nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Changes and factors associated with dentists' willingness to treat patients with severe disabilities.

This study investigated changes in dentists' willingness to treat severely disabled patients and to understand dentists' opinions on reimbursements after the implementation of a dental care financial reward program in Taiwan.



Three hundred dentists from 29 teaching hospitals were randomly selected to answer a structured questionnaire, and 184 structured questionnaires were returned. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the factors associated with dentists' willingness to treat severely disabled patients.



Approximately 60% of the dentists said reimbursements for treatment of severely disabled patients were reasonable. 50.4% of dentists were willing or very willing to treat disabled patients. Seventy-nine percent dentists affected by the program had a higher willingness but 83.7% dentists said this program did not make a significant difference to their income. 52.8% of dentists agreed the program would increase the quality of dental care. The factors significantly affecting dentists' willingness included dentist's age, specialty field, perception of the program in promoting the quality of dental services, and perception of the ability to provide adequate treatments for severely disabled patients.



The rewards program significantly increased the willingness of most hospital-base dentists to treat the severely disabled patients although the effect of incentive to their income was limited.

Field of study: Medicine, Political science
The Relation Between the Expression of latent Membrane Protein-1

In vitro studies reveal that LMP1 induces the expression of many factors for invasion and metastasis.  The aims of this study were to investigate the role of LMP1 expression on the status of Nand M that take place either directly or sequentially through its relation with the expression IL4, IL6. IL 10. IFN-gamma. Gran2yme B and with protease MMP2. MMP9. either in the serum or in the tumour tissue.  Forty one 41 EBER-RISH confirmed NPC cases with parallel serum were used for this study. Immunohistochemistry was used to study the expression of proteins in the tissue. The serum level of proteins were determined with ELISA. Statistical analysis used Lisrel 8.50.  No correlation between the expression of LMP1 with the status of Nand M of the tumour either directly or that sequentially took place through the expression of the cytokines and MMPs either in the tumour tissue or the serum level. The serum level of MMP9 was correlated with the serum level of IL6, the status of N. and the expression of IL 10. Status N was correlated with serum level of MMP2.  There is a process that sequentially took place through the increase of the cytokines. MMPs, either in the tumour tissue or serum level and N. M status. LMP1 expression was not involved in the process.  NPC - metastasis - MMP - cytokine

Field of study: Medicine
Eustatic sea-level patterns from the Lower Silurian (Llandovery Series) of southern Norway and Estonia

This study demonstrates the utility of checking for eustatic sea-level events correlated between passive epicontinental seas and those on the margin of orogenic activity. Bathymetric profiles interpreted on the basis of stratigraphic data from the Lower Silurian (Llandovery Series) in five districts of the Oslo region of southern Norway are compared with similar data derived from five bore-hole sites in the Baltic region of Estonia. These regions preserve extensive marine strata deposited on the Silurian continent Baltica. The data are tested for intra-regional and inter-regional conformity. Despite the fact that the Oslo region was affected by the Caledonide Orogeny, the same four highstands in sea level were recorded there as on Estonia9s comparatively stable platform. Expressed in terms of the established geochronologic standard and its faunal zones, coeval highstands in sea level occurred across Baltica during latest Rhuddanian time, in mid-Aeronian time (as marked by the basal Monograptus sedgwickii or Stricklandia lens progressa zones), in early Telychian time ( M. turriculatus or S. laevis zones), and in late Telychian time near the Llandovery-Wenlock boundary. This timing corresponds to four highstands in sea level previously documented in North America and to at least three high-stands found in South China. Claims for Early Silurian eustasy now rest on data collected from three independent paleocontinents. If the Llandovery Epoch lasted 10 m.y., then sea-level cyclicity was on the order of 2.5 m.y. A combination of tectono-eustastic and glacioeustatic causes probably was responsible for these cycles.

Field of study: Geology
Executive functioning in preschool-age children prenatally exposed to alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana.

Reports from clinical and experimental (animal) research converge on the suggestion that prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, or marijuana undermines executive functioning (EF) and its neurological underpinnings. However, large, adequately controlled, prospective studies of alcohol and marijuana effects on EF have reported conflicting findings, and there have been no such studies of cocaine exposure.



EF was investigated in a cohort (n = 316) of 4-year-old children the majority of whose mothers had used varying combinations of cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana during pregnancy. With use of postpartum maternal report and biological assay, children were assigned to overlapping prenatal cocaine-exposed, alcohol-exposed, and marijuana-exposed groups and to complementary control groups. The postnatal environmental assessment included measures of maternal intellectual and psychosocial functioning, current drug or alcohol use, and home environment.



