nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Peer effects identified through social networks. Evidence from uruguayan schools
Year: 2014

This paper provides evidence on peer effects in educational achievement exploiting for the first time a unique data set on social networks within primary schools in Uruguay. The relevance of peer effects in education is still largely debated due to the identification challenges that the study of social interactions poses. I adopt a recently developed identification method that exploits detailed information on social networks, i.e. individual specific peer groups. This method enables me to disentangle endogenous effects from contextual effects via instrumental variables that emerge naturally from the network structure. Correlated effects are controlled, to some extent, by classroom fixed effects. I find significant endogenous effects in standardized tests for reading and math. A one standard deviation increase in peers' test score increases the individual's test score by 40% of a standard deviation. This magnitude is comparable to the effect of having a mother that completed college. By means of a simulation I illustrate that when schools are stratified by socioeconomic status peer effects may operate as amplifiers of educational inequalities.
Observation of a quasi one dimensional variation of the Stern Gerlach effect
Venue: Physical Review A
Year: 2019

The deflection of an atomic beam in an inhomogeneous magnetic field, known as the Stern Gerlach effect, is a textbook experiment  at the foundation of modern physics. In the original work  performed by Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach in 1922, a collimated beam of silver atoms was passed through a permanent, spatially varying magnetic field. The deflected trajectories, detected on a screen downstream, showed two distinct lines, thereby demonstrating the quantized nature of atomic angular momentum and the existence of electron spin. The effect has since found applications in atom optics  atom interferometry [10,11] and isotope separation  The collimating slit used in the original experiment minimized the beam divergence expected from Maxwell's equations, which forbid a purely one dimensional magnetic field gradient. Creating a one dimensional Stern Gerlach effect has practical implications for the ability to control atoms with magnetic fields [13] and the design of "flat" mirrors capable of reflecting particles specularly without the dispersion of wave vectors [3 5] Additionally, the proposed method of magneto optical cooling, which relies on cycles of optical pumping and one dimensional pulsed magnetic kicks, will compress atomic phase space one dimension at a time without loss of atoms [14] Another exciting application is the ability to simulate microgravity conditions. Using a one dimensional force to cancel gravity, one may conduct noncontact studies of levitated magnetic nanoparticles, improve loading of atoms into optical dipole traps  and further research of cold atoms in force free environments without leaving Earth [16] A one dimensional Stern Gerlach effect can be created if we consider a cloud of atoms, each with a magnetic dipole moment m in the presence of a spatially dependent magnetic field B(r) Atoms will experience the combination of rectilinear motion and precession of the magnetic moment caused by the force (m B) and torque m x B, respectively. For sufficiently fast precession 100 MHz for fields greater than 10 G) an adiabatic approximation is valid in which the magnetic moment is taken as always parallel to the magnetic field. In this approximation the average force F m|B| determines the motion of each atom, which indicates the existence of magnetic field configurations that provide an approximately
Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance
Year: 2014

Bitcoin is an online communication protocol that facilitates the use of a virtual currency, including electronic payments. Bitcoin's rules were designed by engineers with no apparent influence from lawyers or regulators. Bitcoin is built on a transaction log that is distributed across a network of participating computers. It includes mechanisms to reward honest participation, to bootstrap acceptance by early adopters, and to guard against concentrations of power. Bitcoin's design allows for irreversible transactions, a prescribed path of money creation over time, and a public transaction history. Anyone can create a Bitcoin account, without charge and without any centralized vetting procedure or even a requirement to provide a real name. Collectively, these rules yield a system that is understood to be more flexible, more private, and less amenable to regulatory oversight than other forms of payment though as we discuss, all these benefits face important limits. Bitcoin is of interest to economists as a virtual currency with potential to disrupt existing payment systems and perhaps even monetary systems. This article presents the platform's design principles and properties for a nontechnical audience; reviews its past, present, and future uses; and points out risks and regulatory issues as Bitcoin interacts with the conventional financial system and the real economy.
Modeling and controller design of an electro hydraulic actuator system
Year: 2010

