable to crime analysts to improve the readability of their products, but is also useful to general consumers of crime statistics in trying to identify crime trends in reported data. First the use of percent change to identify significant changes in crime trends is critiqued, and an alternative metric based on the Poisson distribution is provided. Then visualization principles to constructing tables are provided, and a practical example of remaking a poor table using these guidelines is shown. Finally the utility of using time series charts to easily identify short term and long increases, as well as outliers in seasonal data using examples with actual crime data is illustrated.
Online Education and Its Effective Practice: A Research Review.

Using a qualitative content analysis approach, this study reviewed 47 published studies and research on online teaching and learning since 2008, primarily focusing on how theories, practices and assessments apply to the online learning environment. The purpose of this paper is to provide practical suggestions for those who are planning to develop online courses so that they can make informed decisions in the implementation process. Based on the findings, the authors argued that effective online instruction is dependent upon 1) well designed course content, motivated interaction between the instructor and learners, well prepared and fully supported instructors; 2) creation of a sense of online learning community; and 3) rapid advancement of technology. In doing this, it is hoped that this will stimulate an on going discussion of effective strategies that can enhance universities and faculty success in transitioning to teach online. Under current debates on the cost and quality of higher education, this study could help for the improvement of higher education and student enrollment and retention.
Major barriers for participating in online teaching in developing countries from Iranian faculty members' perspectives

Although higher education systems in developing countries such as Iran have embraced the online education approach, they are confronted with significant challenges in this transition, one of which is lack of instructors' participation in online teaching. Therefore, this research is aimed at exploring barriers and influential factors for this lack of participation. The researchers developed their theoretical framework based on a thorough review of the existing body of knowledge while considering the cultural features of Iran as a developing country. A tailored questionnaire asking about the existence of three groups of barriers, namely personal, attitudinal and contextual inhibitors, was distributed among all faculty members who were candidates for delivering online courses in one of the top universities in the country. Data was analysed using the descriptive and inferential tests of Friedman, t Test and ANOVA. The results were in line with research findings in other developing countries in which the contextual barriers had the most inhibition effect against faculty members' participation in online teaching. Certain cultural barriers also are highlighted by participants, pertaining to the context of Iranian online education systems.
Design of a Problem Based Online Learning Environment and Evaluation of Its Effectiveness.

Problem based learning approach present several advantages such as improving students' engagement in learning and fostering their higher order thinking skills. Although there is a plethora of research regarding implementation of problem based learning in classrooms, its design and application process for web based environments need further investigation because of independent nature of online settings. This study developed a problem based online learning environment based on constructivist learning design model proposed by Jonassen (1999) and evaluated its effectiveness. It was conducted in the spring 2014 semester with an intention to access to total population that is 1,417 students receiving distance education for Turkish II course at six university vocational schools. The online lesson was implemented in one week, and data were gathered through students' performance tasks and self evaluation form. The research indicated that the problem based online learning environment has a positive influence on learning. Moreover, it was revealed that dynamic nature of online environment affected learner's participation in the designed activities and collaboration among students could not be fostered. Several suggestions were proposed based on the results.
The effectiveness of blended online learning courses at the community college level

Whether through the use of online only or hybrid/blended formats, colleges and universities across the country are increasingly utilizing online platforms as a medium for the delivery of instruction. At the same time, we know little about how student learning outcomes are related to students' engagement with online instructional formats. In particular, few studies have evaluated online learning in community colleges, and fewer yet have employed an experimental or quasi experimental design to do so. In this research, we use propensity score matching to compare learning gains between community college students enrolled in blended courses, (courses that combine online instructional delivery with traditional classroom based instruction) with gains experienced by students receiving only classroom based instruction. Among students enrolled in blended courses, we also consider which aspects of student use of online instructional materials are most strongly associated with student learning. While some evidence has suggested significantly poorer outcomes for community college students enrolled in online only courses, our results suggest that students enrolled in blended courses perform similarly, if not better, relative to students in a traditional instructional setting. Implications for practice and research are discussed.
A review of recent developments in natural fibre composites and their mechanical performance

