nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Platinum Complex Cytotoxicity Tested by the Electrical Resistance Breakdown Assay

The electrical resistance breakdown assay provides a novel approach for the quantification of cytotoxic activity of platinum based anticancer drugs. It is a functional assay system for cancer cell invasion that detects nanoscale alterations of an epithelial test barrier prior to microscopic morphometric changes. We measured changes in transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) of a tight epithelial MDCK-C7 monolayer in response to highly invasive amelanotic melanoma cells (A7-clone) in combination with different platinum complexes (cis-, oxali- and carboplatin). The efficiency of the electrical resistance breakdown assay was compared a standard method for measurement of cytostatic activity, the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The MTT-assay utilizes mitochondrial enzymatic activity to draw conclusions from a functional cell metabolism to the number of living cells in a sample. When human melanoma cells were seeded on top of an electrically tight MDCK-C7 monolayer, electrical leakage occurred within 48 h of co-culture. Electrical resistance breakdown was effectively prevented by cisplatin and its analogs (no significant difference between 100 µM cisplatin and corresponding controls with non-invasive cells). The results of the electrical resistance breakdown and MTT-assay were linearly dependent. Significance of both tests was equivalent, but the electrical resistance breakdown assay gave additional functional information. Compared to oxali- and carboplatin, cisplatin was more effective in preventing TEER-breakdown than reducing the number of tumor cells, giving rise to the assumption that cisplatin can reduce tumor cell number as well as invasiveness. In conclusion the electrical resistance breakdown assay provides a sensitive, continuous and cell-based assay system for the quantification of cancer cell invasiveness and evaluation of chemotherapeutics under physiological conditions.

Field of study: Biology, Chemistry
Prevention versus cure: measuring parental preferences for sealants and fillings as treatments for childhood caries in Southern Thailand.

To determine the parental relative preferences for prevention versus cure in the treatment of caries in children to inform service planning for publicly funded children's dental care services. We measure parents' Willingness to pay (WTP) for two basic dental treatments: prevention (sealant) and cure (filling) and consider whether the relative preferences between the two services are affected by differences in parents' incomes.



Two hundred and five parents of primary school children in Southern Thailand were asked questions about their WTP for the different services as well as background information. Comparative information on caries process, treatment procedure and effectiveness was presented to subjects. Each subject's WTP was determined for sealants and fillings provided in hospital dental clinic using a bidding game approach.



Mean WTP for sealants and fillings were not significantly different. After adjustment for parents' characteristics, the WTP for sealants and fillings remained similar. Adjusted WTP for both services among higher income group were greater than those in lower income group.



Valuing of prevention versus cure was similar after controlling for parents' characteristics. Parent's income was a factor affected to WTP. Parental preferences might be a constraint to extending service utilization for the prevention of caries among primary school children.

Field of study: Medicine, Political science
The Ventral Dentate Gyrus Mediates Pattern Separation for Reward Value

Rats with ventral dentate gyrus (DG) lesions, sham lesions, and controls were run in a runway for 20 pellets of food. After reaching running speed asymptote, the number of pellets was reduced to 1, 9, or 17 pellets. The purpose of the present experiment was to determine whether the ventral DG subregion of the hippocampus plays a role in pattern separation for reward value. The results indicated that sham lesioned and control rats displayed a graded decrease in runway velocities, supporting a pattern separation process. In contrast, ventral DG lesioned rats continued to maintain runway velocities regardless of the reward-value shifts. The ventral DG lesion results do not appear to be due to hyperactivity but could be based on the idea that the ventral DG is part of a decision-making circuitry to predict goal-relevant reward outcomes.

Field of study: Biology, Psychology
Effects of intratracheal instillation of fenvalerate on the ultrastructures of pulmonary alveolar macrophages in rat.

On 1 d after instillation of fenvalerate (Fen) 0.19, 0.93, 4.66, and 23.3 mg.kg-1, and on 30 min, 4 h, 1 d, 4 d, and 7 d after instillation of Fen 4.66 mg.kg-1 by a single intratracheal instillation, respectively, the ultrastructural changes in rat pulmonary alveolar macrophages (PAM) were observed, and the toxicity indices (TI) were calculated. It was found that the ineffective dose of Fen was 0.19 mg.kg-1, and the threshold dose was less than or equal to 0.93 mg.kg-1 as well as the serious intoxication dose greater than or equal to 4.66 mg.kg-1. The results suggest that Fen is quickly toxic to rat lungs and quickly biodegraded in the lungs.

