nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Variational methods for Conditional Multimodal Learning: Generating Human Faces from Attributes
Venue: ArXiv

Prior to this decade, the field of computer vision was primarily focused around hand crafted feature extraction methods used in conjunction with discriminative models for specific tasks such as object recognition, detection/localization, tracking etc. A generative image understanding was neither within reach nor the prime concern of the period. In this paper, we address the following problem: Given a description of a human face, can we generate the image corresponding to it? We frame this problem as a conditional modality learning problem and use variational methods for maximizing the corresponding conditional log likelihood. The resultant deep model, which we refer to as conditional multimodal autoencoder (CMMA) forces the latent representation obtained from the attributes alone to be 'close' to the joint representation obtained from both face and attributes. We show that the faces generated from attributes using the proposed model, are qualitatively and quantitatively more representative of the attributes from which they were generated, than those obtained by other deep generative models. We also propose a secondary task, whereby the existing faces are modified by modifying the corresponding attributes. We observe that the modifications in face introduced by the proposed model are representative of the corresponding modifications in attributes. Hence, our proposed method solves the above mentioned problem.
Attribute2Image: Conditional Image Generation from Visual Attributes
Venue: ECCV

This paper investigates a novel problem of generating images from visual attributes. We model the image as a composite of foreground and background and develop a layered generative model with disentangled latent variables that can be learned end to end using a variational auto encoder. We experiment with natural images of faces and birds and demonstrate that the proposed models are capable of generating realistic and diverse samples with disentangled latent representations. We use a general energy minimization algorithm for posterior inference of latent variables given novel images. Therefore, the learned generative models show excellent quantitative and visual results in the tasks of attribute conditioned image reconstruction and completion.
Stories of Victimization: Self Positioning and Construction of Gender in Narratives of Abused Women
Venue: Journal of interpersonal violence

The objective of this article is to analyze how women who have been victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) position themselves in relation to the image of the "ideal victim" and how gender is constructed in that positioning. There is a need for a gender analysis framework to understand how various forms of femininity are constructed and how narratives linked to this can either maintain a woman in an abusive relationship or encourage her to leave. Christie's theory of the "ideal victim" and Connell's gender theory are applied in this study, in which the narratives of 14 female IPV victims in Sweden are analyzed using a narrative method. Three strings of narratives, representing different forms of femininity, are revealed in the material. The master narrative of the ideal victim reveals a form of femininity that describes women as inferior in relation to men. In the alternative narrative, the narrator positions herself as inferior in relation to the offender but discusses resistance. She describes herself as a caring mother who risks a great deal to protect her children. In the counter narrative, the narrator positions herself as strong and independent in relation to the offender and as a strong and caring mother. The positioning of different narrators may shift depending on the duration of the relationship and the type of violence. The narrator may also take different positions during different phases of the story. However, the dominant narrative among the narrators is the story of the caring mother, which may have several functions and can partially be understood as a sign of the strong discourse of motherhood in society. The study contributes to a more profound understanding of the complexity related to women's own positioning and reveals that awareness is required when attempting to understand the narratives and behavior of abused women.
The teaching of pragmatics by native and nonnative language teachers: What they know and what they report doing

The paper focuses on how nonnative teachers of a target language (NNTs) deal with pragmatics in their classes. It starts with a discussion of what pragmatics entails. Next, issues relating to the teaching of pragmatics are identified, such as the language background of the teacher, comparisons between second (L2) and foreign language (FL) instruction, and the potential role of digital media and other means in providing models for pragmatic behavior. Then, an international survey is presented which probed into the experiences of NNTs of various languages while teaching the pragmatics of their language of instruction. A total of 113 teachers were asked to indicate what they taught with regard to pragmatics, 30 native language teachers (NTs) and 83 NNTs. They were also asked to report on their experience as teachers of L2 and FL pragmatics (e.g. if they encountered classroom moments when they did not feel like an authority on some aspect of pragmatics, what they did about it) Since pragmatics is a meeting of language and culture, the teacher respondents were asked to assess their knowledge regarding pragmalinguistics (i.e. the language forms) and sociopragmatics (sociocultural knowledge) In addition, they were asked to give their opinion regarding similarities and differences between the teaching of FL as opposed to L2 pragmatics, as this traditional dichotomy gives way to a more hybrid reality in an increasingly globalized world. Similarly, they were asked about their methods for teaching pragmatics (e.g. their use of digital media and their handling of dialect differences) Finally, they were asked to suggest areas in which they would like to see research conducted that would inform the teaching of pragmatics. The paper reports the findings from the study, including statistical differences in reported teaching of criticism, sarcasm, and cursing, as well as in the use of digital media and in having students gather data on pragmatics.
Eileen Adams: Agent of Change: in art, design and environmental education

