nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Genotype by environment interaction and breeding for robustness in livestock

The increasing size of the human population is projected to result in an increase in meat consumption. However, at the same time, the dominant position of meat as the center of meals is on the decline. Modern objections to the consumption of meat include public concerns with animal welfare in livestock production systems. Animal breeding practices have become part of the debate since it became recognized that animals in a population that have been selected for high production efficiency are more at risk for behavioral, physiological and immunological problems. As a solution, animal breeding practices need to include selection for robustness traits, which can be implemented through the use of reaction norms analysis, or though the direct inclusion of robustness traits in the breeding objective and in the selection index. This review gives an overview of genotype × environment interactions (the influence of the environment, reaction norms, phenotypic plasticity, canalization, and genetic homeostasis), reaction norms analysis in livestock production, options for selection for increased levels of production and against environmental sensitivity, and direct inclusion of robustness traits in the selection index. Ethical considerations of breeding for improved animal welfare are discussed. The discussion on animal breeding practices has been initiated and is very alive today. This positive trend is part of the sustainable food production movement that aims at feeding 9.15 billion people not just in the near future but also beyond.

Field of study: Biology
LASER APPLICATIONS AND OTHER TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS: Stimulated thermal scattering in a gas under conditions of thermodynamic nonequilibrium

Characteristics of stimulated thermal scattering are investigated under conditions of a strong thermodynamic nonequilibrium. It is shown that a thermal instability resulting in a transient threshold-free stimulated thermal scattering is possible in media with inhomogeneously excited internal degrees of freedom or in chemically active media. The stimulated scattering gain and the scattering angle are then governed by the degree of nonequilibrium of the medium, and by the dependences of the power of the source pumping equilibrium levels and of their relaxation time on the temperature and density of the gas.

Field of study: Engineering, Physics
Characterization of thin back-to-back CdTe detectors

Thin CdTe detectors (3/spl times/5 mm/sup 2/ electrode area, 0.5 and 0.8 mm thick), mounted in back-to-back configuration with common anode have been characterized. This configuration allows one to double the useful absorbing thickness in the classical planar parallel field (PPF) irradiation geometry and to double the sensitive area in the planar transverse field (PTF) geometry, while maintaining the same interelectrode distance (0.5 or 0.8 mm) and one electronic chain as for single detectors. The tests performed aim at understanding the effects on the spectroscopic performance of various interelectrode distances and in particular of the chemical and mechanical treatments used to make thin detectors. A narrow photon beam, 10-150 keV in energy, obtained using a 20-mm-thick tungsten collimator, was employed. The results obtained, compared with previous measurements on various thicknesses devices, indicate that the optimum single detector thickness is 1 mm.

Field of study: Physics
Erratum to ``Diatom-based inference model for paleosalinity reconstructions in estuaries along the northeastern coast of Argentina'' [Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 275 (2009) 77-91]

The correct version of Table 1 can be found in page XXX (Table 1).  The sentence “Maximum salinity values, estimated at about 13‰, were detected between ca. 7500±90 and 6040±90 14C yr BP (ca. 6500–4800 cal yr BP)” should read “Maximum salinity values, estimated at about 13‰, were detected between ca. 7500±90 and 6040±90 14C yr BP (ca. 8459–6716 cal yr BP)”.  The calibrated ages shown in Fig. 10 should be replaced with those provided in Table 1.

Field of study: Environmental science, Geography
Some logical functions of joint control.

Constructing a behavioral account of the language-related performances that characterize responding to logical and symbolic relations between stimuli is commonly viewed as a problem for the area of stimulus control. In response to this problem, the notion of joint control is presented here, and its ability to provide an interpretative account of these kinds of performances is explored. Joint control occurs when the currently rehearsed topography of a verbal operant, as evoked by one stimulus, is simultaneously evoked by another stimulus. This event, the onset of joint stimulus control by two stimuli over a common response topography, then sets the occasion for a response appropriate to this special relation between the stimuli. Although the mechanism described is simple, it seems to have broad explanatory properties. In what follows, these properties are applied to provide a behavioral interpretation of two sorts of fundamental, putatively cognitive, performances: those based on logical relations and those based on semantic relations. The first includes responding to generalized conceptual relations such as identity, order, relative size, distance, and orientation. The second includes responding to relations usually ascribed to word meaning. These include relations between words and objects, the specification of objects by words, name-object bidirectionality, and the recognition of objects from their description. Finally, as a preview of some further possibilities, the role of joint control in goal-oriented behavior is considered briefly.

Field of study: Biology, Psychology
Do elephants prevent other African herbivores from using waterholes in the dry season?

