nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the Message or the Messenger? Implications for Self-Validation in Persuasion

Characteristics of persuasive message sources have been extensively studied. However, little attention has been paid to situations when people are motivated to form an evaluation of the communicator rather than the communicated issue. We postulated that these different foci can affect how a source validates message-related cognitions. Participants focused on the source (Studies 1 and 2) or the issue (Study 2) while reading weak or strong message arguments. Later, the communicator was described as low or high in credibility. When focused on the source, highly motivated participants were more confident and their attitudes were more reflective of thoughts when argument quality matched (e.g., weak arguments-low credibility) rather than mismatched (e.g., weak arguments-high credibility) source credibility. Conversely, when participants were focused on the issue, self-validation was greater when credibility was high rather than low—regardless of argument quality. Implications of these findings for the study and practice of persuasion are discussed.

Field of study: Psychology
On the Use of the County as the Primary Sampling Unit for State Estimates

Our purpose is to consider the efficiency of the county as the primary sampling unit for making state estimates of some socio-economic and agricultural characteristics of the farm population in North Carolina. The main emphasis is on the general purpose type of survey for the State as a whole—one in which both socio-economic and agricultural characteristics are to be estimated; the study is not directed at obtaining ‘best’ estimates for specialized items. Calculations herein presented indicate that the county is not a very efficient primary sampling unit for state estimates. It is expected that future investigation will show that the minor civil division, or some better defined statistical area of comparable size, will produce better results. Variances and relative costs need to be calculated, however, before it is possible to evaluate the relative gains of the smaller over the larger unit.  Prepared while the author was Resident Collaborator for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics at the Insti...

Field of study: Mathematics
Hole Superconductivity in MgB_2, Cuprates, and Other Materials

The theory of hole superconductivity proposes that MgB_2, and the high Tc cuprates, and the 'conventional superconductors', and all other superconductors, are driven by the same physical mechanism, which is not the electron-phonon interaction. That mechanism, hole undressing, evidence supporting it, and predictions for MgB_2, are briefly reviewed.

Field of study: Physics
Demonstration of an off-axis parabolic receiver for near-range retrieval of lidar ozone profiles

During the 2017 Ozone Water Land Environmental Transition Study (OWLETS), the
Langley mobile ozone lidar system utilized a new small diameter receiver to
improve the retrieval of near-surface signals from 0.1 to 1 km in altitude.
This new receiver utilizes a single 90  ∘ fiber-coupled, off-axis
parabolic mirror resulting in a compact form that is easy to align. The
single reflective surface offers the opportunity to easily expand its use to
multiple wavelengths for additional measurement channels such as visible
wavelength aerosol measurements. Detailed results compare the performance of
the receiver to both ozonesonde and in situ measurements from a UAV platform,
validating the performance of the near-surface ozone retrievals. Absolute
 O3 differences averaged 7 % between lidar and ozonesonde data
from 0.1 to 1.0 km and yielded a 2.3 % high bias in the lidar data, well
within the uncertainty of the sonde measurements. Conversely, lidar
 O3 measurements from 0.1 to 0.2 km averaged 10.5 % lower than
coincident UAV O3 . A more detailed study under more stable
atmospheric conditions would be necessary to resolve the residual instrument
differences reported in this work. Nevertheless, this unique added capability
is a significant improvement allowing for near-surface observation of ozone.

Field of study: Environmental science
Inclusive excitation-energy distributions of hot nuclei from 44 MeV/nucleon Ar- and 32 MeV/nucleon Kr-induced reactions

Inclusive neutron multiplicity distributions were measured by means of 4π liquid-scintillator detectors for Ar and Kr-induced reactions at 44 MeV/nucleon and 32 MeV/nucleon, respectively. For all the systems studied, the observed distributions exhibit a bump structure at large multiplicity, corresponding to highly dissipative collisions. For Ar-induced reactions, the excitation energies necessary to explain the most probable neutron multiplicity associated with these dissipative collisions are estimated, the correspondence between excitation energy and neutron multiplicity being calculated in the framework of the statistical model. The so-obtained values of excitation energies, which are systematically lower than those predicted using the massive-transfer picture, are discussed.

