nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Exploring intercultural competence through an intercultural extracurricular activity in Taiwan

This study used interviews to explore how 10 Taiwanese college students' intercultural competence was developed after participating in an intercultural extracurricular activity designed with a purpose to facilitate foreign students' study in Taiwan and to promote meaningful home foreign student contacts. In depth information and narratives from the interviews were collected as evidence of intercultural competence development. The results showed all the interviewees appreciated the experience and felt it to have been of value to them in terms of building international friendships, heightening their intercultural awareness and the benefits of intercultural competence, and having more appreciation and better understanding of Taiwanese culture. Students also realized that a lack of understanding of Taiwanese culture could exacerbate communication difficulties. Students thus became aware of the importance of describing Taiwanese cultural practices in English and realized that more language practice was necessary for smoother communication. Suggestions for both extracurricular activities and language programs improvement in the future were also provided in the conclusion.
A CTF Based Approach in Information Security Education: An Extracurricular Activity in Teaching Students at Altai State University, Russia

Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions are the most popular events in cybersecurity conferences where participants can demonstrate their skills. Also, the CTF is widely acknowledged as a valuable pedagogical tool for providing the students with real life problems in computer security area when dealing with CTF tasks. However, there is the possibility to go beyond treating CTF tasks only. The paper presents an approach to establish a CTF based educational framework that allows students to gain more practical skills, knowledge and expertise in information security and related areas. The framework is implemented in Altai State University (Barnaul, Russia) in 2014 as an extracurricular club activity, and the club runs successfully up till now. Pedagogical benefits, learning methodology and educational aspects are discussed, and positive feedback shows the success of the proposed approach.
Estimating spatial patterns of air temperature at building resolving spatial resolution in Seoul, Korea

The thermal environment in urban areas is substantially influenced by local surface properties and their modification through human activities. The effects of urban climate on human health are one of the motivations for the development of various urban climate analysis tools. Climate Analysis Seoul (CAS) is a tool that incorporates a meso scale atmospheric model and conceptual geographic information system (GIS) based models to provide gridded air temperature deviations based on high resolution land cover information. The CAS output was evaluated using air temperatures observed at 18 automatic weather stations (AWS) located in the detail region (DR) Eunpyeong. Correlation analyses were performed to reveal the influence of different land cover characteristics and CAS output variables on measured air temperature deviations. Based on the results of the correlation analyses in the study region (SR) Seoul, a regression model (total air temperature distribution, TD' was developed. It predicts spatially distributed air temperatures based on morphological parameters and an observed reference temperature. Using the TD' model, maps of daily maximum air temperatures were produced for the entire area of Seoul with a horizontal resolution of 25 m, and of 5 m for the DR, the latter allows to assess the impacts of different building and vegetation structures on air temperature by resolving buildings. The TD' model was evaluated using measurements at eight AWS. The TD' model slightly overestimated daily maximum air temperatures in 2007 and 2011, but performed better for 2011, mainly because land cover data represent the final state of the urban development. The TD' model appears to be a suitable tool for estimating air temperature distributions at building resolving resolutions. It can be used to assess changes in the thermal environment and heat related hazards through urban development plans already ahead of their realization.
Influence of Relationship Marketing on Customer Retention in Sri Lankan Banking Industry

Banking sector has become turbulent with the immense competition; hence it is mandatory to retain customers to ensure long term survival. In contemporary business markets, Relationship Marketing (RM) is used as a new competitive weapon to conquer the minds of consumers. Most of the past studies have concentrated on the link between customer relationship management and customer retention or have treated the concepts separately. Relatively few studies have focused on the influence of RM on customer retention (CR) There is a lack of empirical evidences that directly treated this type of investigations especially in Sri Lanka. Through this study, researchers intend to measure "Influence of RM on CR with respect to the Banking Industry in Sri Lanka" The research objectives are to identify the salient dimension of RM and to examine the influence of RM on CR. This study is descriptive, correlational and conclusive in nature. People who are visiting a bank to get the service were considered as the population for this study. A sample of 250 people from Colombo and Kandy metropolitan area was selected by using the convenience sampling technique. Person who visits a bank to get the service was taken as the unit of analysis. Paired Sample T Test, Mean Analysis and Regression Analysis were performed to assess the hypotheses. The results demonstrated that Organizational dimension as the salient dimension of RM. And also it is identified that there is a strong positive influence of RM on CR with reference to Sri Lankan banking industry. The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature in the aspects of consumer behaviour and psychology. And the inference of this research can be used in developing strategies to enhance the level of CR through means of RM especially in the areas of training and development, creating new roles and responsibilities dedicated to RM and maintaining an effective database system to support marketing information systems which will ultimately lead banks to increase the competiveness in the banking industry and finally it contributes to the economic stability and prosperity of Sri Lanka.  Banking Industry, Relationship Marketing, Customer Retention
Re examination of the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) immune response to flagellin: Yersinia ruckeri flagellin is a potent activator of acute phase proteins, anti microbial peptides and pro inflammatory cytokines in vitro.
Venue: Developmental and comparative immunology

