nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Business Strategy as a Measure of Organizational Performance

The study aimed at examining organizational performance in a Nigerian bank using their business strategies. Specifically, the study identified the business strategies employed by the bank, evaluated her performance over some years-using financial ratios, and assessed the effects of the strategies employed on the performance of the bank in terms of efficiency, profitability, liquidity, and market share. A systematic (case study) research design was adopted and a non-probabilistic sampling technique was used to gather information. The variables used in the study were determined as key indices of performance and values were ascribed to them from the figures supplied in the bank’s financial statement. Some other published working papers as referenced and some Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) publications. The study revealed that the bank’s mission was to invest in the best people, technology and environment to be able to achieve customer enthusiasm. The bank’s major strategies are in the area of financing, marketing, human resources and information technology. The bank has recorded a tremendous success haven attained all the key desires of her mission statement and recording a revenue to expense ratio of 1.7:1, 1.7:1,1.5:1 and 1.5:1 over four financial years(2000-2003). In terms of market share, the bank’s total asset have been continuously higher (2.4%, 2.8%, 3.4%, 3.7%, 5.7%) than the industry average of 1.7%, 1.6%, 1.9%, 2.0%, 2.0% (2000 – 2004). The study concluded that the bank should continuously analysis its strength, weakness, opportunities and threats for an enduring adaptation to its dynamic environment characterized by political instability, government interference, corruption, sharp practices and failing public infrastructures.

Field of study: Business
Biodiversity and Conservation

The major objective of Biodiversity and Conservation is to serve as a vehicle for communicating the best ideas and research across the whole spectrum of biodiversity and conservation to our peers and those who make policy and decisions which affect what happens to the Earth and its people. The launch of Biodiversity and Conservation fills us with a sense of excitement and optimism. Excitement because of the emphatic support from people worldwide; optimism stimulated by the increased mindfulness of scientists, sociologists, economists, politicians, planners and a host of others, to environmental degradation and global changes that menance the Earth's biological diversity. The responsibility of turning concern into effective conservation actions enabling sustainable development will be the role of all our readers; Biodiversity and Conservation will endeavour to provide the information and the catalyst. The knowledge necessary for action, plans and priorities to be defined for effective conservation is generally absent. The complexity of ecological systems and our ignorance continues to thwart attempts to predict, prevent, moderate, or restore destruction of the global environment. The journal's scope is wide and multidisciplinary covering all organisms, and all facets of environmental dynamics and practice. In the former context knowledge is uneven; information on insect, invertebrate, microbial and viral diversity is vastly exceeded by that on vertebrates and plants, and as a consequence their contribution to ecosystem function is largely unheeded. Likewise, in the latter context, socio-political, cultural and economic concerns such as the role of local peoples and their enconomics, or the stability of political structures and gross national product, all come within our ambit. In setting priorities and agendas for conservation, governments, national government organizations, interest groups and individuals must augment research criteria with the values and concerns of society. Since different groups value different aspects of biodiversity differently, and the resources to counteract relentless destruction are limited, we need to set priorities as we strive towards the notion of sustainability. Biodiversity and Conservation will provide a forum for examining these complex issues. Biodiversity and Conservation welcomes contributions from practitioners of conservation as well as those who depend on the managed exploitation of biodiversity, and is keen to foster communication between them and all constituencies of people whether working on, or in, the environment. The international breadth of Biodiversity and Conservation means that we are particularly concerned to encourage contributions from developing countries where much of the biodiversity debate is centred. As Jeff McNeely concludes in the opening paper, "It is time for us to go on the offensive, to stop fighting the biodiversity crisis as if it were a series of discrete battles over pollution, species extinctions or poaching. We need to get in front of the problems."

Field of study: Environmental science
Alignment of Learning Objectives and Assessments in Therapeutics Courses to Foster Higher-Order Thinking

To determine whether national educational outcomes, course objectives, and classroom assessments for 2 therapeutics courses were aligned for curricular content and cognitive processes, and if they included higher-order thinking.  Document analysis and student focus groups were used. Outcomes, objectives, and assessment tasks were matched for specific therapeutics content and cognitive processes. Anderson and Krathwohl’s Taxonomy was used to define higher-order thinking. Students discussed whether assessments tested objectives and described their thinking when responding to assessments.  There were 7 outcomes, 31 objectives, and 412 assessment tasks. The alignment for content and cognitive processes was not satisfactory. Twelve students participated in the focus groups. Students thought more short-answer questions than multiple choice questions matched the objectives for content and required higher-order thinking.  The alignment analysis provided data that could be used to reveal and strengthen the enacted curriculum and improve student learning.