In some African protected areas, concerns have arisen about the influence of locally high elephant numbers on other forms of biodiversity. In arid and semi-arid savannas, surface-water resources are scarce and agonistic interactions between elephants and other herbivores have been reported at waterholes, yet surprisingly very little is known about the impact of elephants on the use of waterholes by other herbivores. Here, we test whether when there are elephants at a waterhole, other herbivores (1) do not change their drinking behaviour; (2) spend shorter time around the water because they are disturbed by elephants’ presence and consequently have to leave the waterhole area probably without having met their water requirements, or (3) spend more time around the water probably owing to an increase in vigilance activities or because the presence of elephants may signal safety from predators. Results show that all species spend longer time around water when there are elephants at the waterhole, although the difference is not large. Consequently, this study strongly suggests that elephants do not prevent other herbivores from drinking (time at waterholes is not shortened when elephants are around). Further, if the additional time spent to drink is linked to an increased vigilance, the difference is not large, and hence unlikely to affect the population dynamics of other herbivores.

Field of study: Environmental science
An algebraic perspective on integer sparse recovery

Compressed sensing is a relatively new mathematical paradigm that shows a small number of linear measurements are enough to efficiently reconstruct a large dimensional signal under the assumption the signal is sparse. Applications for this technology are ubiquitous, ranging from wireless communications to medical imaging, and there is now a solid foundation of mathematical theory and algorithms to robustly and efficiently reconstruct such signals. However, in many of these applications, the signals of interest do not only have a sparse representation, but have other structure such as lattice-valued coefficients. While there has been a small amount of work in this setting, it is still not very well understood how such extra information can be utilized during sampling and reconstruction. Here, we explore the problem of integer sparse reconstruction, lending insight into when this knowledge can be useful, and what types of sampling designs lead to robust reconstruction guarantees. We use a combination of combinatorial, probabilistic and number-theoretic methods to discuss existence and some constructions of such sensing matrices with concrete examples. We also prove sparse versions of Minkowski's Convex Body and Linear Forms theorems that exhibit some limitations of this framework.

Field of study: Mathematics
Association of polymorphisms in the MCP-1 and CCR2 genes with the risk of cancer: a meta-analysis.

Studies investigating the impact of polymorphisms on monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1) and CC chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) on the risk of cancer have reported inconsistent results. We performed a meta-analysis of 23 eligible studies to summarize the data describing the association between cancer risk and polymorphisms in MCP-1 A2518G and CCR2 V64I. Q-statistics and I(2) statistics were calculated to examine heterogeneity and summary odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated using a random effects model. Potential sources of heterogeneity were investigated via subgroup and sensitivity analyses, and publication biases were estimated. Overall, MCP-1 and CCR2 polymorphisms showed no significant associations with cancer risk (MCP-1-2518A/G, GG + GA vs. AA: OR=0.94, 95% CI=0.76-1.17; CCR2 V64I, AA+AG vs. GG: OR=1.27, 95% CI=0.87-1.86). However, strong evidence of heterogeneity was found among the investigated studies, and subgroup analyses were therefore conducted according to study location, cancer type, source of controls, and presence of deviation from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE). When the data were stratified by study location, the increased risk of cancer among A allele carriers of CCR2 V64I was observed only in studies conducted in Asian countries (AA+AG vs. GG: OR=1.65; 95% CI=1.25-2.18). This meta-analysis suggests that genetic polymorphisms of CCR2 V64I may influence the susceptibility of cancer in Asian countries. Further well-designed studies with larger sample sizes should be conducted.

Field of study: Medicine
Electron microscopy and diffraction of modulated structures

It is the purpose of this review to illustrate the possibilities of elect— ron microscopy and electron diffraction techniques for the study of modul— ated structures. A classification of these structures according to the type of modulating structural deviation is proposed. Some particular procedures are outlined for electron diffraction as well as transmission electron microscopy observations. Also the use of the structure imaging mode is discussed since it provides detailed information on the modulation type. Two particular examples are treated in some more detail since each illustrates particular applications of the above mentioned technioues: the charge density wave related phases in tantalum disulphide and an incommensurate intermediate phase near the a—n— transition in quartz.

Field of study: Chemistry
Nernst effect and diamagnetic response in a stripe model of superconducting cuprates

We examine the possibility that the experimentally observed enhancement of superconducting (SC) fluctuations above the SC transition temperature in the underdoped cuprates is caused by stripes —an intrinsic electronic inhomogeneity, common to hole-doped cuprates. By evaluating the strengths of the diamagnetic response and the Nernst effect within a striped SC model, we find results that are qualitatively consistent with the experimental observations (Wang Yayu et al.,  (2006) 024510). We make a prediction for anisotropic thermopower in detwinned samples that can be used to further test the proposed scenario.

