nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
$\mathbb{Z}_4$ Parafermions \& the $8\pi$-periodic Josephson effect in interacting Rashba nanowires

We demonstrate the appearance of zero-energy bound states satisfying the $\mathbb{Z}_4$ parafermionic algebra in interacting quantum wires with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and proximity-induced superconductivity. 
The fourfold degeneracy of these states is protected by time-reversal symmetry and fermion-parity conservation, and leads to an $8 \pi$ periodicity of the Josephson current due to the tunneling of fractionalized excitations with charge $e/2$. Even in the presence of perturbations, we propose that this periodicity will remain visible in driven, current-biased Shapiro step measurements on current state-of-the-art Rashba wires.

Field of study: Physics
REVERSIBLE FORMATION OF ACTIVE SITES ON SULFURATED NICKEL CATALYST

The active sites for hydrogenation are formed on sulfurated nickel by displacing sulfur atoms with acetylene, and when acetylene is exhausted, the sites are occupied by sulfur to result in inactive. The above process is ensured with the H2–D2 equilibration reaction, and makes clear the characteristic of the partial hydrogenation of acetylene over sulfurated nickel.

Field of study: Chemistry
POPULATION-LEVEL EFFECTS OF THE NEEM INSECTICIDE, NEEMIX, ON DAPHNIA PULEX

Although natural insecticides from the neem tree are generally perceived as less harmful to the environment than synthetic insecticides, new evidence indicates that these products may pose a risk to certain nontarget organisms. In this paper, acute and chronic effects of commercial neem insecticides on the aquatic invertebrate, Daphnia pulex were examined. The acute toxicity of two commercial neem insecticides, Neemix, Azatin and the experimental insecticide, RH-9999 to D. pulex was investigated using traditional 48 hr concentration-mortality estimates. Neemix and Azatin were equitoxic with LC50's of 0.68 and 0.57 ppm; RH-9999 was significantly less toxic with an LC50 of 13 ppm. A 10 d population growth study was conducted for Neemix and a Neemix formulation blank (Neemix devoid of the active ingredients) to determine whether the active ingredients of Neemix and/or components of the formulation were responsible for toxicity. D. pulex populations went to extinction after exposure to a Neemix concentration of 0.45 ppm azadirachtin (equivalent to the acute LC7). Neemix No Observable Effect Concentration (NOEC) and Lowest Observable Effect Concentration (LOEC) values for population growth were 0.045 and 0.15 ppm azadirachtin, respectively. The mean number of offspring per surviving female (Ro) declined in a concentration-dependent manner after exposure to Neemix with no offspring being produced after exposure to 0.45 ppm. Neemix NOEC and LOEC values for reproduction were 0.045 and 0.15 ppm, respectively. The formulation blank caused no mortality in the individuals used to start the population growth study but reduced reproduction and population growth accounting for 47% of the toxicity caused by Neemix at a concentration of 0.15 ppm. Thus, the formulation contributes substantially to the toxicity of Neemix but neem components are also toxic to D. pulex. Because the NOEC for population growth and reproduction were higher than the estimated environmental concentration of 0.035 ppm (a measure developed for forest pest mananagement), Neemix should pose little risk to populations of D. pulex.

Field of study: Agricultural and Food sciences
Decisions on Power Emergency Supplies Based on Confidence Criterion

This paper presents a new model of standardized matching for supplies due to the lack of timeliness, validity and pertinence in deployment of emergency supplies and lack of complete sets of supplies. On this basis, this paper puts forward a decision-making method for power emergency supplies based on confidence criterion. This method divides the configuration packages of the emergency supplies required by different types of accidents into different levels through four indicators – disaster type, disaster degree, number of victims and number of commanders and rescuers. When a new accident occurs, as long as the corresponding index parameters are input, the level of configuration package of the emergency supplies required can be quickly acquired. Such a method is in line with the model of standardized matching for emergency supplies presented in this paper. The experimental results show that, the evaluation results of this evaluation model have a high precision. To divide the configuration demand for the emergency supplies required by different types of accidents by the level based on confidence criterion is more scientific, intuitive and feasible than the traditional fuzzy evaluation method.

