nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Emergence of African Swine Fever in China, 2018.
Venue: Transboundary and emerging diseases
Year: 2018

African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious disease manifesting clinical symptoms of hemorrhagic fever caused by African swine fever virus (ASFV) and leads to almost 100% mortality in domestic pigs (Galindo and Alonso, 2017, Quembo et al. 2018) Since ASF was first identified in Kenya in the 1920s, it has rapidly spread in Africa and Eurasia and presented as 24 genotypes (Galindo and Alonso, 2017, Quembo et al. 2018) For instance, a genotype II ASFV derived from eastern Africa has resulted in substantial economic losses in many Eastern and Western European countries (van Heerden et al. 2017) This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Improving visible light induced photocatalytic ability of TiO2 through coupling with Bi3O4Cl and carbon dot nanoparticles
Year: 2020

The fabrication of photocatalysts with considerable photocatalytic performance can be the main purpose for the researchers to substitute the traditional wastewater treatment processes. Accordingly, in this work, visible light responsive TiO2/Bi3O4Cl/carbon dots (denoted as TO/BOC/CD) photocatalysts were synthesized via simple strategy. Multiple techniques including EIS, photocurrent, XPS, PL, UV vis DRS, BET, FT IR, EDX, XRD, HRTEM, and SEM were employed to explore electrochemical, chemical, and physical features of the nanocomposites. The photocatalytic ability of the samples for Cr (VI) methylene blue, fuchsine, and rhodamine B removals was examined to display their widespread capability in removing different pollutants. The optimal photocatalytic performance related to the nanocomposite with 20% of BOC and 1 mL of CD solution (TO/BOC/CD (1 mL) photocatalyst) which was 13.8, 25.9, 14.2, and 52.3 folds as high as the TiO2 and 2.84, 2.26, 2.57, and 5.25 times higher than the TO/BOC (20% nanocomposite in removals of Cr (VI) methylene blue, fuchsine, and rhodamine B, respectively. The impressive photocatalytic activity of the TO/BOC/CD photocatalysts is ascribed to the betterment of the optical property of the fabricated photocatalysts. With the enhancement CD content, the respective ternary nanocomposites displayed the highest optical absorption in the visible region. The other reasons in improving the photocatalytic activity are related to increased e /h+ separation capability, and better textural properties. Additionally, trapping experiments demonstrated that the holes and superoxide anion radicals possess a substantial role during the photocatalytic reaction. Thus, this work could promote the potential utilization of TiO2 based photocatalysts for removal of hazardous contaminants under visible light.
Hybrid, randomized and high capacity conservative mutations DNA based steganography for large sized data
Venue: Biosyst.
Year: 2018

In this paper, a well secured, high capacity, preserved algorithm is proposed through integrating the cryptography and steganography concepts with the molecular biology concepts. We achieved this by first encrypting the confidential data using the DNA Playfair cipher to avoid extra information sent to the receiver and it consequently acts as a trap for an attacker. Second, it achieves a randomized steganography process by exploiting the DNA conservative mutations. The DNA conservative mutations are utilized in a way that allows a DNA base to be substituted by another base to allow carrying two bits. Consequently, a high capacity feature is obtained with no payload for the used sequence. There are three main achieved contributions in this work. First, is hiding high capacity of data within DNA by exploiting each codon to hide two bits whilst preserving the sequence properties of protein after the steganography process, which is a trade off in the field. Secondly, using the conservative mutation with all its valid biological permutations, leads to the lowest cracking probability achieved and published till now, as proven in the security analysis section. Finally, a comparison is conducted between the proposed algorithm and five recent substitution based algorithms using large sized data up to three megabytes, to prove the algorithm's scalability.
The impact of an add on video assisted structured aerobic exercise module on mood and somatic symptoms among women with depressive disorders: Study from a tertiary care centre in India.
Venue: Asian journal of psychiatry
Year: 2018