The children in the alcohol-exposed group had worse tapping-inhibition performance than children in the non-alcohol-exposed group, and this effect persisted when potential confounding environmental variables, other drug variables, and concurrent verbal intelligence were controlled for.



Prenatal alcohol is predictive of decreased EF in early childhood that could not be attributed to environmental factors. The results are discussed in terms of the age and overall high-risk status of the children.

Field of study: Medicine
Scaffolding CLIL in the science classroom via visual thinking: A systemic functional multimodal approach

Learning (CLIL) is a dual-focused pedagogical approach in which a foreign language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language. CLIL specialists have recommended different types of scaffolding techniques, mainly in relation to language use. However, there is increasing interest in multimodal scaffolding techniques involving language in combination with visual resources. Within this context, visual thinking methodology is considered here as a potentially valuable tool for mediating CLIL. Using a Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) approach, this study aims to identify several features of visual thinking that could help scaffold CLIL in the science classroom. Some strategies are proposed, both to promote acquisition of scientific language and to facilitate the development of content knowledge. The approach is explored in relation to students’ understanding and communication of complex scientific knowledge in a foreign language in upper secondary education.

Field of study: Education, Linguistics
Cenozoic climate gradients in Eurasia — a palaeo-perspective on future climate change?

Recent studies in the frame of the NECLIME (Neogene Climate Evolution in Eurasia) network provide a comprehensive inventory of continental palaeoclimate data for various time slices reconstructed from the palaeobotanical record. The integrative analysis of spatial gradients and patterns observed from the proxy data, together with data obtained from numeric modelling studies considerably improved our knowledge about the functioning of the climate system in the Cenozoic. When compared to the present an overall warmer, more humid climate existed. Cenozoic climates are characterized by warm high latitudes, shallow latitudinal and longitudinal gradients and wet continental interiors while concentration of greenhouse gases was about at the present-day level or considerably higher. Thus, these past climates potentially are valuable to better understand future climate change because they allow empirical access to climate situations that do not or not yet exist today. In the present study, continental climate data calculated from micro- and macrofloras using the Coexistence Approach are analysed in order to compare past gradients and patterns and their anomalies relative to present-day conditions with future climate change scenarios. For the case study, three time intervals are selected: The Mid-Eocene represents a very warm period of the Cenozoic exemplifying greenhouse conditions with high atmospheric CO 2 of over 1.100 ppmv. The Mid-Miocene is known as outstanding warm time interval as well. The concentration of greenhouse gases is still controversially discussed, but was certainly below the Eocene level. A third interval selected, the Tortonian, represents a time-span of subsequent cooling with the beginning of Arctic glaciation. For this period, a pre-industrial CO 2 level is assumed. It is shown that the study of past climate patterns provides important clues when evaluating modelling results for future scenarios. Anomalies predicted under global warming partly coincide with the palaeoclimate data sets. As an example for greenhouse conditions, the Mid-Eocene data also show a strong warming of the high latitudes and a significant positive anomaly of winter temperatures in the continental interior as in the model study for the future scenario. However, for the Tortonian where a pre-industrial CO 2 can be assumed data show the best agreement with predicted patterns.

Field of study: Environmental science, Geography
Effects of Emission Characteristics on Elemental Composition of Selected PVC Ceiling Materials

This research work determined the emission characteristics and elemental composition of selected PVC ceiling 
materials common in Nigerian markets especially during service. This research work determined the emission 
characteristics and elemental composition of selected PVC ceiling materials common in Nigerian markets. The 
emission data and elemental structure gave insight to appraise their suitability as ceiling materials. Three PVC 
ceiling materials were used for this analysis: Nigerian made PVC, layered Composite PVC and white PVC. Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) was performed to obtain the elemental structure of the ceiling materials using Ion Beam Analysis facility. 0.05 kg of the samples were combusted in a controlled fire chamber and the gasses emitted; CO, SO2, NO, and volatile organic compounds (VOC) were identified using four gas analyzers. Elements were detected in total and data collected from the experiment were analyzed. Results showed that Nigerian made PVC has the highest total noxious gas among the three samples with value of 3732.5 ppm while layered composite PVC has the lowest among the PVCs with the value of 1477.5 ppm. The elemental make-ups of the samples influence their emission characteristics. The study established that PVC samples were noxious in terms of their emission characteristics due to the effects of their elemental basis.