Field of study: Engineering
Enhanced multiple-error resilient carry look-ahead adders through new customized fault-tolerant voters

Nowadays, multiple-error occurrence because of multiple transient faults is highly probable in digital circuits especially used in outer space environments. Therefore, concerning such applications, the processing systems performing operations such as addition and multiplication are of great importance and should be redesigned, properly. In this paper, some multiple-error resilient carry look-ahead adders are proposed more efficient than the existing designs. In this manner, at first, two new customized fault-tolerant voters are proposed and analyzed to be used for multiple-error correction/detection in the carry look-ahead adders utilizing a distributed partial triple modular redundancy along with a parity prediction scheme. Then, the new voters are exploited and incorporated into two types of grouped carry look-ahead adder architectures to obtain different designs with a compromise between the area overhead and reliability. Simulation results show that, as well as a complete single error correction/detection, the proposed voters lead to 8–15% area overhead reduction in different carry look-ahead adders while increasing multiple-error correction probability up to 17% and 26% utilizing the first and second proposed voters, respectively, compared to the best existing design. Furthermore, the total multiple error correction/detection probability is improved in different adder architectures in many cases.

Field of study: Engineering
Partisans, Professionals, and Power: The Role of Political Factors in State Higher Education Funding

Despite real growth in total appropriations of state tax funds for postsecondary operating expenses, state investment in higher education has substantially declined in recent years relative to changes in enrollment, state wealth, and the growth of institutional budgets. What factors are associated with state investment in higher education over time? In this paper, we report the results of a longitudinal analysis of factors associated with state funding effort for higher education. Using a panel data set and a fixed-effects analysis that we conducted on the drivers of state appropriations to higher education from 1984 to 2004, we find that population, postsecondary enrollment patterns, and economic conditions affect funding levels. Our analysis also points, however, to political influences shaping public choice. Notably, we find strong empirical evidence that partisanship, legislative professionalism, term limits, interest groups, and gubernatorial power influence appropriations levels. Less than a decade ago, the evidence for these kinds of relationships was tenuous; today, the empirical record has accumulated in support of the claim that politics “matters” in helping shape public choice for higher education. We explore some of the implications of these relationships, both for scholarship and for policy making in the states.

Field of study: Education
Matthew effect in counting the number of species

The number of species in an area is a fundamental parameter in species-area theory. Besides sampling size and statistical extrapolation, the inaccurate number of species can intensify the existing controversy on the species richness—productivity and extinction rate overestimate/underestimate. This problem can be caused by Matthew effect from sampling process and taxonomic identification: it is much easier to identify and record common species than rare species. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent and control the Matthew effect, which can distort the number of species (especially the rare species) and the individuals of each species.

Field of study: Environmental science
Anion conductive aromatic membrane of poly(tetra phenyl ether sulfone) containing hexa-imidazolium hydroxides for alkaline fuel cell application

Anion exchange membranes of poly(tetra phenyl ether sulfone) containing hexa-imidazolium hydroxides on the hydrophilic segment of a polymer unit were synthesized by sequential polycondensation, chloromethylation, substitution with 1-methylimidazolium and ion exchange. They showed elevated molecular weight, high solubility in polar aprotic solvents and strong chemical and thermal stabilities in comparison to alkyl quaternary ammonium-functionalized polymers. Different levels of substitution and ion exchange were tested; the resulting ionomer membranes showed high ion exchange capacities (IECs) of up to 2.41 mmol g− 1. The imidazolium-functionalized copolymer membranes showed lower water affinity and high durability in alkaline condition. They exhibited hydroxide conductivity above 10− 2 S cm− 1 at room temperature and good chemical stability for up to 7 days without significant losses of ion conductivity.