The evidence in favor of exercise as a treatment for depression is compelling, but what kind of exercise, how much, how often, and at what intensity is necessary to make a significant difference. There is serious dearth of such data from India, in particular. We examined the impact of low moderate intensity aerobic exercises on mood and somatic symptoms among women with depressive disorders.  A pre test post test control group design was adopted with a sample size of 40 (20 subjects randomized to both experimental and control group) women inpatients diagnosed with depressive disorder at a tertiary care centre, Bengaluru, India. After pre test, experimental group received 10 sessions of add on intervention (video assisted structured aerobic exercise module) and the control group received treatment as usual. Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) Visual Analogue Mood Scale (VAMS) and Depression Somatic Symptom scale (DSSS) were used as clinical outcome measures.  The estimated mean change within the group in HDRS was 4.30 (95% CI 3.15 to 5.44; p<0.001) in the experimental group as compared to 2.70 (95% CI 1.50 to 3.89; p<0.001) in control group. RMANOVA (F=4.08) revealed a significant reduction in mean mood score in HDRS in the experimental group as compared to the control group at p<0.05. There was no statistically significant reduction in mean somatic symptom score between the groups (p=0.142)  The study findings support that add on aerobic exercise is associated with significantly greater improvements in mood symptoms of women with depressive disorders, when performed in a structured and supervised setting.
STREAM: A First Programming Process
Venue: TOCE
Year: 2009

Programming is recognized as one of seven grand challenges in computing education. Decades of research have shown that the major problems novices experience are composition based they may know what the individual programming language constructs are, but they do not know how to put them together. Despite this fact, textbooks, educational practice, and programming education research hardly address the issue of teaching the skills needed for systematic development of programs. We provide a conceptual framework for incremental program development, called Stepwise Improvement, which unifies best practice in modern software development such as test driven development and refactoring with the prevailing perspective of programming methodology, stepwise refinement. The conceptual framework enables well defined characterizations of incremental program development. We utilize the conceptual framework to derive a programming process, STREAM, designed specifically for novices. STREAM is a carefully down scaled version of a full and rich agile software engineering process particularly suited for novices learning object oriented programming. In using it we hope to achieve two things: to help novice programmers learn faster and better while at the same time laying the foundation for a more thorough treatment of more advanced aspects of software engineering. In this article, two examples demonstrate the application of STREAM. The STREAM process has been taught in the introductory programming courses at our universities for the past three years and the results are very encouraging. We report on a small, preliminary study evaluating the learning outcome of teaching STREAM. The study indicates a positive effect on the development of students' process competences.
A diet high in meat protein and potential renal acid load increases fractional calcium absorption and urinary calcium excretion without affecting markers of bone resorption or formation in postmenopausal women.
Venue: The Journal of nutrition
Year: 2011

Our objective in this study was to determine the effects of a high protein and high potential renal acid load (PRAL) diet on calcium (Ca) absorption and retention and markers of bone metabolism. In a randomized crossover design, 16 postmenopausal women consumed 2 diets: 1 with low protein and low PRAL (LPLP; total protein: 61 g/d; PRAL: 48 mEq/d) and 1 with high protein and high PRAL (HPHP; total protein: 118 g/d;  mEq/d) for 7 wk each separated by a 1 wk break. Ca absorption was measured by whole body scintillation counting of radio labeled (47)Ca. Compared with the LPLP diet, the HPHP diet increased participants' serum IGF I concentrations (P 0.0001) decreased serum intact PTH concentrations (P 0.001) and increased fractional (47)Ca absorption (mean pooled SD: 22.3 vs. 26.5 5.4% P 0.05) and urinary Ca excretion (156 vs. 203 63 mg/d; P 0.005) The net difference between the amount of Ca absorbed and excreted in urine did not differ between 2 diet periods (55 vs. 28 51 mg/d) The dietary treatments did not affect other markers of bone metabolism. In summary, a diet high in protein and PRAL increases the fractional absorption of dietary Ca, which partially compensates for increased urinary Ca, in postmenopausal women. The increased IGF I and decreased PTH concentrations in serum, with no change in biomarkers of bone resorption or formation, indicate a high protein diet has no adverse effects on bone health.
Impact of an alien invasive plant Amaranthus retroflexus on wetland sediment properties under two growth stages
Year: 2017