Field of study: Physics
Physical Interactions and Expression Quantitative Traits Loci Identify Regulatory Connections for Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Associated SNPs

The mechanisms that underlie the association between obesity and type 2 diabetes are not fully understood. Here, we investigated the role of the 3D genome organization in the pathogeneses of obesity and type-2 diabetes. We interpreted the combined and differential impacts of 196 diabetes and 390 obesity associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by integrating data on the genes with which they physically interact (as captured by Hi-C) and the functional [i.e., expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL)] outcomes associated with these interactions. We identified 861 spatially regulated genes (e.g., AP3S2, ELP5, SVIP, IRS1, FADS2, WFS1, RBM6, HORMAD1, PYROXD2), which are enriched in tissues (e.g., adipose, skeletal muscle, pancreas) and biological processes and canonical pathways (e.g., lipid metabolism, leptin, and glucose-insulin signaling pathways) that are important for the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Our discovery-based approach also identifies enrichment for eQTL SNP-gene interactions in tissues that are not classically associated with diabetes or obesity. We propose that the combinatorial action of active obesity and diabetes spatial eQTL SNPs on their gene pairs within different tissues reduces the ability of these tissues to contribute to the maintenance of a healthy energy metabolism.

Field of study: Biology
The Effect of Using Small Educational Folk Games on Improving Life Skills of the Deaf in the First, Second and Third Graders in the Elementary Stage in Jordan

This study aimed to investigate the effect of using small educational folk games on improving life skills (cooperation and team work, communication, self dependence and responsibility) of the deaf in the first, second and third Grades in the elementary stage in Jordan. The study sample consisted of 40 students attending Al Amal School for the Deaf in Awajan Area and Al Raja’ School for the Deaf in Rusaifa Directorate. The sample was divided into a control group using the regular program, and an experimental one using the suggested educational program. The researcher used the Experimental Method holding pre and post tests and appropriate statistical operations. The results showed the effectiveness of using these educational motional folk games on improving life skills (cooperation and team work, communication, self dependence and responsibility) of the deaf first, second and third grades in the elementary stage In Jordan, and also showed that there are statistically significant differences between the control and the experimental group for the advantage of the experimental one. The researcher recommends using the suggested educational program which is based on educational and motional games to improve life skills of the deaf in the elementary stage, and assures the importance of constructing curricula and programs based on folk motional games for the deaf students to improve all types of life and motional skills.  Educational, Life Skills, Folk Games,

Field of study: Education
Prognostic variables in surgery for skull base meningiomas.

The authors have retrospectively analyzed selected surgical and pathological observations made among a group of 20 patients harboring recurrent cranial base meningiomas in an attempt to reveal which factors may be important in predicting tumor recurrence. This cohort was compared with a group of 34 patients with cranial base meningiomas that underwent primary resection and in whom tumor recurrence has not been demonstrated over a median follow-up period of 33 months. Features analyzed included brain, cranial nerve, carotid artery, or muscle invasion as well as tumor cellularity, nucleolar prominence, cellular pleomorphism, and percentage of cells staining positive for the Ki-67 antigen. As expected, increased cellularity and tumor necrosis were relatively more prevalent in recurrent tumors. With regard to tumor type, atypical and anaplastic tumors were more common in the group of patients with recurrent tumor compared with the primary group (p < 0.02). As expected, increased cellularity was relatively more prominent in recurrent tumors. Invasion of muscle and bone (72%) was more frequently associated with recurrent tumors, suggesting that these characteristics may be important features of recurrent skull base meningiomas.

Field of study: Medicine
A comparison between the ordinary and the length-biased modified power series distributions with applications

The class of Modified Power Series Distributions (MPSD) is a very wide class which contains many well known distributions as special cases. In this article, a comparison is presented between the MPSD and its length-biased version in a unified manner. Specifically, the moments of the length-biased MPSD are expressed in terms of the moments of the original class, and the information contained in the random samples from the two classes of distributions are compared. These comparisons are studied for some members of the class. A generalized geometric distribution is obtained as the length-biased version of a generalized log-series distribution recentiy presented by the authors, An example is provided where the generalized geometric distribution gives a better fit than the corresponding generalized log-series distribution.