Recently, there has been a rapid growth in research and innovation in the natural fibre composite (NFC) area. Interest is warranted due to the advantages of these materials compared to others, such as synthetic fibre composites, including low environmental impact and low cost and support their potential across a wide range of applications. Much effort has gone into increasing their mechanical performance to extend the capabilities and applications of this group of materials. This review aims to provide an overview of the factors that affect the mechanical performance of NFCs and details achievements made with them.
A novel technique for content based image retrieval using color, texture and edge features
Venue: 2016 International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES)

The massive growth of digital technology along with use of internet has increased the use of audio visual data such as images and videos in many domains like digital museums, commercial use, crime prevention, medical images, remote sensing and so on. With increasing volume of digital data, search and retrieval of relevant images from large data sets in accurate and efficient way is a challenging problem. CBIR combines the contents or features of image like color, texture, edges rather than keywords, labels related to an imaie. This paper presents systematic literature review of various image retrieval techniques presenting the basic concepts and available methods with their research gaps. In this study, retrieval techniques based on features like HSV, Color Moment, HSV and Color Moment, Gabor Wavelet and Wavelet Transform, Edge Gradient are studied and implemented. An approach is proposed for retrieval based on combination of color, texture and edge features of image. Performance evaluation of studied image retrieval techniques and proposed technique is done using parameters like Sensitivity, Specificity, Retrieval score, Error rate and Accuracy. Experimental results of performance evaluation demonstrate that proposed technique outperforms other techniques.
Improving Mental Health Outcomes of Burmese Migrant and Displaced Children in Thailand: a Community Based Randomized Controlled Trial of a Parenting and Family Skills Intervention
Venue: Prevention Science

The negative effects of displacement and poverty on child mental health are well known, yet research on prevention interventions in low and middle income countries, especially fragile states, remains limited. We examined the effectiveness of a parenting skills intervention on mental health outcomes among Burmese migrant and displaced children living in 20 communities in Thailand. Participants were primary caregivers and children aged 7 to 15 years (n 479 families) Families were randomly assigned to receive an adapted version of the Strengthening Families Program (n 240) or a wait list control condition (n 239) Assessments were conducted at baseline and 1 month post intervention for both conditions and at 6 months for treatment group only. One month after the program, children in the treatment condition showed significant reductions in externalizing problems (caregiver effect size (ES) 0.22, p 0.02; child report ES 0.11, p 0.02) and child attention problems compared with controls (caregiver report ES 0.23, p 0.03) There was no significant treatment effect on children's internalizing problems (ES 0.06; p 0.31) Children reported a significant increase in prosocial protective factors relative to controls (ES 0.20, p 0.01) Results suggest that an evidence based parenting skills intervention adapted for a displaced and migrant Burmese population facing high levels of adversity can have positive effects on children's externalizing symptoms and protective psychosocial factors.
A Survey of Simulation Utilization in Anesthesiology Residency Programs in the United States.
Venue: A A case reports

Given the evolution of competency based education and evidence supporting the benefits of incorporating simulation into anesthesiology residency training, simulation will likely play an important role in the training and assessment of anesthesiology residents. Currently, there are little data available regarding the current status of simulation based curricula across US residency programs. In this study, we assessed simulation based training and assessment in US anesthesiology programs using a survey designed to elicit information regarding the type, frequency, and content of the simulation courses offered at the 132 Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education certified anesthesiology training programs. The response rate for the survey was 66% Although most of the responding programs offered simulation based courses for interns and residents and during CA 1 orientation, the curriculum varied greatly among programs. Approximately 40% of responding programs use simulation for resident assessment and remediation. The majority of responding programs favored standard simulation based training as part of residency training (89% and the most common perceived obstacles to doing so were time, money, and human resources. The results from this survey highlight that there are currently large variations in simulation based training and assessment among training programs. It also confirms that many program directors feel that standardizing some components of simulation based education and assessment would be beneficial. Given the positive impact simulation has on skill retention and operating room preparedness, it may be worthwhile to consider developing a standard curriculum.