Field of study: Biology, Chemistry, Medicine
Using viewpoints to derive object-oriented frameworks: a case study in the web-based education domain

This paper is an experience report that illustrates the applicability of a viewpoint-based design method for the Web-based education (WBE) domain. The method is a new approach for domain analysis that generates an object-oriented framework from a set of concrete applications. These applications are defined as viewpoints, since they provide different perspectives of the framework domain. Various existent WBE environments have been used as viewpoints in our case study. The design method has been successfully applied for these viewpoints generating the ALADIN framework. The analysed WBE environments are presented through object-oriented diagrams. The implementation and use of ALADIN is discussed to validate the results of the case study.

Field of study: Computer science, Engineering
Accountability and Reporting in the Fight against Corruption: Preliminary Evidences from the Italian Setting

This paper aims to explain how Italian Regional Governments reacted to the introduction of the Anti-Corruption Plans in order to understand the degree of thoroughness. To answer the research question 20 Anti-Corruption Plans prepared by Italian Regional Governments for the years 2013-2016. The plans were examined using a meaning-oriented content analysis. This analysis allows us to detect the degree of compliance with the National Anticorruption Plan (NAP). Also we investigated the characteristics of the information, as well as the degree of thoroughness of the reports. Our findings highlight the existence of high degree of heterogeneity in the Anti corruption plans that characterises the national context. Also, our findings reveal the existence of a wide presence of regions employing poor reporting practices.

Field of study: Business
Absorbing and Shielding Properties of a Hybrid Patterned Composite Containing CIPs and Carbon Fiber

In order to broaden the absorption band and maintain a high absorption coefficient, a structural absorber was designed based on rubber-added carbonyl iron particles (CIPs) and polylactic acid added carbon fiber (PLA-CF). The hybrid-patterned composite was fabricated using three-dimensional printing and a conventional compression molding method. The electromagnetic parameters of the CIPs and PLA-CF were tested with a vector network analyzer. The effective permittivity and permeability of the layer element were derived as the two parameters were set in commercial software. Then the parameters of the elements with different CIP content were calculated based on the Maxwell–Garnett mixing rule and the interpolate method. Finally, the reflection loss (RL) and shielding effectiveness (SE) were optimized using a genetic algorithm. The results indicate that structural composites with 1.82 mm thickness exhibit excellent absorption (minimum RL − 15.18 dB) in the 8–14 GHz range band, while the SE was larger than 10 dB and RL less than − 10 dB when the thickness was 7.92 mm.

Field of study: Materials science
Über die Helligkeit einer leuchtenden Schicht

ZusammenfassungIn folgender Arbeit wird ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Helligkeit einer leuchtenden Schicht und ihrer Dicke gegeben. Die abgeleitete Formel wird durch Beobachtungen der Helligkeit des blauen Himmels in verschiedener Höhe über dem Horizont geprüft. Dabei ist eine befriedigende Übereinstimmung zwischen Theorie und Experiment gefunden.

Field of study: Physics
Gemcitabine combined with gum mastic causes potent growth inhibition and apoptosis of pancreatic cancer cells

To investigate the antiproliferative and apoptotic effects of gemcitabine combined with gum mastic and the underlying mechanisms in human pancreatic cancer cell lines.Cell proliferation and apoptosis were examined using the methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay and propidium iodine staining, respectively. The expression of Bcl-2, Bax, NF-κB p65 subunit, and IκBα protein was measured using Western blotting.Gemcitabine 0.01−100 μg/mL inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in both pancreatic cancer BxPC-3 and COLO 357 cells. Gum mastic 40 μg/mL significantly potentiated the antiproliferative and apoptotic effects of gemcitabine 10 μg/mL after 72-h treatment. When cells were treated with gemcitabine in combination with gum mastic, the IκBα level was increased, whereas NF-κB activation was blocked; the expression of Bax protein was substantially increased, but Bcl-2 protein was down-regulated.Gemcitabine combined with gum mastic causes potent apoptosis in pancreatic cancer cells. The combination may be an effective therapeutic strategy for pancreatic cancer.

Field of study: Biology, Chemistry, Medicine
Bayesian estimation for non zero inflated modified power series distribution under linex and generalized entropy loss functions

In this paper, we derive Bayesian estimators of the parameters of modified power series distributions inflated at any of a support point under linex and general entropy loss function. We assume that the prior information can be summarized by a uniform, Beta, two-sided power, Gamma or generalized Pareto distributions. The obtained results are demonstrated on the generalized Poisson and the generalized negative binomial distribution inflated at a given point.

Field of study: Mathematics
The contribution of aviation NOx emissions to climate change : Are we ignoring methodological flaws?