Field of study: Materials science
Biological function and mode of action of nuclear xenobiotic receptors

Two related nuclear receptors, the pregnane X receptor (PXR) and the constitutive androstane receptor (CAR), act as xenobiotic sensors that protect the body from a multitude of foreign chemicals (xenobiotics) and play a central role in the metabolism and clearance of steroids and toxic endogenous lipids (endobiotics). A structurally diverse array of chemicals including pharmaceutical drugs, steroids, herbal extracts, and pesticides activate PXR or CAR. This activation results in induction of overlapping, but yet distinct drug clearance pathways consisting of cytochrome P450 enzymes, conjugating enzymes, drug transporters, and other related proteins. Similar pathways are also utilized to protect the body from toxic compounds of endogenous origin. Thus, the xenobiotic regulatory circuit contributes both to drug-drug and food-drug interactions as well as endocrine disruption. Consistent with the notion that xenobiotic receptors regulate drug clearance, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in either the receptors themselves or receptor-binding sites in the regulatory region of genes encoding metabolic enzymes appear to contribute to the polymorphic expression of components of drug clearance pathways. Together, the xenobiotic receptors PXR and CAR confer metabolic immunity via the ability to control an integrated array of target genes.

Field of study: Chemistry
Privatization, home-centredness and leisure

This paper is concerned with the changing relationships between home life, family life and leisure, and sets out to investigate how adequately these are captured by the familiar idea of ‘privatization’. Despite its superficial attractiveness, the privatization thesis is found to be wanting in its central proposition of a growing overlap between people's home, family and leisure activities. There are theoretical grounds for suggesting that there must be limits to how far home, family and leisure can coincide, and evidence from a range of recent studies is drawn upon to support the argument that the growth of home-centredness is not necessarily at the expense of wider patterns of sociability. It is concluded that the privatization thesis is insufficiently sensitive to the diversity of people's situations and goals.

Field of study: Sociology
Initiation and elongation of polyribonucleotide chains on rat ventral-prostate chromatin transcribed by homologous ribonucleic acid polymerase B.

The characteristics of initiation of RNA synthesis and the elongation of RNA chains on rat ventral-prostate chromatin by RNA polymerase B were investigated by two methods. 1. Initiation was carried out under low-salt conditions with three ribonucleoside triphosphates, and elongation was begun in the absence of reinitiation by the addition of the fourth ribonucleoside triphosphate and increasing the salt concentration. 2. Stable initiation complexes were formed by preincubation of enzyme with template at 37 degrees C, elongation was started by the addition of all four ribonucleoside triphosphates and reinitiation or spurious RNA synthesis was prevented by rifamycin AF/013. The latter method gave more reliable results. The dependence of those parameters on the androgenic status of the animal was studied. During the first 24h after castration, elongation was mainly affected, whereas after 72h a smaller number of initiation sites for RNA polymerase B on chromatin was evident. Considerable diurnal variations in the various parameters were observed. Changes in the relative concentrations of the chromatin-associated proteins were also observed after castration. In the rat ventral-prostate gland androgenic steroids may not only influence one stage of the transcriptional process, but may affect many factors involved in the control of gene expression.

Field of study: Biology, Computer science
Cultivation of methanotrophic bacteria in opposing gradients of methane and oxygen.

In sediments, methane-oxidizing bacteria live in opposing gradients of methane and oxygen. In such a gradient system, the fluxes of methane and oxygen are controlled by diffusion and consumption rates, and the rate-limiting substrate is maintained at a minimum concentration at the layer of consumption. Opposing gradients of methane and oxygen were mimicked in a specific cultivation set-up in which growth of methanotrophic bacteria occurred as a sharp band at either c. 5 or 20 mm below the air-exposed end. Two new strains of methanotrophic bacteria were isolated with this system. One isolate, strain LC 1, belonged to the Methylomonas genus (type I methantroph) and contained soluble methane mono-oxygenase. Another isolate, strain LC 2, was related to the Methylobacter group (type I methantroph), as determined by 16S rRNA gene and pmoA sequence similarities. However, the partial pmoA sequence was only 86% related to cultured Methylobacter species. This strain accumulated significant amounts of formaldehyde in conventional cultivation with methane and oxygen, which may explain why it is preferentially enriched in a gradient cultivation system.