Electro hydraulic actuators are widely used in motion control application. Its valve needs to be controlled to determine direction of the motion. Mathematical modeling is a description of a system in terms of equations. It can be divided into two parts; physical modeling and system identification. The objective of this study was to obtain mathematical model of an electro hydraulic system using system identification technique by estimating model using System Identification Toolbox in MATLAB.  Experimental works were done to collect input and output data for model estimation and ARX model was chosen as model structure of the system. The best model was accepted based on the best fit criterion and residuals analysis of autocorrelation and cross correlation of the system input and output. PID controller was designed for the model through simulation in SIMULINK. The controller is tuning by Ziegler Nichols method. The simulation work was verified by applying the controller to the real system to achieve the best performance of the system.  The result showed that the output of the system with controller in simulation mode and experimental works were improved and almost similar.  The designed PID controller can be applied to the electro hydraulic system either in simulation or real time mode. The self tuning or automatic tuning controller could be developed in future work to increase the reliability of the PID controller.
Global and regional diabetes prevalence estimates for 2019 and projections for 2030 and 2045: results from the International Diabetes Federation Diabetes Atlas, 9th edition.
Venue: Diabetes research and clinical practice
Year: 2019

To provide global estimates of diabetes prevalence for 2019 and projections for 2030 and 2045.  A total of 255 high quality data sources, published between 1990 and 2018 and representing 138 countries were identified. For countries without high quality in country data, estimates were extrapolated from similar countries matched by economy, ethnicity, geography and language. Diabetes prevalence (including previously undiagnosed diabetes) in adults aged 20 to 79 years was estimated using logistic regression.  The global diabetes prevalence in 2019 is estimated to be 9.3% (463 million people) rising to 10.2% (578 million) by 2030 and 10.9% (700 million) by 2045. The prevalence is higher in urban (10.8% than rural (7.2% areas, and in high income (10.4% than low income countries (4.0% One in two (50.1% people living with diabetes do not know that they have diabetes. The global prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance is estimated to be 7.5% (374 million) in 2019 and projected to reach 8.0% (454 million) by 2030 and 8.6% (548 million) by 2045.  Just under half a billion people are living with diabetes worldwide and the number is projected to increase by 25% in 2030 and 51% in 2045.
The first fungal laccase with an alkaline pH optimum obtained by directed evolution and its application in indigo dye decolorization
Venue: AMB Express
Year: 2019

Engineering of fungal laccases with optimum catalytic activity at alkaline pH has been a long lasting challenge. In this study, a mutant library containing 3000 clones was obtained by error prone PCR to adapt the optimum pH of a fungal laccase Lcc9 from the basidiomycete Coprinopsis cinerea. After three rounds of functional screening, a mutant with three amino acid changes (E116K, N229D, I393T) named PIE5 was selected. PIE5 showed an optimum pH of 8.5 and 8.0 against guaiacol and 2,6 DMP when expressed in Pichia pastoris, representing the first fungal laccase that possesses an optimum pH at an alkaline condition. Site directed mutagenesis disclosed that N229D contributed the most to the optimum pH increment. A single N229D mutation caused an increase in optimum pH by 1.5 units. When used in indigo dye decolorization, PIE5 efficiently decolorized 87.1 1.1% and 90.9 0.3% indigo dye at the optimum conditions of pH 7.0 7.5 and 60 degC, and with either methyl 3,5 dimethoxy 4 hydroxybenzoate or 2,2' azino bis(3 ethylbenzothazoline 6 sulfonate) as the mediator. In comparison, the commercially available fungal laccase TvLac from Trametes villosa decolorized 84.3 1.8% of indigo dye under its optimum conditions (opt. pH 5.0 and 60 degC) The properties of an alkaline dependent activity and the high indigo dye decolorization ability (1.3 fold better than the parental Lcc9) make the new fungal laccase PIE5 an alternative for specific industrial applications.
Joint Learning of Saliency Detection and Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation
Venue: 2019 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)
Year: 2019

