nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Twelve tips for developing an integrated curriculum.

Integration of curriculum is meant to make the teaching/learning activities meaningful; however, the interpretation of 'integration' varies in different institutions and among individuals. Many medical schools find it hard to change their existing curriculum or develop a new integrated curriculum mainly because of lack of will, infrastructure and understanding the process of change.



Drawn from experience, these 12 tips relating to staff development, establishing working groups, organizing the teaching/learning materials under themes and developing some innovative teaching/learning and assessment strategies, are the techniques that a teaching institution can use to change the existing curriculum to an integrated one or develop a new curriculum.



Knowing about the different levels of integration and steps for developing an integrated curriculum can make it easier to integrate an existing curriculum or develop a new one.
Preparation and characterization of agar/clay nanocomposite films: the effect of clay type.

Agar-based nanocomposite films with different types of nanoclays, such as Cloisite Na+, Cloisite 30B, and Cloisite 20A, were prepared using a solvent casting method, and their tensile, water vapor barrier, and antimicrobial properties were tested. Tensile strength (TS), elongation at break (E), and water vapor permeability (WVP) of control agar film were 29.7±1.7 MPa, 45.3±9.6%, and (2.22±0.19)×10(-9) g·m/m2·s·Pa, respectively. All the film properties tested, including transmittance, tensile properties, WVP, and X-ray diffraction patterns, indicated that Cloisite Na+ was the most compatible with agar matrix. TS of the nanocomposite films prepared with 5% Cloisite Na+ increased by 18%, while WVP of the nanocomposite films decreased by 24% through nanoclay compounding. Among the agar/clay nanocomposite films tested, only agar/Cloisite 30B nanocomposite film showed a bacteriostatic function against Listeria monocytogenes.
Exposure to Parents’ Negative Emotions as a Developmental Pathway to the Family Aggregation of Depression and Anxiety in the First Year of Life

Depression and anxiety load in families. In the present study, we focus on exposure to parental negative emotions in first postnatal year as a developmental pathway to early parent-to-child transmission of depression and anxiety. We provide an overview of the little research available on the links between infants' exposure to negative emotion and infants' emotional development in this developmentally sensitive period, and highlight priorities for future research. To address continuity between normative and maladaptive development, we discuss exposure to parental negative emotions in infants of parents with as well as without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. We focus on infants' emotional expressions in everyday parent-infant interactions, and on infants' attention to negative facial expressions as early indices of emotional development. Available evidence suggests that infants' emotional expressions echo parents' expressions and reactions in everyday interactions. In turn, infants exposed more to negative emotions from the parent seem to attend less to negative emotions in others' facial expressions. The links between exposure to parental negative emotion and development hold similarly in infants of parents with and without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. Given its potential links to infants' emotional development, and to later psychological outcomes in children of parents with depression and anxiety, we conclude that early exposure to parental negative emotions is an important developmental mechanism that awaits further research. Longitudinal designs that incorporate the study of early exposure to parents' negative emotion, socio-emotional development in infancy, and later psychological functioning while considering other genetic and biological vulnerabilities should be prioritized in future research.
Neuropsychological functioning in adolescent marijuana users: subtle deficits detectable after a month of abstinence.

In adults, studies examining the long-lasting cognitive effects of marijuana use demonstrate subtle deficits in attention, executive function, and memory. Because neuromaturation continues through adolescence, these results cannot necessarily generalize to adolescent marijuana users. The goal of this study was to examine neuropsychological functioning in abstinent marijuana using and demographically similar control adolescents. Data were collected from 65 adolescent marijuana users (n=31, 26% females) and controls (n=34, 26% females) 16-18 years of age. Extensive exclusionary criteria included independent psychiatric, medical, and neurologic disorders. Neuropsychological assessments were conducted after>23 days of monitored abstinence. After controlling for lifetime alcohol use and depressive symptoms, adolescent marijuana users demonstrated slower psychomotor speed (p<.05), and poorer complex attention (p<.04), story memory (p<.04), and planning and sequencing ability (p<.001) compared with controls. Post hoc analysis revealed that the number of lifetime marijuana use episodes was associated with poorer cognitive function, even after controlling for lifetime alcohol use. The general pattern of results suggested that, even after a month of monitored abstinence, adolescent marijuana users demonstrate subtle neuropsychological deficits compared with nonusers. It is possible that frequent marijuana use during adolescence may negatively influence neuromaturation and cognitive development.
The efficacy of the 'mind map' study technique.

To examine the effectiveness of using the 'mind map' study technique to improve factual recall from written information.



