nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Forecasting potential innovation activities in high tech industries triggered by merger and acquisition deals: a framework of analysis

Technologies arising out of successful high tech mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have a significant innovation potential. However, forecasting of the possible output is coupled with uncertainties caused by misleading or insufficient future oriented analytics. The proposed framework facilitates publicly available information and data to forecast potential innovation activities of the companies involved in high tech M&As. A five step scheme of analysis is aimed to assess previous M&A record, intellectual property (IP) portfolios of the focal companies as well as the relevant technological context, and construct pathways of potential innovation activities using elements of a scenario technique and roadmapping. The framework has been tested on the deals including both large concerns and small and medium sized enterprises (SME) We summarize the paper by reflecting on the merits and limitations of the framework on the way to our objective to provide grounded forecasting triggered by M&As to support the decision making.
Barreras ocultas en los entornos virtuales que perturban las trayectorias educativas de los estudiantes universitarios con discapacidad visual

No es suficiente con facilitar el acceso, es perentorio sostener las trayectorias educativas en el nivel superior, lo cual implica adquirir una nueva alfabetizacion. Bajo la perspectiva de la educacion inclusiva, cumpliendo con el articulo 24 de la Convencion sobre los Derechos de la Personas con Discapacidad, debe prestarse especial atencion a las barreras ocultas que impiden o perturban la permanencia y egreso de los estudiantes universitarios, en particular, los que declaran alguna discapacidad. La incorporacion de las TIC en el trabajo pedagogico y el uso de aulas expandidas en la virtualidad prometen ser instrumentos valiosos para ese proposito. A partir de distintas iniciativas, entre ellas el Proyecto ESVI AL (Mejora de la accesibilidad en la Educacion Superior Virtual para America Latina) se analizo distintas plataformas de e learning. Por su impacto en la region, se consideraron E ducativa, Moodle y Chamilo. De todas las barreras ocultas, las mas delicadas para detectar y resolver son las que perturban o impiden el acceso a los estudiantes con discapacidad visual. Ademas del relevamiento documental, se realizaron entrevistas en profundidad con informantes clave y se realizaron pruebas en aulas virtuales experimentales. El articulo refleja este proceso de analisis y comparacion y se propone una breve guia que oriente la toma de decisiones al momento de seleccionar una plataforma de e learning accesible para estudiantes universitarios con discapacidad visual.
Very high cycle fatigue behavior of a structural steel with and without induced surface defects

Fatigue tests via rotary bending were performed on the specimens with and without induced surface defects for a structural steel of medium carbon content to investigate the effect of surface defects on fatigue behavior in high cycle fatigue and very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regimes. The S N data showed that induced surface defects substantially degraded the related fatigue strength. For the specimens without surface defects failed in VHCF regime, crack initiated from the interior of specimens with inclusions or matrix inhomogeneities as crack origin and the initiation regions were of different extents of rough surface. The observations on the profile samples cut from crack initiation regions revealed that the region was a layer of nanograins for the case of inclusion as crack origin, and was without grain refinement for the case of grain boundary as crack origin. For the specimens with induced surface defects, crack initiated from surface defects and the initiation region was without grain refinement. The characteristics of crack initiation were carefully examined and the effect of surface defects on fatigue strength degradation was analyzed by available models.
International Journal of Scientific and Technical Advancements Comparison of Marshall and Superpave Asphalt Design Methods for Sudan Pavement Mixes

The quality of asphalt concrete in flexible pavements plays a major role in the performance and durability of these pavements. The literature review revealed that Superpave mix design provides better performance than Marshall method, especially for roads exposed to heavy traffic loadings and climatic changes. This study aims to compare the design of asphaltic concrete by the traditional Marshall and the Superpave methods of mix design. Intensive laboratory testing program was conducted on samples of both mixes prepared at the design asphalt contents and aggregate gradations. A comparison between the design results obtained by two mix design procedures is presented. The Superpave mix showed better results of the studied properties compared to Marshall mix. This result proved the superiority of Superpave mixes over Marshall mixes. Therefore, adopting the Superpave design procedure in Sudan might help in enhancing the performance of the asphalt surface roads.  Asphalt concrete; Marshall method; mix design; performance; Superpave method.
Probiotic (Enterococcus faecium) induced responses of the hepatic proteome improves metabolic efficiency of broiler chickens (Gallus gallus)
Venue: BMC Genomics