Flagellin is the principal component of bacterial flagellum and a major target of the host immune system. To provide new insights into the role of flagellin in fish immune responses to flagellated microorganisms, a recombinant flagellin from Yersinia ruckeri (rYRF) was produced and its bioactivity investigated in the trout macrophage cell line RTS 11 and head kidney cells. rYRF is a potent activator of pro inflammatory cytokines, acute phase proteins, antimicrobial peptides and subunits of the IL 12 cytokine family. This and the synergy seen with IFN g to enhance further expression of specific IL 12 and TNF a isoforms may suggest that flagellin could be a useful immune stimulant or adjuvant for use in aquaculture. Gene paralogues were often differentially modulated, highlighting the need to study all of the paralogues of immune genes in fish to gain a full understanding of the effects of PAMPs or other stimulants, and the potential immune responses elicited.
Medicinal herbs as a potential strategy to decrease methane production by rumen microbiota: a systematic evaluation with a focus on Perilla frutescens seed extract
Venue: Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

Mitigation of the methane (CH4) emission from ruminants is needed to decrease the environmental impact of ruminant animal production. Different plant materials and chemicals have been tested, but few are both effective and practical. Medicinal herbs contain biological compounds and antimicrobials that may be effective in lowering the CH4 production. However, few studies have systematically evaluated medicinal herbs for their effect on CH4 production or on the rumen microbiota. In this study, extracts from 100 medicinal herbs were assessed for their ability to decrease CH4 production by rumen microbiota in vitro. The extracts of 12 herbs effectively lowered the CH4 production, with the extract of Perilla frutescens seeds being the most effective. The major components of P. frutescens seed extract were identified, and the effects of the extract on the fermentation characteristics and populations of rumen methanogens, fungi, protozoa, and select bacteria were also assessed. The decreased CH4 production induced by the P. frutescens seed extract was accompanied by an increased abundance of Ruminobacter, Selenomonas, Succinivibrio, Shuttleworthis, Pseudobutyrivbrio, Anaerovibrio, and Roseomonas and a decreased abundance of Methanobrevibacter millerae. The abundance of Pedobacter, Anaeroplasma, Paludibacter, Ruminococcus, and unclassified Lachnospiraceae was positively correlated with the CH4 production, with no effects on volatile fatty acids. This study suggests that medicinal herbs may be used to mitigate the CH4 emission from ruminants.
A genetic algorithm using K path initialization for community detection in complex networks
Venue: Cluster Computing

Genetic algorithms have been used in community detection due to their efficiency and accuracy in automatic discovery of communities in complex networks. The traditional method of population initialization for genetic algorithms does not fully consider topology of a network. Therefore, the quality of the initial population may be poor, which may consequently slow down the convergence of the entire process. According to the characteristics of social networks, we propose a K path initialization method which makes full use of the topological information of a given network. The main focus of our study is to find whether a K path initialized generic algorithm can bring significant increase in Q value after the FIRST iteration, and to prove whether such algorithm can accelerate the convergence of the entire process for faster community detection over a randomly initialized genetic algorithm. By applying this new algorithm to Karate, Football, and Jazz, we found that the K path initialized algorithm can increase the Q value by 50 160% on average over that without using K path initialization after the first round of iteration. This initial advantage is then accumulated during the subsequent iterations by reducing the number of total iterations by at least 28% and at most 41%
From Q Fever to Coxiella burnetii Infection: a Paradigm Change
Venue: Clinical Microbiology Reviews

