nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Validity of the modified Berg Balance Scale in adults with intellectual and visual disabilities.

A modified version of the Berg Balance Scale (mBBS) was developed for individuals with intellectual and visual disabilities (IVD). However, the concurrent and predictive validity has not yet been determined.



The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the concurrent and predictive validity of the mBBS for individuals with IVD.



Fifty-four individuals with IVD and Gross Motor Functioning Classification System (GMFCS) Levels I and II participated in this study. The mBBS, the Centre of Gravity (COG), the Comfortable Walking Speed (CWS), and the Barthel Index (BI) were assessed during one session in order to determine the concurrent validity. The percentage of explained variance was determined by analyzing the squared multiple correlation between the mBBS and the BI, COG, CWS, GMFCS, and age, gender, level of intellectual disability, presence of epilepsy, level of visual impairment, and presence of hearing impairment. Furthermore, an overview of the degree of dependence between the mBBS, BI, CWS, and COG was obtained by graphic modelling. Predictive validity of mBBS was determined with respect to the number of falling incidents during 26 weeks and evaluated with Zero-inflated regression models using the explanatory variables of mBBS, BI, COG, CWS, and GMFCS.



The results demonstrated that two significant explanatory variables, the GMFCS Level and the BI, and one non-significant variable, the CWS, explained approximately 60% of the mBBS variance. Graphical modelling revealed that BI was the most important explanatory variable for mBBS moreso than COG and CWS. Zero-inflated regression on the frequency of falling incidents demonstrated that the mBBS was not predictive, however, COG and CWS were.



The results indicated that the concurrent validity as well as the predictive validity of mBBS were low for persons with IVD.
Get real in individual participant data (IPD) meta‐analysis: a review of the methodology

Individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis is an increasingly used approach for synthesizing and investigating treatment effect estimates. Over the past few years, numerous methods for conducting an IPD meta-analysis (IPD-MA) have been proposed, often making different assumptions and modeling choices while addressing a similar research question. We conducted a literature review to provide an overview of methods for performing an IPD-MA using evidence from clinical trials or non-randomized studies when investigating treatment efficacy. With this review, we aim to assist researchers in choosing the appropriate methods and provide recommendations on their implementation when planning and conducting an IPD-MA.
TARDiS: A Branch-and-Merge Approach To Weak Consistency

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of TARDiS (Transactional Asynchronously Replicated Divergent Store), a transactional key-value store explicitly designed for weakly-consistent systems. Reasoning about these systems is hard, as neither causal consistency nor per-object eventual convergence allow applications to deal satisfactorily with write-write conflicts. TARDiS instead exposes as its fundamental abstraction the set of conflicting branches that arise in weakly-consistent systems. To this end, TARDiS introduces a new concurrency control mechanism: branch-on-conflict. On the one hand, TARDiS guarantees that storage will appear sequential to any thread of execution that extends a branch, keeping application logic simple. On the other, TARDiS provides applications, when needed, with the tools and context necessary to merge branches atomically, when and how applications want. Since branch-on-conflict in TARDiS is fast, weakly-consistent applications can benefit from adopting this paradigm not only for operations issued by different sites, but also, when appropriate, for conflicting local operations. We find that TARDiS reduces coding complexity for these applications and that judicious branch-on-conflict can improve their local throughput at each site by two to eight times.
Blockchain: Data Malls, Coin Economies and Keyless Payments

We discuss several uses of blockchain (and, more generally, distributed ledger) technologies outside of cryptocurrencies with a pragmatic view. We mostly focus on three areas: the role of coin economies for what we refer to as data malls (specialized data marketplaces); data provenance (a historical record of data and its origins); and what we term keyless payments (made without having to know other users’ cryptographic keys). We also discuss voting and other areas, and give a sizable list of academic and nonacademic references.
ICT in health care: sociotechnical approaches.

The importance of the social sciences for medical informatics is increasingly recognized. As ICT requires inter-action with people and thereby inevitably affects them, understanding ICT requires a focus on the interrelation between technology and its social environment. Sociotechnical approaches increase our understanding of how ICT applications are developed, introduced and become a part of social practices. Socio-technical approaches share several starting points: 1) they see health care work as a social, 'real life' phenomenon, which may seem 'messy' at first, but which is guided by a practical rationality that can only be overlooked at a high price (i.e. failed systems). 2) They see technological innovation as a social process, in which organizations are deeply affected. 3) Through in-depth, formative evaluation, they can help improve system design and implementation.
A first principle model for multiphase slugging flow in vertical risers