The contribution of aviation to anthropogenic climate change results from CO2 and non-CO2 emissions. The latter emissions comprise of nitrogen oxides, water vapour, and aerosols as well as contrail and contrailcirrus effects. A series of updates can be noted in recent studies related to the effects of NOx-emissions; the inclusion of two physical processes and an updated radiation calculation (see below). However, in our opinion, two further published methodological shortcomings have not been fully considered which leads to a considerable underestimation of the contribution of aviation’s NOx emissions to climate change. First, methane response calculations implicitly assume steady-state instead of an adequate transient development. Second, most studies determine ozone changes are caused by switching off or reducing aviation NOx emissions, instead of calculating aviation contributions to the ozone. Such methodological simplifications largely underestimate the contribution of the aviation NOx emissions to climate change by a factor of 6 to 7 and can thereby be considered as flaws. Note that the contribution of an emission to climate change (=‘status report’) and the contribution of a change in emissions to climate change (=‘mitigation option’) require different calculation methods [1, 2]. While for calculating the contribution of emissions to atmospheric compositions (and hence climate change), to which we are referring here, a clear recommendation was made (e.g. ), the methodological approach for evaluating mitigation measures might still be ambiguous, but should certainly not ignore the results of contribution calculations .

Field of study: Environmental science
Hybrid scheduling for scientific workflows on hybrid clouds

Scientific workflows consist of many interdependent tasks dictated by their data dependencies. As these workflows are becoming resource-intensive in both data and computing, private clouds struggle to cope with their resource requirements. Private cloud’s limitations are claimed to be addressed by public clouds, however, the complete offloading of workflow execution to public clouds causes excessive data transfer. In this paper, we address the problem of scheduling scientific workflows on hybrid clouds aiming at cost reduction while improving execution time, with the consideration of public cloud costs, by minimizing data movements between private cloud and public cloud. To this end, we develop Hybrid Scheduling for Hybrid Clouds (HSHC) as a novel data-locality aware scheduling algorithm. HSHC adopts a hybrid approach consisting of static phase and dynamic phase. The former solves the problem of workflow scheduling, using an extended genetic algorithm, with static information of workflows and resources. The latter dynamically adapts the static schedule in response to changing execution conditions, such as locality of intermediate output data and performance degradation of tasks and resources. We evaluate HSHC with both random workflows and real-world scientific applications in execution time and cost. Experimental results compared with seven state-of-the-art algorithms demonstrate HSHC significantly reduces the cost by up to 40% and improves the execution time by up to 25%.

Field of study: Computer science
A thermal cycling reliability study of ultrasonically bonded copper wires

In this work we report on a reliability investigation regarding heavy copper wires ultrasonically bonded onto active braze copper substrates. The results obtained from both a non-destructive approach using 3D X-ray tomography and shear tests showed no discernible degradation or wear out from initial conditions to 2900 passive thermal cycles from − 55 to 125 °C. Instead, an apparent increase in shear strength is observed as the number of thermal cycles increases. Nanoindentation hardness investigations suggest the occurrence of cyclic hardening. Microstructural investigations of the interfacial morphologies before and after cycling and after shear testing are also presented and discussed.

Field of study: Engineering
European starlings are capable of discriminating subtle size asymmetries in paired stimuli.

Small deviations from bilateral symmetry (fluctuating asymmetries) are cues to fitness differences in some animals. Therefore, researchers have considered whether animals use these small asymmetries as visual cues to determine appropriate behavioral responses (e.g., mate preferences). However, there have been few systematic studies of animals' abilities to visually discriminate such minor asymmetries. If the asymmetries cannot be discriminated, fluctuating asymmetry can not be a visual cue. Here, we report an investigation of European starlings' (Sturnus vulgaris) abilities to discriminate small size asymmetries. We trained starlings, through operant conditioning in a free-flight aviary, to discriminate achromatic, symmetric paired stimuli from size-matched asymmetric stimuli. By starting the learning process with a large asymmetry and progressing through sequential trials of decreasing asymmetry, we elucidated a behavioral limit to asymmetry discrimination. We found that starlings are capable of discriminating a 10% size asymmetry. There was weaker evidence for discrimination of 5% asymmetry but no evidence for signal discrimination at 2.5% size asymmetry. This level of asymmetry discrimination suggests that many size asymmetry cues in nature can be discriminated by birds. At each level of asymmetry discrimination, we also tested whether starlings could generalize their learned symmetry preference to unreinforced novel images. Consistent with previous findings, we found that starlings could generalize their symmetry preferences.

Field of study: Biology, Psychology
[The effect of low doses of nakom on the hormonal secretion of the hypothalamo-hypophyseal-adrenal system in patients with infantile cerebral palsy].

