nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Continuous and reversible tuning of the disorder-driven superconductor–insulator transition in bilayer graphene

The influence of static disorder on a quantum phase transition (QPT) is a fundamental issue in condensed matter physics. As a prototypical example of a disorder-tuned QPT, the superconductor–insulator transition (SIT) has been investigated intensively over the past three decades, but as yet without a general consensus on its nature. A key element is good control of disorder. Here, we present an experimental study of the SIT based on precise in-situ tuning of disorder in dual-gated bilayer graphene proximity-coupled to two superconducting electrodes through electrical and reversible control of the band gap and the charge carrier density. In the presence of a static disorder potential, Andreev-paired carriers formed close to the Fermi level in bilayer graphene constitute a randomly distributed network of proximity-induced superconducting puddles. The landscape of the network was easily tuned by electrical gating to induce percolative clusters at the onset of superconductivity. This is evidenced by scaling behavior consistent with the classical percolation in transport measurements. At lower temperatures, the solely electrical tuning of the disorder-induced landscape enables us to observe, for the first time, a crossover from classical to quantum percolation in a single device, which elucidates how thermal dephasing engages in separating the two regimes.

Field of study: Physics
Leaching of toluene-neoprene adhesive wastes.

This work consists of the study of the extraction of solvent (toluene) from a polymeric (neoprene) substrate during a leaching process. Total organic carbon (TOC) is the main contaminant parameter in the leaching of these systems due to the solution of the toluene and the dispersion of the polymer. The toxicity of the extracts was measured with a Microtox equipment, using Photobacteria phosphoreum, deducing that the toxicity of the extracts is low due to the low solubility of toluene but that the toxicity of toluene is high. On the basis of the experimental results, the amount of toluene diffused vs time in plane sheet systems was studied. A kinetic model has been developed considering two stages: In the first stage, the toluene diffuses into the system across the neoprene chains at a constant rate, not depending on the initial toluene concentration. This fact is explained by considering that there is a constant difference of the toluene concentration between the interface with the water and the inner part of the sample. In the second stage, the dispersion of the polymer with the corresponding amount of toluene takes place. The diffusion of toluene in the leaching process is compared and analyzed considering the diffusion of toluene in a desorption process in air so that the difference of toluene concentration between the interface and the interior can be estimated. A mathematical model is also proposed for considering the leaching process in other operating conditions.

Field of study: Environmental science
IgG4 RELATED OPHTHALMIC DISEASE: AN OVERVIEW

IgG4-related disease is a fibro-inflammatory condition with tendency to form tumors with inflammatory infiltrate and elevation of IgG4 level in serum, which may affect virtually every organ and tissue. It may present as dacryoadenitis, myositis, hypophysitis or pachymeningitis causing cranial neuropathies. The diagnosis of IgG4-related disease is based on a typical clinical scenario, supportive laboratory data,radiological findings and distinct histopathological and immuno-histochemical features. Corticosteroid followed by long-term immunosuppressive therapy is the most commonly attempted treatment.

Field of study: Medicine
Do we underdiagnose osteoporosis in patients with pyogenic spondylodiscitis?

Pyogenic spondylodiscitis affects a fragile patient population. Surgical treatment in cases of instability entails instrumentation, and loosening of this instrumentation is a frequent occurrence in pyogenic spondylodiscitis. The authors therefore attempted to investigate whether low bone mineral density (BMD)-which is compatible with the diagnosis of osteoporosis-is underdiagnosed in patients with pyogenic spondylodiscitis. How osteoporosis was treated and how it affected implant stability were further analyzed.



Charts of patients who underwent operations for pyogenic spondylodiscitis were retrospectively reviewed for clinical data, prior medical history of osteoporosis, and preoperative CT scans of the thoracolumbar spine. In accordance with a previously validated high-fidelity opportunistic CT assessment, average Hounsfield units (HUs) in vertebral bodies of L1 and L4 were measured. Based on the validation study, the authors opted for a conservative cutoff value for low BMD, being compatible with osteoporosis ≤ 110 HUs. Baseline and outcome variables, including implant failure and osteoporosis interventions, were entered into a multivariate logistic model for statistical analysis.