Field of study: Physics
Tracing the globe : processing

Increased global trading activities and incidents threatening the quality and safety of food have resulted in food safety becoming a growing concern over the past decades. Tracing food through the production and distribution chain (farm to fork) to identify and address risks and protect public health has become a vital component of food supply chain processes. Traceability is a risk-management tool that allows food business operators or authorities to withdraw or recall unsafe products. Traceability is at the heart of food safety but is also a tool to combat counterfeit products and brands.

Field of study: Agricultural and Food sciences
Anxiety management for persistent generalised anxiety.

A preliminary controlled investigation of the effectiveness of Anxiety Management as a treatment for generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is described. Patients with a primary diagnosis of GAD, in which the current episode had lasted for at least 6 months but not more than 2 years, were included. Anxiety Management, a self-help treatment including procedures for managing somatic and cognitive symptoms, and for dealing with avoidance and low self-confidence, was given either immediately or after a 12-week waiting period. The average length of treatment was 8.7 sessions. Highly significant changes in anxiety, depression, and problem ratings were shown after treatment. These changes were replicated when the waiting list group had also received treatment, and gains were maintained by both groups for 6 months. Similar degrees of improvement and maintenance of change were shown in subgroups with and without minor depressive disorder or recurrent panic attacks.

Field of study: Medicine, Psychology
A stochastic model for transmission, extinction and outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in cattle as affected by ambient temperature and cleaning practices

Many infectious agents transmitting through a contaminated environment are able to persist in the environment depending on the temperature and sanitation determined rates of their replication and clearance, respectively. There is a need to elucidate the effect of these factors on the infection transmission dynamics in terms of infection outbreaks and extinction while accounting for the random nature of the process. Also, it is important to distinguish between the true and apparent extinction, where the former means pathogen extinction in both the host and the environment while the latter means extinction only in the host population. This study proposes a stochastic-differential equation model as an approximation to a Markov jump process model, using Escherichia coli O157:H7 in cattle as a model system. In the model, the host population infection dynamics are described using the standard susceptible-infected-susceptible framework, and the E. coli O157:H7 population in the environment is represented by an additional variable. The backward Kolmogorov equations that determine the probability distribution and the expectation of the first passage time are provided in a general setting. The outbreak and apparent extinction of infection are investigated by numerically solving the Kolmogorov equations for the probability density function of the associated process and the expectation of the associated stopping time. The results provide insight into E. coli O157:H7 transmission and apparent extinction, and suggest ways for controlling the spread of infection in a cattle herd. Specifically, this study highlights the importance of ambient temperature and sanitation, especially during summer.

Field of study: Biology, Mathematics
A Unique 3D Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Composite as High-Performance Oxygen Reduction Catalyst

The synthesis and properties of an oxygen reduction catalyst based on a unique 3-dimensional (3D) nitrogen doped (N-doped) carbon composite are described. The composite material is synthesised via a two-step hydrothermal and pyrolysis method using bio-source low-cost materials of galactose and melamine. Firstly, the use of iron salts and galactose to hydrothermally produceiron oxide (Fe2O3) magnetic nanoparticle clusters embedded carbon spheres. Secondly, magnetic nanoparticles diffused out of the carbon sphere when pyrolysed in the presence of melamine as nitrogen precursor. Interestingly, many of these nanoparticles, as catalyst-grown carbon nanotubes (CNTs), resulted in the formation of N-doped CNTs and N-doped carbon spheres under the decomposition of carbon and a nitrogen environment. The composite material consists of integrated N-doped carbon microspheres and CNTs show high ORR activity through a predominantly four-electron pathway.