: The levels of hormones of hypothalamo-hypophyseal-adrenal system were measured in 14 10-14 year old children with infantile cerebral paralysis (ICP) with central catecholaminergic motor insufficiency. Contents of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), hydrocortisone (HC), somatotropic hormone, prolactin (P) were examined before and during Nacome administration (62.5 mg once daily in the morning). 110 patients of the same age with ICP and 18 children with acquired encephalopathy (EP) formed the control group. The elevations of ACTH, HC and P were revealed in spastic forms of ICP. Meanwhile nearly normal hormonal levels were observed in hyperkinetic forms of ICP and EP. The more pronounced effect was noted in "dopamine-dependent" children in which the drug's administration resulted in normalization of clinical and biochemical indices. Hyperkinetic phenomena revealed the connection between the character of neuromotor dyskinesias and the state of hypothalamo-hypophyseal-adrenal axis which is regulated by dopamine. The data obtained show hypofunction of dopaminergic neurotransmitter cerebral systems in patients with ICP that plays important pathogenetic role in development of disease with systemic manifestations.

Field of study: Medicine, Psychology
Improved key-reconciliation method

In , Peikert proposed efficient and practical lattice-based protocols for key transport, encryption and authenticated key exchange. One of the main technical innovations of  is a reconciliation technique that allows two parties who ”approximately agree” on a secret value to reach exact agreement, a setting common to essentially all lattice-based encryption schemes. In , this reconciliation technique was described for reaching agreement on a single bit. Peikert’s reconciliation technique has been extended in , allowing for agreement on more than one bit. In both cases, only one reconciliation bit is required to reach exact agreement. As symmetric keys typically require many bits, say 128 or more, the parties compute multiple secret values, and reach exact agreement on each of those values individually. In this paper, we propose a reconciliation method that sends more than one reconciliation bit. In this way, the parties can agree on the same number of bits as with Peikert’s method with less stringent conditions on ”how approximate” the approximate agreement must be. Allowing for less stringent conditions on the approximate agreement improves security of the system. Alternatively, with virtually the same approximation requirements (i.e., with virtually the same security guarantees), an instance of our method allows the two parties to agree on one a secret value that is one bit longer than with the method from [2]. We numerically illustrate the advantages of our method with the impact to the recommended schemes in .

Field of study: Computer science, Mathematics
Characterization and Modeling of Fine-Pitch Copper Ball Bonding on a Cu/Low-k Chip

Cu ball bonding faces more challenges than Au ball bonding, for example, excessive deformation of the bond pad and damage of Cu/low-k structures, because of the much greater hardness of Cu free air balls. In this study, dynamic finite-element analysis (FEA) modeling with displacement control was developed to simulate the ball-bonding process. The three-dimensional (3D) FEA simulation results were confirmed by use of stress-measurement data, obtained by use of stress sensors built into the test chip. Stress comparison between two-dimensional (2D) and 3D FEA models showed the 2D plain strain model to be a reasonable and effective model for simulation of the ball-bonding process without loss of accuracy; it also saves computing resources. The 2D FEA model developed was then used in studies of a Cu/low-k chip to find ways of reducing Al bond pad deformation and stresses of low-k structures. The variables studied included Al pad properties, capillary geometry, bond pad design (Al pad thickness, Al pad coated with Ni layer), and the effect of ultrasonic bonding power.

Field of study: Materials science
PM₂.₅ opened a door to public participation addressing environmental challenges in China.

China has long been regarded as a centralized society where the public has little influence on decision-making. Such a top-down management scheme is perceived as a major obstacle to address complicated environment issues. The recent public campaign in China to urge creation of a nationwide PM₂.₅ monitoring network and mitigation plan provides an unprecedented case of how the public participated and influenced policy-making in a centralized society. This paper reviews key incidents in the campaign chronologically. Here we identify information technology, public awareness of air quality's health impacts and the fact air quality affects everyone as public goods as the major factors promoting public participation. This case demonstrates that public participation can happen in a centralized, top-down society such as China. Continued environmental deterioration may stimulate similar campaigns for other issues. We anticipate this essay to be a starting point for more studies on how environmental issues stimulate incremental social change by making people involved in decision-making process, especially in societies where they are rarely able to do so.

Field of study: Environmental science
Factors hindering use of standard weights and measures along Irish potato supply chain in Njombe region, Tanzania

Non-compliance with standard weights and measures in agricultural marketing in Tanzania compelled this paper to examined factors hindering use of standard weights and measures along Irish potato supply chain. To address this challenge a cross section research design was used to develop data collection plan and probability sampling was used to draw a representative sample from a sampling frame. The findings revealed that weak enforcement of the regulations governing compliance to standard weights and measures, weak extension services that failed to provide reliable market information to farmers, lack of negotiation skills among smallholder farmers against local brokers / traders coupled with inadequate market infrastructure with appropriate weights and measure facilities provide incentives for local brokers and traders to exploit smallholder farmers. For the sake of fair deals in transactions associated with Irish potato along the supply chain this paper recommends the best practices to ensure responsible business practices among actors.

Field of study: Business