In this paper, we propose a simple model to represent the slugging flow regime appearing in vertical risers. We consider a one dimensional two-phase flow composed of a liquid phase and a gaseous compressible phase. The presented model can be applied to a wide class of systems, ranging from pure vertical risers to more complex geometries such as those found on actual sub sea petroleum facilities. Following ideas from the literature, we introduce a virtual valve located at the bottom of the riser. This allows us to reproduce observed periodic regimes. It also brings insight into the physics of the slugging phenomenon. Most importantly, this model reveals relatively easy to tune and seems suitable for control design. A tuning methodology is proposed along with a proof of the existence of a limit cycle under simplifying assumptions.
NpBench: A Benchmark Suite for Control plane and Data plane Applications for Network Processors

Modern network interfaces demand highly intelligent traffic management in addition to the basic requirement of wire speed packet forwarding. Several vendors are releasing network processors in order to handle these demands. Network workloads can be classified into data plane and control plane workloads, however most network processors are optimized for data plane. Also, existing benchmark suites for network processors primarily contain data plane workloads, which perform packet processing for a forwarding function. In this paper, we present a set of benchmarks, called NpBench, targeted towards control plane (e.g., traffic management, quality of service, etc.) as well as data plane workloads. The characteristics of NpBench workloads, such as instruction mix, parallelism, cache behavior and required processing capability per packet, are presented and compared with CommBench, an existing network processor benchmark suite . We also discuss the architectural characteristics of the benchmarks having control plane functions, their implications to designing network processors and the significance of Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) in network processors.
The Critical Importance of Retrieval--and Spacing--for Learning.

We examined the impact of repeated testing and repeated studying on long-term learning. In Experiment 1, we replicated Karpicke and Roediger's (2008) influential results showing that once information can be recalled, repeated testing on that information enhances learning, whereas restudying that information does not. We then examined whether the apparent ineffectiveness of restudying might be attributable to the spacing differences between items that were inherent in the between-subjects design employed by Karpicke and Roediger. When we controlled for these spacing differences by manipulating the various learning conditions within subjects in Experiment 2, we found that both repeated testing and restudying improved learning, and that learners' awareness of the relative mnemonic benefits of these strategies was enhanced. These findings contribute to understanding how two important factors in learning-test-induced retrieval processes and spacing-can interact, and they illustrate that such interactions can play out differently in between-subjects and within-subjects experimental designs.
Study of Channel Characteristics for Galvanic-Type Intra-Body Communication Based on a Transfer Function from a Quasi-Static Field Model

Intra-Body Communication (IBC), which modulates ionic currents over the human body as the communication medium, offers a low power and reliable signal transmission method for information exchange across the body. This paper first briefly reviews the quasi-static electromagnetic (EM) field modeling for a galvanic-type IBC human limb operating below 1 MHz and obtains the corresponding transfer function with correction factor using minimum mean square error (MMSE) technique. Then, the IBC channel characteristics are studied through the comparison between theoretical calculations via this transfer function and experimental measurements in both frequency domain and time domain. High pass characteristics are obtained in the channel gain analysis versus different transmission distances. In addition, harmonic distortions are analyzed in both baseband and passband transmissions for square input waves. The experimental results are consistent with the calculation results from the transfer function with correction factor. Furthermore, we also explore both theoretical and simulation results for the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of several common modulation schemes in the IBC system with a carrier frequency of 500 kHz. It is found that the theoretical results are in good agreement with the simulation results.
Camera gimbal stabilization using conventional PID controller and evolutionary algorithms

In this paper, control system is designed to stabilize the camera gimbal system used in different air borne systems for applications such as target tracking, surveillance, aerial photography, autonomous navigation and so on. This camera gimbal system replaces many traditional tracking systems such as radar which are heavy and large to mount on air vehicles. So, the stabilization of camera gimbal is very important to eliminate shakes and vibrations in photography, provides accuracy in tracking moving target and so on. The control system for this gimbal is developed using various control methods and algorithms to provide better and efficient performance with flexibility, accuracy and feasibility. PID controller is designed to control camera gimbal due to its effectiveness, simplicity and feasibility. The tuning parameters of PID controller are tuned using traditional and evolutionary algorithms such as PSO and GA to provide better performance and accuracy in system response. PSO and GA are used due to its dynamic and static performance, computational efficiency and so on. In this paper, performance of system with conventional PID and PSO, GA tuned PID controllers are compared and optimized algorithm is implemented.
Foot Morphological Difference between Habitually Shod and Unshod Runners