Of 200 consecutive patients who underwent fusion surgery for pyogenic spondylodiscitis, 64% (n = 127) were male and 66% (n = 132) were older than 65 years. Seven percent (n = 14) had previously been diagnosed with osteoporosis. The attenuation analysis revealed HU values compatible with osteoporosis in 48% (95/200). The need for subsequent revision surgery due to implant failure showed a trend toward an association with estimated low BMD (OR 2.11, 95% CI 0.95-4.68, p = 0.067). Estimated low BMD was associated with subsequent implant loosening (p < 0.001). Only 5% of the patients with estimated low BMD received a diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of osteoporosis within 1 year after spinal instrumentation.



Relying on past medical history of osteoporosis is insufficient in the management of patients with pyogenic spondylodiscitis. This is the first study to identify a substantially missed opportunity to detect osteoporosis and to start pharmacological treatment after surgery for prevention of implant failure. The authors advocate for routine opportunistic CT evaluation for a better estimation of bone quality to initiate diagnosis and treatment for osteoporosis in these patients.

Field of study: Medicine
Cooling Tower without Draught With New Type of Fill

Praphulla M Kajalkar Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, Government Polytechnic, Amravati(MS) __________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract-The fill medium in the cooling tower which provides the surface for heat transfer,isa key factor in the performance of cooling tower.Currently used fill is made from PVC corrugated sheets with passages for air. It suffers from the limitations of scaling and more resistance to the flow of air. The range of cooling tower is 6 to 12°Cand approach of the order of 5 to 6°C. If we achieve a greater range and closure approach to wbt, the operating cost on pumping water can be considerably reduced. The reduction in resistance to air flow will save the operating cost on fan. This work is an attempt to develop the cooling tower with more porous nature of fill and without using any type of draught. The fill medium is a stretched nylon net in zigzag pattern arranged vertically in numbers. The trials conducted on cooling tower without draught gives the range of 6°C and approach of 11°C for hot water temperature of 35°C. Thus the nylon net arranged in zigzag pattern can be used as the fill medium for cooling tower with better performance. Proper combination of size of zigzag net, density of fill and height of fill has to be worked out.

Field of study: Engineering
Intraband inversion in semiconductors with ultrashort carrier lifetimes

The authors studied the lifetimes and the luminescence spectra of photoexcited carriers in H+-bombarded InP for different damage doses by means of femtosecond luminescence spectroscopy. The lifetime decreases down to 95 fs for a dose of 1016 cm-2 and the time-integrated luminescence spectrum of this sample is inverted. Taking into account the different thermalization and relaxation conditions for electrons and holes, they find that the time-averaged hole distribution is hot but thermalized, whereas the time-averaged electron distribution is inverted, meaning that the electron distribution function increases with increasing energy within the conduction band.

Field of study: Materials science
Determination of mineral contents of wild Boletus edulis mushroom and its edible safety assessment