To obtain baseline data, subjects completed a short test based on a 600-word passage of text prior to being randomly allocated to form two groups: 'self-selected study technique' and 'mind map'. After a 30-minute interval the self-selected study technique group were exposed to the same passage of text previously seen and told to apply existing study techniques. Subjects in the mind map group were trained in the mind map technique and told to apply it to the passage of text. Recall was measured after an interfering task and a week later. Measures of motivation were taken.



Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London.



50 second- and third-year medical students.



Recall of factual material improved for both the mind map and self-selected study technique groups at immediate test compared with baseline. However this improvement was only robust after a week for those in the mind map group. At 1 week, the factual knowledge in the mind map group was greater by 10% (adjusting for baseline) (95% CI -1% to 22%). However motivation for the technique used was lower in the mind map group; if motivation could have been made equal in the groups, the improvement with mind mapping would have been 15% (95% CI 3% to 27%).



Mind maps provide an effective study technique when applied to written material. However before mind maps are generally adopted as a study technique, consideration has to be given towards ways of improving motivation amongst users.
Interventions to prevent and reduce physician burnout: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Physician burnout has reached epidemic levels, as documented in national studies of both physicians in training and practising physicians. The consequences are negative effects on patient care, professionalism, physicians' own care and safety, and the viability of health-care systems. A more complete understanding than at present of the quality and outcomes of the literature on approaches to prevent and reduce burnout is necessary.



In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, and the Education Resources Information Center from inception to Jan 15, 2016, for studies of interventions to prevent and reduce physician burnout, including single-arm pre-post comparison studies. We required studies to provide physician-specific burnout data using burnout measures with validity support from commonly accepted sources of evidence. We excluded studies of medical students and non-physician health-care providers. We considered potential eligibility of the abstracts and extracted data from eligible studies using a standardised form. Outcomes were changes in overall burnout, emotional exhaustion score (and high emotional exhaustion), and depersonalisation score (and high depersonalisation). We used random-effects models to calculate pooled mean difference estimates for changes in each outcome.



We identified 2617 articles, of which 15 randomised trials including 716 physicians and 37 cohort studies including 2914 physicians met inclusion criteria. Overall burnout decreased from 54% to 44% (difference 10% [95% CI 5-14]; p<0·0001; I2=15%; 14 studies), emotional exhaustion score decreased from 23·82 points to 21·17 points (2·65 points [1·67-3·64]; p<0·0001; I2=82%; 40 studies), and depersonalisation score decreased from 9·05 to 8·41 (0·64 points [0·15-1·14]; p=0·01; I2=58%; 36 studies). High emotional exhaustion decreased from 38% to 24% (14% [11-18]; p<0·0001; I2=0%; 21 studies) and high depersonalisation decreased from 38% to 34% (4% [0-8]; p=0·04; I2=0%; 16 studies).



The literature indicates that both individual-focused and structural or organisational strategies can result in clinically meaningful reductions in burnout among physicians. Further research is needed to establish which interventions are most effective in specific populations, as well as how individual and organisational solutions might be combined to deliver even greater improvements in physician wellbeing than those achieved with individual solutions.
Treatment with oestrogen or manual separation for labial adhesions – initial outcome and long-term follow-up

Topical oestrogen and manual separation are the main treatments for labial adhesions. The aim was to evaluate treatment of labial adhesions and compare the outcome of topical oestrogen treatment with that of manual separation.



All girls aged 0-12 years admitted to a tertiary centre for paediatric surgery for labial adhesions were included. The study design was dual: The first part was a retrospective chart review of the treatment success according to the medical charts. The second part was a cross-sectional parent-reported long-term outcome study (> 6 months after last treatment finished).



In total 71 patients were included and the median follow-up time for the chart study was 84 (6-162) months after treatment with oestrogen or manual separation. Oestrogen was the first treatment for 66 patients who had an initial successful rate of 62% but this was followed by recurrences in 44%. Five patients had manual treatment as their first treatment and they had a 100% initial success rate followed by recurrences in 20%. Therefore, for the first treatment course there was a final success rate of 35% for oestrogen and 80% for manual separation (p = 0.006). Corresponding final success rates including all consecutive treatments over the study period were 46/130 (35%) for oestrogen and 21/30 (70%) for manual separation (p = 0.001). The success rate for oestrogen did not differ if treatment was given in a course length of 0-4 weeks (39% success) or > 4 weeks (32% success) (p = 0.369). In the parent-reported long-term outcome study the response rate was 51% (36/71). Parents reported that recurrences of adhesions after last prescribed/performed treatment were frequent: in total 25% of patients still had adhesions corresponding to 8/29 (29%) of those whose last treatment was oestrogen and 1/9 (11%) of those whose last treatment was manual separation.