Foot morphology and function has received increasing attention from both biomechanics researchers and footwear manufacturers. In this study, 168 habitually unshod runners (90 males whose age, weight & height were 23±2.4 years, 66±7.1 kg & 1.68±0.13 m and 78 females whose age, weight & height were 22±1.8 years, 55±4.7 kg & 1.6±0.11 m) (Indians) and 196 shod runners (130 males whose age, weight & height were 24±2.6 years, 66±8.2 kg & 1.72±0.18 m and 66 females whose age, weight & height were 23±1.5 years, 54±5.6 kg & 1.62±0.15 m) (Chinese) participated in a foot scanning test using the easy-foot-scan (a three-dimensional foot scanning system) to obtain 3D foot surface data and 2D footprint imaging. Foot length, foot width, hallux angle and minimal distance from hallux to second toe were calculated to analyze foot morphological differences. This study found that significant differences exist between groups (shod Chinese and unshod Indians) for foot length (female p = 0.001), width (female p = 0.001), hallux angle (male and female p = 0.001) and the minimal distance (male and female p = 0.001) from hallux to second toe. This study suggests that significant differences in morphology between different ethnicities could be considered for future investigation of locomotion biomechanics characteristics between ethnicities and inform last shape and design so as to reduce injury risks and poor performance from mal-fit shoes.
Computer vision based feature extraction of leaves for identification of medicinal values of plants

Plants are considered as one of the greatest assets in the field of Indian Science of Medicine called Ayurveda. Some plants have its medicinal values apart from serving as the source of food. The innovation in the allopathic medicines has degraded the significance of these therapeutic plants. People failed to have their medications at their door step instead went behind the fastest cure unaware of its side effects. One among the reasons is the lack of knowledge about identifying medicinal plants among the normal ones. So, a Vision based approach is being employed to create an automated system which identifies the plants and provides its medicinal values thus helping even a common man to be aware of the medicinal plants around them. This paper discusses about the formation of the feature set which is the important step in recognizing any plant species.
Distributed Cooperative Communication and Link Prediction in Cloud Robotics

While deploying large scale heterogeneous robots in a wide geographical area, communicating among robots and robots with a central entity pose a major challenge due to robotic motion, distance and environmental constraints. In a cloud robotics scenario, communication challenges result in computational challenges as the computation is being performed at the cloud. Therefore fog nodes are introduced which shorten the distance between the robots and cloud and reduce the communication challenges. Fog nodes also reduce the computation challenges with extra compute power. However in the above scenario, maintaining continuous communication between the cloud and the robots either directly or via fog nodes is difficult. Therefore we propose a Distributed Cooperative Multi-robots Communication (DCMC) model where Robot to Robot (R2R), Robot to Fog (R2F) and Fog to Cloud (F2C) communications are being realized. Once the DCMC framework is formed, each robot establishes communication paths to maintain a consistent communication with the cloud. Further, due to mobility and environmental condition, maintaining link with a particular robot or a fog node becomes difficult. This requires pre-knowledge of the link quality such that appropriate R2R or R2F communication can be made possible. In a scenario where Global Positioning System (GPS) and continuous scanning of channels are not advisable due to energy or security constraints, we need an accurate link prediction mechanism. In this paper we propose a Collaborative Robotic based Link Prediction (CRLP) mechanism which predicts reliable communication and quantify link quality evolution in R2R and R2F communications without GPS and continuous channel scanning. We have validated our proposed schemes using joint Gazebo/Robot Operating System (ROS), MATLAB and Network Simulator (NS3) based simulations. Our schemes are efficient in terms of energy saving and accurate link prediction.
Risk prediction of type II diabetes based on random forest model

In recent years, type II diabetes has become a serious disease that threaten the health and mind of human. Efficient predictive modeling is required for medical researchers and practitioners. This study proposes a type II diabetes prediction model based on random forest which aims at analyzing some readily available indicators (age, weight, waist, hip, etc.) effects on diabetes and discovering some rules on given data. The method can significantly reduce the risk of disease through digging out a clear and understandable model for type II diabetes from a medical database. Random forest algorithm uses multiple decision trees to train the samples, and integrates weight of each tree to get the final results. The validation results at school of medicine, University of Virginia shows that the random forest algorithm can greatly reduce the problem of over-fitting of the single decision tree, and it can effectively predict the impact of these readily available indicators on the risk of diabetes. Additionally, we get a better prediction accuracy using random forest than using the naive Bayes algorithm, ID3 algorithm and AdaBoost algorithm.
Placental Adaptation: What Can We Learn from Birthweight:Placental Weight Ratio?