This study aimed to determine the contents of main mineral elements of wild Boletus edulis and to assess its edible safety, which may provide scientific evidence for the utilization of this species. Fourteen mineral contents (Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, Sr, V and Zn) in the caps and stipes of B. edulis as well as the corresponding surface soils collected from nine different geographic regions in Yunnan Province, southwest China were determined. The analyses were performed using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES) after microwave digestion. Measurement data were analyzed using variance and Pearson correlation analysis. Edible safety was evaluated according to the provisionally tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of heavy metals recommended by United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization (FAO/WHO). Mineral contents were significantly different with the variance of collection areas. B. edulis showed relative abundant contents of Ca, Fe, Mg and Na, followed by Ba, Cr, Cu, Mn and Zn, and the elements with the lower content less were Cd, Co, Ni, Sr and V. The elements accumulation differed significantly in caps and stipes. Among them, Cd and Zn were bioconcentrated (BCF > 1) while others were bioexcluded (BCF < 1). The mineral contents in B. edulis and its surface soil were positively related, indicating that the elements accumulation level was related to soil background. In addition, from the perspective of food safety, if an adult (60 kg) eats 300 g fresh B. edulis per week, the intake of Cd in most of tested mushrooms were lower than PTWI value whereas the Cd intakes in some other samples were higher than this standard. The results indicated that the main mineral contents in B. edulis were significantly different with respect to geographical distribution, and the Cd intake in a few of regions was higher than the acceptable intakes with a potential risk.

Field of study: Agricultural and Food sciences
Preparation of Fluorinated Aluminophosphate Molecular Sieve with Hexagonal Nanoflake Morphology by Ionothermal Method

A novel hexagonal fluorinated aluminophosphate molecular sieve has been prepared ionothermally using 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide as solvent and template provider in the presence of HF. The resulting fluorinated aluminophosphate molecular sieve is hexagonal nanoflakes with a thickness of about 170nm and has the single-crystal property. Further comparative experiments show that fluoride ions have a strong effect on the morphology and framework of the samples.

Field of study: Chemistry
Optically stabilized Erbium fiber frequency comb with hybrid mode-locking and a broad tunable range of repetition rate.

We present an optically stabilized Erbium fiber frequency comb with a broad repetition rate tuning range based on a hybrid mode-locked oscillator. We lock two comb modes to narrow-linewidth reference lasers in turn to investigate the best performance of control loops. The control bandwidth of fast and slow piezoelectric transducers reaches 70 kHz, while that of pump current modulation with phase-lead compensation is extended to 32 kHz, exceeding laser intrinsic response. Eventually, simultaneous lock of both loops is realized to totally phase-stabilize the comb, which will facilitate precision dual-comb spectroscopy, laser ranging, and timing distribution. In addition, a 1.8-MHz span of the repetition rate is achieved by an automatic optical delay line that is helpful in manufacturing a secondary comb with a similar repetition rate. The oscillator is housed in a homemade temperature-controlled box with an accuracy of ±0.02  K, which not only keeps high signal-to-noise ratio of the beat notes with reference lasers, but also guarantees self-starting at the same mode-locking every time.

Field of study: Physics
Progress toward novel treatments for chronic kidney disease.

Chronic kidney failure remains a major health problem worldwide. Although current treatment is focused on the renin-angiotensin system, it is essential that new treatments targeted toward novel pathophysiological mechanisms are developed if we are to make significant progress in this area. In this review, we have outlined several promising new areas while emphasizing that large, randomized, well-controlled clinical trials are essential to reach a meaningful conclusion about the efficacy and safety of novel treatment.

Field of study: Medicine
TinyPBC: Pairings for authenticated identity-based non-interactive key distribution in sensor networks

Key distribution in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is challenging. Symmetric cryptosystems can perform it efficiently, but they often do not provide a perfect trade-off between resilience and storage. Further, even though conventional public key and elliptic curve cryptosystem are computationally feasible on sensor nodes, protocols based on them are not. They require exchange and storage of large keys and certificates, which is expensive. Using pairing-based cryptography (PBC) protocols, conversely, parties can agree on keys without any interaction. In this work, we (i) show how security in WSNs can be bootstrapped using an authenticated identity based non-interactive protocol and (ii) present TinyPBC, to our knowledge, the most efficient implementation of PBC primitives for an 8-bit processor. TinyPBC is able to compute pairings in about 5.5s on an ATmega128L clocked at 7.3828-MHz (the MICA2 and MICAZ node microcontroller).

Field of study: Computer science, Mathematics
Time-Driven activity-based costing identifies opportunities for process efficiency and cost optimization for robot-assisted laparoscopic pyeloplasty.