Field of study: Materials science
Cinema, Slavery, and Brazilian Nationalism by Richard A. Gordon (review)

Cinema offers us a window into the soul of a nation—glimpses of how a people think about themselves and their identities. Richard Gordon’s new book looks closely at five films dealing with Brazilian slavery, produced from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s. He seeks “to understand better how the films invite individuals to rethink the collection of attributes they assign to the national category of their social identities” (4).

Field of study: History
Fruit: ultra-lightweight stream cipher with shorter internal state

A few lightweight stream ciphers were introduced for hardware applications in the eSTREAM project. In FSE 2015, while presenting a new idea (i.e. the design of stream ciphers with the shorter internal state by using a secret key, not only in the initialization but also in the keystream generation), Sprout was proposed. Unfortunately, Sprout is insecure. Because Grain-v1 is the lightest cipher in the portfolio of the eSTREAM project, we introduce Fruit-v2 as a successor of the Grain-v1 and Sprout. It is demonstrated that Fruit-v2 is safe and ultra-lightweight. The size of LFSR and NFSR in Fruit-v2 is only 80 bits (for 80-bit security level), while for resistance to the classical time-memory-data trade-off attack, the internal state size should be at least twice of the security level. To satisfy this rule and to design a concrete cipher, we used some new design ideas. The discussions are presented that Fruit-v2 can be more resistant than Grain-v1 to some attacks such as classical timememory-data trade-off. The main objective of this work is to show how it is possible to exploit a secret key in a design to achieve smaller area size. It is possible to redesign many of stream ciphers (by the new idea) and achieve significantly smaller area size.

Field of study: Computer science, Mathematics
Effects of Anger, Guilt, and Envy on Moral Hypocrisy

In the current article the authors examined the impact of specific emotions on moral hypocrisy, the tendency among people to judge others more severely than they judge themselves. In two studies, they found that (a) anger increased moral hypocrisy, (b) guilt eliminated moral hypocrisy, and (c) envy reversed moral hypocrisy. In particular, these findings were observed in two domains. In Study 1, participants responded to moral dilemmas describing unethical behavior and rated how acceptable it would be if others engaged in the unethical behavior, or alternatively, if they themselves engaged in the unethical behavior. In Study 2, participants were asked how much they would like to donate to research on cancer, or alternatively, how much they think others should donate. The results demonstrate that specific emotions influence moral decision making, even when real money is at stake, and that emotions of the same valence have opposing effects on moral judgment.

Field of study: Psychology
High-precision dual-inlet IRMS measurements of the stable isotopes of CO 2 and the N 2 O / CO 2 ratio from polar ice core samples

An important constraint on mechanisms of past carbon cycle variability is provided by the stable isotopic composition of carbon in atmospheric carbon dioxide (δ13C-CO2) trapped in polar ice cores, but obtaining very precise measurements has proven to be a significant analytical challenge. Here we describe a new technique to determine the δ13C of CO2 at very high precision, as well as measuring the CO2 and N2O mixing ratios. In this method, ancient air is extracted from relatively large ice samples (~400 g) with a dry-extraction "ice grater" device. The liberated air is cryogenically purified to a CO2 and N2O mixture and analyzed with a microvolume-equipped dual-inlet IRMS (Thermo MAT 253). The reproducibility of the method, based on replicate analysis of ice core samples, is 0.02‰ for δ13C-CO2 and 2 ppm and 4 ppb for the CO2 and N2O mixing ratios, respectively (1σ pooled standard deviation). Our experiments show that minimizing water vapor pressure in the extraction vessel by housing the grating apparatus in a ultralow-temperature freezer (−60 °C) improves the precision and decreases the experimental blank of the method to −0.07 ± 0.04‰. We describe techniques for accurate calibration of small samples and the application of a mass-spectrometric method based on source fragmentation for reconstructing the N2O history of the atmosphere. The oxygen isotopic composition of CO2 is also investigated, confirming previous observations of oxygen exchange between gaseous CO2 and solid H2O within the ice archive. These data offer a possible constraint on oxygen isotopic fractionation during H2O and CO2 exchange below the H2O bulk melting temperature.

