nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Open Research Data in Sub Saharan Africa: A Bibliometric Study Using the Data Citation Index

The purpose of the study was to explore the status of research data sharing among researchers in sub Saharan Africa (SSA) and internationally. Relevant data was extracted from the Data Citation Index (DCI) using an advanced search strategy, which was limited to the publication years between 2009 and 2014. Data was analysed to obtain the number of data records by country, institution, subject category, year of publication, and document type as well as the number of citations. A Spearman's correlation analysis was conducted to gauge the relationship between the data records and research articles. Findings indicate that only 20 (out of 50) countries in sub Saharan Africa produced at least one data record in the DCI, with South Africa leading the pack with 539 (61.39 records followed by Kenya, Cameroon and Ghana. SSA contributes a mere 0.03 of the world's research data as compared to 1.4 of the world's research articles. Research institutions and universities are the major contributors of research data, which largely focuses on Genetics and Heredity (61.3 Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (61.3 Agriculture (29.2 and Forestry (27.3 Citation wise, the research data has attracted fewer average citations than the articles. A correlational analysis of the data reveals that there is a significant correlation between the publication of data and research articles.
Temporal Action Localization with Pyramid of Score Distribution Features
Venue: 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)

We investigate the feature design and classification architectures in temporal action localization. This application focuses on detecting and labeling actions in untrimmed videos, which brings more challenge than classifying presegmented videos. The major difficulty for action localization is the uncertainty of action occurrence and utilization of information from different scales. Two innovations are proposed to address this issue. First, we propose a Pyramid of Score Distribution Feature (PSDF) to capture the motion information at multiple resolutions centered at each detection window. This novel feature mitigates the influence of unknown action position and duration, and shows significant performance gain over previous detection approaches. Second, inter frame consistency is further explored by incorporating PSDF into the state of the art Recurrent Neural Networks, which gives additional performance gain in detecting actions in temporally untrimmed videos. We tested our action localization framework on the THUMOS'15 and MPII Cooking Activities Dataset, both of which show a large performance improvement over previous attempts.
A Silk Fibroin/Collagen Nerve Scaffold Seeded with a Co Culture of Schwann Cells and Adipose Derived Stem Cells for Sciatic Nerve Regeneration
Venue: PloS one

As a promising alternative to autologous nerve grafts, tissue engineered nerve grafts have been extensively studied as a way to bridge peripheral nerve defects and guide nerve regeneration. The main difference between autogenous nerve grafts and tissue engineered nerve grafts is the regenerative microenvironment formed by the grafts. If an appropriate regenerative microenvironment is provided, the repair of a peripheral nerve is feasible. In this study, to mimic the body's natural regenerative microenvironment closely, we co cultured Schwann cells (SCs) and adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs) as seed cells and introduced them into a silk fibroin (SF)/collagen scaffold to construct a tissue engineered nerve conduit (TENC) Twelve weeks after the three different grafts (plain SF/collagen scaffold, TENC, and autograft) were transplanted to bridge 1 cm long sciatic nerve defects in rats, a series of electrophysiological examinations and morphological analyses were performed to evaluate the effect of the tissue engineered nerve grafts on peripheral nerve regeneration. The regenerative outcomes showed that the effect of treatment with TENCs was similar to that with autologous nerve grafts but superior to that with plain SF/collagen scaffolds. Meanwhile, no experimental animals had inflammation around the grafts. Based on this evidence, our findings suggest that the TENC we developed could improve the regenerative microenvironment and accelerate nerve regeneration compared to plain SF/collagen and may serve as a promising strategy for peripheral nerve repair.
The roles of gender and personality factors in vandalism and scrawl graffiti among Swedish adolescents.
Venue: PsyCh journal

A total of 360 upper secondary school students in Sweden were divided into three grouping variables: gender (male, female) vandalism (involved, not involved) and scrawl graffiti (involved, not involved) Relevant to the discussion of whether or not scrawl graffiti may be construed as vandalism or art, the aim of the study was to explore whether or not personality factors known to be linked to vandalism in general (such as impulsivity, affectivity, emotional disability, and optimism) are related also to involvement in scrawl graffiti, and, furthermore, how the gender factor relates to vandalism and scrawl graffiti, respectively. The analysis showed that impulsiveness was a significant variable related to vandalism as well as to scrawl graffiti. Further analysis indicated that vandalism was predicted by non planning impulsiveness whereas scrawl graffiti was predicted by motor impulsiveness. Analyses showed also that there were significant gender differences related to both vandalism and scrawl graffiti, whereby male participants were significantly more involved in vandalism than female participants, while the latter were significantly more involved in scrawl graffiti than the former.
The Problem of Fake News

