nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Proposition and Validation of a Questionnaire to Measure the User Experience in Immersive Virtual Environments
Venue: Int. J. Virtual Real.

There are increasing new advances in Virtual Reality technologies as well as a rise in Immersive Virtual Environments research and in User eXperience research. Within this framework, we decided to address the overall user experience in Immersive virtual environments. Indeed, in our point of view, this topic is not fully dealt with in the scientific literature, neither in terms of user experience components nor in terms of user experience measurement methods. It is in this context that we conducted a study aiming at proposing and validating a unified questionnaire on User eXperience in Immersive Virtual Environment. Our questionnaire contains 10 scales measuring presence, engagement, immersion, flow, usability, skill, emotion, experience consequence, judgement and technology adoption. Scale construction was based on existing questionnaires. Our questionnaire was tested on 116 participants after they use the edutainment Virtual Environment "Think and Shoot" The number of participants allows us to assess the reliability and the sensitivity of our questionnaire. Results show that 9 out of 10 subscales and 68 out of 87 items are reliable as demonstrated by an internal consistency analysis with Cronbach's alpha and an item analysis. Findings also indicate that the scale scores from 6 subscales are considered normal distributed (e.g. presence) whereas the scale scores from 3 subscales are considered negatively skewed (e.g. skill)
The 4 parameter Compressible Packing Model (CPM) including a new theory about wall effect and loosening effect for spheres

the 4 parameter CPM, is introduced to predict the packing density of maximally dense disordered packings of bidisperse spherical particles. Based on the assumption of a dominant granular class, it takes into account the packing process efficiency and two geometrical interactions objects of a new theory: the wall effect and the loosening effect. For the latter, a critical cavity size ratio, below which a fine bead can be inserted into a small cavity created by touching coarser particles, is introduced. When the packing process is perfect, the packing density reaches a maximum virtual density defined as the maximum packing density attainable for a given mixture. In this reference frame, the theory for wall effect and loosening effect is based on a specific treatment of configurations of one secondary class particle surrounded by dominant class neighbours. The four parameters are: the wall effect and the loosening effect coefficients, the compaction index and the critical cavity size ratio which can be adjusted for aggregates, but whose value is 0.2 for spheres, in harmony with the tetrahedral cavern theory. The 4 parameter CPM demonstrates its efficiency to predict packing density of binary mixtures from the analysis of 320 results. Correlation coefficients are 99% for glass beads (300 values) and 98.7% for numerically simulated spherical particles (20 values)
Biological Flora of the British Isles: Fraxinus excelsior

This account presents information on all aspects of the biology of Fraxinus excelsior L. (Ash) that are relevant to understanding its ecological characteristics and behaviour. The main topics are presented within the standard framework of the Biological Flora of the British Isles: distribution, habitat, communities, responses to biotic factors, responses to environment, structure and physiology, phenology, floral and seed characters, herbivores and disease, history, and conservation. Fraxinus excelsior is a large forest tree, native throughout the main islands of Britain and much of mainland Europe. Seedlings are shade tolerant, but adults are not so it tends to be an intermediate successional species, invading gaps in mixed stands rather than forming extensive pure stands. Ash grows on a wide range of soils but is commonest on nutrient rich soils with a high base status and pH 4.2, and is at its best on dry calcareous screes and fertile alluvial soils. Fraxinus excelsior is trioecious or subdioecious with male, hermaphrodite and female flowers and trees. Seed production is prolific with periodic higher producing mast years. Seeds are primarily wind dispersed, but they can float and be moved considerable distances along waterways. Germination is delayed by dormancy until usually the second spring after being shed. Ash is tolerant of drought, but intolerant of spring frosts and so is predicted to fare well under current climate change scenarios, and indeed has recently been expanding in range in Europe. However, ash health and survival is currently seriously compromised by ash dieback caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (Chalara fraxinea) that has the potential to kill all but a very few resistant trees. Moreover, the emerald ash borer beetle Agrilus planipennis, a serious pest of ash species in N. America, has reached Europe (though not yet the British Isles) and poses an equally if not more serious long term threat to ash.
A Biased Randomised Large Neighbourhood Search for the two dimensional Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls
Venue: Eur. J. Oper. Res.

The two dimensional loading vehicle routing problem with clustered backhauls (2L VRPB) is a realistic extension of the classical vehicle routing problem where both delivery and pickup demands are composed of non stackable items. Despite the fact that the 2L VRPB can be frequently found in real life transportation activities, it has not been analysed so far in the literature. This paper presents a hybrid algorithm that integrates biased randomised versions of vehicle routing and packing heuristics within a Large Neighbourhood Search metaheuristic framework. The use of biased randomisation techniques allows to better guide the local search process. The proposed approach for solving the 2L VRPB is tested on an extensive set of instances, which have been adapted from existing benchmarks for the two dimensional loading vehicle routing problem (2L VRP) Additionally, when no backhauls are considered our algorithm is able to find new best solutions for several 2L VRP benchmark instances with sequential oriented loading, both with and without items rotation.
Using biased randomization for solving the two dimensional loading vehicle routing problem with heterogeneous fleet
Venue: Ann. Oper. Res.