Field of study: Education, Medicine
Über die Winkelabhängigkeit und ihre Unsymmetrie von Energieverlusten an Si und Ge

In Silicon and Germanium one finds three types of characteristic energy losses: the plasma loss at 17 eV in transmission of electrons through thin films, the 10 eV loss in reflection at cleavage surfaces, and the 5 eV loss in transmission through extremely thin films. The present paper is concerned with the 5 eV loss.It is found that the intensity of the 5 eV loss does not depend on variation of thickness of the foils. Thus, it is concluded that the 5 eV loss is due to surface plasma oscillations. In fact, measuring the angular distribution, there is found a dependence of ∼ϑ−3 in good agreement with that given by the theory.In the case of non-normally incident electrons it is found that the intensity of this loss is not symmetric about the direction of the incident electrons. This is in agreement with the theoretical considerations ofStern andFerrell, and represents a further typical feature of surface plasma losses.

Field of study: Physics
Fretting Fatigue Experiment and Analysis of AlSi9Cu2Mg Alloy

An investigation was carried out in order to study the fretting fatigue behavior of an AlSi9Cu2Mg aluminum alloy. The fretting fatigue tests of AlSi9Cu2Mg were performed using a specially designed testing machine. The failure mechanism of fretting fatigue was explored by studying the fracture surfaces, fretting scars, fretting debris, and micro-hardness of fretting fatigue specimens using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and micro Vickers hardness test techniques. The experimental results show that the fretting fatigue limit (42 MPa) is significantly reduced to approximately 47% of the plain fatigue limit (89 MPa) under 62.5 MPa contact pressure. Furthermore, the fretting fatigue life decreases with increasing alternating stress and increasing contact pressure. The examination results suggest that the stress concentrates induced by oxidation-assisted wear on the contact interface led to the earlier initiation and propagation of crack under the fretting condition.

Field of study: Materials science
Self-Affirmations Provide a Broader Perspective on Self-Threat

We present an “affirmation as perspective” model of how self-affirmations alleviate threat and defensiveness. Self-threats dominate the working self-concept, leading to a constricted self disproportionately influenced by the threat. Self-affirmations expand the size of the working self-concept, offering a broader perspective in which the threat appears more narrow and self-worth realigns with broader dispositional self-views (Experiment 1). Self-affirmed participants, relative to those not affirmed, indicated that threatened self-aspects were less all-defining of the self (although just as important), and this broader perspective on the threat mediated self-affirmation’s reduction of defensiveness (Experiment 2). Finally, having participants complete a simple perspective exercise, which offered a broader perspective on the self without prompting affirmational thinking (Experiment 3a), reduced defensiveness in a manner equivalent to and redundant with a standard self-affirmation manipulation (Experiment 3b). The present model offers a unifying account for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated findings and mysteries in the self-affirmation literature.

Field of study: Psychology
Waves of Populism: A Recent Manifestation of Polanyi’s “Double Movement”?

Since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, there has been a new wave of populism in the United States and in Europe. The hypothesis of this article is that this GFC has created the conditions for the resurgence of populism. According to Polanyi’s work of 1944, The Great Transformation, the market is “utopian” and must be imposed by the state. Further, there is a disciplinary dimension, which separates the individual worker from the community, for the purposes of allowing the “prod of hunger” to be effective. This disciplinary dimension of the market, which is based on Polanyi’s analysis of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, can be extended. Several phenomena in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have intensified the tensions inherent in the market: fragmented production by means of finely divided global supply chains, increasing inequality due to the market structure; automation, declining labor share; increasing indebtedness; financialization; and erosion of protective labor market institutions, such as welfare and unionization. Populist movements are part of the backlash or “double movement” against these tensions inherent in the market. Polanyi’s analysis may contribute to a greater understanding of what may be a global inflection point at present.

Field of study: Economics
Anamorphic concentration of solar radiation beyond the one-dimensional thermodynamic limit.

We propose and demonstrate a new scheme for anamorphic concentration of a big (40 cm x 40 cm) diffuse light source to achieve an extremely high concentration in one lateral direction at the expense of that in the other direction, to preserve the total (two-dimensional) optical brightness. Such anamorphic concentration is achieved by a combination of two conventional two-dimensional concentrators and a properly designed retroreflector array. Our experiments in search of a diffuse white-light source with properties comparable with those of solar radiation have yielded 28-fold improvement of the one-dimensional concentration ratio compared with those of conventional concentrators and 14-fold improvement compared with the one-dimensional thermodynamic limit.