Due to the results recurrences are common after both oestrogen and manual separations. However, the overall final outcome after manual separation seems to be more successful when compared to that of topical oestrogen treatment.
A 990-µW 1.6-GHz PLL Based on a Novel Supply-Regulated Active-Loop-Filter VCO

A low-power 1.6-GHz phase-locked loop (PLL) based on a novel supply-regulated voltage-controlled oscillator (SR-VCO) including an active-loop filter (ALF) is realized. In this PLL, an active RC filter is combined with SR-VCO, achieving the advantages of ALF PLL without penalties in power consumption or phase noises. The PLL has measured rms jitter of 4.82 ps, and its core consumes 990 μW from 1-V supply while the chip area is 420 × 570 μm including on-chip passive components required for the ALF and the supply regulator.
Modeling and analysis of a biomimetic foot mechanism

Humans and mammals possess their own feet. Using the mobility of their feet, they are able to walk in various environments such as plain land, desert, swamp, and so on. Previously developed biped robots and four-legged robots did not employ such adaptable foot. In this work, a biomimetic foot mechanism is investigated through analysis of the foot structure of the human-being. This foot mechanism consists of a toe, an ankle, a heel, and springs replacing the foot muscles and tendons. Using five toes and springs, this foot can adapt to various environments. A mathematical modeling for this foot mechanism was performed and its characteristics were observed through numerical simulation.
Perceptions of gender-based discrimination during surgical training and practice

Women represent 15% of practicing general surgeons. Gender-based discrimination has been implicated as discouraging women from surgery. We sought to determine women's perceptions of gender-based discrimination in the surgical training and working environment.  Following IRB approval, we fielded a pilot survey measuring perceptions and impact of gender-based discrimination in medical school, residency training, and surgical practice. It was sent electronically to 1,065 individual members of the Association of Women Surgeons.  We received 334 responses from medical students, residents, and practicing physicians with a response rate of 31%. Eighty-seven percent experienced gender-based discrimination in medical school, 88% in residency, and 91% in practice. Perceived sources of gender-based discrimination included superiors, physician peers, clinical support staff, and patients, with 40% emanating from women and 60% from men.  The majority of responses indicated perceived gender-based discrimination during medical school, residency, and practice. Gender-based discrimination comes from both sexes and has a significant impact on women surgeons.
Microalgae biorefinery: High value products perspectives.

Microalgae have received much interest as a biofuel feedstock in response to the uprising energy crisis, climate change and depletion of natural sources. Development of microalgal biofuels from microalgae does not satisfy the economic feasibility of overwhelming capital investments and operations. Hence, high-value co-products have been produced through the extraction of a fraction of algae to improve the economics of a microalgae biorefinery. Examples of these high-value products are pigments, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, vitamins and anti-oxidants, with applications in cosmetics, nutritional and pharmaceuticals industries. To promote the sustainability of this process, an innovative microalgae biorefinery structure is implemented through the production of multiple products in the form of high value products and biofuel. This review presents the current challenges in the extraction of high value products from microalgae and its integration in the biorefinery. The economic potential assessment of microalgae biorefinery was evaluated to highlight the feasibility of the process.
Visualizing mobile design pattern relationships

This paper describes the process of creating a design pattern management interface for a collection of mobile design patterns. The need to communicate how patterns are interrelated and work together to create solutions motivated the creation of this interface. Currently, most design pattern collections are presented in alphabetical lists. The Oracle Mobile User Experience team approach is to communicate relationships visually by highlighting and connecting related patterns. Before the team designed the interface, we first analyzed common relationships between patterns and created a pattern language map. Next, we organized the patterns into conceptual design categories. Last, we designed a pattern management interface that enables users to browse patterns and visualize their relationships.
Identifying Reusable Macros for Efficient Exploration via Policy Compression