Este es un libro singular, y lo es, tanto por su contenido y enfoque, como por la singularidad de la trayectoria vital de su autora: Eileen Adams. Adams, docente e investigadora de origen escoces, ha sido una figura de capital importancia en la historia reciente de la educacion artistica en Gran Bretana y por extension, en algunas de las tendencias educativas en este ambito que han inspirado el trabajo de muchos docentes britanicos y del resto del mundo. Se trata de un escrito autobiografico en la que la propia Eileen Adams describe, en primera persona, una trayectoria de mas de cuarenta anos de docencia, investigacion y sobre todo, direccion y colaboracion en proyectos innovadores en el campo de la educacion artistica. El libro esta estructurado en orden cronologico, como una biografia al uso que se inicia con una breve descripcion de ciertos recuerdos de infancia, para posteriormente relatar su experiencia formativa como artista y maestra y a continuacion revisar los grandes proyectos de los que ha formado parte desde mediados de los anos setenta y que constituyen el corpus central del libro: Front Door Project, Art and the Built Environment, Learning Through Landscapes, los diferentes proyectos en relacion con el arte publico y, finalmente, The Campaign for Drawing. El hilo conductor de esta trayectoria vital son unos intereses dirigidos desde el comienzo a las interacciones entre arte, diseno y medio ambiente. Enlazo asi, en The Front Door Project y en Art and the Built Environment, la educacion artistica con la educacion ambiental y llevo a cabo, con companeros de viaje de la categoria del arquitecto Colin Ward (autor del libro de referencia en infancia y arquitectura: The Child in the City) una inestimable aportacion a la introduccion de la arquitectura y el urbanismo en el curriculo. La intencion fue desde el comienzo la de formar ciudadanos criticos y comprometidos con la participacion para la mejora de su entorno. Sus primeras propuestas conectaban de este modo con las inquietudes transformadoras y de cambio social que atravesaron el panorama educativo britanico en la decada de los setenta. Esta educacion para la participacion se extendio posteriormente, mediante el proyecto Learning Through Landscapes (que ha seguido creciendo desde entonces) a los espacios escolares, poniendo de relieve las posibilidades de los patios como espacios de aprendizaje y tambien al arte publico, del que exploro sus posibilidades educativas y de conexion comunitaria. En la ultima decada sus esfuerzos se han centrado principalmente en la campana para fomentar el uso del dibujo en distintos Arte, Individuo y Sociedad ISSN: 1131 5598
Cost effectiveness of tiotropium versus glycopyrronium in moderate to very severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Canada, Spain, Sweden, and the UK
Venue: ClinicoEconomics and outcomes research CEOR

Tiotropium (TIO) Spiriva(r) Handihaler(r) is a well established bronchodilator, LAMA (long acting muscarinic antagonist) for the treatment of moderate to very severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) Clinical evidence from the SPARK trial suggests that TIO is superior to glycopyrronium (GLY) Seebri(r) Breezhaler(r) in terms of severe exacerbations. This modeling study assessed the cost effectiveness of TIO versus GLY for Canada (CAN) Spain (ESP) Sweden (SWE) and the UK, making use of this new clinical evidence.  A Markov cohort model, with moderate to very severe (Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease II IV) COPD patients, was populated with efficacy data from the Understanding Potential Long term Impacts on Function with Tiotropium (UPLIFT) and SPARK trials as well as costs, utilities, and epidemiological data relevant for each country. Treatment efficacy was modeled as improvements in lung function, quality adjusted life years (QALYs) and as a lowering of the risk of exacerbations (rate of exacerbations) Risks of exacerbations differed between cohorts based on data from SPARK. Health and cost outcomes were simulated over an approximate lifetime horizon, starting from the age of 65 years. Robustness of results was validated in deterministic sensitivity analyses.  Over the lifetime horizon, patients treated with TIO accumulated 623 (CAN) 1,066 (ESP) 1,137 (SWE) and 169 (UK) respectively, in incremental costs (EUR2014) TIO generated better health outcomes compared to GLY in all countries, 0.21 (CAN) 0.25 (ESP) 0.23 (SWE) and 0.23 (UK) in incremental QALYs. The cost per QALY gained was found to be EUR4,281 and EUR1,137 for ESP and SWE, respectively, while TIO was found to be cost saving in CAN and the UK. The results were mainly driven by the relative risk of severe exacerbations found in SPARK (GLY/TIO relative risk: 1.43, 95% confidence interval: 1.05 1.97, P=0.025)  The results from this study show that TIO is a cost effective treatment compared to GLY in moderate to very severe COPD. The cost per QALY is well below the existing implicit and explicit willingness to pay thresholds.
An Analysis on the Comparison of the Performance and Configuration Features of Big Data Tools Solr and Elasticsearch