Coxiella burnetii is the agent of Q fever, or "query fever," a zoonosis first described in Australia in 1937. Since this first description, knowledge about this pathogen and its associated infections has increased dramatically. We review here all the progress made over the last 20 years on this topic. C. burnetii is classically a strict intracellular, Gram negative bacterium. However, a major step in the characterization of this pathogen was achieved by the establishment of its axenic culture. C. burnetii infects a wide range of animals, from arthropods to humans. The genetic determinants of virulence are now better known, thanks to the achievement of determining the genome sequences of several strains of this species and comparative genomic analyses. Q fever can be found worldwide, but the epidemiological features of this disease vary according to the geographic area considered, including situations where it is endemic or hyperendemic, and the occurrence of large epidemic outbreaks. In recent years, a major breakthrough in the understanding of the natural history of human infection with C. burnetii was the breaking of the old dichotomy between "acute" and "chronic" Q fever. The clinical presentation of C. burnetii infection depends on both the virulence of the infecting C. burnetii strain and specific risks factors in the infected patient. Moreover, no persistent infection can exist without a focus of infection. This paradigm change should allow better diagnosis and management of primary infection and long term complications in patients with C. burnetii infection.
Free Versus For a Fee: The Impact of a Paywall on the Pattern and Effectiveness of Word of Mouth via Social Media
Venue: MIS Q.

Information goods providers such as print newspapers are experimenting with different pricing models for their online content. Despite research on the topic, it is still not clear how information pricing strategy influences word of mouth (WOM) via social media, which has become a dominant channel for raising awareness about a newspaper's articles and attracting new visitors to its website. Using The New York Times' paywall rollout as a natural experiment, our study examines how the implementation of paywall by a firm (i.e. a shift from "free" to "for a fee" influences the pattern and effectiveness of online WOM in social media. Our results indicate that implementing a paywall (i.e. charging for content that was earlier available for free) has a disproportionate impact on WOM for popular and niche articles, creating a longer tail in the WOM (i.e. content sharing) distribution. Further, we find that the impact of WOM on the NYT's website traffic weakens significantly after the introduction of a paywall. These results show that a paywall has implications for product and promotion strategies. The study offers novel and important implications for the theory and practice of strategic use of social media and paywall.
Automatic Reflection Removal using Gradient Intensity and Motion Cues
Venue: ACM Multimedia

We present a method to separate the background image and reflection from two photos that are taken in front of a transparent glass under slightly different viewpoints. In our method, the SIFT flow between two images is first calculated and a motion hierarchy is constructed from the SIFT flow at multiple levels of spatial smoothness. To distinguish background edges and reflection edges, we calculate a motion score for each edge pixel by its variance along the motion hierarchy. Alternatively, we make use of the so called superpixels to group edge pixels into edge segments and calculate the motion scores by averaging over each segment. In the meantime, we also calculate an intensity score for each edge pixel by its gradient magnitude. We combine both motion and intensity scores to get a combination score. A binary labelling (for separation) can be obtained by thresholding the combination scores. The background image is finally reconstructed from the separated gradients. Compared to the existing approaches that require a sequence of images or a video clip for the separation, we only need two images, which largely improves its feasibility. Various challenging examples are tested to validate the effectiveness of our method.
The statistical analysis of the color orbit parameters and color inclination distributions of TNOs

The research of the surface properties of the trans Neptunian Objects (TNOs) is the key factor to obtain information about past and current status of our Solar System. Because of the far distance from the Sun the photometric investigations remain the most popular approaching way to study of physical conditions of TNOs. For this reason, we examine the correlation between 294 known B R and 259 V R color indexes and the orbital parameters of the trans Neptunian Objects (TNOs) with by classification is giving in the literature: Cubewanos (Classical KBOs) Plutinos, Sentaurs, SDOs, Other TNOs, and Resonants, and subgroups by diameters greater than 80 km. Almost all inclinations of subgroups by classifications and diameters are strongly correlated with B R and V R indexes. Simultaneously, the remarkable and moderate correlations with high significance levels were found in 8 cases for B R and other orbit parameters: semi major axis, eccentricity, perihelion and diameters by diameter subgroups and 9 cases by classifications. Moreover, only 4 of 11 moderate correlation coefficients with high significance levels for V R were calculated by classifications and 6 cases by diameters.On the contrary of previously researches, we have found a unimodal B R color distribution for Cubewanos instead of bimodal distribution of TNOs. Every classification of TNOs has more than 2 color peaks polymodal distribution and number of the peaks rises by increasing of observed TNOs. This claim contradicts the existence of sharp boundaries between "blue" and "red" objects. We explain this tendency by the interplanetary nano dust, which surrounds Solar System and according to Rayleigh scattering the light from TNOs passing through the interplanetary nano dust in case low inclinations so called "cold" objects seem more reddish, and high inclinations so called "hot" objects seem more bluish.
Possible Thermoluminescence of the Solid Cometary Substance: Thermoluminescence of Commentary Substance