Reinforcement Learning agents often need to solve not a single task, but several tasks pertaining to a same domain; in particular, each task corresponds to an MDP drawn from a family of related MDPs (a domain). An agent learning in this setting should be able exploit policies it has learned in the past, for a given set of sample tasks, in order to more rapidly acquire policies for novel tasks. Consider, for instance, a navigation problem where an agent may have to learn to navigate different (but related) mazes. Even though these correspond to distinct tasks (since the goal and starting locations of the agent may change, as well as the maze configuration itself), their solutions do share common properties—e.g. in order to reach distant areas of the maze, an agent should not move in circles. After an agent has learned to solve a few sample tasks, it may be possible to leverage the acquired experience to facilitate solving novel tasks from the same domain. Our work is motivated by the observation that trajectory samples from optimal policies for tasks belonging to a common domain, often reveal underlying useful patterns for solving novel tasks. We propose an optimization algorithm that characterizes the problem of learning reusable temporally extended actions (macros). We introduce a computationally tractable surrogate objective that is equivalent to finding macros that allow for maximal compression of a given set of sampled trajectories. We develop a compression-based approach for obtaining such macros and propose an exploration strategy that takes advantage of them. We show that meaningful behavioral patterns can be identified from sample policies over discrete and continuous action spaces, and present evidence that the proposed exploration strategy improves learning time on novel tasks.
Khat Chewing and Mental Distress: A Community Based Study, in Jimma City, Southwestern Ethiopia

Khat (Catha edulis) contains a psychoactive substance, cathinone, which produces central nervous system stimulation analogous to amphetamine. It is believed that khat chewing has a negative impact on the physical and mental health of individuals as well as the socioeconomic condition of the family and the society at large. There is lack of community based studies regarding the link between khat use and poor mental health. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between khat use and mental distress and to determine the prevalence of mental distress and khat use in Jimma City.



A cross-sectional community-based study was conducted in Jimma City from October 15 to November 15, 2009. The study used a structured questionnaire and Self Reporting Questionnaire-20 designed by WHO and which has been translated into Amharic and validated in Ethiopia. By multi stage sampling, 1200 individuals were included in the study. Data analysis was done using SPSS for window version 13.



The Khat use prevalence was found to be 37.8% during the study period. Majority of the khat users were males (73.5%), age group 18-24 (41.1%), Muslims (46.6%), Oromo Ethnic group (47.2%), single (51.4%), high school students (46.8%) and employed (80%). Using cut-off point 7 out of 20 on the Self Reporting Questionnaire-20, 25.8% of the study population was found to have mental distress. Males (26.6%), persons older than 55 years (36.4%), Orthodox Christians (28.4%), Kefficho Ethnic groups (36.4%), widowed (44.8%), illiterates (43.8%) and farmers (40.0%) had higher rates of mental distress. We found that mental distress and khat use have significant association (34.7% Vs 20.5%, P<0.001). There was also significant association between mental distress and frequency of khat use (41% Vs 31.1%, P<0.001)



The high rate of khat use among the young persons calls for public intervention to prevent more serious forms of substance use disorders. Our findings suggest that persons who use khat suffer from higher rates of mental distress. However, causal association could not be established due to cross-sectional study design.
1 From Storyline to Box Office : A New Approach for GreenLighting Movie Scripts

Movie studios often have to choose among thousands of scripts to decide which ones to turn into movies. Despite the huge amount of money at stake, this process, known as “green-lighting” in the movie industry, is largely a guesswork based on experts’ experience and intuitions. In this paper, we propose a new approach to help studios evaluate scripts which will then lead to more profitable green-lighting decisions. Our approach combines screenwriting domain knowledge, natural language processing techniques, and statistical learning methods to forecast a movie’s return-on-investment based only on textual information available in movie scripts. We test our model in a holdout decision task to show that our model is able to improve a studio’s gross return-on-investment significantly.
A next-best-view system for autonomous 3-D object reconstruction

The focus of this paper is to design and implement a system capable of automatically reconstructing a prototype three-dimensional model from a minimum number of range images of an object. Given an ideal 3-D object model, the system iteratively renders range and intensity images of the model from a speci ed position, assimilates the range information into a prototype model, and determines the sensor pose (position and orientation) from which an optimal amount of previously unrecorded information may be acquired. Reconstruction is terminated when the model meets a given threshold of accuracy. Such a system has applications in the context of robot navigation, manufacturing, or hazardous materials handling. The system has been tested successfully on several synthetic data models, and each set of results was found to be reasonably consistent with an intuitive human search. The number of views necessary to reconstruct an adequate 3-D prototype depends on the complexity of the object or scene and the initial data collected. The prototype models which the system recovers compare well with the ideal models.
A Critical Study of Selected Classification Algorithms for Liver Disease Diagnosis

Patients with Liver disease have been continuously increasing because of excessive consumption of alcohol, inhale of harmful gases, intake of contaminated food, pickles and drugs. Automatic classification tools may reduce burden on doctors. This paper evaluates the selected classification algorithms for the classification of some liver patient datasets. The classification algorithms considered here are Naïve Bayes classifier, C4.5, Back propagation Neural Network algorithm, and Support Vector Machines. These algorithms are evaluated based on four criteria: Accuracy, Precision, Sensitivity and Specificity.