This paper discusses the two dimensional loading capacitated vehicle routing problem (2L CVRP) with heterogeneous fleet (2L HFVRP) The 2L CVRP can be found in many real life situations related to the transportation of voluminous items where two dimensional packing restrictions have to be considered, e.g. transportation of heavy machinery, forklifts, professional cleaning equipment, etc. Here, we also consider a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, comprising units of different capacities, sizes and fixed/variable costs. Despite the fact that heterogeneous fleets are quite ubiquitous in real life scenarios, there is a lack of publications in the literature discussing the 2L HFVRP. In particular, to the best of our knowledge no previous work discusses the non oriented 2L HFVRP, in which items are allowed to be rotated during the truck loading process. After describing and motivating the problem, a literature review on related work is performed. Then, a multi start algorithm based on biased randomization of routing and packing heuristics is proposed. A set of computational experiments contribute to illustrate the scope of our approach, as well as to show its efficiency.
Improving Variational Autoencoders with Inverse Autoregressive Flow

The framework of normalizing flows provides a general strategy for flexible variational inference of posteriors over latent variables. We propose a new type of normalizing flow, inverse autoregressive flow (IAF) that, in contrast to earlier published flows, scales well to high dimensional latent spaces. The proposed flow consists of a chain of invertible transformations, where each transformation is based on an autoregressive neural network. In experiments, we show that IAF significantly improves upon diagonal Gaussian approximate posteriors. In addition, we demonstrate that a novel type of variational autoencoder, coupled with IAF, is competitive with neural autoregressive models in terms of attained log likelihood on natural images, while allowing significantly faster synthesis.
Online Human Action Detection using Joint Classification Regression Recurrent Neural Networks
Venue: ECCV

Human action recognition from well segmented 3D skeleton data has been intensively studied and has been attracting an increasing attention. Online action detection goes one step further and is more challenging, which identifies the action type and localizes the action positions on the fly from the untrimmed stream data. In this paper, we study the problem of online action detection from streaming skeleton data. We propose a multi task end to end Joint Classification Regression Recurrent Neural Network to better explore the action type and temporal localization information. By employing a joint classification and regression optimization objective, this network is capable of automatically localizing the start and end points of actions more accurately. Specifically, by leveraging the merits of the deep Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) subnetwork, the proposed model automatically captures the complex long range temporal dynamics, which naturally avoids the typical sliding window design and thus ensures high computational efficiency. Furthermore, the subtask of regression optimization provides the ability to forecast the action prior to its occurrence. To evaluate our proposed model, we build a large streaming video dataset with annotations. Experimental results on our dataset and the public G3D dataset both demonstrate very promising performance of our scheme.
Purely Sequence Trained Neural Networks for ASR Based on Lattice Free MMI
Venue: INTERSPEECH

In this paper we describe a method to perform sequencediscriminative training of neural network acoustic models without the need for frame level cross entropy pre training. We use the lattice free version of the maximum mutual information (MMI) criterion: LF MMI. To make its computation feasible we use a phone n gram language model, in place of the word language model. To further reduce its space and time complexity we compute the objective function using neural network outputs at one third the standard frame rate. These changes enable us to perform the computation for the forward backward algorithm on GPUs. Further the reduced output frame rate also provides a significant speed up during decoding. We present results on 5 different LVCSR tasks with training data ranging from 100 to 2100 hours. Models trained with LFMMI provide a relative word error rate reduction of ~11.5% over those trained with cross entropy objective function, and ~8% over those trained with cross entropy and sMBR objective functions. A further reduction of ~2.5% relative, can be obtained by fine tuning these models with the word lattice based sMBR objective function.
Evidence regarding the utility of multiple mini interview (MMI) for selection to undergraduate health programs: A BEME systematic review: BEME Guide No. 37
Venue: Medical teacher