Looking at the recent spate of claims about "fake news" which appear to be a new feature of political discourse, I argue that fake news presents an interesting problem in epistemology. The phenomena of fake news trades upon tolerating a certain indifference towards truth, which is sometimes expressed insincerely by political actors. This indifference and insincerity, I argue, has been allowed to flourish due to the way in which we have set the terms of the "public" epistemology that maintains what is considered "rational" public discourse. I argue one potential salve to the problem of fake news is to challenge this public epistemology by injecting a certain ethical consideration back into the discourse.
No Comparison: Barring Citizen Suits in Dual Enforcement Actions

speaking, there is no comparison or is there? This is one question pondered recently by federal courts in an attempt to formulate a test for determining whether state water pollution control laws are comparable to the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) for purposes of barring citizen suits. See McAbee v. Fort Payne, 318 F.3d 1248 ( 2003) (adopting the "rough comparability" test) Under the CWA, individuals or groups of citizens may sue alleged violators in federal court after providing the requisite notice to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the appropriate state agency, and the alleged violator. Problems arise when citizens bring actions against an alleged violator and the applicable state environmental agency has already commenced an administrative enforcement action for the same alleged violations. In order to prevent the burden imposed by dual actions for the same violations, Section 309(g) of the CWA, 33 U.S.C. SSSS 1319(g)(6) bars citizens from filing suit if, among other things, the state is diligently prosecuting an administrative penalty action under a "State law comparable" to the CWA's administrative penalty provisions. In addition to Section 309 (g) there are other statutory and extrastatutory bars to citizen suits. These statutory bars have in some instances been interpreted in widely disparate manners by the courts. For example, two circuit courts of appeal have recently reached diametrically opposed interpretations of the meaning of "comparable" in the context of CWA citizen suits. Compare McAbee v. Fort Payne, 318 F.3d 1248 (1 lth Cir. 2003) with Lockett v. EPA, 319 F.3d 678 (5th Cir. 2003) If there is one thing on which the courts do agree, or at least pay consistent lip service to, it is the underlying rationale for citizen suits. The CWA contemplates that state and/or federal agencies have primary enforcement authority and citizen enforcement simply acts as a backstop to ensure adequate enforcement. See North South Rivers Watershed Ass 'n u Sdtuate, 949 F.2d 552, 555 (1st Cir. 1991) (stating,"The primary function of the provision for citizen suits is to enable private parties to assist in enforcement efforts where Federal and State authorities appear unwilling to act" The limitation on citizen suits when the government is diligently prosecuting an action "suggests that the citizen suit is meant to supplement rather than to supplant governmental action." Gwaltney of
Enrolling Heterogeneous Partners in Video Game Preservation
Venue: Int. J. Digit. Curation

This article extends previous work known as Preserving Virtual Worlds II (PVWII) funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The author draws on interview data collected from video game developers, content analysis of several long running video game series, as well as the project's advisory board and researcher reports. This paper exposes two fundamental challenges in creating metrics and specifications for the preservation of virtual worlds; namely, that there is no one type of user or designated video game stakeholder community, and that significant properties of games cannot always be located in code or platform. The PVWII data serve to explain why existing ideas about preservation of video games are inadequate when games are treated as digital cultural heritage. Preservation specialists need to bind nebulous and dynamic digital objects, a process that is necessary while inherently artificial.
Adaptive multimode signal reconstruction from time frequency representations
Venue: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

This paper discusses methods for the adaptive reconstruction of the modes of multicomponent AM FM signals by their time frequency (TF) representation derived from their short time Fourier transform (STFT) The STFT of an AM FM component or mode spreads the information relative to that mode in the TF plane around curves commonly called ridges. An alternative view is to consider a mode as a particular TF domain termed a basin of attraction. Here we discuss two new approaches to mode reconstruction. The first determines the ridge associated with a mode by considering the location where the direction of the reassignment vector sharply changes, the technique used to determine the basin of attraction being directly derived from that used for ridge extraction. A second uses the fact that the STFT of a signal is fully characterized by its zeros (and then the particular distribution of these zeros for Gaussian noise) to deduce an algorithm to compute the mode domains. For both techniques, mode reconstruction is then carried out by simply integrating the information inside these basins of attraction or domains.
Information and communication technology access and use and competency level among second cycle school teachers in Ghana