Robot-assisted laparoscopic pyeloplasty (RALP) is a commonly performed procedure in children, but its actual cost implications on the healthcare ecosystem have not been adequately defined. Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) is a novel cost accounting method derived from value based healthcare systems that may offer one pathway to assess institutional costs.



To determine the true cost of a robot-assisted laparoscopic pyeloplasty (RALP) in the pediatric population using TDABC, and compare it to traditional cost accounting. And to utilize TDABC to minimize cost and improve time-flow efficiency.



The RALP care pathway was defined from patient arrival to the pre-operative suite to discharge from the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU). Process maps were created with an interdisciplinary team to survey RALP activities. Retrospective time stamps were obtained from the electronic medical record for fiscal year 2016 (FY16) RALP cases, and were validated by prospectively stopwatch timing additional RALP cases. Male and female pediatric patients undergoing a unilateral RALP during FY16 and during the prospective study period (June 2017-October 2017) were included. Procedure costs were calculated using TDABC after determining the capacity cost rate for all personnel and assets, and multiplying them with the time stamps.



25 RALP cases were analyzed for FY16. TDABC determined a total cost of $15 319/case, when direct, indirect and capital robot cost are included. Traditional cost accounting amounted to a total of $16 158/case. The current robot utilization rate is 22% of total capacity, effectively increasing the total RALP cost by 16%. Time stamps with the most variance were pre-operative services (115 ± 27.5 min), robotic console (142 min ±30.7 min) and PACU times (145 ± 101.1 min)  This study represents the first TDABC implementation in robot-assisted pediatric procedures. Previous TDABC in other areas of urology similarly revealed discrepancies between traditional cost accounting and TDABC. The present study demonstrates a higher total cost than previous cost accounting studies for the RALP, however, this is the first effort to include indirect costs in the final calculations. This study does convey the limitations of a retrospective analysis and those inherent to a single institution study.



TDABC defined the magnitude of cost variation based on robot utilization of a RALP. Traditional cost accounting overestimates the actual costs of a RALP. TDABC also identified high-cost and high variability loci in the RALP process map that will be targeted for process and quality improvement while further reducing assessed costs.

Field of study: Medicine
Anomalous Coulomb drag in electron-hole bilayers as a signature of formation of excitonic molecules

Several recent experiments have reported an anomalous temperature dependence of the Coulomb drag effect in electron-hole bilayers. Motivated by these puzzling data, we study theoretically a low-density electron-hole bilayer, where electrons and holes avoid quantum degeneracy by forming excitonic molecules. We describe the ionization-recombination crossover between the electron-hole plasma and exciton gas and calculate both the intralayer and drag resistivity as a function of temperature. The latter exhibits a minimum followed by a sharp upturn at low temperatures in a qualitative agreement with the experimental observations [see, e.g., J. A. Seamons et al.,  (2009)]. Importantly, the drag resistivity in the proposed scenario is found to be rather insensitive to a mismatch in electron and hole concentrations in sharp contrast to the scenario of electron-hole Cooper pairing.

Field of study: Physics
Primary School Teachers’ Practice and Challenges of School-Based Assessment (SBA) System in Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District

The purpose of this study was to assess primary school teachers’ practice and challenges of School-Based Assessment (SBA) system. The study used the descriptive survey design. The cluster and disproportional sampling techniques were used to sample 240 primary school teachers in Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District for the study. Self-developed observational check-list and self-developed questionnaire were used for the data collection. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages, mean of means and standard deviations were used to analyse the data. The study found that to a high extent teachers practice the School-Based Assessment (SBA) using the policy guidelines. Again, the study showed that primary school teachers face challenges such as; unavailability of assessment materials, no expert support to teachers in assessment task preparation and no provision of project topics by the District Education Office. In view of this, the study recommended that Educational Directorates should encourage teachers to follow the laid down procedures in administration of SBA by organizing frequent workshops on the practice of SBA for the teachers.  school-based assessment, practice, primary school teachers DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-4-13 Publication date: February 29 th 2020