BackgroundThe liver plays important roles in nutrient metabolism, detoxification and immunity. Enterococcus faecium (E. faecium) is a probiotic that has been shown to have positive effects on broiler production. However, its molecular effects on liver metabolism have not been characterized. This study aims to further identify the biological roles of E. faecium by characterizing the hepatic proteomic changes of broilers (Gallus gallus) fed E. faecium using two dimensional fluorescence difference gel electrophoresis (2 D DIGE) and mass spectrometry (MS).ResultsThirty three proteins (50 protein spots) involved in nutrient metabolism, immunity and the antioxidant system were shown to be differentially expressed in the liver of broilers fed E. faecium than from birds not fed the probiotic. The biological processes of sulphur amino acids, vitamin and cellular hormone metabolism, sulphur compound biosynthesis and protein tetramerization were enhanced in the liver of broilers fed E. faecium. However, proteins involved in calcium ion flux, cell redox homeostasis and platelet activation related to hepatic immune responses were down regulated in broilers fed E. faecium. These results indicate that the supplementation of poultry feed with E. faecium may alter the partitioning of nutrients and promote optimal nutrient utilization.ConclusionsThis study assists in unraveling the molecular effects of the dietary probiotic, E. faecium, in the liver of broiler chickens. It shows that the probiotic improves the metabolism of nutrients and decreases inflammatory responses. Our findings extend previous knowledge of the mechanism of dietary probiotic action and provide new findings for research and future probiotic development.
Long Term and Transgenerational Effects of Stress Experienced during Different Life Phases in Chickens (Gallus gallus)
Venue: PloS one

Stress in animals causes not only immediate reactions, but may affect their biology for long periods, even across generations. Particular interest has been paid to perinatal stress, but also adolescence has been shown to be a sensitive period in mammals. So far, no systematic study has been performed of the relative importance of stress encountered during different life phases. In this study, groups of chickens were exposed to a six day period of repeated stress during three different life phases: early (two weeks) early puberty (eight weeks) and late puberty (17 weeks) and the effects were compared to an unstressed control group. The short term effects were assessed by behaviour, and the long term and transgenerational effects were determined by effects on behavior and corticosterone secretion, as well as on hypothalamic gene expression. Short term effects were strongest in the two week group and the eight week group, whereas long term and transgenerational effects were detected in all three stress groups. However, stress at different ages affected different aspects of the biology of the chickens, and it was not possible to determine a particularly sensitive life phase. The results show that stress during puberty appears to be at least equally critical as the previously studied early life phase. These findings may have important implications for animal welfare in egg production, since laying hens are often exposed to stress during the three periods pinpointed here.
Domestication and ontogeny effects on the stress response in young chickens (Gallus gallus)
Venue: Scientific reports

Domestication is thought to increase stress tolerance. The connection between stressor exposure, glucocorticoids and behavioural responses has been studied in adults, where domestication effects are evident. Early stress exposure may induce detrimental effects both in short and long term. Previous research has reported a lack of glucocorticoid response in newly hatched chickens (Gallus gallus) whereas others have found opposite results. Hence it remains unclear whether the HPA axis is functional from hatch, and if domestication has affected the early post hatch ontogeny of the stress response. Our aims were to investigate the early ontogeny of the HPA axis and characterize behavioural and hormonal stress responses in ancestral Red Junglefowl and in two domestic layer strains. Plasma corticosteone and behavioural responses before and after physical restraint was measured on day one, nine, 16 and 23 post hatch. The results showed significant increases of corticosterone after stress in all three breeds at all the different ages. The HPA response decreased with age and was lower in Red Junglefowl. Behavioural responses also decreased with age, and tended to be stronger in Red Junglefowl. In summary, the HPA axis is reactive from day one, and domestication may have affected its development and reactivity, alongside with related behaviour responses.
Phenotypic characterization of the indigenous chickens (Gallus gallus) in the northwest of Algeria

This study was conducted to characterize local chickens in the northwest of Algeria based on some phenotypic traits and to look at prediction of body weight from morphometric measurements (linear body) The results indicated that the predominant comb colour was dark red (77.8 followed by light red (22.2 Tarsus colour was either white (40.9 grey (31 yellow (15.39 dark (8.05 or green (4.51 Most chickens (81.7 had orange eyes, while 10.37 and 7.92 had yellow and dark brown eyes, respectively. The dominant earlobe colour was white (73.96 followed by red (16.81 The remaining proportion included yellow and red mottled yellow and black earlobes. Proportions of the adaptive genes were low. Incidences of Na, F, Pti, Cr, R, and P genes were 8.82, 0.45, 1.22, 5.54, 3.35, and 4.7 respectively. The calculated gene frequencies ranged from 0.002 to 0.045. Variations were also found in quantitative morphological traits. Sex associated differences (P
Selenoprotein Transcript Level and Enzyme Activity as Biomarkers for Selenium Status and Selenium Requirements of Chickens (Gallus gallus)
Venue: PloS one