Field of study: Physics
A New Approach to Variable Selection Using the TLS Approach

The problem of variable selection is one of the most important model selection problems in statistical applications. It is also known as the subset selection problem and arises when one wants to explain the observations or data adequately by a subset of possible explanatory variables. The objective is to identify factors of importance and to include only variables that contribute significantly to the reduction of the prediction error. Numerous selection procedures have been proposed in the classical multiple linear regression model. We extend one of the most popular methods developed in this context, the backward selection procedure, to a more general class of models. In the basic linear regression model, errors are present on the observations only, if errors are present on the regressors as well, one gets the errors-in-variables model which for Gaussian noise becomes the total-least-squares (TLS) model, this is the context considered here

Field of study: Engineering
The structure and organization of the polysaccharides of yeast

The polysaccharides present in the yeast cell are best considered in relation to the total organization of the cell both as regards their function and. their synthesis. Three polysaccharides may be extracted from the cells as distinc:t entities and these represent the storage material, glycogen, and the strue1:ural components, glucan and mannan. The three polysaccharides may be extracted from the yeast by cytolysing the cells with hot 3 per cent sodium hydroxide solution 1 which brings most of the mannan and a little of the glycogen into the solution and leaves an insoluble residue ofglucan membranes enclosing the bulk ofthe glycogen2, 3. The glycogen may then be dissolved from this latter material by hot 0·5 N aceric acid3, 4 and precipitated and purified by addition of alcohol. The mannan is precipitated from the alkaline solution as the copper complex which is decomposed by acid alcohol and the crude polysaccharide is purified by dissohring it in water and reprecipitating it with alcohol5• Alterna.tively, the cell wall of the yeast may be isolated free from the cell contents by breaking the cell with fine glass beads in a sonic vibratory mill and the resultant suspension fractionated by differential centrifugation2. U nder these conditions the cell wall may be analysed free from the glycogen which is ~.haken out of the cell envelope and appears in the supernatant with the other cell contents. The mannan and glucan may then be separated by gentle chemical extraction of the mannan from the wall fraction and the glycogen isolated from the cell contents without the use of strong alkali2 •

Field of study: Chemistry
Tuning the EDCA parameters in WLANs with heterogeneous traffic: A flow-level analysis

The need to support multimedia services in WLANs has motivated the research on traffic differentiation mechanisms at the MAC layer. The most common approach is the tuning of the different MAC parameters of the heterogeneous traffic profiles in order to provide different channel access probabilities. The benefits of these mechanisms in terms of throughput and transmission delay, as well as their traffic differentiation and QoS capabilities, have been thoroughly studied. However, there are very few results on how the tuning of the MAC parameters impacts on the flow-level metrics, such as blocking probability or average flow duration. In this article, several EDCA-based tuning algorithms have been evaluated by comparing their flow-level response in presence of rigid (e.g. VoIP) and elastic (e.g. P2P) flows. Results show that those algorithms which adapt better to the changing WLAN state (number and type of active flows), and that are designed under multiple objectives, provide significantly higher performance and QoS than static and single-objective configurations.

Field of study: Computer science
On the problem of erotomania

Ten cases of erotomania with a clinical picture determined by isolated erotic delusion have been examined. Three stages in the disease course (catathymic, delusion systematization and residual) have been recognized. While diagnostic evaluating, an accordance of the disorders with Clerambault's syndrome in disease debut and an increase of erotomanic paranoia symptoms in pathological process development were taken into account. Premorbid personality abnormalities of schizoid spectrum, catathymic character of delusion with affective component in its formation, narrow range and concrete content of persecution ideas, expansive manifestations in the patient behavior and favorable outcome were found to characterize the isolated erotomania. The existence of special marginal types of erotomania, not corresponding to atypical paranoia spectrum (paranoia, paranomic schizophrenia) is assumed. Most of the patients were diagnosed as affected with schizotypic disorder (slow-progredient schizophrenia).

Field of study: Medicine, Psychology
A Diagnosis of Tenets of the Research Process: What is it to Know Anything?

This paper explores the tenets of the research process, that is, the processes involved in gaining new knowledge on a problematic phenomenon. The paper examines philosophical standpoints adopted by researchers and where such standpoints might be located in the knowledge sphere. For the reader to get a better understanding of issues related to knowledge, a comparison between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is made as well as discussions on the sub-disciplines of the philosophy of education, namely epistemology, ontology and logic. The place of these sub-disciplines of education in knowledge creation cannot be overemphasised and hence their understanding is paramount.The authors argue that researchers are conformists who follow established systematic ways of doing research. Also, doing research is viewed as a human action and deciding on a particular research approach derives from the nature of the social phenomena to be explored as well as what the researcher thinks will work in the particular situation s/he finds her/himself in.  research process, knowledge, epistemology, philosophical assumptions, paradigms, feminism.