Appropriate fetal growth relies upon adequate placental nutrient transfer. Birthweight:placental weight ratio (BW:PW ratio) is often used as a proxy for placental efficiency, defined as the grams of fetus produced per gram placenta. PW ratio in an appropriately grown fetus (small placenta) is assumed to be due to up-regulated placental nutrient transfer capacity i.e., a higher nutrient net flux per gram placenta. In fetal growth restriction (FGR), where a fetus fails to achieve its genetically pre-determined growth potential, placental weight and BW:PW ratio are often reduced which may indicate a placenta that fails to adapt its nutrient transfer capacity to compensate for its small size. This review considers the literature on BW:PW ratio in both large cohort studies of normal pregnancies and those studies offering insight into the relationship between BW:PW ratio and outcome measures including stillbirth, FGR, and subsequent postnatal consequences. The core of this review is the question of whether BW:PW ratio is truly indicative of altered placental efficiency, and whether changes in BW:PW ratio reflect those placentas which adapt their nutrient transfer according to their size. We consider this question using data from mice and humans, focusing upon studies that have measured the activity of the well characterized placental system A amino acid transporter, both in uncomplicated pregnancies and in FGR. Evidence suggests that BW:PW ratio is reduced both in FGR and in pregnancies resulting in a small for gestational age (SGA, birthweight < 10th centile) infant but this effect is more pronounced earlier in gestation (<28 weeks). In mice, there is a clear association between increased BW:PW ratio and increased placental system A activity. Additionally, there is good evidence in wild-type mice that small placentas upregulate placental nutrient transfer to prevent fetal undergrowth. In humans, this association between BW:PW ratio and placental system A activity is less clear and is worthy of further consideration, both in terms of system A and other placental nutrient transfer processes. This knowledge would help decide the value of measuring BW:PW ratio in terms of determining the risk of poor health outcomes, both in the neonatal period and long term.
Cyber Warfare : A New Doctrine and Taxonomy

arl von Clausewitz defined war as " … an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will … In order to attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed, and disarmament becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities … . " At the end of the second millennium, this definition no longer describes the full spectrum of modern warfare. In the near future, – with software alone – we will have the potential to make war without the use of violence and fulfill the second half of von Clauswitz's definition. Today's software-intensive systems make this possible. Cyber describes systems that use mechanical or electronic systems to replace human control. In this paper the term includes systems that incorporate software as a key control element. Cyber warfare can be executed without violence, and therefore the dependence on software intensive systems – cyber systems – can make nations vulnerable to warfare without violence. Cyber warfare is the conduct of military operations according to information-related principles . However, this does not define the full degree of capabilities now possible in cyber warfare. Limiting the scope of cyber warfare to information-related principles does not describe what happens when an enemy disrupts the electrical power grid of a nation by hacking the controlling software . Information is not only at risk – so is the fundamental control of civilization. As technology progresses , this fundamental control will continue to devolve into networks and software-controlled electronics . This transition has already occurred in aviation. Previously, 100 percent of an aircraft's performance and capabilities were defined by hardware – the physical makeup of the aircraft. Today in the most advanced aircraft, 75 percent or more of the aircraft's performance and capability is absolutely dependent on the software [4]. Without software, aircraft would not be con-trollable or reach the desired performance capabilities 1. In some cases, through software, aircraft performance is gaining limited independence from physical configuration 2. Software dependence and hardware independence are growing: modern aircraft fly-by-wire, their engines are controlled-by-wire, their weapons are fired-and dropped-by-wire. Systems that in the past were entirely hardware with mechanical control are being replaced by software with software control. Software defines the strength of modern systems, and through networking provides a basis for the integration of many disparate items. These networked software systems are under attack today, and the attacks are increasing . Unfortunately …
Adventitious shoot regeneration in cultures of Humulus lupulus L. (hop) cvs. Brewers Gold and Nugget

A very efficient protocol for plant regeneration from two commercial Humulus lupulus L. (hop) cultivars, Brewers Gold and Nugget has been established, and the morphogenetic potential of explants cultured on Adams modified medium supplemented with several concentrations of cytokinins and auxins studied. Zeatin at 4.56 μm produced direct caulogenesis and caulogenic calli in both cultivars. Subculture of these calli on Adams modified medium supplemented with benzylaminopurine (4.4 μm) and indolebutyric acid (0.49 μm) promoted shoot regeneration which gradually increased up to the third subculture. Regeneration rates of 60 and 29% were achieved for Nugget and Brewers Gold, respectively. By selection of callus lines, it has been possible to maintain caulogenic potential for 14 months. Regenerated plants were successfully transferred to field conditions.