Field of study: Environmental science
Emission noise in an interacting quantum dot with asymmetrical barriers

The emission noise through a quantum dot is calculated at frequency $\nu$ in the presence of Coulomb interaction in the dot and barrier asymmetry between the dot and two metallic reservoirs. The calculation is performed on the basis of a method which consists in identifying the transmission processes of one electron-hole pair through the dot, where its recombination leads to the emission of an energy $h\nu$ in one of the reservoirs. This method allows us to get the expressions for the auto-correlator and the cross-correlator noises, which are found to be in full agreement with the ones derived by using more complicated approaches. Upon the application of a voltage bias $V$, we find that the noise derivative, $dS_{\alpha\alpha}(\nu)/dV$, is zero as long as $|eV|<h\nu$ whatever the strength of the interaction is. When the system is in the Kondo regime, $dS_{\alpha\alpha}(\nu)/dV$ exhibits Kondo peaks in addition to broad peaks located at the boundaries of the Coulomb blockade structure. The whole results explain the recent emission noise measurements in a carbon nanotube dot in the Kondo regime.

Field of study: Physics
Population structure and dynamics of a neotropical palm in fire-impacted fragments of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

The demography of the acaulescent palm Attalea humilis was studied from 1996 to 1999 in three forest fragments (1.6, 6.4, and 9.9 ha) in southeastern Brazil (22°30′–22°33′ S, 42°15′–42°19′ W). A human-induced fire damaged the populations in August–September 1997. Palm density was higher in the medium-sized fragment, where it was concentrated in a single disturbed sector. Population ontogenetic stage structure was dependent on fragment and year, but in general later stages were more abundant than initial ones. Population finite growth rates projected from linear, stage-structured demographic models indicated that the populations were increasing before fire. Population growth rate in the smallest fragment was larger due to a single recruitment event, being most sensitive to changes in survival and growth of seedlings, virgins and the immature, and relatively insensitive to changes in shrinkage and fecundity. Observed growth rates for the entire study period showed that populations remained in equilibrium after fire, but the population in the medium-sized fragment showed a declining tendency. Population structure was resilient to fire, which caused a transitory concentration of individuals in the medium-sized stage. The self-sustainability of the population in the largest, most preserved fragment suggests that habitat-protection measures may suffice to ensure the persistence of populations in small fragments. However, population fluctuations and exclusion from hyper-disturbed sectors in the smallest fragment suggest that reduced fragment area, habitat degradation and human-induced fires can interact to threaten the persistence of even abundant, preadapted to fire, species like A. humilis.

Field of study: Environmental science
The Effect of Preconception Paternal Alcohol Exposure on Epigenetic Remodeling of the H19 and Rasgrf1 Imprinting Control Regions in Mouse Offspring

Imprinted loci play a critical role in fetal development. Their expression is often regulated by CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) protein binding at imprinting control regions (ICRs). Prenatal alcohol exposure has been shown to reduce global DNA methylation in the developing mouse fetus. This study explored the effect of preconception paternal alcohol exposure on DNA methylation at two paternally methylated ICRs (H19 and Rasgrf1) in the sperm of exposed males and somatic DNA of sired offspring. Significant reductions at the H19 CTCF 1 (p = 0.0027) and CTCF 2 (p = 0.0009) binding sites were observed in the offspring of ethanol-treated sires, which was significantly correlated with reduced weight at postnatal days 35–42 (p < 0.05). As birth weight was unaffected and growth was only delayed during the postnatal weaning period, with subsequent re-convergence, we hypothesize that this may be the result of a mental deficit causing delayed establishment of independent feeding following weaning and would explain why this effect is transient. No difference in DNA methylation was observed in the sperm of alcohol-exposed males, indicating that the transmission of the epigenetic signal at conception is not due to altered methylation, but may be the result of an RNA-mediated mechanism or altered chromatin remodeling.

Field of study: Biology
Laboratory Diagnosis of UTI in Family Practice.