One hundred second cycle school teachers in Ghana (average age 38) were surveyed to explore their access to and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools, and their level of competence. The Global Citizenship Survey instruments were adapted to collect the data. The study adopted the descriptive research design and data was analysed using descriptive statistics and Chi square test. The findings of the study showed that majority of the teachers have access to ICT tools such as computers, mobile phones, the Internet and personal digital assistants. In addition, the results indicated that majority of the teachers use 1) mobile phones and e mail for social communication; 2) the Internet for research and professional development, and 3) computer for teaching and learning. Furthermore, according to the results of the study most of them possess high competence level in ICT applications such as word processing, the Internet, and e mail; but have low competency in database and multimedia application software required for the design of 1) activities related to classroom management and assessment and 2) activities to cater for individual learners' learning needs. The study provides new and relevant information for educational policy makers, practitioners, researchers and instructional design and technologists for effective planning and training towards successful implementation of ICT into education.  Information and communication technology (ICT) integration, ICT use; access to ICT tools; ICT competence, second cycle teachers; Ghana.
Improving Manufacturing Process Change by 3D Visualization Support: A Pilot Study on Truck Production

In the global market, customer demands changes rapidly. Manufacturing companies need to meet the demands to keep competitive. Therefore, manufacturing processes constantly need to be changed. The process change is challenging because it involves different actors across the company, especially for international companies that have globally distributed operations. Manufacturing process change is carried out by production engineers and needs to consider the needs and requirement of all actors in the manufacturing system. To this end, guidelines for manufacturing system design and cross functional team meetings for concept design assessment are utilized. While the meeting takes place, such meetings require resources to be available in parallel and advanced planning to come to fruition. Thus making the concept design iteration loop considerably longer if inputs are to be collected frequently. This paper presents an approach that utilizes a collaborative tool developed in Unity. It integrates 3D scanned factory data with proposed process changes to provide sufficient context to every stakeholders involved. Thus, to facilitate better understanding and communication of the ongoing changes. It will improve every process change on its design, implementation, and future maintenance. The challenges of implementation and evaluation of the collaborative tool are discussed.
Estimation of combined sewer overflow discharge: a software sensor approach based on local water level measurements.
Venue: Water science and technology a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research

Combined sewer overflow (CSO) structures are constructed to effectively discharge excess water during heavy rainfall, to protect the urban drainage system from hydraulic overload. Consequently, most CSO structures are not constructed according to basic hydraulic principles for ideal measurement weirs. It can, therefore, be a challenge to quantify the discharges from CSOs. Quantification of CSO discharges are important in relation to the increased environmental awareness of the receiving water bodies. Furthermore, CSO discharge quantification is essential for closing the rainfall runoff mass balance in combined sewer catchments. A closed mass balance is an advantage for calibration of all urban drainage models based on mass balance principles. This study presents three different software sensor concepts based on local water level sensors, which can be used to estimate CSO discharge volumes from hydraulic complex CSO structures. The three concepts were tested and verified under real practical conditions. All three concepts were accurate when compared to electromagnetic flow measurements.
Synthesized Classifiers for Zero Shot Learning
Venue: 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)

Given semantic descriptions of object classes, zero shot learning aims to accurately recognize objects of the unseen classes, from which no examples are available at the training stage, by associating them to the seen classes, from which labeled examples are provided. We propose to tackle this problem from the perspective of manifold learning. Our main idea is to align the semantic space that is derived from external information to the model space that concerns itself with recognizing visual features. To this end, we introduce a set of "phantom" object classes whose coordinates live in both the semantic space and the model space. Serving as bases in a dictionary, they can be optimized from labeled data such that the synthesized real object classifiers achieve optimal discriminative performance. We demonstrate superior accuracy of our approach over the state of the art on four benchmark datasets for zero shot learning, including the full ImageNet Fall 2011 dataset with more than 20,000 unseen classes.
Neutron and high pressure X ray diffraction study of hydrogen bonded ferroelectric rubidium hydrogen sulfate.
Venue: Acta crystallographica Section B, Structural science, crystal engineering and materials