Field of study: Education
A Survey on Method of System Identification

In this paper the advance in the study of system identification is summarized. Some traditional system identification methods are introduced, Least Squares Method, Recursive Gradient Correction and Recursive Maximum Likelihood. Some disadvantages are introduced too so that some new identification methods based on neural network, genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and wavelet network are presented. After all, one system identification method based on adaptive filter ,the method has been usually used in active vibration control.

Field of study: Engineering
[Evaluation of antigenic relationship of Guangxi isolates of infectious bronchitis virus].

Monovalent antisera of 3 vaccine strains and 7 representative field isolates were prepared based on the comparison of genetic diversity of the hypervariable region I of S1 gene (HVR I from 3 infectious bronchitis (IB) vaccine strains (H120, Ma5 and 4/91) ,one reference strain M41 and 26 IB field isolates. These 30 strains were classified in 7 different genotypes, respectively. Virus-neutralizing test on tracheal organ cultures (TOC) with chicken embryo were used to evaluate relatedness values of the antigenicity based on the antibody titer, to analyze the antigenic relationships between the isolates and vaccine strains, as well as to determine the serotypes of 26 IB viruses isolated from the field in Guangxi between 1985 and 2008. The results showed 30 strains were classified into 7 distinct serotypes and there were two predominant serotypes within the 26 isolates, serotypes 1 (totally 13 isolates) and serotype 2 (totally 5 isolates), respectively. In addition, there were some differences observed between the results of serotyping and the genotyping (including the S1, N, M and 3'UTR). The results of the study demonstrated that there were different predominant serotypes and multiple serotypes of IBV circulated in Guangxi in recent years, antigenic variation existed between Guangxi field isolates and vaccine strains.

Field of study: Biology
Rethinking robust and accurate application protocol identification

Protocol traffic analysis is a fundamental problem regarding a variety of networking and security applications, such as intrusion detection and prevention systems, network management systems, and protocol specification parsers. In this paper, we propose ProHacker, a nonparametric approach that extracts robust and accurate protocol keywords from the byte sequences generated by an application protocol, and effectively identifies the protocol trace from mixed Internet traffic. ProHacker is based on the key insight that the n -grams of protocol traces have highly predictable statistical nature that can be effectively captured by statistical language models and be leveraged for robust and accurate protocol identification. In ProHacker, we first extract protocol keywords using a nonparametric Bayesian statistical model, and then use the corresponding protocol keywords to classify protocol traces by a semi-supervised learning algorithm. We implement and evaluate ProHacker on real-world traces, and our experimental results show that ProHacker can accurately identify the protocol trace with an average precision of about 99.4% and an average recall of about 99.28%. We compare the results of ProHacker to one state-of-the-art approach, ProWord, and one our previous work, Securitas, using backbone traffic. We note that ProHacker provides significant improvements on precision and recall for online protocol identification.

Field of study: Computer science
REEFS OF BIKINI, MARSHALL ISLANDS

Systematic surveys made at Bikini before and after the atomi bomb tests (Operation Crossroads) in the summer of 1946 afforded an unusual opportunity to examine the reefs and islands of one of the larger atolls of Micronesia. The existing reef appears to be developed on an older surface that extends as a terrace into the lagoon and beyond the seaward margin of the reef. A sketch map shows the distribution of the terraces in relation to the existing reefs.

Reef zonation is briefly described, and a classification of reef types based upon the characteristics of the marginal zone is presented. Illustrations are given from Bikini's reefs and those of near-by atolls. A sketch map shows the distribution of the reef types at Bikini relative to prevailing winds and currents. The processes of reef growth and unusual areas wherein the existing reef appears to be undergoing destruction are also described and figured.

Field of study: Geology