Existing weakly supervised semantic segmentation (WSSS) methods usually utilize the results of pre trained saliency detection (SD) models without explicitly modelling the connections between the two tasks, which is not the most efficient configuration. Here we propose a unified multi task learning framework to jointly solve WSSS and SD using a single network, i.e. saliency and segmentation network (SSNet) SSNet consists of a segmentation network (SN) and a saliency aggregation module (SAM) For an input image, SN generates the segmentation result and, SAM predicts the saliency of each category and aggregating the segmentation masks of all categories into a saliency map. The proposed network is trained end to end with image level category labels and class agnostic pixel level saliency labels. Experiments on PASCAL VOC 2012 segmentation dataset and four saliency benchmark datasets show the performance of our method compares favorably against state of the art weakly supervised segmentation methods and fully supervised saliency detection methods.
Field Performance of Seed Yam Dioscorea rotundata Poir) Derived from Tissue Culture and Aeroponics Seedlings
Year: 2020

Yam plays an important role in the livelihoods of people in the yam growing regions of the yam belt in West Africa. It forms the dominant crop in these areas and serves as an important source of income to the people [1] The crop is generally cultivated from farmers' saved seed yams from previous harvests. This traditional way of cultivating yam usually leads to significantly low yields as a result of a build up of pests and diseases accumulated through recycling of infested seed yams  Tuber yield weight of 20 30% is lost annually at harvest as a result of pests and diseases of seed yam
OPTIMASI AIRFOIL MENGGUNAKAN PARTICLE SWARM DENGAN PARAMETERISASI CST CLASS SHAPE TRANSFORMATION
Year: 2017

Airfoil is a cross sectional profile that applied to the transport vehicle and energy generation as a cross section of the turbine blade. Airfoil designed is expected to produce maximum lift, but drag to a minimum. The purpose of this study were 1) Aerodynamics validation of panel method with ViscousInviscid Interaction; 2) Analysis the aerodynamic airfoil lift and drag coefficients; 3) Applying Particle Swarm Optimization to get the geometry airfoils that provide lift and drag coefficient ratio maximum (CL/CD max) The first phase to determines the airfoil profile using a Class Shape Transformation (CST) Airfoil will be analyzed using the panel method and applied flow model in singularity of source and doublet. The solution from panel method is a condition that is to be viscous flow. If the angle of attack is high enough solution obtained with this approach is no longer accurate. To improve the results is applied a viscous inviscid interaction method of quasi simultaneously. This process is repeated until convergence. By using Particle Swarm Optimization will be obtained airfoil profile with a maximum coefficient of lift and drag. However, if the optimization procedure is not optimal, it will be updated geometry, to obtain convergence. Conclusions of research are: 1) The panel methods with ViscousInviscid Interaction gives good results and accurate, with an average error below 9.5% 2) The greater the value of the Reynolds number, value of maximum CL/CD will be higher; 3) The maximum thickness and camber tends to increase with an increase in the Reynolds number; 4) Optimization of CST airfoil with Particle Swarm gives best results. This is because the global optimum solution added another iteration to obtain the best of the best solutions.
Effects of the truth FinishIt brand on tobacco outcomes
Venue: Preventive medicine reports
Year: 2018

Since 2000, the truth campaign has grown as a social marketing brand. Back then, truth employed branding to compete directly with the tobacco industry. In 2014, the launch of truth FinishIt reflected changes in the brand's strategy, the tobacco control environment, and youth/young adult behavior. Building on a previous validation study, the current study examined brand equity in truth FinishIt, as measured by validated multi dimensional scales, and tobacco related attitudes, beliefs, and behavior based on two waves of the Truth Longitudinal Cohort data from 2015 and 2016. A fixed effects logistic regression was used to estimate the change in brand equity between panel survey waves 3 and 4 on past 30 day smoking among ever and current smokers. Additional models determined the effects of brand equity predicting tobacco attitudes/use at follow up among the full sample. All analyses controlled for demographic factors. A one point increase in the brand equity scale between the two waves was associated with a 66% greater chance of not smoking among ever smokers (OR 1.66, CI 1.11 2.48, p 0.05) and an 80% greater chance of not smoking among current smokers (OR 1.80, CI 1.05 3.10, p 0.05) Higher overall truth brand equity at wave 3 predicted less smoking at wave 4 and more positive anti tobacco attitudes. Being male, younger, and non white predicted some of the tobacco related attitudes. Future research should examine long term effects of brand equity on tobacco use and how tobacco control can optimize the use of branding in campaigns.
Sociedade de risco, direito e meios de comunicacao: uma relacao entre o sistema midiatico e os aparatos de seguranca, conforme a teoria sistemica
Year: 2010