Field of study: Education
Differential proopiomelanocortin gene expression in the medial basal hypothalamus of rats during pregnancy and lactation.

Hypothalamic proopiomelanocortin (POMC) gene expression was determined using in situ hybridization histochemistry (ISHH) during pregnancy and lactation in rats with and without prior reproduction experience. POMC mRNA levels in the arcuate nucleus were compared between primigravid (first pregnancy) and multigravid (second pregnancy) and primiparous and multiparous lactating rats, and between these groups and age-matched, regularly cycling, nulliparous females in diestrus. Hybridizations were performed using a digoxigenin-labeled riboprobe complementary to 837 bp of the POMC gene. The number of cells expressing POMC mRNA in the arcuate nucleus decreased in primiparous rats on day 12 of lactation when compared with the number of POMC cells in the arcuate nucleus of nulliparous rats in diestrus. In addition, the number of cells expressing POMC mRNA in multigravid animals was significantly less than in the primigravid group on days 7 and 21 of pregnancy, and on day 12 of lactation in primiparous animals. Repeated reproductive experience affected the number of POMC mRNA positive cells; there were fewer cells expressing POMC mRNA in the multigravid females on day 7 of pregnancy and an increase in the number of POMC cells in the multiparous group on day 12 of lactation compared to the primiparous animals. Optical density measurements revealed a significant increase in reaction product in the labeled cells on all days of pregnancy compared with virgin females in diestrus and a significant decrease in reaction product on day 12 of lactation in the multiparous group. The results of the present study indicate that POMC gene expression changes across pregnancy and lactation and that repeated reproductive experience has long-term, possibly permanent, effects on the endogenous opioid system.

Field of study: Biology
Emergence of Tamm states from Thouless pumping

Localized states universally appear when a periodic potential is perturbed by defects or terminated at its surface. In one-dimensional systems, these localized states are commonly called Tamm states. In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate a mechanism that generates Tamm states through Thouless pumping. We consider a continuous translation of the periodic potential as the pumping and prove a topological bulk-edge correspondence without relying on any symmetry protection. Based on the correspondence, we show that Tamm states emerge as topological edge states. The mechanism is experimentally verified in microwave photonic crystals.

Field of study: Physics
Forty years of coastal zone management (1975–2014): Evolving theory, policy and practice as reflected in scientific research publications

Since its implementation as public law in the United States in 1972, the theoretical foundation of coastal management has moved forward in diverse directions. Given the time elapsed since the passage of this influential legislation and the growing number of disciplines and scientific papers published on the topic, this work employed bibliometric and social network analysis methods to quantitatively and qualitatively assess coastal management literature published during the period from 1975-2014. The results indicate that coastal management research has increased significantly over time. The emergence of the topic in scholarly work coincides with passage of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 (US Public Law 92–583), and increases in productivity can often be tied to the passage of important legislation or the publication of major policy documents for action on coastal issues. Social network analyses (SNA) indicate loosely connected networks of researchers and institutions, with highly collaborative subgroups that have a significant impact on the field. SNA results also highlight the importance of federal governments and international organizations in driving research and encouraging integrated management. The results indicate that the discipline is evolving to focus more on cross-boundary management strategies, systems perspectives, and consideration of both marine and terrestrial environments.

Field of study: Environmental science
Influence of income inequality on population health and directions of research in the sport area.

In relevant researches on the relations between income inequality and health,foreign scholars have established theories such as the hypothesis of absolute income,the hypothesis of relative income,the hypothesis of deprivation,the hypothesis of relative status,the hypothesis of income inequality etc.There are only few researches in this area in China,especially,there are really rare researches on the sport area.The author pointed out the directions of research on the relations between income inequality and population health in the sport area: multiple discipline coordinated researches,selection and innovation of health measurement methods,valuing the application of empirical methods,and valuing researches based on the data of individual health levels.

Field of study: Education
Cycle Detection of LDPC Codes Based on Linked List

A cycle detection method of low-density parity-check(LDPC) codes is proposed based on linked list.A linked list is obtained by expanding the non-zero elements in the parity-check matrix layer by layer.All the cycles can be detected by comparing the nodes per layer with those of upper layers.The exact number of different length of cycles can be got by recording them and then the girth(the length of the shortest cycle) is known.The detail of the process is given and the complexity is analyzed.Simulation results show that the method is powerful to detect all the different cycles in parity-check matrix.It's also very useful to estimate the performance of LDPC codes and construct the parity-check matrix.

Field of study: Engineering