Field of study: Biology, Environmental science
Building an Ontology Model of Big Spectrum Data

Nowadays, big data, whose characteristics are in terms of four V’s, i.e., volume, variety, velocity and veracity, has become a hot spot in many fields. Spectrum Data also present the characteristics of big data with the increasing of mobile phone subscribers and radio frequency identification. One of significant properties in Variety is that big data, which come from various sources, are heterogeneous. In order to solve this problem, the first step is to structure heterogeneous data. The ontology provides an effective method to realize the structuring. In this article, we start with the introduction of four characteristics of big spectrum data, and then expound the motivation of our work. Next we make a summary of the ontology theory. At last, a ontology model is constructed to complete the first step mentioned above and we reveal a specific implement in some cases of spectrum data so as to illustrate the compatibility of normal spectrum data and the expansibility of big spectrum data.

Field of study: Engineering
The Formation of Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs

It is estimated that ∼ 60 % of all stars (including brown dwarfs) have masses below 0. 2 M⊙. Currently, there is no consensus on how these objects form. I will briefly review the four main theories for the formation of low-mass objects: turbulent fragmentation, ejection of protostellar embryos, disc fragmentation, and photo-erosion of prestellar cores. I will focus on the disc fragmentation theory and discuss how it addresses critical observational constraints, i.e. the low-mass initial mass function, the brown dwarf desert, and the binary statistics of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. I will examine whether observations may be used to distinguish between different formation mechanisms, and give a few examples of systems that strongly favour a specific formation scenario. Finally, I will argue that it is likely that all mechanisms may play a role in low-mass star and brown dwarf formation.

Field of study: Physics
Influence of renal function and diet on acid-base status in chronic kidney disease patients.

We investigated the influence of potential renal acid load (PRAL) and renal function on the degree of metabolic acidosis in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD).



This was a cross-sectional study.



This study was conducted at the Nephrology Outpatient Division of the Hospital Universitário Clementino Fraga Filho (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).



Thirty CKD patients undergoing conservative treatment were divided according to plasma HCO(3)(-) values into acidotic (HCO(3)(-) <or=22 mM, n = 15) and nonacidotic (HCO(3)(-) >22 mM, n = 15).



Biochemical, nutritional, and anthropometric parameters and PRAL were measured.



The mean of plasma HCO(3)(-) values was 17.7 +/- 2.8 mM in the acidotic group, and 25.1 +/- 2.2 mM in the nonacidotic group. There was no significant difference in mean PRAL values between the acidotic (9.8 +/- 6.4 mEq/day) and nonacidotic (12.7 +/- 10.0 mEq/day) groups, but there was a significant correlation between plasma HCO(3)(-) and creatinine clearance (r = 0.78, P < .0001). Based on the receiver operating characteristic curve, the level of creatinine clearance to begin detection of acidosis was 31.8 mL/min, with a sensitivity and specificity of 86.7%.



The acid-base status of this group of CKD patients undergoing conservative treatment was mainly determined by degree of renal insufficiency rather than diet.

Field of study: Medicine
Beam Plug for Radiation Shielding Penetrations

A beam line plug has been designed to fill the cylindrical hole formed by beam lines which pass through radiation shielding walls. The plug consists of multiple steel discs held together along their cylindrical axis by a steel cable forming a flexible snake-like structure. Other disc materials including laminates may be used to solve a variety of radiation shielding problems. When the beam line is to be used, the plug is pneumatically withdrawn into a vertical extension of vacuum line that is connected through a 90° bend to the beam line. Upon release, the plug is reinserted by pneumatic action. The beam plugs being used at the Brookhaven Three-stage MP Tandem Van de Graaff Facility are 7.6 cm diameter and provide 80 cm equivalent thickness of steel to fill penetrations through a 120 cm thick concrete wall. Fast-neutron measurements at the shielding wall surface show that the beam plug is indistinguishable from concrete shielding. A description of the beam plug mechanism, failsafe features, test results, and performance data is presented.