Field of study: Materials science
“Your Credibility Could Be Shot”: Preservice Teachers’ Thinking about Nonfiction Graphic Novels, Curriculum Decision Making, and Professional Acceptance

This article examined the value of using nonfiction graphic novels as historical narratives in the social studies curriculum. Preservice teachers evaluated several graphic novels and identified attributes of graphic novels that could contribute to students’ development of historical thinking and understanding of multiple perspectives. Despite the preservice teachers’ value for graphic novels as resources and their desire to use them in their future classrooms, all of the preservice teachers identified reasons why they would not be able to use graphic novels in their future school context. The findings suggested that the preservice teachers’ desire to be accepted by their school community took precedence over their intention to use resources that they deemed engaging and beneficial for student learning.

Field of study: Sociology
A BSP recursive divide and conquer algorithm to solve a tridiagonal linear system

In this paper we discuss a recursive divide and conquer method to solve a tridiagonal system of linear equations. We propose two divide and conquer algorithms using different communication schemes. The first one uses a fan-in scheme to perform communication among processors, while the second one follows a rather different model, in which all the processors communicate all data to the main one. A theoretical study of the computational cost of both algorithms is developed computing theoretical times; firstly in an IBM SP2 computer with a high performance switch and Ethernet connection, and secondly in a CRAY T3D computer. We present experimental results for the IBM SP2 computer, for 2, 4, and 8 processors, comparing these results with the theoretical predicted times.

Field of study: Mathematics
Particle-production mechanism in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

We discuss the production of particles in relativistic heavy-ion collisions through the mechanism of massive bremsstrahlung, in which massive mesons are emitted during rapid nucleon acceleration. This mechanism is described within the framework of classical hadrodynamics for extended nucleons, corresponding to nucleons of finite size interacting with massive meson fields. This new theory provides a natural covariant microscopic approach to relativistic heavy-ion collisions that includes automatically spacetime nonlocality and retardation, nonequilibrium phenomena, interactions among all nucleons, and particle production. Inclusion of the finite nucleon size cures the difficulties with preacceleration and runaway solutions that have plagued the classical theory of self-interacting point particles. For the soft reactions that dominate nucleon-nucleon collisions, a significant fraction of the incident center-of-mass energy is radiated through massive bremsstrahlung. In the present version of the theory, this radiated energy is in the form of neutral scalar ({sigma}) and neutral vector ({omega}) mesons, which subsequently decay primarily into pions with some photons also. Additional meson fields that are known to be important from nucleon-nucleon scattering experiments should be incorporated in the future, in which case the radiated energy would also contain isovector pseudoscalar (, }, ), isovector scalar (, }, {delta}{supmore » 0}), isovector vector (, }, ), and neutral pseudoscalar ({eta}) mesons.« less

Field of study: Physics
Current practice of cervical disc arthroplasty: a survey among 383 AOSpine International members.

The use of cervical disc arthroplasty (CDA) in spinal practice is controversial. This may be explained by the lack of studies with a large sample size and long-term outcomes. With this survey the authors aimed to evaluate the opinions of spine surgeons on the use of CDA in the current treatment of cervical disc herniation (CDH).  A web-based survey was sent to all members of AOSpine International by email using SurveyMonkey on July 18, 2016. A single reminder was sent on August 18, 2016. Questions included geographic location; specialty; associated practice model; number of discectomies performed annually; the use of CDA, anterior cervical discectomy (ACD), and anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF); and the expectations for clinical outcomes of these procedures.  A total of 383 questionnaires were analyzed. Almost all practitioners (97.9%) were male, with a mean of 15.0 ± 9.7 years of clinical experience. The majority of responders were orthopedic surgeons (54.6%). 84.3% performed ACDF as the standard technique for CDH. 47.8% of the surgeons occasionally used CDA, whereas 7.3% used CDA as standard approach for CDH. The most common arthroplasty device used was the ProDisc-C. Low evidence for benefits and higher costs were the most important reasons for not offering CDA. The risk of adjacent-level disease was considered smaller for CDA as compared with ACDF. However, ACDF was expected to have the highest effectiveness on arm pain (87.5%), followed by CDA (77.9%), while ACD had the least (12.6%).  In this survey, CDA was not considered to be the routine procedure to treat CDH. Reported benefits included the reduced risk of adjacent-level disease and preservation of motion of the neck. Lack of enough evidence on its effectiveness as well as higher costs were considered to be disadvantages of CDA. More research should be conducted on the implementation impact of CDA and the cost-effectiveness from society's perspective.