The family physician is in the best position to practise preventive medicine and keep patients healthy by routine urinalysis during each visit. Routine screening of the fresh, meticulously collected mid-stream urine may be done by biochemical screening dipstix, followed up by microscopic examination, where positive for leukocytes, blood, or bacteria. Infections should be cultured in children and recurrent infections in the adult patient. The fresh, properly collected, mid-stream, uncentrifuged urine that has motile bacteria per high-power field is equivalent to a colony count of 100 000 per mL and significant of the urinary tract infection. There is still considerable debate in the literature about the traditional criterion of 100 000 bacteria per mL for urinary tract infection, especially for adults who present with urological symptoms. More long-term research is needed in this area of family practice.

Field of study: Medicine
Fluorescence at a surface

Fluorescence emitted by atoms near a metal surface is used to study the coupling of the surface plasmon field of a dielectric substrate with a molecular electron transition. Explicit expressions are derived for the atomic and molecular lifetimes. It is shown that the classical phase shift of a plane wave accompanying reflection from the surface is responsible for changes in the atomic lifetime. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the dipole direction of an atom can be established by exposing the system to polarized radiation. The contribution of the surface plasmons and the surface roughness to the radiative decay constant is determined for molecular transitions. A comparison between image theory and energy transfer theory showed that the first may be extremely inaccurate for the description of molecules far from the surface or for a highly conducting substrate.

Field of study: Engineering, Physics
Architectural Invention in Renaissance Rome: Artists, Humanists, and the Planning of Raphael's Villa Madama. Yvonne Elet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xxvi + 338 pp. + 16 color pls. $120.

entered into the heart of the Vatican to have a look at the Cappella Nicolina. To summarize, Scanlan offers an extensive survey of this important example of feminine patronage and art and, with her focus on liminality and corporeality, opens stimulating perspectives. Her pleasant writing style makes it easy for readers to immerse themselves in the fifteenth-century setting. Still, a parallel reading of Böse’s book remains essential to acquiring a complete picture.

Field of study: History
Cloning and expression of a neural differentiation-associated gene, p205, in the embryonal carcinoma cell line P19 and in the developing mouse.

Mouse P19 embryonal carcinoma cells can be reproducibly differentiated into neurons and glial cells upon treatment with high concentration of retinoic acid (RA). In order to understand the molecular mechanisms that control early neural differentiation, we screened a cDNA library made from 24-h RA-treated P19 cells with subtracted cDNA probes. One clone was positive in the secondary screening and was designated as p205. This clone (1.1 kb) has an open reading frame of 317 amino acids with homology to G-protein beta subunit. This protein sequence was identical to chicken and human genes previously identified as a major histocompatibility complex-associated gene. The complete conservation of its amino acid sequence between mouse, human and chicken provides strong evidence that the p205 protein fulfills a fundamental function. Developmental Northern blot analysis revealed that a p205 mRNA is expressed at high levels in the embryonic mouse brain, decreasing as development proceeds. In situ hybridization revealed that p205 mRNA is strongly and ubiquitously expressed in the embryonic and early postnatal mouse brain. This expression decreased during postnatal development and was localized in the dentate gyrus, habenula, piriform cortex, paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus and supraoptic nucleus of the adult brain. These results suggest that this protein plays an important role in the developing brain and neuronal differentiation.

Field of study: Biology
A new aging concept derived from the increasing convex ordering

In this paper, a comparison between the life distribution of a new unit with that of a used unit in the increasing convex order is made leading to a new class of life distributions which we call “new better than used in convex ordering of second order”. This class includes as subclasses the NBU and the NBUC and is a subclass of the NBUCA class. Preservation properties under convolution, random maxima, mixing and formation of coherent structures are established. Stochastic comparisons of the excess lifetime when the inter-arrival times belong to the NBUC(2) class are developed. Some applications of Poisson shock models and a test of exponentiality against NBUC(2) alternative are presented.

Field of study: Mathematics