In the 11 years since its development at McMaster University Medical School, the multiple mini interview (MMI) has become a popular selection tool. We aimed to systematically explore, analyze and synthesize the evidence regarding MMIs for selection to undergraduate health programs.  The review protocol was peer reviewed and prospectively registered with the Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) collaboration. Thirteen databases were searched through 34 terms and their Boolean combinations. Seven key journals were hand searched since 2004. The reference sections of all included studies were screened. Studies meeting the inclusion criteria were coded independently by two reviewers using a modified BEME coding sheet. Extracted data were synthesized through narrative synthesis.  A total of 4338 citations were identified and screened, resulting in 41 papers that met inclusion criteria. Thirty two studies report data for selection to medicine, six for dentistry, three for veterinary medicine, one for pharmacy, one for nursing, one for rehabilitation, and one for health science. Five studies investigated selection to more than one profession. MMIs used for selection to undergraduate health programs appear to have reasonable feasibility, acceptability, validity, and reliability. Reliability is optimized by including 7 12 stations, each with one examiner. The evidence is stronger for face validity, with more research needed to explore content validity and predictive validity. In published studies, MMIs do not appear biased against applicants on the basis of age, gender, or socio economic status. However, applicants of certain ethnic and social backgrounds did less well in a very small number of published studies. Performance on MMIs does not correlate strongly with other measures of noncognitive attributes, such as personality inventories and measures of emotional intelligence.  MMI does not automatically mean a more reliable selection process but it can do, if carefully designed. Effective MMIs require careful identification of the noncognitive attributes sought by the program and institution. Attention needs to be given to the number of stations, the blueprint and examiner training.  More work is required on MMIs as they may disadvantage groups of certain ethnic or social backgrounds. There is a compelling argument for multi institutional studies to investigate areas such as the relationship of MMI content to curriculum domains, graduate outcomes, and social missions; relationships of applicants' performance on different MMIs; bias in selecting applicants of minority groups; and the long term outcomes appropriate for studies of predictive validity.
Development of a benthic macroinvertebrate multimetric index (MMI) for Neotropical Savanna headwater streams

Assessing the ecological impacts of anthropogenic pressures is a key task in environmental management. Multimetric indices (MMIs) based on aquatic assemblage responses to anthropogenic pressures, have been used increasingly throughout the world. The MMI approach is a low cost, rapid field method that produces an aquatic condition index that responds precisely to anthropogenic pressures, making it useful for conservation and environmental management. We developed four candidate MMIs based on benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages sampled at 40 randomly selected sites to assess the environmental condition of streams upstream of a hydroelectric power plant in the Brazilian Neotropical Savanna biome. Those MMIs were built from landscape adjusted and unadjusted biological metrics as well as two alternative ways of choosing metrics. The alternative MMIs performances were tested by comparing their precision to distinguish least disturbed areas, responsiveness to discriminate least and most disturbed areas, and sensitivity to anthropogenic pressures at catchment and local scales. The best performing MMI had landscape adjusted metrics and was produced through use of principal component analysis for metric selection. It included 4 metrics: Ephemeroptera richness, average tolerance score per taxon, percentage of predator individuals, and percentage of Odonata individuals adjusted by elevation. This index discriminated well the anthropogenic pressures at local and catchment scales, and at both scales simultaneously, as indicated by an integrated disturbance index. Our methodological development included statistical criteria for identifying least and most disturbed sites, calibrating for natural landscape variability, and use of non redundant metrics. Therefore, we expect it will provide a model for environmental assessment of water resources elsewhere in Brazil and in other nations.
An 8 Channel Wavelength MMI Demultiplexer in Slot Waveguide Structures
Venue: Materials

We propose a novel 8 channel wavelength multimode interference (MMI) demultiplexer in slot waveguide structures that operate at 1530 nm, 1535 nm, 1540 nm, 1545 nm, 1550 nm, 1555 nm, 1560 nm, and 1565 nm. Gallium nitride (GaN) surrounded by silicon (Si) was found to be a suitable material for the slot waveguide structures. The proposed device was designed by seven 1 x 2 MMI couplers, fourteen S bands, and one input taper. Numerical investigations were carried out on the geometrical parameters using a full vectorial beam propagation method (FV BPM) Simulation results show that the proposed device can transmit 8 channel that works in the whole C band (1530 1565 nm) with low crosstalk 19.97 13.77 dB) and bandwidth (1.8 3.6 nm) Thus, the device can be very useful in optical networking systems that work on dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology.
Love thy neighbour: Personality traits, relationship quality, and attraction to others as predictors of infidelity among young adults

Infidelity is defined as the violation of a couple's assumed or stated agreement concerning emotional and/or sexual exclusivity. The current study examined the utility of personality traits (i.e. the Big Five and SIS/SES an individual's sexual response to sexual desires, arousal, and behaviours are based on the balance between sexual excitation and sexual inhibition; Bancroft Janssen, 2000) relative to relationship quality and attraction to others in predicting reports of infidelity among a sample of young adults (ages 18 26 years) A total of 131 men and 164 women from the US who reported being in a romantic relationship were recruited using MTurk(r) an online crowdsourcing survey tool. Participants completed a series of measures assessing demographics, relationship quality and investment, sexual experience, sexual attitudes, attraction to others, and personality traits, including the Big Five and SIS/SES. A notable minority (16.6% of participants reported at least one occasion of past infidelity during their current romantic relationship (yes/no reports) however, reports of infidelity increased significantly when individuals reported actual sexual, romantic, and online infidelity activities (78.6% Personality traits within the Big Five and SIS/SES models were not significant predictors of infidelity. With each occurrence of emotional attraction to a person other than their current partner, the odds of reporting infidelity increased by 51.6% The findings are discussed in terms of implications for counselling and education regarding infidelity, as well as continued research on risk factors for infidelity among young adults.
Controlled synthesis of CaTiO3:Ln3+ nanocrystals for luminescence and photocatalytic hydrogen production