O direito, outrora sistema fechado em si proprio, na autopoiese de sua funcao normativa, ao juridificar relacoes fora da sua orbita de operacoes, agora parece que autorreproduz uma funcao normativa de identificacao e criminalizacao de inimigos, em seus acoplamentos com outros sistemas sociais, na forma de um aprendizado sobre fatos ocorridos no entorno social, que pode vir a traduzir muito mais uma corrupcao do sistema, do que propriamente no exercicio de uma autopoiese do sistema juridico. A preocupacao e que o discurso de criminalizacao de inimigos nao venha a comprometer a autonomia do sistema do direito, vindo este a ser subjugado por outros sistemas sociais, reproduzindo em suas operacoes internas uma funcao normativa muito mais associada a uma politica criminal irracional, baseada tao somente num populismo penal, a reboque da opiniao publica e a merce dos discursos alarmistas dos meios de comunicacao, perante uma sociedade de risco
Experimental analysis of the shear strength of composite concrete beams without web reinforcement
Year: 2021

Composite concrete members without web reinforcement are often used in precast construction. The contribution of the cast in place concrete topping slab to vertical shear strength has been traditionally disregarded. However, significant cost savings can result from designing and assessing these structures if this contribution is considered. This paper presents the experimental study of a series of 21 monolithic and composite (precast beam and cast in place slab) specimens without web reinforcement, and with rectangular and T shaped cross sections, failing in shear. The vertical shear strength was analysed by the following test variables: cross section shape, the existence of an interface between different aged concretes, strengths of the two concretes and the differential shrinkage effect. From these experimental tests, it was concluded that the slab contributed to shear strength, the use of high strength concrete slightly increased specimens' shear strength and the differential shrinkage did not reduce shear strength. Specimens' failure modes were analysed based on their shear transfer mechanisms, noticing that the arching action in the slab was considerable after critical shear crack formation. The vertical shear strength experimental results were well predicted by the codes' formulations (Eurocode 2, Model Code 2010 and ACI 318 19) when composite beam depth was taken for the calculations instead of beam depth. Codes significantly underestimated the horizontal shear strengths of the composite specimens.
Globalization of EU Trade Policy in the COVID 19 Era
Year: 2021

The COVID 19 pandemic has changed the shape of economic globalization as well as the position of world trade within it. Nation states and several customs unions will have to update their trade policy accordingly to the changing situation. The need for trade policy update is especially related to the EU as one of the most important actors in the world economy. This article deals with the priorities of EU trade policy during the presence of the COVID 19 pandemic. The authors assess what kind of changes occurred to EU's trade policy during the first eight months (February to September 2020) since the outbreak of the COVID 19 in Europe. Furthermore, the authors also assess the penetration of unusual protectionist measures into the practical execution of EU's trade policy. Our approach is built on a content analysis of various trade policy documents from EU and WTO. In this undertaking we also critically reflect on specific trade policy measures already adopted by the European Commission since the global outbreak of COVID 19.Findings Value added: The article aims to be one of the first of its kind to analyze the changes caused by COVID 19 to the formation of EU trade policy. The paper concludes that during the first eight months of the pandemic, the EU trade policy followed the liberal path and protectionist measures were applied scarcely. However, in the future, EU will have to deal with increasing protectionist pressures from both internal and external environment.
Inhibition of HIV infection by structural proteins of the inner nuclear membrane is associated with reduced chromatin dynamics
Year: 2020