The pressure and temperature dependent phase transitions in the ferroelectric material rubidium hydrogen sulfate (RbHSO4) are investigated by a combination of neutron Laue diffraction and high pressure X ray diffraction. The observation of disordered O atom positions in the hydrogen sulfate anions is in agreement with previous spectroscopic measurements in the literature. Contrary to the mechanism observed in other hydrogen bonded ferroelectric materials, H atom positions are well defined and ordered in the paraelectric phase. Under applied pressure RbHSO4 undergoes a ferroelectric transition before transforming to a third, high pressure phase. The symmetry of this phase is revised to the centrosymmetric space group P21/c, resulting in the suppression of ferroelectricity at high pressure.
Corticosteroids in treatment of aspiration related acute respiratory distress syndrome: results of a retrospective cohort study
Venue: BMC Pulmonary Medicine

BackgroundAcute stroke patients suffering from aspiration may present with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) There is still a lack of convincing data about the efficacy of corticosteroids in the treatment of aspiration related ARDS. Therefore, we evaluated the clinical impact of corticosteroids on aspiration related ARDS.MethodsBetween 2012 and 2014, we conducted a retrospective study among acute stroke patients diagnosed with aspiration related ARDS. The data analyzed included demographic characteristics, clinical manifestations, laboratory examinations, chest imaging, and hospital discharge status.ResultsSeventy three acute stroke patients were diagnosed with aspiration related ARDS. The hospital mortality rate was 39.7 Corticosteroids were administered in 47 patients (64.4 The mean dosage was 1.14 (standard deviation [SD] 0.47) mg/kg daily of methylprednisolone (or an equivalent) by intravenous infusion for a period of 7.3 (SD 3.8) days. Ground glass opacities in chest computed tomography images were resolved when corticosteroids were administered. The admission National Institute of Health Stroke Scale score (odds ratio [OR] 5.17, 95 confidence interval [CI] 1.27 10.64) and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score (OR 2.00, 95 CI 1.12 3.56) were associated with an increased risk of hospital mortality, while albumin (OR 0.81, 95 CI 0.64 0.92) and corticosteroids therapy (OR 0.50, 95 CI 0.35 0.70) were associated with a decreased risk.ConclusionsLow dose and short term corticosteroid therapy may have an impact on survival in aspiration related ARDS. The presence of ground glass opacities on the chest computed tomography, performed to rule out aspiration related ARDS, could be translated into an increased possibility of positive response to corticosteroid therapy.
A test of the hydraulic vulnerability segmentation hypothesis in angiosperm and conifer tree species.
Venue: Tree physiology

Water transport from soils to the atmosphere is critical for plant growth and survival. However, we have a limited understanding about many portions of the whole tree hydraulic pathway, because the vast majority of published information is on terminal branches. Our understanding of mature tree trunk hydraulic physiology, in particular, is limited. The hydraulic vulnerability segmentation hypothesis (HVSH) stipulates that distal portions of the plant (leaves, branches and roots) should be more vulnerable to embolism than trunks, which are nonredundant organs that require a massive carbon investment. In the current study, we compared vulnerability to loss of hydraulic function, leaf and xylem water potentials and the resulting hydraulic safety margins (in relation to the water potential causing 50% loss of hydraulic conductivity) in leaves, branches, trunks and roots of four angiosperms and four conifer tree species. Across all species, our results supported strongly the HVSH as leaves and roots were less resistant to embolism than branches or trunks. However, branches were consistently more resistant to embolism than any other portion of the plant, including trunks. Also, calculated whole tree vulnerability to hydraulic dysfunction was much greater than vulnerability in branches. This was due to hydraulic dysfunction in roots and leaves at less negative water potentials than those causing branch or trunk dysfunction. Leaves and roots had narrow or negative hydraulic safety margins, but trunks and branches maintained positive safety margins. By using branch based hydraulic information as a proxy for entire plants, much research has potentially overestimated embolism resistance, and possibly drought tolerance, for many species. This study highlights the necessity to reconsider past conclusions made about plant resistance to drought based on branch xylem only. This study also highlights the necessity for more research of whole plant hydraulic physiology to better understand strategies of plant drought tolerance and the critical control points within the hydraulic pathway.