Bifunctional CaTiO3:Ln3+ (Ln Eu and Er) nanocrystals were prepared via a facile method followed by calcination in air. The as prepared CaTiO3:Ln3+ nanocrystals exhibited bifunctional performance for both photoluminescence and photocatalytic hydrogen production. As a phosphor powder, the luminescence properties of CaTiO3:Ln3+ nanocrystals could be controlled by doping with different Ln3+ ions. They showed very stable luminescence properties and a much higher quenching concentration due to the scheelite related structure of CaTiO3, which was up to 17% (Eu doping) As a photocatalyst, the CaTiO3:Ln3+ nanocrystals exhibited a higher activity for hydrogen production under ultraviolet light irradiation. The CaTiO3:Er3+ nanocrystals displayed the highest photocatalytic activity of up to 461.25 mmol h 1, which was higher than that of CaTiO3:Eu3+ nanocrystals and pure CaTiO3. The results indicated that incorporation of Ln3+ ions benefits electron transfer as well as the reduction of the band gap of the CaTiO3 photocatalyst.
Effects of Fuel to Synthesis of CaTiO3 by Solution Combustion Synthesis for High Level Nuclear Waste Ceramics.
Venue: Journal of nanoscience and nanotechnology

A solution combustion process for the synthesis of perovskite (CaTiO3) powders is described. Perovskite is one of the crystalline host matrics for the disposal of high level radioactive wastes (HLW) because it immobilizes Sr and Lns elements by forming solid solutions. Solution combustion synthesis, which is a self sustaining oxi reduction reaction between nitrate and organic fuel, the exothermic reaction, and the heat evolved convert the precursors into their corresponding oxide products above 1100 degrees C in air. To investigate the effects of amino acid on the combustion reaction, various types of fuels were used; a glycine, amine and carboxylic ligand mixture. Sr, La and Gd nitrate with equivalent amounts of up to 20% of CaTiO3 were mixed with Ca and Ti nitrate and amino acid. X ray diffraction analysis, SEM and TEM were conducted to confirm the formed phases and morphologies. While powders with an uncontrolled shape are obtained through a general oxide route process, Ca(Sr, Lns)TiO3 powders with micro sized soft agglomerates consisting of nano sized primary particles can be prepared using this method.
QL: Object oriented Queries on Relational Data
Venue: ECOOP

This paper describes QL, a language for querying complex, potentially recursive data structures. QL compiles to Datalog and runs on a standard relational database, yet it provides familiar looking object oriented features such as classes and methods, reinterpreted in logical terms: classes are logical properties describing sets of values, subclassing is implication, and virtual calls are dispatched dynamically by considering the most specific classes containing the receiver. Furthermore, types in QL are prescriptive and actively influence program evaluation rather than just describing it. In combination, these features enable the development of concise queries based on reusable libraries, which are written in a purely declarative style, yet can be efficiently executed even on very large data sets. In particular, we have used QL to implement static analyses for various programming languages, which scale to millions of lines of code.
Examining Quality in Two Preschool Settings: Publicly Funded Early Childhood Education and Inclusive Early Childhood Education Classrooms

BackgroundAlthough classroom quality is an important consideration, few recent research studies have examined the process and structural quality in publicly funded early childhood education (ECE) and inclusive ECE classrooms. This study provides an important contribution to the literature by comparing two conceptualizations of quality in classrooms serving children from low income households and those with disabilities.Objectives(1) To characterize and to determine differences with regard to process and structural quality in publicly funded ECE and inclusive ECE classrooms, and (2) to examine whether and to what extent the process quality varied when controlling for structural quality and classroom income/race variables.MethodOne hundred and sixty four classrooms (85 ECE, 79 inclusive) that were enrolled in two large scale intervention studies examining a book reading program were included in the present study. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al. in Classroom assessment scoring system, Paul H. Brookes, Baltimore, 2008) and three detailed questionnaires were used to quantify process and structural quality, respectively.ResultsResults revealed quantitative differences in process quality, specifically in the emotional support dimension of negative climate as well as all dimensions of instructional support, between the two settings. In addition, teachers' education was a significant predictor of process quality, and publicly funded ECE classrooms scored over two points higher on the instructional support domain of the CLASS when controlling for other structural quality measures and income and race.ConclusionsOur findings have implications for best practice guidelines and policies, particularly for classroom environments serving children with disabilities, which are discussed.