nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Using RUFDATA to guide a logic model for a quality assurance process in an undergraduate university program.
Venue: Evaluation and program planning

This article presents a framework to identify key mechanisms for developing a logic model blueprint that can be used for an impending comprehensive evaluation of an undergraduate degree program in a Canadian university. The evaluation is a requirement of a comprehensive quality assurance process mandated by the university. A modified RUFDATA (Saunders, 2000) evaluation model is applied as an initiating framework to assist in decision making to provide a guide for conceptualizing a logic model for the quality assurance process. This article will show how an educational evaluation is strengthened by employing a RUFDATA reflective process in exploring key elements of the evaluation process, and then translating this information into a logic model format that could serve to offer a more focussed pathway for the quality assurance activities. Using preliminary program evaluation data from two key stakeholders of the undergraduate program as well as an audit of the curriculum's course syllabi, a case is made for, (1) the importance of inclusivity of key stakeholders participation in the design of the evaluation process to enrich the authenticity and accuracy of program participants' feedback, and (2) the diversification of data collection methods to ensure that stakeholders' narrative feedback is given ample exposure. It is suggested that the modified RUFDATA/logic model framework be applied to all academic programs at the university undergoing the quality assurance process at the same time so that economies of scale may be realized.
An Improved Map Matching Technique Based on the Frechet Distance Approach for Pedestrian Navigation Services
Venue: Sensors

Wearable and smartphone technology innovations have propelled the growth of Pedestrian Navigation Services (PNS) PNS need a map matching process to project a user's locations onto maps. Many map matching techniques have been developed for vehicle navigation services. These techniques are inappropriate for PNS because pedestrians move, stop, and turn in different ways compared to vehicles. In addition, the base map data for pedestrians are more complicated than for vehicles. This article proposes a new map matching method for locating Global Positioning System (GPS) trajectories of pedestrians onto road network datasets. The theory underlying this approach is based on the Frechet distance, one of the measures of geometric similarity between two curves. The Frechet distance approach can provide reasonable matching results because two linear trajectories are parameterized with the time variable. Then we improved the method to be adaptive to the positional error of the GPS signal. We used an adaptation coefficient to adjust the search range for every input signal, based on the assumption of auto correlation between consecutive GPS points. To reduce errors in matching, the reliability index was evaluated in real time for each match. To test the proposed map matching method, we applied it to GPS trajectories of pedestrians and the road network data. We then assessed the performance by comparing the results with reference datasets. Our proposed method performed better with test data when compared to a conventional map matching technique for vehicles.
Identification of bioactive ingredients with immuno enhancement and anti oxidative effects from Fufang Ejiao Syrup by LC MS(n) combined with bioassays.
Venue: Journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis

Fufang Ejiao Syrup (FES) is a widely used immune boosting Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Eastern Asian countries. This study attempts to investigate the bioactive compounds in FES. First, FES extract was separated into fractions to facilitate the investigation and 72 compounds were identified using LC MS(n) Subsequently, Immune enhancement effects of FES and its components were investigated on bone marrow cells and neuroprotective effects against H2O2 induced oxidative damage were evaluated in SH SY5Y neuroblastoma cells and bEnd.3. Our results indicated that fraction 3, 5, 6 and 8 showed significant improvements on immune function, while several fractions had cytoprotective effects against H2O2 induced oxidative injury. Jionoside A1 isolated from Radix Rehmanniae Praeparata displayed dose dependent immune enhancement activity. 20(R) ginsenoside Rg3 could protect bEnd.3 against oxidative damage. Furthermore, echinacoside, jionoside A1, vitexin 2 O rhamnoside, acteoside and isoacteoside possessed moderate protective activities on H2O2 treated SH SY5Y cells. In conclusion, our study provided both chemical and biological evidences to support clinical application of FES.
Deep Survival: A Deep Cox Proportional Hazards Network
Venue: ArXiv

Previous research has shown that neural networks can model survival data in situations in which some patients' death times are unknown, e.g. right censored. However, neural networks have rarely been shown to outperform their linear counterparts such as the Cox proportional hazards model. In this paper, we run simulated experiments and use real survival data to build upon the risk regression architecture proposed by Faraggi and Simon. We demonstrate that our model, DeepSurv, not only works as well as other survival models but actually outperforms in predictive ability on survival data with linear and nonlinear risk functions. We then show that the neural network can also serve as a recommender system by including a categorical variable representing a treatment group. This can be used to provide personalized treatment recommendations based on an individual's calculated risk. We provide an open source Python module that implements these methods in order to advance research on deep learning and survival analysis.
A Study On Named Entity Recognition For Malayalam Language Using TnT Tagger Maximum Entropy Markov Model