The article describes a mechanism of the possible thermoluminescence of solid cometary substances, including dusty halos. We propose to consider comet flares as the thermoluminescence of the cometary ices and mineral dust. The article provides the results of some laboratory experiments on frozen phosphorescence of a number of minerals (quartz, forsterite, and diamond) conducted over the past several years and relevant for reviewing the given problem. We also propose a concept of the comet's luminescent relictography and some scientific initiations. Properties of red and blue thermoluminescence flares of cometary halos are described, and we consider the similarity of thermoluminescence and cathodoluminescence processes of cometary dust. Various aspects of the problem are under discussion.
Cathodoluminescence and Raman Spectromicroscopy of Forsterite in Tagish Lake Meteorite: Implications for Astromineralogy

The Tagish Lake meteorite is CI/CM2 chondrite, which fell by a fireball event in January 2000. This study emphasizes the cathodoluminescence (CL) and Raman spectroscopical properties of the Tagish Lake meteorite in order to classify the meteoritic forsterite and its relation to the crystallization processes in a parent body. The CL zoning of Tagish Lake meteorite records the thermal history of chondrules and terrestrial weathering. Only the unweathered olivine is forsterite, which is CL active. The variation of luminescence in chondrules of Tagish Lake meteorite implies chemical inhomogeneity due to low grade thermal metamorphism. The blue emission center in forsterite due to crystal lattice defect is proposed as being caused by rapid cooling during the primary crystallization and relatively low temperature thermal metamorphism on the parent body of Tagish Lake meteorite. This is in a good agreement with the micro Raman spectroscopical data. A combination of cathodoluminescence and micro Raman spectroscopies shows some potentials in study of the asteroidal processes of parent bodies in solar system.
Fraud Detection in Credit Card Transactions; Using Parallel Processing of Anomalies in Big Data

In parallel to the increasing use of electronic cards, especially in the banking industry, the volume of transactions using these cards has grown rapidly. Moreover, the financial nature of these cards has led to the desirability of fraud in this area. The present study with Map Reduce approach and parallel processing, applied the Kohonen neural network model to detect abnormalities in bank card transactions. For this purpose, firstly it was proposed to classify all transactions into the fraudulent and legal which showed better performance compared with other methods. In the next step, we transformed the Kohonen model into the form of parallel task which demonstrated appropriate performance in terms of time; as expected to be well implemented in transactions with Big Data assumptions.
Collaborative Object Transportation Using MAVs via Passive Force Control
Venue: ArXiv

This paper shows a strategy based on passive force control for collaborative object transportation using Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) focusing on the transportation of a bulky object by two hexacopters. The goal is to develop a robust approach which does not rely on: (a) communication links between the MAVs, (b) the knowledge of the payload shape and (c) the position of grasping point. The proposed approach is based on the master slave paradigm, in which the slave agent guarantees compliance to the external force applied by the master to the payload via an admittance controller. The external force acting on the slave is estimated using a non linear estimator based on the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) from the information provided by a visual inertial navigation system. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of the force estimator and show the collaborative transportation of a 1.2 m long object.
Individual differences in students' complex problem solving skills: How they evolve and what they imply

Changes in the demands posed by increasingly complex workplaces in the 21st century have raised the importance of nonroutine skills such as complex problem solving (CPS) However, little is known about the antecedents and outcomes of CPS, especially with regard to malleable external factors such as classroom climate. To investigate the relations between CPS and other constructs, we had Finnish 6th grade students complete a test battery that included CPS tasks, fluid reasoning, classroom climate, and academic outcomes such as school grades and academic potential (N 1,670) The working memory test was administered to a subsample of students (N 357) A latent multilevel analysis suggests that (a) fluid reasoning, working memory, and classroom climate influenced CPS skills, and (b) CPS skills exhibited some incremental value in explaining school grades after controlling for cognitive ability, although the largest part of CPS' relations to the outcomes was due to its overlap with other cognitive abilities. Further, on the class level, classroom climate showed a significant indirect effect on school grades via its influence on between class differences in CPS. On the basis of this pattern of results, we argue that classroom climate is likely to be an important antecedent of CPS skills. Hence, we suggest that future research further explore how CPS is related to malleable factors such as classroom climate and extend analyses on the predictive validity of CPS to include real world outcomes beyond the academic setting.