The NRC selenium (Se) requirement for broiler chicks is 0.15 mg Se/g diet, based primarily on weight gain and feed intake studies reported in 1986. To determine Se requirements in today's rapidly growing broiler chick, day old male chicks were fed Se deficient basal diets supplemented with graded levels of Se (0, 0.025, 0.05, 0.075, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 mg Se/g) as Na2SeO3 (5/treatment) Diets contained 15X the vitamin E requirement, and there were no gross signs of Se deficiency. At 29 d, Se deficient chicks weighed 62% of Se supplemented chicks; 0.025 mg Se/g reversed this effect, indicating a minimum Se requirement of 0.025 mg Se/g diet for growth for male broiler chicks. Enzyme activities in Se deficient chicks for plasma GPX3, liver and gizzard GPX1, and liver and gizzard GPX4 decreased dramatically to 3, 2, 5, 10 and 5% respectively, of Se adequate levels, with minimum Se requirements of 0.10 0.13 mg Se/g, and with defined plateaus above these levels. Pancreas GPX1 and GPX4 activities, however, lacked defined plateaus, with breakpoints at 0.3 mg Se/g. qPCR measurement of all 24 chicken selenoprotein transcripts, plus SEPHS1, found that SEPP1 in liver, GPX3 in gizzard, and SEPP1, GPX3 and SELK in pancreas were expressed at levels comparable to housekeeping transcripts. Only 33% 25% and 50% of selenoprotein transcripts were down regulated significantly by Se deficiency in liver, gizzard and pancreas, respectively. No transcripts could be used as biomarkers for supernutritional Se status. For export selenoproteins SEPP1 and GPX3, tissue distribution, high expression and Se regulation clearly indicate unique Se metabolism, which may underlie tissues targeted by Se deficiency. Based on enzyme activities in liver, gizzard, and plasma, the minimum Se requirement in today's broiler chick is 0.15 mg Se/g diet; pancreas data indicate that the Se requirement should be raised to 0.2 mg Se/g diet to provide a margin of safety.
Ecto parasites of Domestic Chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja, Nigeria West Africa

Ectoparasites are generally considered as the primary cause of poor health conditions, growth retardations and decrease in production in local chickens in Nigeria. However, there is no data on the prevalence of the common ectoparasites of chickens in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. In this study, a preliminary survey was conducted on the common ectoparasites on local chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja. Collection and identification of the ectoparasites were undertaken from the five selected areas of Gwagwalada between the months of September and November, 2014 (Hot rainy season) All visible individual ectoparasites were collected from 250 local chickens with 20% of the total sample size being randomly selected from each of the five areas viz Phases 1, 2 3, Dagiri, Kuje Road, Passo and Gwagwalada market (raised in cages) whilst all other chickens were from free range. The prevalence of ectoparasites was significantly higher in Gwagwalada market and was significantly associated with higher infestation rate (P
Examining the disconnect between learning theories and educational practices in the PharmD programme at Qatar University a case study

research aims to examine evidence concerning the implementation of learning theories in the QU PharmD programme, utilising a case study research approach. The research is divided into four stages, conducted under the umbrella of a social constructivist interpretative framework and the constructivist and social theories of learning. In the first stage, the perceptions of full time students, faculty and preceptors in the QU PharmD programme were explored; these raised questions regarding the role of learning theory in the design and delivery of the programme. The second stage explored the extent to which the programme is based on learning theories by interviewing two programme designers, a pharmacy education scholar and an accreditation agency administrator. This stage proposed a disconnect between learning theories and educational practice in the QU PharmD programme, and suggested the need for investigating the implications of the proposed disconnect from a Communities of Practice (CoP) theory perspective. In the third stage, a novel CoP theory informed framework was developed through an extensive review of the literature. In the fourth stage, the CoP framework was used as a theoretical instrument to analyse the evidence of CoP theory in the QU PharmD programme by conducting three focus groups and five interviews with key stakeholders, and by performing document analysis. The research suggests that the disconnect between CoP learning theory and the educational practices in the QU PharmD programme is at the "implicit disconnect" level, meaning that some elements of the CoP framework were implicitly evident. This implicit disconnect contributes to the challenges found in the programme. This study concludes with the creation of a case study developed theory emphasising the importance of the full and explicit implementation of learning theory in educational practices. The theory calls for better integration of academic, practice, accreditation, and governmental sector efforts in professional healthcare educational reform initiatives.
Three parties, one direction: Research priorities in adults with congenital heart disease. What do professionals, patients and relatives want to know?
Venue: International journal of cardiology