Information Extraction is the process of extracting the relevant data from the given text documents. It is one of the widely used research areas in Natural language processing. Named Entity Recognition(NER) deals with recognizing named entities(NE) such as person, organization, location in the text documents. In the existing system, TnT tagger is used for named entity recognition. The drawback is that there occurs a problem while handling the unknown words. Maximum entropy markov models have a drawback. It potentially suffer from the label bias problem. The lowentropy transition distributions effectively ignore their observations. This work implements a named entity recognizer for Malayalam language using Maximum Entropy Markov Model (MEMM) It combines the features of Hidden Markov models and Maximum entropy. It represents all these observations as arbitrary features such as capitalization, word, PoS, formatting) Input data for proposed Named Entity Recognition system is any text document related to the any domain in Malayalam language. Trigrams"n"tags (TnT) tagger is used for parts of speech (POS) tagging. The significance of the work is that it helps in smoothing and handling unknown words. The system is experimented with more than thousand sentences. An accuracy of 82. 5% is obtained for the proposed methodology.
Corpses, popular culture and forensic science: public obsession with death

The cadaver has been heralded as 'pop culture's new star' Foltyn's claim will be expanded in that it does not adequately consider the underlying components of the rise of the corpse in popular culture. It will be argued that forensic science portrayals in popular culture play a critical role in fuelling public obsession with death and cadavers. A particular focus will be taken upon the sociological concept of the gaze and using it to explore how watching the dead is influenced through popular culture forensic work portrayals. The gaze is used to highlight how forensic science in popular culture provides a softening lens through which death and corpses are viewed and how this leads to the normalisation of consuming the dead by the public. Finally, this article will propose the notion of morbid space which is argued to be part of the process in which public fascination with death, dying and corpses is experienced and normalised.
Fair skin in South Asia: an obsession?

The British left South Asia by the middle of the twentieth century. Large parts of Asia and Africa gained independence in the 1950s and the 1960s and the Sun was finally beginning to set on the British Empire. The decline of the British was followed by the rise of their transatlantic cousins, the Americans. The American empire in contrast to the British was mainly an economic one. The American dream and the idea of America as an El dorado caught the imagination of the masses. Hollywood, American television and the entertainment industry exerted a powerful influence on South Asia.
Red obsession: The ascent of fine wine in China

This article uses hammer prices from five global auction houses to analyse the price premium Bordeaux fine wine yielded at Hong Kong wine auctions. We find that fine wine was on average sold at a 19% premium in Hong Kong. We further observe that the Hong Kong premium is not uniform and most pronounced for wines with perfect Parker scores and the most powerful brands. The premium has declined throughout the sample period from 60% in 2008 to a level of 15% since 2012. This can be attributed to the increase in knowledge on fine wine by Chinese customers.
Obsession with perfection: Body dysmorphia.
Venue: Clinics in dermatology

The deeply rooted fascination with beauty penetrates society worldwide. The indulgence to look and feel beautiful pervades all ages, genders, and nationalities, with research conferring a remarkable tendency to agree on measures of attractiveness among these disparate groups. Research has found that beautiful people do, in fact, receive more desirable outcomes in life and job satisfaction, family formation, and overall happiness. Humans have a tendency to respond to attractive persons more favorably, driving many patients to our clinics. Although some dissatisfaction with one's appearance is common and normal, excessive concern with certain facial or body attributes can be sign of an underlying disorder. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a disorder of self perception. It is the obsession with perfection. Defined as the impairing preoccupation with a nonexistent or minimal flaw in appearance, BDD affects 0.7 2.4% of the general population and a much larger percentage of those attempting to receive aesthetic treatments. Clinicians should be aware of this disorder and remain vigilant because such patients will not be satisfied with corrective procedures. Although not involving cosmetic intervention, the treatment of BDD does involve psychiatric referral and psychopharmacologic therapy, with patients receiving these having a much better prognosis.
Persuasive Design for Behaviour Change Apps: Issues for Designers
Venue: SAICSIT '16