It is meaningful to investigate the impact of alien invasive plants on wetland sediment. Field experiments were conducted to study the impact of the alien invasive plant, Amaranthus retroflexus, on wetland sediment properties under two growth stages. The results showed that growth of A. retroflexus tended to increase moisture content, porosity, and could significantly decrease total nitrogen (TN) and nitrate (N NO3 concentrations in sediment and ammonium (N NH4+ concentration in interstitial water (p 0.05) However, no obvious impact was observed on total phosphorus (TP) nor on N NH4+ concentrations in sediment. There was a difference in impact of A. retroflexus on sediment properties under two growth stages. The plants with a longer growth stage significantly decreased loss on ignition in sediment and P PO43 concentration in interstitial water. There were also significant differences in N NH4+ concentration in both sediment and interstitial water over the vertical profile of the plant. In the plant treatment with a longer growth stage, P PO43 concentration also showed significant differences over the vertical profile. Therefore, the growth of A. retroflexus can improve sediment physical and chemical properties, reducing N NH4+ and P PO43 release from sediment to overlying water to some extent, thereby decreasing sediment nutrient loading.
Social Disconnectedness, Perceived Isolation, and Health among Older Adults*
Venue: Journal of health and social behavior
Year: 2009

Previous research has identified a wide range of indicators of social isolation that pose health risks, including living alone, having a small social network, infrequent participation in social activities, and feelings of loneliness. However, multiple forms of isolation are rarely studied together, making it difficult to determine which aspects of isolation are most deleterious for health. Using population based data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we combine multiple indicators of social isolation into scales assessing social disconnectedness (e.g. small social network, infrequent participation in social activities) and perceived isolation (e.g. loneliness, perceived lack of social support) We examine the extent to which social disconnectedness and perceived isolation have distinct associations with physical and mental health among older adults. Results indicate that social disconnectedness and perceived isolation are independently associated with lower levels of self rated physical health. However, the association between disconnectedness and mental health may operate through the strong relationship between perceived isolation and mental health. We conclude that health researchers need to consider social disconnectedness and perceived isolation simultaneously.
Media exposure, perceived efficacy and positive experience as predictors of personal and social risk perceptions of mishandled vaccine in China
Year: 2021

Informed by social cognitive theory and impersonal impact hypothesis, this study examined the effects of media exposure, perceived efficacy and prior positive experience on risk perception during a risk event concerning mishandled vaccine in China. Through an online survey of 923 Internet users in China, the study explored the effect of media exposure on perceived risk in two dimensions: exposure frequency and exposure extensity, and found that exposure extensity was a significant predictor of personal risk perception, while exposure frequency had a significant effect on social risk perception. Response efficacy negatively predicted perceived social risk, while self efficacy did not predict perceived personal risk. Prior positive experience moderated the effects of exposure extensity and self efficacy on perceived personal risk. Prior positive experience also moderated the effects of response efficacy on perceived social risk, but did not moderate the effect of exposure frequency on perceived social risk.
Deteccio i reconeixement de text mitjancant l'estimacio de l'amplada del trac
Year: 2012