Patients, their relatives, as well as medical specialists from the fields of paediatric cardiology, cardiology and cardiac surgery were surveyed to investigate the current research needs in the field of congenital heart disease (CHD) focussing specifically on the needs of those affected.  An online survey including four groups of patients with CHD (Fontan circulation, transposition of the great arteries [TGA] after atrial switch [AS] and after arterial switch operation [ASO] tetralogy of Fallot [TOF] was performed. Each questionnaire comprised twelve topics. Persons affected (patients and relatives) were surveyed by means of CHD group specific questionnaires. Participants were recruited through the German National Register for Congenital Heart Defects.  N=596 affected persons (Fontan circulation: n=189; TGA after AS: n=64; TGA after ASO: n=90; TOF: n=253) and 75 physicians (57.3% paediatric cardiologists, 28.0% cardiologists, 10.7% cardiac surgeons, 4.0% other) participated. In general, those affected assume a greater need for research than physicians. Regarding the CHD related topics to be the focus of future research, those affected largely agreed with the participating physicians, although with a different ranking of research topics.  Based on the results of our study the challenges immanent in routine care for the CHD patient groups investigated can be identified. Accordingly, these topics should be prioritized in the research of the coming years.
A comparative study of the morphometry of sperm head components in cattle, sheep, and pigs with a computer assisted fluorescence method
Venue: Asian journal of andrology

The aim of this study was to compare the sperm nuclear and acrosomal morphometry of three species of domestic artiodactyls; cattle (Bos taurus) sheep (Ovis aries) and pigs (Sus scrofa) Semen smears of twenty ejaculates from each species were fixed and labeled with a propidium iodide Pisum sativum agglutinin (PI/PSA) combination. Digital images of the sperm nucleus, acrosome, and whole sperm head were captured and analyzed. The use of the PI/PSA combination and CASA Morph fluorescence based method allowed the capture, morphometric analysis, and differentiation of most sperm nuclei, acrosomes and whole heads, and the assessment of acrosomal integrity with a high precision in the three species studied. For the size of the head and nuclear area, the relationship between the three species may be summarized as bull ram boar. However, for the other morphometric parameters (length, width, and perimeter) there were differences in the relationships between species for sperm nuclei and whole sperm heads. Bull sperm acrosomes were clearly smaller than those in the other species studied and covered a smaller proportion of the sperm head. The acrosomal morphology, small in the bull, large and broad in the sheep, and large, long, and with a pronounced equatorial segment curve in the boar, was species characteristic. It was concluded that there are clear variations in the size and shape of the sperm head components between the three species studied, the acrosome being the structure showing the most variability, allowing a clear distinction of the spermatozoa of each species.
Federated Optimization: Distributed Machine Learning for On Device Intelligence
Venue: ArXiv

We introduce a new and increasingly relevant setting for distributed optimization in machine learning, where the data defining the optimization are unevenly distributed over an extremely large number of nodes. The goal is to train a high quality centralized model. We refer to this setting as Federated Optimization. In this setting, communication efficiency is of the utmost importance and minimizing the number of rounds of communication is the principal goal. A motivating example arises when we keep the training data locally on users' mobile devices instead of logging it to a data center for training. In federated optimziation, the devices are used as compute nodes performing computation on their local data in order to update a global model. We suppose that we have extremely large number of devices in the network as many as the number of users of a given service, each of which has only a tiny fraction of the total data available. In particular, we expect the number of data points available locally to be much smaller than the number of devices. Additionally, since different users generate data with different patterns, it is reasonable to assume that no device has a representative sample of the overall distribution. We show that existing algorithms are not suitable for this setting, and propose a new algorithm which shows encouraging experimental results for sparse convex problems. This work also sets a path for future research needed in the context of \federated optimization.
A data fusion algorithm based on the Kalman filter to estimate leaf area index evolution in durum wheat by using field measurements and MODIS surface reflectance data

The use of leaf area index (LAI) is essential in ecosystem and agronomic studies since it measures energy and gas exchanges between vegetation and atmosphere. In the last decades, LAI values have widely been estimated from passive remotely sensed data although estimated results were often affected by noise and measurement uncertainties. In this article, we propose a Kalman filter algorithm in order to estimate the time evolution of LAI by combining field measured and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface reflectance data. The scalar equation of the dynamic LAI model (state transition model) was derived by the field measured data while the MODIS red, near infrared and shortwave infrared reflectance data were used to implement the observation model. The reflectance data were linked to LAI by using the reduced simple ratio. The method was tested in an experimental field located in the north western part of the Apulia region (Italy) The results showed a good agreement between the LAI estimated through the algorithm and the LAI derived from field data, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.96 and a corresponding root mean square error of 0.124.