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) enters the nucleus to establish infection. HIV interacts with nuclear pore components to cross the nuclear envelope. In contrast, the role of other proteins of the nuclear envelope in HIV infection is not yet understood. The inner nuclear transmembrane proteins SUN1 and SUN2 connect lamins in the interior of the nucleus to the cytoskeleton in the cytoplasm. Increased levels of SUN1 or SUN2 potently restrict HIV infection through an unresolved mechanism. Here, we find that SUN1 and SUN2 exhibit a differential and viral strain specific antiviral activity HIV 1 and HIV 2. In macrophages and HeLa cells, HIV 1 and HIV 2 are respectively preferentially inhibited by SUN1 and SUN2. This specificity maps to the nucleoplasmic domain of SUN proteins, which associates with Lamin A/C and participates to the DNA damage response. We find that etoposide, a DNA damaging drug, stimulates infection. Inhibition of the DNA damage signaling kinase ATR, which induces a DNA damage response, also enhances HIV 1 infection. The proviral effect of ATR inhibition on infection requires the HIV 1 Vpr gene. Depletion of endogenous Lamin A/C, which sensitizes cells to DNA damage, also enhances HIV 1 infection in HeLa cells. SUN1 overexpression neutralizes these proviral effects, while the antiviral effect of SUN2 is rescued by etoposide treatment. Finally, we show that inhibition of HIV 1 infection by overexpressed SUN proteins and endogenous Lamin A/C is associated with reduced internal movements of chromatin and reduced rotations of the nucleus. Altogether, these results highlight distinct antiviral activities of SUN1 and SUN2 and reveal an emerging role of nuclear movements and the DNA damage response in the control of HIV infection by structural components of the nuclear envelope.
The Vertical Migratory Rhythm of Intertidal Microphytobenthos in Sediment Depends on the Light Photoperiod, Intensity, and Spectrum: Evidence for a Positive Effect of Blue Wavelengths
Venue: Frontiers in Marine Science
Year: 2020

Estuarine intertidal flats strong biological productivity is mainly based on the activity of benthic microalgae communities or microphytobenthos (MPB) mostly dominated by diatoms. Epipelon is a major MPB growth form comprising motile species, which perform repeated "vertical migration" patterns in the upper sediment layers according to tidal and diurnal cycles with upward migration at the beginning of the daylight emersion and downward migration before immersion starts. Although this fascinating behavior has been extensively studied for more than a century, many of its features remain uncharacterized. Epipelon migratory rhythms are believed to be driven by an endogenous internal clock of unknown nature in combination with diverse environmental stimuli. Among the environmental stimuli impacting on MPB vertical migration, light is probably the most important. Rhythmic changes in surface abundance of natural MPB assemblages were therefore continuously assessed at high frequency by Imaging PAM fluorimetry in fresh sediment sampled at different seasons, comprising 85 migration profiles from 40 sediment samplings over 2 years, and exposed to different light conditions without any other environmental stimuli (i.e. no tidal like water flow and stable optimal temperature) In particular, we manipulated (i) the 24 h natural photoperiod MPB that was acclimated to in order to disentangle the tight link between the diurnal and tidal rhythmicity of epipelon migration, and (ii) the light spectrum in order to potentially influence MPB accumulation at the surface of sediment. We found that the migration rhythmicity mapped onto the tidal cycle but that it was modulated, and even overridden, by the diurnal cycle and by the irradiance level during daytime periods with a positive phototactic upward migration up to a certain threshold (in our conditions, 120 mmol photons m 2 s 1 of white light) Also, we found blue wavelengths (465 nm) triggered MPB surface accumulation, as compared to other wavelengths (white, green, and red) in patterns that were intensity dependent and species dependent. In particular, we found two species, Navicula spartinetensis and Gyrosigma fasciola, which strongly migrate up under blue light and could potentially be used as model species for further studying the light responses of intertidal MPB.