Today, every kind of text, audio and visual data, which are thought to be transformed into pieces of information, are stored for long periods of time for processing. The concept of Bid Data is not only associated with the data stored, but also with the system involving hardware and software that collects, processes, stores, and analyzes the data. As the data grows bigger, their physical storage options must be provided in a distributed architecture. Solr and Elasticsearch are among the most preferred tools which makes this storage process easier. As a part of Apache Lucene project, Solr is a software which was started to be developed in 2004 with the searching features of full text, multiple search, dynamic clustering, database integrated, open source and elasticity. Similarly, Elasticsearch is a new open source tool for real time, full text and distributed search, which was launched in 2010 using the Lucene library. Although Solr and Elasticsearch have similar features, there are many parameters that differentiates one from the other such as intended use, type of use, and query and indexing performances. This study researches and analyzes the differences between Solr and Elasticsearch with regards to their query and indexing speeds, ease and difficulties of use, configuration forms, and architectures in light of the literature, and the results are discussed regarding these tools' performances.
Scalable synthesis of self standing sulfur doped flexible graphene films as recyclable anode materials for low cost sodium ion batteries

The commercialization of anodes for sodium ion batteries (SIBs) requires multitude approaches such as the practicality of the synthesis process, battery performance and the recycling option which most studies overlooked. Herein, we showed the scalable synthesis of self standing sulfur doped flexible graphene films as the anode materials for SIBs, demonstrating up to 377 mA h g 1 capacity at 100 mA g 1 current density as well as an excellent rate capability and a moderate decay rate of 0.106% per cycle during long cycling test. The work also shows that sulfur doping creates additional redox sites for reaction with Na+ and induces larger interspacing layers, leading to an enhanced capacity compared to the non doped graphene. The self standing nature of the films also eliminates the need for other additional anode components, such as conductive carbon or binder, and more importantly, allows their recovery and subsequent reuse in new applications.
A systematic review of best practices in teaching ophthalmology to medical students.
Venue: Survey of ophthalmology

Ophthalmic medical student education is a cornerstone to improving eye health care globally. We review the current state of the literature, listing barriers to potential best practices for undergraduate ophthalmology teaching and learning within medical curricula. We describe recent advances and pedagogical approaches in ophthalmic education and propose specific recommendations for further improvements and research. Future research should concentrate on developing teaching and learning innovations that may result in a more time and resource effective models for interactive and integrated learning. As well as demonstrating that a competency based approach results not just in better eye health, but also improvements in patient care, education, and medical care in general. By optimizing teaching available through improved evidence based education, the ultimate goal is to increase medical students' knowledge and produce graduates who are highly trained in eye examination skills, resulting in improved patient eye care through timely diagnosis, referrals, and treatment.
Multi level image software assembly technology based on OpenStack and Ceph
Venue: 2016 IEEE Information Technology, Networking, Electronic and Automation Control Conference

With the development of virtualization technology, it is a prevailing trend that users deploy highly reliable, scalable, high efficiency application services via virtual machines. OpenStack, the most fiery open source virtual machines management platform, focuses on IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service) and now expands to PaaS(Platform as a Service) and SaaS(Software as a Service) As a Mature IaaS cloud computing product, it's no doubt that it should take data replication and storage mechanism into consideration as a precondition, in order to ensure the integrity and continuity of service provided for users. At the mention of storage, Ceph, a unified, high reliability, high performance and scalable distributed file system, comes to OpenStack's mind, providing block storage, object storage and file storage. To solve the problem that OpenStack only supported Single level image management which wastes a fairly large number of storage space, we have studied Ceph storage cluster with OpenStack integration architecture and achieved the multi level image software assembly technology. From the aspect of storage space, the technology eliminate duplication of shared operating system image data and shared application software image data. From the aspect of time, users don't have to install the required application softwares manually, providing the time saving as well. Once you launched your virtual machine instances, the required softwares have been installed already.
Torus Network Based Distributed Storage System for Massive Multimedia Contents

Explosively growing service of digital multimedia data increases the need for highly scalable low cost storage. This paper proposes the new storage architecture based on torus network which does not need network switch and erasure coding for efficient storage usage for high scalability and efficient disk utilization. The proposed model has to compensate for the disadvantage of long network latency and network processing overhead of torus network. The proposed storage model was compared to two most popular distributed file system, GlusterFS and Ceph distributed file systems through a prototype implementation. The performance of prototype system shows outstanding results than erasure coding policy of two file systems and mostly even better results than replication policy of them.
DYNAMIC SONOGRAPHY OF THE EQUINE METACARPO(TARSO)PHALANGEAL DIGITAL FLEXOR TENDON SHEATH.
Venue: Veterinary radiology ultrasound the official journal of the American College of Veterinary Radiology and the International Veterinary Radiology Association