This report presents a method for detecting and recognizing text in television pictures, which is based on estimating the stroke width. The method extracts the text that is present in the image, and writes it in a text file, so it can be used together with other features, for image indexing. This work on text detection and recognition for image indexing was developed in the context of the CENIT Buscamedia project. That is why, throughout the project, different versions of software were delivered to Televisio de Catalunya, which is one of the companies working with the project CENIT Buscamedia. A text detector has been developed, starting from a first implementation of the algorithm published by Microsoft Research paper, "Detecting text in natural scenes with stroke width transform" Two new stages have been included, binarization and recognition. For the recognition we have used an open source software developed by Google, the Tesseract OCR. Previously, a binarization stage was used to binarize the output of the text detector and facilitate the task of the OCR system. The results have improved considerably compared with the first version implemented, achieving a rate of 5.67% non detected text versus 15.5% of the initial software. The quality factor has also been improved from an initial 39.03% to a 64.56% Deteccio i reconeixement de text mitjancant l'estimacio de l'amplada del trac Index 1. Introduccio 1 2. Objectius del PFC 3 3. Estat de l'art 4 3.1. Metodes de deteccio de text en imatges 4 3.1.1. Metodes basats en la segmentacio de la imatge 4 3.1.2. Metodes basats en els contorns dels caracters 6 3.1.3. Metodes basats en l'amplada del trac 8 3.2. Metode triat. 9 4. Algorisme 10 4.1. Descripcio general 10 4.2. Deteccio de text 12 4.2.1. Deteccio de contorns 14 4.2.2. SWT 15 4.2.3. Creacio de les components 19 4.2.4. Filtratge de components 21 4.2.5. Creacio de les cadenes 25 4.2.6. Analisis de les cadenes 30 4.3. Binaritzacio 32 4.3.1. Metode triat 32 4.4. Reconeixement de text 34 5. Avaluacio del sistema 36 5.1. Avaluacio segons els criteris ICDAR 36 5.1.1.  5.2. Limitacions de l'algorisme 42 5.3. Comparacio de resultats entre algorisme inicial i final. 45 6.  6.1. Treball futur 47 7. Referencies 50 Deteccio i reconeixement de text mitjancant l'estimacio de l'amplada del trac 1
A Short Note on Meshfree PDE constrained Optimization using Moving Least Squares
Venue: OCEANS 2019 MTS/IEEE SEATTLE
Year: 2019

This short note discusses meshfree approach to PDE constrained optimization. For meshfree discretization of partial differential equations, "Moving Least Squares (MLS)" was adopted, and for searching the best solution which minimize the evaluation function, "Constrained Least Squares (CLS)" was used. The combination of MLS and CLS was applied to tidal motion and found to work well for solving PDEs described system. On the other hand, when this method is applied to a kind of data assimilation problem where the observation data have some random error, it was found that the raw PED model is too sensitive to the data error and leads to an over fitted result which is full of short wavelength noise. To overcome this difficulty, a Laplacian filter was introduced and found that it is effective to supress the undesirable growth of short wave component, and gives reasonable fitting result.
Salient Object Detection via Structured Matrix Decomposition
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Year: 2017

Low rank recovery models have shown potential for salient object detection, where a matrix is decomposed into a low rank matrix representing image background and a sparse matrix identifying salient objects. Two deficiencies, however, still exist. First, previous work typically assumes the elements in the sparse matrix are mutually independent, ignoring the spatial and pattern relations of image regions. Second, when the low rank and sparse matrices are relatively coherent, e.g. when there are similarities between the salient objects and background or when the background is complicated, it is difficult for previous models to disentangle them. To address these problems, we propose a novel structured matrix decomposition model with two structural regularizations: (1) a tree structured sparsity inducing regularization that captures the image structure and enforces patches from the same object to have similar saliency values, and (2) a Laplacian regularization that enlarges the gaps between salient objects and the background in feature space. Furthermore, high level priors are integrated to guide the matrix decomposition and boost the detection. We evaluate our model for salient object detection on five challenging datasets including single object, multiple objects and complex scene images, and show competitive results as compared with 24 state of the art methods in terms of seven performance metrics.
Trends in the main Labor Force Indicators in South East Region of Romania during 1998 2014 Effect on Regional Disparities on the Labor Market
Year: 2016

South East Region has a significant economic potential, being a traditional agricultural area, concentrating industrial units well known in Romania and abroad and having the most important national tourist resources. The paper tries to reveal and explain the evolution of the main labor force indicators (the activity rate of labor resources, the employment rate, the unemployment rate, the share of human resources on economic sectors, the net average salaries) over three key moments: 1998 the year when development regions in Romania were created, 2007 the year when Romania acceded to EU and 2014 the last year for which we have statistics.
Nonlinear 2D shape registration via thin plate spline and Lie group representation
Venue: Neurocomputing
Year: 2016