Field of study: Mathematics
Predictive Uncertainty Quantification with Compound Density Networks

Despite the huge success of deep neural networks (NNs), finding good mechanisms for quantifying their prediction uncertainty is still an open problem. Bayesian neural networks are one of the most popular approaches to uncertainty quantification. On the other hand, it was recently shown that ensembles of NNs, which belong to the class of mixture models, can be used to quantify prediction uncertainty. In this paper, we build upon these two approaches. First, we increase the mixture model's flexibility by replacing the fixed mixing weights by an adaptive, input-dependent distribution (specifying the probability of each component) represented by NNs, and by considering uncountably many mixture components. The resulting class of models can be seen as the continuous counterpart to mixture density networks and is therefore referred to as compound density networks (CDNs). We employ both maximum likelihood and variational Bayesian inference to train CDNs, and empirically show that they yield better uncertainty estimates on out-of-distribution data and are more robust to adversarial examples than the previous approaches.

Field of study: Computer science
Bromide ion effect on N-nitrosodimethylamine formation by monochloramine.

N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) formation experiments conducted in phosphate buffer demonstrated that in waters containing monochloramine, the presence of bromide ion enhanced NDMA formation at the relatively high pH values of 8 and 9 after 24 h of reaction time, which was consistent with literature results. However, at relatively low to neutral pH (6 to 7), the presence of bromide resulted in lower NDMA formation as compared to results obtained in the absence of bromide. The hypothesis that bromamines were the species directly responsible for enhanced NDMA formation at high pH was tested and was shown not to be valid. Additional active bromine species were also tested, including hypobromous acid, hypobromite ion, and tribromide ion, with no species showing an ability to directly enhance NDMA formation. Analysis of the UV spectral data corresponding to the NDMA experiments suggest that the mechanism by which bromide enhances NDMA formation lies in the formation of a haloamine compound, possibly the mixed dihaloamine bromochloramine.

Field of study: Environmental science
Functional and numerical response of Amblyseius largoensis to Aceria litchi

The functional and numerical response of Amblyseius largoensis preying Aceria litchii was studied. Tests were carried out to determine the relationship between the preying capacity of female A.largoensis and the population density of Aceria litchi, between the preying capacity and the population density of A. largoensis, between the egg number of A.largoensis and the population density of Aceria litchi and between the development stages and the preying capacity of A. largoensis. The adults of A. largoensis preyed on Aceria litchi of all life stages. With the growth of prey density within a certain range, the daily preying capacity of the predator increased gradually. The maximum number of the daily preying capacity of A. largoensis adults was 37 heads of adults of A. litchi at the average temperature of 25℃ with the humidity of 80--85%. When the prey density was kept constant, the daily preying capacity of A. largoensis per head declined with its own population density. As the population density of the preys increased, the average daily oviposition capacity of A. larfoensis increased, and the development stage of A. largoensis became shorter.

Field of study: Agricultural and Food sciences
Conscience clauses and sexual and gender minority mental health care: A case study.

Tennessee is one of the first states in the United States to have a law that enables counselors and therapists in independent practice to deny services to any client based on the practitioner's "sincerely held principles." This so-called "conscience clause" represents a critical moment in professional psychology, in which mental health care providers are on the frontlines of cultural and legal debates about religious freedom. Though the law's language is ambiguous, it was widely perceived to target sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals. We interviewed 20 SGM people living in Tennessee to understand their experiences with mental health care in the state and their perceptions of the law. Our participants perceive the law as fundamentally discriminatory, though they overwhelmingly conceptualize the conscience clause as legalizing discrimination toward members of all stigmatized groups-not just SGM individuals. They described individual and societal consequences for the law, including an understanding of the conscience clause as harmful above and beyond any individual discrimination event it may engender. We situate these findings amid the research on structural stigma and suggest that counseling psychologists become actively engaged in combatting conscience clauses, which appear to have profound consequences on mental health care engagement, particularly for populations vulnerable to discrimination.

Field of study: Psychology
Rethinking Bank Examinations: A Minsky Approach

In recent statements, federal bank regulators from the OCC, FDIC, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and Federal Reserve Banks have called for a new approach to bank examinations. The essence of the new approach to bank examinations is what Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig calls "supervision by risk," i.e., exams that focus on evaluating the quantity of risk exposure in an institution and determining the quality of the risk management systems in place to control that risk [. Taking a similar approach, Ricki Helfer, chairman of the FDIC, notes the exam focus will be macroeconomic and will include the increased involvement of economists in the bank examination process. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, has stated that regulatory innovation is necessary and that the Board has been studying an alternative capital allocation approach that he calls the "pre-commitment approach." This would allow banks to choose their own capital allocations for trading risk that they believe are consistent with their own risk management capabilities [Greenspan 1996b]. These discussions of new approaches to bank examination echo some of the concerns put forward in a proposal three decades ago by Hyman Minsky for a "cash flow-oriented" bank examination. Though Minsky spent his career as an academic, his working relationship with private banks and federal bank regulatory agencies gave him unique insights into the workings of the financial system. Minsky based his bank examination proposal on his analysis of the problem of financial instability,

Field of study: Economics