Palmar/plantar annular desmitis is a common disease that may be associated with adhesions and structures affecting the flexor tendons, which requires tenoscopy to diagnose. The purpose of this descriptive study was to develop a dynamic sonographic technique for evaluating the motion of normal equine flexor tendons in relation to the palmar/plantar annular ligament and to compare findings with horses previously diagnosed with palmar/plantar annular desmitis. Ten healthy adult horses were examined prospectively and the images of four horses diagnosed with palmar/plantar annular desmitis were retrospectively evaluated. Dynamic sonography was performed at the level of the metacarpo/metatarsophalangeal joint by maximally extending and flexing the interphalangeal joints. Palmar/plantar annular ligament thickness (mm) size of any gap between the flexor tendons, and subjectively increased angulation of the long linear echoes of the superficial digital flexor tendon were measured. The presence of gliding motion between the palmar/plantar annular ligament and superficial digital flexor tendon was determined by consensus. Twenty eight healthy control limbs (16 hind/12 fore) and four with palmar/plantar annular desmitis (3 hind/1 fore) were evaluated. Controls had unrestricted gliding motion between the palmar/plantar annular ligament and flexor tendons and zero to 13deg of angulation of the long linear echoes. The four affected horses had restricted gliding motion and between 20 35deg angulation of the long linear echoes. Dynamic ultrasound is a feasible technique for detecting restricted flexor tendon and palmar/plantar annular ligament gliding motion, as well as subjectively increased angulation of the long linear echoes of the flexor tendon in affected horses compared with controls and warrants further investigation.
Modelling the anaerobic digestion of solid organic waste Substrate characterisation method for ADM1 using a combined biochemical and kinetic parameter estimation approach.
Venue: Waste management

This work proposes a novel and rigorous substrate characterisation methodology to be used with ADM1 to simulate the anaerobic digestion of solid organic waste. The proposed method uses data from both direct substrate analysis and the methane production from laboratory scale anaerobic digestion experiments and involves assessment of four substrate fractionation models. The models partition the organic matter into a mixture of particulate and soluble fractions with the decision on the most suitable model being made on quality of fit between experimental and simulated data and the uncertainty of the calibrated parameters. The method was tested using samples of domestic green and food waste and using experimental data from both short batch tests and longer semi continuous trials. The results showed that in general an increased fractionation model complexity led to better fit but with increased uncertainty. When using batch test data the most suitable model for green waste included one particulate and one soluble fraction, whereas for food waste two particulate fractions were needed. With richer semi continuous datasets, the parameter estimation resulted in less uncertainty therefore allowing the description of the substrate with a more complex model. The resulting substrate characterisations and fractionation models obtained from batch test data, for both waste samples, were used to validate the method using semi continuous experimental data and showed good prediction of methane production, biogas composition, total and volatile solids, ammonia and alkalinity.
Expression and localization of members of the thrombospondin family during final follicle maturation and corpus luteum formation and function in the bovine ovary
Venue: The Journal of reproduction and development

The aim of this study was to characterize the expression patterns and localization of the thrombospondin family members (THBS1, THBS2) and their receptors (CD36 and CD47) in bovine ovaries. First, the antral follicles were classified into 5 groups based on the follicle size and estradiol 17beta (E2) concentration in the follicular fluid 0.5, 0.5 5, 5 40, 40 180 and >180 E2 ng/ml) Second, the corpus luteum (CL) was assigned to the following stages: days 1 2, 3 4, 5 7, 8 12, 13 16 and >18 of the estrous cycle and of pregnancy (month 1 2, 3 4, 6 7 and 8) Third, the corpora lutea were collected by transvaginal ovariectomy before and 0.5, 2, 4, 12, 24, 48 and 64 h after inducing luteolysis by injecting a prostaglandin F2alpha analog. The mRNA expression of examined factors was measured by RT qPCR, steroid hormone concentration by EIA, and localization by immunohistochemistry. The mRNA expression of THBS1, THBS2, CD36, and CD47 in the granulosa cells and theca interna was high in the small follicles and reduced in the preovulatory follicles. The mRNA expression of THBS1, THBS2, and CD47 in the CL during the estrous cycle was high, but decreased significantly during pregnancy. After induced luteolysis, thrombospondins increased significantly to reach the maximum level at 12 h for THBS1, 24 h for THBS2, and 48 h for CD36. The temporal expression and localization pattern of the thrombospondins and their specific receptors in the antral follicles and corpora lutea during the different physiological phases of the estrous cycle and induced luteolysis appear to be compatible with their inhibitory role in the control of ovarian angiogenesis.