Thin plate spline for robust point matching (TPS RPM) algorithm is a famous and widely used approach in nonlinear shape registration. In this paper, we improve this approach by adopting an alternatively iterative strategy of globally affine and locally nonlinear registration. Concretely, in the affine registration step, we apply the Lie group parameterization method to globally align two shapes to assume the global similarity. In which, some suitable constraints are introduced to improve the robustness of algorithm. Then, in the locally nonlinear deformation step, we apply the thin plate spline approach. By alternatively iterating these two steps, the proposed method not only preserves the advantages of spline methods, but also overcomes an overmatching phenomenon in shape registration. Finally, we test the proposed method on several conventional data sets with comparison of TPS RPM. The experimental results validate that our method is really effective for nonlinear shape registration as well as more robust.
Witch Persecution and Folk Belief in Lowland Scotland: The Devil's Decade
Year: 2008

The Witchcraft Act of 1563, in citing the 'abominabill superstitioun' employed by certain of lieges of the realm through using witchcraft, sorcery and necromancy, and the 'credence gevin thairto in tymes bygane aganis the Law of God' effectively identified diablerie and folk belief with the medieval Church.1 The Reformers, however, operated within a well established ecclesiastical tradition, for the authorities' suspicion of folk belief and popular culture was of very long standing. The Kirk had been concerned about witches since at least the thirteenth century. The formulaic sentence of excommunication from that period, to be pronounced four times a year, included 'witches and all who countenance and protect and support them in their evil doings as well as those who are parties with them in their misdeeds' The sixteenth century version mentioned 'al wichis and trowaris [i.e. believers] in thaim' The Statutes of the Scottish Church prescribed excommunication for all fortune tellers, witches male and female, incendiaries, violators of churches, and other such offenders. The fourteenth century St Andrews statutes had a similarly wide remit including 'all sorcerers and those believing in them'.2 After 1560, since there was widespread opinion, not to mention fear, that superstition sustained the Catholic faith, all such superstition had to be eradicated.
A Survey on Malicious Domains Detection 1 3 DNS data collection Data enrichment Algorithm design Evaluation
Year: 2018

Malicious domains are one of the major resources required for adversaries to run attacks over the Internet. Due to the important role of the Domain Name System (DNS) extensive research has been conducted to identify malicious domains based on their unique behavior reflected in different phases of the life cycle of DNS queries and responses. Existing approaches differ significantly in terms of intuitions, data analysis methods as well as evaluation methodologies. This warrants a thorough systematization of the approaches and a careful review of the advantages and limitations of every group. In this paper, we perform such an analysis. In order to achieve this goal, we present the necessary background knowledge on DNS and malicious activities leveraging DNS. We describe a general framework of malicious domain detection techniques using DNS data. Applying this framework, we categorize existing approaches using several orthogonal viewpoints, namely (1) sources of DNS data and their enrichment, (2) data analysis methods, and (3) evaluation strategies and metrics. In each aspect, we discuss the important challenges that the research community should address in order to fully realize the power of DNS data analysis to fight against attacks leveraging malicious domains.
Heritage and Social Change: Anticipating Future Trends
Year: 2010

While its intellectual roots go back for centuries, heritage conservation came of age as an organizational field in the second half of the twentieth century. As the typical conservationist went from being an amateur interested in art, architecture, or archaeology, to a professional with a scientific, rational bent, the field became more bureaucratized and specialized (Lee 2002; Koshar 2004) The field also gained strength from UNESCO's definition of cultural heritage as a human right and the passage of a series of path breaking conventions. With the world economy undergoing dramatic expansion for much of the period, heritage conservation appeared a growth industry, aided by the changing definition of heritage. From being focused on isolated monuments, the definition expanded to include whole landscapes, and also intangible cultural patterns and practices.