The main aim of this position paper is to identify and briefly discuss design related issues commonly encountered with the implementation of both behaviour change techniques and persuasive design principles in physical activity smartphone applications. These overlapping issues highlight a disconnect in the perspectives held between health scientists' focus on the application of behaviour change theories and components of interventions, and the information systems designers' focus on the application of persuasive design principles as software design features intended to motivate, facilitate and support individuals through the behaviour change process. A review of the current status and some examples of these different perspectives is presented, leading to the identification of the main issues associated with this disconnection. The main behaviour change technique issues identified are concerned with: the fragmented integration of techniques, hindrances in successful use, diversity of user needs and preferences, and the informational flow and presentation. The main persuasive design issues identified are associated with: the fragmented application of persuasive design principles, hindrances in successful usage, diversity of user needs and preferences, informational flow and presentation, the lack of pragmatic guidance for application designers, and the maintenance of immersive user interactions and engagements. Given the common overlap across four of the identified issues, it is concluded that a methodological approach for integrating these two perspectives, and their associated issues, into a consolidated framework is necessary to address the apparent disconnect between these two independently established, yet complementary fields.
Therapeutic Plasma Exchange for the Treatment of Systemic Scleroderma A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

Systemic scleroderma (SSc) is a family of rare autoimmune disease that primarily affects middle age women. It is disabling, disfiguring, and steadily progressive, attacking internal organs through fibrotic processes in addition to its characteristic skin changes. Current treatment approaches focus on using immunosuppressants to slow the disease process plus interventions targeted at specific symptoms. Neither approach is currently very effective. Therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) has been tried as a treatment approach for SSc since 1978 based on the rationale that some circulating factor is involved in disease pathogenesis, e.g. autoantibodies or immune complexes, and that removing the potential pathogenic factors should lead to symptom improvement.  A comprehensive review of the research literature was conducted during November and December 2015. Additional articles were found by reviewing all of the references in the original article list. Articles written in other languages were included only if the abstracts were in English.  We identified 40 relevant articles that met our search criteria, involving a total of 533 patients. 15 of these were case studies; the rest ranged from small observational studies to prospective clinical trials with control groups. Because of the very diverse nature of the included studies and the greatly varying protocols, it is difficult to provide quantitative summary data. However, a number of very clear observations can be made upon careful review of these articles. TPE was very well tolerated by almost all patients. Adverse events were very rare and in almost all cases mild. In all studies, the majority of patients receiving TPE showed improvements in both symptoms and laboratory markers, whether in short term treatment of crisis situations or from long term administration of regular TPE. Many patients experienced significant improvement in Raynaud's symptoms and initial healing of digital ulceration after just 3 to 4 weekly treatments. While the effects of even a few TPE treatments often lasted for a number of months, only continued long term treatments resulted in stabilization of symptoms or in one recent case report, sustained remission over a 21 year period. Venous access problems occurred in a significant minority of patients receiving long term TPE, leading to cessation of TPE treatments in some cases and switching to central venous access in other cases.  In contrast to current treatment modalities such as immunosuppression that carry significant risk and show limited efficacy, the results shown in the clinical studies reviewed for this article suggest that long term TPE may offer a low risk way to control and in some cases reverse SSc 1 Scleroderma Education Project, Madison, WI.
Developing Core Competencies for the Prevention and Management of Prescription Drug Misuse: A Medical Education Collaboration in Massachusetts
Venue: Academic medicine journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges

Drug overdose has become the leading cause of injury death in the United States. More than half of those deaths involve prescription drugs, specifically opioids. A key component of addressing this national epidemic is improving prescriber practices. A review of the curricula at the four medical schools in Massachusetts revealed that, although they taught components of addiction medicine, no uniform standard existed to ensure that all students were taught prevention and management strategies for prescription drug misuse. To fill this gap, the governor and the secretary of health and human services invited the deans of the state's four medical schools to convene to develop a common educational strategy for teaching safe and effective opioid prescribing practices. With leadership from the Department of Public Health and Massachusetts Medical Society, the deans formed the Medical Education Working Group in 2015. This group reviewed the relevant literature and current standards for treating substance use disorders and defined 10 core competencies for the prevention and management of prescription drug misuse. The medical schools have incorporated these competencies into their curricula and have committed to assessing students' competence in these areas. The members of the Medical Education Working Group have agreed to continue to work together on key next steps, including connecting these competencies to those for residents, equipping interprofessional teams to address prescription drug misuse, and developing materials in pain management and opioid misuse for practicing physicians. This first in the nation partnership has yielded cross institutional competencies that aim to address a public health emergency in real time.
Wildlife Crime and State Security in South(ern) Africa: An Overview of Developments