Field of study: Physics
ARSM: Augment-REINFORCE-Swap-Merge Estimator for Gradient Backpropagation Through Categorical Variables

To address the challenge of backpropagating the gradient through categorical variables, we propose the augment-REINFORCE-swap-merge (ARSM) gradient estimator that is unbiased and has low variance. ARSM first uses variable augmentation, REINFORCE, and Rao-Blackwellization to re-express the gradient as an expectation under the Dirichlet distribution, then uses variable swapping to construct differently expressed but equivalent expectations, and finally shares common random numbers between these expectations to achieve significant variance reduction. Experimental results show ARSM closely resembles the performance of the true gradient for optimization in univariate settings; outperforms existing estimators by a large margin when applied to categorical variational auto-encoders; and provides a "try-and-see self-critic" variance reduction method for discrete-action policy gradient, which removes the need of estimating baselines by generating a random number of pseudo actions and estimating their action-value functions.

Field of study: Computer science
Observation of low-lying excitations of electrons in coupled quantum dots

Tunneling excitations of electrons in dry-etched modulation-doped AlGaAs∕GaAs coupled quantum dots (QDs) are probed by resonant inelastic light scattering. A sequence of intra- and intershell excitations are found at energies determined by the interplay between the QD confinement energy ℏω0 and the tunneling gap ΔSAS, the splitting between the symmetric and antisymmetric delocalized single particle molecular states. The narrow linewidths displayed by electronic excitations in these nanostructures indicate promising venues for the spectroscopic investigation of entanglement of electron states in these artificial molecules.

Field of study: Physics
Anaerobic trophic interactions of contrasting methane-emitting mire soils: processes versus taxa.

Natural wetlands such as mires contribute up to 33% to the global emission of methane. The emission of methane is driven by trophic interactions of anaerobes that collectively degrade biopolymers. The hypothesis of this study was that these interactions in contrasting methane-emitting mire soils are functionally similar but linked to dissimilar taxa. This hypothesis was addressed by evaluating anaerobic processes and microbial taxa of eutrophic, mesotrophic and oligotrophic mire soils. Glucose was fermented to various products (e.g. H2, CO2, butyrate, acetate). Acetoclastic methanogenesis occurred, and acetogenesis and methanogenesis transformed H2-CO2 to acetate and methane, respectively. Although product profiles, cultivable cell numbers and gene copy numbers [mcrA (encodes alpha-subunit of methyl-CoM reductase) and 16S rRNA genes] were similar for all mire soils, only approximately 15% of detected family-level bacteria and species-level methanogens were shared by all mire soils. Approximately, 40% of the detected family-level taxa of each mire soil have no cultured isolates. Acidic conditions appeared to restrict the number of dominant phylotypes. The results indicated (a) that microbial processes which drive methanogenesis are similar but facilitated by dissimilar microbial communities in contrasting mire soils and (b) that mire soils harbor a large number of taxa with no cultured isolates.

Field of study: Biology, Environmental science
Application of ultrasonic Ohmic hydrodistillator system in production of essential oil from Zenyan.

In this study, two methods of Carum copticum essential oil extraction were examined. Traditional hydrodistillation (TH) and innovative Ultrasonic Ohmic Hydrodistillator (UOH) methods have been compared and evaluated for their effectiveness in the isolation of essential oil. The UOH offers main advantages over TH, namely: shorter isolation time (20 min against 2.5 h for TH), higher quality and quantity of essential oil, higher antioxidant activity and somewhat lower operating and energy cost. Based on the present study, the UOH process may be considered to have a significant potential in the field of extraction of essential oils from seeds and herbs.

Field of study: Agricultural and Food sciences