Field of study: Medicine
Lung retinoid metabolism and signaling in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

There are a number of sites that are required for the production and/or action of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA). In particular, interruption of different components of the chain of trafficking and metabolism has been associated with cancers arising in numerous organs of the body. Preliminary work suggests that such interruptions may be a factor in lung disorders induced by the smoke exposure. The active metabolite of retinoid, ATRA offers a therapeutic strategy to protect against functional abnormality in the lung, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This review deals with the lung retinoid metabolism and mediators of retinoid trafficking and signaling with special emphasis on their roles in health and disease.

Field of study: Biology, Chemistry, Physics
A new approach based on "soft statistics" to the nonlinear blind-deconvolution of unknown data channels

In this paper, we present a new nonlinear receiver for the blind deconvolution of intersymbol interference (ISI) impaired data. The proposed receiver achieves fast identification of an unknown transmission channel using only one channel estimator and requiring the computation of only the second-order conditional statistics of the baud-rate sampled received signal and the knowledge of the transmitted constellation. The main novelty of the proposed approach is that the receiver accomplishes fast channel-identification by using soft-statistics. In particular, the receiver consists of a symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori (SbS-MAP) detector that feeds a nonlinear Kalman-like channel estimator with the soft statistics constituted by the a posteriori probabilities (APPs) of the state sequence of the ISI channel. Several numerical results confirm that the proposed blind detector achieves the identification of nonminimum phase channels with deep spectral notches within 300 symbols, even at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Furthermore, an attractive feature of the proposed blind channel estimator is that it directly estimates the discrete-time impulse response of the unknown channel so that, in principle, any equalization technique for known channels may be performed after channel identification has been achieved.

Field of study: Engineering
Spherical characters: the supercuspidal case

We exhibit a basis for the space of spherical characters of a distinguished supercuspidal representation $\pi$ of a connected reductive $p$-adic group, subject to the assumption that $\pi$ is obtained via induction from a representation of an open compact mod centre subgroup. We derive an integral formula for each spherical character belonging to the basis. This formula involves integration of a particular kind of matrix coefficient of $\pi$. We also obtain a similar formula for the function realizing the spherical character. In addition, we determine, subject to some conditions, which of these spherical characters vanish identically on an open neighbourhood of the identity. We verify that the requisite conditions are always satisfied for distinguished tame supercuspidal representations of groups that split over tamely ramified extensions.

Field of study: Mathematics
Baseline data on forest loss and associated uncertainty: advances in national forest monitoring

Countries participating in climate change mitigation via the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation mechanism are required to establish national forest monitoring systems. The design of national forest monitoring system includes provision of transparent, consistent and accurate estimates of emissions and removals from forests, while also taking into account national circumstances and capabilities. One key component of these systems lies in satellite remote sensing approaches and techniques to determine baseline data on forest loss against which future rates of change can be evaluated. Advances in approaches meeting these criteria for measuring, reporting and verification purposes are therefore of tremendous interest. A robust example advancing such approaches, focused on Peru, is provided in the recent paper of Potapov et al (2014 ).

Field of study: Environmental science
Threat and Self Predictability with Predictability of others Controlled: An Addendum

Landfield (1955) found less anticipation of one's own actions in connection with a threatening than with a nonthreatening acquaintance, indirectly confirming the movement interpretation of threat (Landfield, 1954, 1955; Kelly, 1955). According to this interpretation, discomfort with and avoidance of another person are intimately tied to perception of one's personal change. Meeting someone, and being reminded at some level of awareness, of oneself in the recent past, produces discomfort, avoidance and possibly a desire to change the other's behavior. Such a person is a "reminder" of the overcome past and hence is perceived as threatening, i.e., threatening to elicit regressive behavior in oneself. In this study, a derivative hypothesis is tested, that a person will feel more predictable (i.e., there is less possibility of regression) in the presence of a nonthreatening person ( N T ) than in the presence of a threatening person ( T ) .  Thirty-seven undergraduate students (10 female, 27 male) served as Ss. Instructions were essentially those used in the previous study (Landfield, 1955) except that the extent to which S feels acquaintances are predictable was controlled. Predictability was controlled at two levels. First, S was asked to name T and N T acquaintances, some who were predictable, some unpredictable. T and N T pairs were matched on general estimate of predictability, and also on the basis of Ss' rating of acquaintance pairs as equally predictable in specific behavioral areas. Briefly, Ss were first asked to name four T and four N T acquaintances, two of the four to be unpredictable to him and two, predictable. For example: "A person you have known or worked with who appeared to dislike you and who is very predictable." "A person you have known with whom you usually feel very relaxed and who is very unpredictable." (The former is an example of a predictable T, the latter an unpredictable NT.) Ss were then asked to rate these names in more specific areas of behavior.

Field of study: Psychology