There is a growing interest in wildlife crime and security issues, which is inspired by the popular but problematic poacher as terrorist narrative. As poaching has been integral to the creation of enclosures, the question of how it becomes a national and global security issue is pertinent to analyses of the poaching security linkages. I engage this question by tracing changing meanings of the poacher and their relations to security during the Cold War and in post apartheid South(ern) Africa. These historical moments reveal, first, the relevance of the regional context to discussions on the intersection between poaching and security in South(ern) Africa. Second, they shed light on the evolution of poaching as a security code. Third, they show that the discursive poaching security link takes place at various levels across time. I argue that this link does not cohere in South(ern) Africa in part because of shifts in the meanings of the poacher.
How does state security limit the right to protest? State response to popular participation in South Africa

In South Africa, the right to protest has come under threat from the state. Increasing cases of forceful policing and, at times, unlawful procedural prohibitions of protest attest to this. Interviews with members of different community based organisations across South Africa show that protest is sometimes delegitimised under the guise of security as protestors are constructed as threats to the state. The larger implication of this treatment is that these protestors are treated as non citizens who are excluded from participating in governance. This study aims to describe this situation through securitisation theory, arguing that South Africa has become a securitised state. It therefore looks at the implications of this securitised response for popular participation in South Africa.
A tale of two communities: Using relational place making to examine fisheries policy in the Pribilof Island communities of St. George and St. Paul, Alaska

This paper describes how relational place making, with its focus on power dynamics, networked politics, and non market, locally valued characteristics, provides a useful framework for managers to better design fishing community policies. Social data, while becoming more common in fisheries management analyses, are typically restricted to quantitative measures that often cannot adequately summarize dynamics within fishing communities. In contrast, detailed ethnographic research and the theoretical framework of relational place making can provide a useful methodology through which to gather social data to understand resource dependent communities and the effects of fisheries management policies in these places. Relational place making describes the process through which physical spaces are transformed into socially meaningful places, and how these understandings are contested and negotiated among different groups of actors. These contested narratives of place, called place frames, can interact with economic development efforts to help create (or fail to create) sustainable communities. To better understand the efficacy of a specific fisheries policy, the community development quota (CDQ) program, we conducted 6 months of ethnographic research in the rural, Native communities of St. George and St. Paul, Alaska. In both communities we found that local place frames centered on local empowerment and control. In St. George, local place frames conflicted with place frames advanced by CDQ employees, and locals were unable to align place making goals with local economic realities. In St. Paul, local residents and CDQ employees shared a place frame, allowing them to accomplish numerous local development goals. However, differences in place frames advanced by other political entities on the island often complicated development initiatives. This study supports previous research indicating that policies and development projects that increase local power and self determination are most successful in furthering community sustainability and well being. This study indicates that relational place making can illuminate local goals and desires and is therefore of great utility to the fisheries management decision making process.
Empirical Asset Pricing: The Cross Section of Stock Returns

Bali, Engle, and Murray have produced a highly accessible introduction to the techniques and evidence of modern empirical asset pricing. This book should be read and absorbed by every serious student of the field, academic and professional. The empirical analysis of the cross section of stock returns is a monumental achievement of half a century of finance research. Both the established facts and the methods used to discover them have subtle complexities that can mislead casual observers and novice researchers. Bali, Engle, and Murray's clear and careful guide to these issues provides a firm foundation for future discoveries. and Murray provide clear and accessible descriptions of many of the most important empirical techniques and results in asset pricing. This exciting new book presents a thorough review of what we know about the cross section of stock returns. Given its comprehensive nature, systematic approach, and easy to understand language, the book is a valuable resource for any introductory PhD class in empirical asset pricing. Empirical Asset Pricing: The Cross Section of Stock Returns is a comprehensive overview of the most important findings of empirical asset pricing research. The book begins with thorough expositions of the most prevalent econometric techniques with in depth discussions of the implementation and interpretation of results illustrated through detailed examples. The second half of the book applies these techniques to demonstrate the most salient patterns observed in stock returns. The phenomena documented form the basis for a range of investment strategies as well as the foundations of contemporary empirical asset pricing research.  The Cross Section of Stock Returns also includes: Discussions on the driving forces behind the patterns observed in the stock market An extensive set of results that serve as a reference for practitioners and academics alike Numerous references to both contemporary and foundational research articles Empirical Asset Pricing: The Cross Section of Stock Returns is an ideal textbook for graduate level courses in asset pricing and portfolio management. The book is also an indispensable reference for researchers and practitioners in finance and economics.